Pacific Rim

[GeneChing]

Pacific Rim Official Trailer

[GeneChing]

Pacific Rim - Official Wondercon Trailer #2 (HD) Guillermo Del Toro

Did I see a sword fight? There - at 1:52! I'm totally calling dibs on reporting on this for KFM (assuming we're invited to a screener).

[Dragonzbane76]

Jax's from Sons of anarchy is the main character. Looking forward to this.

[GeneChing]

It wasn't a sword fight. It was a jo staff fight.

Official KFM review forthcoming this Friday.

[doug maverick]

ok saw a screening last night that was attended by some of the cast ill be brief and pretty much spoiler free.

sorry to beat you too it gene but im sure yours will be more thought out and comprehensive.

ok so ill start with what i didnt like.

the film suffered from both too much and a lack of exposition. or rather the exposition was misplaced. things that didnt really need explaining were over explained and things that really needed to be fleshed out were breezed over.

the first ten minutes and the voice over were pointless. should have just started at the first kaiju/jhaeger battle.

the dialogue could have been beefed up a bit.

ok what i did like



the action. was amazing...

the mythology was fantastic

idris elba... this dude just crushed anyone who had the misfortune of being in a scene with him.

the cast in general.. all fantastic character actors

the 3d. on par with avatar...sit at the back of the theater to get the full effect.

the film is a solid 7.5

ill wait till after genes review to post something more in depth.

[GeneChing]

I agree with your comments for the most part.

Who was at the screening you were at?

[GeneChing]

...its all about China for films now.

'Pacific Rim' Hits $100M in China, Passing 'Avengers' and 'Kung Fu Panda 2'
Guillermo del Toro's giant robots epic is up to $286M at the foreign box office
Published: August 18, 2013 @ 5:11 pm
By Todd Cunningham



"Pacific Rim" raised its overall total in China to more than $100 million after staying in the No. 1 box office spot with a $14 million third weekend.

Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros.' "Pacific Rim” brought in roughly $20 million from 58 territories in all this weekend. Its international total is $286 million and it is at nearly $385 million worldwide.

Director Guillermo del Toro's giant robots epic is the second movie to cross the $100 million mark in China this year. Disney's "Iron Man 3” has amassed more than $120 million there since opening in June.

Already the highest grossing Warner Bros. movie in China, "Pacific Rim" moved up the list of all-time highest-grossing U.S. films there, passing "The Avengers” ($84 million) and "Kung Fu Panda 2” ($92 million). The leader is "Transformers 3,” which made $172 million there in 2011.

"Pacific Rim” hasn't been able to match the success it's had in China in Japan. After two weeks there, it has taken in just over $9 million.

After China, the biggest foreign markets for "Pacific Rim” have been Russia with $20.5 million, South Korea with $18 million and Mexico with $15.8 million.

[Raipizo]

I thought the movie was okay, they left many holes in the plot. There was some action but a lot of dialogue which I guess is okay. I just didn't see the big hype about this movie.

[GeneChing]

Dinosaurs vs Monsters at China box office
By Kevin Ma
Mon, 26 August 2013, 22:45 PM (HKT)

Despite competition from a Pixar film and a comedy starring XU Zheng 徐崢, Jurassic Park (1993) topped the China box office this weekend.

The 3-D version of the Steven SPIELBERG film made RMB96.39 million (US$15.7 million) Friday to Sunday. After six days, it has made RMB198.1 million (US$32.4 million). The re-release grossed US$45.4 million in North America in April.

Pixar's Monsters University – the opening film of this year's Shanghai International Film Festival 上海國際電影節 – was second placed at the weekend with RMB80.2 million (US$13.1 million) over three days. It is Pixar's best opening yet in China.

SHAO Xiaoli 邵曉黎's Fake Fiction 摩登年代, starring Lost in Thailand 人再囧途之泰囧's Xu as a con artist posing as a magician. The comedy was third-placed at the weekend with RMB33.5 million (US$5.47 million).

On Saturday, Pacific Rim's total gross was RMB674.5 million (US$110 million), passing Let the Bullets Fly 讓子彈飛 (2010) as the 10th highest grossing film of all time in China. After 26 days, it has now made RMB679 million (US$111 million).

Dante LAM 林超賢's action-drama Unbeatable 激戰 crossed the RMB100 million mark (US$16.3 million) on Sunday, its 10th day of release.

I feel ya, Doug. Elba was really the only character in the film that was really worth watching. The rest was all robots and monsters.

[GeneChing]

...off doug's facebook.

