TrueGentleman

Good lord, that's just barely under a three-month turnaround from theaters to DVD. The Expendables probably won't be out until December, and even that's for the Christmas release.

Meanwhile, the marginally good news for SPvtW for this weekend is that it earned slightly more than the special re-release of the latest Twilight movie that was timed to (I wish I were making this up) coincide with the heroine's fictional birthday.

Sure, if Tribes had computer opponents with AI worth a damn, a storyline of any interest, or graphics that were better than run of the mill.

The relevant point for this thread, however, is that the actual development of a game in the context of its era blurs pretty quickly in the gaming public's mind and is often misrepresented by the designers later in their careers. Bungie is unusual in that although its founders later split up after the Microsoft buyout and the studio itself would return to independence, its alumni have never really talked smack about each other or their one-time parent company or come out with competing versions of their games' histories. It would be nice if that were the norm in the gaming industry.

When then-independent Bungie first unveiled Halo in 1999, the game was to feature unique vehicle combat and huge outdoor environments and was widely regarded having tremendous potential, between its sophisticated graphics, physics, and AI. It was clearly a quantum leap ahead of Quake and Unreal (the Quake engine-powered CoD wasn't even around yet). When Microsoft stepped in to acquire the studio, its development's direction was changed in order to adapt it for the X-Box as, improbably, a console FPS. No matter what one may think of that, Bungie succeeded in reaching an audience an order of magnitude greater than other entries in that field. (Personally, I mourn for the PC game version of Halo that could have been.)

In any case, Halo's tangled early history tells us a lot about how video game development and corporate business can muddy up a title's history. There are bound to be some developers who will take advantage of this for self-promotion.

Anyone who's played Bungie's other games - particularly from the Marathon and Myth series - knows that Halo is no fluke. The games from Microsoft's subsequent purchases of other independent studios and co-ventures have never yielded the same order success simply because Bungie is one of those rare studios like Blizzard and Valve that is capable of creating megahits.

Thanks for the lead on that bit of CoH lore. Dakan's interview with Gamasutra about the early days is fascinating, even though some of the circumstances are rather murky. Emmert, to his credit, seems to be fairly consistent about giving credit for the idea of CoH to Dakan in various interviews (though not entirely). Emmert's ego and media accessibility have no doubt contributed to the misconception about his role in the origins of the MMO. (Ironically, that also sounds like former Cryptic and Blizzard employee Bill Roper.)

Unfortunately, that quote came from a studio exec just after SPvtW's disappointing opening weekend, so I don't read it as especially encouraging for the film. The studio line could be more cutting losses on the film while it's in theaters without alienating Edgar Wright, who still has a lot of potential in his directorial career. That said, I have no idea how Wright's previous films performed on DVD, so I can't guess at what Universal's expectations for this one are.

At any rate, we'll see how it performs this weekend and how many screens it remains on.

The theater owners will, of course, need something suitable with which to replace SPvtW. Often times a film catches a break by simply scheduling itself around its competition, as Coraline did. In SPvtW's case, it's going to have to hang on to as many screens as possible when the new Resident Evil movie comes out this weekend, having already been mauled by The Expendables, Piranha 3D, Vampires Suck, et al. If it can do that, then it won't face much competition for its demographic until Let Me In in October. Of course, this may mean just plateauing instead of spiraling, now that summer is officially over. Waiting until after Comic Con to release the movie was just another of Universal's missteps. Kick-***, on the other hand, released early enough in the season that it could take full advantage of its demographic's free time.

What the NYT reporter totally failed to address in SPvtW's case, however, was the DVD, digital download, and TV sales that he said were also going to contribute handsomely to Kick-***'s bottom line. With SPvtW's friendlier PG-13 rating and more respectable reviews, it's likely to do better than Kick-*** in this arena, however its theater box office turns out. In my own experience, several friends are putting off seeing it simply because their home theater setups are (in their opinion) as good as seeing a film at a multiplex. They have become, like many people, devoted living-room downloaders and renters.

Jonah Hex, on the other hand, has no chance in any market segment, as everyone from critics to moviegoers agreed it was a terrible, terrible film.

The credit crunch should definitely be considered a factor in independent gaming studios' recent struggles (some of which have been lost). Consider how 38 Studios has recently been pursuing alternative forms of investment, e.g. the development loan from the state of Rhode Island to relocate there, while they prepare to launch their first MMO in the fall of next year.

