Lionsgate Home Entertainment’s mega-buck epic, The
Gods of Egypt, will be released on May 31 as a four-SKU selection of
home entertainment products.
On that date, consumers will be able to choose between either
stand-alone DVD or Blu-ray editions, plus those willing to go upscale can
purchase a Blu-ray/DVD Combo Pack presentation that includes a 3D viewing
option (two Blu-rays and a DVD).
And for those into the newly launched 4K Ultra HD format,
Lionsgate Home Entertainment will be delivering a day and date 4K Ultra
HD/Blu-ray Combo Pack edition as well.
Domestic box office receipts were a disappointing $30.5 million, and for the record, the ARR is a very swift-to-market 81 days. Bury your losers and move on.
Indeed, if those reported production costs of $140 million for
The
Gods of Egypt are any where close to the mark, then someone is
absorbing quite a bit of red ink on this one.
Throw in another $20 million to $30 million in P&A (just for the domestic
launch) and you can begin to see why Lionsgate stock has been in the tank of
late — $41 per share in November and down to just half of that as April begins.
When you do the math, the studio has shed about $3 billion
in market capitalization in just five months.
Ouch!
Part of that is directly related to the end of the Hunger
Games franchise, which was handled very poorly by the home
entertainment division with their feeble PR and marketing efforts (that was an unapologetically
self-inflicted wound).
That’s a tough film franchise to replace, but the same could have been said for the studio when Saw came to an end … Lionsgate got through that.
That’s a tough film franchise to replace, but the same could have been said for the studio when Saw came to an end … Lionsgate got through that.
The other big chop to the stock price can be attributed to
this film. It’s simply not the next Mummy
film franchise … reviews were generally on the negative side, which were more
of a PC reaction to the casting of “white actors” (Gerald Butler, Brenton
Thwaites, etc.) in the lead roles than an honest critique of the film itself.
Criticize a film for bad acting, or a poor script or even
botched production values, but The Gods of Egypt is a bad movie
because the actors are white? Please,
that’s just stupid — PC run amok these days.
In all fairness, the film is lovely to look at and it is entertaining,
but sadly, it is simply not the next Mummy film franchise.
As to bonus goodies, the featurettes titled “The Battle for
Eternity: Stunts” and “A Window into Another World: Visual Effects” are common
to all release configurations.
Exclusive to the Blu-ray editions are four additional
featurettes — “A Divine Vision: Creating a Cinematic Action Fantasy,” “Of
Gods and Mortals: The Cast,” “Transformation: Costume, Make-up & Hair” and
“On Location: Shooting in Australia” — and deleted storyboards (that’s a new
one; deleted scenes yes, deleted storyboards … scenes that were never filmed,
interesting).
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