Wednesday, April 03, 2013

Big Write Offs

WB appears to take a punch in the corporate bread basket.

Warner Bros. is facing a substantial financial hit on Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Slayer. Now four weeks into its run, the fractured fairy tale starring Nicholas Hoult and Ewan McGregor is on track to lose $125 million to $140 million for the studio and financial partner Legendary Pictures, insiders tell THR.

That would put the film midway between Universal's 2012 flop Battleship and Disney's John Carter in terms of financial damage. Legendary financed half of the production budget for Jack, minimizing the studio's loss. ...

Some films connect with the public; Jack clearly wasn't one of them. (Maybe part of its problem is that it didn't have a classic film to latch onto the way Oz the Great and Powerful did. Timing ... and Judy Garland ... make all the difference.)

But the film might be one of the reasons Warner Bros. is so squirrelly about the visual effects business just now. When a movie studio drops huge money into digital effects and then sees the investment melt away to nothing, it causes a large (and unlucky) entertainment conglomerate to pause and reflect.

2 comments:

Dan Siciliano said...

Saw "John Carter" last night and my response: What the hell was that?!?

Grant said...

Couldn't agree more. john carter was a bore. And whoever directed it should be well embarrassed.. In particular, the fighting scenes were badly choreographed, staged, and shot. But it was the script and directing that were amateurish and dull. Sure, Disney's marketed even WORSE films better--but there's no real wonder why they cut their losses early.

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