- Hot
- New
- Categories...
- Producer's Lounge
- Producer's Vault
- The Gulch: Live! (New)
- Ask the Gulch!
- Going Galt
- Books
- Business
- Classifieds
- Culture
- Economics
- Education
- Entertainment
- Government
- History
- Humor
- Legislation
- Movies
- News
- Philosophy
- Pics
- Politics
- Science
- Technology
- Video
- The Gulch: Best of
- The Gulch: Bugs
- The Gulch: Feature Requests
- The Gulch: Featured Producers
- The Gulch: General
- The Gulch: Introductions
- The Gulch: Local
- The Gulch: Promotions
- Marketplace
- Members
- Store
- More...
I'd certainly make a lot of noise to get people to see an Atlas Shrugged marathon.
Part I failed. That's no secret.
Part II failed worse. That's no secret either. You saw that in January when the special showing in upstate NY got cancelled. A quarter million people within thirty minutes of the theater, yet you couldn't even get three dozen who wanted to see it.
The real goal, as always, is to complete the trilogy so that astroturf organizations can buy it bulk and give it away by the forkliftful to artificially inflate Rand's popularity, just as they do with her books, which would vanish without a trace without that sweet, sweet astroturf.
Now, you can pretend that you don't know this, but that won't make it any less true.
It does not matter who defines A, A is always A.
Listen to those who try to convince you that A is not A at your own peril.
Here is the point. If I say that A is not A, then I am saying that whatever I say A is is not really A, then my statement has to be meaningless and my words are just a garbled mess.
Perhaps I have misunderstood the whole A thing. I guess if I say that God existing equals A, then A is A, regardless of others' opinions. Gee, A is always A, then.
If that is the case, if others say A is not A, then their statement cannot mean what they say it means, unless they do not intend to communicate anything.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/00f5c3ggowirg5...
I'd put these on everything. And hopefully they would get people curious and to the website, where they could watch a trailer. I find people are a lot more receptive to discussing Atlas Shrugged when they make it part of the way on their own.
**I obviously made up the release date. June seemed good since that's the month Dagny spent in the Gulch.
The reality is that Part I started small and tried to use word of mouth to grow, and the word of mouth was - outside the groupies - quite terrible. And deservedly so, because it was a very slapped-together movie that disappointed a lot of the base and was ignored outside the base.
So Part II canned the "start small and grow" release pattern in exchange for wide release. But as a sequel to a bomb nobody saw, and one getting horrific reviews as well, it too sank without a trace. It actually did worse than Part I. The moment that theaters were no longer contractually obligated to show it - that is, after the fourteenth day - theaters dropped it like the proverbial hot brick, and overnight it lost five-sixths of its screens.
The odds that Part III might actually make any money in a theatrical distribution are pretty much zero. Aglialoro would be smarter to release it direct to video, so that its tiny little audience won't have to wait, but then that gives Aglialoro less of the ego-boosting "Look at me, I'm a movie mogul" he seems to need.
If you make a sequel to a terrible bomb sequel to a terrible bomb, don't expect a profit. That seems like a simple enough idea.
Hey, Harmon! Hey John! If this move is "for you" — meaning, for those who have already read the novel and will no doubt purchase the DVD regardless of how bad the movie is — then why bother releasing the movie theatrically? Just go direct-to-DVD. You sound as if you're already convinced (perhaps with good reason) that part III will also be a box-office failure. (Just a guess, but I wonder if it has something to do with the weak screenwriting and directing? Nah, couldn't be that. It must be the "irrationality" of the movie-going public.)
Additionally, I've read some online film-finance sources that indicate the previous DVD sales of parts I and II were actually quite weak.
I'm sure the failure, critical and commercial, of the AS trilogy will not hurt future sales of the novel (though it might possibly hurt future attempts by more competent producers to film or televise it), but it behooves us *cineastes* to ask the following:
On John's blog, prior to the November 2012 election, Aglialoro asserted in an interview that if Obama won a second term, there would be no point in producing the final part of the trilogy. Alas, Obama did win a second term. So why is he proceeding with the project?
Just curious. I expect him to duck the question entirely.
What he doesn't get is that the last two films were for him too. The whole trilogy-on-the-cheap adventure has been the story of what happens when there's a mismatch between ego and ability. Aglialoro got to strut around in his movie-producer glasses, as he created a string of stinkbombs that have enwreathed the novel in eau d'isaster so rank that nobody's going to consider another adaptation, let alone one that isn't wretchedly bad, in our lifetimes.
Bingo.