Atlas Shrugged dies to market forces. Producer angry.

[SirNitram]

Link

EXCLUSIVE: Twelve days after opening "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," the producer of the Ayn Rand adaptation said Tuesday that he is reconsidering his plans to make Parts 2 and 3 because of scathing reviews and flagging box office returns for the film.

"Critics, you won," said John Aglialoro, the businessman who spent 18 years and more than $20 million of his own money to make, distribute and market "Atlas Shrugged: Part 1," which covers the first third of Rand's dystopian novel. "I’m having deep second thoughts on why I should do Part 2."

"Atlas Shrugged" was the top-grossing limited release in its opening weekend, generating $1.7 million on 299 screens and earning a respectable $5,640 per screen. But the the box office dropped off 47% in the film's second week in release even as "Atlas Shrugged" expanded to 425 screens, and the movie seemed to hold little appeal for audiences beyond the core group of Rand fans to whom it was marketed.

Aglialoro attributed the box office drop-off to "Atlas Shrugged's" poor reviews. Only one major critic -- Kyle Smith of the New York Post -- gave "Atlas" a mixed-to-positive review, calling the film "more compelling than the average mass-produced studio item." The movie has a dismal 7% fresh rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes thanks to critics like the Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips, who said "Atlas" is "crushingly ordinary in every way." Roger Ebert called the film "the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault," while Rolling Stone's Peter Travers said the movie "sits there flapping on screen like a bludgeoned seal."

"The New York Times gave us the most hateful review of all," said Aglialoro, who also has a writing credit on the movie. "They didn’t cover it."

The novel, a sacred text among many conservatives for Rand's passionate defense of capitalism, takes place at an unspecified future time in which the U.S. is mired in a deep depression and a mysterious phenomenon is causing the nation's leading industrialists to disappear or "strike."

Aglialoro's 97-minute adaptation is directed by first-timer Paul Johansson and stars little-known TV actors Taylor Schilling (as railroad executive Dagny Taggart) and Grant Bowler (as steel magnate Hank Rearden).

Though the film has made only $3.1 million so far, Aglialoro said he believes he'll recoup his investment after TV, DVD and other ancillary rights are sold. But he is backing off an earlier strategy to expand "Atlas" to 1,000 screens and reconsidering his plans to start production on a second film this fall.

"Why should I put up all of that money if the critics are coming in like lemmings?" Aglialoro said. "I’ll make my money back and I'll make a profit, but do I wanna go and do two? Maybe I just wanna see my grandkids and go on strike."

Aglialoro, who is chief executive of the exercise equipment manufacturer Cybex, said he is not completely finished with Hollywood, however. An avid poker player who won the U.S. Poker Championship in 2004, he has a dramatic script called "Poker Room" in development. "Maybe the critics will be kinder to that one," he said.

Ya know, you make a shitty product, people review it, and no one uses it. That's called the market. Isn't that the religion promoted here? But no, must whine about being persecuted. 'Personal Responsibility' is just an empty phrase.

[Serafina]

"Critics, you won,"

Seriously tough? Is that the best he's got? Blame the evil critics?

[CaptainChewbacca]

'Critics' being 'people who critique, which is in this case everyone.

[Simon_Jester]

The underlying (Randist) mindset really isn't about markets; it's about the idea that certain people (i.e. you the Randist) are special geniuses and everyone else is holding the geniuses back with their phony conventions and naysaying.

So when you succeed, it's because you did something right. When you fail, it's not because you did something wrong, it's because society wasn't ready or the parasites ate up your profits or something like that.

It's the perfect ideology for people with inflated opinions of themselves.

[Shroom Man 777]

Strike?! This ain't no union shop! Douse him with white phosphorus! That Hypocritical Producer Communist Aglialoro. He can go to Wisconsin and eat corn bread!

EDIT:

I bet his deliberate ruining of Fatlas Smugged, and now his strike, is a LIBERAL INSIDE JOB to discredit Ayn Rand's visionary works. It was like they spray painted a crosshair on Fatlas Smugged and did violence to it in a false flag operation.

[Patrick Degan]

Hmm... that went a lot quicker than I thought. I'd projected a month maximum to complete failure. And Aglialoro can just go fuck himself. He put out a half-assed effort and it showed through every pore of this waste of DVD space. Of course, even if he had actually done some goddamned work instead of just phoning in his job as producer, the film would probably have still flopped given the source material on which it was based. The only difference would have been the degree of failure and he'd still be whining about it.

Let's hope he'll follow in the model of the great "persecuted" industrialists of the book and withdraw his "genius" from society, to our lack-of-sufferance over the alleged loss.

[Pelranius]

At least his Cybex exercise machines aren't too bad.

[Covenant]

At least his Cybex exercise machines aren't too bad.

They did render some lady a quadriplegic when it fell over onto her. Make a shitty product, get a shitty result. That's a bit of a cheap shot, but honestly the guy doesn't deserve to have me leave the velvet gloves on if they're marketing this thing as "the movie hollywood doesn't want you to see" and such.

