NEW ROMULUS 2 NEWS:

Michael Sarnoski is being eyed for the Alien Romulus sequel but when does making a franchise “love letter” become a necessary evil to progress a franchise?
I mean, a very small portion of Alien Romulus progressed the franchise further.
Why bring in more people to just try to make small steps to something original?

They really need to buckle down and start making original Alien films rather than AVP films that aren’t labelled as AVP. Romulus isn’t worth returning to unless they redo at least 90 percent of the story narrative.
So what if i liked the main characters as genuine original content, but they themselves as actors and actresses can choose new roles that make their fanbases,-it isn’t doing anything for the franchise itself.
Alien isn’t making new fans by hiring actors/actresses that dont’ make you think about the subject matter. Its just casting cheerleading actors and actresses doing whats best for themselves which is putting themselves in the spotlight.

I hope what they do next is about a narrative rather than a talent exploit for putting people in theatre seats. But i guess that is what it takes right to get the train back on the tracks? I haven’t watched rated R sci-fi much as an adult in the theatres-mainly a social thing- neither kiddie sci-fi either, i still do though in many other ways and find the means to experience it.

Does Alien need a director atteched? Possibly, but more importantly they need a script that pushes new territory.

I mean why does Steven Speilburg need to make a UFO film? I fucken don’t know. possibly because he needs to funds to make other films.

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They should only make AvP films going forward Richard

The reason we keep getting ‘love letters’ to the franchise is because people will buy seats. There are two ways to fill in theatres. 1) write a well written story that engages people and subtly has the characters evolve and treats the audience like thinking adults or 2) Throw in as many memberberries as possible so people do the dicaprio pointing meme, remember how good the reference was in its original context, and apply that feeling to the current movie.

Because with the current writing talent, if they try to break new ground, it’ll flop. Look at badlands. It barely made back its cost. Adjusting for inflation, it was near the bottom of the franchise gross. If you want a new narrative, you need at least competent people working on the script.

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I think post-covid, things haven’t recovered. It would have done a solid x2 to x3 gross if the balls were all aligned.
To respond to your points

  1. any film like this is good, franchises barely make this cut except for tangents like Prometheus (think that will happen with a Predators film? possibly. they tried with Prey.
  2. this shit happened with Romulus to a great degree of hope, but it ultimately was the “lets do everything we can with whats already been done”…

My thoughts: Budget is always a concern, thats why Predators did so well. Remember people, Predators cost 40 million against the 127 million it made as a RATE R without silly promotions except for an elaborate/directors trailer (remember those laser pointers?). Predators utilized a budget of a slasher film with well craft shots that made the film’s universe believable. What little they did with camera shots for the hunts were done so budget it realized it without spending a lot. But thats coming from TroubleMaker studios. Not Disneys well planned budget of “send everything everywhere to lower the costs and be on budget for every little thing that a director wants”. Predators it was meticulously produced and it survived and it paid out! Clearly, that should be the model of success for this franchise considering that it wasn’t initially a block buster sci-fi family action film to begin with and It shouldn’t be.

Badlands probably was an excercise in how to freebase handle a small franchise that is given a large budget with huge expectations but it did a few things people didn’t expect which was tell a very techinically difficult story to tell on screen.

Did iit survive? YEs. Did it make loads of money? No. Did it tell the tale it wanted to? Yes.
Will we ever want to go back there? Probably can’t happen because its a unique story.

The story itself was probably contracted based on the Disney Fox merge. Had they didn’t merge, another Predators/Prey type of story would have surfaced. It would probably have had a female predator…and would probably had been a very Rated R film much like Predators and Prey.

Sadly, the cinema companies are probably partially to blame. They haven’t changed their standards of operations except for buying more digital signage (selling tim hortons ads all over the place) and neglecting the arcade markets by not updating their strategy. Do they need more digital signage? No. Is their strategy for coin op vs card based arcades hindering their success probably. If they didn’t go this route and started to adopt independant vendors to setup, they would probably be more fruitful. Instead they look antiquated and hiring less people to do what they should have done since covid happened…and thats probably this principal “sell more collectable and practical merch like comics. Its called literature. Not printed mugs and special popcorn buckets that mean nothing to nobody.”.

You haven’t recovered

But how could you when you guzzle buckets of diareepoo on the regs?

I’m afraid you’ve completely lost the plot and the budget calls for your immediate retcon

wat?

i’ll retcon you! You souls-like fortnite reskin!

The budget always has the last laugh

No it doesn’t. Investors have the last laugh.