The Island

[meatball]

Act 1 - Story
Logan's Run
THX 1138
Dark City
The Matrix

Act 2 - Too Much Action
Gattaca
Badlands
Adaptation
Bad Boys II
Star Wars: Episode I
The Matrix Reloaded

Act 3 - Where'd the Story Go?
Man on Fire
Star Wars: Episode IV

[Pubrick]

is scarlett johansson not in this movie??

[atticus jones]

in deed...

and what of kevin mccorkle?

small parts grow bigger when stroked...

good job if you can get it...keep humpin' pal...

ata uh counting

[MacGuffin]

What Happened To The Island?
Parkes and MacDonald discuss what went wrong.

Husband and wife producing team Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald have become two of the most successful producers in the business over the course of the past decade. Their hit list is too long to list, but a few of the highlights include Men in Black 1 and 2, Gladiator and The Mask of Zorro.

Earlier this year Parkes and MacDonald had the horror sequel hit The Ring Two and it looked as they were on the brink of another with the July 22nd release of The Island. Helmed by A-List action director Michael Bay and starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlet Johansson, the original sci-fi action epic looked to be one of the tent pole releases of summer 2005. A lot can change in three weeks in Hollywood.

With a production budget well over $100 million dollars, The Island opened to a highly disappointing 12.4 million and has grossed only $31.4 million to date total domestic and $55.4 total worldwide.

This weekend press had the chance to talk to Parkes and McDonald at a press event to promote the upcoming Reese Witherspoon DreamWorks romantic comedy Just Like Heaven. Although talk ultimately shifted to the subject at hand, the question of 'What went wrong with The Island' was the unavoidable starting point for the interview.

"I think there's a lot of things to think about," says Parkes. There's two ways to think about it: There's let's think about what all of us didn't recognize in terms of the conceptual limitations of the movie. Most people think it's a really good movie and it plays well with an audience, but for some reason the idea of the movie as presented in marketing did not appeal… And then you have to look at or is this an indication of changes in the audience that are bigger than any one movie."

"On the movie side, it's a bad title. It's a title that refers to something that doesn't exist in the movie. You might say, 'Oh well, so what?' But really from the title comes the advertising campaign and from the campaign comes the image people have of what they may or may not see, so that was a problem."
 
MacDonald concurs: "It is, quite honestly, something we talked about later into the process of marketing the movie and almost made a change, but that's also a difficult decision, when you've already gone into production with a title and it's kinda in the air."

Another theory that has been mentioned is that the advertising campaign possibly gave away too much of the story. Parkes: "The reason why some people felt we gave away too much is because the story didn't distill down to a simple concept that could be rendered in a few words or a few scenes. I can easily tell you about two guys in black suits with sunglasses and big guns who protect us from the aliens [where] we don't know are all around us and you go, 'OK, I'll take that...' It's a very distinct concept. If I tried to do that on The Island, it doesn't come down that well… Without that clear conceptual hook, we ended up having to actually present too much, but it actually seemed to be more confusing, as opposed to elucidating to the audience."

Yet another factor is the perception in Hollywood that Scarlett Johansson and Ewan McGregor were bigger stars than they actually were. "Listen," says Parkes. "Those are superstars of the future, those two actors, they're not superstars of the present…

MacDonald: "I think within the industry, we think they are bigger stars, particularly Scarlett - both of them, we know Ewan's not a star, but he's such a good actor."

"[We] loved Lost in Translation, says Parkes. admired it and it's extraordinary. It made $30 million and that was a big hit for that movie…"

"[Scarlett] is not owned by this sort of young generation at all," MacDonald admits. "Even lesser television actresses, quite honestly, would have more connection to that audience."

"We've done this a long time and we've made so many movies. It was a big risk to go out with an original, and what turned out to be a difficult, idea and in summer, you're going out in a highly competitive time. What everyone will do now, though, is you'll probably be a little more conservative in what you spend, the kind of casting you need to feel assured you can open the movie, putting it out in a time you feel it has its own space. Those are just things you will reexamine more carefully."

Parkes says that, on Gladiator, a similar approach worked, but you just never know. "We had the experience with Gladiator where the biggest person on the marquee was the director and it wasn't a genre that was well-known and we cast for what we thought was the best actor. The timing was right and there was something very strong about that man, that concept, coming back with that genre at that moment. It was a very clear idea. I think that The Island was less clear than we thought it was. (Walter)

"We would all love to take out of the summer 'Let's all make cool, more original movies with lower budgets,'" says MacDonald. "And 'Let's find something new for the audience,' but I think there are still going to be both things in the market."
 
"Take a look in the last year or two," says Parkes. "Yeah, there are some big movies that haven't worked so well, but we've had Napoleon Dynamite and we've had these penguins and we've had Michael Moore's movie making $100 million. I think that it's a healthy time for financially responsible smaller movies to find their way into the marketplace and to find audiences. By the way, the audience now is all niche. There is no more mainstream, general audience."

"The Island certainly makes you as producers and as a studio look harder the next time… You cannot assume because it's a Michael Bay movie that that audience will go find it."

[modage]

"Those are superstars of the future"

hey, just like The Island.

[modage]

Is Michael Bay's Big-Budget 'Island' Just A Clone Of An Earlier Film?
Makers of 1979 cult classic sue Dreamworks, saying, 'They stole it, period.'
Source: MTVNews
    
Filmmakers Robert Fiveson and Myrl Schreibman have a message for director Michael Bay, Warner Bros., Dreamworks and anyone else responsible for this summer's sci-fi flick "The Island":

"I feel like I've been slapped in the face."

Those are the words Schreibman is using to express his own resentment toward the Ewan McGregor-Scarlett Johansson cloning film released in July, and which continues to play in theaters even as it faces a lawsuit that the duo filed earlier this week.

