Movies of 2004

The new year is upon us, and there will be no new
Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.
What else is there to keep us occupied?

Let’s do these in order of release dates, as found on
this
IMDB page
.

January

January 23 sees the release of The
Butterfly Effect
. The trailers make it seem
interesting, but studios generally release the dregs
between New Years Day and Valentine’s Day, as so few
people go to movies in the meantime.

March

Genre entertainment hits a dry spell that lasts until
March 19, with the release of Dawn of
the Dead
. Kevin Smith’s Jersey
Girl
will be released on the same day, so I won’t
be seeing Dawn of the Dead the first day of
release.

March 26 is home of the release of Scooby
Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed
as well as Shaolin
Soccer
. I know my mind is made up about what I’m
seeing that weekend.

April

On April 2, Ron Perlman plays Hellboy
in a movie written and directed by Guillermo
del Toro
, best known in this context for his work
on Blade
2
. This should be dramatically different from
the talking-animal-fantasy Home on
the Range
that opens the same day.

Fantasy fare resurfaces on April 9 with Ella
Enchanted
. It seems like a vessel for a “be
yourself, little girl!” inspirational movie aimed at
young adults.

April 16 brings us The
Punisher
. I thought the first image released
looked awful, the first trailer looked great, and the
latest trailer seemed mixed. I’ll probably check it
out, but won’t have high expectations. It’s got to
be better than Dolph Lundgren’s, at any rate.

On April 30, we have Godsend,
a movie that sound very much like sci-fi to me, in
which a couple try to clone their dead son.

May

May kicks off with a bang when Van
Helsing
hits on May 7. I expect the Bureau 42
authors will be fighting over the review of this one.

May 14 brings us Troy,
Wolfgang Peterson’s adaptation of a major part of
Greek myth, starring Brad Pitt, Orlando Bloom, Eric
Bana, Sean Bean, and Diane Kruger.

May 21 brings us Shrek
2
. If it’s half as good as the first, it’s worth
owning.

On May 28, Roland Emmerich strikes out without Dean
Devlin for the first time in years, bringing us The Day
After Tomorrow
. Given his work before Dean
Devlin, I’d say we’re getting something much closer
to Stargate or Moon 44 than
Godzilla. This is a most decidedly good
thing. On the same day, Jennifer Garner stars in 13 Going
On 30
. It sounds like Big with a female
lead, but that might work.

June

The first guaranteed blockbuster is out on June 4.
Harry
Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban
will be the
first movie in the series directed by Alfonso
Cuaron
instead of Chris
Columbus
. It’ll be interesting to see if it
holds up against the first two.

On June 11, we see The
Chronicles of Riddick
hit screens. Fans of
Pitch Black, take notice. This will compete
with The
Stepford Wives
, about replacing women with
clones.

June 18 brings us Garfield:
The Movie
with Brecken Meyer, Jennifer Love
Hewitt, and Stephen Tobolowsky in on-screen roles,
and Bill Murray providing the voice of Garfield.

July

July 2 brings us Spider-Man
2
. What more needs to be said?

On July 9, King
Arthur
retells the classic myths and legends of
the round table.

On July 16, Will Smith plays the lead in I,
Robot
. Will people believe the man is a robot?

On July 30, Halle Berry hits the screen as Catwoman.
Although filmmakers paid DC Comics for the rights to
use their character, they’ve changed her from Selena
Kyle into Patience Prince. This isn’t going to be
the only change, but it gives you an idea of how much
of the comic character we can expect to see on
screen.

August

August 6 brings us Alien vs.
Predator
, a movie that was in development hell
for about a decade. Did they finally get it right?
I won’t know right away, as this is released the same
day as M. Night Shyamalan’s The
Village
, my top priority, Thunderbirds,
a remake of the old marionette show, and Code
46
, about genetic engineering gone awry. I
haven’t seen a weekend with four genre movies and
nothing else for a long, long time, so I wouldn’t be
surprised if some of these moved.

August 13 might be a bad date to move to, as it’s
home to Blade:
Trinity
. I haven’t seen the first two
Blade movies, but with a sequel including
Parker Posey and Jessica Biel, I just might feel
compelled to catch up in time to see this one.

On August 20, we see A Sound
of Thunder
, a time travel movie that may be more
deserving of the title The Butterfly Effect.

