Disaster Zone – Summer 2010: “Robin Hood” Charges, “Just Wright” Shoots Hoops, and “Letters to Juliet” Shoots Hearts
While the second weekend of the summer was still dominated by Iron Man 2, which dropped a large, but not dismal 59.4% and pulled in $52 million in its second weekend, three new films were also released. The weirdest and largest of them being the manly looking Robin Hood, but chick-flick Letters to Juliet, and basketball romance Just Wright squeezed into the summer season as well. All three received poor reviews, but the most noticeable shortcoming here had to be Robin Hood.
It should be noted, that due to almost universally poor reviews, and a lack of interest I didn’t see anything in the month of May except for Iron Man 2. Anything I say is purely speculation, but much of it will be based on business fact which can’t really be disputed too much.
Robin Hood was not just regarded as a relatively poor film, but a business failure. To be honest, I was rather surprised that it even managed to pull in $36 million opening weekend, a solid start for most films. Apparently people really did enjoy, and still very much remember Gladiator as the advertising campaign for this PG-13 flick referenced and mimicked it to no end. If Universal had put out a product that was surprisingly good, perhaps that would have been enough, but with what they’d released it was not.
You may be shocked to hear this, but they actually invested a whole… wait for it… $200 million dollars in the production of the film! What. The. Hell. Why is Universal so stupid? When was the last time Russell Crowe had a hit? Oh, I remember, in 2007 when he had second billing to Denzel Washington in American Gangster. When was the last time Russell Crowe made a bomb? Oh, I remember, he had two bombs in the last two years with State of Play barely able to push over it’s production budget with overseas grosses included, and Body of Lies hitting it big elsewhere, but going nowhere here in the states.
Why does this guy still get $20 million a movie exactly?
Anyway, they also paid Cate Blanchett something like $10-15 million to be in the movie, and that’s a pretty big start to the budget of a film that seemed to do everything wrong. “So if we’re making a prequel to ‘Robin Hood’ to tell a tale about a younger Robin before he decided to be a super-hero of sorts, it makes perfect sense to cast the oldest actor ever to play Robin Hood in that film.”
What were they thinking? Worst casting decision I’ve ever seen, and they paid $20 million to do it. You could have gotten a young brit like Jonathan Rhys-Meyers to come in for a quarter or even a tenth of that! Why!?
So regardless, the film managed far more than I ever expected at its release, a total domestic take of $104.5 million. Worldwide it fared better with a total international gross of $306 million. Which for a film that cost $200 million to make (the same price tag Iron Man 2) that doesn’t cut it at all.
Marketing and distribution cost at least $100 million, and the only way the final figure could possibly go is up. So really the film had a total cost of $300 million or more, and Universal only keeps a little more than half of the total gross, so let’s just say they took home $165 million, which makes for a loss of at least $135 million that needs to be made up on DVD, Blu-Ray, and VOD. That’s a lot of make up work.
This is one of several overpriced productions Universal has released in the past 12 months. The list includes Land of the Lost, Funny People, The Wolfman, and Green Zone as well as Robin Hood. All of those films either will fail to make a profit, or may break even after a long run on home video. A bad sign for the old, formerly prestigious studio. Things may be looking up with Despicable Me though.
The other two films, Just Wright, and Letters to Juliet pulled in $8 million and $13.5 million respectively. Juliet went on to pull in a lot of girls, and obtain a final total of $61 million on a budget of $30, a solid performance on poor reviews. Wright, the third and final panned film of the weekend, pulled in a little over $21 million, which may have been enough to surpass a surely low production budget that is unreported.
This second weekend of bad films and poor financial performance for all involved still was just scratching the surface of the awful projects that Hollywood had not yet released. I wish that they all had been great, but that is not the case, and thus the Disaster Zone begins to take shape.
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