Swami Ken predicts…

Updated on May 5, 2009 By Ken Begg 10 Comments

…there will be a Wolverine sequel.

I know, I’m really going out on a limb, there. Wolverine pulled $85 million domestic this weekend, and another $73 million worldwide. Not the best weekend ever, but pretty damn good. For a film with a comparatively modest $150 million budget, it’s going to be in the black pretty quick. (Hugh Jackman seems to have finally made peace with teh fact that comic book movies are his ticket to ride. Aside from another Wolverine movie–with maybe more after that–he’s just signed to star in an adaptation of the comic Ghostopolis.)

Hollywood’s been having a good year so far, with Watchmen being the only bomb so far. More interesting to me than the success of big movies like Wolverine were the large amounts of money pulled in by films like Paul Blart Mall Cop. People do seem to be seeing movies more in what have traditionally been the ‘off’ seasons. The studios’ job will be to continue to feed that appetite.

Even so, the big Hollywood studios are again retrenching towards a ‘blockbuster’ focus, as Fox shutters its low-budget genre arm Fox Atomic. This means only Sony of the big studios maintains such an inhouse branch, their Screen Gems imprint. I’m not sure this is the wisest strategy, unless the studios are planning to stick with the sorts of reduced production schedules that resulted from the recent writers’ strike. (I think that may be a wise idea, but it’s the opposite of what the studios’ statements would indicate.)

I’d like to think this will lead to a more vibrant independent mini-studio culture, but I get depressed when those companies, like Dimension, seem to be focusing purely on remakes. I mean, yes, I’m excited about the Piranha 3-D movie, but nearly everything on their slate (Halloween 2, Scanners, Short Circuit, Hellraiser) seems to be remakes. It almost makes me nostalgic for the days when everything was sequels…although we are getting tons of those, too.

I realize they are making these films for teens and 20-somethings who never saw the originals, but damn, I hope they occasionally make something I want to see, too.

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  • Plissken79

    Given that Fox has to make an X-Men film every few years or the rights go back to Marvel, another Wolverine film is almost for certain, as Hugh Jackman is sure to make a few more bombs in the meantime. And seriously, how big of an audience is there for a Magneto origin film? Now that seemingly every single mutant in the Marvel universe has appeared in either X-Men III or Wolverine, perhaps Logan can a film more too himself, although I would not mind if they brought Gambit back).

    On another note, is Watchmen really a bomb? I can understand financial dissappointment, but it hardly seems to a Speed Racer or Australia-size disaster, $120 million budget with $180 million gross worldwide does not seem to be on the bomb scale. I realize of course Watchmen would have had to gross $240 million at least to show a profit, which it will not reach even with DVD and Blu-ray sales.

  • Well, first, the budget was $150m, not $120m. Then there was marketing costs, so add in another ten or twenty million. Part of the production budget admittedly was defrayed by pre-selling foreign markets, but on the other hand, that means Warners’ doesn’t see any more money from those territories, so they aren’t getting a big hunk of the foreign monies, which weren’t so big to start with.

    Next, because Fox won their lawsuit, they also are sharing in Warners revenues. So basically you have all those parties (after the theaters take their cut) sharing a pool of maybe $100 million, tops. In other words, I don’t see how Warners isn’t eating tens of millions of dollars on this one, even after DVD et al. The attendant failure of the various toys, etc., surely won’t help.

    Then there’s the fact that Paul Blart Mall Cop basically made as much worldwide as Watchmen did, while Fast and Furious has done twice as well, and still counting.

  • Plissken79

    Points taken, although one has to admire Warner Brothers for allowing Zach Snyder to make the film the way he did, as close to Moore’s graphic novel as possible, which means it was not going to be very commerical. I do not think we will see anything like it again for awhile.

    Please do not remind me that Paul Blart made far much more than Watchmen, as if I needed more indications this country is on the wrong track

  • Joe11

    “Next, because Paramount won their lawsuit, they also are sharing in Warners revenues.”

    I thought Fox sued WB over Watchmen.

  • Oops, thanks, corrected.

    I don’t necessarily think there’s a problem with Paul Blart making more than Watchmen. The latter might be a better movie, but obviously more people would rather spend ten bucks watching a Kevin James comedy (admittedly, not my bag) than a rather downbeat, three hour deconstructive superhero movie. I mean, if you’re not into superheroes, why would you go see Watchmen in the first place?

    On the other hand, if League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (or Van Helsing) had made more than Watchmen, then yes, that would have depressed me.

  • fish eye no miko

    Given that Fox has to make an X-Men film every few years or the rights go back to Marvel, another Wolverine film is almost for certain

    I thought there was going to be a Gambit movie that would go under the X-Men name. And if they do a Deadpool movie as suggested in the comment of another thread, that’ll probably be given the X-Men moniker as well.

    That being said, yeah, they’ll probably make another another Wolvie film, too (or instead). Hell, as long as they make money, and Jackman’s willing to do ’em, they’d be foolish not to, frankly.

    Also: Is the upcoming Halloween 2 a remake, or a sequel?

    Actually, now that I mention it, it’d be interesting to see Zombie do what Carpenter intended to do–make films under the “Halloween” title that aren’t connected to each other story-wise. Sort of a film anthology.

  • Eddie80

    If Jackman returns as Wolverine after this, that makes five consecutive films as Wolverine-not even Christopher Reeve did that. (Marc McClure did appear in five films as Jimmy Olsen, including Supergirl.)

  • Eddie80

    If Jackman returns as Wolverine after this, that makes five consecutive films as Wolverine-not even Christopher Reeve did that. (Marc McClure did appear in five films as Jimmy Olsen, including Supergirl.)

    “I mean, if you’re not into superheroes, why would you go see Watchmen in the first place?”
    Were sci-fi novels big sellers before Star Wars came out? Historically, it seems that detective novels such as Spillane and Erle Stanley Gardner outsold sci-fi/fantasy…..but no Spillane amounted to much, and Perry Mason shined on TV, not film.

    Regarding Watchmen….well, at least this means that they will not make a sequel. Now, I say this as Watchmen, as Moore wrote it, worked as a fixed story, now an ongoing series. So, in that sense it works wee.

  • Eddie80

    That said, making Watchmen R did serve as a risk by shutting out the family going audience. After all, even Stallone these days cannot get record setting budgets and paychecks for R-rated films, only got out of direct to DVD by making a PG film, and set himself up as the Charles Bronson of our day; much as Bronson moved to Cannon, Stallone moved to Lion’s Gate.

    Ah well, the suits will panic, but at least we can enjoy it on DVD for the respect the material received from its makers. An R-rating usually brings with it a more serious treatment.

  • Aussiesmurf

    Although Watchmen was hardly a financial success, it was not a ‘bomb’ along the lines of Speed Racer and Seeker : The Dark is Rising.

    ‘Australia’ actually ended up doing pretty well due to overseas sales : total worldwide of approximately $210 million. Due to tax write-offs, the actual budget was kept under $80 million.

    Some of the biggest money-losers are those 50-60 million dollar movies that get only a token release and then shipped straight to DVD. Remember the Adventures of PLuto Nash?