Warner Apologizes For Summer Slate!

[AndyDursin]

Someone's head will roll...

Warner Bros. President Alan Horn has apologized to the studio's financial partners who helped fund the string of money losers and underperformers that the studio put out this year. "All I can say to our partners is the same thing I say to our people here at Warner Bros.: It's painful to lose money on a movie," Horn told today's (Friday) Los Angeles Times. "We are in the business for the long term. We are producing a slate of movies and some will work and some will not." The newspaper observed that Warner Bros. partnered on virtually every film it released this year and quoted entertainment analyst Harold Vogel as saying that perhaps easy access to private equity funding clouded its choices. "Maybe Warner Bros. got a little inebriated, and it distorted their normally g/b]ood judgment," Vogel said. "Everyone can have a bad year. Just the same, I don't understand how a smart management team like Warner Bros. could have made Poseidon or Lady in the Water."

[Eric W.]

"Maybe Warner Bros. got a little inebriated, and it distorted their normally g/b]ood judgment," Vogel said. "Everyone can have a bad year. Just the same, I don't understand how a smart management team like Warner Bros. could have made Poseidon or Lady in the Water."

I have to salute this guy for this truth and blunt candor.

Heads SHOULD roll all over the place.

[mkaroly]

Well, I'm glad to see someone stepping up to the plate to say something "official" about their crappy releases.

[Carlson2005]

You know, I think Horn has probably saved his job with that. Ignoring the courage it took to admit to those kinds of mistakes, he's also effectively pre-empted the objections that will be raised at the next shareholders' meetings while at the same time reminding everyone that the risk was halved and the losses minimized by going into partnership. Smart strategic thinking and also damn good personal and corporate PR. Give that man a cigar!

[Paul MacLean]

If WB wants to make money, they should pay Chris Columbus and John Williams to come back for the next Harry Potter movie!:roll:


Paul

[romanD]

well, I guess the next HP will make still the usual amount of money without CC and for sure the same without JW...

[Jedbu]

I say yes most definitely to Williams but keep that hack Columbus away from the soundstage. He made ONE good film-ONLY THE LONELY-but the HOME ALONE films and STEPMOM-ptooey!! Offer Newell or Couron whatever they want to make the remaining films (they could each take one) and leave them alone to work their magic. Their HP films had some form of cinematic vision-CC basically got the films off the ground, but I don't think he could have pulled a lot of the emotion or visual daring of the last two films.

[Paul MacLean]

Offer Newell or Couron whatever they want to make the remaining films (they could each take one) and leave them alone to work their magic.

I love all the Harry Potter films, and while I'm hardly a fan of most of Columbus' previous movies, I'm tired of hearing how Columbus is the "hack" and Cuaron is the "genius". For me Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire lack the heart of the first two films. Leaving filmic style and aesthetics aside, I just didn't care about the characters' plight as strongly as I did in the first two.

Certainly Sorcerer's Stone has that "Amblin" style (the emotional sentiment of the films suggests Spielberg's influence on former protegé Columbus, as does the optimistic lyricism of John Williams' score), but the series' descent into "darkness" had already begun in Chamber of Secrets, which was more frightening, better shot (with the great Roger Pratt replacing the admittedly ill-chosen John Seale) and had a darker, more sinister score.

Nobody seems to have noticed that almost every positive aspect of Prisoner of Azkaban was something carried-over from the first two films. Cuaron was directing a terrific cast -- which was largely assembled by Chris Columbus. Cuaron was working more or less within the visual style established by Chris Columbus. And Cuaron was collaborating with John Williams -- who was only involved because of Chris Columbus.

While I enjoyed Prisoner of Azkaban, and thought it was a little more visually inventive, I also found many of Cuaron's touches clumsy and ill-conceived. The first half-hour of the film is abominable -- the Aunt Marge and "knight bus" scenes were embarrassingly mishandled (and there were no shrunken heads in the book). Putting the kids in trendy mallrat clothes was also a blunder (and will surely date this film badly as time goes on). The demetors "looked" scary, but weren't. And that final freeze-frame of Harry on his broomstick is like something out of a 70s TV show.

Sure, POA was very well-shot, and Michael Seresin is one of my heroes (tho isn't it time they did away with bleach bypass processing?). But for all its "darkness" it was not particularly scary, or more meaningful than the first two films. I admit that POA was arguably a more visually arresting film than Sorcerer's Stone, but not Chamber of Secrets.

For me, Alfonso Cuaron's sour, didactic cynicism doesn't fit comfortably in a fantasy. I thought Newell did a better (if more workman-like) job, but he was sabotaged by Patrick Doyle's lacklustre score which did nothing to invest the film with any kind of emmotional uplift.


Paul

[romanD]

interestingly Terry Gilliam was Rowlings first choice of director for the first movie. Wonder how different the whole show wouldhave turned out then...

[Paul MacLean]

interestingly Terry Gilliam was Rowlings first choice of director for the first movie. Wonder how different the whole show wouldhave turned out then...

It would have been interesting no doubt. And he might have used some of the same people too (Roger Pratt, maybe John Cleese).

But I don't think the score would have been as good (I doubt Michael Kamen would have delivered something as great as Williams did...tho it would have been cool if Gilliam had asked George Fenton).


Paul

[mkaroly]

interestingly Terry Gilliam was Rowlings first choice of director for the first movie. Wonder how different the whole show wouldhave turned out then...

It would have been interesting no doubt. And he might have used some of the same people too (Roger Pratt, maybe John Cleese).

But I don't think the score would have been as good (I doubt Michael Kamen would have delivered something as great as Williams did...tho it would have been cool if Gilliam had asked George Fenton).


Paul

I don't want to imagine Gilliam directing any of the Potter films. Had he directed that first film it would have never gotten off the ground, what with the 2x4 on his shoulder against any studio people. You would have never heard the end of his complaints about "his" movie, etc. etc. His last movie (BROTEHRS GRIMM) was a fantasy picture (sort of), so that may give us an idea of how the Potter films may have turned out if he directed them.

[Paul MacLean]

Its interesting that Gilliam was Rowling's first choice.

One would assume an author knows best...until you consider that Roger Moore was Ian Fleming's first choice!


Paul

[AndyDursin]

I don't want to imagine Gilliam directing any of the Potter films. Had he directed that first film it would have never gotten off the ground, what with the 2x4 on his shoulder against any studio people. You would have never heard the end of his complaints about "his" movie, etc. etc. His last movie (BROTEHRS GRIMM) was a fantasy picture (sort of), so that may give us an idea of how the Potter films may have turned out if he directed them.

Gilliam has worn out his welcome, and BROTHERS GRIMM was one of those movies that wasn't just bad -- it actually left you with a really creepy, unsettling feeling that I don't imagine was intentional. Everything about that movie just rubbed me the wrong way, from the visual effects to the performances and the horrible score!

[Paul MacLean]

BROTHERS GRIMM was one of those movies that wasn't just bad -- it actually left you with a really creepy, unsettling feeling that I don't imagine was intentional.

"Mmm...I taste good!"


Paul