Well, I've set up to get notified for an early Pre-Order of the DVD when it's readyCmaj7th wrote:withinfocus Ive ordered the novel on amazon already and I cant wait to get it. represent gryphon!
LMI Is a Box Office Flop
Moderator: LMI Moderator
Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
I'd be surprised to see it make half that much over here to be honest - we've seen nothing like the coverage that it's gotten in the States. In fact, other than here, IMDB and the viral marketing, I don't think it's been mentioned in the media that much at all which is strange seeing as it's Hammer's first release in such a long time. We may get some nearer the release date, but I really can't see it pulling in anywhere near $5 million. Personally, apart from people who have seen LdRKI, I don't know anyone who's actually heard of the remake.withinfocus wrote:The UK release is upcoming so throw another $5 million in there .
Also, films in the UK are normally made or broken off the back of how popular it's been in the States and if a film doesn't prove popular over there, it's unlikely (but not impossible) to fare much better over here...
I'm not putting it down - I'm half-looking forward to seeing it, but I'll most likely wait for the DVD in any case...
'Lucky is he who has such a friend...'
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withinfocus
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Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
A lot of people think the US has heavily marketed this film but they really haven't. Take a film like "Social Network" with a mini-trailer once an hour on every local channel and compare it to the much-less-publicized "Let Me In" and it's easy to see the winner. I did some traveling over the past few months and didn't see nearly the hype around the southeast (Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida). "Let Me In"'s viral campaign wasn't that viral either really and was certainly not a "Cloverfield". "Let Me In" also premiered in 1500 _less_ theaters than several other films that week. At the two theaters I went to, "Let Me In" lacked the physical advertising of its competitors.
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CyberGhostface
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Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
As someone who browses horror websites frequently, I can safely say that LMI was marketed up the wazoo. If I wanted to view a video, I was subjected to the annoying "Innocence dies, Abby doesn't" TV spot. And I've heard from others that Spike (at least) showed the trailer all the time, as well as on other channels. Not to mention the magazine articles Chloe was interviewed to promote the film or the various interviews that Reeves gave, etc.
No banaaaanas?
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withinfocus
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Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
I would think you know as well as I do that horror websites wouldn't be considered a mainstream venue. Neither is Spike, a relatively small pay-for-cable channel. I'm sure you can find lots of one-off examples where the film was mentioned, but that doesn't mean it got a lot of marketing. Show me a billboard in a downtown metro area or a commercial between 8 and 9 PM on a Thursday night on NBC. It just didn't happen. I feel it's very easy to see that most all the other films playing at the same time got much more exposure:
This movie comes up with virtually no advertising via traditional methods. All those articles (of child actors whose audience isn't old enough to see the film) and interviews (for people interested in film) were set in niche markets, not Time Magazine or CNN. You've gotta work with me here and show me something more mainstream.
This movie comes up with virtually no advertising via traditional methods. All those articles (of child actors whose audience isn't old enough to see the film) and interviews (for people interested in film) were set in niche markets, not Time Magazine or CNN. You've gotta work with me here and show me something more mainstream.
Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
IGN had Let Me In ads. Gametrailers had 'em. Gamespot had 'em. Pretty much every large videogame site had'em. Maybe that's the reason why people did so not want to see the movie 
.
.Att fly är livet, att dröja döden.
Do not ask why; ask why not.
Do not ask why; ask why not.
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sauvin
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Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
Having no TV and living in a rural area where ads for movies never appear on billboards, I can't get a fix for how LMI was marketed but from the trailers I saw on IMDB and another couple of sites, I have the strong impression people were promised blood, gore, scares and lots of action, with maybe just a little sex added. It was supposed to be a vampire movie, no? - which, of course, is precisely what it wasn't.
There's another movie I liked - much much more so than I did LMI (but not nearly as much as LTROI, never fear...) called Bug http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470705/ that also didn't do well at the box office. In the three or four years since I saw it on the Big Screen, according to IMDB, it's grossed a mere seven million. I suspect a very large reason for that was that the trailers promised a critter flick; obviously, I had no idea what kinds of critters but got the impression that maybe some kind of superintelligent insect from Mars (or maybe just an ant that ate too many radioactive Hostess Twinkies) was coming over to kill all the men, rape all the women and put all the children to work in underground coal mines. In other words, it was going to be cheap, mindless entertainment on a boring and COLD Sunday night in the dead of a northern Midwestern winter.
Instead, what I wound up watching was a movie about a man who obviously had more than a few moths rattling around in his head hooking up with a psychologically compromised and emotionally vulnerable woman (Ashley Judd is a devastatingly powerful actress whose obvious intelligence and strength of character should probably have disqualified her for this role, except that her talent and skill as an actress let her make you believe she was compromised and vulnerable - don't ever miss an Ashley Judd movie if you can help it!). She's so lonely, vulnerable and emotionally needy that she gets sucked into his delusions, at first apparently just to avoid risking losing him but progressing into apparently implicitly believing his delusions and sharing them with him.
It was for me an unforgettable movie, one that I actually watched several times after having found the DVD on the Walmart shelves. It touched something in me very deeply, and it ranks right up there with LTROI and Babel in my list of Movies You Really Need to See.
