Would You Like to Play a Game?

(No, Katie Featherston has nothing to do with this news. Just keep reading.)

So, about a week ago, Paramount hired Saw VI director Kevin Greutert to direct a sequel to Paranormal Activity, perhaps the biggest success story of 2009 (or at least, Avatar aside, the biggest low-budget success story, anyway). This was funny because Paranormal Activity was the movie that finally knocked the Saw franchise -- Greutert's entry, actually -- from its four-year throne atop the Halloween box office. I guess the old saying, "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" still applies.

Greutert's Paranormal sequel was positioned against Lionsgate's Saw VII 3D, which may or may not, depending on its financial performance, be the last theatrical Saw movie (that is, until they remake or reboot the first one, which, going by Spider-Man, may be as soon as, say, Thursday).

Or at least that was how things were until yesterday, when Lionsgate decided to exercise an option they held on Greutert, forcing him to direct Saw VII instead of Paranormal 2. Saw V director David Hackl, who was previously slated to direct VII, is relegated off to some other, as-of-yet undecided project.

While it makes for great, hilarious, public Hollywood shenanigans, this is a terrible, terrible move. First of all, how does Lionsgate expect to get a good performance out of Greutert when he's got the taste of sour grapes in his mouth the whole time? Greutert edited all five Saw films prior to his directorial debut on the sixth, so there's no doubt he's got the franchise in his blood. But is he going to be able to creatively and emotionally invest in a project he doesn't want to make? As low-rent as it may be, I am still a die-hard Saw fan, and if this is the last hurrah, I want it to be good.

Then there's Hackl. The general consensus is that Saw V is the worst of the series (I agree). Producers being producers, they'd never tell you straight up that a movie they worked on sucked unless they were fired or something, but I'm sure Hackl thought it was a good display of solidarity when he was asked back to direct the seventh, and in 3D as well. Of course, the moment it became "the last", I'm sure the stakes went way up, and all of a sudden, going with the fans' least favorite director starts looking like a bad idea, especially when your last director is running off to the competition. Greutert expressed his frustration via his website, although he chose to delete what he specifically said and left it at "pissed". I imagine Hackl doesn't feel much better (although for him, "used" be more accurate).

Of course, Hackl's involvement raises another question: the movie supposedly starts rolling on February 1st, so the film can make its traditional last-week-of-October date. Since it's January 26th, I imagine the movie's ready to go before cameras, but didn't Hackl do all the pre-production work? Not only does Lionsgate have an unwilling, angry director, but he's also gonna have to adapt using months of another director's pre-production work, on something as complicated as 3D.

In any case, I'm excited to see how this story develops. Personally, I'm hoping Hackl signs on to direct Paranormal Activity 2. I hear they're looking for a director.

Shutter Island, dearly departed.

Yesterday, the news broke via Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood Daily that Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island has been pushed back to February 2010. Paramount's Brad Grey released a statement blaming the economy (pretty much the same reason Warner moved Potter in 2008 -- they've made all the money they need to and want 2010 to have a little more financial security), but it doesn't matter. From where I'm standing, it sends a clear message to audiences everywhere: that the movie can officially be ignored.
Now, of course, I might be overreacting, and I haven't seen Shutter Island, so it could certainly suck and then I wouldn't have anything to say about it, but the way most of the people I've talked to about the movie have reacted is depressing to me. I understand that the majority of horror movies made these days aren't that good, but when did the whole genre become useless to people? Why is Martin Scorsese directing a horror film any less interesting than directing another crime film? In fact, shouldn't it be more interesting, because Scorsese has less horror films on his resume (not to mention plenty of crime films)?

When I posted the trailer a couple of months ago, the fact that Scorsese had made a horror movie was, personally, the most exciting thing about it. What I wrote then still holds true: there's nothing like seeing a really creepy, skin-crawlingly, lights-on-all-night, disturbing horror movie, and that pleasure these days is rare. Even Drag Me to Hell (also totally, unfairly ignored by genre fans and one of my five favorite movies of 2009) is more of a funhouse horror movie, the kind where things pop out and you laugh at yourself for being frightened. Ephemeral TFP writer Matt Lingo (mentioned in more articles than he's actually bothered to write at this point) and I agree, some of the dialogue in the trailer just chills the bones. "The nurses, the orderlies, they couldn't possibly know!"

The trailer is also gorgeous. Every single shot is visually stunning: the glow of Michelle Williams in some sort of picturesque-but-twisted Norman Rockwell perfection, the flickering lightbulbs over the guards in slow motion, the subtle, seemingly reverse photography of DiCaprio alone in a library or study, where the smoke pulls backward into the cigarette. Some of it isn't even that subtle: the way the fire engulfs a building while two survivors stand in front of it with dead eyes or how Williams vanishes as DiCaprio embraces her.

There's also the great appeal of the cast, including DiCaprio and Williams, Patricia Clarkson, Ben Kingsley, John Carroll Lynch and the authoritatively imposing Max Von Sydow.

There are remarkably uninspiring posters for the movie (which suprisingly fail to play up the seemingly obvious "Who is 67?" hook built right into the movie), and obviously nothing can be done now to try and lure Shutter Island back to 2009. But I'm afraid of something more than who the 67th patient is on Shutter Island, and that's that despite plenty of starpower and one of the greatest living directors, nobody will care when the movie finally arrives in February 2010.

