Give Up Truckin'

There's a movie coming called Monster Trucks. It won't be out until early next year, so you normally wouldn't be hearing about it so early. But it made the news not in the entertainment section but the business section. Apparently, the movie is so bad that the studio's accountants are taking a $115 million write-down on the movie, which is accounting-speak for "this movie's gonna bomb, so we'll just write all the negative numbers in the budget right now." And it's all under the assumption that it will bomb at the box office.

You might think that a movie about monster trucks would be a slam-dunk for Americans. And it stars the guy from the new MacGyver, who I was surprised to see is not also one of the guys from Supernatural. The idea is that this particular truck is possessed by an actual monster. See, this is what they call a "high concept" film, where there's a simple premise, which is explained in the title.

This preemptive panic by the studio had invited people to start piling-on the criticism. A movie about a monster living in a truck? What a silly idea, of course it's a failure. It gets worse when people find out that the movie was inspired at least in part by a studio exec's five-year-old. Again, cue the amateur critics, tut-tutting the idea.  But really, it's not that different from Cars, which was wildly popular. And Disney even managed to wring more money out of that concept with Planes, which you have to think would be a flimsier idea that going with trucks.

And the exec's son? Was it really such a dumb idea to get a kid's input on a kids' movie? After all, that little consultation could have prevented Mars Needs Moms. I don't understand why the same public that notices, or even revels in, the stupidity of movies, thinks that it's obvious which movies are going to be popular. And also, give the public a little credit for being open to oddball ideas.  Can you really say Monster Trucks is an inherently worse idea than Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs?  

I'm not saying it will be a success.  Though studios are sometimes surprised by bombs,  if they know the movie is in trouble this early,  they're likely right. Having seen the trailer,  it looks like it could be dumb fun,  though not nearly what I would expect from a movie whose two defining concepts are "monsters" and "monster trucks."  So I have no doubt the write-down is correct. But don't fire that exec's kid just yet.