Monday Morning Quarterback Part II

By BOP Staff

October 28, 2015

Wait! No one wanted to see this? Crazy talk!

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Ryan Kyle: I think Steve Jobs went too wide too soon. Platform releases are an art form that very few without the last name Weinstein understand the intricacies of. While it did gangbusters in limited release, too few saw it (less than $2.5 million worth) to get the word-of-mouth buzz to a fever pitch when going wide. The trick will now be keeping it in enough theaters through the end of the year when the awards buzz starts coming into play to convince those reluctant ticket buyers to see it. The less than $3,000 per theater average is troubling in terms of its staying power. Given that the film's opening comes in towards the lower end of Sorkin's resume (this is his film almost as much as Fassbender's), I'd call this opening a disappointment. However, the big picture might be different once we see how the film holds in the upcoming weeks.

David Mumpower: In addition to the other thoughts, there were a couple of key issues going against the film. It was the second Steve Jobs film in two calendar years, and people ignored the first one. While this one looked better, it didn't look THAT much better. Also, this project was among the hardest hit by the Sony leak, which gave it the stink of failure ahead of time. All things considered, this was about what I expected and possibly even on the upper side. As for its Oscar aspirations, it doesn't have any right now.

Kim Hollis: Rock the Kasbah had one of the worst openings ever for a film that debuted on more than 2,000 screens (although it wasn't the worst of the weekend on over 2,000 screens). What happened here?

Edwin Davies: Every few years, someone makes a film which is marketed solely on the fact that Bill Murray is in it, and which seems to assume that Bill Murray is still the massive star that he was in the '80s and early '90s. That approach worked precisely once, with last year's St. Vincent, but the rest of the time it doesn't, because Bill Murray is now known as a comedy icon, a consistent character actor, and a living meme. You need to do something more than say "Hey, Bill Murray is in this!" to get people excited, otherwise the film becomes nothing more than an excuse for Murray to be weird on talk shows.

The ads for Rock the Kasbah were unfocused, not especially funny, and gave little sense of what the film was about, other than that it seemed weirdly like Ishtar (which, for me, isn't the worst association in the world since I quite like that film, but I am in the minority on that one). There was nothing to the advertising (what little there was) to suggest that this was a film worth watching, and that was reflected in its performance.

Ryan Kyle: I'm not sure how you can analyze something when there is nothing even there to analyze. The opening is absolutely terrible and another flop for newcomer Open Road Films, who doesn't seem to know how to pick 'em or release 'em. The cast should remain fine, but director Barry Levinson, who is in desperate need of a hit, or just a film that will break-even, will take the biggest hit for this.

David Mumpower: Bill Murray almost seems to pick projects based on how likely they are to bomb rather than succeed. A luck at his recent filmography proves this. Ignoring the one unlikely Wes Anderson hit, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and a couple of cameos like Zombieland, Murray has only selected one commercial project over the past decade. Amusingly, that film, Monuments Men, bombed relative to expectations. I see the performance of Rock the Casbah as a career decision rather than any kind of surprise.




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Kim Hollis: Jem and the Holograms threw under Rock the Kasbah and opened with just $1.4 million. Say something funny about Jem and the Holograms.

Edwin Davies: This is really going to hurt the chances of my script for a Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors film getting made.

This should probably be a lesson to Hollywood that if you want to make a film version of a cult property with lots of cache for a specific audience, it's probably not the best idea to rush a super-cheap version of it into production which seemingly goes out of its way to alienate the only people who actually care about the property in question. Instead, they will probably just assume that making films aimed at young women is a waste of money, ignoring that this version of Jem and the Holograms was a disaster from the moment it was announced.

Ben Gruchow: I just can't believe they rebooted Josie and the Pussycats so soon after the original came out.

Ryan Kyle: LOL. Is there anything more to say?

Ben Gruchow: At least the movie fits into Jason Blum's wheelhouse now.

David Mumpower: I have a 30-year-old niece who looooooves Jem and the Holograms. Like, Pete Kilmer sent her a gift batch of comics last year, and it made her cry she was so happy. When she saw the film on opening night, she expressed outrage over it. As she said, the people who made the film clearly had no clue what fans love about Jem and the Holograms. This entire project was a mistake from the greenlight to the release, and it's a blueprint example of the perils of making a movie because you have the license rather than a good idea for a story.


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