Tag: 24 hour movie marathon

Hollywood Nights 24-Hour Movie Marathon 2015

Doing anything this Friday (and Saturday)? No? Yes? Who cares! Drop what you are doing and attend the Children’s Leukemia Foundation of Michigan’s (CLF) 24-hour movie marathon!

LOCATION: Emagine Theater Novi
DATE: October 9 – 10, 2015
TIME: Friday 10AM – Saturday 10AM
REGISTRATION: Opens Friday, October 9th at 9 AM and remains open throughout the day.
ADMISSION FEE: Each participant must raise a minimum of $100, to be turned in by October 9, 2015. Funds can be raised online through personal fundraising pages, mailed in, or turned in at the event check-in.
FAMILY PACKAGE: A family of four who raises $140 total is eligible for the Paparazzi Pack, which includes two movies of your choice, dinner, and unlimited popcorn and soda.

Register Today!

And remember – you don’t have to manually create your movie viewing schedule like a chump! There’s an app for that! Well, actually a website. “App” just makes for a pithy phrase.

Movie Marathon Of Flops

We all love catastrophic failures, and Hollywood flops can single-handedly lose hundreds of millions of dollars, bankrupt entire studios, and ruin prestigious careers. A movie marathon of flops would be like watching a train transporting a load of fireworks smashing into an orphanage located on an active volcano during a Sharknado. You know you couldn’t look away.

However, just because a movie wasn’t a commercial success doesn’t mean it isn’t good. In fact, the most spectacular flops have great production values simply based on the sheer amount of money spent on them. I think a movie marathon of flops has some real untapped potential. It is going to be an entertaining spectacle one way or another.

However, to put together a decent flop movie marathon schedule, the key thing we need to know is: how much money was lost in bringing this cinematic experience to you? The answer is harder to figure out than you might think. Hollywood has strange and secretive accounting practices, which are only amplified when they just lost a ton of money.

So, knowing that the best we can do is form an educated guess, I found some decent flop lists (with financial figures) on Wikipedia, CNBC, the the-numbers.com. Each list disagreed with the other in terms of the movies on the list, and how much money was lost, and one of them wasn’t adjusted for inflation. So, what I did was take an average based on the numbers from each list (when available), and adjusted for inflation as needed. That sounds a lot like science, in that math is involved.

And so, I came up with a list (dollar amounts are in 2014 dollars).

Top 20 Movie Flops, Based on Total Loss

MovieYearEstimated Loss
Mars Needs Moms2011-$144,439,582
Cuttthroat Island1995-$142,147,256
The Alamo2004-$134,784,016
John Carter2012-$133,289,640
The 13th Warrior1999-$133,127,431
The Adventures of Pluto Nash2002-$130,429,259
Sahara2005-$127,167,887
The Fall of the Roman Empire1964-$126,417,784
47 Ronin2013-$126,158,267
The Lone Ranger2013-$119,173,592
Town and Country2001-$115,352,672
How do you know?2010-$115,215,810
Heaven’s Gate1980-$112,748,057
Final Fantasy: The Spirits within2001-$108,125,697
Speed Racer2008-$106,054,234
Jack the Giant Slayer2013-$105,813,215
RIPD2013-$94,250,663
Inchon1982-$89,870,942
Treasure Planet2002-$83,833,389

Now, this is a fine list, but we have a 24-hour movie marathon format to satisfy. So, to get the most flop in the least amount of time, we’d want to schedule the biggest losers according to how much money they lost per minute of movie. That results in the following list.

