MacGruber

[MacG]

This movie was awesome. I seriously hadn't laughed out loud so much since ANCHORMAN back in '04.

It may not be doing well in theaters, but I think it's gonna find a massive following on DVD....

[Pasquali56]

Dean, the key demographic for SNL is teens. Back in good old days, it was huge on college campuses, but no more. So my point is that an R-rating on MacGruber made no sense -- and I think its failure at the box office shows that.

[SCanfield]

The funny thing is, everyone is calling this an epic bomb. It was a $10 million movie. By the end of this weekend, they'll have made half their budget back.

On video, where their audience will multiply 10 fold, they'll make their money back. In the end, it will be a break-even picture at worst. Not terrible. Even if studios would try to convince you otherwise. These are the same people claiming they made $600 million on Superman Returns.

Box office is a terrible judge of how successful a movie is. To say you should shelve all Hard R scripts is retarded. Since this movie failed, it's the perfect opportunity to get your awesome Hard R comedy out there into the hands of the people seeing where MacGruber failed, ready to outdo it.

Someone mentioned Hangover as an anomaly. Guess what? Most hits are anomalies, unless it's a tentpole adaptation of something that's famous. You are either going to be that anomaly or you'll be here. Write quality, nothing else will matter.

[nuvuefilms]

for the guy above, everything you said is obvious, other than thinking that it is better for you as a writer because a hard R bombed. It is never good for anyone in the industry when something bombs. You should familiarize yourself a bit more. Or you can go try to sell a vampire movie right now. (the best one ever written)

[Scripted77]

Anyone know how much marketing costs were for the film? Making its "budget" back is only part of the battle.

[Pasquali56]

I don't know if he was talking to me, but I never said that R-rated comedies can't make it. Obviously, they can. What I did say is that in this instance what they tried to achieve demographically made no sense. It's like making a Winnie the Pooh movie PG-13.

[Mark Somers]

Finally saw most of this.

I learned a good lesson from this movie. The whole gag where MacGruber recruits his team then accidently blows them all up is absolutely fucking hilarious. A ton of screenplay was used just for that gag but I think it was well worth it.


The downside for me though is that the recruiting of MacGruber from the monestary was, except for all the ZAZ background gags, identical to Topper Harley's recruitment from a monestary in "Hot Shots Deux".


Still funny shit though.

[kintnerboy]

Finally saw this last night on HBO (maybe Starz?). Very funny. I should have supported it in theaters.

As far as some of the previous comments go, I'm sure Universal is content with the money they made on this. It sold and rented well on dvd, and will be a staple of cable tv for many years to come.

Opening weekend box-office means nothing, and all conjecture regarding budgets and grosses is BS.

Also, there is no correlation between Saturday Night Live alumni and the success of their films based on PG-13 or R ratings.

Carry on.