Did any of you see The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones movie? It was supposed to be a movie that would pick up a fan base along the same lines of Twilight or The Hunger Games, but instead bombed in the same way that The Golden Compass did in 2007.
If you didn’t see it, it’s likely that either: A) the appalling marketing campaign missed you (more on that in a sec) or B) you spoke to one of the numerous fans and moviegoers who damned the poor casting, writing and directing that did absolutely no justice to the hugely popular books.
The result of the movie’s failure was that the production of the Mortal Instruments was put back every time it was due to start until eventually it was put on indefinite hold.
The problem was that the movie grossed just shy of $100 million, which sounds great until you consider that $60 million went into making the movie and then another $60 million went into the marketing of it (meaning a $20 million loss). For comparrison’s sake: the first Twilight movie had a budget of just $37million, a marketing budget of under $50million and made over $390million.
Head of film, Martin Moszkowicz, said in late 2013 that he believes the film’s failure was down to the studio incorrectly positioning the movie – aiming it at children when the readers were young adults – and that they would fix that by repositioning the second one, City of Ashes.
Of course, that’s easier said than done and after marketing the movie tin such a way, it was always going to be difficult to then market the second movie to a much older audience – especially when the first had no real support or high-profile review outlets saying anything about it but ‘avoid’.
Well, those of you willing to give the studio another chance: rejoice! The Mortal Instruments will be going Live Action again, this time though: on the small screen. This is certainly preferable to the other idea that was floated: to plough ahead with the second film, but use a much smaller budget (recipe for disaster!). This time they will be going for a high-end drama – we are guessing that they will look to position it alongside shows that have seen pretty wild success lately such as The Vampire Diaries, The 100 and so on.
“It actually makes sense to do (the novels) as a TV series,” said Martin Moszkowicz yesterday, “There was so much from the book that we had to leave out of the Mortal Instruments film. In the series we’ll be able to go deeper and explore this world in greater detail and depth.”
What do you guys think? Will you be tuning it and do you agree that TV is indeed a more natural fit?
Oh, and before we leave you: it’s also worth noting that Constantin Film and TV said they would be looking at a television adaptation of the Resident Evil franchise too. Well, zombies are hot right now – just ask Fox!
