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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Felon" data-source="post: 3454277" data-attributes="member: 8158">You are being somewhat obtuse. The stuido didn't walk blindly into a brick wall. We are well past the days when a movie's success or failure--or, to use a less nebulous assessment, profit margin--hinged entirely on its box office gross, and movie studios are well are aware of this even if the rest of the world isn't. Movies that are family unfriendly--namely, R-rated action and horror films--focus on cleaning up with DVD sales (and, to a lesser degree, pay-per-view and other secondary sources).  In fact, we are quite likely well past the days when we can actually expect another Robocop or Total Recall to clean up in the theatres. In-your-face over-the-top violence was, for a small time, the stuff of summer blockbusters, but the studio has figured out a formula that says that the date-movie crowds and the family-movie crowds are where the money is, and while they may want thrilling action and adventure, they don't want to see lots of gore (in direct defiance of all those pessimistic cyberpunk projections about the desensitization of the American public). This is why Spider-Man is the new millenium's champion of summer blockbusters and The Punisher isn't. The day we aren't past, however, is the day where a movie can go the direct-to-DVD route without being written off as a shoestring-budget non-event. Grindhouse is an R-rated movie, it has a three-hour-and-twenty-minute running time, and it has a premise that was simply impossible to communicate clearly to the general moviegoing audience. Any one of those things hurt box office profits, and you can rest assured that none of these details were lost on the studio. But they know a big-budget movie still needs a widespread theatre release, so they do so and hope for lightning to strike. And you know what else studios know? More and more, folks are deciding that going to the movies is a lousy deal. They'd rather own the $30 DVD. This is where a long running time doesn't hurt your sells. It helps! So do things like "extended version" and "unrated" and "director's cut". Can you imagine how jam-packed the Grindhouse DVD will be? They'll be releasing new editions for years to come.Well, lightning didn't strike, but nothing went actually wrong here. Your outlook on this is just too short-term.</blockquote>

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