Get Your Guillermo del Toro Reality Check Right Here

Is it possible to like and appreciate Guillermo del Toro while accepting that an R-rated, $150 million adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness is not an economically sound idea? Yes! Let me and a couple of other realists show you how.

Try Exhibit A, from David Poland:

There have been eighty $500m worldwide grossers in movie history.

The ONLY ones that have been R-rated were the Matrix and Terminator franchises and The Passion of The Christ.

Movies like The Hangover, Gladiator, and Saving Private Ryan got close. But none of them were looking at $500m as a break even point either.

And with due respect to Tom Cruise, who is probably undervalued as a star right now, he hasn't ever hit $500m with an R-rated movie and is now five years past his last $100m domestic film.

Guillermo has never had a film gross 1/3 of $500 million worldwide.

You have to make a lot of money for a studio before they disregard the numbers and make this kind of leap into hopefulness. And nine out of 10 times, the same people who are mourning for Guillermo this week will tell you how stupid the studio was for making the investment in other directors... even some directors that are well respected and liked.

Pretty much! And now, for good measure, Exhibit B:

I know none of you follow the movie business to do math, but notice the pattern here -- not a lot of [del Toro's] movies have made money, and the one that did (Pan's Labyrinth) was a smaller, foreign movie that was picked up after it was made by a studio. Universal basically made Hellboy II as a show of faith in del Toro's directing ability (which is prodigious), and they weren't exactly rewarded with untold riches.

None of this is to say that del Toro isn't talented -- he is. But he's not Jim Cameron -- he's less of a technician and more of an artist. But his audience is not big enough to hand him $150 million and the keys to the studio. Sorry fanboys (and girls).

We've cleared this up, right? It's nothing personal? This movie was a bad idea from a commercial standpoint? OK, cool. Moving on...

· I Love Guillermo, But... [The Hot Blog]

· Guillermo Del Toro Spits On Your Crass Need To Make Money, ComcastUniversal [Negative Sum Game]