This news arrived in spite of some really early buzz that said the film was over-performing at test screenings and generating positive criticism. All I can do is tell you Pacific Rim is fantastic – a full review is coming soon, but screw the tracking and certainly don’t listen to the uninformed masses who think it looks like Transformers.
This afternoon, I had a chance to speak with Legendary Pictures head Thomas Tull and ask him for his thoughts on the tracking news dominating headlines.
“Audiences that have seen the movie, love the movie,” Tull told me. “I think in our core audiences and, sort of, the fanboy groups that want to see the movie…we have seen tracking wildly on all of our movies so, at this point, all we can say to audiences is if you go see this movie, you’re going to love it and you’re going to tell your friends – that’s all we can do. The other stuff, it has almost become like sporting events. Every weekend, it’s so wildly reported on and now even opining about tracking, which is kind of weird to me. I can tell you, when I was a kid and Star Wars came out, I wasn’t like, ‘I don’t know, the trailer looks cool, but the tracking sucks.’ I don’t know what that is.”
Tull does have a point with the Star Wars analogy. Even when I was growing up, the last thing I gave a damn about was how Tim Burton’s Batman was tracking, good or bad. Still, for those in the industry that crunch numbers, tracking indeed means something. Then again, this year has proven that movies can overcome poor tracking buzz and you can’t predict a thing – for instance, who knew World War Z would become a hit (especially given the stories that came out of the production), or even a film like Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters?
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