MovieChat Forums > Veronica Mars (2014) Discussion > Official worldwide final gross: 3.6 m. B...

Official worldwide final gross: 3.6 m. Budget: 6 million. Why VM tanked.

posted 10 years ago by tomasfigueroagaray
48 replies | jump to latest

Badly conceived and executed film based on a TV property that had already tanked on TV. Bad actors (come on, Bell comes from the Jessica Alba school of thespians) with no charisma (no matter how hard Hollywood tried to make Bell a film star in a string of bad romcoms, audiences never found her appealing), and a horrible script that nobody who wasn't a fan of the TV show could understand.
That's why VM tankes at the box office. Audiences completely ignored it, even though VM fans hoped for a breakout (that never happened).

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] stimpy25 10 years ago

that's fine if he wants to have his own opinion. but like it's been said the film didn't cost that much to make. well by today's standards anyways.

i'm shocked that Jamie Lee Curtis was even in it. even if it was just a cameo at the start of the film. but the thing is there's a lot of reasons why it wasn't a hit like your normal flix. it was released differently and though it didn't make the 6 million in the theatres. it no doubt made a bunch of money from on demand and various other ways it was shown.

so you have to be more understanding that. i knew right away that it wasn't going to make big money and so did warners? or whoever released it. they took a chance on it and they still made money on it. i dunno what the exact figure it turned out to be. but it no doubt made more than they thought it would. but i'm just guessing on that. i think the OP is used to having films come out everywhere and

if the budget was say $20 million bucks and it only made $3.6 million than yes that would be a flop. but it wasn't made for that and no doubt there were cast members who took pay cuts or hell did it for free. it does happen just not very often.

[–] rahholmb 10 years ago

It got over 5 M on Kickstarter alone so it has to have grossed more than 3.6 M.

Normally investors want their money back. In this case they just wanted the movie to be made, so the croudfunded part of the budget needs to be added to the gross as it doesn't need to be covered by sales. In other words, it didn't really tank like a normal movie would have done with those numbers.

[–] stimpy25 10 years ago

exactly. thank you, in fact I just bought the film on Blu-ray today! and that no doubt helps them too.

[–] acb132 10 years ago

You have to subtract out the kickstarter take and all the stuff they had to send out from the budget.

Nobody could understand it?? Did you even watch it? I don't know a single person who was confused by it whether they had seen the series before or not. Sure you might not get every little in joke, but that is another matter entirely. If you found this too hard to follow.... yikes.

No charisma? She is pretty much 100% charisma when she plays this character.

It failed because everyone stayed away and didn't see it because they couldn't follow the script when they saw it? umm yeah...

Most people never heard of it. It had zero regular marketing (if with decent marketing, many people still never even know that lots of stuff exists).

It was released on demand DAY ONE of theatrical release. Of course that will tank a lot of the raw box office numbers.

Don't forget add in VOD and disc sales.

What the heck is there for you to get all upset over anyway? What does it harm you? The fans got a movie that they were dying to get. The people involved in it got to get together and to play the parts again. The studio is definitely making a profit on this? What the heck are you griping about? You don't like it, don't pay it any attention.

[–] tarcotti 8 years ago

I disagree COMPLETELY with the original poster! I'm one of the backers (not a huge one, but a backer none the less) and I was one of the many fans that was disappointed with an early cancellation. With the director and actors initiation and leadership, all the fans banded together to donate for this film to come to fruition. That's enough for me to be a non-tanker of a film.

As previously stated, since it was all fan funded and didn't get a wide-spread release, none of us expected a multi-million blockbuster film. And frankly, a small target audience of marshmallows only! (Do you even KNOW what I'm referring to? No? Well, that's the point)

But look at the success! When have you ever heard of a recent show (that isn't hugely popular) reaching out to its fans and inspiring them to donate for a major film release and not only reaching their 2 million dollar goal, but ended up almost 6 million! Unless its been beaten since, it was the biggest kickstarter project in history. Shows sometimes get reunion movies, but we are talking the big ones like X-Files, Star Trek, I don't know...The Brady Bunch and the Hulk? Those last two are older, but you see what I mean? So many people whine about their favorite shows getting canceled after a couple years, but reunion films are never made about them. But this did! This happened! We made it happen! Like I said, not a huge backer, but I feel pretty proud!

And I'm damn sure all those actors didn't care about the pay, they did it for the fans. And the acting was just perfect, all the actors just slid right back into character. I could not have been more pleased with the result.

[–] RottenBeauty 10 years ago

I honestly WANTED to see it . . .but I couldn't find information about where to see it and when in Sydney Australia. I only managed to get that info AFTER it was shown and obviously that was too late.

SO I think it was poorly advertised and other problems, because even when i contacted the cinema on Facebook they said they would post the info 'soon' but then . . .didn't.

What came first, the music or the misery?

[–] bmw9521 10 years ago

Let me start by saying I watched 1 episode (the pilot) of the Veronica Mars TV Series. It didn't appeal to me, so I didn't continue. I remember when director Rob Thomas and star Kristen Bell took to the web (specifically Kickstarter) to get funding for a Veronica Mars movie. I personally love to judge movies, so when a movie was released that was paid for by fans, I decided it would be worth a watch. It was shockingly a decent-to-good movie, considering what Hollywood throws at us these days. So allow me to say, you're wrong.

Fans paid the budget for the movie. Fans spent more money to see the movie they paid for. The movie was strictly made for nostalgia and so fans can see one of their favorite TV characters arrive on the big screen. Any other movie goer was just bonus. Sure, it could have taken off. If it had, it would have made movie history. But it didn't.

In the end, it was a success because a movie that was made by the fans, for the fans, actually happened and the fans got to see it. This was never a movie about "how much money can we make off it".

[–] TheVorlonKosh 10 years ago

It wasn't about the token theater release.

[–] ScorpionTDC 10 years ago

Is that counting iTunes purchases & On Demand?

Death Awaits (Horror forum)
http://w11.zetaboards.com/Death_Awaits/index/

[–] nala-7 10 years ago

The reason it didn't make much at the box office is because it was only shown in a few hundred cities (box office mojo says 291) for a short amount of time and then went straight to DVD.

I live in a city with a metro area of 600K and it was never shown here...but the minute it was release on DVD, I put it in my Netflix queue and watched it last weekend. Would I consider it a great movie? Not really, good, but not great...but as a fan of the series I was very satisfied getting to catch up with all the kids from Neptune. My girlfriend gave money through kickstarter and she loved it.

Long story short, this movie was always meant to go pretty much straight to video which is where most fans will see it. And yes, if you weren't a fan of the show you probably wouldn't care about the movie...that was also the point, Rob and the cast made this movie for the fans, not trying to start a secondary life in movies.

Everyone got paid and the fans got what they wanted, a reunion...no matter how much the official gross was, pretty much everyone who actually cared about VM was happy with the end product.