New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Welcome to How to Spend $20, BOP’s look at the latest Blu-ray discs and DVDs to hit stores nationwide. This week: Seth Rogen wears half a mask, Vince Vaughn keeps an ugly secret and a vampire and werewolf figure out a way to cohabitate.

Pick of the Week

The Green Hornet

News of Seth Rogen’s involvement in The Green Hornet - not just as star, but as a writer, too - was sandwiched between the releases of Knocked Up and Superbad in summer 2007. If there ever were a time when Rogen was viewed as a hot commodity, it would have been then. It was like: “Bam! Knocked Up opens to $30 million. Bam! Seth Rogen attaches to The Green Hornet. Bam! Superbad opens to $33 million.”

Through two R-rated comedies, Rogen netted $270 million in domestic box office dollars in a matter of months. So, scripting a superhero adaptation was practically nothing. Seth coulda said he wanted to claymate a version of Birth of a Nation, and Universal would have been like: “All right. How much money you need?”

But in the three and a half years that passed between Rogen signing on with buddy Evan Goldberg and the release of the movie, anticipation for The Green Hornet seemed to fizzle some. And that release date - January 14th of this year - certainly didn’t help any. Green Hornet was to open summer 2010 before getting bumped into the new year for 3D-conversion purposes.





So to scoff at The Green Hornet’s $33 million opening probably seems in poor taste, since that kind of number would seat The GH at fifth best January weekend of all time if Avatar weren’t eating up four slots of its own. (Avatar included, The GH is #9). But a superhero movie failing to break $100 million - or even break even, GH reportedly cost $110 million to produce - seems unfortunate.

As well, I figured more would go for Christoph Waltz in his second villainous role. And now that he’s currently appearing as the big bad in Water for Elephants, I think Waltz has discovered a niche.

Disc includes: Audio commentary, animated storyboards, gag reel, deleted scenes, Writing The Green Hornet featurette, Finding Kato featurette, The Green Hornet Cutting Room featurette, The Black Beauty: Rebirth of Cool featurette, Trust Me: Director Michel Gondry featurette, The Stunt Family Armstrong featurette, The Art of Destruction featurette

Continued:       1       2