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Netflix is putting up $90 million to finance Bright, "a Max Landis scripted cop thriller with fantastical elements." The film will be directed by David Ayer, and will star Will Smith and Joel Edgerton. They state that the film could get a limited theatrical release, but is intended for their streaming service. I can't fathom how in the world Netflix makes any sort of profit in this scenario. Nor can I fathom why anyone would give Max Landis money for anything, much less the $3 million he's pocketing here.

Trailer for David Ayer's $90 million Netflix boondoggle, Bright

Thanks, Mr. Ayers, but I'll just watch "Zootopia" again instead.

Thank you for posting that domino. It reminded that I'm going to die one day and that someone thought it was perfectly okay to spend ninety million on this and not helping the needy.

Amazing. Remember when Will Smith was the biggest star on the planet?

He is the star of one of my all time favorite Onion headlines: "Will Smith: the Black Man Everyone At the Office Can Agree On"

domino harvey wrote:Why

It was inexplicably a huge success, though I don't think I've spoken with a single person who watched it, even on social media (aside from critics I follow).

“Bright” got 11 million viewers Dec. 22 through 24 in the U.S., Nielsen said Thursday. If those viewers had each paid the national average movie-ticket price of about $9, that would’ve been a $99 million debut at the box office -- roughly what Universal Pictures’ “The Fate of the Furious” did in April. ... And Netflix disputes Nielsen’s methodology to begin with, in part because it only measures views on televisions, leaving out computers and phones.

Also that views doesn't mean anything, considering tons of people will turn it on, get bored, and leave five minutes in, because it's purportedly a nightmare. It would have made $100 million if 11 million people had saw it, but if it hadn't been given to everyone for free it'd not surprise me if only three million people bothered total. They didn't get $100 million in new subscribers, that's for sure.

So I actually sat through the entire thing. The story unfolds with all the coherence you've come to expect from the director of Suicide Squad, but it's not as awful as I expected it to me. (That's a low bar to clear, though.) I thought it was a poor fantasy version of End of Watch.

Spoiler

The movie seems to operate in an "alternate" reality, where orcs, fairies, elves, etc. have been living among us for centuries and there's a shared history. Bright takes very few pains to explain it,
though, so viewers have to fill in the blanks for themselves. If anything, I kinda liked that about it, but that's all there is to recommend this otherwise derivative flick.

I think I'll just rewatch Alien Nation, thank you very much.

Murdoch wrote:I think I'll just rewatch Alien Nation, thank you very much.

Or Upworld! Its all part of a continuum running from the straightly played 48 Hrs and Lethal Weapon at one extreme to these sci-fi themed programmes at the other. Of course including the cop partner trend of the late 80s with K-9, Turner and Hooch and Tequila and Bonetti! (Even anime got in on the act with the motormouthed Eddie Murphy-styled sass talking cat in Galactic Pirates!)

One of these days I'd like to see a mismatched buddy cop movie or TV show that wasn't about different races, or species, learning to work together!

Both trailers for this looked terrible to me, so I went into it very apprehensive, to my surprise I thought it was fine. Not great, not cutting edge, doesn't transcend its premise, isn't must watch, doesn't really explore its world that much, but is still thoroughly fine/okay. I think the problem with this is two fold, Max Landis appears to be very good at writing scripts that are supposed to be high concept takes on 80's/90's action movies, but that in the end neither deliver fully on the actual joys of those movies (see Shane Black who's actually good at this) or transcend or elevate the genre in ways that make going to its wells again interesting (see Shane Black who's actually good at this). The second problem is who thought it was a good idea to put all of this money in a buddy cop action film in 2017? Even when these are great (see Shane Black) they don't make that much money, so I wouldn't think this would be a great foundation to build a franchise on, but then again a lot of user reviews are positive and the film did leave me wanting someone to take a second crack at this world, so...