What happened?

I didn't see it either. I heard from some guy that it's really lousy.

I commented a while back about how the trailer looked a little too crisp and clean. It almost reminded me of the off-putting nature of the Alice in Wonderland trailer from Tim Burton. I can definitely see what you mean by that. It's odd to see that the reviews from everyone seem to be so negative. I don't know if the budget went to Oprah, but it doesn't seem to be working for this movie.

People who saw the movie were saying that it missed the gritty plot of the book. Your comment makes sense.

"Maybe less money should have been spent on special effects and greater attention should have been given to a plot that follows the story."

^^

I love Oprah, BTW. A great human being and a surprisingly good actor. But it's a shame they made the decisions they did on this project.

Wow, that's really stereotypical Hollywood tropes which everyone outside of America hates. No wonder it tanked overseas.

On top of that, it's not a well known book outside of America, it's definitely not a household item. I was surprised about the age of the book, it's not like it's some recent book which just hasn't spread worldwide yet.

The reality is the diversity casting of the main character, her mom and brother is what drove a wedge in this movie. If you want to change the race of the main character in a book that people are familiar with then you might as well go down the road of making it an all black movie like The Wiz, at least that way you aren't going to start off with people familiar with the book being pissed from the start that you twisted some of the characters because if you do it like The Wiz, your being open about what you are doing and owning it. When director decide to just monkey with a few characters it comes across as more bullshit diversity casting which is annoying as hell. I don't think Oprah killed this movie, it was the diversity casting that required them to change the main characters that did....

Think about how well a movie about Jesus would do if they decided to cast a woman as Jesus... you can't make changes to a known character and then still expect to please the people that take the Bible to heart to jump for joy. Somehow Hollywood hasn't realized that, and until they do I expect they'll continue to make these diversity casting decisions and then wonder why the movies bomb.