When we last heard from the producer of the mega-bomb movie Atlas Shrugged, he was blaming critics and considering “going on strike”. A few days later, he’s singing a different tune:
As for making second and third installments of “Atlas Shrugged,” Aglialoro said he wouldn’t proceed until he had a more extensive marketing plan in place.
Ideally, he would also like to partner with Hollywood for the next go-around. “It’s my hope that some of the major studios will believe that this is not just a movie and it’s over. I’m open to making a deal with a major studio. I don’t want to fight them. I want to join them,” he said.
He said he’d be open to doing another $10 million independent production. “But wouldn’t it be nice to do a $50 million movie? And now the studios have a laboratory in part 1.”
This sounds like collectivism to me.
Also, too: This guy poops out the biggest turd since Gigli and he’s talking about using it as a “laboratory”? That’s like TEPCO trying to auction off Fukushima as a nuclear physics lab.
(via)
dmsilev
Didn’t he plan to make part three, which is almost entirely John Galt’s enormously tedious speech, as a musical?
Are we *sure* that this movie series isn’t being produced by Bialystock and Bloom?
jeffreyw
This thread needs more sausage.
WereBear
Atlas Shrugged, the Musical.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Jay C
Except Fukushima would probably draw more people…
Jay in Oregon
Now that’s doubling down on the stupid.
“Hey guys, I know that I managed to lose money on a $10 million independent production, but if you give me $50 million I know I can do better! Hello? Hello?”
Tom Levenson
@dmsilev: “Springtime for Reardon and Taggert/Winter for Unions and Clods”
or “Don’t Be Stupid/Be A Smarty/Come and Join John Galt’s Party!”
or, “Der Galt vas a beeyootiful dancer.”
Possibilities, my man.
Ash Can
That sounds like a fine plan. I’m sure the major studios would be lining up for the opportunity to make a picture that 12,000 people would flock to see on the first weekend, then shut down after that. I smell an Oscar!
VERBERNE
Just how many films has Michael Cimino done since Heavens Gate?
Breezeblock
I’m sorry, but that is fucking hilarious.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I liked it better when this guy was going to withold his productivity to teach us all a lesson. Why can’t all snotty libertarian douchebags do that? Come on, geniuses, show us how wrong we are! Make us sorry! Do it, you know you want to!
BigHank53
John Galt, Mall Cop
Ash Can
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Maybe he saw how many people were delighted by his announcement that he was going Galt, so decided he really would make us all sorry, and stick around instead.
BruceK
If I were a Hollywood bigwig, I’d give him his money, but I’d insist on taking away creative control from him. And remaking Part 1. And seriously rewriting the script.
I mean on the order of Starship Troopers vis-a-vis the original book.
The whole concept is just crying out for the Paul Verhoven touch (in satirical Robocop mode, not Showgirls mode, natch).
SFAW
Did I hear a rumor that Pammy Geller was going to play Bagme Tagher in Atlas Tugged? Or am I confusing her with something else?
Tom Levenson
@dmsilev: or perhaps it should be
“She’s up on the roof with his trains. He keeps trains. Dirty… disgusting… filthy… lice-ridden trains.”
(And, btw, it should have read “John Galt vas a terrific dancer.” Hell, it’s a.m., and I can’t even steal (much) better writers’ jokes w/o flubbing them.)
SFAW
Re: Starship Troopers
Too late, the Brain Bug has already gotten to Agli e olio. And the rest of the Galtians, for that matter. (Un)fortunately, there was so little there to begin with, the Brain Bug died of malnutrition.
PeakVT
@jeffreyw: No, no, any discussion of Atlas Shrugged or libertarianism in general is already a sausagefest. Don’t add to the problem.
debit
@WereBear: I can see it now.
Oh my God, I was wrong! It was Earth all along! Yes, you’ve finally made a monkey out of me!
Oh, wait, wrong movie.
AAA Bonds
Is there anything more predictable than a libertarian’s whine?
SFAW
Re: snausage: Am I the only one who thinks there’s something slightly “off” about having someone named DiMaggio make Cajun sausage?
AAA Bonds
Since my comments on this blog have yet to turn a profit, my next step is to offer Microsoft and Apple a partnership since they’re no doubt hot to get in on this
Come on, assholes, GROUND FLOOR! GROUND
FLOOR
Shalimar
$50 million for a movie about actors sitting around drinking. Only the best scotch on the next one, and the special effects of trains going through tunnels are going to be so awesome the audience will need LSD to appreciate their true beauty.
