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| Red Tails box office numbers stink |
Costing $93 million to make and distribute, Red Tails has earned an estimated $31 - $33 million in two weeks of being in theaters. Not too bad, right? Wrong. Consider that Tyler Perry - the Orson Welles of Black cinema - has a target market of mostly Black moviegoers, while his films open to box office numbers that should give any industry analyst pause when it comes to evaluating Red Tails success. From my new Vdare column:
Of course, that $58 million didn’t count the $35 million dedicated to distribution and marketing. Still, some were even more optimistic: Take That, Critics! “Red Tails” Is Box Office Hit!, NewsOne.com, January 23, 2012.
But Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family opened to $25 million in April of 2011; and Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married opened to $29 million in April of 2010; and Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail opened to $41 million in 2009. See the numbers on BoxOfficeMojo.com.Read the rest of it there, comment on it here, and share it all across the wonderful social media of the Web.
And Perry spends considerably less in marketing dollars and doesn’t get free, sycophantic “earned media”—let alone schools closing to take students to see fiction peddled as truth.
“Hollywood studios were stunned by how well this George Lucas banner film Red Tails did in matinees Friday. Until they discovered that the Lucasfilm/Twentieth Century Fox marketing inside the African-American community resulted in busloads of midday filmgoers for the Tuskegee Airmen’s true story. ”[Nikki Finke, writing on Deadline.com, January 22, 2012]Nor do Black people launch a Twitter campaign(#supportRedTails) urging seeing Tyler movies the opening week.
Crash and burned? Yeah. Red Tails is officially a bomb. And Slider still stinks.
44 comments:
More and more white people are catching on: When Hollywood produces a black-based movie, it will be little more than fantasy that preaches White privilege, White guilt and black victimization.
People go the movies to be entertained; to enjoy the experience.
Being lied to and brow beaten is not entertainment.
This has probably been pointed out before, I just looked at the movie poster(s) for this film. The absolutely ridiculous notion that had these Tuskegee Airmen actually in pursuit of one of those German ME262 (jet propulsion fighter), which would have left any piston driven aircraft in the dust,
I guess we need to believe that they are also magical pilots now who by their very presence can propel a piston driven aircraft to fly as fast as a jet. This is nuts.
I think RED TAILS failed because it offers old-fashioned liberalism, the sort Lucas was familiar with in his youth. Though filled with liberal cliches, it is stylistically a Norman Rockwellian sort of movie that appeals to the conservative mindset. It's a conservative-feeling movie with liberal message. As such, it failed to win over conservatives(who want conservative feel and conservative message) and it failed to win over liberals and blacks(for whom RED TAILS is too old-fashioned). RED TAILS may be effusive in its praise of blacks, but it still fits into the mold of 'credit to my race' narrative. Blacks in this movie are good because they possess so many positive qualities. For many blacks, this is boring. Blacks now take pride in being 'bad', not in being goody. Blacks wanna see blacks yelling 'fuck', 'nigga', and humping white chicks--and using futuristic guns to blow away space aliens or zombies, which be far more cool than watching old WWII pre-jet planes. When much of porn is now about big black studs conquering white meat, stuff like RED TAILS is quaint. Blacks feel that they've proven their manhood via music, sports, and porn many times over. And even through politics with Obama presidency.
Yet, Lucas, in his isolation, is still making the sort of stuff made by Stanley Kramer in the early 60s. It's sooooo boring, so irrelevant. It's like promoting Joe Louis as a good Negro in the era of Muhammad Ali.
Btw, while RED TAILS has nothing to do with real history, what war movie has ever been true to history? Didn't John Wayne make GREEN BERETS? Didn't Stallone give us RAMBO? What did they have to do with what really happened in Vietnam? So, while I detest the PC bullshit of RED TAILS, it is hardly unique in being full of bs about history. Most movies about Jesse James have nothing to do with reality either.
You guys can't handle the truth.
These brave soldiers not only kicked the Nazis asses while aAmerica was relling but had to deal with atrocious racism back home.
THis move was ahuge success and will pave the way for more movies that tell the true stories of People of Clolr.
Just wait until the demographics change and Red Tails will seemlike Birth of a Nation.
White guilt is something that is for the other person, "better for thee than me." That is the DWLs' take on white guilt.
Being a Navy vet, and an Army vet myself - I wouldn't want to take away anything any of what my brothers and sisters of all races have done for this country. However, the notion of a reciprocating engine driven aircraft outflying an Me-262 in a dog fight is laughable. Lucas may have done more to hurt blacks (by promoting an obvious lie, to be sneered at, its concept derided) than he might have helped them, for example - telling the story of George Washington Carver, the man who founded Tuskegee in the first place. Modern blacks aren't interested in true heroism anyway, but much more interested in blackness, for blackness sake. Most whites like Bill Cosby - most blacks think he acts white.