I don't remember that it was much promoted, either, except for maybe a few trailers in the few weeks before it actually aired. It was only through those trailers I even knew about it at all. What they promised and what they actually delivered weren't even in the same country: the superintelligent bug I'd wildlly conjectured turned out to be a man and a woman barricading themselves in her apartment and just mostly talking. The IMDB boards at the time, as I recall, spent a great deal of time and energy expressing anger and disappointment over how such a well-crafted movie could be so cluelessly and maladroitly marketed.
I'm fairly convinced that a great deal of something similar is happening to LMI (I'll be wandering away later tonight to see it a third time before it goes away completely); it doesn't deliver what it promises. It's not really an LTROI "remake" (more like a re-imagining), it doesn't explicitly show her "keeping you safe, keeping you forever", there's no panty-twisting sexual anxiety or sparkling in the sunlight and there's no evil smile showing off huge fangs just before they sink into a throat. Truthfully, there's not even any real terror at all. It's not a monster movie and not a romance (partly because, as has been pointed out before, maybe even in this very thread, Americans don't want to think about twelve year old children having "romances") - since it falls clearly into no particular genre in the American psyche, it's nothing.
In other words, yea, it probably could have been marketed more aggressively, but I'm thinking it could also have been marketed a lot more honestly. Even with most Americans knowing nothing of the novel or the movie it pretends to "remake", I think it would have enjoyed much better "word of mouth" success if folks in my little corn patch had had a better idea of what to expect.
There's another movie I liked - much much more so than I did LMI (but not nearly as much as LTROI, never fear...) called Bug http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0470705/ that also didn't do well at the box office. In the three or four years since I saw it on the Big Screen, according to IMDB, it's grossed a mere seven million. I suspect a very large reason for that was that the trailers promised a critter flick; obviously, I had no idea what kinds of critters but got the impression that maybe some kind of superintelligent insect from Mars (or maybe just an ant that ate too many radioactive Hostess Twinkies) was coming over to kill all the men, rape all the women and put all the children to work in underground coal mines. In other words, it was going to be cheap, mindless entertainment on a boring and COLD Sunday night in the dead of a northern Midwestern winter.
Instead, what I wound up watching was a movie about a man who obviously had more than a few moths rattling around in his head hooking up with a psychologically compromised and emotionally vulnerable woman (Ashley Judd is a devastatingly powerful actress whose obvious intelligence and strength of character should probably have disqualified her for this role, except that her talent and skill as an actress let her make you believe she was compromised and vulnerable - don't ever miss an Ashley Judd movie if you can help it!). She's so lonely, vulnerable and emotionally needy that she gets sucked into his delusions, at first apparently just to avoid risking losing him but progressing into apparently implicitly believing his delusions and sharing them with him.
It was for me an unforgettable movie, one that I actually watched several times after having found the DVD on the Walmart shelves. It touched something in me very deeply, and it ranks right up there with LTROI and Babel in my list of Movies You Really Need to See.
I don't remember that it was much promoted, either, except for maybe a few trailers in the few weeks before it actually aired. It was only through those trailers I even knew about it at all. What they promised and what they actually delivered weren't even in the same country: the superintelligent bug I'd wildlly conjectured turned out to be a man and a woman barricading themselves in her apartment and just mostly talking. The IMDB boards at the time, as I recall, spent a great deal of time and energy expressing anger and disappointment over how such a well-crafted movie could be so cluelessly and maladroitly marketed.
I'm fairly convinced that a great deal of something similar is happening to LMI (I'll be wandering away later tonight to see it a third time before it goes away completely); it doesn't deliver what it promises. It's not really an LTROI "remake" (more like a re-imagining), it doesn't explicitly show her "keeping you safe, keeping you forever", there's no panty-twisting sexual anxiety or sparkling in the sunlight and there's no evil smile showing off huge fangs just before they sink into a throat. Truthfully, there's not even any real terror at all. It's not a monster movie and not a romance (partly because, as has been pointed out before, maybe even in this very thread, Americans don't want to think about twelve year old children having "romances") - since it falls clearly into no particular genre in the American psyche, it's nothing.
In other words, yea, it probably could have been marketed more aggressively, but I'm thinking it could also have been marketed a lot more honestly. Even with most Americans knowing nothing of the novel or the movie it pretends to "remake", I think it would have enjoyed much better "word of mouth" success if folks in my little corn patch had had a better idea of what to expect.
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères
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withinfocus
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Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
"Bug" and "Babel" have been added to my Netflix queue now.
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sauvin
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Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
Bug impressed and moved me. Babel ranks almost as highly in my mind as LTROI in quality, feel and substance. I'll be d%#n keen to hear your reactions to them.withinfocus wrote:"Bug" and "Babel" have been added to my Netflix queue now.
Fais tomber les barrières entre nous qui sommes tous des frères
Re: LMI Is a Box Office Flop
Just to be fair, the original Swedish film LTROI didn't succeed commercially in its own country Sweden as well.
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=i ... tonein.htm
It only made $1,602,993 in Sweden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_the_Ri ... _In_(film)
But the budget is about 4 million USD
Critically acclaimed films usually don't do well at the box office.
http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=i ... tonein.htm
It only made $1,602,993 in Sweden.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_the_Ri ... _In_(film)
But the budget is about 4 million USD
Critically acclaimed films usually don't do well at the box office.