Fox's cruel summer: Not a $100-million hit in the bunch

When News Corp. President Peter Chernin was taking a victory lap last week after the company reported a 27% jump in its fiscal fourth-quarter net income, he took pains to credit the 20th Century Fox Film Group for much of the good news. He also predicted healthy earnings in the future, pointing to such upcoming summer 2009 films as "X-Men Origins: Wolverine" and "Night at the Museum II: Escape from the Smithsonian." For Hollywood insiders, it was telling that Chernin--perhaps the savviest showbiz mogul of our era--somehow failed to mention any of his studio's movies from this summer.

And with good reason. This is the first summer since 1997 that Fox hasn't had a $100-million box-office hit. For 10 straight summers, the Fox assembly line has churned out every kind of hit imaginable, from "X-Men" movies to "Dr. Dolittle" and "Big Momma's House" family comedies to last year's "Simpsons Movie." Even more impressively, in three of the last four summers, the studio had three $100-million-plus hits each year (perhaps its best summer being 2005, when it had "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith," "The Fantastic Four" and "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," which all topped $150 million in the U.S. alone).

The remarkable consistency of the Fox movie machine has made this summer's series of disappointments and flops even more of a surprising stumble. It's a shock to the system--like the New York Yankees not making the playoffs. Built around intense fiscal discipline and tight creative control, Fox has been a studio that rarely made a false move. But this summer has been different. Without a true tentpole film, the results have been dispiriting. The studio's biggest hit was "What Happens in Vegas," a forgettable comedy that grossed $80 million in the U.S. and roughly $215 million around the world. "The Happening," a poorly reviewed thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, topped out at $64 million (though it's performed better overseas). The other films have been embarrassments, especially by Fox standards.

"Meet Dave," a costly Eddie Murphy comedy, was a big bomb; "The X Files: I Want to Believe" had a weak opening and dropped off precipitously afterward, and "Space Chimps" barely made a ripple (though it wasn't financed by Fox). This coming weekend's entry, "Mirrors," is another film Fox is simply distributing (it was financed by New Regency), but it's still eating up time and money on the release schedule. According to tracking numbers, it's on course to be another loser.

Fox executives say that after 10 straight summers of success it was inevitable that they'd have an off year. Fair enough. But I say the cruel summer numbers are also the result of a rigidly constructed system that has driven away nearly all of the creative filmmakers and producers who once worked on the lot, putting the studio's movies in the hands of hacks, newcomers and nonentities who largely execute the wishes of the Fox production team led by studio Co-Chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos.

Rothman and Gianopulos (who would not speak to me for this story) have been running the studio since 2000 and they've run it as well as anyone else in the business. But by Hollywood standards, nine years is the equivalent of a couple of centuries. Is it time for some new blood--or at least a new approach?

When it comes to Fox's movie management skills, I've always been of two minds. The part of me who has to balance a checkbook every month is always impressed, since the studio rarely wastes any money, avoids colossal blunders and shrewdly steers all its risky art-house projects to Fox Searchlight, its specialty film division. But the part of me who loves movies questions whether a studio can go to such lengths to manage risk that it bleeds all the joy, spontaneity and art out of the business.

With the exception of James Cameron and Baz Luhrmann, who make movies once every millennium, Fox rarely hires a filmmaker with contractual rights to final cut or any strong creative point of view. With the exception of Shyamalan, whose career has been in a downhill slide ever since "The Sixth Sense," this summer's films were directed by guys who will only get invited to the Oscars as someone else's date. "Meet Dave's" Brian Robbins did "Norbit." "Vegas' " Tom Vaughan did "Starter for 10." "Space Chimps' " Kirk De Micco is a first-time director. This weekend's "Mirrors" director Alexander Aja did the horror film "The Hills Have Eyes."

It wasn't always this way. In the early years of Fox's $100-million streak, the studio still occasionally had the appetite for classy summer fare made by A-list filmmakers. In 1998, both Warren Beatty's "Bulworth" and Forest Whitaker's "Hope Floats" were summer films. In 2001, the studio released Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge" and Tim Burton's "Planet of the Apes" in the summer. Even as late as 2002, it put out summer films directed by such distinctive filmmakers as Adrian Lyne ("Unfaithful") and Steven Spielberg ("Minority Report").

