Can Jonah Hex Teach DC Entertainment A Lesson About Movies?

With an estimated opening weekend of somewhere around $5 million, it’d be tough to deny that the Jonah Hex movie is a flop – but coming only a couple of months after the similarly soft The Losers, should Warner Bros. and DC Comics be worried about their cinematic future together?

Both The Losers and Jonah Hex were adapted from critically-acclaimed, if commercially-mid-level DC comics, and both were adapted into relatively-cheap movies guaranteed to make their cost back eventually (The Losers cost $25 million to make, Hex somewhere in the region of $35-65 million, depending on whether you factor in reshoots or not), but the two movies also share the unfortunate fate of being the first two movies based on DC properties to come out since the formation of DC Entertainment, and flopping.

Deadline Hollywood’s Nikki Finke reports on the damage control being done to save face:

The studio is so embarrassed that it took great pains to points out that the pic was greenlighted before Diane Nelson took over as DC Entertainment prez… As one insider tells me, ”the studio looked at the movie a long time ago and wrote it off”.

While DC’s library of non-superhero properties may seem like a plus for DC Entertainment’s development in other media, it’s worth noting that the division’s first official projects seem to have learned from the fate of Jonah and Losers (Not to mention Marvel’s success), sticking with successful superhero brands Green Lantern and The Flash for movies, and Young Justice and Smallville for television.

More On Techland:

A Brief History of Jonah Hex

Is Blue Beetle The New Smallville?

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Boing Boing’s Rob Beschizza strung together this great 30-second video of just about every one of Apple’s hardware and software designs over the years. It’s perfect for Apple fans and people with short attention sp—oh man, there’s an albino squirrel right outside my window! Every Apple Design Ever in 30 seconds [Boing Boing]

charlieromeobravo

All the successful super hero comic movies of the last 10 years have had a few things in common. The characters are well known generally or at least very popular amongst comic readers. The characters have all had some contemporary relevancy. The filmmakers have actively recruited the comic fan base to build buzz. They’ve been well executed films.

Jonah Hex and The Losers were none of those things (although I really did enjoy The Losers as pure action entertainment). Are the Green Lantern or The Flash any of those things? Hard to say. The thing I like about Marvel more than DC is that DC comics tend to lean more heavily in the direction of pure fantasy sci-fi which I think makes their titles a tougher sell generally. I’m not a regular reader of any DC titles so that may just be my outdated impressions talking…
Kevin in Chicago

I’m not sure there’s any coherent lesson to be learned. Purely anecdotally, in my group of friends, very few people were excited about “The Losers” because they were excited about the similar-on-paper “The A Team,” which also had better name recognition. The only people who knew that “The Losers” wasn’t just an A Team ripoff were the comic book fans.

On the flip side, the comic book fans I know were turned off by “Jonah Hex,” because the filmmakers felt the need to add in horse-mounted gatling guns and give Hex magic powers to talk to the dead.

My advice to DC Entertainment would be: (1) Don’t open movies based on lesser-known properties the same season that a movie based on a very well known property that seems similar is opening and (2) don’t mess with the core concept of your properties just so you can add in some more special effects.
http://djtrudeau.wordpress.com djtrudeau

I think we’re overlooking something when it comes to evaluating these two duds: the movies gutted what made the original charaters/series so lively and entertaining. As a concept, The Losers is nothing new. What made the series fun was its “balls to the wall” attitude. The movie stripped that away to achieve a PG-13 rating. What you were left with was an entertaining, but not special, action movie. That’s not enough to rise to the top.

Jonah Hex is a classic example of how Hollywood botches a property. I happen to love Jonah Hex and I don’t particularly care for westerns. The producers/writers/director didn’t trust the source material, though, and camped it up. The assumption is since this was a comic book/fantasy world character, you make it bigger and campier for the audience. That, in turn, takes away what made the adapted stories special and you end up with a train wreck. Just ask Joel Schumacher.

Also, to follow up on Charlie’s point, popularity with comic readers or even the wide audience doesn’t mean as much. Is Iron Man a bigger character than The Flash? I think the well executed part is the main thing. Jonah Hex was never going to do Spider-man numbers, but it could’ve done better than it did if they had stayed true to the nature of the character.
charlieromeobravo

@djtrudeau

Excellent execution is obviously very important but honestly I don’t think that you’re going to get a super hero comic movie off the ground unless there is support from comic fans. Is Iron Man bigger than The Flash? Three years ago we could debate that but not today :) I don’t think that Iron Man was one of Marvel’s top shelf characters prior to the movies (and please correct me if I’m wrong) but there was an obvious appreciation for him with comic readers and the film makers were able to honor that and work with it to propel the film.

I think I figured out what it is about DC that makes their heroes a tougher sell. this is strictly my impression and I don’t know if there’s wider agreement with me but I find DC’s biggest characters pretty hokey. Superman is the big indestructible boyscout and Singer’s movie didn’t do a lot to change that impression. The Green Lantern make big green fists to punch people. The Flash runs around fast. Don’t even get me started about Wonder Woman.