The movie AFTER EARTH was expected to be big.. So far this summer, films have been spot on in the money making capacity..
Big names obviously help.
What better than Will Smith and his son starring in a post-apocalyptic film about the planet Earth? Looks like FAST AND FURIOUS 6 was better, for one..
The movie 'experts' among us are trying to pin a blame on why AFTER EARTH fizzled this weekend.
While the HORROR REPORT knows (and has been reminded by some friends) that the money a movie makes really has no bearing on whether the movie is any good at all, it's worth noting that this film with the stars in it probably should have been a littler larger than the life it was..
After all, AFTER EARTH was in 3,401 theaters (only two hundred or so less than the number one film of the weekend, F&F3), and it earned only a little over $26 mil.. CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes were not kind to the movie, either..
It was clearly a dud. Jaden Smith's role couldn't even save it..
Nikki Finke seems to blame M Night Shymalan's directing skills for the disaster of disaster movies.. Finke writes that Shyamalan is "unwatchable"... and she goes on to type this in her update on the movie:
Will Smith’s residual mega-wattage was still strong enough to open the summer tentpole comfortably above $20M. But even that and Sony’s marketing prowess couldn’t overcome this Shyamalan meltdown, yet another in his string of box office stinkers which have made audiences and critics alike completely soured on him. (The director lost me forever after the execrable The Happening…) I’m told that Will really wanted M Night to direct – even though this subject matter decidedly wasn’t in Shyamalan’s wheelhouse - and they together developed the script for a “not terribly expensive” movie. But a budget of at least $130M is hardly insignificant. Still, given the fact that Smith has made billions for Sony Pictures, the studio felt it just couldn’t say no to its most successful movie partner. Now Smith and Sony must weather this very public failure. I’m told the studio worked “really hard” to fix this crapfest in post-production and that even an arrogant know-it-all like Shyamalan was aware the pic didn’t work but couldn’t fix it on his own. ”You keep hoping people are going to be as good as their best work,” one insider told me about this all-too-familiar filmdom situation. “Sometimes some collaborations bring forth amazing results. And some are not meant to be.”
She minced no kind words for director Shyamalan, but equally was harsh on the movie itself..
But really, to the average fan, what makes the movie a movie. The directing is really a secondary story to a bad script and a bad premise..
And getting only a little over 13% on Rotten Tomatoes is abonimible..
Other Hollywood former rags turned netrags are weighing in on the bad opening for AFTER EARTH, including the HOLLYWOOD REPORTER, which says the 'box office shocker' is a 'major blow' for Smith ..
Vulture has a perspective, now that After Earth is widely considered a dud and failure, as to where things went wrong for Shyamalan. And they point to the BURIED SECRET OF M NIGHT SHYMALAN.
Remember that? The way that Shyamalan planted media stories, made things up, acted in his role that was billed as a documentary..? Remember that? VULTURE seems to think that's where the big missteps for the once widely-acclaimed director began.
They may very well be right.
People enjoy being entertained.
But they certainly don't enjoy being lied too (*accept if you go back to the days of Andy Kauffman, but that's a whole different story*)
Though we now know that fake 'paranormal' experiences that he had in the BURIED SECRETS 2004 documentary were no more than tall tales, the words of M Night Shyamalan may prove he could have a knack for being a psychic if he chooses to follow a whole new path.
In 2011, Shyamalan was involved with an event at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania when he said this:
"Well, right now, I'm starting to believe that the future for me, what I want to do -- and I know it sounds very hypocritical now, [since I'm] making this giant movie with Will Smith -- is to be the Coen brothers and make small movies where I can take great artistic risks and do stuff that I know 30% of the audience is not going to dig, because I'm making it for the appropriate budget"
The buried secret of the Wharton School talk. M Night may say goodbye to big budgets and get back to the basics.. But he'll probably never have SIXTH SENSE again..