WereBear
Some enchanted evening, you will meet a sadist,
You may see a strange one, across a crowded room,
And somehow you know, you know even then,
That somehow you’ll hear about metals, again and again.
or
Everything’s coming up roses for me and for you!
But not you, or you, or you, or you, or you…
andy
Honestly, he needs to go suck up to the Kochs if he wants funding. A half a billion should do to re-shoot part one and do parts two and three with ALL the speeches! They could release them over the spring, summer and fall before the elections, thus saving America from collectivism forever and ever and a pony amen!
David
Atlas Shrugged: a movie jugger-not
All a bored!
AAA Bonds
The entire Ayn Rand enterprise depends on charity work by Randroids for other Randroids. That’s what this guy is hoping for – that his shamanistic invocation of imaginary Hollywood friends will draw some of the right-wing termites out of the woodwork in Cali, so they can further fund a money-losing venture.
No Randroids went to see this movie to see a good film or to celebrate its success. In the fashion of their religion, they bought a ticket to attend Easter Mass.
Chris
@WereBear:
Jwest may get his interpretive dancing after all, wherever he is.
H.E. Pennypacker, Wealthy Industrialist
He’s right — Hollywood’s unionized talent and crews WOULD have made a better film.
kamper
The funniest part is watching the producers blame their turd on the great and all-powerful cabal of ‘lefty’ critics when the box office numbers show that it was bad word of mouth that killed that beast.
jenniebee
I’ll say this for the randroids – they have truly mastered the art of going begging for donations to their cause.
Amir_Khalid
I do hope someone pushes John Aglialoro’s buttons so that he makes Atlas Shrugged Parts 2 and 3, preferably with the same people who made Part 1. The rest of the film needs to have all the rhetorical grandeur that the author set down in her book, and a truthfulness to life matching that of the Wyoming deserts depicted in Part 1. Only then can it stand complete and self-consistent as the monument that Randian philosophy truly deserves.
maya
Quiddich, Aglialoro, Quiddich! That’s all parts deu et trois needs.
Mnemosyne
Yes, because the studios have absolutely no idea how to make a movie and needed you to give them a demonstration. After all, they’ve only been doing this for almost a hundred years, so I’m sure they needed you to teach them what a good movie should look like.
Putz.
I would love to see a Verhoeven version, though.
Mnemosyne
@Amir_Khalid:
I think they showed them driving through the vast deserts of Wisconsin in the movie, not Wyoming.
If you’ve never been there, this is what Wisconsin looks like, so it’s even more hilarious than you thought.
piratedan
maybe if they take a more classical angle…. John Galt, Man of La Rauncha?
Amir_Khalid
@Mnemosyne: I stand corrected. Ws confuse me.
Bubblegum Tate
@BruceK:
I would actually be inclined to see that. Especially if Verhoeven can hone his sharp satirical edge again.
Brachiator
Hahahahahahahahahahaahahaha! There are few things more pathetic in Hollywood than blaming “bad marketing” for the failure of a craptastic movie.
And I would bet that marketing departments would be filled with exactly the types of people that Rand would see as the antithesis of the heroic solitary creator.
Good times.
Muley Graves
My garbage can grows mold. Maybe the new penicillin is in there. So it’s a laboratory, right?
Villago Delenda Est
The first ever spam sent on ARPA net was sent by…
a marketdroid.
They are vermin.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@David:
Nice!
Villago Delenda Est
LOL. Banner ad for “Atlas Barfed” on my browser tab right now. “Who is John Galt?” We’ll never know now…and, remarkably, that isn’t considered to be much of a disappointment.
Cheryl from Maryland
Where is Mystery Science Theater 3000 when you need it?
We’ll send him cheesy movies,
The worst we can find (la-la-la).
He’ll have to sit and watch them all,
And we’ll monitor his mind (la-la-la).
