Hollywood Babble On & On #1213: Floptopsy - Mortdecai

Poor Johnny Depp, his box office record outside of the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise is not only less than stellar, it downright sucks donkey balls, and even the Pirates movies have become so expensive, they can't make money at the box office, instead have to rely on TV airings and merchandise to turn a profit.

Depp's latest movie Mortdecai is what's lying on my floptopsy table, waiting for me to dissect it to find a cause of death. So let's fire up the metaphorical bone-saw and get going.

First, let's do a preliminary examination, that'll give you the basics.

Mortdecai was a comedic caper film, a genre you don't really see very much these days, and loosely based on the works of British comic author Kyril Bonfiglioli. In it Depp plays Charlie Mortdecai, a shady art and antiques dealer who gets involved in all sorts of mayhem over money.

Bonfiglioli, a huge fan of PG Wodehouse, created the character, and his manservant Jock Strapp, as mirror-parodies of Wodehouse's Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves. Where Wooster gets into trouble because he's always trying to do the right thing, Mortdecai gets into trouble because he's always doing the wrong thing.

Now let's see where things went wrong.

1. QUALITY. The reviews for Mortdecai were pretty dreadful, earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 12%, ouch. Right now the audience is hungry for heroes. Superheroes, war heroes, it doesn't really matter, as long as they get out their and do the right thing.

That's not to say that the audience won't accept an anti-hero, but there's a catch when you're trying to sell an anti-hero, you have to make the movie GREAT! Especially in a comedy, you need to deliver a high laughs-per-scene count, the story must be really complex and interesting, and the character must be if not likeable, downright fascinating.

The critics told the world that Mortdecai was none of those things, and the ad campaign seemed to agree, so let's take a look at the...

2. MARKETING. Like I said, selling a caper-comedy with a shady lead is a tricky thing. It seems the Lionsgate marketing department knew that too, and decided to skip pitching the story and the humour and made the ad campaign all about…

DEPP'S MOUSTACHE!

Don't believe me?

They have a whole series of posters where they photoshopped the moustache on the different cast members. 

Now the marketing gurus who came up with that idea no doubt dragged out Willy Wonka and Jack Sparrow and said: "Look, Depp's wacky outfits and make-up mean boffo box-office, and him looking like Terry Thomas is going to have us rolling in dough!"

But there's a catch.

Both Wonka and Sparrow starred in movies aimed at kids.

Try to sell a crazy outfit, makeup, and affectation combo to an audience over 12, and you're shit out of luck. Just look at the Lone Ranger.

Then there's the hype they put on his costar Gwyneth Paltrow. Sure, Mortdecai's relationship with his long suffering wife is important to the plot, but when it comes to selling tickets Paltrow is the white Nicole Kidman. Not only is she unable to carry a movie with the general audience, she's best known for dispensing scientifically laughable advice in the most smug condescending and incredibly self-unaware way possible.

That ain't gonna put bums in seats.

3. COMPETITION. Like I said at the beginning, the audience is currently craving heroes and heroics. Which means that the movie that Hollywood didn't want to make Clint Eastwood's American Sniper, is currently having Summer Blockbuster level box-office in the middle of what is supposed to be a dead period.

That means the best you can get is a distant second, and even then you need either to bring your A-Game, or have some sort of tacky hook that might bring in people at the cineplex, like a still-good-looking Jennifer Lopez doing a statutory rape turned Fatal Attraction fantasy, but even that is only pulling in about 1/4 of Sniper's business.

That's a little too brutal for a badly marketed weak movie to survive.

I think we've found the cause of death.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1190: Ma's Money Meets Movieland

Jack Ma is an extremely rich man, and his company Alibaba Group, had the biggest IPO ever, and he's on a little shopping trip in Hollywood.

First, he's looking for content. Alibaba handles a wide range of online services, and its the entertainment wing that's needs content and lots of it. Remember, there are well over a billion people in China, they crave entertainment, and, for the first time in the country's history, the country has a growing middle class who has money to spend on entertainment.

But reports say that Ma is looking at more than just content. There's talk that he's considering buying a piece of mini-major Lionsgate Pictures.

Buying a piece of Lionsgate is probably a smart move for him, because it would set him up with something outside of China.

Why?

Because, as I always say, China is a growing market, but it's not a free market.

