(dare we hope?)
VCNJ~
From the official Bruce Campbell website:
Sounds frickin’ sweet.
KICK ASS!
passes out from happiness
This sounds like one of those things that could be really entertaining if done well, but will likely be pure crap.
right there with ya! 
It has Bruce Campbell, and that’s enough for me.
I’ve never seen him on the big screen before, this would be pretty sweet indeed
Didn’t I see somewhere that they’re doing a prequel to Bubba Ho-Tep, too?
Folks, don’t get your hopes up. Bruce is great when he’s working with other talented people who are in charge of the whole shebang, but when he’s the one putting things together the results tend to be horrendous. Watch his most recent SciFi channel movie if you don’t believe me. Bruce needs to get humble and take some direction, rather than trying to be everything on and off the set.
As long as it’s not crap taking itself seriously, I’m happy.
That was more due to having to film in Bulgaria and use Bulgarian actors than his talant of putting things together himself.
It could be a great sendup of his onscreen persona and legacy (if I can call it that). But yeah, Man with the Screaming Brain was pretty sloppy.
Ted Raimi isn’t Bulgarian. I don’t know what the fuck he is. He was like a cheap knockoff of French Stewart, who is himself a cheap knockoff of God-knows-what.
He’s a friend of Bruce. But, really, the whole thing ended up being rewritten for its Bulgarian locale instead of LA as originally intended. The movie wouldn’t even have been made if not for Terminal Invasion being so poplular.
He’s a friend of Bruce. But, really, the whole thing ended up being rewritten for its Bulgarian locale instead of LA as originally intended. The movie wouldn’t even have been made if not for Terminal Invasion being so poplular.
Nor is Stacy Keach, who was also in that flaming turd.
Ted’s a good guy, everyone likes him a lot, and he’s good when he “stays within himself” as the athletes say, but if you’re collaborating on a movie he’s the wrong Raimi.
I know that you can have fun watching a bad movie, if the film doesn’t take itself too seriously and you maintain the right mood. But it is painful to watch someone making something horrendous when you know that person is capable of much better work. Bruce tends to shrug off his work, plays the modesty card and all that, but at some point you have to wonder with someone like him if he’s just being casual about his career, or if he’s afraid of trying to do something that’s really good. Don’t know what the deal is, but I’ve had an assful of Bruce phoning it in on lame-ass movies. No more.
He tried to go A-list before, but Hollywood pretty much snubbed him. No idea why. He was almost in the Phantom, which was a decent if not great movie back in the day. In any event, the man’s gotta eat, and to be blunt, he’s never done anything as bad as, say, ingsley in Bloodrayne. Same thing. You do the movie because it pays. Heck, Campbell probably made more of of his book than any movie he ever did.
He said in a radio interview back in August: "The good news is ‘B-Movies’ doesn’t necessarily mean bad. They’re like Avis, they try harder…because you have less resources, the people working on them have less experience, so it’s a harder row to hoe. I find it more rewarding because that’s where the weird stores are. That’s where the offbeat stuff is. That’s where you find stuff that’s not Dukes of Hazzard. I used to apologise for being in B-Movies for those very reasons, that these movies are not as polished, they’re not as slick or glossy. They don’t look as good, they don’t sound as good, the actors aren’t as good. Everything…the perception is they’re not as good.
But now after seeing summers like this current summer where all these ‘A-Movies’ are, I’m embarresed for Hollywood. I’m embarressed to have any affiliation whatsoever because they really are creatively bankrupt.
"What I don’t understand is why a movie exeuctive wouldn’t start a division and say, ‘Okay, instead of making 100-million-dollar movies, [we’ll] make 100 one-million-dollar movies.’ [H]alf of them would suck and be unwatchable, 25 of them would be okay, mediocre, and 10 of them would be classics and they would pay for the…losers. I think on the economic scale, somebody’s really missing the boat.
I’ve been in plenty of stinkers, admittedly, but…you just make the move. It’s more about making the movie."
He goes on to talk about being filmed for The Quick and the Dead in order for Sam Raimi to shut up Pat Hingle, his novel, The Phantom (“Thank God Billy Zane got it!”), Bubba Ho-tep, horror movies, submitting Man with the Screaming Brain to Sci-Fi where it sat for a couple of months until he did Terminal Invasion and they wanted to know if he had anything else, and filming in Bulgaria. The whole thing is about 26 minutes.
By the way, Man with the Screaming Brain was not his idea; it came from David Goodman, who got it from someone else while in a rowboat.
Because you still have (relatively) fixed marketing and promotion costs. Saturating the market with one hundred $1M probably won’t pay off as much as one $100M blockbuster, plus you’re carrying to huge overhead of production and promotional staff to do so.
That being said, the nickel-budget filmmaking is a profitable niche for some filmmakers, Roger Corman, Chuck Norris, Robert Rodriguez, Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson’s early films, et cetera…but in the era of home video and DVD release, the margins are low and the profits come largely from cult status rather than broadcast/cable royalties. When big studios try to produce “independent” low-budget films it usually either ends up being an Oscar-baiting vanity boutique (Million Dollar Baby, The House of Sand and Fog) or badly under/mispromoted little gems (Being John Malkovich, Kiss Kiss Bang Bang) that never show a dime of profit.
There’s definitely a market for small, well-made low-budget films–hence, the arthouse circuit–but cheaply made action/sci-fi films with bad scripts and mediocre f/x have been undercut by super-blockbuster action/sci-fi films with bad scripts and awesome f/x. I mean, if you’re going to sit through two hours of cliched sci-fi, wouldn’t you rather see Bruce Willis duking it out with an asteroid in Dolby Mega-Earblowing Sound and LucasFilm CGI work rather than no-name Eastern European action star duking it out with an asteroid in two channel stereo against a bad greenscreen of 486-rended graphics?
Oh, and I have to toss in the obligatory “I know somebody who…” reference, since my boss’ son is doing some of the artwork on the graphic novel that is being released along with this film. So it’s not like I know Bruce Campbell, but I know someone who knows someone who knows someone…okay, never mind. My closest brush with fame is still seeing Val Kilmer curse out a lovely young production assistant regarding some bird.
Stranger
He said “a division”, there would presumably be the main division still cranking out the $100M blockbusters.