Star Wars & Sc-Fi Talk

Here's how it works. As China's box office grows, the percentage of Hollywood's take will go into account into future production budgeting. For example a Hollywood A-List actor wanted for a blockbuster movie, their agents and managers will be looking at China's box office and account how much it'll cost the studio to have him or her to act in that movie. People think $25 million was a lot for an A-List actor to act in one movie. You might be hearing $50 million or more in the future. And that's not including the back-end deals that are based on a percentage of how much a movie makes at the box office. Over two decades ago Jack Nicholson supposedly got $60 million on back-end deals for playing the Joker in Batman. So Hollywood is actually stuck between a rock and hard place and a double-edged sword. The relationship Hollywood has with China now makes it an unknown for actors to take that into account how much they should get paid for a movie. They don't know if their movie will be shown in China. The irony is the access to China Hollywood wishes to have gives more power to China because all the things I said before will happen and if some actor looking for PR uses China in a negative light, China can basically ban that movie and studios will go bankrupt literally the next day. And what will Hollywood do to avoid that situation? Hollywood will be doing all of China's dirty work and then bashing China will be considered a taboo just like others in Hollywood on subjects to be avoided.

Hollywood should avoid China if they want to continue the illusion they care about artistic integrity. But we all know it's unavoidable because as usual money talks in the end and that will be their choice and not a gun to the head. Right now there is going to be two Hollywoods. The one that's already established and one for China. Hollywood is already setting up production studios in China for movies just for the China/Asia market. I know the people that are protective of the old Hollywood will try to spin it as lesser. Yeah until they make more money over there.

bladerunner said:

How do you judge success, a movie returning 2,3,4 and more X the cost of production.? IMO a Star Wars or James Bond movie will make money without the asian market. The asian market would just be the icing on the cake for these two movies.

Click to expand...

I think there is a problem with this philosophy. Yes, they don't need the Asian market to make money. However, how much more money can they make with the Asian market?? It's like the fast food industry. KFC is making a sizable profit alone in the North America market. However, what they make in Asia at least equals their profit in NA if not more. So together, they at least double their profit when including Asia. Who doesn't want to double their income??? And if you look at it from another angle, they lose 50% of their profit when they exclude Asia. Not a good thing no matter how you look at it... So simply looking at whether they make money or not is not enough. It's how well you can maximize your potential to make a profit.

The Chinese box office is only icing on the cake now because these movies do not interest them as much because of the cultural differences. It's like giving Chinese a lot of food with cheese. Since they hate cheese, they won't like the food and the sales won't be good. So the conclusion would automatically be "well, the Chinese market for our restaurant chain is so small that we should ignore it..." Another company, like KFC, comes in and says "well, let's cater to the Chinese palate." And they end up making billions... The same goes with making movies. If they keep focusing on 007's, the Asian market will stay as marginal and they won't be able to maximize their profit potential. However, it would be a completely different story if they put a little more focus on Chinese culture. And they will see what they have missed all this time. Another good strategy would be to invest in TV instead of movies. majority of the Asian nations prefer TV series over movies. Most of the time, high profile TV series in China can get all their money back even before premier. And what they make after that will be pure profit... And the TV series in China are getting more and more elaborate. A new TV series about the establishment of Han dynasty that was aired about a month ago cost 240 million yuan (> $40 million) to make. Another one about Tang dynasty cost close to $50 million. That's unimaginable for a TV series elsewhere. And both got their money back before they went on air.

Here's a cool insight about the actor Kelly McGillis and the movie "TOP GUN".


Kelly McGillis has nothing but great memories of filming "Top Gun" more than 25 years ago -- in spite of the fact that she had to go back to shoot the movie's iconic love scene after filming had supposedly wrapped.
"I was doing another movie and I wouldn't cut my hair," she said of her steamy scene with Tom Cruise in the 1986 film. "So, in the elevator scene, which we shot at that time as well, they put me in a baseball cap. And then [in the love scene] it was all silhouette because I had dark brown hair."

The actress, now 55 years old, spoke to Yahoo! Movies in honor of a Blu-ray 3D/Blu-ray 2D two-disc set of the popular '80s film being released on February 19. (Starting February 8, there is also a six-day theatrical run of "Top Gun" in select IMAX® 3D theaters.)

