Weekly Box Office and Film Discussion Thread

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Drtooth

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Pig's Laundry said:
The new Smurfs movie teaser trailer is out. Obviously it's too early to speculate on the quality of the film, but I will say I really love the art style they're going with:
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There's a thread for this, by the way. I was to lazy to post it there myself.

http://www.muppetcentral.com/forum/...d-smurf-movies-goes-to-straight-up-cgi.58111/

D'Snowth said:
Why didn't they look like that to begin with?
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You may have forgot about This thread from 2008. Long story short, they totally were, a trilogy was planned, and Paramount was to released them, possibly through Nickelodeon Studios.

Then nothing.

Then Sony bought up the rights, then Chipmunks came out and was a surprise hit, and they needed to make it a hybrid film. So it was down to a stupid script about a little girl crying Smurf toys to life because reasons, and a still stupid, but in a completely different way where they He-Man the Movied their way into the "real world." And while the first one is a lousy film pretty much saved by Hank Azaria, the second one with all it's flaws (a LOT of flaws) they actually tried and made a decent story about Smurfette.

Only thing I'm going to miss about these films is Hank Azaria. And the completely wasted Paul Reubens as Jokey Smurf.


On another subject, I wasn't exactly pumped when I first heard of Storks, but I'm really jazzed about it now seeing a lot more footage and knowing the script was written by TM and MMW's Nicholas Stoller.
 
mr3urious

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I've been doing some research on that upcoming Middle School movie with the hand-drawn notebook sketches, and it's being directed by the same guy as Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Movie 43, so you know we're in for some top-quality entertainment. :rolleyes:
 
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Drtooth

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Worst part is, at least Paul Blart and Movie 43 looked interesting (hey. bad stuff can at least hold interest for being bad). Middle School looks so, freaking boring. Just...it looks like it should be on Nickelodeon. Doesn't even star anyone name. The "It's that guy" comedian that was the villain of the Yogi Bear movie. Hand drawn sequences are utterly wasted on this thing.
 
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THE LION KING was a good movie, don't get me wrong, but for a while there, it was to Disney what Rugrats were to Nick, in that Lion King was everywhere: Timon and Pumbaa got their own TV spin-off (which also occasionally features the Hyenas), then they redid the first movie with Timon and Pumbaa having a bigger sideplot so we could see what they were doing in the movie when they weren't on screen, then there was the sequel about Simbaa's pride and what have you. I kind of feel like it has no intergrity anymore already, so why run it into the ground even further?

As for Jon Favreau, yeah, he's a good director, so I'll agree that it might be in good hands, but still. . . .
 
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Drtooth

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D'Snowth said:
As for Jon Favreau, yeah, he's a good director, so I'll agree that it might be in good hands, but still. . . .
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I'll say this much. I was certainly not very excited about the live action Jungle Book movie even though The Jungle Book was one of my favorite Disney movies. But I can assure you, it's actually a solid film, and I have to agree with Honest Trailers here, it even improved on some of the faults of the original. You get some great Adam Westing from Walken as King Louie, and Bill Murray was born to play Baloo at some point. I'd even say I liked him better than John Goodman, who was the only thing right with the crappy theatrically released DTV sequel. Lion King's one of my other favorite Disney movies, and Timon and Pumbaa are my favorite sidekick characters right up there with Genie. I'm a big fan of the new Lion Guard cartoon as well, feeling closer to the original source material than the 90's T&P cartoon series. I don't know how a movie will go over and how it can be done "live action" if there are no human roles. But if the same guy behind the fantastic Jungle Book remake that made the film better than it needed to be or could have been, I'm all for it.

At least it's not a live action Frozen...yet.

mr3urious said:
The remake of The Magnificent Seven (which in turn was a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai) is around $35 million so far. At 2nd place is Storks at around $21 mil.
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Stinks that Storks didn't quite get the usual amount a Sony animated film would bring in...especially considering Sony pretty much animated it so WB could release it under their WAG banner. It really was a film that I wasn't looking forward to or wanting to bother with, but I'm glad I came around and saw it. Key and Peele especially stole the show as the wolf pack, as I figured. It's no Zootopia or Kubo, but I enjoyed it around as much as most of the animated movies I saw this year. Though it did manage to close a major plot hole with a slight aside.

You see, the Storks stopped production and delivery of babies 18 years prior to the events of the movie. So, how does that explain the little boy noticeably under 18 who wants a baby brother? Well, procreation does exist in their universe and it's confirmation is in a line where the Boss Stork rhetorically asks if the Andy Samburg Stork knows why they only deliver packages, to which he replies "Uh...because there are other wasy to get babies?"

Otherwise there would have been a huge gap in logic making the movie a little...odd.
 
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Hmm, see I loved the Lion King Broadway musical far more than the cartoon. So that's what I'd personally be comparing a live action movie to.
 
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I'm sure it will borrow from multiple sources, but in the end look like Jungle Book.

Though it's strange to say it's "live action" when Jungle book was mostly CGI, and actually good convincing CGI too, but a couple live action humans here and there. No human exists in the Lion King World, and no Quint from Lion King's Timon and Pumbaa doesn't count.

Turning that subject, I really don't get why they bothered with a Max Steele movie. It barely got any released trailers, and one TV spot just popped up a week ago, and the film's out October 15th, 2 weeks from now. It's clear and obvious the Jem movie was slapped together quickly just to get it out of the way, burying it in October without any merchandising or franchise relaunching push. In fact, if it weren't for the fan outrage, it would have been largely forgotten. But even then, it was marketed. Max Steel comes out of nowhere with no marketing and after a massive disappointment of a reboot 2 years ago. I doubt the original 2000 series was that popular when it was.

So basically, we have a movie of a franchise not even Mattel wants to milk, that wasn't all that successful either time around, marketed so no one would go see it, and even though it looks like they spent actual money on it unlike Jem, but also like Jem, there isn't even a toyline for a movie based on a toy line...what was the point?
 
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