But having suffered through years of having their chain yanked by the studio's business affairs department and having seen virtually every creative decision approved by Rothman, top talent learned to avoid Fox like the plague. After making an "X-Man" movie there, Brett Ratner complained that Rothman even had approval of releasing key photo images from the film. Innumerable agents have complained to me that Fox doesn't want filmmakers--it wants no-name traffic cops to direct its movies. Here're the people who directed the studio's 2007 summer films: James Wan, Tom Brady, David Silverman, Len Wiseman, Tim Story and Carlos Fresnadillo. I bet some of them are genuinely nice guys, but there's not a Warren Beatty or Tim Burton in the bunch.

Fox also doesn't have any A-list producers, because the real producers of Fox movies are its executives. Other studios have deals with Oscar-winning producers like Brian Grazer and Scott Rudin, box-office behemoths like Jerry Bruckheimer and Joel Silver and a host of knowledgeable veterans, including Neal Moritz and Laura Ziskin (at Sony), Lorenzo diBonaventura and J.J. Abrams (at Paramount) and Kennedy/Marshall and Scott Stuber at Universal. Fox's biggest producer is John Davis, the man behind the "Garfield" and "Dr. Dolittle" franchises.

The executive with the most influence on filmmaking is Rothman, who is a fascinating jumble of contradictions. He got his start as an executive in the specialty film world, running Goldwyn Films and launching Fox Searchlight, yet he's now the epitome of a commercial-minded studio boss. Rothman also writes his own thoughtful monologues as the host of "Fox Legacy," a Fox Movie Channel show devoted to the history of great films from the studio library. Of course the irony is that the program celebrates films like "MASH," "Wall Street" and  "Phantom of the Paradise," all pictures made by prickly, hard-to-control directors that today's Rothman-run Fox wouldn't dream of hiring.

Fox does have a powerhouse lineup of movies for next summer, so I'm certainly not predicting any precipitous fall from grace. But if the studio really believes it can continue to compete, year in and year out, without regularly working with top-flight artists, I think it will eventually find itself in decline. For decades, studios have tried, in one way or another, to take the risk out of filmmaking, either by laying off financing to outside entities or employing various sorts of quality-control formulas.

But art is elusive. It rarely responds to or can be regulated by any sort of formula. When Fox made "MASH" nearly 40 years ago, it thought the film was a disaster because it felt so far out of the mainstream. It turned out the film was more plugged into the emerging new culture than any of the studio executives. The same could be said about George Lucas' "Star Wars," or James Cameron's "Titanic," which was written off as an epic blunder before anyone saw a foot of footage. Great films come from great filmmakers.

If Fox continues to hire pliable, easy-to-control talent, it may discover that today's youthful audience, always on the prowl for something exciting and new and strangely different, will have the studio behind. Investors love predictable quarterly earnings, but moviegoers enjoy surprises. An immensely bright if sometimes overbearing man, I think Rothman still has some of that maverick, movie-loving spirit inside him. It's time he embraced it.      

Photo of Eddie Murphy in "Meet Dave"  from 20th Century Fox

Comments

[bejasus]

sounds like they need bill mechanic back!

[Jonathan L. Bowen]

Really interesting article. Good information, and when I read this I really think you're correct. I've always liked Fox in the past, but right now it's just not very exciting, there's not much for which to root. I guess I always was loyal to Fox because I loved The X-Files, I watched Sliders back in the day, I am a huge Star Wars fan so there's some Fox loyalty there, and now they lost out on distribution rights for The Clone Wars, which I thought was a pretty big blow. It's very awkward to have Warner Bros. before a Star Wars movie, feels so wrong. You need A-list FILMMAKERS to make great movies, you can't just have executives running the ship. An executive's place should be running the machine, which means hiring talented people you trust to make artwork, first of all, and hiring reliable line producers and whatnot to manage the budget concerns. If a director is not over budget, however, and has a track record, let him do his thing and deliver the best film possible.

[moviegeek101]

Wouldn't you consider Borat one of the most controversial commercial films of the decade? Also didn't they take chances with more maverick directors like Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven & A Good Year) and Mike Judge (Idiocracy) only to see those movies fail?

[CMU]

We've been arguing the exact same points over at the Aint It Cool News talkbacks for years now. The suits at Fox are clueless! We've known this from the point in which they neutered 2 R-rated franchises and combined them into the PG-13 poopfest known as "Aliens vs. Predator", to the moment they kicked Bryan Singer off the lot and hired The Rat to make "X-Men For Dummies" (b.k.a. "X-Men: The Last Stand"), the Fantastic Four flicks; and last summer's "Live Free or Die PG-13" (yet ANOTHER neutering of a hard R franchise).

