After all, how often does a movie with a cast that includes pretty people like Katie HolmesJosh DuhamelAnna Paquin and Malin Akerman deliver a serious narrative that offers a realistic look at love? They were all present at the press junket for the film which was held at the Gansevoort Hotel in NYC, where they answered questions about their take on love, the experience of making the film and much. Read on for quotes from the conference and make sure you check out The Romantics when it hits theaters in limited release this weekend before expanding on September 24th. Q: Congratulations on such a great cast. Is that a true thing? Sometimes your head drags you in one direction and your heart pulls you in .
“We’re going to need a bigger boat”
Hard to know what to make of a hack job called The Romantics. Since the bride Anna Paquin and her sister, who is also her maid of honor Katie Holmes, who unwisely co-produced , have both slept with the groom boyishly handsome TV heartthrob Josh Duhamel , the sibling rivalry leads to a drunken fiasco that covers one night of nudity, alcohol, drugs and husband-wife swapping in which they plunge into the surf and return without the groom. Couples divide up to find him, and before dawn breaks, they discover a lot of dull secrets about their darker sides that would be hard to see with a flashlight. The all-night orgy of stupidity that ensues is so contrived that instead of examining friendships and love, it only made me wish they had all drowned, saving us from 95 minutes of wooden, boring and inconsequential embarrassment. It was written and directed without a megabyte of pace, rhythm, intelligence or fresh observation by Galt Niederhoffer, whose only talent appears to be talking otherwise talented people like Ms. Paquin, Mr. Rarely have so many people been so misguided. Holmes is trying hard to sharpen her acting chops, but she still comes off like a bus-and-truck Michelle Williams. And if at all possible, do spare yourself the horror of seeing with your own eyes what has become of Candice Bergen in the role of the waspy, washed-out mother of the bride.
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She should sue the cinematographer. Come to think of it, so should Jonathan Demme. There is nothing vaguely romantic about The Romantics. Instead of originality, The Romantics recycles the same material with a lot of noise masquerading as style, and no substance whatsoever, producing a grotesquerie of caricatures from central casting that are dead on arrival. We get it: you like to have control of your own internet experience. But advertising revenue helps support our journalism. To read our full stories, please turn off your ad blocker.
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Their odd number is the problem. Maid of honor Laura Katie Holmes arrives dutch. Up to here, these Romantics have been charming enough to make one wish them, collectively, the fate of that other Romantic, Percy B. Returning to land, characters start to distinguish themselves from the mob organism, switching partners and drifting through the adjacent properties. It is uncertain, though, how this material is served by disheveled cinematography, shooting handheld on the Hi 8 camcorder I had in high school, apparently editing on two VCRs, and flooding the mix with Forever 21 dressing-room music. Crew catalog shoot. Group Combined Shape. Combined Shape Group 2. Enter search below: Combined Shape. Path 2. From The Archives.
Though noticeably short on plot, Galt Niederhoffer ‘s novel, «The Romantics,» had enough deft characterizations to make it a worthwhile read. Niederhoffer, a first-time director, must have been thrilled to snare Katie Holmes and Anna Paquin for her leads Holmes also co-produced. But they’re both dismally miscast, the former as anxious Laura Rosen , the latter as Lila Hayes , a golden girl who always gets what she wants. Now, several years later, Lila’s marrying him at her family’s Maine estate. Though Laura tells their friends including Malin Akerman and Adam Brody that she’s thrilled, of course she’s miserable: Not only does she have to watch her true love marry another, but she’s there as their maid of honor. Over the course of the weekend, Tom temporarily disappears, Laura broods, friends flirt and awkward toasts are made. In other words, any wedding you’d actually attend would likely have more excitement.
What’s the average cost of making and selling a Hollywood blockbuster?
The information available online is normally a mix of true figures which have leaked and educated guesses by industry experts. So the data may be skewed. At one point, DVD sales accounted for a majority of movie earnings, and for years studios have been working to close the large gap between […]. As VOD has grown up, the newer services have become their own new window but the old way of accounting for the older services were retained. The public can be fickle, the industry is in flux, and just about any movie is an extremely risky investment, even a film starring big name actors and actresses. Best, Shaun Reply. Yes, certainly. Shaun McGovern May 10, at pm. Nemo July 12, at am. My mom told me that my niece and nephew watch movies like The Incredibles all the time but they probably have not seen Titanic yet. I finally had a moment to sit down and crunch the numbers — I hope it helps in the understanding of Hollywood economics. Mike Edwards July 15, at pm.
