The film reveals the origins of Bloodrayne in the cinematic prequel to Majesco’s popular videogame. In eighteenth century Romania, Rayne (Kristanna Loken), a young dhampir (half-human, half-vampire), prone to fits of blind blood rage but saddled with a compunction for humans, strives to avenge her mother’s rape and murder by her father, Kagan, King of the Vampires.
Orphaned and forced to find refuge in a circus freak show, the only place her aberrant abilities are tolerated, Rayne does not discover her true abilities till the night she tastes human blood for the first time defending herself from the circus strong man. Consumed by bloodlust and tormented by her new identity, she transforms into BloodRayne and feeds on the blood of vampires, refusing to take the lives of innocents.
Two vampire hunters, Sebastian and Vladimir, from the Brimstone Society persuade her to join their cause to destroy the most evil and powerful of all the vampires in the land, her father. She races to find the three Talisman organs: a heart, an eye and a rib wrought from her ancestor vampire, Beliar, which Kagan also covets. The Talismans give the beholder the power to throw the earth into darkness allowing vampires to rule forever...
A projectionist from UltraStar Cinemas has revealed to Shacknews a rather huge error made with the distribution of Uwe Boll's latest cinematic endeavor, the BloodRayne adaptation featuring such well-regarded thespians as Ben Kingsley and Michael Madsen. The UltraStar employee explained that when he got into work last week, he noticed that the theater had received a copy of BloodRayne. This seemed odd because his particular theater generally shows films aimed more at the arthouse set. "I didn't want to build this and put it in my theater," he said, so he checked up with UltraStar higher-ups. It turns out that a computer error resulted in the print being sent to 5,500 more theaters nationwide than was intended. "The computer that placed the order, instead of selecting just the correct theatres, it also selected 5,500 additional theaters, so they made that many extra copies." Whoops.
I asked how much each print costs, and he said that in total, it costs about $5,000 to have each set of reels delivered to a theater, meaning that as a very rough estimate the total costs incurred may be upwards of $27 million. "And that's 27 million that didn't go into production, didn't go into marketing, it's just expenditure that's sitting there," he said. "I mean, I know Ben Kingsley was in Ghandi, but nobody gets to just throw away that much money for nothing."
The situation is exacerbated by the fact that, according to Variety, the film is only showing on 985 screens, just over half of the original target of 1,900--and that's separate from the thousands of accidental extra copies. Now, the film is already millions in the hole and it earned only $1.2 million during its opening weekend, failing to place it in the top ten. Uwe Boll has had a lot of second chances, but might this spell the beginning of the end for the self-described misunderstood director?
Now, while I realized the revelation that a man whose career consists almost entirely of movies based on video games, none of which has ever turned a profit, is crazy isn't exactly big news, this particular assertion is based on actual human interaction (someone else's sadly, not mine), not just his crappy movies.
At the LA premiere of the now officially disastrous BloodRayne, Uwe Boll stood before the audience and denounced the entire Hollywood community as "greedy thieves." True? Well, perhaps. But if you actually want to work with those thieves? Strike one. Then, he convinced members of the film's cast to join him on stage, only to forbid them to speak because he "hate[s] it when actors talk." Yeah. That's strike two. Finally, Boll proceeded to spend a lot of time talking about how Romar Entertainment is "the only truly independent film studio that makes and distributes films inexpensively." Since by "distributes films inexpensively" I assume he means "sends unsolicited prints to hundreds of theaters," I'm going to have to call that strike three.
I mean, really. Just when you think the man can't possibly damage his reputation further, he goes and pulls something like this. What's the opposite of genius, anyway?
I did some math, and if Bloodrayne opened in the same number of theaters as Alone in the Dark but with its per screen average, it still wouldn't have made as much as Alone in the Dark. These movies keep making less and less.
