Blade Runner 2049

[GeneChing]

[Gweilo_Fist]

Very rarely am I ever excited for a sequel, remake, prequel, reboot, adaption, etc.
But with director Denis Villeneuve and cinematographer Roger Deakins at the helm, I'm certainly interested in this one.

[GeneChing]

[GeneChing]

OCT 27, 2017 @ 12:00 PM
Box Office: 'Blade Runner 2049' Bombs In China
Scott Mendelson , CONTRIBUTOR
I cover the film industry.
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.


Stephen Vaughan - © 2017 Alcon Entertainment, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
'Blade Runner 2049'

Nope, China will not be saving Blade Runner 2049. The Sony/Alcon Entertainment production, which has earned just under $200 million worldwide ($77m of that in North America courtesy of Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.), bombed in its first day of release in the second-biggest moviegoing market in the world. The $150m+ sci-fi sequel, which debuted to rave reviews but indifferent box office earlier this month, earned just $2.4m on Friday. That means, offhand, that we’re looking at a $7m-$8m weekend and $15m-$20m total in China.

Yes, the film opened in Japan on Friday as well, but we’re not dealing with the same kind of potential. For example, Terminator Genysis made $113 million in China two years ago while making $25m in Japan. China was the last hope for something resembling a respectable figure for the sequel to what was initially a bomb back in 1982. The original Blade Runner earned just $28m domestic on a $28m budget. The Ridley Scott futuristic film noir boasted jaw-dropping production design and remains on the more influential genre films of the last half-century.

But it was a flop in 1982, with critics and film nerds championing a critical reevaluation beginning in 1992 with the release of a director’s cut on VHS. And, as we all know, just because an IP is a big deal in North America doesn’t mean it’s going to be huge in China. If Star Wars couldn’t do better than “**** good” in China, despite Walt Disney’s best efforts, then a property like Blade Runner wasn’t going to strike it big there either. So, barring a fluke in Japan, we may be looking at a global total under $225m.

The irony of all this is that the winner in China this weekend will be Warner Bros. and Skydance’s Geostorm. So essentially the Dream Factory opened Geostorm in China on the same day as the other movie that they were merely distributing in North America. It’s a strange circumstance, even if it somewhat makes sense. Anyway, the poorly-reviewed Gerard Butler disaster adventure topped the box office in China on Friday, earning $10.1 million (including online ticketing fees).

That’s almost what the Dean Devlin picture earned in North America ($13 million) over its domestic Fri-Sun debut last weekend. But let’s not kid ourselves. Even with a likely $30m debut weekend and $60m-$65m total in China, the $120m “Egad, the weather is attacking us!” thriller has a long way to go before it even thinks about breaking even. The film had $69m worldwide heading into the weekend, and its fate will now be determined by how well it does in the rest of the world. Yes, China was a big help, but it’s not entirely a lifesaver.

The chief culprit for Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 was spending so much on a Blade Runner sequel that it essentially had to perform like a Star Wars sequel (or at least the more commercial Tron: Legacy) just to break even. An $85m domestic/$225m worldwide total for a 2.75-hour, R-rated, adult-skewing sci-fi tone poem starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford isn’t too bad. But this wasn’t a $50m picture, so a run like (ironically) Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival isn’t good enough. That’s the danger with giving a successful studio programmer director a mega-budget franchise, as Paul Feig learned last year with Ghostbusters.

As for Geostorm, it was the kind of film that bet on overseas glory that is now probably wishing it had done better in North America.

I still want to see both Blade Runner 2049 & Geostorm.

[GeneChing]

I'm rather pleased that I started this Geostorm thread now. I didn't think about it facing off against Blade Runner 2049 in PRC. I hope Hollywood takes notice and starts casting more Chinese actors now.

OCT 29, 2017 @ 09:40 AM
Gerard Who? 'Geostorm' Worked In China Because It Was Billed As A Daniel Wu Movie

Rob Cain , CONTRIBUTOR
Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.


Actor Daniel Wu attending the premiere of Universal Pictures' "Warcraft" on June 6, 2016. (Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)

Two science fiction movies go head-to-head, one starring Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling, the other Gerard Butler and Andy Garcia. If you had to bet money on which would outgross the other, you'd surely put your money on Ford and Gosling, confident you'd win that bet.

And that's just what happened with Blade Runner 2049 and Geostorm in North America. The Ford-Gosling starring sequel to the 1982 Ridley Scott classic earned $12.6 million on its opening day, three times as much as the $4.3 million earned in its debut by the Butler-starring Geostorm. In most territories, the former film will easily wind up outgrossing the latter.

Now, take those same two movies and release them in China. Without making any meaningful changes to either picture, you adjust the poster for Geostorm by removing Butler and Garcia's names and images and replacing them with another actor who isn't even billed on the U.S. poster: Daniel Wu.


Electric Ent. / Sony Pictures
Chinese posters for 'Geostorm' and 'Blade Runner 2049.

And voilà, with that adjustment in the marketing, you’ve changed everything. When Geostorm opened on Friday against Blade Runner 2049, it outearned the more well-received Ford-Gosling picture by a margin of four-to-one, $10 million to just $2.4 million.


Electric Entertainment
'Geostorm' debuted in China on October 27, 2017.

Butler and Garcia are barely known in China, but Wu, who was born in Berkeley, California, is a big star there. The son of immigrants from Shanghai, the 43-year-old Wu grew up in California admiring Jet Li and Jackie Chan. After graduating from the University of Oregon, he moved to Hong Kong in 1997, initially to pursue a modeling career.

Only four months later, the Hong Kong martial arts movie director Yonfan contacted Wu after seeing his image on a bus stop advertisement and asked him to star in his upcoming film Bishonen. Despite the fact that he did not speak Cantonese, Wu performed in the picture and was on his way to a successful career as an action star.

Based ever since in Hong Kong and mainland China, Wu has since appeared in over 60 films, including the hit Overheard movies, Go Away Mr. Tumor and Warcraft.

When Geostorm director Dean Devlin cast Wu, he did so not only for the award-winning actor's on-screen talent but also for his marquee value in China, where the picture was expected to perform well given the prior success with disaster movies as The Day After Tomorrow and 2012.

In contrast to the cynical Hollywood casting of Chinese stars in tiny cameo roles, to which Chinese audiences often react with well-deserved sneers, casting Wu in Geostorm was a well-considered move that has paid off nicely. Though it's impossible to say how much impact Wu has had on the bottom line, it's safe to say that his presence in has been vastly more important to Geostorm's China results than Gerard Butler or any of the picture's other actors.

[GeneChing]

I watched this on a 10+ hour flight returning to California from a layover in Sweden and the baby seated behind me kept kicking my chair, ironically just prior to watching Geostorm. It reminded me 2010, the '84 sequel to 2001. No way could it hold a candle to the original film, too groundbreaking to step out from that shadow, but the attempt was thoughtful and a decent continuation of the story. It was way too long and too self absorbed, but that baby may well have tainted my experience, plus the tiny video screen surely detracted from the visual impact of the film. Close-ups on Gosling got annoying because he was supposed to be deadpanning with tiny betrayals of emotion but just came off as bland. It's weird to see Harrison revisit these old roles, Deckard, Han, and next Indy. I wanted more Bautista. The hologram squeeze was too ST: Voyager for me because I've never been comfortable with the concept of sentient holograms. Also because it was an airplane flick, the nipples and butts were digitally blurred in a blocky manner, which greatly detracted from the artful aesthetics of the film. I did like the replicant assassins, somewhat reminiscent of Hannah & Hauer in the original. There were certainly some decent easter eggs.