After the success in Japan, the Golden Compass movie is on course to set a record as the first film in history to gross $300 million abroad while failing to reach $100 million in North America.
Why did the film do so poorly in the US compared to the rest of the world? While some would be quick to blame Christian activist groups, Adam Dawtrey reporting on Variety thinks the New Line publicity team should acknowledge some of the blame. While New Line promoted and benefited from the film domestically, the international rights had already been sold to a range of indies (independent companies) to offset production costs. Dawtrey proposes the success discrepancy is a case of poor marketing by New Line compared with that of the international indies. Read his whole article here.
Although it’s too late for New Line, it’s good news for fans hoping to see the rest of the trilogy at the cinema. While the success may not be spectacular, the special effects Oscar and the movie’s international reception make a respectable case to Warner Brothers (who have acquired New Line) that there’s money to be made from the sequels. Such is the view of Golden Compass producer Deborah Forte, who vows “I will make The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. I believe there are enough people who see what a viable and successful franchise we have.”
According to the Associated Press the estate of writer J.R.R. Tolkien have filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles against New Line Cinema, claiming that they have as yet received no money from the movie adaptation of Lord of the Rings. They are seeking $150 million in compensation and the right to cancel New Line’s right to produce any further Tolkien works in movie form. If they were to win their case this would clearly leave an already struggling company on the brink of ruin. This litigation can only throw more doubt on the possibility that there will be sequels to The Golden Compass movie produced. Read the full story
here.
Actor Colin Farrell recently explained to reporters that a film in which he stars, “Pride And Glory”, has had its release pushed back until 2009. He explained that contrary to popular belief that the film simply was still incomplete, the delay was in fact a direct result of The Golden Compass movie. He says that he feels New Line lost everything on the film and states categorically “they literally don’t have enough money to market things”. Read the (short but interesting) article
here.
We reported last week that it was rumoured that New Line Cinema was to be broken up and the founders sacked by owners Warner Brothers. Later in the week it was said that Warner Brothers had officially denied this in an email. However, in one of her latest blogs on Deadlinehollywood, Nikki Finke says that Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne are still on the way out and that their replacement is to be Terry Semel, former chairman of Yahoo. You can read the blog
here.
The
Bookwitch blog has recently featured a couple of interesting entries with a Pullman-related theme. Bookwitch firstly wrote about ‘
What authors say‘ and an incident when a well known author had denied knowing who Philip Pullman was led to an interesting discussion in the comments section between a number of people (including several well known authors such as Meg Rosoff). In response to this the Bookwitch wrote a follow up article entitled ‘
Obsessed- Moi?‘, and in particular how one can be obsessed with people and things, including Pullman. Just as before an interesting comments section follows. Certainly worth a read.