Jack Ma is rich, important and prominent, and that's great, but in the context of China, he is not truly powerful. True power in China rests solely in the hands of the ruling Communist party.

Under the Communist Party, China is a fundamentally feudal economy. A merchant/worker class is allowed to make money, but only as long as they please the ruling political elite. Except instead of Kings, Lords, and Knights that need appeasing Chinese businesspeople must pay various forms of obeisance to politicians, policemen, military officers and bureaucrats. Displease any of them and you could end up having your assets seized, and your ass seized shipped off to the dankest dungeon around.

Since it's very uncomfortable to do business while balancing on a political high wire that being jerked around by the whimsy of over 100 internal political factions, it's important to build a safety net.

That safety net comes in the form of foreign assets.

A good example of this practice is Russia. It's dangerous business to be rich and successful in Russia. At any moment the cronies of the ruling class may decide that your property would look better in their possession. Then you are well and truly screwed.

That's why you see Russian oligarchs dropping huge money to buy up foreign assets, their favourite being British real estate. They need something that is outside of the reach of their hometown higher-ups so that when the shit hits the fan, at least their family can live in comfortable exile.

It's unlikely China's government will embrace wider economic freedom in the form of expanding political rights, including protection from unlawful interference, imprisonment, and seizure. That's because they remember what happened to the regime of General Augusto Pinochet and his Junta who took over Chile in a bloody coup.

At first the Junta tried to rule the nation's economy the way they ruled everything else, with a mix of brutality and corruption.

Their attempts at central economic control flopped, leaving the country with high unemployment, crippling inflation, and exploding debt.

Desperate, the Junta agreed to follow a program designed by University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman. That program called for the government to essentially pull out of economic matters almost entirely. That meant that one of the most politically oppressive regimes in the Western Hemisphere had a high level of economic freedom.

What happened?

Chile is no longer ruled by a military dictatorship. The growth caused by the economic freedom led to a movement for greater political freedom that eventually forced the Junta out of power.

The rulers of China, be it the men at the front, or the string pullers behind the scenes, have learned that lesson. They will allow only enough to generate prosperity, and do everything they can so it doesn't go any further.

So expect Ma, and others like him from China to start buying up not only content, but companies, real estate, and anything else that can be well and truly theirs and out of the reach of politicians.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1166: Random Snark Attack!

MONEY MADE / MONEY PAID:

Lionsgate made a wee miscalculation when putting together boss-man's Jon Feltheimer's compensation, announcing he was getting $63.6 million then said "Whoopsie" and corrected the amount to $66.3 million.

Apparently they left a sack of money behind his desk.

Now some will say "That's too much!" and scream about fairness, and inequality and I will have to say: Balderdash!

The only question that should come up are the same questions that should be asked when it comes to movie star salaries:

DOES THE PERSON IN QUESTION MAKE MONEY FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS?

IS THE AMOUNT BEING PAID TO THE PERSON IN QUESTION COMMENSURATE TO THE MONEY THEY'RE MAKING FOR THE SHAREHOLDERS?

If the answer to both questions is "YES" then there is no problem, no unfairness, and it isn't too much.

Now the key point is that the company's Board of Directors and the shareholders should know the answers to those questions. If they don't then neither are doing their job.

NBC GETS PANNED, SORT OF…

Following the ratings gold of Sound of Music Live, NBC is putting together another live musical, this time it's Peter Pan. In keeping with tradition of casting a woman as the boy who never grew up they cast Allison Williams of HBO's Girls in the title role.

Some are criticizing it as nepotism since her father is the anchorman for NBC Nightly News, but in fact they chose the Girls actress because they wanted to cast someone the audience has never heard of.

GYPSY: FLOGGING A DEAD HORSE

Speaking of musicals, Barbara Streisand's long stagnant remake of the musical Gypsy has come back from the dead at Universal. Streisand will direct and star as the title character's domineering stage mother Momma Rose, because Momma Rose gets all the show-stopper songs.

I wrote about this three years ago when it was going to be made at Warner Bros. and said that the project would cost way too much for the size of the audience and that Streisand wasn't as big a name as she was in the 1970s, and even then wasn't as big outside of Hollywood as she was inside Hollywood. Which is the key why this dead horse is still being flogged. Within Hollywood she's the 800 pound gorilla who gets whatever the gorilla wants.

