Big-budget washouts like “R.I.P.D.,” “After Earth” and “White House Down” were promoted as imaginative and new. But critics mostly panned them, and audiences stayed away, apparently recognizing that the films’ plots and themes were simply reassembled parts from blockbusters past.
Now comes another film promising to take an imaginative detour from the familiar formula: “Elysium,” starring Matt Damon and Jodie Foster, from the director of “District 9,” Neill Blomkamp.
On its surface, at least, “Elysium” sounds awfully familiar: a world-in-ruins story, lavish computer-generated visual effects, robots and production and global marketing costs of more than $200 million.
But the film’s backers and stars vow that it is different. Really.
“Ours is not a film that goes down the middle,” said Sharlto Copley, who plays a maniacal South African assassin in “Elysium,” which arrives in theaters on Aug. 9. “When you do that, it weakens everything.”
“Our movie is a political statement,” Mr. Copley added. “It doesn’t shy away from controversial ideas. No studio person was saying, ‘Oh, people won’t understand that accent you’re doing, so you had better do half of that.’ Or if there was, we didn’t listen.”
Despite its surface similarities to the pack, “Elysium” indeed works hard to veer into more creative terrain, starting with the fact that it aims to make audiences think. “Elysium” comments on present-day socioeconomic inequality by spinning a futuristic tale about a squalid Earth and a glorious space habitat where the superrich have retreated.
There is no sex. There is no goofy sidekick. It will not be released in 3-D. It is rated R. And the screenplay leaves questions unanswered, like how Mr. Damon, as an injured factory worker on Earth, survives a brutal back-alley operation to affix an exoskeleton to his spine and head. Don’t expect to see the obligatory camera shot of a ruined New York City.
“There were certain factions on the movie pushing for those global shots,” said Simon Kinberg, who produced the film. (Yes, “Elysium” has only one fully credited producer; “White House Down,” by comparison, had six.) “Neill ignored them.”
Mr. Blomkamp, who also wrote the script, does tend to do exactly what he wants — a right that he earned, Mr. Kinberg contended, with his first feature film, “District 9.” That R-rated alien movie, made for about $30 million, took in about $211 million in 2009 and was nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture.
“ ‘Elysium’ was definitely allowed to be as original and provocative as it is because of the success of ‘District 9,’ ” Mr. Kinberg said.
Mr. Blomkamp, 33, who declined to be interviewed for this article, may have also been able to execute his vision fully because of the involvement of Media Rights Capital, or MRC, a production and financing company that split the expense of “Elysium” with Sony Pictures Entertainment. MRC has a history of finding success through creative risk; it backed Universal’s “Ted” and Netflix’s “House of Cards,” which both met resistance from entrenched studio and network executives but ended up as home runs.
“The only way to be successful is to be original,” said Mordecai Wiczyk, MRC’s co-chairman. “Playing it safe is the fastest way to ruin.”
Sony has learned that the hard way this summer. While other studios have suffered bigger misfires — Disney’s “Lone Ranger” was the most expensive single dud, by far — Sony is the only movie company to have two big-budget films fail to connect. “After Earth,” starring Will Smith and his son, and “White House Down,” with Channing Tatum and Jamie Foxx in the lead roles, both fizzled at the box office.
Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/31/business/media/with-elysium-sony-hopes-to-break-a-string-of-failures.html?partner=rss&emc=rss