Pacific Rim Is The Highest Grossing Live-Action Movie Worldwide Of The Year Based On New IP
By: Scott Johnson on August 30, 2013

Pacific Rim Box OfficeThere’s been a lot of debate over the summer as to if Pacific Rim was a successful movie or not. Pacific Rim did not have a great opening at the U.S. box office, but it has proven to be a hit internationally.

At the domestic box office, Pacific Rim has continued to creep up the box office charts, and the film now ranks in top twenty highest grossing movies of the year at the domestic box office. At $99.3 million, Pacific Rim is also very close to becoming the twentieth movie of the year to cross the $100 million mark at the domestic box office.

Looking at Pacific Rim’s worldwide box office reveals an even better story for the film. Pacific Rim is now in the top ten highest grossing movies worldwide for the year. At $397.4 million, Pacific Rim is also very close to becoming only the tenth movie of the year to cross the $400 million mark at the worldwide box office.

The $400 million worldwide number is a very significant number. Because Pacific Rim cost around $190 million to produce, $400 million worldwide has been the number widely reported that the film needed to do in order to break even.

Now, here’s another interesting, but very important trivia fact about Pacific Rim. Of the nine films ranked ahead of Pacific Rim worldwide, eight of them were either sequels or based on pre-existing books or comic book characters. The Croods was the only brand new intellectual property, and it was an animated film. Pacific Rim was the highest grossing live action movie worldwide based on a brand new intellectual property.

It’s a pretty powerful accomplishment for a film that was branded a failure by many in the media right after it was released. If Pacific Rim doesn’t get a sequel, then Hollywood should probably re-assess whether they even want to continue to do big budget live action movies based on new IP, because it doesn’t get any more successful than Pacific Rim (at least this year so far).

[GeneChing]

Scott Mendelson, Contributor
9/02/2013 @ 11:40AM
'Pacific Rim' And More Domestic "Flops" That Became Global Hits

One of the more noteworthy bits of box office news this weekend was Warner Bros.’ 3D and IMAX-enhanced Pacific Rim crossing $400 million worldwide and $100 million in America. Now big would-be blockbusters cross $400 million globally well, not all the time, but frequently enough over the last ten years that there are now 175 such films. But here’s the rub: Pacific Rim is the rare English-language film in history to cross $400 million while barely crossing $100 million domestic. For all intents-and-purposes, the $180 million Guillermo del Toro monsters vs. robots epic pretty much tanked in America, grossing about as much as Cowboys and Aliens. What its overseas success represents is an example of a most interesting and arguably increasing anomaly: films that disappointed, if not out-and-out bombed, in America only to do so well overseas that they were relatively profitable anyway. Some notable examples over the years:

Troy (2004)
Would you believe that Wolfgang Petersen’s Troy is one of the biggest-grossing R-rated films of all time? The $175 million Brad Pitt/Eric Bana adaptation of The Iliad was mostly written off as a swing-and-a-miss back in summer 2004. It opened in that ‘second weekend of summer’ doom slot I occasionally write about, where it debuted with a relatively solid $44 million coming off the second weekend of the under-performing summer and much-loathed kick-off film Van Helsing.

The long and violent action picture, well-acted but hamstrung by the need to modernize the source material, was neither loved nor loathed, quietly making its way to $133 million in the states and being mostly written off as “just another film that opened in summer 2004″. But Brad Pitt is a big deal overseas, arguably more so than he is in America. His star power, this being his first pure big-scale would-be blockbuster since Interview With the Vampire, in along with the ‘war has no good guys’ narrative, the general big-scale action on display, resonated outside our shores where it earned a colossal $364 million overseas.

With $497 million total, it’s the sixth-biggest R-rated grosser in global history and the third-biggest non-sequel R-rated film behind just Ted ($549m) and The Passion of the Christ ($611m). The other R-rated champions, by the way, are Terminator 2: Judgment Day ($519m), The Hangover II ($586m), and The Matrix Reloaded ($742m). Troy was a rare example at the time of a non-franchise picture absolutely decimating its domestic total overseas and becoming a blockbuster via foreign dollars.

The Golden Compass (2007)
This is a, if not THE, classic example of why we should sometimes pay attention to overseas numbers before passing judgment. The first of a proposed franchise based on the His Dark Materials fantasy series, The Golden Compass weathered oodles of bad press based on both its $180 million budget and its source material’s negative feelings towards organized religion. The knives were already out, with attacks on both sides either arguing against the book’s anti-Catholic stance or arguing against the film’s softening of said material. Even New Line Cinema’s independence from Warner Bros. was allegedly on the line.

