Halo falls apart, a lesson for EG
Posted: Fri Oct 20, 2006 1:00 pm
If you check around the news today you'll see that the studio financial backing for Halo just fell apart.
Why?
because it's an unproven director whose budget was balooning to an outrageous 200 million.
200 million is a risk that is only taken with proven directors, proven genres and proven franchises. Halo was 0-3. The ONLY factors in its favor was game sales and Peter Jackson's producing involvement. Unfortunately it may have been Jackson's 'enthusiasm' that drove the budget from 100 to 200.
So how does Ender's Game stand? Well first of all, it's got a director who is proven with budgets of 200 (Poseidon pushed close to that number and that's why it's something of a disaster, but Troy was also a big budget film that did a phenomenal worldwide gross in comparison to it's domestic), and he's proven with Action, Epic and Genre films. Check.
As for proven genre, well Star Wars remains the only mega success in science fiction--and the Star Wars budgets were around 100-150 million. Unlike the Pirates Sequels, the Spiderman Sequels, the Shrek Sequels and the Harry Potter sequels, and Titanic, James Cameron is the only person to ever get a 200 million dollar budget for a science fiction film (his next film for 2008). Spielberg doesn't get that much, but he doesn't ask for it. The only reason War of the Worlds was 150 million was that it was a rush job that was basically worked on 24/7 for eight months to complete effects on time (overtime, double overtime, triple overtime basically).
What Ender's Game can expect in terms of budgeting is somewhere between what Fellowship of the Ring got and Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe got. Fellowship was made for about 60-80 million and Narnia was made for around 90. fwiw all the Harry Potter movies have been either very close to 200 or over 200. Serenity, on the other hand, was budgeted about about 30-40 million. EG could do very well with triple Serenity's budget. Paramount got into EXTREME trouble when they let Lemony Snicket go over 150 million, no one wants to repeat that experience.
In terms of franchising, Ender's Game does not have the cachet of the successful fantasy series, but studios are willing to risk the chance that a scifi series might enjoy the success and profitability that most of the fantasy series' have led to. But frankly fantasy is red hot. That's why His Dark Materials, and Dark is Rising will be filming very soon. Why Half Blood Prince will start filming in may (two months before OOTP comes out). Why we'll see at least three more Narnia films and why we have Eragon coming out in December. But we won't be seeing any more Lemony Snicket, at least not with "I destroy budgets and can't get a movie made anymore because I"m so arrogant and costly" Jim Carrey involved. But the continued success of these series at the box office is essential to seeing EG move forward with enthusiasm on the Studio's part. EG may be fasttracked if Eragon substantially beats expectations. However if it performs as expected or underperforms it won't negatively affect EG. It's different enough to be a good thing.
But the worst thing that could happen to EG would be to have someone big named come in and jack the budget way up, because the studios are hemoragging people and budgets lately. Part of this is that the studios lag several years behind the rest of the economy, for instance the great depression didn't really hit the movie industry until 1933, five years after it hit. Part of it is a****** super rich stock holders are ordering cutbacks that are destroying thousands of jobs so they get higher profit margins on their quarterly earnings (coughCarlIcahncough). But the biggest part of it is that the DVD market matured and plateaued about 18 months ago and the studios are not seeing their coffers flowing with money like they did during the DVD boom.
adam
Why?
because it's an unproven director whose budget was balooning to an outrageous 200 million.
200 million is a risk that is only taken with proven directors, proven genres and proven franchises. Halo was 0-3. The ONLY factors in its favor was game sales and Peter Jackson's producing involvement. Unfortunately it may have been Jackson's 'enthusiasm' that drove the budget from 100 to 200.
So how does Ender's Game stand? Well first of all, it's got a director who is proven with budgets of 200 (Poseidon pushed close to that number and that's why it's something of a disaster, but Troy was also a big budget film that did a phenomenal worldwide gross in comparison to it's domestic), and he's proven with Action, Epic and Genre films. Check.
As for proven genre, well Star Wars remains the only mega success in science fiction--and the Star Wars budgets were around 100-150 million. Unlike the Pirates Sequels, the Spiderman Sequels, the Shrek Sequels and the Harry Potter sequels, and Titanic, James Cameron is the only person to ever get a 200 million dollar budget for a science fiction film (his next film for 2008). Spielberg doesn't get that much, but he doesn't ask for it. The only reason War of the Worlds was 150 million was that it was a rush job that was basically worked on 24/7 for eight months to complete effects on time (overtime, double overtime, triple overtime basically).
What Ender's Game can expect in terms of budgeting is somewhere between what Fellowship of the Ring got and Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe got. Fellowship was made for about 60-80 million and Narnia was made for around 90. fwiw all the Harry Potter movies have been either very close to 200 or over 200. Serenity, on the other hand, was budgeted about about 30-40 million. EG could do very well with triple Serenity's budget. Paramount got into EXTREME trouble when they let Lemony Snicket go over 150 million, no one wants to repeat that experience.
In terms of franchising, Ender's Game does not have the cachet of the successful fantasy series, but studios are willing to risk the chance that a scifi series might enjoy the success and profitability that most of the fantasy series' have led to. But frankly fantasy is red hot. That's why His Dark Materials, and Dark is Rising will be filming very soon. Why Half Blood Prince will start filming in may (two months before OOTP comes out). Why we'll see at least three more Narnia films and why we have Eragon coming out in December. But we won't be seeing any more Lemony Snicket, at least not with "I destroy budgets and can't get a movie made anymore because I"m so arrogant and costly" Jim Carrey involved. But the continued success of these series at the box office is essential to seeing EG move forward with enthusiasm on the Studio's part. EG may be fasttracked if Eragon substantially beats expectations. However if it performs as expected or underperforms it won't negatively affect EG. It's different enough to be a good thing.
But the worst thing that could happen to EG would be to have someone big named come in and jack the budget way up, because the studios are hemoragging people and budgets lately. Part of this is that the studios lag several years behind the rest of the economy, for instance the great depression didn't really hit the movie industry until 1933, five years after it hit. Part of it is a****** super rich stock holders are ordering cutbacks that are destroying thousands of jobs so they get higher profit margins on their quarterly earnings (coughCarlIcahncough). But the biggest part of it is that the DVD market matured and plateaued about 18 months ago and the studios are not seeing their coffers flowing with money like they did during the DVD boom.
adam