Today's NY Times presented a case study of how Kick-*** managed to generate a solid profit in ticket sales and then DVD purchases/rentals after moderate critical reception and a disappointing opening weekend. (Their reporter mentions SPvtW but essentially forgets all the lessons in the article when considering its future.)

edit: I recalled the reviews for Kick-*** being worse than the aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic suggest - perhaps the reviewers I read regularly didn't like it as much - and, if anything, aren't that much less favorable that those for SPvtW.

Adult Swim produced an animated one-off episode, voiced by the film's stars, that suggested the comic series would have worked just fine on TV. Edgar Wright had the harder task of compressing a six-chapter graphic novel series into a single live-action dramatic piece.

In any case, Wright's directorial career isn't likely to be derailed by this, thanks to the largely favorable reviews and the praise of such heavy-hitter directors as Quentin Tarantino. Nevertheless, his forthcoming adaptation of Ant-Man had better be a demonstrable success.

Michael Cera, however, desperately needs to reaffirm his box office credibility.

Praetoria reminds me in some respects of the (comparatively) newly founded Brasília, particularly the congress, main cathedral, and other modernist buildings along the Monumental Axis - a name that could be right out of Cole's playbook. The other real-world capital it reminds me of, though, is Pyongyang, particularly the statuary and official posters.

Much depends on the perspective: From the distance of the mainstream's outlook, the directors and source material may seem pretty much the same, but from a closer viewpoint, where geeks have a head start, they're very different. The marketing departments must start from the latter perspective to appeal to the former. With Kick-***, all they have to do in the trailer is show the geeky protagonist don his homebrew superhero costume and kick ***/get his *** kicked (Big Daddy and Hit Girl, however colorful, are supporting characters in the narrative). With SPvtW, the indie boy-meets-girl formula is complicated by not only Scott's slacker lifestyle (with its much bigger supporting cast) colliding with his fights vs. the seven evil exes, but also Edgar Wright's approach to Scott's unrealiable status as a protagonist and what he calls "video game magic realism" (viz). SPvtW turns out to be a much tougher sell in this respect. There are still moviegoers who did not "get" this approach after seeing it, to say nothing of those indifferent to its idiosyncratic charms in the first place.

In any case, I've been unable to drum up sufficient interest from either my geek or indie friends, something that has happened consistently since Memorial Day. In general, this has been a poor summer for moviegoing, with ticket prices up and overall attendance down. We'll see how the fall goes, with its scheduled offerings from the decidely mainstream CG supervillain movie Mega Mind from Dreamworks to the film version of Warren Ellis's indie comic Red.

Those updated figures haven't yet been broken down according to country. Since the UK opening weekend was $2.5M (modest but respectable for its market), it looks as though SPvtW may have picked up more business on word of mouth, which is what Universal was hoping for in the US but conspicuously failed to achieve. As I said earlier, SPvtW is getting a rolling release in Europe over the course of this year. Positioning it as a fall movie may very welll turn out to be a better tactical move. (Perplexingly, there's no ready information about its release in Asia.)

Except Edgar ("Shaun of the Dead", "Hot Fuzz") Wright is known for blending genres in his movies, while Matthew ("Layer Cake", "Stardust", "Kick-***") Vaughn's specialty is treating established genres with a bit more intelligence than usual. The latter's films are consequently much easier to promote and find their audiences with less hassle.

As for comparisons of the comics behind Kick-*** and Scott Pilgrim, well, there's none.

This is a fascinating hypothesis, especially when taking into account Disney's ersatz planned community, the "town" of Celebration, as well.

That truly monstrous "24 Hours" episode would present a challenge to an R-rated horror movie, much less television show, whether network or cable. The incidental detail that the villain is one of the goofier Golden Age nemeses of the Justice League of America only adds another layer of complication for a would-be adaptation.

Daniel, the son of the Silver Age Sandman (Hector Hall) and the Fury (Lyta Trevor-Hall), was a mortal child who {spoilers} assumed the incarnation of Dream at the conclusion of Gaiman's Sandman series when Morpheus, shall we say, resigned {/spoilers}. Gaiman's inspiration to have Morpheus be the father of Orpheus from Greek mythology - which has no basis in any legend - may simply have something to do with the similarity of their names.

(As I said, the depth of trivia concerning this project will greatly complicate any attempts at adaptation.)

If one is going to be formal, "Morpheus" was one of the many cognomens of Dream of the Endless. He did have a son by the name of Orpheus, however, during his dalliance with the muse Calliope.

(And it's this level of mythological trivia that helps scare off would-be adapters of the voluminous comics series.)