Hollywood What If Chapter 596
September arrived, and only three movies released this month grossed over $100 million.
First was Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs. This animated movie was not produced by DreamWorks, not produced by Walt Disney and Pixar, and also not produced by Blue Sky Studio.
The animation studio that produced Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was Sony Pictures Animation. Yes, people might be surprised, but Sony-Colombia had its own animation studio, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was one of their biggest projects.
To list it down, Sony Pictures Animation produced:
Open Season
Surf's Up
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
The Smurfs
Hotel Transylvania
The Emoji Movie (People hated this movie so much, by the way.)
Spider-Man: The Spider-Verse series
Out of all these, the Spider-Verse series was probably the most successful one.
Anyway, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs was released on September 18 and grossed over $303 million.
The second movie that grossed over $100 million and was released in September 2009 was Paranormal Activity. "Written" by Kazir Grey and starring Tobey Maguire, this horror movie gave a new recipe to the found footage genre. Because of many changes, the performance of Paranormal Activity was better than the original timeline.
The horror movie grossed over $429 million compared to the original, which was $216 million. It was twice the amount. Kazir was not surprised. Paranormal Activity now had him and Tobey Maguire as box office appeals. More people were interested in watching it because of the two famous people who worked on it.
20th Century Fox was satisfied with the performance of Paranormal Activity. They didn't regret buying the script. They only spent a dozen million dollars, and the profit they earned was more than 20 times that amount. The company, being happy, decided to give Tobey Maguire and Kazir Grey some bonuses as appreciation.
With this, Tobey Maguire had now changed his career. He was not just Peter Parker anymore. He now had other box office hits aside from Spider-Man, and more production studios would cast him in their projects. He now had steady jobs to work with.
The third movie that grossed over $100 million and was released in September 2009 was Surrogates. Starring Bruce Willis as an FBI agent in a world where people could control robots while staying in their houses... Yeah, anyway, this movie was distributed by Walt Disney and produced by Touchstone Pictures, which was the live-action production studio of Walt Disney. The movie grossed $136 million.
The executives of Walt Disney blamed Paranormal Activity for the low performance of Surrogates. After all, the two movies were released on the same day and fought for ticket sales, which caused Surrogates to lose. Surrogates had Bruce Willis as the protagonist, so it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either. That was just it.
In October 2009, the movies that were released were mediocre. None of them did great; some were just barely doing well. There were no movies that could be defined as blockbusters.
On October 2, Zombieland was released. Don't be deceived by its title or premise. Zombieland was not a horror movie. It was a comedy. Perhaps people loved this unique blend of zombie + comedy, so the movie grossed $156 million. Zombieland was produced and distributed by Sony-Colombia. Sony-Colombia's business strategy was to produce mid-budget movies and release them on different schedules, hoping that they would make money.
Well, their business strategy seemed to be doing alright because they didn't suffer bankruptcy.
On October 8, a romantic comedy titled Couples Retreat was released. The movie grossed $219 million. It was distributed by Universal Pictures.
On October 16, a thriller/suspense titled Law Abiding Citizen was released. Starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler, the movie grossed $166 million. The movie was distributed by Overture Films, one of the lesser-known movie distributors in Hollywood. This company was founded in 2008 and ended in 2010. It was very hard for a film distribution company to survive in this business because the Big Six would do everything to destroy them. That was one of the factors why this company didn't last.
In this industry, a studio company that could distribute movies was a threat that needed to be taken down. We have so many examples, such as Orion Pictures, Carolco, and Relativity Media. New Line Cinema and Miramax might be part of the topic since they lost their wings after they were acquired by the Big Six.
Only some studios that were heavily funded and protected could survive the purge in Hollywood, such as Lionsgate and A24. Even DreamWorks couldn't last with its live-action and animation departments. In 2009, only DreamWorks Animation would remain. As for the live-action department, it was acquired by Paramount Pictures (Viacom), and the company ceased to exist after Steven Spielberg left.
On the same day, October 16, Where The Wild Things Are was released. This movie had the genre of adventure, but it was also an animated film since there was heavy CGI in the movie. This movie was based on a children's book that had the same name. It was about a boy who sailed to an island where creatures called Wild Things lived. The movie was distributed by Warner Brothers and it grossed over $135 million.