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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
 Posted - 05/17/2006 : 7:48:28 PM
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I'm afraid to further hijack threads below yakking about The DaVinci Code, so let me set this conjecture apart. For some reasons I've brought up in other threads (crazy casting), I'd actually bet that this movie turns out to be a major disappointment if not actually an embarassment for Sony.
Everyone thinks the movie will be a hit because the book is such a phenomenal success. My question, however, is what evidence do we have that successful books translated to screen end up being major hits at the box office? There have been scores of books adapted for the screen and still I couldn't think of one DaVinci-esque best seller that resulted in a huge box office success.
I ask the minions to fill me in because I'm no great scholar of film adaptations. I think that "Gone With the Wind" may have been a big best seller at the bookstores before the movie was made, but that's the only thing that comes immediately to mind. Was "Jaws" a publishing phenomena? I know that they notoriously tossed out about 60% of the book's plot when writing the script so fans of the book were certainly not driving its success. Was "The Exorcist" a best-seller or did book sales pick up after the movie? And how about "The Greatest Story Ever Told"? The movie was based on an extrordinarily popular retelling of the Gospels yet turned out to be a legendary box-office failure.
I'm just not sure that any evidence exists to support the conventional wisdom that a film adaptation of an enormously popular book is necessarily destined for box office success. |
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Sardu
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
1126 Posts |
Posted - 05/17/2006 : 8:22:36 PM
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Gone With The Wind was a HUGE book. And of course LOTR was huge both in print and on screen. The Godfather did very well in print. Lots of successful books have made successful films.
But, A movie simply has to live or die by its own merits. It's too early to tell, but I think the movie will be a hit in the long run, making a profit. I just don't think it will be the blockbuster that was hoped for. I really doubt it will pull people into theaters again and again. And I DO think a huge potential audience will not go on moral grounds. Myself, I will wait for the DVD and probably check it out then.
Coming soon-
Eraserhead: The Musical!! |
Edited by - Sardu on 05/17/2006 8:24:28 PM |
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RVHorror
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
532 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 07:38:27 AM
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| The Exorcist, Jaws, The Andromeda Strain and The Godfather were all best-sellers before their respective movies. |
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John Nowak
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
1017 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 09:23:07 AM
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Will the film flop or hit? Personally, I wouldn't bet a buck either way. "Bonfire of the Vanities," "Clan of the Cave Bear", and "The Right Stuff" were all solid, successful books.
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We've always been united in stupidity. That's why there is no hope. But, then again, when has that ever stopped us?
-- hbrennan |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 11:27:26 AM
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And the Right Stuff, at least, was a brilliant film to boot.
Can't say quite as much for either Cave Bear or Bonfire, though. However, the latter did inspire one of the two or three most essential books about modern movie making out there.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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Culfy
Preeminent Apostolic Prelate of the Discipleship of Jabootu
United Kingdom
113 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 3:58:38 PM
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Captain Correli's Mandolin was a huge success as a novel - and a mediocre film and box office failure
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Notes from a small cavy
www.culfy.blogspot.com |
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Ken HPoJ
Supreme Potentate
USA
1530 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 4:29:37 PM
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I can't believe that the raft of bad reviews (the film currently has an 18% positive rating at Rotten Tomatoes) won't hurt the movie. The question is, how much? I still expect it to do better than Mission: Impossible III, but probably not that much better.
Certainly a weekend tally of $50-60 million will be seen as a disappointment, and given that X-Men 3 is due out the following week, along with the bad reviews, a drop-off of more than 50% is to be anticipated.
Were I to bet, I'd say the film will lose a small amount of money, or make little enough profit that it will be considered a mild failure in any case. Say, $140 million total.
I could be wrong, of course, but these things have a certain momentum to them, and a poorly reviewed would-be blockbuster doesn't strike me as the film likely to break the pattern of box office blahs being established by M:I3 and Poseidon.
Although not greatly reviewed (56% positive rating), look for Over the Hedge to probably be the weekend's number one movie.
PEGGY: I don't see how having a girl on the team would ruin it. Did a woman judge ruin the Supreme Court?
