I don't buy it. The most common reason to push back a movie is to fix it up because it sucks. I'm not saying that Half-Blood Prince is bad, or is going to be bad, but you can make a pretty good assumption since the last movie was crap. As I've preached many times before, David Yates is
Another reason I don't particularly buy the first excuse is the fact that moving to a summer release doesn't necessarily mean more money. So far, three HP films have been released in November and they averaged $916 million worldwide, while the two summer releases averaged $866 million worldwide. That's a $50 million difference, people! Plus, if the movie came out in November, it would have zero competition as the next big movie release would be Twilight which doesn't even come out until a month later. With this summer release, now it has to compete with Ice Age 3, Land of the Lost, and Roland Emmerich's next disaster movie, 2012.
There is a little bit of good news to this... fans will not have to wait as long for the first Deathly Hallows film as this push back does not affect the release date for the final two movies... yet.
So, I guess we'll see if Yates will pull off another stinker. My guess is yes.
Edit 3:37 PM: Disney has decided to move Bolt up a week to the November 21st date. Good move Disney. Bad move Warner Bros.
Interesting...I think there's more to this than meets the eye.
ReplyDeleteDespite your assumption that HP5 was crap, I don't think it's because they're unhappy with the movie. Let's not forget that HP1 and HP2 got releases on time, and they're both regarded as the worst of the bunch (though I liked them...just not as much as 3, 4 and 5).
The fact is that summer IS the most profitable time to release a movie...the figures you quote aren't the whole picture. Average US grosses would be more realistic (the holiday season and the summer don't mean necessarily the same thing in other countries around the world as they do here in the US). Based on this, the difference between average HP grosses is considerably smaller - $289 million to $271 million. Also, don't forget that HP5 is the highest grossing Harry Potter movie after the first one (which was ALWAYS going to gross the most).
Also, your claim that Yates is a talentless director is not really without any foundation. You've seen one (ONE!) of his movies and you didn't like it. Fair enough. Audiences and a lot of critics would disagree with you and I think your reasons for disliking it are without foundation, but, of course, it IS just my opinion and there are others that didn't like it either (it's not like you're the only one that thought it wasn't very good!). But the fact is that Yates is almost universally critically acclaimed...first for his miniseries "State of Play" (which I know you haven't seen, but you should...it's great) and also for his HBO film "The Girl in the Cafe" (which I'm going to assume you haven't seen). I think "talentless" is a bit much!
Who knows, though, you could be right. It COULD be because the film stinks (certainly, as you said, that's been one of the reasons for pushing back release dates), I just don't think it will be. Come July, I guess we'll find out...
Are you sure you're not biased towards David Yates just because you like his TV series? Tell me, how many times have you watched OotP since its release? For me, twice. It's that unwatchable. There's barely no point to the movie.
ReplyDeleteYou mention that Order is the second highest grossing Harry Potter film to date, which is correct. But, keep in mind that it is also the worst rated Harry Potter film when it comes to professional critics. Just because a sequel made a lot of money doesn't mean it's good (i.e. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and At World's End, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, The Lost World). And while I understand that your argument is more to the point of summer movies make more money, I have to point out some high grossing films that weren't released in the summer and did not have much competition released around them: Lord of the Rings (all three of them), Titanic, Chronicles of Narnia. So, my point is that I think it could have made more at a November 2008 release than a July 2009 release. Although, I am not a studio exec., nor will we ever know if my prediction is true.
Oh, and I took back the whole thing about David Yates being a talentless director. Read the post again. =P