"It's easy to second-guess ourselves, but 90% of our decisions were the right ones with the wrong results" says Universal Studio President
Ron Meyer in an article in the
L.A. Times, sounding like a man under an intense amount of pressure after a string of 2009 flops and under-achievers including:
Bruno ($60 million, half the domestic gross of
Borat),
Public Enemies ($150 WORLDWIDE gross making little profit for a $100 million picture with Mann/Depp/Bale),
Land of the Lost (a gigantic failure likely to cost them $60 million in lost revenue) and even a Judd Apatow picture with
Funny People, set to be far and away the lowest grossing picture from the writer/director who previously seemed like a $100 million solid home runner each time he would step up to the bat. The movie only stayed in the TOP TEN for TWO WEEKS! Yikes!Add that list to State of Play, Duplicity andFrost/Nixon, ambitious adult themed pictures which despite having supposedly big stars (the first two at least) all ended up costing Universal money. And lots of it!Meyer continues in the piece......I have confidence in the entire team to come up with the proper solutions to get us back on track. We've got a bad case of the flu, but by no means is this terminal."
The answer according to the quotes from the Universal guys in the piece is to more modest pictures and less star vehicles... but as I said in the article directly above this one, what does this mean for
Earth vs. Moon and the
$200 million they need to make that picture into a reality?!?!
We are refocusing our efforts on doing what we think we've always historically done best, which is modest-budgeted comedies. And we really need to get our franchises and tent poles moving again.
And IMO,
The Wolf Man and
Robin Hood aren't tentpole pictures they have upcoming they should really be riding on for future tentpole success. I don't think either of them will get a sequel when all is said and done. For those wondering Universal tentpoles include
Hellboy (now defunct for at least half a decade),
Bourne series (which should see a new film within 2 to 3 years),
Riddick series,
Wanted, Fast and Furious and
The Mummy series.