Here's the trailer again, just for edification.

Where's Nickelodeon?

So, speaking of terrible ideas that won't work, there's all this buzz on the internet about how Universal also picked up the rights to Martin Handford's Where's Waldo? series of books. FilmDrunk mentions that it's a stupid idea, and reels that Universal reportedly paid at least a million dollars for the rights, but this is made twice as staggering by the fact that they already tried to do a Where's Waldo? this decade and failed miserably at it.

Apparently people don't remember, but in 2002 or 2003, Nickelodeon and Paramount had the rights to the character, and they had already concocted a crappy enough plot to get a greenlight at most studios. It made Waldo a janitor who invented a time machine and ended up going back to important historical periods and getting lost. He might have been chasing Odlaw, and I think Waldo's girlfriend was in it too.

There was also that Saturday morning cartoon show with Waldo, which awkwardly paused for a true Where's Waldo? frame at every commercial break. It didn't really work in the cartoon, and we've already failed at making a movie once, and yet the rights to this doomed or at best extremely unwise attempt at franchising an 80's relic is still worth more than a million dollars?

I had better get to work on that Koosh Ball movie I'm working on. I see big money in my future!

Paramount and HD-DVD

This was first posted on the film ick Fightback on August 21st, 2007. Since film ick itself is currently offline and The Fightback only has three posts -- all by me -- I'm going to repost it here for the sake of preservation.

It's been widely reported that Paramount has joined the HD-DVD camp and I am almost gobsmacked by what a poor choice this is. On AICN someone from Paramount suggests that Blu-Ray is only "allegedly" winning the format war, mere weeks after sales of 300 skewed Blu-Ray by a great margin.

The most baffling thing about the decision is that there appears to be no upside for anyone. Blu-Ray customers who want Paramount movies will not switch to HD, they will merely be frustrated by the unavailable movies and will probably buy them in standard definition. Paramount doesn't exactly have a boatload of super blockbusters on slate aside from Transformers, and it sounds like the title may not end up exclusive after all (after hearing that Spielberg supports BR, I was prepared for this announcement and suspect there might be at least a couple more of them). Paramount may have netted in the range of $150 million to jump the Blu-Ray ship, but even if HD-DVD stays afloat, Paramount will probably end up losing a considerable portion of their revenue if nobody buys their HD titles (since it looks like they'll be able to get the good ones on BR and stuff like "Blades of Glory" isn't going to benefit from hi-def). Meanwhile, HD-DVD will sink further because they just blew a massive amount of cash on a deal with gaping holes in it. On top of all that, I'm sure word will spread that Spielberg is a Blu-Ray supporter and that might cause at least a handful of hardcore fans to adopt. And, of course, if HD-DVD fails during the Christmas season Paramount is just going to look really, really stupid.

Paramount suggests that the format is cheaper for consumers and is therefore better. This is ridiculous, although it has some ground in reality as I have heard several people state that they've gone for HD over Blu-Ray simply because HD players are cheaper. By Christmas, however, I expect PS3s to go on sale and Blu-Ray players to drop, and even if Blu-Ray fails to crush the competition, assuming their sales hold up that's still approximately a 70/30 margin in favor of Blu-Ray. It is again, puzzling that Paramount chose to make this decision now when in a mere four months we'll have a great idea of where the format war is going (not that we don't already).

In any case, I expect something big to happen very soon. It seems like people are beginning to sound off on the format war, as both Universal and Microsoft have made controversial statements to suggest they're keeping it alive for no reason. It would be particularly impressive (and probably deadly to HD-DVD) if Blu-Ray used a similar cash bid to buy Universal's format neutrality -- surely they see the negativity getting thrown at Paramount for making this decision (not to mention Universal owns at least a couple of Spielbergs), this is their opportunity to look like the good guy by finally buying their way out of being the last man standing.

UPDATE
So it seems that Michael Bay has retracted his statement about wanting Transfomers to go format neutral. We'll see. Again, this is based on the silly assumption that the cheaper player is undoubtedly what's best for the consumer. You can buy a lot of cheap standard-def DVD players at any old Wal-Mart, but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

A few other notes worth making: Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits has lots to say here and here (both posts). Most intriguing are his suggestions about why Microsoft has jumped into the game, and the way Paramount staffers feel about this decision.

From forums I've surfed I hear a lot of negativity towards Hunt and The Bits about their decision to support Blu-Ray. Perhaps they're seen as one-sided. I do happen to agree with them, but if HD-DVD is willing to make a good play towards being competitive, then so be it. I don't think this Paramount deal is it, however. I'd also like to stress that I don't think the format war will be over after Christmas 2007, but I think it will be the writing on the wall. Certainly Paramount and Universal will continue to support and produce HD-DVDs for at least a couple years to come but should Sony move a million PS3s and Blu-Rays this Christmas and Toshiba and Microsoft sell a mere 20,000 units each, then it will be hard to argue that those numbers aren't indicative.

I'd also like to add that I work in retail and I don't think losing Transformers as an HD-DVD will mean a lot to consumers anyway. People will complain but in general I expect (as they often do) they will simply settle with the SD-DVD -- my point remains that no single title, no matter how big, is likely to sway someone into dropping down $300 to get a new technology (especially since you also need a hi-def television).