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Project Trainwreck

5 comments on Project Trainwreck

Project Trainwreck
: The numbers are in: The Battle of Shaker Heights, the product of this season’s Project Greenlight on HBO, brought in $47,693 in five theaters last weekend. So that’s less than $10,000 per screen. Miramax execs had said on the Greenlight season finale that if they were going to consider wide distribution of the film, they’d want to see $20,000 per screen (to which one scarred exec replied: the only way this is going to make $20k is if everybody seeing the movie leaves a $100 bill on the seat when they leave). So by that measure, it’s a bomb.

But that doesn’t matter. It’s better, in fact.

This is what reality TV is all about: humiliation. And who better to humiliate than Hollywood executives? It’s such great entertainment.

I can’t wait for next season.

5 responses to “Project Trainwreck”

  1. Lola Avatar
    Lola

    Right. There’s a good article in Washington Post (yesterday’s issue, I think) about how the hyped-up movies this summer were bombing left and right. Shows that it doesn’t pay to market just for teenage boys. Their parents want to see movies with good plot lines (and after all, they’re the ones making money, not the teenage boys).
    And there’s this documentary that Debra Winger produced with “aging” actresses (aging, according to the Hollywood studio heads, who think any women over 30 are over the hill) about their experiences in the industry as they try to find intelligent scripts . . .

  2. Buck Avatar
    Buck

    The will be no new season. Miramax is going to realize that the system as it is, works. Pulling directors and writers from the internet into the hollywood system will only allow in inexperienced and untalented directors. These guys were out of control from the beginning.
    Don’t misundertstand, it is not only their fault if the movie fails. The producers, and studio changed the movie completly AFTER it was shot. However, IMO the directors needed to stand up to that.

  3. Sean Kirby Avatar
    Sean Kirby

    Didn’t Gigli make something like $600 per screen opening weekend? Shaker Heights could have done worse…

  4. Mumblix Grumph Avatar
    Mumblix Grumph

    Speaking of GIGLI…why the hell was the screenplay EVER even considered for production? Didn’t anybody read the damn thing?
    “‘Gobble gobble gobble?’ Why that’s box office GOLD I tell ya!”
    Everybody in L.A. has a screenplay in a drawer, hell, I have one and I don’t even live there.
    There should be someway to let these “amatuers” have their work see the light of day instead of relying on the same few people for the scripts. Martin Brest is not a good screenwriter…why the hell did he get “Meet Joe Black” and “Gigli” produced?
    You can’t even get your stuff read if you’re not part of the incestual system.
    If no one new is allowed to break into the system, will we be forced to endure the same crap from the same tallentless hacks over and over again?
    It’s three in the morning and I’m probably not making any sense at all.

  5. Lola Avatar
    Lola

    Yes, Mumblix, I do get your points. There’s a lot of good stories to be told out there, if only these execs would get out of their skyscraper towers and mingle with the unwashed mass . . .