Top 20 Movie Flops, Based on Dollars Lost Per Minute

MovieYearLoss / Minute
Mars Needs Moms2011-$1,641,359
The Adventures of Pluto Nash2002-$1,372,940
The 13th Warrior1999-$1,305,171
Cuttthroat Island1995-$1,146,349
Town and Country2001-$1,109,160
47 Ronin2013-$1,069,138
Sahara2005-$1,025,547
Final Fantasy: The Spirits within2001-$1,020,054
John Carter2012-$1,009,770
The Alamo2004-$983,825
RIPD2013-$981,778
How do you know?2010-$952,197
Jack the Giant Slayer2013-$928,186
Treasure Planet2002-$882,457
The Lone Ranger2013-$799,823
Solider1998-$797,095
Speed Racer2008-$785,587
The Fall of the Roman Empire1964-$672,435
Gigli2003-$644,311

Picking off the top of this list, and making a few creative choices along the way to create a decent schedule, I give you….

The World’s Best Movie Marathon of Flops

Start TimeTitleRuntimeLoss / Min
12:00 PMMars Needs Moms88 min.-$1,641,359
01:45 PMThe Adventures of Pluto Nash95 min.-$1,372,940
03:30 PMThe 13th Warrior102 min.-$1,305,171
05:15 PMCuttthroat Island124 min.-$1,146,349
07:30 PMTown and Country104 min.-$1,109,160
09:15 PM47 Ronin118 min.-$1,069,138
11:15 PMFinal Fantasy: The Spirits within106 min.-$1,020,054
01:15 AMJohn Carter132 min.-$1,009,770
03:30 AMThe Alamo137 min.-$983,825
06:00 AMHow do you know?121 min.-$952,197
08:15 AMJack the Giant Slayer114 min.-$928,186
10:15 AMTreasure Planet95 min.-$882,457
12:00 PMFinish

This movie marathon cost the studios an astounding $1,472,716,233 (that’s almost $1.5 BILLION dollars – adjusted for inflation) of their own money. These movies lost an average of $1,118,384 per minute of runtime. Awesome!

So hey – the next time you complain about movie ticket prices – remember – sometimes the studios take one for the team too.

Halloween Movie Marathon Ideas from The A.V. Club

Halloween is the closest thing to an annual horror movie marathon holiday. You can’t swing a dead cat during Halloween without hitting a horror movie or a horde of people lunging to consume it. So – if you want to have your own Halloween movie marathon, what the fastest way to conjure up a 24-hour unholy vision of the gaping maw of hell?

If you are a do-it-yourselfer like myself, you probably just want a great list of horror movies to start from. I wrote a Horror Movie Marathon Where-to-Start article a while back.

However, I was surprised to find out the A.V. Club (affiliated with The Onion) are big fans of 24-hour movie marathons – and a 24-hour Halloween movie marathon is one of their annual traditions. Even better, the A.V. Club is well-connected enough to have celebrities put together Halloween movie marathon schedules for them! Check out their Halloween movie marathons from years past:

If assembling one of these schedules sounds like work, maybe channel surfing is more your style. So what’s on TV this Halloween? American Movie Classics seems to be throwing themselves most enthusiastically into the horror fray with their AMC Fearfest. But if you need more options, there are other Halloween Movie Marathons on TV too. Or you can assemble your own marathon from the list of Halloween movies on the Huffington Post. There are a lot.

If bothering to look up showtimes of horror movies on cable TV sounds like work to you, dang, are you one lazy bum! There is yet still a way to stream images of violence and depravity on-demand directly into your ocular receptors. Check out Reel Life with Jane’s 31-day Netflix Halloween Movie Marathon.

I hope one of these horrible options works well for you. Happy Halloween! Don’t turn off the light!

Update 22 July 2017: Updated list of links for mid-2017. All of the other TV schedule references are still from 2014.

Highest Body Count Movie Marathon

Sure – plot, character development, and beautiful cinematography are important factors for movies, but what about sheer on-screen body count? In fact, I think the real question we should be asking ourselves is: what is the highest body count movie marathon possible?Mushroom cloudOf course there are tools available on the internet to assist us with answering this question (you doubted it for a second?). I was first alerted to this fact by Randal Olson’s blog, which has a handy infographic of the deadliest films of all time – as measured by on-screen deaths.

