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Post by Kevin Young on Apr 10, 2011 20:29:13 GMT -5
Don Rickles would have been better-calling Cos a hockey puck.
Dan Aykroyd as Travis and Jane Curtin as Sue Dickinson just so we could have the line, "Susanna you ignorant..."
Herve Villechaize as Daniel William Cloud just so we can have him ring the bell at San Fernando and yell "The troops...the troops."
Belushi as Bowie?
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Post by Paul Sylvain on Apr 11, 2011 9:44:09 GMT -5
I got so lost in this that I forgot what the thread was even about.
Feldman as Santy Anny? Hmmm .... how about John Cleese as Travis?
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 15, 2011 11:54:25 GMT -5
Ok-if you could do an Alamo film that had teenage boys doing a roadtrip that had them having to haul supplies over ice roads, and hunting gators, involve Alien machines that transformed into 18 pounder cannon fighting against the Mexican Army dominated by soldadaras clad only in see through white fatigue uniforms set during fiesta (with lots of beer drinking) and have the Santa Anna invade the Texas coast (during Spring break) in 1836 style Higgins Boats and then have it fast forward to where two antique guys are picking a barn and find Alamo artifacts which they take to a Vegas pawn shop where one of the artifacts has to be decoded by a team of experts and clearly shows that Nazi Space Aliens visited the planet and gave us saran wrap while hunting for Bigfoot... then you might be able to have an new Alamo movie. Hopefully, you have started on the screenplay. ;D
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 15, 2011 12:05:34 GMT -5
According to John Farkis´ book about Alamo Village and the making of the movie, and according to an article about the movie´s box office sales in the Alamo Journal by Joe Musso, the production costs were $12.000.000. The Musso article also says the movie made $7.910.000 in the first year of its release, according to Variety, but that was the domestic gross after theater rentals were deducted, not the world wide profits. The world wide earnings were 15.000.000 the first time around after the theater costs were deducted. John is preparing a new book on John Wayne's The Alamo with much more detailed information on the actual budget, the proclaimed budget (always two totally different figures in Hollywood) and the B.O. income (another nebulous figure). An old Hollywood rule of thumb is that a movie must make at least 2.5 times its production cost before it reaches a break even point and goes in the black. If we were to assume that $12,000,000 was indeed Batjac's budget, then the film would have had to rake in $30,000,000 gross. The $7.9 million figure is "domestic gross" only. That means U.S. and Canada. Before internet tracking of boxoffice figures was possible, the world gross was another rule of thumb and was assumed to merely double domestic gross. By those figures (and Joe's findings already have blown them out of the water), the movie only made a possible $15.8 million, never getting near $30 million. $7.9 million, by the way, was the movie's TOTAL theatrical gross, including it's 1967 rerelease. None of this information is from John's research, merely my conclusions from what I have learned over the decades. Hopefully, John will shed much new light on these carefree figures.
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 15, 2011 12:31:52 GMT -5
Regarding The Alamo (2004) and The Alamo (1960)... Both films suffered bad timing for their release. The 2004 film being up against 'The Passion of the Christ.' ...and opening on GOOD FRIDAY! And that is the very least of the abysmally stupid mistakes Disney made in the care and feeding of this film. Wayne's Alamo had the early stages of the war in Vietnam leaving a sour taste in the movie going public. Even though the war hadn't actually begun yet, all the anti-Communism moods were latent in The Alamo '60. i.e.: In reference to joining the Texians' fight, a Tennessean says, "It ain't our ox that's gettin' gored." Wayne responds, "Talkin' about whose ox gets gored, figure this; fella gets in the habit of gorin' oxes, whets his appetite. He may come up north next and gore yours." (Americans go get the bad guys before the bad guys get them.) Isn't that a reference to what was happening in the world at that time?