[viewdrix]

David Silverman, the director of The Simpsons Movie, doesn't come across as an easy-to-control or talentless guy just because he's not a huge or instantly recognizable name. He came from Pixar as a co-director on Monsters, Inc. On the other hand, The Simpsons creative team is long known for their near-complete control on the franchise, including the movie, and Silverman was a long-time veteran director of the show through the 90's before making the jump to Pixar.

[H-bomb]

Gavin Hood directing Wolverine, a big summer picture after having done Tsotsi. Can't get any more mainstream than that.

They had one bad year, and like you said, they have a good schedule coming up for next year. Aren't they doing Avatar? Articles like this just LOVE to run the gun on pessimism, and it gets way more tiring to see more of these churn up than 'Meet Daves' and 'The Happenings'.

[Shelle]

Here's why The X-Files film didn't do well. It wasn't The X-Files. It was a poor man's art house flick that looked like it was pieced together from an unused X-Files and Millennium script. If this film had a better script that appealed to all segments of the fan bases and had it been a truly scary or suspenseful, it would have gotten great word of mouth and would not be the flop that it is. Also, a movie adapted from a TV show should not look like something that should be airing during November sweeps.

[milo]

moviegeek101, interesting examples.

Borat only cost 18 million, not a huge risk for the studio, and Cohen had a good record from his TV show.

Kingdom of Heaven had cuts forced by the studio that Ridley Scott didn't want to make - the theatrical cut got mediocre reviews and didn't do well, but the director's cut got a much better reaction. It certainly can be argued that Fox's meddling hurt the film.

And Idiocracy got only a tiny release in theatres, seven cities and 125 theatres. The studio didn't even make a trailer, much less show it - no TV ads either and not screened for critics. The only advertising was releasing a poster.

Fox didn't take a chance and fail, they basically sabotaged the release of the movie - there was no way it could have done well with such a botched release. That and Kingdom of Heaven are great examples of how Fox has had decent directors but blew it - most likely those guys will avoid working with Fox again.

[Biting the Hand]

Another article in the LA Times attacking the film industry- what a surprise! Do you wonder why circulation is down? Put articles like this in BUSINESS- maybe one day Calendar will EMBRACE the hometown film industry- the world loves Hollywood's movies- hopefully Calendar will cover them one day- maybe it would give people a reason to buy the LA Times.

[JetDog]

"Live Free of Die Hard" wasn't neutered -- it should have been rated R in the first place. Remember the climax? "Yippee-ki-yay, MOTHERF*****!" BANG! Splat!

I wish I could say the suits at Fox were clueless, but they continue to make money off of garbage, so they're obviously not. They're just making less than they used to. How expensive could "What Happens in Vegas" have been? That said, I hate Fox almost as much as I hate Lionsgate.

[Michel B. O.]

I feel that Fox Films and the other giants from the showbizz should look around the globe
for new talented people.

Working in Hollywood is wolrd wide dream! e.g. myself... I can´t develop my skills in screenwriting because in Brazil where I llve there´s no professional screenwriters guild, as we have wga in the States.

I study hollywood blockbuster scripts by myself and I´m also asking for good advice on literature on how to improve my Screenwriting English Skills.

I always used to tell my short stories on the phone to my best friend... he was always eager to listen to my "wire tales", than I talked to myself grow up and become a man who writes a complete story, not just short stories and some scenes on the phone to a friend.
I thought to myself: "Become a Pro!!!"

Nowadays I work as an English teacher here in my town and I´m reading screenplays that amuses me, that I could possibly had written or told the story to my best friend on the phone. Because my tales were really entertaining, we used to spend hours just chatting about my stories and I used to correct him when he suggested me something that wouldn´t work.

Well I´ve told my story. Maybe somebody steals it and make the next Fox´s summer hit.
THE WANNA BE SCREENWRITER!!!