August 27 brings us Man-Thing,
the year’s third Marvel property (after The
Punisher
and Spider-Man 2.) Late
August releases are usually the films that studios
don’t have a lot of faith in. The last week of
August is generally reserved for a decent movie that
couldn’t hold its own against the big summer
releases, but is still good enough to get people in
before school starts up. As far as the horror genre
goes, this one will likely be the last to be released
before October. If the final edits look good enough,
the studio will probably move the release date,
either earlier into the summer (if it’s more action
than horror) or late, into October (as horror films
do their best business in the general vicinity of
Hallowe’en.)

No Firm Dates

We’ve exhausted the IMDB’s list of forthcoming
releases for the moment. Two Bureau 42 readers
(joe__gee and y42) have pointed us to Sky
Captain and the World of Tomorrow
, which has its
official site here.
Lurch_Kimded points us to The Mask
2
, starring Jamie Kennedy and Alan Cumming, with
its official site here.

This probably isn’t an exhaustive list. Did we miss
anything you’re interested in? Is there anything
above that you want us to make sure we review? This
is the time and place to let us know!

17 replies on “Movies of 2004”

  1. Well, here is my $0.02
    Butterfly Effect – Premise is interesting but my knee-jerk reaction was ‘oh, it’s ashton kutcher’s attempt at a serious film’ to show the world that he’s not just a big goofy dumb ass. Really interesting idea though, i’m iffy on seeing it theater side though.

    I’m there for Jersey Girl in March, but the weekend of the 29th I’ll stay home. I always hated scooby doo as a kid and I always will. Not sure what shaolin soccer is about but that has no appeal to me so far

    April looks like a dry month to me

    Van Helsig looks intriquing, but i’ve never been much of a horror fan. But The Day After Tomorrow looked really cool in the previews on the films I saw over the weekend, so I’d like to check that one out.

    June. I’m ready. The Prisoner of Azkaban was the start of my really getting into Harry Potter. I really liked the dark turn it took with this page and casting Gary as Sirius Black to me is just genius especially to people that have not read the books, it fits with what you should expect based on characters he’s played in the past. Though I don’t like who they picked for Dumbledore based on the previous because he just ‘looks goofy’ so that part of the films I’m going to miss. The chronicals of Riddick looked really cool in the previews as well

    Spider Man, Nuff said. I, Robot is a great story but Will Smith? Not so sure about that one. He’d have to play someone besides ‘the hip guy’ like he has in other films for me to like it. Otherwise they should have named this ‘The Fresh Robot of Bel Air’ if they continue the trend like Wild Wild West and other films he’s been in where he plays the wisecracking character.

    August could be fun, but haven’t seen much about the films listed there so no comment from me.

  2. January and febuary
    Why is there never any good movies in Jan and Feb? Its as if the studios
    had agreed that only crap is released in those two months.

    Hint: Its cold and dark and depressing, we could use 2 hours escaping
    reality in a nice warm room. Sigh.

    As for Blade…if you haven’t seen Blade 2 and you plan to see it: I hope
    you like wrestling! : )

    • Re: January and febuary

      Hint: Its cold and dark and depressing, we could use 2
      hours escaping
      reality in a nice warm room. Sigh.

      Numbers drop regardless of film quality when you’re going
      to a theater. Video rentals start to go up, though.

    • Re: January and febuary

      As for Blade…if you haven’t seen Blade 2 and you plan to see it: I hope
      you like wrestling! : )

      What that means: Someone from World Wrestling Entertainment decided it would be a good idea to put “Triple H” in a movie, so they got him a role (not sure how big) in Blade 3.

      They’re probably trying to make Cripple H into a movie star, like The Rock. The difference is, of course, that Rocky is a damn good performer, both in the wrestling sense and in the acting sense. (q.v. that movie Rock was in last fall, whose name escapes me but it was actually pretty good in a mindless action flick sorta way. see also “The Scorpion King, same disclaimer applies.)

      Cripple H is a lousy performer, and over the last few years arguably owes as much of his success to his actual wrestling talent (which was there before his quad surgery, but has seriously diminished since) as the fact that he’s quite literally sleeping with the boss’ daughter.

      Yes, I know I should probably ban myself from the site for admitting I’m sufficiently familiar with pro wrestling to write this.

      • Re: January and febuary

        (q.v. that movie Rock was in last fall, whose name
        escapes me but it was actually pretty good in a mindless
        action flick sorta way.

