Thursday, January 14, 2010

The Terminator franchise

From Wikipedia:
In late October 2009, Halcyon announced it would auction off the rights to future Terminator material and is seeking $60-70 million, though thus far the only offer has been significantly less at $10,000 by director Joss Whedon.

OK, I offer $15.000. Really. Anybody know where I'll go to tell them?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to buy it just so that no one can make any more movies. Let it die already! They took a couple of episodes of The Twilight Zone and spun it out into how many movies and how many million dollars? Enough.

Pascal [P-04referent] said...

What, so you can make Terminator-themed bodypainted Domai fem-bot cyborguettes?
Is that really worth $15.000?
(Even with butt-mounted twin machine guns, like Astro-Boy?)

And... I'm not sure an "entirely bare" Terminator would really be efficient promotional material for DOWAI. (Thinking or your "Halloween strip show" and how it went a tad too far. ;-)

One single reason why I'd buy a franchise like that, would be to make reasonably-priced action figure series, and teach the greddy "marketeers" a thing or two about making more bucks by showing the customers you respect them.
I mean, really, the prices of action figures have taken a BRUTAL leap upwards in 2009, a good 50% out of the blue! Is it just the Lebanese market?

I bet HALF the "cost" of licensed merchandise comes from the advertising expenses. I read that many multi-million dollar films spend more on promotion than on the production itself! Grotesque.

Here's a hint: if you make new Termie movies, forget the now painfully obsolete "Schwarzenator" model, and hire some WWE wrestlers. Their acting isn't worse ("you can suspect a cyborg by the over-the-top stereotyped way they behave" ;-), their muscles are in great shape, and they're fantastic stuntsmen, needing no doubles. Or fantastic stuntswomen.
Besides, these siliconed "Divas" fit perfectly the expectable "commercial design" of female cyborgs as we can expect them. ;-p

You know... if you DID buy that franchise, and somebody in the U.S. press found it interesting to check what else it is you do, there might be a right-wing "moral uproar" wailing to "defend that familial franchise from a smut-maker", with the end result being an unprecedented free advertising for you.
Heck, if it worked for Hugh Heffner and Larry Flint... ;-)