This is topic Pokemon Hell in forum Film Handlers' Forum at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.
To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=1;t=000394
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 11-12-1999, 10:56 PM:
OK, we've all dealt with the first few days of Pokemon, and I have to throw this out to those of you in our group who are currently playing this anime masterpiece. How many of those cards did WB send you? I got approximately 150, and those were gone the first showing. How in the world could they expect that to be a reasonable supply? I talked to a manager at a small cinema in a backwater town, and they received 800, so it appears as though the distribution was totally arbitrary. What a really nice thing for a studio to do for a film geared towards small children. Of course, I'm going to place a portion of the blame on Technicolor, who was responsible for the distribution of the cards. They strike again.
Oh, by the way, great frame lines at the end of the first reel. I said the hell with it and just clipped off everything right up until the last frame of the picture. If this film weren't making so much money....------------------
Posted by Kenn Fong (Member # 118) on 11-12-1999, 11:23 PM:
We got 1,000 cards, which we split 70/30 between this theatre (the Grand Lake in Oakland, California) and the other one in our miniscule indy chain, the Orinda.We ran out of the cards in the first matinee on Thursday.
I was told the sets of cards are currently selling for $35/set of four on Ebay. I also heard someone hijacked a whole carton of them and placed them for sale on Ebay. We had an incident where an eight-year-old carelessly flashed his card and an adolescent stole it and ran.
We played it completely straight and no one stole or wheedled any cards.
For those here who have never seen them, each pack contains a neat coupon card for a $2/discount on "The Iron Giant." I picked up several of those which were discarded and gave a couple to my friend's son who loves Diesel and Hogarth. Also included is a coupon card for the Warner Bros. store good for another Pokemon card pack (in this same promotional set) with every purchase of $10. We did some early Christmas shopping and since we received a new pack with another coupon card to redeem for another card pack, we ended up with an extra set.
(I will send a $2 discount Iron Giant card to the first two people who send me a private email with their physical address.)
FYI, the picture set a Wednesday non-holiday record with $10.1 million. (Overnight daily box office records: http://www.showbizdata.com/contacts/dailybox.cfm.) Paradoxically, the Thursday Veterans' Day holiday number was slightly lower.
Did anyone see the very funny "South Park" episode skewering the whole phenomenon?
------------------
Kenn Fong
http://qwertyuiop.net
Screenwriter's Home Page
Posted by Jim Ziegler (Member # 86) on 11-13-1999, 02:12 AM:
We got two cases. We ran out today.
Posted by Aaron Sisemore (Member # 145) on 11-13-1999, 02:13 AM:
The theatres I have had to service recently got several cases of the cards...you can Love Pokémon or hate them (thats another thread altogether), but I was happy the prints were on FUJI (Would Nintendo have it any other way?) stock, although a couple of the prints had bad jumpy weavy reels, although the reel 1's on all the prints I have seen are ROCK steady... Hmm...
Aaron
Posted by Masao Garcia (Member # 184) on 11-13-1999, 03:45 AM:
We got two prints of Pokemon and the one I screened had wavey reels (#4 and #5). I thought it was the intermittent going bad (because that particular projector's intermittent sounds like a John Deer, or so I've been told).It wasn't a technicolor print, so I couldn't lay the blame on them...darn =). But no one's complained, and I don't see Pokemon as being a big thing for a long time *knocking on wood*
--MG
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 11-13-1999, 08:08 AM:
Speaking of the South Park parody-I almost felt guilty selling tickets to kids for Pokemon. Guess THEIR tagline of 'Gotta Buy 'Em All' wasn't too far from the truth.
I did a search on ebay to see what is going on with these cards. Some jackass is selling tons of collated sets of the four cards. Theaters can't get cards to give to children, but some bastard is selling them for $60 a set?!?!
I did notice that the print was on Fuji stock. I had no problem with it at all, and did notice that the colors look especially vibrant. The DTS does drop out a few times during the end credits, though, but not during the film itself-very strange.
Posted by Chris Erwin (Member # 176) on 11-13-1999, 09:11 AM:
Kenn,I saw that South Park episode. That's pretty much what our single screen theater I work at will look like when we get "Chinpokomon" 
Our theater seats almost 600,so I'm getting ready with the extra janitorial supplies now.
