One Month Out
By BOP Staff
April 13, 2010
Kim Hollis: Robin Hood, the Russell Crowe film being marketed as Gladiator 2, opens on May 14th. What are your expectations for it?
Josh Spiegel: I'm coming from a bit of a skewed perspective here, as one of the few people who didn't love Gladiator when it came out, so this movie does not interest me at all, aside from Cate Blanchett playing Maid Marian. The movie just looks like Gladiator with bows and arrows. I'm not sure that this movie will do huge numbers, if only because Iron Man 2 has more anticipation surrounding it and will have been out for only a week. I'd be a bit surprised if this one does $100 million in its first weekend, but then again, I'd have said Gladiator wouldn't do that well before it came out.
Michael Lynderey: May 14, 2010?!? You mean 2001, right? This movie has a decent trailer, but we all witnessed the genre it belongs to - the two and a half hour long historical epic - dying a slow and painful death, way, way back around 2004-2006. That's why I'm so surprised that someone went ahead and made another one of these, against all apparent reasoning not to. Maybe I'm crazy, but I don't necessarily see this out-grossing Kingdom of Heaven or King Arthur. It just seems like a film about seven years out of time.
David Mumpower: I too found Gladiator wildly mediocre with its only saving grace being Joaquin Phoenix. Given its $187 million domestic take in 2000, everyone knows the filmmakers instantly regretted the decision to kill off Crowe's character, which is why a prequel was rumored for so many years (and will in fact be rumored again if Robin Hood does well). In terms of what to expect from Robin Hood, opinions are going to be all over the map for a reason. Nobody knows what to think of Russell Crowe as a box office draw. He's had some shocking successes with Gladiator and A Beautiful Mind and he's done about as well as expected with American Gangster. He's also had some disappointments with 3:10 to Yuma, Cinderella Man and Body of Lies.
Perhaps the best comparison, however, is one that hasn't been mentioned yet since everyone tends to forget it. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World was supposed to become the iconic character for Crowe that would be his franchise. It...didn't work out that way. The movie was slow and dense, not the words an action feature wants to have associated with it. It wound up being marginally in the black but basically a wash for all involved. I am not arbitrarily dismissing Robin Hood out of hand as the popularity of the story to each generation never ceases to amaze me, but this has felt like a disastrous project for a while now due to all the on-the-fly changes to the project. I have trouble envisioning this as a huge hit.
Max Braden: Of course, before there was Gladiator, there was Braveheart, which had only grossed half of what Gladiator did. And Blanchett's presence brings up Elizabeth. All three of those historical epics are probably better known for their award recognition than box office. I could see the same with Robin Hood. The problem it faces getting people into seats is that there's very little charm or sex appeal here, and it's not a rock & roll war film, so it lands in the limbo between Prince of Thieves and 300. It does have a good pedigree, though, so I would expect a moderate opening with good reviews keeping its legs up for a while.
Jason Lee: Despite the appeal of Scott and Crowe, I just can't see this movie being the breakout action film of the summer. The tale of Robin Hood has always been a little bit cheesy and overly melodramatic, and while those qualities were somehow appealing in Gladiator (I did not like the film), I don't think it'll translate as well in Robin Hood. Films in the middle ages have always been a little hit and miss (see a final gross of $51.9 million for King Arthur and $47.4 for Kingdom of Heaven). The total of 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves would be around $290 million today, but that film wasn't nearly as fight-y and action-y as this one. Will men buy a bunch of tickets to see Crowe kill people using a bow and arrow? Maybe, but not $200 mil worth of them.
Kim Hollis: Just to get this out there, Gladiator is one of my most hated films ever. And yet, even though I phrased the question comparing Robin Hood to Gladiator at the beginning, the movie that Robin Hood forcibly reminds me of is King Arthur. This adaptation seems overly self-serious and grim, much like the Antoine Fuqua adaptation of the story of the Knights of the Round table did. Audiences never seem to buy very heavily into this sort of thing, and unless the movie gets outstanding word-of-mouth quickly, I think it's in some trouble, frankly. It's always had a stink of "things going wrong" about it from the beginning.
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