Land of the Lost Revenue

Well, not that long ago I termed the new $100 million dollar Will Ferrell film Land of the Lost a total failure of imagination. And now, general audiences seem to agree with that assessment.

E Online reports that Land of the Lost "debuted with an estimated $7 million Friday, prompting the box-office-tracking Exhibitor Relations to pronounce the $100 million Will Ferrell extravaganza "the first bomb of summer."" (And special thanks to Marx Pyle for the link to the news.)

All I can say is...It's nice to know that good taste isn't entirely...extinct.

I'm gratified that those movie-goers who grew up with the Saturday morning TV series collectively turned their noses up at a cynical enterprise designed purely to poke fun at the memory of a production that was quite sincere, and quite special. Land of the Lost (the TV series) wasn't expensive and it didn't have a big budget. But it had heart and was written with intelligence, care and humanity. It deserved better than a "remake" by those who couldn't see anything except dated special effects.

Transforming the beloved Land of the Lost into a stupid, mocking Will Ferrell comedy was one of the worst ideas I've heard in a long time, especially when a great Lost World/Jurassic Park-style thriller could have been created in its place, given just the tiniest, most microscopic sliver of imagination. The movie's eventual approach was poorly conceived even in terms of marketing: exactly who was this movie designed to appeal to? The longtime fans whose faces were to be spit in? Young audiences who had never before heard of Land of the Lost? Or those multitudinous fans of Anchorman who also just happened to love dinosaurs?

I mourn for Land of the Lost (and creators Sid and Marty Krofft) that such a potentially valuable genre property was developed in such a snarky, disrespectful, irreverent manner and that the long-term up-shot is that there will be no movie franchise. But at the same time, Land of the Lost's complete and utter failure to draw audiences may at least discourage studios from taking the disrespectful Will Ferrell approach to other beloved genre franchises.

Let's hope so.