Dawn May 29, at pm. It has the most potential for growth in the near future as the North American market is saturated with cinemas and movies. Stephen Follows August 12, at am. Studios typically still charge a distribution fee to cover their time and lawyers but this is minute in comparison with the marketing and manufacturing costs of Theatrical and Home Ent. Teacher who kneeled during CFP title game speaks. Free TV — Free to air television, typically either public service broadcasting or ad supported. Related Articles. When is someone offering you a book mjch
This is an kuch I have wanted to research and write for a long, long time. Hoow finally had a moment to sit down and crunch the numbers — I hope it helps in the thw of Hollywood economics.
Almost as ormantics as there have been movies, Hollywood has relied on huge-scale productions to bring in the big bucks. The Extra-Terrestrial As the films have grown, so too have the spoils on offer.
The starting point for working out the final costs of releasing a movie is to look at how much it cost the studio to shoot the film i. This includes….
Budgets have been rising in recent decades, well above inflation. In the following ten years this rose to The information available online is normally a mix of true ohw which have leaked and educated guesses by industry experts. The studios often try to hide the true cost of a movie, in order to make themselves seem thriftier, smarter or more in control than they actually are.
I performed a quick check for the 29 blockbusters I have inside data on compared with their budgets listed on Wikipedia. Some of the other costs involved in making and releasing a romantcs include….
To give you a little more detail and context, below are some notes on each of the main cost areas…. Judging the correct number of prints and units to manufacture is a key part of the planning done by the studios. If they order too few then cinemas and stores will have to turn away customers in the all-important first few weeks of release.
If they over-order then their costs increase and they are left with annoyed cinema owners and large quantities of unsold units. Giving these people a share of the income is a good way for the studio to hedge against bow box office performance and it also defers the moment they have to pay up.
On the flipside, studios have got rather good at using creative accounting techniques to show that they made a loss on paper in order to get out of paying such fees. Fortunately, Hollywood is rather good at squeezing every penny out of a movie, ensuring that the target customer is given many chances to pay to see it. Movies may start in cinemas but they are far from the only place they earn money.
Each stage at which a movie reaches a new type of platform i. Of the 29 Hollywood blockbuster movies I studied, 14 generated a profit and 15 lost money. Note: The following discussion of profit uses this formula: all revenue received by the studios from a particular movie minus all costs they internally attribute to that production.
The smallest movies within my dataset i. Would you have made a smart investment? And I am sure this is a fairly low return for that kind of cash. The only problem is — how do you spot the tomantics Hollywood currently employs the smartest, best informed and most profit-focused people in an effort to exclusively make profitable mvie and yet half mych their movies lose money.
In fact, their combined best efforts only produce a 3. Yes, but only by a very small margin. The average Metacritic score i. Similarly, IMDb audiences rated the profitable films an average of 6. However, we can say that, yes, movies with the biggest marketing budgets do seem to gross the highest amounts at the box office. Added to this, studios are less likely to make missteps on their home turf as they can be on-hand to scrutinise th to a greater extent. Well, it depends on which part of the process you look at.
Below you can see the origin of revenue and costs for the blockbusters in my dataset. As you can see, the majority of hos money collected at the box office does indeed come from countries outside of the US and Canada. However, studios spend a higher proportion of their marketing money in North America. This could be for a number of reasons including the higher cost of advertising in America, the temptation to spend more in the cid which studio execs actually live in and because the US is often the ghe place a movie is released and the media rimantics reporting on huge opening weekends and decrying massive flops.
Together, they mean that only 12 of my 29 movies made money at the domestic box office, whereas 20 romanticw money at the international box office. Alongside this, the losses at the domestic theatrical market were much worse than internationally. So Hollywood looks to the international market with glee because…. Q4: Is there a rule of thumb for guessing which Hollywood blockbusters are in profit?
They reached this conclusion by studying the full financial records of the movies they were involved with and also checking their hypothesis with independent professional film financiers. Using this rule, I was able to correctly identify hod of the profit-making films and correctly identify ten as loss-making, however, this system incorrectly marked move loss-making movies as being profitable.
Not as reliable as one might have liked and way below the accuracy the BFI found yow the rule is applied to smaller films but certainly interesting. So there you have it — a rather long sorry! The biggest question some readers may have at this stage is — how did he get this data? I was also helped by a few romanyics friends in the industry who were able to fill in the blanks and confirm the veracity of some of the data points.
