I don’t talk about movies and TV shows much over here, that’s mostly something for my other blog, but I figured it fit here because of the reasons it bombed, of which there are a lot.

So, why do I think the director of Haunted Mansion has a lot of problems? The same reason I think a lot of Hollywood has a lot of problems.

Let’s explore it.

Mostly, I’m going to talk about some of the things that the director, Justin Simien, has said about the making of the movie. He stated specifically that he wanted to make the movie primarily black and then used the demographics of New Orleans as an ostensible reason. Granted, he said that New Orleans was 85% black, when in fact, at least at the moment, it is 58% black, but the demographics bear it out, so fine. Cast your movie as you’d like. It makes sense.

However, we know that’s not why it was actually being done. That is not how Hollywood works. If they cared about actual demographics, their Little Mermaid remake wouldn’t have been “diverse” because the “actual world” of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale was very white. The cast should have been white, if they cared at all about the demographics. Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books were set in a very white medieval Poland. They sure didn’t care about that when they made the TV show, did they and the less we can say about Blood Origins, the better.

The “demographics” are only an excuse and they only go one way. They will never apply to having more white people in a movie or TV show because this is a double standard. It’s not the real reason, it’s an excuse to shield them from the actual reality. They don’t want too many white people in things.

As I said at the beginning, if it had actually been a matter of the director wanting to present a demographically-accurate representation of New Orleans, that would have been fine, especially if he had some really great black actors in mind for his movie. However, this is the same director who came up with “Dear White People” on Netflix. He’s a director with a clear agenda, like so many other people in Hollywood. They are not looking to make entertaining movies, they want to make movies with a message.

It’s that message that tends to kill a lot of their projects.

So this movie, with a production budget of $160 million, made $33 million on its opening weekend. That’s not $33 million domestically, that’s $33 million worldwide. This is a complete flop, as we knew that it would be.

The media has already taken to the Internet to explain why, and they have some good reasons. One site gave five reasons. It had too much competition. Okay, I can see that, given how well Barbie and Oppenheimer have done. However, those have been out for a couple of weeks and they can’t have that big an impact. Disney knew this long before they scheduled the film.  That was their second point, it had a bad release date, which I agree with. This should have been an October movie. The 2003 Eddie Murphy movie of the same name, at least it released in November, for Christmas. The Haunted Mansion is not a summer blockbuster. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Third, they said that there was no ability for stars to promote it. That had no bearing on Barbie or Oppenheimer, did it? They exploded, in a way that this movie never could. Heck, half the time, recently, allowing the stars to open their mouths harms the box office. Stop letting these Hollywood morons speak. Fourth, mixed reviews. Well duh! It’s not a good movie. It’s the same thing that happened with The Flash and Indy 5. People saw it and reported that it wasn’t good, which means people didn’t go and see it. Maybe you should try making good movies. Hollywood has these paid shills who run around and proclaim “it’s the best movie I’ve ever seen!” and then when it comes out, it’s not. Maybe just make good movies. Just saying.

Finally, they say it was way too expensive, which is probably true, but it’s not nearly as expensive as some of the other movies that flopped just as hard. Virtually everything in Hollywood is way too expensive, I agree. Barbie cost $150 million. Things could have gone very differently for that movie, very easily. If you take something like Sound of Freedom, which cost $14.5 million to make, a $33 million opening weekend would have been spectacular. Hollywood needs to tighten its belt.

What it needs to do more so is to just make movies that the paying audience wants to see. Barbie and Oppenheimer prove that they are out there, willing to run to the theater if a movie that appeals to them comes out. Avatar 2 brought them in like gangbusters. So did Top Gun: Maverick. If you make a good movie, they will come.

Sadly, most of the things coming out from the major studio system, they just aren’t good movies. They are agenda-driven tripe with absurdly bloated budgets that were put together by committee, not by anyone with a vision. So long as that is the case, these things will continue to fail. Hollywood is not willing to learn from its own mistakes. As such, it is very much like religion. It just wants to believe, but beliefs don’t get you to a profitable bottom line.

No wonder theaters are a complete wasteland these days.