[Scott Schirmer]

I believe Fox had a couple of bad years during the time they released Fight Club and Moulin Rouge, and Titan AE. I think Bill Mechanic was forced to resign because of all the box office failures they were having. I remember reading about it and thinking it was too bad. The studio was taking real risks (especially with the aforementioned films), and audiences were not appreciating it. I though Mechanic's choices were brave and inspired, and history will remember many of those movies fondly. Fox just had a couple of unfortunate years where audiences simply didn't know what a good thing Fox was giving them. Now, maybe, they have to pull the purse strings a little tighter to compensate. I understand. But I hope they feel comfortable taking chances again, soon. They have a great legacy, especially with sci-fi and action, genres which naturally require bigger budgets.

[Ken Bendor]

Your lumping in "Simpsons Movie" director David Silverman with the other hacks was unwaranted, not to mention somewhat elitist; besides, isn't it time you kissed Bill Maher's rump some more over his film that will absolutely flop?

[Kate]

I loved The X-Files: I Want to Believe. It was a beautiful, intricate film about redemption and faith. It required you to think, to be willing to debate the threat and potentials of science, to wrestle with moral complexities—exactly what young summer audiences didn’t want to see, apparently. The problem with this film wasn’t the film or the creativity of the filmmakers. The problem was that Fox did what they always do: they marketed the film to teen and college-aged men. They marketed it as a horror/sci fi film to fanboys and kids who grew up with torture porn like Saw. That demographic doesn’t want an adult, contemplative film with their popcorn in July. To make matters worse, Fox chose to release this movie into a market where the demographic they were targeting was already well-served by TDK and Stepbrothers. Market this movie in October to adults, and you would have a much different outcome. It’s not a lack of creativity that stalled this film in the United States--it was Fox’s inability to recognize what they had.

[Bill Dora]

Dave Poland had some interesting observations about this story:

Taking On Fox... But Where's The Beef?

Well… I guess it‘s something to write about…

What is Patrick Goldstein’s problem with Fox?

Has Tom Rothman been refusing to buy him lunch?

If Goldstein or anyone else wants to take on a studio and how it behaves, please, have at it! But be fair in how you use your stats… or you are not doing the job.

Goldstein uses the most petty journalist trick in the book, selective box office information. He writes;

“This summer has been different. Without a true tentpole film, the results have been dispiriting. The studio's biggest hit was "What Happens in Vegas," a forgettable comedy that grossed $80 million in the U.S. and roughly $215 million around the world. "The Happening," a poorly reviewed thriller from M. Night Shyamalan, topped out at $64 million (though it's performed better overseas).”

Problems?

1) However forgettable What Happens In Vegas is, it is the #2 comedy of the year so far worldwide, behind only Sex & The City, with a reported $209 million to date. As a point of reference, only one Judd Apatow movie (written, directed, or produced) has EVER matched or beaten the WHIV number – Knocked Up – and then, by only $11 million. The #2 Apatow movie is $30 million behind.

I had no idea how very real the success of WHIV was… and if Patrick had his way, you wouldn’t either. Even offering the number, he chooses not to offer the perspective.

2) Worse, Patrick smacks The Happening without mentioning the worldwide number... only admitting “it's performed better overseas.” Yeah… about $145 million worldwide so far.

3) Likewise, there is the “summer only game,” which eliminates a relative bomb in America, Jumper, which is a $222 million worldwide hit, and allows him to overlook Fox’s animation strategy, which is to release in March, not the summer, which led to a $295 worldwide gross for Horton Hears A Who.

4) Finally, is Patrick really selling that idea that a studio MUST make a summer tentpole – a dead concept still used all the time by old media – to be doing the right thing? Would a smash hit like The Day After Tomorrow, a truly horrible movie in any season that made huge bank before audiences realized they were buying a pig in a poke, have made this summer a success in Patrick’s mind?

No. I don't think so.

See… what Fox is supposed to do is to turn it all over to producers with deals and directing talent that has minds of their own. Why? Could it be that the people who whisper loudest in Patrick’s ears are the people who benefit from this idea… an idea that died first at Fox, but which every studio in town is following?

And again, Patrick plays the dating game to manipulate his point, even within the confines of his own story. He writes;

“Here're the people who directed the studio's 2007 summer films: James Wan, Tom Brady, David Silverman, Len Wiseman, Tim Story and Carlos Fresnadillo. I bet some of them are genuinely nice guys, but there's not a Warren Beatty or Tim Burton in the bunch.”

Wait… weren’t we talking about the summer of 2008? The three $100 million-plus films of 2007 are the same as the no-$100 million summer of 2008? But I thought… uh… well…

And does Goldstein realize that his slap at Silverman is a slap at the guy that co-directed Monsters, Inc? Not good enough?

