Expelled "Documentary" is up for sale

[Alyeska]

[urlhttp://ncse.com/news/2011/06/expelled-block-006695]NCSE[/url]

Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed — the 2008 creationist propaganda movie fronted by Ben Stein — is scheduled to be auctioned, lock, stock, and barrel, pursuant to the bankruptcy proceeding of Premise Media Holdings LP. According to a document (PDF) filed in the United States Bankruptcy Court of the Northern District of Texas, Dallas Division, on May 31, 2011, the trustee of the bankruptcy estate is seeking to auction "[t]hat certain feature-length motion picture ('Picture') 'Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed' and all collateral, allied, ancillary, subsidiary and merchandising rights therein and thereto, and all properties and things of value pertaining thereto." The auction is scheduled to take place on-line from June 23 to June 28, 2011.

The high bidder will become the owner of the movie that The New York Times (2008 Apr 18) described as "[o]ne of the sleaziest documentaries to arrive in a very long time ... a conspiracy-theory rant masquerading as investigative inquiry ... an unprincipled propaganda piece that insults believers and nonbelievers alike" and that was denounced by the American Association for the Advancement of Science for its "profound dishonesty" and condemned by the Anti-Defamation League for its "outrageous" misuse of the Holocaust to "tarnish those who promote the theory of evolution." (NCSE's Expelled Exposed provides a collection of reviews, commentary, and resources documenting the extensive problems with Expelled.) Caveat emptor!

I find this rather funny. The company couldn't sustain itself and didn't make a reasonable profit from all that work. Several organizations are already looking at trying to purchase the rights just so they can get all the archived material and expose just how blatant the movie quote mined and misrepresented statements.

[ChaserGrey]

Now *that* would be truly interesting. I've always wanted to take one of these political spin pieces masquerading as documentaries and have a chance to see the archive of raw, unedited footage they were cooked up from.

Best of all, since it's a bankruptcy proceeding, there's no (legal) way to keep everything in the lot out of the hands of the highest bidder. What will be really interesting will be to see who's scrambling to get the cash together to either buy the thing at auction or try to purchase it from the highest bidder. Maybe Ben Stein will to save himself public embarrassment, to whatever extent that's possible.

[ChaserGrey]

Ghetto edit: looks like the auction has already ended, as of 10 AM this morning. The movie fetched $201,000 to a bidder- unfortunately, all the bidders in the auction are anonymous so we don't know who ended up with it. For the truly curious: http://www.maxanet.com/cgi-bin/mnhistory.cgi?rosen2/1.

Nobody seems to know how much the producers blew on this thing. I've seen $3.5 million banded around as a production cost, but that doesn't include marketing- and there was a media blitz around the movie, at least in some circles. Box Office Mojo says it took in about $7.7 million in theaters before being put out of its misery, and it went to DVD pretty quickly after that. Seems to indicate the producers spent a lot of money on marketing and couldn't make it back.

If anyone needs me, I'll be finishing a degree in nanoscale engineering solely for the purpose of construction a violin out of ten carbon atoms and playing it. Don't wait up.