For me it’s the real Carrell’s shoes like…knowing the true story, was the original poster concept showing Carrell in high-heels? It just seems weird for him to be in short jeans, no socks and wearing …what are those? Moccasins? But they decided to back off on that in the poster? I remember the original trailer made no mention of the hate crime part of the story (was glad to see that rectified in later versions of the trailer).
My understanding is that while the documentary saved the motivation for Hogancamp’s attack until late into the film, as a twist, the feature film addresses it up front at the beginning of the movie.
Is anyone here familiar with the real-life story behind the movie? My understandings that he built this model village in the backyard of his house in Kingston, NY. How did he protect the model from the weather? (Or even from a dog that wandered through.)
I haven’t seen anything about him in a while, but my recollection is that it isn’t really protected from the weather but just built to survive outdoors. The real Marwencol is built a bit more roughly than the version in the movie, I think.
This is one of those examples of something I never heard of that suddenly turns up everywhere. Well maybe not everywhere, but it was in my bookbub email this morning. On sale for $2.99, if anyone is interested.
I saw it yesterday, without having seen the earlier documentary or read the reviews beforehand. I have mixed feelings; I didn’t love it, but I didn’t hate it. It has its flaws, one of which is that it’s too slow-moving, at least at times; but it’s an interesting attempt.
I haven’t seen this and don’t plan to (I have seen parts of the documentary). But I came just to wonder: how did they think this could possibly make any money at its budget level? I could see making it for five or ten million and doing an indie marketing campaign, but they went full Hollywood here and of COURSE they are going to take a bath. Anyone with common sense could have told them there was no commercial potential here.
William Goldman (screenwriter of Marathon Man, The Princess Bride and All The President’s Men) famously said, “Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess—and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.” This film, for example, was written and directed by Robert Zemeckis and stars Steve Carell and Leslie Mann. It was based on a documentary that was very well-received. There was no reason to think it would fail.
It’s true that no one can ever be certain that a movie will be a hit. But I don’t believe Goldman was asserting that it’s necessarily impossible or even terribly difficult to predict that certain ideas have an uphill climb. A movie with this clunky name and premise would have to be extraordinarily good (inspiring glowing reviews and strong word of mouth) to make significant money. Lots of other types of movies can make money without having the same bar to clear.
And I question whether “based on a well-regarded documentary” is typically a path to grossing $200 million domestically (as this would have to, to unambiguously count as having been a shrewd gamble). I can’t think of examples, but I concede that I may simply be unaware of them. (I note that Carell was previously in a drama based on a doc, a 2015 release called “Freeheld” that did only $1.7M of business on a $7M budget.)
As for Carell, he has had big comedic hits. But in the past five years he has appeared in several dramas, with less box office success. The only one that looks like a modestly successful performer is “The Big Short”, but that also starred Christian Bale, Brad Pitt, and Ryan Gosling, so it isn’t tenable to give Carell credit. And while the others all look like various degrees of box office failure, they were at least made on significantly smaller budgets.
I suppose, but it seems like they could have made that play for a much lower price tag, and therefore with far less risk. (Carell’s “Foxcatcher” got lots of Oscar buzz, but only made back $19 million of its $24M budget.)
seems like if they want to spend $200 mil on a movie just make it Spiderman #43 or Batman #56 or Star Wars #18 and they will rake in the money . that seems like a sure path to cash except in a few cases.
They DO do that, but you can’t release 3 Batman & Spiderman movies in the same year. I’ve got to agree that this seems like a pretty quirky story to attach to a $100M+ budget.
100% agree. The post this was based on is made safely from the POV of hindsight. Make that prediction on a yet to be released movie and I’ll be impressed.
I’m not a Zemeckis fan, but on paper this one looked good. Other people thought so as well. Check out the first several posts in this thread.