New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

If it had been Season of the Vampire..

Kim Hollis: Season of the Witch, the latest in a long line of ill-reviewed Nic Cage films, opened to $10.6 million. Given the film's $40 million budget, should Relativity be pleased with this result?

Josh Spiegel: Is there any way to be pleased about a Nicolas Cage movie being released in January and making $10 million? Obviously, there are over a million people who dropped money into the metaphorical trash can to watch this movie, but this movie had no chance of becoming a big hit, and I imagine Relativity Media was aware of that, having pushed it back already.

Matthew Huntley: I would say it depends on whether Relativity has international rights to the movie. If they do, and if they can pick up decent numbers from overseas markets (which, given the premise, are more likely to respond to this movie than the U.S.), I'd say someone's job can be spared. If not, then it's going to be an uphill battle before the movie shows a profit, if ever, in which case Relativity's role as a distributor remains questionable.

Kim Hollis: Matthew, they sold off international rights, so I guess it depends how much they got in that deal. It might mitigate their losses or if it does well overseas, I suppose they'll regret it.





Bruce Hall: They say that every day above ground is a good day, but the people who say that were clearly not Hollywood executives. What we have here is an action film starring two B-list stars opening in January 2011 to third place behind a Western and a worn out franchise about a bunch of people whose name sounds like what I called the guy who almost backed into me at the grocery store this morning. How would you feel? I guess the upside here is that with with such a relatively modest budget and despite the fact that the release date was pushed out almost a year, Season of the Witch might still luck out and earn back a fair portion of its budget internationally, keeping in mind the caveat Matthew pointed out.

But overall I believe this to be a forgettable result for a forgettable movie from an increasingly forgettable Nic Cage. Ron Perlman can at least lay claim to being Hellboy and Clay Morrow - and his career is on its second wind anyway. Cage has been one of Hollywood's most consistently marketable stars for decades but continues to alienate his fans with puzzling choices and uninspired performances. Is he just trying to pay off his considerable debt? Did he lose a bet? Does he hate us? I don't know, but sooner or later people are going to stop caring about a man who was once one of the industry's most intriguing and unique talents. And that's a shame.

Jim Van Nest: That ANYone went and saw this film should make Relativity pleased with the result. It's like they wanted to take Cage's Sorcerer character and put him in a crappy looking almost horror flick. Who would want to see that? I'm one of the very few that hasn't jumped off the Nic Cage bandwagon, but even I wouldn't waste my time or money on this one. $10 million HAS to be better than what they expected, so if I'm Relativity, I call it "not a complete disaster" and move on.

Continued:       1       2       3       4