No Go for Roland Emmerich's Science Project, 'The Zone'

Just two weeks ago, we told you about a low-budget $5 million sci-fi film Roland Emmerich will be working on.  Well so much for that.  The Hollywood Reporter claim sources close to the director say the project entitled The Zone, is shut down.

The movie was suppose to start shooting next week and was aimed to showcase the director's range and ability to stretch the dollar while still producing a blockbuster flick.  The actors which included Peter Mackenzie and Brandon Scott have no clue as to why the project is kaput though one doesn't need to  venture far to put together a list of possible suspects.

Many are saying it's because the "found-footage" genre (Cloverfield, Paranormal Activity) is overplayed and people are tired of it or that it would be released too closely to another alien film Apollo 18, which was recently purchased by The Weinstein Company.  But to me, all those reasons sound like a load of bull.

First of all, Hollywood is known to milk everything until the very last drop and I haven't seen any slow downs occur with found-footage films.  PA2 did $150 million in little over 2 weeks!  Second, they can change the date of the release to fill a void but for the sake of argument lets say that's not possible.  If Apollo 18 and The Zone were to share the spotlight one week from each other, we're still talking about a $5 million film.  They'd easily make that much and then some.

My hunch is that the film studios would rather give Roland Emmerich another $50 million - $100 million project that can gross half a billion or more.  While the film will generation profits 10X the cost, the studios believe that his time can be better used.  It's all about the bottom line and I'd rather him work on $100 million film that generates $400 million then a $5 million that generates $100 million because at the end of the day $300 million in profits is greater than $95 million.

Or maybe this Emmerich was never serious on the $5 million project and may have used it more as a bargaining chip. "Hey, if you don't give me what I want, I'm going to go off and make an indie film and you won't hear from me in another year."  Well, I hope someone got what they wanted because I would've love to have seen what a director like Emmerich could have done with a nickel.   

Comments

[D]

My hunch is that the film studios would rather give Roland Emmerich another $50 million - $100 million project that can gross half a billion or more. While the film will generation profits 10X the cost, the studios believe that his time can be better used. It's all about the bottom line and I'd rather him work on $100 million film that generates $400 million then a $5 million that generates $100 million because at the end of the day $300 million in profits is greater than $95 million.

Not sure I agree. Not about the studios preferring him to work on bigger budget projects, because they probably do, I just don't think they are relevant. I mean with a $5 million budget Emmerich could just finance the thing himself. He even has his own production company (Centropolis Entertainment). He'd need to find a distributor but with his pull in the industry that wouldn't been an issue.

[J.Bradley]

Actually finding a distibutor would indeed have been an issue because they would've had to spend at least 10 -15 mil on marketing, unless they did something creative like the slow roll out they did with "Paranormal Activity". Remember, "Paranormal Activity" was made independently and was originally just simply going to be bought outright by Paramount who were then going to make a more "professional" movie BASED on the original. When Spielberg saw it, HE had the idea of releasing it, as is, but slowly - really the way "Blair Witch" had been gradually promoted a decade before, with a ten million dollar ad campaign. These kind of movies take a creative approach to promoting them and some distributors don't have that kind of time. So far these kind of movies have been festival type movies - "September Tapes", "Open Water" - OR they've been treated like major movies "Cloverfield", "Quarantine", "Paranormal Activity", "The Last Exorcism" - and for their cost - and the marketing put in them, they maybe have turned a profit. But eventually this trend runs out, and nobody wants to be the one caught when the music stops. Emmerich probably COULD make it himself, but he's obviously not passionate enough about it to make it and then shop for a distributor at the festivals. So in the end, it probably WAS just a sort of a little vanity project to show what he could do on a small scale, but it just turned out to be too much trouble to really deal with.