WANNA PLAY A GAME?:

I stumbled on a picture of something while doing research and I thought we'd have a little fun with it.

I know what this object is…

…the question is DO YOU?

Can any of my readers, who I hope are fiends for obscure trivia, identify that object and tell me what it is, simply for bragging rights?

Hollywood Babble On & On #1140: Are Ideas Dead?

Hollywood became the dominant player in global entertainment because it flooded the world with stories. Stories come from ideas, and now a lot of people are starting to feel that ideas are dead.

Let's look at Hollywood's development slate. First Disney's putting together what they hope will be a movie franchise based on their It's A Small World ride. Meanwhile someone else is putting together a movie/TV franchise based on the Marshmallow Peeps candy, and the most logical sounding of these decisions, but not by much, is that they're rebooting Eli Roth's 11 year old Cabin Fever.

Oy gevalt.

First let's look at Cabin Fever. I'm not as outraged at it being rebooted since it's the nature of the beast for horror films to be sequelized, remade, rebooted, and rehashed until there's no blood left in its rotting stinking corpse. But let's take a look at the facts. The original was made on a $1.5 million budget, and raked in about $30 million at the box office. Not a bad rate of return even after you deduct P&A and the House Nut.

The sequel Cabin Fever 2: Spring Fever however, came and went in theatres with barely a notice, and then went to DVD where it clutters up discount bins next to countless other forgotten films. Even its director wants nothing to do with it.

Now I can see the strategy forming in the minds that are behind the reboot idea. They look at the first film and how it made so much money and they're thinking that if they do a bigger version then that will do even bigger at the box office.

But there's a catch.

I'm not a fan of Eli Roth's particular brand of nihilistic gory cinema, but I have noticed a pattern.

The films are not the franchise, he is.

Usually he directs the first film, goes off to do something else, and someone else makes the sequel. The sequels, like Cabin Fever 2, Hostel 2, etc…etc… usually disappear into DVD oblivion. They're usually too violent for most basic cable outlets, so they really have to make their money in theatres and in home video.

Yet what are they, each film is essentially about good looking people dying horribly in ways that are mostly different in each film. A sequel simply tells fans of that genre that they're going to see more good looking people die horribly the same way they saw in the first film.

So why bother.

Now, onto the others.

I know why Disney wants to do It's A Small World as a movie, and it's not just to scare the living crap out of Clive Barker.

It's this…

Disney knows that the "branding" of a ride doesn't hurt at the box office, and here's a franchise that doesn't involve the overpriced and under-performing star Johnny Depp and director Gore Verbinski driving up the costs of the franchise into the realm of unprofitability.

However, Pirates was basically just a title tacked onto a fantasy story involving pirates. It's a lot more wide open story-and-idea-wise than a tour of how America sees the world's stereotypes in 1963.

Then again, the movie, like its predecessor will probably have NOTHING to do with the ride. They just want the title because branding is all they want these days.

Now lets talk about making a movie about a mushy candy that people seem to eat a lot of around Easter.

Yep, a Peeps movie.

Now like the others I know why they're making this movie.

They figure if a movie about a toy could make huge bank then a movie about a candy can do the same.

But is that thinking seeing the whole picture?

The Lego Movie wasn't exactly about Lego, or it would have starred a bunch of faceless blocks. Instead it was about a range of characters, all of whom under the aegis of Warner Bros., engaging in a wacky adventure.

It wasn't a movie about a toy, instead the toy was used as a vehicle for a multi-franchise/multi-genre family friendly spoof.

That's why it succeeded.

Do Peeps have characters and story lines ripe for family friendly comedy?

I'm not so sure.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1133: Conjuring Up A Lawsuit

Here's a little tale of terror that's guaranteed to curl your hair, or, if your hair is already curly, straighten it.

Once upon a time, a horror film called The Conjuring was made for about $20 million, and about another $20 million was spent on prints and advertising.

The Conjuring got good notices and excellent word of mouth and raked in $138 million domestically, and another $180 million at the international box office.

Now this should be where I say: "And they all made sequels happily ever after" but I can't.

Because according to the producers all the profits DISAPPEARED!

The film's producer's Evergreen Media claim in their lawsuit that not only has their contracted profit participation not been paid, they're also fighting over who has control over the rights to any and all sequels and that the dispute scotched a proposed Conjuring TV series deal with Lionsgate.