Posted by Kenn Fong (Member # 118) on 11-13-1999, 10:49 AM:
Yeah, Chris, that's what it was like on Thursday. Our two matinees sold out more or less and the auditorium was a disaster. We didn't even bother to sweep under the seats, just picked everything up and ran the push broom up and down.It seemed like everyone wanted refreshments so we were going at top speed and had to hold the picture a few mins. With everyone working at top speed we finished serving customers half an hour after it rolled.
I felt bad for the night guys on the floor -- we were short -- because of some water balloons I was stationed inside the auditorium, and so the other three auditoriums didn't get cleaned at all until after the first two shows.
------------------
Kenn Fong
http://qwertyuiop.net
Screenwriter's Home Page
Posted by John Pytlak (Member # 331) on 11-13-1999, 11:21 AM:
AFAIK, Warner Bros. used both Kodak and Fuji print film for the release prints of "Pokemon". US prints were printed at Technicolor.------------------
John Pytlak, Senior Technical Specialist
Worldwide Technical Services, Professional Motion Imaging
Research Labs, Building 69, Room 7419
Eastman Kodak Company
Rochester, NY 14650-1922 USA
Tel: 716-477-5325 Fax: 716-722-7243
Posted by Lance C. McFetridge (Member # 95) on 11-13-1999, 11:31 AM:
I was told that Warner Bros were only giving out 200 cards per screen. It seems some of you got cases of these cards. How many were in a case, how many cards did you get, and what state or providence is your theatre? It really p***es me off to tell these little kids they have to send the ticket stub in to technicolor to get a card, because my theatre is too small to count. Oh, did I mention a 2500 dollar guarantee I had to pay?
lance
Posted by Michael Cunningham (Member # 210) on 11-13-1999, 02:44 PM:
Speaking of fun with "Pokemon", did any of you have cross promotions running with it? We had a local gaming store running the trading card game in our lobby for the first two days it played. This meant that there was never a break in the swarms of children moving about. First, a crowd would show up for the movie, and when they started to thin out the crowds would show up for the games. It was pretty rediculous for a while there. Mike
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 11-13-1999, 10:40 PM:
What I got for the cards, was an Airborne envelope, similar to a trailer shipping envelope with a few handfuls thrown in, and a small box with another few handfuls. I don't care what WB, Nintendo, or Technicolor say-the distribution was totally at random, at least here in NH. Again, I have to say, if they thought this film had any merit, why did they have offer a premium? Especially when they couldn't meet the demand. I'm willing to bet no one has any cards left. Luckily, to take the sting off a little, we did plan a coloring contest, with prizes donated by local merchants, including Burger King, who COULD NOT donate any of the toys, which I'm sure they were shorted on too. I spoke to exhibitor relations at WB earlier in the week, and they did donate a few shirts and some chase cards, which is more than most studios supply to us.
I'm guessing that the legs on this picture will be similar to that of the Power Rangers film of a few years back-first weekend huge, then absolutely nothing.------------------
Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 11-14-1999, 01:00 AM:
We did well with "Pokeman" today, but am I the only one who thinks the anamation is about the cheapest slop on the planet? I mean, "Speed Racer" was better than this crap.Yet, we made a ton of money. Which is why I'll always be poor, I guess.
Posted by Kenn Fong (Member # 118) on 11-14-1999, 01:26 AM:
For us, business was off by more than two-thirds from the holiday by my unscientific estimate on Friday, then up a little today. It did $9.1 million Friday, for a 3-day total of $28 million.I think the picture is over already...
Speaking of animation, at 8 AM, we rented the same auditorium where we have "Pokemon" to a comics hobbyist who brought in Mark Davis, one of Disney's original "9 Old Men." He showed some of his classic sketches, designs for some exhibits which never came to fruition at Disneyland, and spoke with some clarity and love for his colleagues and Walt.
The irony was not lost on some of us.
------------------
Kenn Fong
http://qwertyuiop.net
Screenwriter's Home Page
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 11-15-1999, 06:35 PM:
Did Mr. Davis say if Walt was spinning in his grave? You'd expect an animated feature produced in another country and dubbed to not be lip synched, but what cracks me up is when there's dialogue and the mouths aren't moving at all. At least we've gotten past the Hanna-Barbera repeating background school of animation. I think most of us were spoiled by Prince Of Egypt.