Fiveson and Schreibman — the director and producer, respectively, of the 1979 cult film "The Clonus Horror" starring Peter Graves, Dick Sargent and Keenan Wynn — claim that there are no fewer than 90 similarities between the two movies, and they are determined to make Bay, the studios and the producers acknowledge those similarities — and pay.

"Where were the armies of lawyers that the studios have during development of this project?" Fiveson fumed. "How could this have ever occurred?"

"I would just say they stole it, period," said Schreibman, before listing a few of the striking similarities between the two films. It's total theft."

"One of the biggest and most obvious is when the clones are being introduced to the island," he continued. "[They see it] on these huge projection screens over their heads, and they see their former colleagues in this paradise called 'The Island,' and it's all being narrated by a beautiful, female, soothing, engaging voice. In 'Clonus,' we had a slide show in this large auditorium where all of our clones were, and they were being shown an idyllic place that we called 'America,' with their friends who have gone to America all dressed up in white. And again, it's all narrated by an engaging, soothing voice."

"In the escape sequence in 'Clonus,' " Fiveson added, "when the clone escapes, he dodges people in a building that looks like an office building, then he takes an elevator, then he's running through some basement areas, then he runs through a corrugated pipe, pops out into sunlight, runs along a desert environment and through a fence that says 'Keep Out,' and makes his way to a [place] overlooking a valley. It's a very dramatic shot, when he first realizes there's a world beyond this place that he's been in. The sequence in both movies is exactly the same; the shots are exactly the same."

In their suit, the "Clonus" makers seek unspecified damages, a portion of the proceeds from "The Island," and demand that the latter movie be withdrawn from theaters and blocked from further release.

While some of the suit's listed parallels (the soon-to-be-hatched clones are similarly laid out) are stronger than others (both have scenes set in L.A.), the two argue that their compilation of similarities annihilates any theories of mere coincidence.

"It's just like a DNA forensic test," Fiveson said. "You take the genetic markers from both films, you hold them next to each other under the light and say, 'How many of these match?' Then you do the math, and you say, 'What are the probabilities of this occurring in nature by accident?'

"They'll throw out a certain number of similarities, and then a certain percentage they'll chalk up to the copyright rule that says you can't copyright an idea. So, the whole idea that there's a place where clones are raised for spare parts, one of them thinks something is weird and escapes — they'll throw that out," Fiveson said of his expectations for the lawsuit. "That's still going to leave, out of [90 parallels], a large number that are unexplainable."

And although relatively few moviegoers have, perhaps, ever even seen "Clonus," Fiveson and Schreibman assert that their movie still carries a certain cachet among genre fans.

"['Clonus'] won an award from the Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy and Horror in a nationally televised ceremony," Schreibman remembered. "It has been considered, for some reason, a cult classic. There's a whole underground group of people who know about it."

A quarter-century later, as both continue their movie production careers and Schreibman doubles as a film professor at UCLA, they also insist that they hope to make an example of the studios with their lawsuit.

"Here at the university, we teach ethics in filmmaking," he said. "My first question to any student would be, 'Do you have the rights to this?' I'd say, 'Do your homework — talk to an attorney.' "

According to the filmmaking team, representatives for "The Island" have barely acknowledged their claims. "Do you know what we've gotten as a response from Dreamworks so far? 'Would you like to meet the writer?' " Fiveson laughed. "My response to my attorney was, 'Gee can I get a crew jacket, too?' "

[Spokespeople for DreamWorks and Michael Bay had no comment; a spokesperson for Warner Bros. could not be reached by press time.]

"We do know that [Dreamworks co-founder and CEO] Jeffrey Katzenberg knew about the movie," Schreibman chimed in. "We showed him 'Clonus' when we were looking for a distribution deal."

"It's called stealing. It's against the law. People are in prison for [stealing]!" Fiveson barked.

"What do we have that makes us rich in this industry?" he said. "Ideas. Ideas are the coin of our realm. If you need to steal someone else's coins, then you're impoverished. If you Google 'The Island' and 'Clonus,' those three words — right now I think it's up to about 23,000 hits." (In fact, as of Friday, August 12, the number of results for that Google search was about 24,500.)

Was "The Island" as much of a clone as the characters it sought to portray? With "The Clonus Horror" newly available on DVD, and Michael Bay's far-bigger-budget film still in theaters, exhibits A and B are available for public comparison. And if the suit goes forward and the courts side with Robert Fiveson and Myrl Schreibman in their David-and-Goliath legal battle, much of the proceeds from both products may soon find their way into the same pockets.

not only did it tank, but now they're being sued.  just adding insult to injury.

[pete]

whoa if I was the director I definitely wouldn't go around admitting to everyone that I once directed a cheap version of The Island.

[Kal]

i actually liked it... just saw it... and its not bad

it has flaws... but its definetly entertaining... and scarlett looks awesome... ewan mcgregor does a great job too.. i liked it

[cowboykurtis]

scarlett looks awesome...

worth repeat viewings

[grand theft sparrow]

Act 1 - Story
Logan's Run
THX 1138
Dark City
The Matrix

Act 2 - Too Much Action
Gattaca
Badlands
Adaptation
Bad Boys II
Star Wars: Episode I
The Matrix Reloaded

Act 3 - Where'd the Story Go?
Man on Fire  Tron
Star Wars: Episode IV Total Recall

This really wasn't horrible.  Yet another poorly chosen battle against Hollywood by the moviegoers in 2005.  This one tanks but Fantastic Four does $150 million.  Not that The Island is some landmark sci-fi film, it's a bit too long and predictable, and it rips off more movies than Serenity, but it has its moments and it doesn't pretend that it's 2001 or anything.  Bad Boys II is still Bay at his worst.