LunaTEKKE said:
Considering the cost to get a major theatrical release produced and distributed, yes. Even though a lot of folks (myself included) would go multiple times, I still think it would be a money-losing venture.
You just have to look at the numbers here... and, since the cost of recording an album and the cost of filming a movie differ greatly, the numbers work out differently. For example... if a band sells 1 million albums, that's considered great. However, if a movie sells 1 million tickets, that amounts to perhaps $8 million... a very poor showing for a wide-released theatrical movie with even a modest budget. To become profitable, a theatrically-released movie simply needs more widespread appeal than an album. This was borne out by the Kiss movie from 5 - 6 years ago. After they reunited, their new album sold well, their tour sold well, then they brought out a movie which was basically sold as "The Kiss Movie"... and it was a theatrical flop. Even with lots of rabid Kiss fans running out and seeing it multiple times.
Now, Queensryche isn't as commercially popular as Kiss to begin with... so even with repeat movie-viewers, there's no way this is going to be a viable film project if you produce and market it as "The Queensryche Movie", and target only Queensryche fans as the audience. If a studio picks this up, it has to be made as a regular movie, with decent actors, and confidently marketed as a dark, dramatic, political, romantic thriller... not focusing on the Queensryche connection at all in the advertising materials. The plot does inherently have commercial viability, and if the movie is made well, and marketed properly, it can be successful at the box office.
LunaTEKKE said:
Direct-to-video, which was mentioned in another post, would probably be a viable option, though.
Unlikely. This severely limits the potential mass-appeal of the film, which means one of two things: Since this will be a somewhat complex film to make, going direct-to-video means that either they will have to lower the budget to the point that it will seriously affect the quality or commercial appeal of the movie (i.e., they couldn't hire recognizable actors), or they will fail to lower the budget enough, and wind up spending far more than they could ever recoup on a direct-to-video title.
LunaTEKKE said:
Another post mentioned the option of getting a major studio to pick the film up and promote it properly. But QR would have to ask themselves how much creative control they are willing to give up in exchange for some marketing muscle. I just can't see a major studio keeping the storyline intact.
This all depends on what sort of deal can be worked out by the guy who they hired to pitch the script to studios. I can see why you would be suspicious about a film studio's commitment to keeping a film as close as possible to the source material, given all the books that have been completely mauled when turned into movies. However, there is one key difference here... books are long. If you tried to make an exact movie version of a 300 page novel, you'd have a 43 hour movie.
Operation: Mindcrime, on the other hand, is nowhere near as long or detailed as a book. It's just under 1 hour long... and remember, first and foremost, it's an album of rock music. That means there are a lot of sections with no lyrics, a lot of repeated chorus lyrics, a lot of jumps in the storyline between different songs. There is perhaps a total of 20 minutes of storyline progression in there. There are lots of story elements which are simply not covered within the lyrics of the album. It would simply have been impossible. So as opposed to cutting stuff out (and therefore changing it) like they do in a film adaptation of a book, this situation presents the exact opposite: a lot of flexibility for a good screenwriter to *add* details (instead of cutting them out) and to flesh out the existing (short) storyline.
As I said before... the film would have a "story by Queensryche" mention in the credits, and would probably have "Eyes Of A Stranger" playing over the closing credits, but that's all the blatant Queensryche connections that should be used. The fans will already know about the connection, so you don't need to advertise the fact to them, and non-Queensryche-fans don't care about the connection (they just want to see a good movie), so you don't need to advertise it to them. And again, the storyline is inherently a viable one for a movie. So if this movie is picked up by a studio, and produced and marketed correctly, I believe it can stand a solid chance of becoming a successful and profitable movie.