        A Man Apart is the one I think you’re groping
        for.

  3. Butterfly Effect
    I saw the trailer for The Butterfly Effect twice while waiting for ROTK to start… that movie looks so bad. About halfway through the trailer, when Amy Smart goes from being rich, smart and freshly scrubbed to SCARRED-UP CRACK WHORE IN A TRAILER PARK, I burst into hysterical laughter and couldn’t stop until the movie started. So very bad.

  4. wee
    Hellboy actually looks really good and the trailer for Day After Tommorrow was very interesting too. I guess 2004 is the year for comic super hero movies.

    Oh one thing about Alien vs Predator is the short time between pre-production and release. I saw a behind the scenes trailer thing for their pre-production in like September. Does that mean they’re making and releasing the movie all within a year? Is that normal?

    • Re: wee

      Hellboy actually looks really good and the trailer for Day After
      Tommorrow was very interesting too. I guess 2004 is the year for comic
      super hero movies.

      Oh one thing about Alien vs Predator is the short time between pre-
      production and release. I saw a behind the scenes trailer thing for their
      pre-production in like September. Does that mean they’re making and
      releasing the movie all within a year? Is that normal?

      I think they saw Terminator 3, saw the numbers, and figured that sci-fi
      movies based on sucessfull franchises don’t need to be good to rake in
      the bucks.

      Be afraid…

  5. I cant believe they f**ked up Garfield
    My god. Garfield looks absolutely horrible. I was so excited when I heard that Bill Murray was going to be the voice of Garfield that I completely took for granted that the movie may not be cel/vector animation. Bill doing the voice seemed like a strangely logical conclusion after Lorenzo Music’s death – Lorenzo was the original voice for Garfield, also the voice for Peter Venkman in The Real Ghostbusters, etc, etc, etc. Unfortunately, the actual product isn’t promising.

    Live action actors with a CG Garfield. Didn’t they learn anything about how bad this turns out from the hooverfest named Scooby Doo?

    • Re: I cant believe they f**ked up Garfield

      My god. Garfield looks absolutely horrible. I was so excited when I heard
      that Bill Murray was going to be the voice of Garfield that I completely
      took for granted that the movie may not be cel/vector animation. Bill
      doing the voice seemed like a strangely logical conclusion after Lorenzo
      Music’s death – Lorenzo was the original voice for Garfield, also the
      voice for Peter Venkman in The Real Ghostbusters, etc, etc, etc.
      Unfortunately, the actual product isn’t promising.

      Live action actors with a CG Garfield. Didn’t they learn anything about
      how bad this turns out from the hooverfest named Scooby Doo?

      Total US Gross
      $153,288,182

      Production Budget
      $84,000,000

      Prints and Advertising Budget
      $35,000,000


      Worldwide Gross
      $270,900,000


      MPAA Rating
      PG

      Franchises
      Scooby-Doo

      Genres
      Based on TV

      Distributed by
      Warner Bros.

  6. Shaolin Soccer = Best. Movie. Ever.
    Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but it’s absolutely hiliarious. Admittedly, though, since I’ve only seen the imported DVD (imported from South Korea, region-free, and no longer for sale since the American distributor has managed to sue it into oblivion), much of the humor is the “so bad it’s good” subtitles, obviously written by Afghani monks who translated it from the original Mandarin Chinese using only a Farsi-Afrikaans dictionary and a dartboard with letters of the Greek alphabet.

    • Re: Shaolin Soccer = Best. Movie. Ever.

      translated it from the original Mandarin Chinese

      Its cantonese, but yes, hilArious movie, I’m 78% sure that the butchered
      version they’re releasing will suck so much the popcorn will fly out of
      the bags…although I could do without the singing-in-the-restaurant
      scene.

    • Re: Shaolin Soccer = Best. Movie. Ever.
      I saw Shaolin Soccer (English translation) in a theatre in Calgary back in July. It was hilarious. It definitely fits into the “so bad it’s good” category of stuff.

  7. Firefly Movie Timing
    Sooo…let’s say there IS a Firefly movie. Joss has written the script, Universal accepts and turns on the green light. Is there any possibility we can start from today and see it by Christmas 2004? Does the fact it’s already been in production once save them any time on casting, set design, team organization, etc so it gets released on a shorter timeline than usual?

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