Jay Rasulo said keeping costs lower will help with risk management

Walt Disney will be more judicious when it comes to greenlighting the next big-budget film that doesn’t feature a member of the Marvel Comics or Star Wars universe.

Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo said the studio had learned a valuable lesson from the failure of “The Lone Ranger.” The Johnny Depp Western cost a reported $215 million to produce and tens of millions more to market, but only netted $243 million worldwide.

“There needs to be a cap on tentpole, non-franchise movies,” Rasulo said at the Bank of America…

Liam Neeson has an impressive resume. Think about it. He trained Batman and Obi-Wan and Darth Vadar. He is both Aslan and Zeus (which makes him a god in at least two mythologies). And he single-handedly annihilated an entire human trafficking ring during a short vacation in Paris.

Having duly weighed this in our minds, we have to ask: Who or what is going to mess with a guy like that?

Wolves. And God.

Of Plane Wrecks & Mythical Beasts

In The Grey, Neeson plays the character of John Ottway, an oil-rig worker who survives – together with several other roughnecks - a brutal plane crash in…

Insidious: adjective, proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.

That just about sums up this film if you ask me. You see, I can’t help but form opinions about films even if I haven’t seen them (I’m sure you’ve noticed). I have no intention of seeing Insidious Chapter 2. It looks dreadful. That may be partly because I’m not exactly into horror films. But there have been a few here and there that I have liked. The Sixth Sense for instance is considered a horror film. But these days I think Horror films have morphed into something else. And generally, there’s a…

It’s Friday the 13th so of course we have to get a terrible looking horror film release by way of Insidious. I’m not even going to mention it in my list.

We seem to be in a dearth of good film releases right now.

New This Weeekend

The Family — R

This looks mildly entertaining, but I have this feeling it’s going to be a pretty foul film and I’m going to be disapointed. I do plan to see it sometime soon, but probably not this weekend.

The Manzonis, a notorious mafia family get relocated to Normandy, France under the witness protection program. While they do their best to fit in, old…

Constantin Film announced on Tuesday that principal photography on the sequel, which was already in production with Sigourney Weaver attached to join the cast, has been delayed. A statement from the production company states that it will use the time to “analyze the results to date and reposition the franchise in order to maximize results for future installments.”

Translation: we have no idea what went wrong, but it was costly and we can’t afford another mistake like that.

As of this moment, the worldwide total is $37.3 Million. The production budget was $60 Million. So they’re bleeding…

I suppose I should preface this review with two things: 1) I did not watch the first two films in this series due to lack of time and interest; 2) I never had any interest in seeing this film. With those items in mind, here I go.

The Chronicles

Due to my lack of background on the character, I’ll leave it to IMDB to tell you what the film is about:

Left for dead on a sun-scorched planet, Riddick finds himself up against an alien race of predators. Activating an emergency beacon alerts two ships: one carrying a new breed of mercenary, the other captained by a man from Riddick’s past.

This… Read The Review

The Hollywood Reporter is saying that the film will be delayed well beyond its planned summer 2015 release date, which means it isn’t likely to open until the following summer (the ‘Pirates’ movies aren’t really winter fare). Production on the sequel, supposedly titled “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales,” will still start this fall, except later than expected.

It’s unclear how much the failure of this summer’s “The Lone Ranger” had to do with the delay of ‘Pirates 5.’ That film featured many of the same creative principles that fuel the ‘Pirates’ franchise, most notably…

Broken record alert: I can’t wait for this show. I want it to be airing now. I want to be watching it now!

Josh Brolin has confirmed to The Huffington Post that he was up for the role of Batman in director Zack Snyder’s upcoming Superman/Batman movie, a role which instead went to Ben Affleck.

Asked if he had any conversations with Snyder about the role, Brolin said, “We did. I didn’t have conversations about it, but Zack, that was part of his idea. It just didn’t turn out. It’s OK. It is OK. You know, another scenario might have worked better, but I’m happy for Ben.”

I’m not sure by how much, but I think this would have been a better choice. Then again, I’m not really the right person to ask…