Guest Essay: Merrill Barr explains why Comic-Con is a better marketing tool for television than it is for movies.

From time to time, Mendelson's Memos is able to present reviews and/or essays from guest writers, as is the case this afternoon. Merrill Barr is a frequent analyzer and reviewer of television for both blogs and podcasts. A former contributor to FilmSchoolRejects.com, he currently runs the television podcasts The Idiot Boxers and Operation: Nikita for FatGuysAtTheMovies.com and occasionally provides written reviews for DarkMediaOnline.com. He can be found on twitter (@sonic43), Facebook (facebook.com/merrilljbarr) and Tumblr (TheIdiotsBox.com). He can also be contacted via email at TheIdiotBoxers@gmail.com. Please enjoy, share, and comment.

Four years ago, when it came to movie hype, there was no greater combination of studio marketing and rabid fandom than Comic-Con. Iron Man, The Dark Knight, Green Lantern, Twilight, Captain America, Piranha 3D, Avatar, Scott Pilgrim, Cowboys & Aliens, The Avengers, if your movie had even a sliver of nerdy potential (and sometimes not at all [Salt]) you went to the annual San Diego Comic Book Convention, better known as just 'Comic-Con'.  But that mentality is shifting in movie land.  The downside to a massive marketing push like Comic-Con is – and let’s not beat around the bush, that it is all marketing. Really cool, sometimes clever and intelligent marketing, but marketing none the less – is that there needs to be results. The problem is that it’s hard to differentiate the impact of Comic-Con vs. every other piece of marketing inside the box office because of one thing… Time.  

Box Office Speculation: With few real competitors, why The Hunger Games will likely end 2012 as its second highest-grossing film.

I made an offhand comment in yesterday's box office write-off stating that The Hunger Games was all-but certain to end the year as among the top-three grossing films (domestically) by the time 2012 ended.  To be fair, it inspired more chit-chat on Twitter than it did here (my twitter followers really ought to comment here more often), but there were a number of 'what about THIS film?' and what-not.  So let's take a few moments to really examine the theoretical box office potential of the would-be box office giants of summer 2012 and the Thanksgiving/Christmas season.  This will be focusing on the biggest-of-the-big, so films that will merely be solid hits (Battleship, Snow White and the Huntsmen, anything and everything released between July 21st and November 9th) need not apply.  What is the plausible box office verdict on these films, and what real chance do they have against the likely $375-$400 million final domestic cume of The Hunger Games?  To put it bluntly, with one obvious exception, the odds are not in their favor.

The Hobbit gets a trailer. Maybe you CAN go home again after all...

The highest compliment I can pay to this footage is that it looks absolutely a part of the prior Lord of the Rings trilogy.  Unlike the Star Wars prequels, which looked and felt like a world very different from the original trilogy, this two-part adaptation of The Hobbit should fit right in with the first three films.  How wonderful it is to hear that music again, from the mournful beautiful main 'Shire theme' to the almost subtle appearance of 'the Ring theme' when an old friend pops up in the end, these two films feel of a piece with what came before.  The only real 'concern' I have is that I never found The Hobbit that engaging as a novel.  Truth be told, I never got around to actually reading Lord of the Rings because I wasn't all that intrigued by the original story.  But for those who enjoy the first book as much as the next three, I can find no fault with what is on display at the moment.  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens on December 14th, 2012.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson    

Why Peter Jackson signing on to direct The Hobbit is a tragedy.

I've been down this road before, but now that it's official, it's worth repeating. After years of speculation and attempted pawn-offs, Peter Jackson is in fact directing The Hobbit. As of today, MGM and Warner Bros. have reached a deal to fund two films based on The Hobbit at an absurd cost of $500 million. First of all, at $250 million apiece, each film will basically have to perform like The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring just to break even. Each film will basically cost what the first two Lord of the Rings films cost combined, and the whole two-film project will cost around $100 million more than the original three films cost back in 2001-2003. I suppose this is exciting news for the hardcore fans of the original series, as well as JRR Tolkien fans in general. While I firmly believe that the Lord of the Rings trilogy is the most impressive film achievement of the just-finished decade, I can't help feeling a little depressed at the news. This isn't a case of Peter Jackson returning in glory to a franchise that made him a legend. This truly feels like a case of Peter Jackson, unfairly marginalized because of one wrongly-lambasted box office smash (King Kong) and one genuine misfire (The Lovely Bones), begrudgingly returning to Middle Earth because he had no where left to go.