Now keep in mind Mike can’t control
Where the movies begin or end (la-la-la)
He’ll try to keep his sanity
With the help of his robot friends.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I just had a horrifying epiphany: After listening to this asshole “threaten” to withold his productivity, and then backtrack on that 3 days later; after listening to Wall Street supermen who drowned the world’s economy in the toilet whine for the last 2 years about how we didn’t appreciate them, and that they were therefore going to stop working and make us suffer, come and take our jobs, maybe even kill and eat our jobs–or maybe us, it was hard to tell–and hit grounders to the baseball team all summer for $5000; after all that, I understand their plan. They’re going to unendingly tempt us with the prospect that they’ll stop doing all the things they do and then back out until we agree to pay them not to work. That’s the only explanation I can see: We have to pay them obscenly to withold their “productivity”. Let’s be blunt: this is the lowest kind of blackmail. And yet, it looks to me to be a pretty good deal. We can shovel a few billion dollars to these assholes and they’ll go away and stop bothering us, stop torching the economy, stop making shitty movies, maybe even stop whining about how we don’t grovel thankfully to them enough, though that last one may be a dream too far…
piratedan
@Cheryl from Maryland: I dunno, sounds like this film was at the same cinematic level as Manos, Hands of Fate or Sidehackers, not sure our stalwart lads (and bots) have the youthful reserves necessary to rebound from such an endeavor.
Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@piratedan:
Manos the Hands of Fate is the best bad movie ever made. It’s sublime how bad it is. There’s no way to top that. Hal Warren truly was a genius, if an unconventional one. And Torgo rules! There is no way out of here. It’ll be dark soon. There is no way out of here.
Maybe, now that I think of it, those lines are a metaphor for the Galts of the world who just won’t go Galt. There is no way out of this hell where the people who most need to withold their productivity just mulishly won’t withold it. It’ll be dark soon. and there will be no more sunrise…
Carol from CO
Has he tried 20th Century Fox? Galt is so retro and so fair and balanced I feel sure Murdoch would snap him up in a NY second.
Mr. Wonderful
If you’ve read Atlas Shrugged, and are looking to finally derive some benefit from the experience…or if you’re looking for a way not to have to read it at all, go here for a good time:
http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/54707
WereBear
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): Yep. Made Ed Wood seem like… well, I can’t say Orson Welles, but I can say Norm Taurog.
piratedan
@Duncan Dönitz (formerly Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.): well I have to admit that when I experienced Manos with the bots, I was glad to have them riding virtual shotgun with me. I have no intention to see Atlas because I still follow a quaint philosophy I stumbled upon while in College, Life is too short to spend it drinking bad/shitty beer. I’ve had modest success in applying that tenet to the few things in my life that I apparently have realistic control over, the beer I drink, the food I eat and the blogs I read (hence why I don’t read Sully).
C.S.
Verhoeven would be good, but I’d really only get excited for it if Mary Harron did it. If she could make American Psycho interesting – and interesting in a way that was completely antithetical to the text itself – then she can do anything.
BombIranForChrist
Too bad this Galtian hero needs a Union to make something that isn’t shit.
Mouse Tolliver
He’s delusional. There’s no business more capitalist than show business. No studio is going to spend money on a sequel when the original’s box office doesn’t even match the movie’s cost.
AS’ ticket sales dropped 47% in its second week even though it expanded to 165 additional theaters. It fell another 47% last week. He told the Wall Street Journal he spent $400,000 on advertising last week, but last week the movie only grossed around $468,000. He added 165 screens in week two, but 94 theaters dropped the movie in week three.
It’s only made $3.9 million so far. At this rate it’ll be out of theaters before it makes back the $10.4 million John Agliaro spent on it, much less the $20 million total production cost.
Redwood Rhiadra
He should contact Uwe Boll – the man knows how to get lots of funding for movies which are guaranteed to lose money. (Uwe makes a profit when his movies lose money due to a loophole in German tax law).
WereBear
@Redwood Rhiadra: Dear heavens; that would punch a hole right through the fabric of space and time.
cckids
@Mouse Tolliver: Plus, he has zero chance of recouping anything on any kind of foreign distribution; can’t you just see the rest of the world hearing the premise of this shit & thinking WTF?
Mouse Tolliver
@cckids: Hell, when I hear the premise of this shit I think WTF? This is a story where one of the heroes causes an ecological disaster out of spite.
Mnemosyne
@Amir_Khalid:
Hey, at least you don’t live in the US, so no one expects you to be familiar with the different states. These filmmakers are supposedly born and bred Americans and they still didn’t know that there are no deserts in Wisconsin.
I think our educational system is even worse off than I thought.
Darkrose
@piratedan:
Galt hacking is the thing to do
And it doesn’t hurt to have a low IQ