Looks Like The Asylum is Winning this Round

Back when I watched The Asylum's Almighty Thor, I wrote a bit about how I'd developed an entirely new perspective on the company.  As I said then, it appeared that The Asylum knew exactly what it was doing and was having fun and making money without a damned bit of concern for what other people thought about its business model.

Now, it looks like the company famous for its "mockbusters" may have gone one better.

Last week, Will Smith's $100M+ "summer blockbuster" After Earth hit theaters on May 31.  True to its standard practice, The Asylum got its knock-off, AE: Apocalypse Earth, out on video a few days ahead of the larger film's theatrical release.

Then, a couple of very interesting things happened.  The first was that the Will/Jaden Smith film tanked at the box office.  Yes, when I say "tanked," I mean that it only grossed $27 million opening weekend...but that's the worst opening performance we've seen from a Will Smith vehicle in 20 years (and that includes Wild, Wild West).  The second is that the Richard Grieco/Adrian Paul film generated some interest.

Obviously, there's an apples-to-oranges element in this comparison, given that one of these films was a large-budget picture with a theatrical release and the other had an estimated budget of $1 million and went straight to DVD.  But the comparison is worthwhile, nonetheless.

Viewer Ratings of After Earth and AE: Apocalypse Earth

Because of the differing distribution, not every rating site has viewer ratings for both movies, so I'll start with IMDB.  AE: Apocalypse Earth currently has a 3.4 overall rating on IMDB.  Not stellar, to be sure, but After Earth isn't far ahead with a 4.6.  Considering that the After Earth budget was more than 100 times the AE: Apocalypse Earth budget, that's not much of a lead.

On Rotten Tomatoes, The Asylum's film isn't rated, but After Earth has an average rating of 3.8/10.  The fresh to rotten ratio is 17:132 and fewer than half of viewers said they liked the movie.

Since After Earth isn't yet available on DVD, it's not rated on Amazon--but AE: Apocalypse Earth has an average 3 stars out of 5.

Neither film is setting the world on fire, but to the extent that it's possible to compare, they seem to be running virtually neck and neck in viewer reaction: the primary difference seems to be that one of these films still needs to earn another $100 million to reach the break-even point.

Who's Attracting More Attention?

Obviously, After Earth is getting more and bigger press.  But, let's take a look at some trends.

As of today, Richard Grieco is the 1,585th most searched actor on IMDB--that's up from somewhere in the 6000s just ten days ago.  Adrian Paul comes in today at 1,059, and although I don't know exactly where Paul was ten days ago, I know that number was greater than 4,000.  In other words, the two lead actors in AE: Apocalypse Earth have attracted a lot of attention over the ten-day period since the film's release.

Of course, that doesn't put either in competition with Will Smith, who's sitting at # 10 today. However, Smith has made several appearances in the top ten over the past several years and has dipped outside the top 100 only briefly in the past 7 years.

On the other hand, aside from a brief flurry surrounding the release of the first 21 Jump Street movie, Grieco is higher on the list today than he's been since 2000.  Likewise, Paul hasn't come in so high since late 2001.  But the attention the two lead actors are enjoying in the wake of the AE: Apocalypse Earth release pales in comparison to the rank the movie itself is posting.

After Earth is currently the 8th most searched movie on IMDB...and the "mockbuster" version comes in at # 47.  Levin's "knock-off" is just behind the popular television series Dexter and ahead of The Avengers on the most-searched film list, and is one of only two feature films in the top 50 with a budget of less than $10 million.  The other is a Warner Brothers picture with a $9.48 million budget.

So...go Asylum!  I haven't seen the film yet because DHL seems to think that California and Kansas are between Illinois and Illinois, but I hope to soon (estimated delivery date, June 24???)  More when I've seen it. Until then, I'll revert to my recent assessment: this is a company that knows exactly what it's doing.

Update: After this post was published, AE: Apocalypse Earth director Thunder Levin contacted me to advise that the actual budget for his film was less than half of the estimated $1 million that's been widely reported.  That means After Earth's budget was actually near 250 times what Levin had to work with, making the comparisons above all the more impressive.

AE: Apocalypse Earth Trailer

It's only a little over a month until AE: Apocalypse Earth is available on DVD, but in case you need something to hold you over (or to help you decide whether or not you want to pre-order the movie), here's the first official trailer.

Fresh off of viewing Almighty Thor, I'm happy to report that Richard Grieco plays one of the humans in this film...

 

The Asylum's Almighty Thor

Honestly, Almighty Thor wasn't high on my list of Richard Grieco movies to watch. I'm not a big fan of sci fi, mythology or knock-off movies and Grieco has been in so many films that there are several I haven't seen that interest me more.  Fish Don't Blink, for example.  And I assumed (correctly) that Richard wouldn't be at his most attractive as a deteriorating demon god.

But my options on Amazon streaming video were limited the trailer was kind of interesting, so I decided to go ahead and give it a shot. 




Honestly, the movie wasn't great: I had a hard time taking Cody Deal seriously as Thor, even before he pulled out the semi-automatic weapon.  I'm not sure whether it's a positive or negative to say that I had far less trouble taking Richard Grieco seriously as a demon god with giant, lizard-like beasts for pets.

All in all, I found the movie relatively entertaining, though I was sometimes unsure whether the things that were making me laugh had been intended to do so.  If you're a Grieco fan and haven't seen it, it's worth watching.  (If you do and you come away with an understanding of why he starts the movie looking pretty much like himself and is as white as The Joker by the end, please come back and share.)

While determining whether or not to watch this movie, I also learned some very interesting things about The Asylum, which is also behind Richard's upcoming AE: Apocalypse Earth.  The fact that both of these movies appeared to be created specifically to capture an audience created by a closely-related box office film initially put me off, but the more I learned the more interesting their business model became.

Apparently these knock-offs, often referred to as "mockbusters," are all The Asylum does.  And, that was apparently a conscious decision and one that's paid off. Sure, they get sued from time to time.  Yes, they may have had to change a name here and there or been restrained from releasing a movie for a while.  But from what I've read, it appears that the company has never lost money on one of these relatively low-budget movies. 

The more I learned, the more I shifted from thinking of The Asylum as a company that makes crappy rip-off movies to thinking of it as a company that knows exactly what it's doing, has accepted that it's not a blockbuster sort of operation and is having fun and making money doing its own thing.  Which, from where I'm sitting, looks like a pretty good fit for the guy who put on 40 pounds to mock himself in A Night at the Roxbury.