Monster Trucks is a movie that isn’t scheduled to debut until January, but already it’s forecasted to lose $115 million. You may be wondering how that is possible, even when considering that the concept for it was created by a four-year-old child, but somehow it is!!!!!!!
This blissful film tells the story of a #teen named Tripp (real name) with a pickup truck that appears to become inhabited by some combination of an octopus and the Loch Ness monster and Dikembe Mutombo’s voice. The octopus/monster/global-treasure-and-philanthropist lives in Tripp’s truck and hijinks ensue and there’s a big chase with flips and other octopi and then Danny Glover appears??????
I dunno, watch the trailer:
It’s expected to lose more than a hundred million bucks before it ever even sees the light of day, the Wall Street Journal reports:
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.
In case you’re wondering how such a bucket of incredible joy was ever created by a major Hollywood studio, the Slate says that it was the work of an ACTUAL child:
The idea for the film—what if monster trucks had real, live monsters in them? Burping monsters?—was developed by one-time studio president Adam Goodman with the help of his then-4-year-old son, who is now the undisputed world champion of economic collapse, preschool division.
Adam Goodman is already out at Paramount, as is Bob Bacon, the head of Paramount Animation. And rather than replace him, as Slate notes, Paramount decided to just get rid of the position entirely.
There is no word yet on the employment status of the child.
A large part of the initial idea, apparently, was to make it an entirely animated film and then sell a shit-ton of dumb toys and backpacks and insufferable tchotchkes, much like Pixar did with Cars and Michael Bay did with Transformers. Paramount appears to have gotten as far as “TRUCKS and MONSTERS and developed by a KID” in the thought process, without actually thinking about whether the resulting film would actually be any, you know, good.
But I don’t think this will actually be so bad. I mean, with lines like “the monster is IN the truck!” and Danny Glover asking “what do you need?” and then the boy with the hair saying “TRUCKS!” and a kid going “did you see that?” and Jane Levy’s character going “did that just happen????” I don’t see how any of this could possibly go wrong.
And he named the “creature” Creech!!!!!!!!!!