Err, what a joke.<p>> The Expendables 3″ was widely seen as a litmus test for the impact that piracy can have on a film’s prospects.<p>How? By what metric? A movie that no one wants to see, that is predictably bad tanked. Trying to blame piracy so that you can justify increasingly anti social measures against your customers is ridiculous. Indeed most people would prob want to be paid to go and see this rather than waste 2 hours on it.<p>I know a filmmaker and they are fully aware that the marketplace for bad content is very small. Due to internet word of mouth failures are exponentially worse because people these days go to see specific movies and rarely go to see whatever movie happens to be on. They teach courses on this stuff.<p>This is a studio trying to save face.
If anyone here has seen this movie or any of the other movies in this series then you would know piracy is merely a scapegoat here. It flopped because, well, it's a bad movie with an expendable storyline.<p>To be honest, I think the studio deliberately leaked the movie because they knew it was going to flop (studios aren't stupid, they loosely know the numbers before a movie debuts) so they could blame piracy instead of the bad storyline and lack of plot.<p>The inner conspiracy theorist in me thinks the studios leaked the movie so they could push for tougher anti-piracy legislation and lobby harder. Before this, the studios had no real argument, but you can't deny the numbers are atrocious and on paper, it's easy to blame piracy for this instead of the real culprit. It feels very deliberate.
"Expendables 3" scores 35/100 on Metacritic [1]. The original scored 45/100 [2] and "Expendables 2" scored 51/100 [3].<p>Perhaps it's performing poorly because it's a very poor movie. Or perhaps the leak let people find out in advance it's a very poor movie.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables-3" rel="nofollow">http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables-3</a><p>[2] <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables" rel="nofollow">http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables-2" rel="nofollow">http://www.metacritic.com/movie/the-expendables-2</a>
nope: it's just a bad movie.<p>while I enjoyed the 2nd expendables for its rather funny moments, the 3rd one takes itself very serious. with the lack of comedic moments, it's really just a dull action movie with a dumb story and annoying "characters".
Isn't Expandables 3 nothing more than a movie attempting to suck the last marrow out of someone's stardom to make a quick buck?<p>The instinct to watch a movie like this is like being in a waiting room at the doctor's office and picking up a two year old copy of People magazine. I might read it, I might even enjoy it, but there's no way I'm paying for that.<p>If people are pirating this movie, it means that people want to see these actors regardless of how bad the movie is. The entertainment industry could probably make more money skipping out on the huge production costs and doing Shakespeare with rehashed sets/costumes starring Stallone as Brutus.
Anybody know whether studios are insured against leaked films? If they realize they're not going to make their budget back in ticket-sales, maybe they're seeking to cover their costs using other methods.
Maybe there are better ways to reduce piracy...
How about a global, cross-platform release date for films? Pay to stream a movie to your device, or watch at a cinema.
I saw it in theaters, and piracy is not to blame, sorry. I liked the first two, but this one was just not as good. They tried too hard to bridge the gap with a "new generation" of Expendables, and less about our old-school action heroes blowing shit up (which is the entire point of these). And Terry Crews only had a bit part which sucked because he's the funniest of the bunch.
Since Expendables 3 supposedly sucks, I bet a high percentage of the losses were due to people pirating/watching the film and telling their friends how shitty it was, resulting in them going to see something else.
When a studio allows movie reviewers to see a film before release, are they allowed to influence/censor the reviewer from telling others that the movie is bad?