I have watched a ton of reviews for the movie so far and the best reviews are still giving it a "meh" while most just think the movie is a sloppy mess that takes all the bad things of X3 and doubles down on them.
It is sitting at a 22% on Rotten Tomatoes with over a hundred critic reviews and at a 44 with about 40 critic reviews over on Metacritic.
Last edited by Zero Hunter; 06-06-2019 at 10:11 AM.
I don't know anyone who has seen the whole movie, so I don't know if it is or bad. But horror movies are very difficult to do test screenings and can spiral out of control with feedback from test audiences with different expectations. Audiences come into the screening being told they are seeing an untitled horror movie and certain expectations without seeing a trailer or knowing what the movie is. Everyone has different ideas on what does or doesn't make a good horror movie.
For example, a while back there was a test screening for a suspense/thriller which starred an actor known more for comedies. The audience expected the movie to be funny, the director played up horror elements and ended up on the floor crying after reading comments from the test audience ripping his movie to shreds. The original movie wasn't bad, but after messing with it to fix issues the studio had and dozens of cooks in the kitchen, it was a worse movie.
New Mutants isn't a typical movie and recruiting a test audience who wants to see that movie isn't possible so they'll just have a general audience who respond with massive criticism and it turns into a clusterf*** as more and more changes are made. Since it's a Marvel movie, they're going to keep test screenings limited to avoid leaks and spoilers.
Hopefully someone can have a vision of what the film is and ignore test audiences when their feedback isn't helpful. Blumhouse has mastered that approach. They how to make horror movies and they trust their judgement. The only instance where it is is when the director wants to make a movie the audience isn't interested in seeing.
I really don't know how they do reshoots since the cast has changed so much. Maisie looks like she did in about Season 5 of Game of Thrones. It's going to be so obvious what's added.
The X Men IP seems damaged by DP how can they market this film?
Having just seen Dark Phoenix, I think any goodwill New Mutants might have had has just gone down the toilet. That compounded by all the drama with the reshoots makes me think this is VERY unlikely to be released in cinemas.
They can't streamed it, it must be showed in theaters because it's in the actors contracts that states the movie must be showed in theaters. Besides Disney also assumed the debt FOX had before the buyout ($13.8 billion to $19.2 billion) it wouldn't make much sense not to try to make some money back by releasing the films in theaters.
Well, theater chains could refuse to show a movie from a major studio, but that's not likely to happen. There have been some pretty bad movies getting wide releases, but Disney maintains pretty high distributor/exhibitor relationships. They can negotiate perks for chains to show a movie they know isn't as strong in exchange for something else.
New Mutants has an established fanbase, so even if it's unwatchable, it's still going to draw an audience. The problem is it's going to take marketing and the question of what that budget it. The major theater chain owners are more concerned about what a studio is going to do to market a bad movie, than if the movie is actually bad.
It's becoming common for movies being dumped to streaming to have a single day release at a limited number of theaters (some times only 1) to fulfill contractual obligations. For example, Mowgli had a limited release at 1 theater before premiering on Netflix and didn't report box office revenue to the fulfill contractual obligations of a theatrical release. So, technically the same could happen with New Mutants.
The problem is a theatrical release isn't going to even make back marketing costs. Keep in mind, studios split the box office with theaters. To get a movie like New Mutants into theaters, the distributor has to offer an even better deal with more of the box office up-front to the theater.
It's difficult to keep marketing costs for a wide release to below $20 million.
Last edited by ClanAskani; 06-07-2019 at 06:09 PM.