The encyclopedia · Product & Design · Product decision · 2017
Warner Bros. spent $15M reshooting Geostorm after test audiences found the cut unwatchable
The disaster film needed a new director and writer for December reshoots after a disastrous test screening, and still lost the studio an estimated $74M.
Warner Bros. · Skydance · 2017-10-20
What happened
Warner Bros. and Skydance produced Geostorm, a disaster film written and directed by Dean Devlin, on a budget of about $120 million, but internal test screenings of the first cut reportedly found the film 'unwatchable' well before its planned release.
The studio approved $15 million in reshoots in December 2016, bringing in executive producer Jerry Bruckheimer, a new writer and director Danny Cannon to rework the story's clarity and character motivations — an unusual and costly late-stage intervention for a finished tentpole.
Geostorm opened in October 2017 and grossed $221.4 million worldwide, a number that sounds substantial but still left the studio with an estimated $74 million loss once the full production, reshoot and marketing costs were counted against the box office return.
Why it happened
- The original cut's fundamental storytelling problems weren't caught early enough to fix without an expensive late-stage rescue effort.
- Bringing in new creative leads for reshoots after the fact treated a structural script problem as fixable with additional footage alone.
- The studio proceeded to a fixed release date despite the reshoot signaling the film wasn't ready months before opening.
- A large worldwide gross number masked the studio's actual net loss once full costs were properly accounted for.
The lesson
Reshoots can fix scenes, but they can't fix a story test audiences already told you doesn't work.
Aftermath
Geostorm became a frequently cited example of costly late-stage studio reshoots failing to rescue a fundamentally troubled production, and it contributed to broader industry scrutiny of expensive disaster-genre tentpoles in the years that followed.
Sources
spotted an error? The club wants to know.
More like this
Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning: a $400M budget against a $598M gross
Pixar's Elio — an original animated film that cost $200M+ and grossed $154M
The Alto Knights: a $50M mob film that grossed $9.6M
Somewhere, someone solved the problem this company failed at. 2nd Opinion →
Comments · 0
Sign in to join the comments.