News

Fanboys knock 'Dragonball'

By Robert Marich
   April 8, 2009 – Dragonball Evolution premieres Friday in the U.S. and Canada, though it’s not clear how fans of the source Japanese comics will support the fantasy film aimed at the youth market. It seems the fanboys are angry!
   A Los Angeles Times article catalogs a succession of nasty posts by aficionados disappointed with what they know of the film. “Across the web, fans have been bellowing their anger over the choices made by director James Wong (The One, Final Destination), who was to looking to streamline and mainstream the Dragonball mythology,” writes the article’s author Geoff Boucher. Fox is the distributor of the PG-rated Dragonball film.
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Update: Dragonball opened with a disappointing $4.8 million in box office over its April 10-12 three-day premiere weekend, ranking a lowly eighth.
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   The LA Times article continues: “Fans are frothing on YouTube about the casting, missing characters, the fight scenes and even the hair styles. This is serious stuff to devotees who have followed the manga franchise since it began in 1984 and have shown their allegiance by buying up the tie-in card game, the assorted video games, the apparel and other merchandise.”
   Movies based on other source material mostly cash in on eager fans, but there have been exceptions. Novel author Clive Cussler knocked the movie version of his treasure-hunt adventure Sahara, which bombed at the box office as the book’s base stayed away. Aficionados of American classic The Scarlett Letter ripped a big-budget film version starring Demi Moore in pre-Internet days when broad fan revolts were harder to mount.
   The LA Times article adds: “Warner Bros. had a muggle revolt last year when it abruptly postponed the sixth Harry Potter film for no reason beyond pure profit-positioning; frustrated fans came after Warner chairman Alan Horn and pledged boycotts when the film reaches theaters this summer.”
   The book Marketing to Moviegoers notes that film marketing executives cultivate the fan base of any book or vid game on which a film is based, giving them snippets in advance to stoke interest. Filmmakers walk a fine line between making an interesting film and being true to the source material, since a literal translation lifted from another medium seldom makes compelling cinema. Film marketers occasionally post their own praise in cyberspace as fanboys (meaning incognito) to help build positive buzz--without revealing their connection to films.
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