After some investigative work (i.e. I read the article), I discovered Randal’s source was moviebodycounts.com. This site does all the exhaustive work of cataloging on-screen deaths in popular movies – so you don’t have to! Their counting methodology is described in the FAQ. Since they have a website, clearly they are the most scientific source on the subject of on-screen movie deaths.

They have the 101 highest body count movies in a convenient list (they also have a deadliest character list). If you simply took the top entries, and jammed them into a 24-hour period, you would come up with a movie marathon schedule like the following.

Top Body Count Movie Marathon

Start TimeTitleYearRuntimeBody Count
12:00 PMLoTR: Return of the King2003201 min.836
03:21 PMKingdom of Heaven2005144 min.610
05:45 PM3002007117 min.600
07:42 PMTroy2004163 min.572
10:25 PMThe Last Samurai2003154 min.558
12:59 AMLoTR: The Two Towers2002179 min.468
03:58 AMGrindhouse2007191 min.310
07:09 AMHard Boiled1992128 min.307
09:17 AMTitanic1997194 min.307
12:31 PMFinish

That’s 4,568 on-screen deaths spread across nine movies over 24.5 hours. That’s not bad, but the schedule is a little over the 24-hour time limit and, well, the schedule includes Titanic. Is that really the best that you can do?

Since time in any movie marathon is limited (to, you know, 24 hours), I thought that a better way at looking at the problem is the efficiency of the movies – as measured in average bodies per minute. When you look at things that way, you get a schedule like this.

Top Bodies Per Minute Movie Marathon

Start TimeTitleYearRuntimeBody CountBodies /  Minute
12:00 PM3002007117 minutes6005.1
01:57 PMKingdom of Heaven2005144 min.6104.2
04:21 PMLoTR: The Two Towers2002179 min.4682.6
07:20 PMLoTR: Return of the King2003201 min.8364.2
10:41 PMThe Last Samurai2003154 min.5583.6
01:15 AMTroy2004163 min.5723.5
03:58 AMRambo200892 min.2472.7
05:30 AMHard Boiled1992128 min.3072.4
07:38 AMWe Were Soldiers2002138 min.3052.2
09:56 AMEquilibrium2002107 min.2362.2
11:43 AMFinish

This schedule has 4,739 on-screen deaths spread across ten movies over 23.5 hours. That’s 171 more kills, one extra movie, accomplished in one less hour, with exactly one less Titanic movie! Now we’re talking! Also, this schedule delivers an impressive average of 2.5 bodies per minute. This will dull your sense of empathy for your fellow man in no time!

What do you think? Can you improve on this schedule? Or is it truly the pinnacle of cinematic carnage?

Photo by The Official CTBTO Photostream

Hollywood Nights Movie Marathon 2014

The Children’s Leukemia Foundation of Michigan is holding their 15th annual Hollywood Nights 24-hour movie marathon at Emagine theater in Novi, Michigan. I attended the Grand Rapids version of the event last year. I didn’t think I’d be able to attend this year’s event, but some last minute changes in plans freed up my weekend!

This is a charity event (like a walk-a-thon, but with less walking) and a week doesn’t leave much time for fundraising. So – if you’d like to help out children with leukemia (you aren’t in favor of child cancer… right?) here is my personal fundraising page for the event. 100% of the funding is spent helping Michigan families and $0.83 of each dollar donated goes to patients and their families. I’ll be fronting the $100 minimum donation, and getting matching funds from my employer – so Children’s Leukemia Foundation of Michigan gets $200 off the bat.

Even with short notice, however, writing this weblog has given me some tools for quick movie marathon organization. I’ll use my favorite automated movie marathon scheduler as soon as showtimes are available, and I’ll be packing my movie marathon survival kit. I’m looking forward to trying disposable toothbrushes for the first time – because that is just science in action right there!

I’ll be blogging the experience and posting photos (and video?) shortly after the event. Looking forward to it!