At the beginning of 2009, I had written that Christian Bale would be the savior of the Terminator Franchise and that the new movie could achieve Dark Knight level box office. I even made a bet with reader Joe Ardent that the new movie would achieve half of the box office of the Dark Knight. Joe has asked that in lieu of the money that I post a public acknowledgement that he won the bet.
This is that concession.
I saw the movie. It was ok as far as action movie go. I would say that it is in third place for me in terms of the four Terminator movies (1. Terminator Two, 2. Terminator One, 3. Terminator Four and 4. Terminator 3). Action was fine, but it lacked emotional hooks or compelling battles. For movie box office I will be surprised at this point if it passes $150 million made by Terminator 3 and think it is impossible that it can get to the range of Terminator 2 with about $205 million. Half of the Dark Knight box office is about $265.5 million.
For predictions, I view this as a lesson in allowing personal biases and “outcomes that one hopes for” to color predictions.
The Director had no track record for delivering big box office and Christian Bale has only a tiny percentage of movies to reach the $265.5 million box office level and the Terminator franchise is not as strong at the box office as the Batman franchise has the capability of being.
From Joe:
May I recommend seeing Pixar’s _Up_? Although I think I liked _The Incredibles_ more, due to my own partiality to the material, _Up_ was by far Pixar’s best movie, and should seriously be considered for a Best Picture Oscar.
Pixar’s Up is the next movie that I plan on seeing.
Only three movies in 2008 had US box office greater than half of the Dark Knights box office.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
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