Posted by Ian Price (Member # 14) on 11-17-1999, 12:40 PM:
I have not seen Pokeman, and I will not be seeing it. However, if you want to see some really cool animation, you should check out Princess Mononoke. It is a Japanese animated film that is 9 reels long. The animation is some of the best I have seen. They aren't very good at expressions, but the seenery is the best I have ever seen.
Posted by Randy Stankey (Member # 64) on 11-17-1999, 01:57 PM:
As far as I am concerned, there IS nothing and there will NEVER be anything as good as the old Bugs Bunny shorts or theMickey and Donald shorts that W.B and Disney used to make. (respectively)Although the computer animated stuff that's comming out looks good, VERY good, it still looks 'synthetic'. Furthermore those 'oldies' broke all the ground in animation. There's nothing that the new features can do that hasn't already been done.
Even the NEW shorts that Disney is making for their features SUCK! The voices are all wrong. (I DO like Billy West, but he's just not Donald!)
I think W.B, the guys who pretty much INVENTED the animated film, should be ASHAMED to put out such drabble!
(OK Disney 'invented' it. WB re-invented some things -- but I think you get the point.)
Posted by Aaron Mehocic (Member # 15) on 11-18-1999, 11:17 AM:
Three things:1) Yes, the change at the end of reel one was very hard to do, but I had extra time and pulled it off corectly, even getting the ending credit in frame. I'm happy about that.
2) Our print must be on Kodak film because it is powdering (but not very bad). I'll have to check. Thank you to whoever mentioned the product is on two different film types.
3) I think our cinema only received 200 cards, which were gone by the end of the 5:45 show on Friday afternoon. I don't really care about the cards, but two boys who go to school with the owner's son accused him of stealing a pack because they didn't get any. Guess you just had to be there to appreciate that story.
Posted by John Wilson (Member # 269) on 11-21-1999, 04:20 AM:
It looks like you may not have to put up with your Pokemon Hell much longer. It had (as I'm sure you all could tell by looking out the port glass) a massive 78% drop in attendances on Friday from the Friday before. 1 per cent for each frame of artwork. 
Posted by Brad Miller (Member # 2) on 11-21-1999, 05:28 AM:
Yes, but with the money made the first week, you can bet there will be more Pokemon hell to come. I don't see it going much past a second movie though. This is reminding me slightly of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.Fortunately, the worst is over.
Posted by Tom Ferreira (Member # 70) on 11-21-1999, 08:07 AM:
That's exactly what I was thinking, Brad. Remember when the first Turtles movie came out? It was like a madhouse-that had a huge following at the time, and it really wasn't that bad of a film, nor was the second one. By the time the third came out, no one cared. The Power Rangers also had a massive opening weekend, but the second one might well have been released straight to video-by that time there was no interest. It will be interesting to see in the Pokemon craze lasts long enough to carry over to the promised(threatened)summer sequel.
By the way, we still had very good matinees of Pokemon this weekend, but that's all about to end. The anticipation for Toy Story 2 is higher than any family film I've seen in many years. Should be a very good movie, too.
Posted by Charles Everett (Member # 889) on 07-28-2002, 12:29 PM:
WB released Pokemon 2000 in 2K (stiffed) and Pokemon 3 in 2001 (bombed). What's next? Pokemon 4 -- to be released in October by Miramax 
Yes, Miramax -- the same company that sat on Princess Mononoke for a year, redubbed it with American voices, and dumped it on a Halloween weekend. The New York crowd thought better of it and saw Being John Malkovich instead.
Posted by Mike Olpin (Member # 1115) on 07-28-2002, 09:13 PM:
WHY?!?!? I don't understand how kids watch this show. according to the trailer http://www.apple.com/trailers/miramax/pokemon_4ever/
it will have the same type of "free card" promotion.
Posted by Thomas Procyk (Member # 1170) on 07-28-2002, 10:31 PM:
Is Pokemon even popular anymore? I don't hear or see much about it (them?) as much as I used to. As for the cards, I think the distributors get some sort of sick rush knowing that there are parents cursing out theater employees somewhere because their little brat didn't get one. Oh, the death threats I recieved during the opening weekend of the first one... =TMP=
Posted by Steven Gorsky (Member # 603) on 07-29-2002, 05:32 PM:
Just wait a 5th movie has already been released in Japan.Steven Gorsky