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 15, 2011 12:36:42 GMT -5
. For Hollywood I don't think we are going to see, or ever will see again, anything better than this film. I doubt $145 million USD in capital will be risked again on an Alamo film. The production budget for The Alamo (2004) was $95,000,000. (According to best references at the time, Ron Howard's initial budget was to be $135 million. When he pulled out as director, Disney slashed that to $75 million. The project was brought in for $95 million. Additional costs would have been in two categories. (1) Budget for the 3-month re-edit done by John Lee Hancock and Eric Beason, and (3) Disney-Touchstone's distribution, prints and advertising budget. This all could certainly have reached $145 million. The theatrical world gross was $22 million. I have a sign in my office that Happy Shahan gave me that reads, "If you don't promote, a terrible thing happens. Nothing." A concept that seems to have been lost on the Mouse House.)
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Post by Rich Curilla on Apr 15, 2011 13:02:56 GMT -5
An interesting side note about Alamo Passion. Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment "developed" The Alamo, meaning his company paid for the first drafts of the screenplay and shopping it around Hollywood (several million dollars). That's normal. A company such as Imagine may have a dozen movies "in development" and ultimately only produce one or two of them due to studio willingness to finance the projects. The rest get trashed. That is the developement business.
The extra-normal: Ron Howard had such a passion to do The Alamo that he kept the project "on a back burner" after other producers would have trashed it. When the opportunity did come along to resurrect it (when Disney showed interest in financing it), Ron's company spent more money for another rewrite and to hire Michael Corenblith and team to begin on the sets at Dripping Springs.
More passion: Ron's company paid for the design and building of these sets BEFORE DISNEY EVER GREENLIGHTED THE PROJECT.
After Ron left the project as director (he did produce it), the film was created through shared passion of Michael Corenblith, John Lee Hancock and pretty much everybody on the team.
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Post by Allen Wiener on Apr 15, 2011 13:03:32 GMT -5
Regarding The Alamo (2004) and The Alamo He may come up north next and gore yours." (Americans go get the bad guys before the bad guys get them.) Isn't that a reference to what was happening in the world at that time? Exactly. I was 17 at the time and even I didn't miss the analogy. Most of us easily translated it into contemporary Cold War events. Vietnam was a direct result of that kind of preemptive thinking; for years people "explained" that we were fighting "them" over there so we woluldn't be fighting them in California.
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Post by tman56 on Apr 15, 2011 18:49:56 GMT -5
Rich,
That's REALLY interesting information to me about Ron Howard's passion for the Alamo project. Do you know, did he actually hire Les Bohem to do the first draft, or did he buy Bohem's script and then try to develop it? I remember reading, I think it was in one of the screenplay magazine's, that Bohem first spoke about the script to Randall Wallace at a party at the Austin Film Festival back in the '90s.
Terry Todish
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Post by mjbrathwaite on Apr 15, 2011 19:21:14 GMT -5
According to John Farkis´ book about Alamo Village and the making of the movie, and according to an article about the movie´s box office sales in the Alamo Journal by Joe Musso, the production costs were $12.000.000. The Musso article also says the movie made $7.910.000 in the first year of its release, according to Variety, but that was the domestic gross after theater rentals were deducted, not the world wide profits. The world wide earnings were 15.000.000 the first time around after the theater costs were deducted. John is preparing a new book on John Wayne's The Alamo with much more detailed information on the actual budget, the proclaimed budget (always two totally different figures in Hollywood) and the B.O. income (another nebulous figure). An old Hollywood rule of thumb is that a movie must make at least 2.5 times its production cost before it reaches a break even point and goes in the black. If we were to assume that $12,000,000 was indeed Batjac's budget, then the film would have had to rake in $30,000,000 gross. The $7.9 million figure is "domestic gross" only. That means U.S. and Canada. Before internet tracking of boxoffice figures was possible, the world gross was another rule of thumb and was assumed to merely double domestic gross. By those figures (and Joe's findings already have blown them out of the water), the movie only made a possible $15.8 million, never getting near $30 million. $7.9 million, by the way, was the movie's TOTAL theatrical gross, including it's 1967 rerelease. None of this information is from John's research, merely my conclusions from what I have learned over the decades. Hopefully, John will shed much new light on these carefree figures. I first saw the $12,000,000 figure in the film's souvenir program, but suspect it may have contained an element of hyperbole, and have tended to believe Allen Eyles statement (in "John wayne and the Movies"), which said, "The production cost six and a half million dollars to make and when it overran the original budget Wayne was compelled to mortgage Batjac, his production company, and put over a million dollars of his own money into it to ensure completion." When writing about the all-time top-grossing films of any genre (one of my part-time occupations), one has to use inflation-adjusted domestic gross figures because, as you point out, one cannot get reliable world grosses for older films. Are you sure the $M7.9 figure includes the rerelease? The source I got it from ("Anatomy of the Movies", edited by David Pirie) claimed it was from its initial release only, and his lists of top-grossing films tend to agree with those from other sources. I look forward to seeing the figures John comes up with.