I am completely confident that the information in this article is a true representation of mudh these Hollywood blockbusters make money. The purpose of this site is educational and my sole intention is to help explain how our industry works. In the nake, I have been contacted by lawyers for various companies, trying to prevent the sharing of key data points relating to their business. So far, I have managed to avoid lawsuits and also to avoid having to take any articles down, but if I were makke offer the full figures as a download or details of how to do the same piecing together I have then I suspect I would get the wrong kind of attention.
So, if you want to know any more about these movies, please add your question in the comments. Very informative and great info as. Thank you, Stephen for some scintillating reading.
When is someone offering you a book deal? Great work Stephen — thank you. And related to this can you demystify the roles, contributions and compensation for these various kinds of producers? Very helpful. Re the query on books sinceour volumes Global Hollywood and Global Hollywood 2 are more recent than the one. They are also available in Chinese, Turkish, and Spanish. Stephen, please, please put all of this marvellous stuff in a book. Thank you for this amazing work!
Can you clarify here? Thanks. Marketing and avertsing are not romantkcs, save maybe for the on-set photographer and a publicist who shows journalists around the set.
This is particularly important for things like tax incentives, which almost never include publicity and distribution costs when calculating how big the budget is. Both have a reasonable claim to be correct. The budget is a real document created in pre-production which covers the cost of physically making the film. Before internet streaming as we know it now, Pay Per View PPV was commonplace, in hotel rooms and on encrypted satellite and cable channels.
As VOD has grown up, the newer services have become their own new window but the old way of accounting for the older services were retained. So strictly, the idea of digital delivery of video on demand to the viewer appears within three windows! Just two questions about the average costs graph: 1. Instead of being included in costs?
The opacity occurs for a number of reasons but most are to do with hiding embarrassing or unattractive practices, because they can and because there is no benefit from being open. Wow Stephen. Scary stuff. I want to break down the costs and show how they differ between products. Thank you Steve for your informative article.
The research that went into it romaantics have been domantics as it covered so much of the movie business including distribution. I was really interested in the DVD sales figures and the overseas theatrical markets as the advertising would be.
Thank you te your info!!! Michael L Edwards. Can you say the swing on that? Stephen, thank you for your informative detailed article. This is the sort of thing mojey internet would ideally be used for, instead of widespread trolling. Keep up the good work. Thank you for the information and the analysis you have performed. The real numbers are never released, nor should.
Nobody romanyics the industry pays those numbers. At the end of the day, the important numbers and analyses come from what the windows revenue figures are romanticcs their relationships.
As for profits… do magicians reveal their tricks? Hey Adrian. Glad you found it useful. This allowed me to compare the true cost to that of the public figure in this case from Wikipedia. Hi Stephen, thanks for the excellent analysis. Do you have any data to support or contradict these tue
There is a brilliant second iPhone commercial hidden in the minute movie The Romantics. Laura spends the movie trying to get Tom to admit he’s marrying the wrong L, to which end she recites snippets of a Keats poem they both liked in college that Tom now claims not to remember. In a fit of passionate frustration, Laura looks up the poem on her iPhone, then sets out in search of Tom, holding her phone’s lit screen like a beacon. And there, across the massive lawn, is Tom, striding toward her with his own outstretched iPhone, Heathcliff by way of the Apple Store.
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Isn’t it romantic? Doesn’t it just make you want to … text someone? As the iPhone scene suggests, The Romantics is a very pretty movie that has no idea how silly it is. As a portrait of a group of Ivy League pals coming together for a wedding straight out of WASP heaven, it could not be more appealing: the clothes, the sets, and even the mist-shrouded landscape are J. Crew-perfect in fact, the brand created a mini Web site for the film and sponsored the premiere. The opening scene, of Lila and her equally blonde, preppy mother and sister anxiously awaiting the delivery of her wedding dress, inspires you to hope for a tart, Whit Stillman—esque satire of the lawn-party set. Unfortunately, once the characters begin speaking, you realize Niederhoffer takes these people completely seriously. College is a time when people do take themselves extremely seriously, forming incestuous, pretentiously named cliques and assuming their actions have the import of Greek drama. But it’s one thing for Laura Jewish in the novel but in the movie merely a writer, which apparently amounts to the same thing to lack the self-awareness of how ridiculous she sounds, and another thing for Niederhoffer to assume we’ll find the characters nearly as deep and interesting as they find themselves. Books like Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and movies like Stillman’s Metropolitan handle similar themes far more deftly, proving that it is possible to make snotty, self-deluded rich people sympathetic without letting the characters off the hook. The pathos of their work derives, in part, from the disconnect between how exquisitely well educated the characters are and how little they know about themselves or the world. Niederhoffer’s characters, in contrast, are not only dumb about themselves, they’re also just dumb.
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