Now I don't know the details of the contracts, or the personal relationships between the major players in this case, but all I can say is:

WHY?

Why does every business  partnership involving a major studio seem to end in litigation?

Why do major studios look at potentially lucrative franchises and the first thing they think of is how can they ruin relationships with the people who made that franchise possible?

Why do I always have to assume that it's always the studio's fault?

Why can't Hollywood studios accept the first rule of real capitalism?

You don't know what that rule is?

Oh, well I'll drop some explaining on your lap.

The first rule of capitalism is that in any business relationship all sides get what they want.

Here's an example: you want to buy a cup of coffee at your local chain store. You want the coffee more than you want the money in your pocket, and the clerk wants your money more than they want that triple chocolate latte double-double vente fortissimo congealing on their counter.

You get your coffee, they get your money.

You both got what you wanted.

Why can't Hollywood grasp that?

They could probably milk about 3 to 4 more Conjuring movies with comparable budgets and similar box office if they manage to maintain a similar level of quality before they hit the inevitable law of diminishing returns.

Why not just do those movie and television projects with a minimum of fuss and muss and litigation, relax, and let them make everyone some money?

It's not rocket science, it's just plain old common sense.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1127: Tiny Tidbits

1:

Legendary voice actor Hal Douglas, who did thousands of movie trailers, has passed away at the age of 89.

His funeral will take place… IN A WORLD!

2:

Sony is not going to make Smurfs 3.

But don't applaud just yet. They may not be making a sequel to last year's Smurfs 2, but they are doing a REBOOT!

I hope they go all dark and gritty this time.

3:

Lionsgate TV has announced they're starting a reality TV series about the preparations for the first human colony on Mars.

The working title is MARS ONE, but I think INEVITABLE DISAPPOINTMENT will be more realistic.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1086: That's Where The Money Is...

Epix is a cable/satellite network owned by a partnership between Viacom/Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate that was founded in 2009. Epix specializes in showing movies, boxing, and stand-up comedy specials. 

However, the head honcho of network partner Lionsgate has announced that the network is now planning to produce and/or license original scripted content for their channels.

Now just a few years ago people who claimed to be in the know said that "reality TV" was going to be the future. All shows were going to be about celebrities, skanky debutantes, pawn shops, car restoration, and a hundred other topics.

So why is everyone rushing toward scripted programming?

First, experience has proven that while about 5% of reality shows can be whopper hits, like Duck Dynasty, 95% of reality shows are just filler. Even the modestly successful ones are usually watched simply because they're on, and the competition in the 1000 channel universe is pretty thin.

Now add competition.

"Al A Carte" packaging in cable/satellite providers is probably inevitable, and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon means that you need something that will attract subscribers and/or viewers.

Reality programming is not a selling point, quality storytelling is.

Think about it, what's the first thing a child asks for that doesn't involve food or a diaper change?

The little bastards look up at you and say: "Tell me a story."

People love stories, they crave stories, and while interactive material like games are all well and good, there's nothing like a good story well told.

People will pay for good stories, reality TV, not so much.

"But what about movies?" you ask, furrowing your brow in a feeble attempt to understand. "Movies have stories."

True, but there are too many channels and not enough movies those channels are willing to air. Most channels balk at airing black and white movies, because they don't think kids will watch them. So there goes hundreds, if not thousands, of movies that can't get aired outside of Turner Classic Movies.

Then there's the fact that these channels are owned by studios, and they want the films in their libraries being given precedent. Then comes all the other factors that go into scheduling, and most of it is the sort of internal corporate politics & penny-pinching bullshit that ends up putting some less than stellar films on a perpetual loop.

People won't subscribe to movie channels that only show the same cluster of movies into infinity. Especially since so much of Hollywood's recent output can be described as lacklustre at best.

Another case for original scripted programming.

So let's all wish Epix luck. More scripted programming means more work for writers, actors, and directors, and if the shows are good, it's a win for the audience as well.

Hollywood Babble On & On #1061: Little Thoughts From A Big Brain

NEW WAY TO DO TV?

Lionsgate and European TV production company Tandem have inked a deal to co-produce projects based on their relatively new business model.

That model is to pre-sell the show to markets all over the world before trying to get it on an American network like they recently did by selling the show Crossing Lines to NBC.