"Just wait until the demographics change and Red Tails will seemlike Birth of a Nation."
This sentiment captures beautifully why exactly massive third-world immigration needs to be stopped, cold, not only for the future of Whites, but blacks as well.
The author of he above vomit doesn't realize there is no concept of brown guilt.
Blacks are too shortsighted to realize demographic White demise will be the demise of the American-African population.
And, btw, how can a loss of 50 plus million dollars be considered a success?
In short: It can't.
Just wait until the demographics change and Red Tails will seemlike Birth of a Nation.
Wait until the demographics change? In case you didn't notice, boy, practically all of the demographic change in this country has been the rapid increase in the Hispanic and Asian populations. These people have absolutely no white guilt. You think that when they're the majority in this country, they're going to pay sky-high taxes so that your fat-assed baby mommas can sit on their asses all day collecting welfare checks and smoking crack? You think that they're going to put up with your constant, disruptive TNB?
I have a better idea, boot-lip: why don't you just wait until the demographics change. I think when that happens, you're going to get the rudest fucking awakening of your life.
Oh look, black thugs being black thugs...
Thugs attack cabbie, passenger
IN A HORRIFIC assault in Center City on Saturday night, three teenagers who were spouting racial slurs pulled a man out of a cab to beat him. And when the cabdriver intervened to stop the assault, the teens turned their rage on him, police said yesterday.
About 8:25 p.m., a cab was stopped at a red light at 15th and Chestnut streets when two 17-year-old boys and a 15-year-old boy approached and started calling the male passenger in the back seat racially derogatory names, police said.
The boys then threw an unknown liquid at the cab before they opened the door, pulled the passenger out and started to pummel him, police said.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/138307964.html?cmpid=15585797
Maybe Lucas next excuse-fest will be a story about the Black Nazi soldiers that fought in WW2.
If the handful of black pilots can "win the war," for the U.S., then the black soldiers for the NAZI's "lost the war" for the U.S.
Next, Lucas can do a film on the black (slave-owning) confederate soldiers that enlisted, served, and were well documented post-war with tv, radio, and print interviews.
Ya know, a story not often told but just as true and racially-juicy might just be the thing we should see.
Maybe the next project could be the current-day sex-slave trade in Detroit
"You guys can't handle the truth."
These troll posts were unfunny to begin with, now they're just annoying and tiresome.
but much more interested in blackness, for blackness sake. Most whites like Bill Cosby - most blacks think he acts white.
Indeed. Aren't mr evergreen, Desiree, and GI Joe sneered at for being "Oreos" by members of their own community?
"I think RED TAILS failed because it offers old-fashioned liberalism"
It failed because there is no interest in the tired, white-guilt-inducing story of the "heroic black underdog", especially when this mythical image is so colossally inconsistent with thug-negro reality. These movies have been failing for years, and they will always fail. Even blacks don't waste their money supporting such horse-shit.
Other recent examples:
"Akeelah And The Bee"
"The Great Debaters"
"Pride"
"Coach Carter"
"The Express"
It's almost comical that George Lucas was willing to spend 100 million of his own money, in spite of the sheer certainty that this turd would sink. The guy is an absolute fool.
It is a wikipedia fact that the Red Tails sunk the TA-23 in the Mediterranean.
It hit a mine and was attacked by Torpedo boats and left in such a condition it was sunk rather than let it fall into enemy hands.
Who would be crazy enough to go to a theater that is expected to draw negros? That's asking to be a crime stat.
Anonymous (January 30, 2012 12:02 PM): It's almost comical that George Lucas was willing to spend 100 million of his own money, in spite of the sheer certainty that this turd would sink. The guy is an absolute fool.
This reminds me very little of a scene from "Citizen Kane".
"You're right, Mister Thatcher, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in... 60 years."
At this rate, Lucas will have to shutter his studios sometime in the next century.
Slider will always stink, Iceman is sill an asshat piranha, and I still find myself racing any plane I see doing a takeoff. Meg ryan does her best acting of any of her films in this classic though and as far as McGillis goes, well I guess once she took the Cruise, she couldn't ever find anything else to compare. bad joke I know.
Films made before the dawning of CGI overload had to rely on strong stories and good acting. Red Tails has neither. The HBO version wasn't any better and did't have anywhere near the overhyped marketing campaign that this Lucas flop enjoyed. Wonder if Speilberg has traded in the 1/2 and 1/2 deal he made with Lucas years ago? I mean War Horse, with little to no marketing and Spielberg agreeing to limit the total numbers of theaters that the film was released onto, has still made what 75$ million and counting? Any way Lucas looks at this, Red Tails is a flop.