I knew this would happen, since there's no way he can afford to make two more--there's no way to pitch it or sell it or anything. If it had gone well I have to imagine he'd just sell the rights rather than make another one, since this seems half about making money and half vanity, with maybe some vague margin-of-error percentage about a love of the source material. Mostly because someone who was beloved of this stuff wouldn't have treated it so badly.

And just how perfect is it that he's decrying the critics? His tears are delicious.

First, he decides to be cheap and not fork over the money for real advertising, relying entirely on people searching for "Galt" or "Atlas Shrugged" or "Rand" and letting FOX's mouthpieces trumpet the film. They get pretty people and pretty locations instead of just shooting in burned out sections of Detroit and South-side Chicago like they should have. They make an anachronistic plot even moreso by sticking to the trains. And when the bad reviews come in, they cling desperately to the "per theatre" averages and "percent per theatre" sellouts, an old, old trick for inflating the look of the numbers temporarily. It's all just vanity. Nobody with a brain for movies was involved at all in this process.

And that's the best treat of all--seeing the movie fail on it's own merits as well as on it's ideology. And then to have the money Whine about it afterwards. Please go on Strike, buddy. Leave the movies to the moviemakers.

[FSTargetDrone]

Do they honestly think this will find a place on television? Maybe if Fox runs it on one of its news channels...

[Pelranius]

Funny how TNT wanted to do a four hour miniseries of Fatlas Smugged back at the end of the 90's.

I read somewhere that Aglialoro's stake in Cybex is worth $36.5 million. Looks like he bit off more than he could chew.

[Metahive]

Once more a Randroid does not fail to act predictably and in accord with his wretched ideology of Perpetual Immaturity. They should rename themselves Lost Boys and worship Peter Pan along with John Galt since like that fairy-addled sociopath, they just don't want to grow up!

[Phantasee]

Hmm... that went a lot quicker than I thought. I'd projected a month maximum to complete failure. And Aglialoro can just go fuck himself. He put out a half-assed effort and it showed through every pore of this waste of DVD space. Of course, even if he had actually done some goddamned work instead of just phoning in his job as producer, the film would probably have still flopped given the source material on which it was based. The only difference would have been the degree of failure and he'd still be whining about it.

Let's hope he'll follow in the model of the great "persecuted" industrialists of the book and withdraw his "genius" from society, to our lack-of-sufferance over the alleged loss.

Wait, you actually watched it?

[Patrick Degan]

Hmm... that went a lot quicker than I thought. I'd projected a month maximum to complete failure. And Aglialoro can just go fuck himself. He put out a half-assed effort and it showed through every pore of this waste of DVD space. Of course, even if he had actually done some goddamned work instead of just phoning in his job as producer, the film would probably have still flopped given the source material on which it was based. The only difference would have been the degree of failure and he'd still be whining about it.

Let's hope he'll follow in the model of the great "persecuted" industrialists of the book and withdraw his "genius" from society, to our lack-of-sufferance over the alleged loss.

Wait, you actually watched it?

It hardly requires actually watching this movie all the way through when you can see just from the clips and the fact that C- and D-list nobodies comprised the cast, plus the fact that zero promotion went into flogging this film to the public, that this was a waste of time.

Besides, the film didn't even appear in Gadsden.

[Pelranius]

How many DVDs would they have to sell in order to recoup the costs, in addition to making enough profit to get Part 2?

I don't think Mr. Aglialoro has another spare $20 million.

[Elfdart]

Hmm... that went a lot quicker than I thought. I'd projected a month maximum to complete failure. And Aglialoro can just go fuck himself. He put out a half-assed effort and it showed through every pore of this waste of DVD space. Of course, even if he had actually done some goddamned work instead of just phoning in his job as producer, the film would probably have still flopped given the source material on which it was based. The only difference would have been the degree of failure and he'd still be whining about it.

Let's hope he'll follow in the model of the great "persecuted" industrialists of the book and withdraw his "genius" from society, to our lack-of-sufferance over the alleged loss.

Wait, you actually watched it?

It hardly requires actually watching this movie all the way through when you can see just from the clips and the fact that C- and D-list nobodies comprised the cast, plus the fact that zero promotion went into flogging this film to the public, that this was a waste of time.

Besides, the film didn't even appear in Gadsden.

I don't think it's fair to bust the balls of the filmmakers or the actors, except maybe on the grounds that trying to make a movie out of Ayn Rand's books is like trying to turn horseshit into gold thread with a spindle. One of her books was turned into a movie starring Gary Cooper, the biggest star of his era, and it flopped like an epileptic fish out of water.

[Patrick Degan]

I don't think it's fair to bust the balls of the filmmakers or the actors, except maybe on the grounds that trying to make a movie out of Ayn Rand's books is like trying to turn horseshit into gold thread with a spindle. One of her books was turned into a movie starring Gary Cooper, the biggest star of his era, and it flopped like an epileptic fish out of water.

