New ‘Fockers’ Poster Refs ‘Meet the Parents’ (Updated: Hoffman Rumors)
Thanks to Mike Markus for the tip on this one. Here’s the new Little Fockers poster. Or, perhaps, should I say Meet the Parents: Little Fockers poster?
The reference to the 2000 comedy classic is a curious addition. Do 2010 moviegoers need to be reminded that this is a sequel? It’s true that many of us felt that 2004’s Meet the Fockers did not measure up to the original, but the box office results were much much greater. So, you’d think Fockers in the title would be enough.
Then again, perhaps this confirms the rumors about reshoots pickups that were dropped by Deadline Hollywood yesterday.
For about 4 to 5 weeks now, Weitz, Hamburg, Jay Roach, and Ben Stiller have been going through the footage. The good news is that they just decided that re-shoots aren’t needed. The not-so-good news is that they think a week of pickups with all the principal cast in September is required. Fortunately for the studio, the film is “dramatically under budget”, according to an insider. But even so it’s still a $100M film as contemplated. ”The last research screening on June 8th in Sherman Oaks scored great. 54% excellent, 85% total favorable, 73% definitely recommend. But it can be even better after working on it,” a studio exec told me diplomatically.
Not sure what to make of this. It’s true many films have “additional footage” during post-production, especially comedies. I guess Universal is deciding to not take any chances.
Little Fockers Poster
Update:
I wrote something about this new footage offering an opportunity to pay Dustin Hoffman what he wants so that he could appear in this movie. Ultimately, I decided to delete it from the post since it came off as too fanboyish. Well, I guess I should have stuck to my guns because Vulture is reporting that Universal is in talks with… (wait for it…)… Dustin Hoffman.
It’s a $100M budget for the 3rd film in a franchise. I can understand why they’d be nervous. First off, the teaser trailer showed much of the same from the past movies and the reception didn’t appear to make people that excited for the film. Second, looking at the movies being released there is a good portion of the high budgets that didn’t do so great and money was lost. I love these guys to death but these outrageously high budgets are ridiculous IMO and are nothing more than stroking egos. They could make deals with these people that if the movies a success they get a so-much-percentage of the profits rather than make the movie have a high budget so they can get $20M salaries regardless how it does in the end. The days of the movie star are changing unfortunately. People are being more fickle than they use to. There was a time that whenever Tom Hanks (or someone similar) made a movie that meant something. Nowadays that isn’t the case. Even Will Smith got knocked down.
Not sure where you can include Will Smith in this argument, when his last movie made $168m worldwide.
Given the grosses of star-heavy comedies such as Tropic Thunder, NATM, and (I am strongly guessing) The Other Guys, I don’t know that $100m is that big a deal for a third Fockers film. If it does half of Meet the Fockers’ box office during during the same moviegoing season (albeit six years ago…) then it’ll still make a profit.
[...] of Hoffman’s return first surfaced two weeks ago, amidst news of the September pick-up shoot and allegations of replacing Director [...]