Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

August 23, 2010

Two words: Instant replay!

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Brett Beach: As sad as it makes me to consider, if this had opened on Friday instead of Wednesday, it most likely would have had enough to open on the top spot. I don't think it reinvigorates the format nor is it a blah result. It simply validates Friedberg/Seltzer's existence and allows them to make the same kind of film indefinitely with a similar budget. Setting Disaster Movie aside (which was from a different studio), their three previous movies finished in the near $40 million to near $50 million range and this will most likely get there as well. I can accept that there is an audience for this (even I got suckered the first time around with Date Movie. I mean c'mon, with Alyson Hannigan, Jennifer Coolidge, and Fred Willard in the cast, I had hopes), but three things really get me down:

1) Can Fox at least put some good money into the advertising budget for posters that don't look like Photoshop Wrecks?

2) These guys don't even have to promote their movies. Are they afraid to confront the masses (at least Uwe Boll makes statements)? I have done Google searches for Friedberg/Seltzer Interviews and the only hits are for mocks and (wait for it) spoofs. I can also only find two photos of them. Do they even exist?

3) If Friedberg/Seltzer had/have final cut on their films, would anyone be able to tell?




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I wish we could quit talking about them, but in this case, that won't make them go away.

Jim Van Nest: I don't see how this can do anything but kinda reinvigorate the genre. They've been releasing these pieces of crap for years now with little to no success. This relatively successful result will likely cause a glut of these in the next couple years. Of course, the genre will go right back to having no box office impact whatsoever. This result can only be attributed to the Twilight backlash.

Edwin Davies: I think it reinvigorates the genre briefly, but only until the next one comes out. Aside from Friedberg/Seltzer, these kind of broad, terrible and slapdash parodies don't tend to have that much traction, and they've been declining in popularity fairly steadily since the heights - and I do use that word cautiously - of the first Scary Movie. Unless their next film has as massive and divisive a target as Twilight to focus on I think they'll struggle, since the backlash against that franchise is the only reason I can see why this film did more business than Disaster Movie. Clearly there are a lot of people out there whose desire to see Twilight being mocked hasn't been sated by the millions of people online doing just that. (I'd like to think the reason why it didn't make more money is that there is a hugely overlap between people who don't like Twilight and people who don't like Friedberg and Seltzer.)

Reagen Sulewski: This is a pretty low standard for "reinvigorating" that you guys have. I view this as more of a one-off: Seltzberg made the wise decision of focusing on just one series that is ripe for backlash, coasting on that presumed hostility towards Twilight movies. And still they only got $12 million out of it. Congratulations for reading the tea leaves, guys, but without a second target, this momentum isn't going to last.


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