Monster Trucks is a upcoming movie about a high school senior that ends up having his own truck powered by a strangely cute subterranean creature with its own need for speed.
As fun or as childish as you may think that sounds, what’s really surprising about this movie is that it’s expected to lose money even before its January 13th, 2017 official release date.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “Viacom Inc.’s movie studio took the unusual step Wednesday of announcing a $115 million impairment charge “related to the expected performance of an unreleased film.” Analysts quickly zeroed in on “Monster Trucks,” a Jan. 13 release about a teenager who discovers a creature that gives his pickup special powers.”
Apparently, the idea for the film, which was basically monster trucks having real (and silly) monsters in them was developed by a studio president with the help of his then 4-year old son.
Said studio president is already out at Paramount, as is the studio’s head of animation. It’s also been reported by Jalopnik that initially the movie was supposed to be entirely animated so that the studio could sell a lot of toys and backpacks and so on, the way Pixar profited off of Cars.
Now that you can see the trailer for the film though, it’s clear that the direction they took is a completely different one – that can either succeed in some way, or backfire to the tune of over $100 million.
Are you going to go see this thing?