Oh, I know about The Fountainhead. I'd even mentioned it in my own thread about this latest Randian skippy-whip to make the big screen. It had two big stars: Cooper and Raymond Massey along with young ingenue Patricia Neal and was helmed by King Vidor, a big shot in the director's ranks in that time. It was a major studio release and it flopped. But that film was at least a crafted effort which went from initial script draft to theatrical premier in six years. This thing is more like the slapdash of a high school kid who starts work on his term-paper on the bus to school, on the morning it's due on the teacher's desk, after he's had the whole semester to do the assignment. And what makes the story of Atlas Shrugged even more comical is the fact that John Aglialoro dumped $20 million of his own cash and eighteen years of his life to bring forth such cinematic mediocrity.

[Pelranius]

How hard would it have been for Aglialoro to get other people like that guy from Ralph Lauren, the Whole Foods founders, the former BT&T chairman and whatever hedge fund randroids to pony up some cash of their own to help, I mean invest?

I mean, at one point, Angelina Jolie and a whole boatload of other Hollywood stars were interested in signing on (even with the source material, higher production values and big stars would most likely mean a wider audience)?

[Covenant]

How hard would it have been for Aglialoro to get other people like that guy from Ralph Lauren, the Whole Foods founders, the former BT&T chairman and whatever hedge fund randroids to pony up some cash of their own to help, I mean invest?

I mean, at one point, Angelina Jolie and a whole boatload of other Hollywood stars were interested in signing on (even with the source material, higher production values and big stars would most likely mean a wider audience)?

That was an entirely different project than this one. People often forget that he's owned the rights for 18 years, but the actual script-to-shooting process of THIS project was very recent, and there's not much carryover between attempts. It's extremely unlikely anyone is going to want to pony up actual hollywood budgets aside from hollywood, and those big stars are going to want to have more authorial control over the content than just reading off lines rote. I believe their concept was also either for a 4-part TV movie or a 2-part movie of the whole book. Clearly they were aiming to condense it a hell of a lot more and probably, knowing her, to move right along to the piracy and world collapse sections.

Even with more money they're saddled with poor actors and a real need to find their footing. They omit quite a bit of the non-conservative bits in the first part, things that would have been increasingly relevant into the next sections, so either they're going to have to ruffle some conservatives and lose more of that audience or dial it back just for a direct-to-DVD release and market it specifically at the randroid community--to the exclusion of anyone else.

This part 1 of 3 can slip under the radar as a traditional american conservative movie, but the next two would fly off into crazy candy land. That's probably why Jolie was intrigued--there was a real opportunity to turn it into a version of Bioshock meets Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

[Pelranius]

How much of an 'editorial' control did the Ayn Rand Institute and that Pleikoff moron have in the first place?

My impressions is that they took a pretty hands off approach (if it can be even called that), so it sounds like it's pretty much Aglialoro's fault for being such a source purist.

[Andrew J.]

I don't think it's fair to bust the balls of the filmmakers or the actors, except maybe on the grounds that trying to make a movie out of Ayn Rand's books is like trying to turn horseshit into gold thread with a spindle. One of her books was turned into a movie starring Gary Cooper, the biggest star of his era, and it flopped like an epileptic fish out of water.

I don't know, I've heard some commentators say that it might be possible to make one entertaining movie out of Atlas Shrugged. Of course, that would require making changes in the adaptation of the source material that most Randroids are apparently incapable of.

[TithonusSyndrome]

I don't think it's fair to bust the balls of the filmmakers or the actors, except maybe on the grounds that trying to make a movie out of Ayn Rand's books is like trying to turn horseshit into gold thread with a spindle. One of her books was turned into a movie starring Gary Cooper, the biggest star of his era, and it flopped like an epileptic fish out of water.

I don't know, I've heard some commentators say that it might be possible to make one entertaining movie out of Atlas Shrugged. Of course, that would require making changes in the adaptation of the source material that most Randroids are apparently incapable of.

Imagine how a literal adaptation of Starship Troopers, that actually preserved Heinlein's politics and personal views, would've differed from the Verhoven version. Huge relief for all involved, right? Now imagine Verhoven's treatment applied to Rand. Considerably more challenging, but it's the only shot there is at making a halfway watchable AS film.

[Sidewinder]

Fun fact: Armin Shimerman portrayed a "Dr. Potter" in Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. He's the same actor who voiced Andrew Ryan in BioShock. Anyone else see the irony?

[The Yosemite Bear]

he's also a ferengi.

[Pelranius]

Fun fact: Armin Shimerman portrayed a "Dr. Potter" in Atlas Shrugged: Part 1. He's the same actor who voiced Andrew Ryan in BioShock. Anyone else see the irony?

IIRC, Rand took a very dim view of humor that didn't come from her mouth, if there was such a thing.

[Xisiqomelir]

Just went to go see it. Honestly, not terribly filmed or acted at all. I'd say a 7.2/10 or so.