Now the plus side of this model is that it sort of takes the creation of television shows out of the hands of network executives. Since many network executives don't really understand things like storytelling, character development, and common sense.

On the downside their next project is supposedly a sexy crime series about handwriting analysis.

Not too sure about that one.

WHO GETS NO JACKSON

Peter Jackson will not be directing an episode of Doctor Who in the foreseeable future.

Officially they're saying he doesn't have enough time.

Unofficially it's because he wanted to expand the script for 1 episode into nine hours by including scenes from old scripts from Blake's 7.

BATFLECK

Ben Affleck's been named the new Batman.

The internet promptly shit its pants.

Personally, I think he's a little old, but since they're deliberately going for an older Batman, and seems to have grown beyond the whole Bennifer debacle that defined his early career to be reborn as a serious director and actor I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt.

Just don't let Matt Damon in it. He's starting to annoy me.

SPEAKING OF AFFLECK

To do Batman he's dropping out of directing a feature film version of Stephen King's first epic tome The Stand.

Probably a smart move. The complete version of King's book about a deadly plague and a battle between good and evil is over 1,000 pages long and has a massive cast of characters, plots, and subplots. Any feature film version would be just a cheat notes version of the novel, which had already been done as a miniseries over a decade ago.

If they're so adamant of remaking the damn thing, they should probably do it as a "event" series, let's say where the second flog-the-dead-horse season of Under The Dome is planned to go.

But that would be logical.

SPEAKING OF BOOKS

A new documentary on the life of reclusive author JD Salinger says that some previously unpublished works will be released soon.

The weird part of the story is that it's all Knight Rider fan fiction.

YOU ASKED FOR IT!

That's right folks, I'm answering reader questions. I am still collecting questions to answer in the future, so keep asking in the comments.

First question:

Blast Hardcheese asked... OK, I'll start. D, following up on your post for The Rockford Files remake - let's assume you make it a TV show instead of a movie. Who would you cast for Rockford?

The answer to that one is simple. 

 

James Garner circa 1974. Without James Garner's very specific charisma and persona Jim Rockford kinda comes across as a wimpy loser instead of a likeable everyman.

 

With Garner you got a sense that Rockford deplored violence because years of hard-earned experience taught him that getting into fights really hurts, and should be avoided if possible. 

 

Too many of today's "leading men" don't carry the weight of that sort of experience.  They're either too pretty or too goofy.

 

I think the best course of action is to come up with a new PI character tailored to the gifts of a new actor.

 

It's not hard, it just takes a scintilla of imagination and balls bigger than a raisin.

Dirty Dingus McGee 1 asked... It seems like many movies get made and released that never should have made it that far in the process. Some have terrible scripts, and some are just horribly, stupid ideas. How do these projects make is so far down the road when is seems obvious to anyone on the outside that the movie is going to suck?

This is a big question that tackles some of the fundamental issues of how Hollywood is run.

It all starts with intent.

Outside of The Asylum and those SyFy original movies no one actually intends to make a bad movie.  Everyone who hacks out a script and/or puts film in the camera and yells "Action" intends for their film to be the very best there is.

 

There are three reasons for bad movies:

 

1. POLITICS

 

2. FEAR

 

3. CHEMISTRY

1. POLITICS:

Now I'm not talking about which party is in government.  I'm talking about politics as all the nonsense that has nothing to do with accomplishing the task you set out to accomplish, but still gets in the way.

And boy is there a lot of nonsense in Hollywood.

A frequent occurrence is that a script that has a lot of promise is bought. Rewrites are ordered because rewrites are pretty much mandatory in order for the people who green-lit the film to protect themselves from taking responsibility for their decisions.  

 

Who gets to do those rewrites is often a political decision based more on connections and social position than merit.  Depending on how that draft comes out, another writer is often hired to give it another pass. 

Then comes the director and the cast.  The director usually does their own pass, or has one of their friends take a shot at it.  If the lead actors have any clout then their own pet writers have to do drafts of their own. This can happen so many times that everything about the original script that made it such a good buy can be easily lost forever.

 

2. FEAR

 

A stinker of an idea needs someone in a position of power to think it's brilliant. None of the underlings will dare admit that the particular brain-fart of casting Rosie O'Donnell as the lead in a multimillion dollar sex comedy gives of eight kinds of stink for fear of being fired, so they let it go.