Is Brett Ratner - who cherry-picked the X3 job from a relieved Matthew Vaughn and went tens of millions over budget, but delivered the film in time for a pre-Superman release – really the standard bearer for good behavior while working for a studio?

He throws Forrest Whittaker’s Hope Floats into the mix because, what?, he won an Oscar for acting years later? It's not like it was a great movie or a box office smash. And no mention of First Daughter. Not to mention Whittaker’s inability to make things work with Bill Cosby, back-burnering Fat Albert, an eventual minor hit for the studio as directed by Joel Frickin’ Zwick, for a couple of years.

And who is working for Fox after this summer? The masterful B13 director, Pierre Morel, does his second feature for Fox. Gil Kenan has jumped into a live-action film with his sophomore effort after the excellent Monster House. Wes Anderson is doing a cartoon. They have John Singleton aboard. Baz Luhrmann is back. The Chris Wedge team is back again. And of course, Jim Cameron is coming back.

Plus, the studio hired the art-house director of Tsotsi (and unfortunately, Rendition), Gavin Hood, to handle their Wolverine franchise, much as they tried to hire Vaughn (the production dates did his involvement in), much as Bill Mechanic hired Bryan Singer for X-Men, who they chaperoned to two successes, which led directly to Christopher Nolan being hired for the Batman franchise at WB.

Boo on them! Hacks! Fools!

Are these hires Beatty or Burton or Altman?

Well, Beatty hasn’t directed a film since… and he acted in one, Town & Country, which is one of the three biggest money losers in the history of the industry.

Boo on them! Hacks! Fools!

And Burton, who I do think is brilliant, was an absolute mess on Planet of the Apes, went way over budget and schedule, and was at the low point of his personal issues that affected his career. Meanwhile, he continues to work almost exclusively at WB, where he has done 8 of his 13 films. (The ninth, Sweeney Todd, was co-funded by WB, which has the overseas distribution.)

Boo on them! Hacks! Fools!

And seriously… John Lesher was all Beatty and Burton and Altman types at Vantage and lost over $100 million in less than 2 years. Is that what Patrick wants?

“I say the cruel summer numbers are also the result of a rigidly constructed system that has driven away nearly all of the creative filmmakers and producers who once worked on the lot, putting the studio's movies in the hands of hacks, newcomers and nonentities who largely execute the wishes of the Fox production team led by studio Co-Chairmen Tom Rothman and Jim Gianopulos.”

Then how did all those years of success happen? And what will you say if they have a billion dollar year next year?

So....

What would I say is a reasonable position?

I would say that the idea that the Fox bad habit under the R&G regime, which is absolutely real, of working with mediocre directors who are willing to work under the hardly pressed thumb of management, does come home to roost now and again.

Tim Story, Rob Bowman, Raja Gosnell, John Whitesell, Andy Tennant are all in that group. Some of them have had some big hits. And that is what is difficult about arguing the choices that any studio makes about the level of talent with whom they work.

I would say that Fox has made some very bad calls about restricting some of the real talent they have had in place, like Ridley Scott and the release cut of Kingdom of Heaven… but that would require making an accusation not based on popular belief.

Was Kevin Reynolds’ teen version of Tristan & Isolde a worthy attempt at something interesting or a child strangled at birth?

Could they have picked a more difficult genius director to work with than Doug Liman... twice?

Are these the same dream killers who backed Sasha Baron Cohen all the way on Borat?

Where do you put Shawn Levy in all of this? Does anyone really think he is a quality director? But can anyone deny he is a cash machine and that Fox is his home studio?

I like Tom Rothman. But then again, I have never gotten spittle all over me from the screaming.

But you can make the argument when any studio head is having a down year that their style has become a problem. Every one of the people in that job has vulnerable points, even the mostly-liked Dick Cook, who has lived with accusations of being too much of a company man when Disney’s had down years.

With Fox and Rothman and Jim G, I look back at their last down year, 2003. They couldn’t get the Peter Weir movie, Master & Commander, over $100 million, even with an Oscar nod. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was weak in the US, but made up for it overseas (almost double domestic). Just Married was horrible, but made money. Peyton Reed’s ambitious effort with Down With Love went down in flames. Phone Booth numbers weren’t over whelming, but it was a strong money maker and established Colin Farrell’s box office potential as an above-the-title name. And there were classic image disasters like From Justin to Kelly and genre experiments Chasing Papi and Wrong Turn... but all were cheap.

