
How an underwater fantasy blockbuster turned into a legendary movie fiasco - seventyhorses
https://read.atavist.com/sunk
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Animats
This is about typical for "amateur director meets clueless rich guy" projects.
There are lists of movie flops, but they usually only include movies that
shipped. Wikipedia has a list of unreleased films.[1] If you read the trades
(Variety and The Hollywood Reporter), you can read about many other projects
that started production but didn't ship.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreleased_films](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Unreleased_films)

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coredog64
The book "Tales From Development Hell" has backstories on some interesting
movies that never got made. It was fascinating to read about some of the
complications that you'd never think about.

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Agathos
I read somewhere (Wikipedia, I suppose) that Wreck-It Ralph was in development
hell for decades. Long enough for its target audience to grow up into
nostalgic 30-somethings.

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quasse
This film sounds like what would happen if you purchased the components of a
blockbuster from Aliexpress and then had them pieced together by China's Tommy
Wiseau.

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DiabloD3
On that description alone, I want to see it.

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system16
Fascinating, but not surprising for anyone who's spent any time or done
business in China. For more reading, an expat cast as an extra in this film
kept a diary: [http://beijingcream.com/2014/07/deep-trouble-on-the-set-
of-e...](http://beijingcream.com/2014/07/deep-trouble-on-the-set-of-empires-
of-the-deep-part-1/)

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Shivetya
The trailer didn't look bad in spots. Reminded me of a mix of Hollywood's epic
movies set in Egypt and similar of the 50s/60s... the effects were off and on
good looking. Still its so odd seeing a "Chinese" movie and everyone is white

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verytvse
> Jiang told him that he planned to cast foreign actors in the lead roles and
> wanted to tailor the movie for international distribution.

I wonder if it irks him that the Chinese film which has made the most money
ever in the history of Chinese cinema (US$553.8 million so far, even beating
Hollywood films in China) is a film called "The Mermaid."

And it features a completely Chinese main cast and the story is geared towards
the Chinese audience.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mermaid_%282016_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mermaid_%282016_film%29)

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studentrob
> I wonder if it irks him that the Chinese film which has made the most money
> ever in the history of Chinese cinema

Why should it? That's awesome.

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studentrob
Since this story and thread seem to be about failure..

Here's a film made in China I _did_ like, called Ocean Heaven, starring Jet Li

It's a drama and touching story about a single father and his disabled son.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWAknxhWNZI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWAknxhWNZI)

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ChuckMcM
Oddly that preview felt like I was in Vashj'ir in World of Warcraft watching a
whale shark swim by.

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ucaetano
If you made a few changes to the article, I'd bet it was talking about
Waterworld!

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Steko
It's like the Jiro Nishi sub-plot from The Big Hit come to life.

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x0x0
Taste the Golden Spray!

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tcfunk
I feel like this would have translated better as a videogame

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fiftyacorn
i always think this sort of thing is for the tax break

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nealrs
headline had me thinking -- Waterworld?

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hinkley
Are all Atavist articles designed to be so distracting, or is it just this
one?

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WiseWeasel
I had to fight the urge to close the tab each time one of those damn sea
creatures lazily swam in front of the text I'm trying to read, but the
fascinating writing and subject matter just wouldn't let me. It's like the
author wanted to impart just a bit of the torture experienced by the featured
crew members, as they fought to complete the project in spite of a fatal lack
of vision.

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coldpie
NoScript fixes this.

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dboreham
I read the headline as "underwear fantasy".

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krylon
I think there is a word for that.

A friend of a friend used to run a record store called Futurizm, and my brain
always wanted to read it as "Furzsturm" ("fart storm"). Always made me smile.
Still does - it would be an awesome name for whatever one would attach it to.
;-)

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Jedd
The word you may be looking for / thinking of is melcryptovestimentaphilia.