Of course with all of his pre-opening, last minute let me cover my ass for what I know is about to happen, interviews he painted an even more fictitious picture of reality than the one he was about to show on the screen. All of this has followed so nicely on the heels of Lucas whining about fans being disappointed in his only moneymaker series Star Wars. All the lost money from Red Tails also explains why he has re-re-released Episode 1 but hey wait this time in 3D, I mean he's gotta pay for that new huge mega studio some how.
He needs to go back to film school and learn how to make a film, his only claim to fame is a ripped-off Kurosawa take on a Shakespeare play and that isn't anything to hang your hat on.
Andrea Ostrov Letania said
It's a conservative-feeling movie with liberal message. As such, it failed to win over conservatives(who want conservative feel and conservative message) and it failed to win over liberals and blacks(for whom RED TAILS is too old-fashioned).
I saw the movie last week and your description fits it to a 'T'.
I can't type more now but in sum tyler perry runs a plantation cranking out low budget dreck. He works crew like slaves.
"People of Clolr"? This guy is a riot, I'm telling you. It is getting a bit difficult to distinguish between the sub-literate black troll posts and the ersatz sub-literate racial realist-mocking-black-troll-posts posts. I think this one was the former because of the reference to "Birth of a Nation." Most blacks don't even know of the film's existence. Still, hilarious post.
That's two 2012 predictions that have come true:
(1) Red Tails flopped.
(2) The Black Undertow in Philadelphia continues to make headlines.
"These brave soldiers not only kicked the Nazis asses while aAmerica was relling"
"THis move was ahuge success and will pave the way for more movies that tell the true stories of People of Clolr."
"Just wait until the demographics change and Red Tails will seemlike Birth of a Nation."
Oh! Gawd! LOL!!! STOP already! My stomach hurts!!! LOL!!!!
Ohhhh .... *Sniff* .... Hee hee hee ....
Well, we see what a Mega-Blockbuster this obviously is ... Just like that Disney cartoon 'The Princess and The Frog' was.
Oh lawdy, you negros be SO damn funny!
PK you can be my wingman anytime!
OT - but did anyone watch the 100% White X Games this weekend? What a celebration of White Culture and White Athletic Ability! I mean we had guys FRONT FLIPPING 450lb. snowmobiles 60 feet in the air! The touching tribute to Sarah Burke was incredible, as almost all the athletes had some sort of visual reminder of a fallen comrade. The best part was listening to REGGIE BUSH in the booth saying that he would NEVER be able to do what these White athletes were doing in a MILLION YEARS!
Somewhat ironically, the X Games are hosted by a BLACK dude named Sal Masekala, who has never snowboarded or skated in his life. I guess Badasses like Shaun White and Torstein Horgmo arent "Hip" enough.....
For The Help:
Production Budget: $25 million. Domestic Total: $169 Million. Overseas total: $35 million. Likely marketing budget: $35 million.
Thus costs are $60 million, opening weekend was $26 million of which the studio keeps 75%, or 19.6 million, and the $143 remaining domestic gross is split fifty fifty for $71.5 million, or $91.1 million, 31.1 million gross profit excluding any foreign revenues.
Why is "the Help" a modestly profitable movie (that cleaned up at the SAG Awards and is likely a major Oscar winner with another boost in sales coming)?
Because the Help was aimed at a subset of White women, the ones who made Oprah a billionaire by buying her "imaginary Black best friend" and moralizing ("I'm better than THOSE White people.") That's why it worked, and a WWII action movie with Black guys flopped. White women yearning for the social approval of Black people so as to raise their social status among important White people did not go see it. Since "the Help" has a White girl ... writing a gossip book ... as the central character. Who knew, Gossip kick-started the Civil Rights movement?
Gee, what "great news":
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/31/us/Segregation-Curtailed-in-US-Cities-Study-Finds.html?_r=2&seid=auto&smid=tw-nytimes&pagewanted=all
Segregation Curtailed in U.S. Cities, Study Finds
By SAM ROBERTS
Published: January 30, 2012
More than 40 years after the federal government enacted fair-housing legislation and the Great Migration of blacks from the South began to ebb, residential segregation in metropolitan America has been significantly curtailed, according to a study released Monday.
Whiskey, apparently they tried to get the white chick romance angle in there with one of the pilots flying over a town then meeting up with some italian chick. Probably didn't fly well (bad pun intended) with black women in the audience either.
