I believe that someone else on I-A has written about the Steven Soderbergh film called Bubble. The movie was shot in a small town and the cast was made up of non-actors. If that isn’t weird enough, 2929 Entertainment released it in theaters, on DVD, and on HDNet Movies on cable and satellite systems simultaneously. Studio heads believe that because the box office revenue is decreasing they can shrink the window of a film’s release in theaters and a film's release on video and make up the loss in revenue. Theaters owners are a bit worried about this. They are worried this would hurt the already declining revenues by encouraging even more people to wait for the DVD and stay home and watch movies.
This is why they think we don’t go to as many movies as we did, say, 5 years ago? DVDs? I am going to digress. The reason we don’t go to movies as much is because many of the movies are crap. Many of the people that attend movies are a-holes who can’t keep quiet and just enjoy the show. If you go at night in a town that has nothing else to do for entertainment, you get a theater full of yapping pubescent teenagers that cannot sit still and make you want to take you and them out suicide bomber style. And if that isn’t enough, you have to save up three weeks of pay to afford a ticket, popcorn and a drink. That is your problem, theater owners and Hollywood. Now back to my other rant on Bubble.
Well, good news, good news, the movie did horribly in theaters even after what some would say was millions of dollars of free publicity. Theater owners are overjoyed. That doesn’t really make that much sense. They are happy no one is coming to the theater to see this movie. I thought that was what they were afraid of. Anyway, all is right with the world.
Not really. If this movie starred George Clooney and Julia Roberts, I have to think it would have done a little better. I do not know what the makers of this film were expecting. Have you seen the trailer for this film? I have and it gives no clue whatsoever as to what to expect from this movie. I don’t know about you, but when I see a trailer that really doesn’t give me a hint of the story then I am not that excited to see it. In fact, I am usually not that excited to see movies that do give me a hint of the story in the trailer. Don’t get me wrong, I do not need big stars or a trailer that gives me the whole movie, but I do like a smart trailer that gives me enough to intrigue me to check it out. Bubble’s trailer gave me too much intrigue to never check it out.
I read that Soderbergh and 2929 Entertainment spent $1.6 million on this movie and were hoping to make $5 million. I think that is possible and if that was the true hope then they should not be disappointed with the week’s grosses. They only released it to 32 theaters. What did they expect? This is a small movie that has no big names and details about what it is about were not made clear. I think that if they make any money it is a good thing. The next time Steven Soderbergh or 2929 Entertainment wants to try something this ambitious, they should release Ocean’s 13 this same way. Then we will see if a mass release to all media is the wave of the future.
Tuesday, January 31, 2006
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1 comment:
32 screens? Geez, I at least thought they were going to attempt to make some money.
And since they shot it in six days with "non-actors" why did it cost $1.6 million? I guess being Steven Soderbergh made it cost that much.
Robert Rodriguez would have shot that sucker in HDV, edited it as he shot it and have it done for $100,000 before distribution. Unless they had some special effects done, this movie should have broke even on 32 screens. Then the DVD should have made it cash.
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