New Riddick Movie Made Possible By Games? 160
Hugh Pickens writes "Scott Harris writes on Moviefone that the economics of Hollywood are often baffling, as DVD sales, broadcast fees and merchandising tie-ins balance against advertising costs and pay-or-play deals to form an accounting maze. The latest example is the untitled sequel to The Chronicles of Riddick, released in 2004 to a slew of negative reviews and general viewer indifference. Despite its hefty $105 million budget, most of which was spent on special effects, the film topped out at a paltry $57 million domestically. So how can a sequel be made if the movie lost money? The answer has to do with ancillary profits from revenue streams outside the box office. While the combined $116 million worldwide probably still didn't cover distribution and advertising costs, it likely brought the film close to even, meaning DVD sales and profits from the tie-in video game franchise may have put the movie in the black. In addition, Riddick itself was a sequel to Pitch Black, a modestly budgeted ($23 million) success back in 2000. Extending the franchise to a third film may help boost ancillary profits by introducing the Pitch Black and Chronicles of Riddick DVDs and merchandise to new audiences, meaning that the new film may not even need to break even to eventually turn a profit for the studio."
Re:Theater Chronicles of Riddick sucked because... (Score:2, Interesting)
Advertised budget != Actual budget (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyone who has watched the film industry knows the published budget number have nothing to do with the actual budget. They published 107 million? Actual cost was probably closer to 50 million. Producing such a movie today would probably cost 30 million (what did an episode of BSG cost by the 5th season? 1 million per hour?). Most of the budget is going to be Vin Diesel's fee, after that it's just production cost and advertising. The published cost of the movie will be 100 million again, for tax reasons
The Chronicles of Riddick (Score:5, Interesting)
"The Chronicles of Riddick" was a great action movie with a dark Sci-Fi/Fantasy background - in fact it might be quite a unique mix of genres: certainly the (Futuristic Black-Magic) background to the story is way off anything else Hollywood ever made.
That said, it's not surprising that those that first saw "Pitch Black" and then went to see "The Chronicles of Riddick" as a sequel were disapointed: to put it simply "Pitch Black" was a finelly tuned Horror-Action movie while The Chronicles was more of a Rambo style action movie (chewing gum for the brain) Sci-Fi/Fantasy movie with an anti-Hero as the main character (although Riddick as a character was much more developed in the second movie).
Personally I thoroughly enjoyed both movies in different ways, although this might be because I first saw "The Chronicles of Riddick" and then went looking for "Pitch Black" instead of the other way around so I didn't saw the second movie in the
expectation it would be a continuation of the first.