Even if the executive, producer, or star who let loose the brain-fart is ousted it's often the case that such a stinker will live on if enough money's been spent on its development.  Then they'll try to finish it in the vain hope that they'll recoup at least something from it.

 

3. CHEMISTRY

Now this is just plain bad luck.  A final shooting script can look great on the page, the actors and director can all be very talented, and yet when the final product is on the screen.... it just doesn't come together.

All creative endeavors are crap-shoots and rely on an impossible to define alchemical reaction to work.  Miss that precious reaction, and your movie is going to stink.

Next question:

ILDC asked... With The Hunger Games, has Lionsgate and the other mini-majors "proven" they can produce and release big-budget blockbusters like The Big 6?

Independent producers/distributors have been capable of making and releasing big budget blockbusters since the dawn of film-making.  All it takes really is money and testicular fortitude.

A classic example of this is independent producer Samuel Bronston.  He made a series of mega-budget epics like El Cid and 55 Days At Peking that were released through the independent distributor Allied Artists.

Now the trap that lies in wait for independent producers and mini-majors making epic blockbusters is cushioning.

A big studio has a lot of cushioning to protect it when it falls.  There's the income earned by other releases, the film library, and television productions, and then there's the sheer bulk of a being major movie studio that's part of an even huger media conglomerate.

When you're an independent or a mini-major you don't have cushioning like that.  You need to bat a thousand when you play in the big leagues or risk being completely wiped out.  It happened to Bronston when his 1964 mega-epic The Fall Of The Roman Empire tanked at the box office.  His company went bankrupt and he even did time in jail from all the fracas it caused.

Lionsgate can survive in the big leagues if it develops the right strategy. Namely avoiding putting all their eggs in the basket of promised blockbuster mega-hits by still cultivating smaller, lower risk, higher margin productions, and growing their interests in television production.

NEXT!

Dirty Dingus McGee 2 asked...  How do we get back to the 70s and 80s when hot female stars were unafraid to bare their uh, assets?

Time travel?

Actually there's been a massive social shift that probably ensures that big screen nudity would be a thing of the past.

Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s when nipples became involved with mainstream cinema there were two reasons to have big screen nudity: 

 

1. Street Cred. 

 

2. Prurient Titillation (pun intended)

Having some nudity in your movie meant that your film was not your grand-dad's movie.  It marked you as a rebel, a renegade, someone not afraid to take risks who was mad, bad, and dangerous to know.  Now for those of you who don't know what "prurient titillation" means I can translate it best into "Hurray for boobies!"

However times have changed.  Why shell out money in a movie theater to see an actress take her top off with a hundred other people when you can beat off to see it and so much more on the internet for free and in the privacy of your own home.

Nudity also means getting an R-Rating for your movie. The excitement of seeing an R-Rated movie for the sake of it being R-Rated died out some time after the birth of home video.  So you can expect to make less money than if the film was rated PG or PG-13.

 

Then there's whole sleazy aspect producers using a celebrity nude scene to sell their movie. It tells the audience that the only thing worth seeing in the movie is some brief boobage, so they just stay home and get the pics off the internet.

So don't expect a comeback of the casual nude scene anytime soon.

 

Last question of the night:

Gary T. Burnaska asked... The Lobo movie news makes me wonder if

 

1. This film is an attempt for a director known for more family fare to branch out into more hard edged R rated material.

2. Since Lobo is a obscure, 3rd stringer character, does this mean that DC/WB is scraping the bottom of the comic licensing barrel for new characters?

 1.  Unlikely, since WB would probably spend $100+ million on a Lobo movie, they would want the director to sanitize it to make the more marketable PG-13 rating. That would offend the character's core fans and pretty much ensure that it would become a bomb.

 

2.  DC/WB's biggest problem is that they expect every comic book character to star in a big budget blockbuster feature film that will break records every time.  So they look for characters that were "big" at one time or another.  Lobo was "big" in the 1990s.  He became a symbol of everything wrong with 1990s comics, and is now considered more of an obnoxious remnant of a best forgotten age, but he was still big at some time, so someone at Warner Bros. is hoping that will translate into boffo box office.

It won't, but that won't stop them from spending millions of dollars of other people's money before they find that out.

I hope I answered all your questions.  If you have any more, keep them coming, and leave them in the comments....