Charles Martel: Films made before the dawning of CGI overload had to rely on strong stories and good acting.
Or they had to have hand-crafted special effects that were simply jaw-dropping. Like "2001 a Space Odyssey", for instance.
He needs to go back to film school and learn how to make a film, his only claim to fame is a ripped-off Kurosawa take on a Shakespeare play and that isn't anything to hang your hat on.
Unless you're Kurosawa.
Paul, ban Andrea. This poster is a known troll who will ruin your blog if you let him. (It's a he posing as a she, btw) (we know all about him)
I'm one black person that is ecstatic about this cliched crap of a movie crashing and burning.
The funny thing about all of the "controversy" is that the movie was made with white audiences in mind. The clue that this would be bullshit should have been the PG-13 rating.
The only "love interest" featured in the film involved a white woman. None of the men involved had white wives or girlfriends.
How ironic! A film sanitized for the delicate sensibilities of white people was rejected by white people.
-Black Guy
I've seen 4 incidents in the last month or two where whites have pulled a gun or other weapon on teenage black thugs--the cabbie (tire iron), a older woman who pulled a gun on a thug trying to steal her car while fleeing the police, and an old man who was confronted by a group of these idiots breaking into a neighbors' house--until he went into his house and came back with a shot gun. The fourth was a the poor 65 YO man knocked off his bike by black thugs who wanted to rob him--unfortunately for them, the man had a gun. One of his attackers is dead, one shot and the other on the run. Amazing how quickly these manly thugs cave when they don't have the upper hand.
We will see more of this. It is inevitable. I used to be a liberal and bought into the nonsense that blacks were just a helpless minority buffeted by the winds of white racism. I don't hate blacks--I have several black friends that I love--but these attacks have to stop.
Charles Martel - I disagree with your assertions about George Lucas and his film making ability. American Graffiti is an excellent look at WHITE American culture. Thx 1138 is an absolute GEM that set the stage for just about every Sci Fi movie that came after it. Do you like Indiana Jones? Lucas wrote the story and designed the characters for all 4 of the movies (yes Crystal Skull was TERRIBLE). He also wrote the story/screenplay and developed all of the characters from all 6 Star Wars as well as directing 4 out of 6 of them. (somehow he lost his touch for dialogue about 25 years ago).
As far as the Kurosawa thing goes, I believe you are referring to "The Hidden Fortress." Yes there are similar elements BUT part of the GENIUS of Lucas was to take various story elements (none of which were new by the way)move them into space, add a dynamic back story and entire universe, throw in some Campbellian heroes and bring the whole thing together with never before seen special effects and models. In short he produced a Masterpiece that borrowed some story elements from Kurosawa. BIG DEAL. Kurosawa borrowed TONS of stuff from American Spaghetti Westerns.
Somewhere along the way, little Georgie was hijacked by the Cultural Marxist elite and put Billy Dee Williams and Sam Jackson in Star Wars and then was convinced he had to do Red Tails because his early film making career was shall we say TOO LILY WHITE! He is a greedy Whore though, I agree with that.....
Am I the only one who sees the ironic redundancy here? The Red Tails movie is based on an overblown hype of the "success" of the Tuskegee Airmen while the "success" of said movie is based on overblown hype of the movie receipts.
I'll never forget reading a long time ago about how Alex Haley reacted when he was confronted by historians about how historically inaccurate his Roots was. He replied that he wanted to give his people something to believe in.
Primitives prefer false self esteem to the truth.
Allow me to correct myself: Alex Haley replied that he wanted to give his people a myth to believe in.
My argument otherwise remains the same...
The people that might consume a ww2 flying film, have enough technical understanding to know a P51 could not have knocked down a Schwalbe, unless the German was doing a bit of unauthorized slow dogfighting.
Everything else collapses for the film from that point. Added to that the bomber offensive in Europe could only be interesting from two perspectives as a drama. The Germans on the ground coping with the firebombing, or the pilots in the bombers. Thus we get Slaughterhouse 5, Heimat, (Even Das Boot), Memphis Belle, Dambusters, Land of Hope and Glory and catch22. The escorts were just not that interesting. The prison camp dramas proved to be the most compelling in the end: Great Escape, Von Ryan's Express, captive Heart, Colditz, Empire of the Sun.
Stalag films were a genre unto themselves.
It's almost comical that George Lucas was willing to spend 100 million of his own money, in spite of the sheer certainty that this turd would sink. The guy is an absolute fool.
Yeah, but not as comical as Mark Zuckerberg giving $100 million to the Newark school system.