HANK: Yes, and that woman's name was Earl Warren.
--King of the Hill |
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flellis
Archdeacon of Jabootu
USA
17 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 5:04:03 PM
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Speaking of best-selling books, I am reminded of someone who works for NBC who spoke to my UCLA class. He mention if the same exact number of people who read a John Grisham or Stephen King bestseller was the same amount of people who watch a certain TV show, that TV show would have to be put off the air because of a lack of audience interest. The point is he making is that there are much more different scales when comparing mediums. (Another similar case is with Broadway shows. Anthony Rapp, star of the Broadway production and movie "Rent", mentioned the Rent film was not a hit, but he also mentioned the amount of money it made it's opening weekend gross was like if the show sold out for 2 years straight.) So, my guess the number of the people who love this book, along with certain people curious to know what all the fuss is about, will add up to a strong week. But expect huge drop offs in the next couple of weeks, because the core audience are not likely to repeat themselves and word of mouth won't be strong enough to lure other viewers in.
As for bestsellers becoming succesful movies, often they got to have a cinematic hook or come across well in a visual medium. Take Jaws, a great white shark, or Jurassic Park, dinosaurs, which can be easily translated from the paper into a cinematic film. Likewise, Stephen King or John Grisham cinematic adapations do bring in their fans but bring other people because the stories can be told in a 2 hour cinematic medium. I didn't read or see Clan or Captain Corelli, so I cannot comment but I can comment on Bonfires in which I have read the book and seen the film. It did not have the type of plot that could be marketable easily or can be told in two hours. DePalma made it worse by miscasting the film and making changes to Wolfe's story that made the film more incoherent. (Example: Morgan Freeman plays a judge who is accused of racism for letting a white man go free.)
That brings me to the last point on why DaVinci will not be a huge hit. This mediocre-at-best novel has a lot of scenes where characters just sit and babble on past religious history and what possibly could happen if the Da Vinci code was revealed. That may be OK on the written page, but in cinema, it's boring and static, especially to those who haven't read the book. |
Edited by - flellis on 05/18/2006 5:07:14 PM |
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R. Dittmar
Holy Cardinal and Five Star General of the Righteous Knighthood of Jabootu
USA
420 Posts |
Posted - 05/18/2006 : 7:51:08 PM
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Here's some further food for thought on the subject.
I was somewhat surprised to find out while searching this afternoon that it is extrordinarily difficult to figure out what books should be on a list of the all-time best-selling fiction. Apparently book sales - like movie profits - are extremely difficult to gather accurate information on.
The Internet Public Library gives the following list of fiction books that seem to undeniably have sold more than 10 million copies:
Bach, Richard. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull
Blatty, William. The Exorcist
Benchley, Peter. Jaws
Caldwell, Erskine. God’s Little Acre
Heller, Joseph. Catch-22
Lee, Harper. To Kill a Mockingbird
McCullough, Colleen. The Thorn Birds
Metalious, Grace. Peyton Place
Mitchell, Margaret. Gone With the Wind
Orwell, George. 1984, Animal Farm
Puzo, Mario. The Godfather
Robbins, Harold. The Carepetbaggers
Salinger, J.D. Catcher in the Rye
at this site:
http://www.ipl.org/div/farq/bestsellerFARQ.html
All of these were made into movies except "The Thorn Birds" which was made into a TV mini-series and "Catcher in the Rye". I would argue that there seems to be little evidence here that would let us attach a high probability to "The DaVinci Code" being a big hit. There are some undeniable classic movies on the list like "Jaws" and "To Kill a Mockingbird". There are some definite ehhs on the list like "God's Little Acre" and "Peyton Place". And there are some hellish films touched by Jabootu himself like "Jonathan Livingston Seagull" and "The Carpetbaggers". All in all a pretty even split hits and misses and a couple of true fiascos.
It's also interesting to note that "The Valley of the Dolls" is believed to be one of the best selling books of all time even though the exact number sold is somewhat mysterious. If true, we can chalk up another for Jabootu. |
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