So when the film debuted with “just” $25 million in December 2007, those who live to scream “FLOP!” or “BOMB!” at every possible moment dove in without a life vest. The film had mediocre December legs, earning just $72 million in America. It added more fuel to the rumblings about Nicole Kidman being box office poison (yes, because films like Birth and Fur just scream box office smash) and New Line Cinema folded into Warner Bros. soon after. It wasn’t a direct correlation, as the post-Lord of the Rings period at New Line was not a pleasant one, but that’s for another day (come what may, I still like The Last Mimzy).

But here’s the rub: The would-be flop not only won an Oscar for Best Special Effects (in itself meaningless in terms of finances) but also went on to earn $302 million overseas, including $33m Japan and $53m the UK for a total of $372m worldwide. Now New Line Cinema ironically sold off foreign rights to help pay for the budget, but someone made money off those $302 million worth of overseas grosses. By the time the foreign totals had been tallied, the film’s reputation as a legendary flop was etched in stone, even as films with somewhat similar budget-to-gross ratios (think Batman Begins, Star Trek, Snow White and the Huntsman) went on to get sequels in the last several years.

Continued on next post.

[GeneChing]

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)
Brendan Fraser had a really good 2008 summer season, even if no one really noticed. Journey to the Center of the Earth was a live-action film in modern 3D way before that was a fad, and the film debuted with $21 million before legging it to $100m domestic and $241m worldwide on a $60m budget. He closed out the summer with The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. A somewhat too-little, too-late third entry in the popular Mummy series, it was basically missing everything that audiences loved about that series save for Fraser and John Hannah, losing co-star Rachel Weisz, director Stephen Summers, and crowd-pleasing bad-ass Oded Fehr. If it looked and felt like one shade away from a direct-to-DVD Mummy sequel, well, I’d agree with you and so did most critics at the time.

The picture debuted with just $40 million, well below the $68m debut of The Mummy Returns seven years earlier and actually below the $43m debut of The Mummy back in 1999. But while the film just barely crossed $100m in the states, it was (this punch line is getting old, I know) a massive hit overseas, becoming one of those barely-over-$100m domestic/over-$400m worldwide hits that are rare enough to still be noteworthy. It earned $401m worldwide, less than $415m of The Mummy and the $433m of The Mummy Returns, but not so far below those totals to be an aberration. Setting the film in China to capitalize on the 2008 summer Olympics was a cynical but successful play, although China ($17m) wasn’t remotely the film’s biggest territory (outside America, that would be Russia with $27m).

The third Mummy movie, also starring Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh, was the last was of the franchise, as even major profits for the $145 million picture wasn’t enough to wash out the taste of one too many bites of the apple. There are talks of a reboot, which I hope don’t happen since the franchise’s success is more about the actors involved than the special effects. The first two films, with their emphasis on actor chemistry over CGI overload, have aged remarkably well, showing the potential for high-quality franchise thrills when we actually care about the characters involved.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010)
We’ve talked quite a bit this year about the mini-trend of cheaper, smaller-scale sequels attaching 3D for the sake of overseas grosses, translating into a smaller domestic take but a larger overseas one (think G.I. Joe: Retaliation or The Wolverine). Intentional or not, this one could arguably be considered the film that started said trend. Disney decided to pass on a third Chronicles of Narnia film after the insanely expensive ($220 million) Prince Caspian grossed “just” $419 million versus the first film’s $745m take.

So Fox picked up the rights of the Walden Media-produced series, and a third film was commissioned to be both cheaper ($155 million this time) and set to release in the same mid-December slot where The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe scored five Decembers prior (Prince Caspian debuted the third weekend in May, 2008). Alas, the domestic results were pretty grim, opening with just $24m (compared to the $67m and $55m debuts of the first two entries) and ending with $104m the states (compared to the $291m and $141m domestic results of the first two entries).

But thanks partially to the 3D conversion and partially due to Fox’s genuine magic touch overseas (really, go luck up some alleged Fox domestic flops and marvel at the overseas totals), the film grossed nearly three times its US total, for a $415 million total. While that was $4m less than Prince Caspian, it was also cost $65m less to make. Most presumed this franchise was DOA back in December 2010. And due to Walden no longer having the rights and needing to wait a few more years before they can be purchased again, it may be awhile before we see a fourth Narnia film. But the relative consistency shows that there is an audience for this seven-volume adventure saga.

Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)
The much-delayed and oft-ridiculed Paramount fairy-tale reinvention was supposed represent everything wrong with big-scale filmmaking. Instead it may have shown studios the pathway for the future of international cinema. The film finally debuted in January 2013 with a decent $20 million opening weekend, and it ended with $55m, not horrible for a $50m film but theoretically no franchise starter either. But it made three times its domestic gross overseas, earning $170m in foreign markets and bringing its cume to an eye-popping $225m.

The project that spent most of its pre-release life as a glorified joke will now be getting a sequel. We’ll see if stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arteton bother to return, but we are indeed getting a second chapter in the ongoing saga of Hansel and Gretel reimagined as witch-killing mercenaries. Now Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is not the first lower-budget horror-tinged action film to score huge overseas. Sony has found huge overseas bounties for their ongoing Underworld and Resident Evil franchise. 2010′s Resident Evil: Afterlife, the first in 3D and coming just under a year after Avatar, earned $60 million in America (a series high, but not by a massive margin) but $236m overseas for a stunning $292m worldwide total.

But the Underworld (whose last entry earned $62 million here and $97m over there) and Resident Evil franchises were both established by the time they were able to add 3D to enhance overseas grosses. Hansel & Gretel is a new would-be franchise, built cheap enough so that it didn’t have to be a world-beating blockbuster to thrive. In an era when we have $400m worldwide grossers like, um, Pacific Rim, that still struggle to make real profits due to huge budgets, the future of would-be blockbuster cinema may be cheaper fantasy films that thrive overseas more so than in America. We’ll see if Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters becomes a glorified game-changer as studios look for a way to tighten their budgetary belts.

And that’s a wrap for this respective trip down box office memory lane. This is not a remotely comprehensive list of worldwide hits that all-but failed in America, but merely representative sampling of what may well become the new normal as the American film market becomes less important over the next decade. Now that still doesn’t mean we should be getting a sequel to Pacific Rim. At $180 million, the Legendary Pictures-produced and Warner Bros.’ distributed sci-fi actioner will still have to wait until home viewing revenues to see any profits, and there is no reason to presume that a sequel will exponentially grow to justify the theoretically increased budget.

But thanks to China and other receptive overseas markets, Guillermo del Toro doesn’t have a big budget black mark on his resume, which should make it easier to get his next film greenlit. In the meantime, those who really enjoyed Pacific Rim will be happy to know that their favorite robots-vs-monsters epic is no longer considered a worldwide flop. Now go out and rent The Golden Compass. It’s actually pretty solid.

Hansel and Gretel surprised me here. I thought about doing a KFM review of that but then decided against it because I was too busy at the time.

I totally agree on Golden Compass.

[GeneChing]

Perhaps I'll split this off into it's own thread when this production gets more underway.

Guillermo del Toro Says He’s Still Writing the PACIFIC RIM Sequel with Travis Beacham
by Adam Chitwood Posted 2 days ago



Filmmaker Guillermo del Toro made a splash this summer with his massive “monsters vs. robots” epic Pacific Rim. Though the Warner Bros. film carried a hefty budget, the pic did solid business at the box office, bringing in over $400 million worldwide. Del Toro always envisioned sequels to the pic in order to further flesh out the Pacific Rim world, and last we heard a follow-up was looking likely from a studio standpoint given the pic’s success at the global marketplace. Though the sequel still has yet to receive an official greenlight, del Toro recently revealed that he and screenwriter Travis Beacham are still working on the script for Pacific Rim 2. Hit the jump for more.

pacific-rim-2-sequel-guillermo-del-toro-charlie-hunnamSpeaking with IGN to promote the release of Pacific Rim on Blu-ray, del Toro confirmed that he is indeed hard at work on scripting the follow-up:

“We are writing the sequel. Travis Beacham and I are writing, so that is active. The decision to greenlight or not, that’s definitely above my pay rate.”

The Blu-ray sales of the film can’t hurt the follow-up’s chances, and hopefully the studio will make a firm decision in the coming months. It’s unclear whether the decision lies with Legendary Entertainment or Warner Bros. given that the two have since parted ways, but fans are no doubt crossing their fingers for a positive outcome either way.

Del Toro is rather busy for the next two years so he may not be in a position to direct the Pacific Rim follow-up, as he’s currently shooting the pilot for his FX series The Strain and he begins production on his next feature, Crimson Peak, in February.

[doug maverick]

seems that china is the only place where original non super hero blockbusters can exist..lol,,i think del toro was smart to place the film in hong kong.

[Lucas]

what is non-super hero. i confuse