McGillis was as candid as her memory would allow, recalling that "a lot of partying" was happening when the actors were off the clock -- some even getting in trouble in nearby Mexico. (Much of "Top Gun" was filmed in San Diego, California.) She observed how the film's indelible soundtrack -- including the songs "Take My Breath Away" by Berlin and "Danger Zone" by Kenny Loggins -- has stuck with her through time, especially when she's grocery shopping.

McGillis also took time to remember "Top Gun"'s late director Tony Scott, who died over the summer, as well as discuss her current "quiet" life and career, admitting, "My goal is to be like Jessica Tandy -- to be an older woman and really just secure in myself. I don't want to have to try to be 30 for the rest of my life."

Disney is saying that they will making single stand-alone SW movies in addition to Episodes 7,8 and 9. Some actually speculates a stand-alone movie about Yoda!

I think Disney is kicking the tires of its new toy but here's an interesting read which I agree with on the idea of doing these "biographies" of characters in the Star Wars universe for these single movies.



I already know why they're bouncing the idea of biographies publicly. It's characters in the Star Wars universe that people are known to like thus there's a built in audience. It shows even with the name "Stars Wars" associated with these movies, they're still not confident to try something new. When Zack Synder was rumored to direct, that's when the stand alone single movie idea came about. It was reported that Synder wanted to do a Seven Samurai in the Star Wars universe. A lot of detail for rumor that was later refuted by Synder of having any involvement. But then JJ Abrams also refuted he was being considered as a director also.

Frankly this kind of analysis can be done with every battle depicted by Hollywood. But an entertaining read.



If I recall correctly Darth Vader was obsessed with finding Luke which answers why Vader just didn't bombard from space after the shields went down and also why he went down to Hoth.

There is going to be a new TV series called Defiance on SyFy channel. It talks about alien invasion from a completely different angle. Instead of directly attacking Earth as depicted in every other alien invasion story, an alien alliance wants to live on Earth and goes through a complicated negotiation process with Earth govn'ts while its Noah-like ships park in space. After decades of negotiation and their resources depleted, the alien alliance loses patience and starts attacking Earth to force Earth into a deal to allow them to live on the planet. Somehow, a super powerful alien weapon was detonated accidentally by the humans when they capture the alien weapon and renders earth into a kind of living hell. And the series talks about how aliens and human try to live together. An interesting angle of talking about aliens... Can't wait...

vesicles said:

There is going to be a new TV series called Defiance on SyFy channel. It talks about alien invasion from a completely different angle. Instead of directly attacking Earth as depicted in every other alien invasion story, an alien alliance wants to live on Earth and goes through a complicated negotiation process with Earth govn'ts while its Noah-like ships park in space. After decades of negotiation and their resources depleted, the alien alliance loses patience and starts attacking Earth to force Earth into a deal to allow them to live on the planet. Somehow, a super powerful alien weapon was detonated accidentally by the humans when they capture the alien weapon and renders earth into a kind of living hell. And the series talks about how aliens and human try to live together. An interesting angle of talking about aliens... Can't wait...

Click to expand...

Interesting concept, but IMO if the alien have that kind of technology and energy that's better than any Earthlings why not terraform Mars and call it your very own?

Another interesting alien invasion story is "Falling Skies" on TNT. The story starts out like any other alien invasion story, but is morphing into a very unique one. It first talks about humans allying with the aliens in attempts to better control Earth, but then potentially aliens allying with humans in attempt to rebelling against alien overlords. So there are multiple alien species: some evil and trying to control everything and others from conquered planets, being controlled and manipulated just like humans. The latter, previously seen by humans as evil, is trying to form an alliance with the humans so that they can defeat the overlord and get their own planets back... Cool, IMO...

Equation said:

Interesting concept, but IMO if the alien have that kind of technology and energy that's better than any Earthlings why not terraform Mars and call it your very own?

Click to expand...

But if you have Earth that is already in living condition, why wasting so much energy to terraform Mars? One of the premises is that their resources are depleting. They escaped their own star system because their star has gone nova and is melting their home planets. So they don't have the kind of limitless resources to back them up as in a case of an invasion in an ordinary sense.