A rough year… over 30% down from the year before and the next year would be more than 30% up.

But from that year, they got an Oscar nod… as they may this year with Australia (and don’t let anyone tell you that Baz is an easy ride for a studio). They extended the X-Men franchise more effectively than anyone expected (and yes, Rothman’s chase for the Memorial Day slot for X3 cost a lot… and they did, as it worked out, beat Singer’s Superman by $70 million worldwide), as they may this year with Wolverine. And they got Shawn Levy in place, who will pay off again this year with Museum II.

And as I indicated earlier… things got a lot better again the next year.

You could argue that it is time for Peter Rice, who is much smoother than Rothman, to take over… an argument that will turn Rice green if you suggest its inevitability. When he someday gets the job, he will be ready for the job. But part of why that works is that he is loyal to his current bosses and unflinching in sharing the credit. He is probably the next truly great studio chief and I look forward to his ascension.

But these August cheap shots that guys like Patrick love to take… they don’t hold up. If the year to come doesn’t lead to a domestic number of more than $1 billion, averaging $100 a releases over 10 releases, you can start saying, “This has been going on for years now... they took a strong shot this year and they failed.” Truth is, the two holiday powerhouses made 2007 look better than it had looked as well.

But if you want to make the argument, don’t back it up with the kind of off-the-cuff attacks that people throw around over – yes – lunch. It's not news or even thoughtful opinion... it's just gossip.

[tom]

you can't lump vegas in as a flop. over 200 million for a comedy world wide is very good. and x-files while a definite miss, is up to 50 million worldwide on a 30 million budget. they will at least make money after dvd.

[Dan Zee]

People can quibble about this fact or that fact, but basically this piece is right on! Fox doesn't feel like Fox these days. Yeah, they've been able to make money, but would you really be proud of working for a studio that released Meet Dave or the two Fantastic Four movies?

And it seems strange that it didn't know how well The Simpsons would do as a movie. This lack of research definitely can ruin a studio. For example, underestimating the X-Files fans and making a low-budget sequel that has nothing to do with the show's main theme. They may have just killed off a film franchise. And, of course, we all know about the studio having so little faith in Titanic that they sold the US distribution rights to Paramount!

Marketing too is a problem. The ad campaigns for Fight Club and Moulin Rouge were awful. They didn't look like films I wanted to see, and I had to discover them on DVD and kick myself for missing some of the best films of the year because of bad marketing.

All of the studios are hiring non-name and cheap hack directors to helm a lot of their projects, but at least some of them keep a few vets around to do some prestige projects. Here's hoping that Fox will turn around and will not be afraid of taking a chance on the next James Cameron or George Lucas.

[mark398]

Well said BIll.

[dom]

there's no quibbling when the writer refers to a 32 million dollar budgeted comedy that grosses over 200 as part of a problem. that just doesn't make sense. the overall theme of the story is correct but when a so called journalist makes things up to suit his argument then it's not quibbling... it's correcting a bad writer

[observer]

Actually, wasn't Tom Rothman an entertainment lawyer in NY before joining the studio world?

[HollywoodDream]

I fully agree that it is time for Fox to get some new blood. Oh, how far they have fallen.

[Mike]

Seems to me one of the biggest problems with Fox is that they are trying too hard to find the next tentpole film without giving the film makers the freedom and creative control to make a *good* tentpole film. They seem to want the films out fast, cheap, and directed by paint by numbers film makers. I am thinking of films such as Eragon, Fantastic Four, X-Files, The Seeker, and X-Men: Last Stand. They need to take a look at what Warner Bros has done with The Dark Knight. That movie has lessons every studio should learn. Forget about pandering to the audience, give the film makers enough freedom to make the movie they intend on making (including the freedom to make it as ``adult` as they wish).

[Alan McKenna]

This is not a new phenomenon at Fox, look at Alien 3 way back in 1991/92 and the mess the suits made of that. Even the original X-men movie was made at a budget lower than it should have been, and it's just lucky that Singer managed to make a decent movie.

[David]

Isn't the way Fox is being run today reminiscent of the old Universal horror machine back in the old studio days, a studio which also eschewed A-level talent (which resided mostly at MGM) in favor of cost efficient B-level movies?