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Post by TRK on Apr 16, 2011 14:13:25 GMT -5
Interesting (mis)use of footage from The Alamo 2004, including scenes of the scaling of the north wall, to illustrate a news story from 2009 about the discovery of some human bones at the Buena Vista battlefield near Saltillo: www.99model.com/videos/yt-FfORdCLw4O8
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Post by Rich Curilla on May 6, 2011 16:49:24 GMT -5
Interesting (mis)use of footage from The Alamo 2004, including scenes of the scaling of the north wall, to illustrate a news story from 2009 about the discovery of some human bones at the Buena Vista battlefield near Saltillo: www.99model.com/videos/yt-FfORdCLw4O8 Ha! And among others, music from The Patriot and Last of the Mohicans.
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Post by Rich Curilla on May 6, 2011 16:55:28 GMT -5
Are you sure the $M7.9 figure includes the rerelease? The source I got it from ("Anatomy of the Movies", edited by David Pirie) claimed it was from its initial release only, and his lists of top-grossing films tend to agree with those from other sources. I look forward to seeing the figures John comes up with. I'm 90% sure. I got the information years ago from the List of All Time Boxoffice Hits in Variety. I assumed that to mean everything to date, not just innitial release. John (far more anal than I) is turning up lots of new information.
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Post by Rich Curilla on May 6, 2011 17:07:59 GMT -5
Rich, That's REALLY interesting information to me about Ron Howard's passion for the Alamo project. Do you know, did he actually hire Les Bohem to do the first draft, or did he buy Bohem's script and then try to develop it? I remember reading, I think it was in one of the screenplay magazine's, that Bohem first spoke about the script to Randall Wallace at a party at the Austin Film Festival back in the '90s. Terry Todish I am of the understanding that Les Bohem made the original pitch to Imagine. Ron accepted the pitch. I think Writers Guild of America rules are that if a producer accepts a pitch and the person doing the pitch is a WGA signatory, then he must be allowed to write the first draft. Then they can hire whomever they want. Anybody? If this is correct, that doesn't mean Bohem didn't already have a script finished -- one which I would dearly like to read. It only means Imagine would have had to pay him for it. Point is, Ron couldn't just listen to Bohem's pitch and then have somebody else write it until he gave Bohem the first chance. What I do know for sure is that John Sales was hired by Imagine to rewrite the Bohem draft. I think he did two drafts of his own. Then Gaghan was hired to improve the Travis part. When John Lee took over, he did a whole new draft using the best of each -- and streamlining a very character-heavy screenplay.
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Post by mjbrathwaite on May 6, 2011 20:01:33 GMT -5
Are you sure the $M7.9 figure includes the rerelease? The source I got it from ("Anatomy of the Movies", edited by David Pirie) claimed it was from its initial release only, and his lists of top-grossing films tend to agree with those from other sources. I look forward to seeing the figures John comes up with. I'm 90% sure. I got the information years ago from the List of All Time Boxoffice Hits in Variety. I assumed that to mean everything to date, not just innitial release. John (far more anal than I) is turning up lots of new information. I've just looked up the "Variety" lists I have, which are from 1960, 1963, and 1981. The film doesn't appear on the 1960 list, presumably because the list was produced in January and the film hadn't been released yet. The 1963 list says it made $7,200,000, and the 1981 list has the $7,910,000, so it may include the reissue after all.
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