No WONDER there won't be another theatrical release!

[Mistersuperstar]

Those fifteen years were very bad on ticket prices, so the gross reflects inflation, BIG TIME.

I guess so. I wonder what the difference would be if video/DVD and merchandise sales were added to the movies too?

 

[Marky]

I guess so. I wonder what the difference would be if video/DVD and merchandise sales were added to the movies too?

Well, any box store will have tons of MFS for 9.99, and it hasn't even been re-released! Must have over-produced them. I have it on VHS from Walmart - 3.99!

 

[travellingpat]

Wow...how did MTI top TGMC???????

 

[Mistersuperstar]

Well, any box store will have tons of MFS for 9.99, and it hasn't even been re-released! Must have over-produced them. I have it on VHS from Walmart - 3.99!

That's the difference then I guess. If you include merchandising and video releases, the early Muppet movies would outshine anything the Muppets have been involved in since Christmas Carol.

 

[TheJimHensonHour]

yea i was the one that brought it up before...the only thing thats differnt is the green moon on the box nothing else and it came out around last christmas.

 

[Marky]

Wow...how did MTI top TGMC???????

Let's face it, outside of us hardcore fan base, the Muppet's popularity comes and goes.

By 1984, the Muppet's popularity was on its way down. The show was gone, and they'd be high profile for a long time.

Since MCC was such a critical success, it paved the way for the 90's renaissance. Family flicks were HOT around that time (Toy Story, Babe, etc), so MTI came out at the right time.

It didn't hurt that it was a genuinely funny technical wonder with a brilliant Tim Curry performance. Word of mouth for MTI was amazing because, simply, it was a great movie. The 90's comeback though, sputtered out with Muppet's Tonight, which robbed the steam out of Muppets From Space.

I think that, unless it was really, really good, a Muppet theatrical release today would be disasterous. Chances are though, that they opt for another MWoO type of turkey. Disney has really missed the boat.

 

[MrsPepper]

MTI was amazing, I don't care what you guys say. And huge. Anyone who was somewhat young when it came out can recite at least one line. It was the only Muppet thing I owned for a long time. I've seen it way more times than The Muppet Movie, and I hadn't even seen GMC until last year. **cough** Generation Gap **cough**.

 

[Sgt Floyd]

You know, I have never even seen MTI
The funny thing is, about 6 years ago it was shown on tv alot

 

[GelflingWaldo]

Here's what Brian Henson had to say on the issue of Muppets from Space's "failure" (from a 2000 IGN interview):

Generally, the problem with Sony was that Sony and Henson were never in sync creatively. Ever. I have a lot of respect for those guys over there, but we were never in sync. Our instincts were completely different on everything. I'm not saying that we were right or that they were wrong, or that they were right and we were wrong, but there was a disconnect creatively between the two companies that kind of meant that what we thought they wanted us to do was not what they thought they wanted us to do. It's hard to really even go into it....

...Well, I think Muppets From Space suffered from two things. One, which was certainly our fault, was that the film was probably not as strong as it could have been. The script was not as focused as it could have been, and the tone of the film meandered a little bit. Second, removing musical numbers – in hindsight – was probably a bad idea.

I would say there were flaws in the film, but we also got clobbered by a disconnect from inside of Sony, where the distribution department loved the Muppets – and the distribution department wanted to go out in summer, against the biggest films, and wanted to make a huge hit. Early on, I had said to them, "We're used to releasing Muppet movies in the off-season, not on the on-season. We've always done well that way." They said, "No, we're going to knock it out of the park. We're going to go summer, and do a big summer hit." That was the way distribution felt – marketing didn't feel that way at all, so marketing gave us a marketing plan that was smaller than the plans that we ever worked off of with Disney, and yet we were in a summer rush. There was no marketing.

When we opened the film, there was still only like less than half of the audience who even knew it was in theaters, which is kind-of catastrophic for any movie. That's a week-and-a-half of your business right there. The marketing didn't get to the audience at all. That's why those big summer movies spend an enormous amount of money – because they have to catch families who aren't watching television, who aren't on a regular routine... They're on a summer routine, so you've got to catch them on the way to the beach, you've got to catch them at the restaurants, you've got to catch them at the theme parks, you've got to catch them on their boating holidays – you've got to catch them every way you can. Basically, we didn't do that at all. They used an off-season marketing plan that was not going to work in the school holidays. We really suffered a disconnect over at Sony. Having said all that, the film had its problems, too. Definitely.

However, the box office "failure" of "Muppets From Space" does not automaticly mean the Muppets will never be back in theaters. There are a lot of issues at play as what the future has in store for the Muppets.

 

[Vic Romano]

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed MCC and MTI, but I enjoyed MFS more and I think it's solely because the Muppets were themselves. Maybe it was a bad movie, I don't know, I liked it a lot; but MTI and MCC, as good as they may or may not have been, just felt they played backseat to human actors. To me at least, it was more like "A Christmas Carol - featuring the Muppets" as well as "Treasure Island - featuring the Muppets". Like "Yeah, we made a movie and the Muppets happened to be there the day of filming and we thought let's put them in it too."