Disney movie question???

[Bob O]

With movies being talked about due to the recent Oscars i have a question to ponder.
While i dont think that disney should as a company be invovled in R rated movies if they want to keep their clean/family image(and that also means Miramex etc.)
Then why didnt Disney do the right thing and get the distribution rights for "The Passion of The Christ" which while a violent movie did protray an event that to alot of christians was the death of a their savior. They declined to distribute this movie(which if eisner was concerned about shareholder stock value was a no-brainer) but did then make and distribute a movie like Kill Bill which was very violent soley to be violent not based on any real events.
And while one movie based on what too hundreds of millions of millions of people was a real event has made over 135 million in less than a week the movie disney did make didnt even break even at the box office as the estimated coast of production/pr was 80 million per boxofficemojo and the box office take as 68 million.
So did disney make the right decisions in what type of violent movie they will sponser???

 

[Chuck S]

Perhaps Mel Gibson wanted to retain all merchandising rights. (He is selling stuff, you know)

Perhaps Disney felt that the company would be perceived as "Anti Anything Not Christian"

Perhaps Disney felt that distribution this movie was not great for corporate image.

We really don't know why any company chooses what movies they distribute, as we aren't sitting at the negotiating table...but really, this isn't Disney's style of movie (assuming you wanted it distributed under the "Disney" banner).

Personally, I think MG would have peddled it to whoever would give him the best deal.

 

[grinningghost]

In their ever increasing attempt to be super politically correct, I think Disney would have passed on this no matter what the financial rewards were projected to be.

 

[Bob O]

I would tend to agree with the pc line of why disnmey wouldnt be invovled.
But its obvious with the kind of movies released by disney under Miramax that they wouldnt consider violence or bad taste to be a reason not to bankroll and highly publicize a movie. So i guess Kill Bill is good for disney's image but a movie about the death of Jesus is bad???

 

[RyMickey]

First off, it's not like Disney was the only company to pass over "The Passion." Gibson couldn't get anyone to go for this flick. Everyone (in Hollywood) thought that it was gonna tank. I don't think that in anyone's wildest dreams they would have imagined that this flick could gross upwards of $300-400 million dollars.

Secondly, the way that Gibson set up the distribution deal with Newmarket Films (the distributor of "Passion") is that Newmarket will gain only 10% of the profits. Granted, now 10% may be significant, but this is the same kind of deal that Disney squelched with Pixar (I'm not saying whether I agree with this or not, just simply stating a fact).

As for the whole Miramax/"Kill Bill" angle - Disney should just drop Miramax if they're worried about stuff like that, and since they released "Kill Bill," I don't really think that the violence was the factor that kept Disney away from "Passion" (If anything, it was the talk of anti-Semitism surrounding the film that kept the company - and all other Hollywood studios - away). To me, I think that the Disney company can still maintain their family image while having a sub-division that handles adult-related material (I know this is not a popular opinion, but it is one that I believe in).

RyMickey