This film was a smash shit
It made nineteen million on the opening weekend
That is extremely good
Most films dOnt make half that there entire run
You guys are deluded if you think that this was a flop
The P-51 Mustang was a superb piston engine fighter, and it was more than a match for the German ME-109 and equal to the D model of the infamous radial engined FW-190 "Butcher Bird." However this aircraft was a mere target for the ME-262 once they were airborne. Put simply, a ME-262 flew at speeds of 540mph and reached higher altitudes than the Mustang, which was able to only reach 440mph in level flight. In other words, trying to take on an ME-262 in a dog fight would put any Mustang pilot at a severe disdvantage. Morevover, the German jet was armed with four 30mm cannons that fired high explosive shells that exploded on impact or proximity to the target, just one shell could easily blow a wing off or disintegrate a Mustang. In contrasts, the Mustang would have to score many more hits with it's .50 calbier machine guns to get a ME-262. The truth is, Mustang pilots resorted to ambushing the jets during take off and landing, or destroying them on the ground before they can take off. In the Korean war, the same thing happened between the piston engined F4-U Corsair and the Russian built MiG-15's, which in an engagement almost always used the Corsairs for target practice. Only on a very few occassions has the pilot of an F4U-Corsair won a battle with a MIG-15, a plane armed with a 37mm and two 23mm cannons that also can fly 250mph faster than the F4-U and 20,000 feet higher. The F4-U did fly on as a deadly ground attack aircraft all the way to Vietnam because it can withstand ground fire that would bring down many jets and it could stay aloft for hours as well. The Mustang was the right plane at the right time, but at the end of WW-11, it's day as a front line fighter was over.
Just to beat a dead horse, Lucas hates actors. Maybe you noticed he prefers working with CG? or the wooden dialog/acting he gets out of his human actors?
FWIW the final scene in Star Wars is an 'homage' to Triumph of the Will, the 1938 masterpiece about Hitler by his filmmaker Leni Reifenstahl.
The idea of "Red Tails" making a profit wasn't grounded. It augered in after reality shot it out of the sky.
Anonymous said...
This film was a smash shit
Exact quote!
Funniest thing I've read all day!
Thank you.
Btw, while RED TAILS has nothing to do with real history, what war movie has ever been true to history? Didn't John Wayne make GREEN BERETS? Didn't Stallone give us RAMBO? What did they have to do with what really happened in Vietnam? So, while I detest the PC bullshit of RED TAILS, it is hardly unique in being full of bs about history. Most movies about Jesse James have nothing to do with reality either.
The comparison crumbles when you examine it. Rambo was pure fiction based on nothing, set in America, and Green Berets was pure fiction based on nothing, set in Vietnam. Red Tails is "based on a true story," and the "true story" is itself a pack of lies.
Also, Whites have no business making "pro-Black" movies. Let Blacks make "pro-Black" movies (think there are any Black-produced and Black-funded "pro-White" movies on the horizon?) We're forbidden from making "pro-White" movies, or anything but anti-White movies, but we're making "pro-Black" movies now?
Red Tails is a fictional account. The "Tuskeegee Airmen" were a group of black fighter pilots, that is the only true part of the movie. What you won't be told, and what is true, is that the Tuskeegee Airmen entered the air war in Europe in 1945, all of Germany's experienced pilots had been shot down and killed, and they were flying in old planes. The Tuskeegee Airmen were flying the brand new P-51 Mustang, which was a superior aircraft. If the P-51 had come out in 1941, the war would have ended in 1941, that's how effective it was. The Tuskeegee Airmen were nothing more than a few black pilots who flew at the end of the war when there was no threat of danger from the Germans anymore. It's just a movie meant for black people to feel like they contributed to WWII on the battlefield, which they didn't. It's pure fiction.
I would just like to point out that it is a historical fact that the 332nd DID shoot down German 262s. 3 in one day in fact (March 24, 1944), an act which earned them a Distinguished Unit Citation.
http://www.history.com/news/the-tuskegee-airmen-5-fascinating-facts
And 3 of the Tuskeegee Arimen went on to make flag rank.
From the same article linked to above:
"5. Three Tuskegee airmen went on to become generals.
For keeping his cool in the face of Qaddafi’s troops, Daniel James was appointed a brigadier general by President Nixon. He wasn’t the only graduate of the “Tuskegee experiment” to make flag rank, however. James followed in the footsteps of Benjamin O. Davis Jr., the original commander of the 332nd Fighter Group and the first black general in the U.S. Air Force. Another Tuskegee aviator, Lucius Theus, retired a major general after dedicating most of his 36-year career in the Air Force to improving the military’s bureaucracy, helping to implement a direct deposit system for service members."
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