A budget of 125 million dollars, a franchise ambition, a line of toys: “Monster Cars” was designed to become a landmark saga. Except that the feature film was thought up by a 4 year old child…
In 2016, Paramount released Monster Cars in theaters, a family film directed by Chris Wedge (creator of the Ice Age saga) which mixes the worlds of Transformers and The Goonies.
It follows the story of Tripp (Lucas Till), a high school student, who builds a “Monster Car”, a super-powerful and oversized 4×4, from spare parts found in a scrapyard. Following an accident near an oil drilling site, he discovers a strange, underground creature who has a taste and a certain talent for speed.
Despite a comfortable budget of $125 million, which was spent mainly on post-production, this project was a dismal failure for the studios since it was not profitable at all. Only 60 million greenbacks were won worldwide.
A project mocked with its release
Monster Cars had all the makings of an industrial disaster, even before its release. The posting of the first trailer received quite negative feedback, ranging from the story considered ridiculous to the CGI, in particular the animation of the monster Critch.
Others mocked the project for this information released in the press: the idea for the film was imagined… by a 4 year old child. But not just any one! He is the son of producer Adam Goodman, then president of Paramount. The script was obviously not written by this fan of monsters and cars – unlike Robert Rodriguez who had his 8 year old son work on the script for The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl – but by Derek Connolly (Jurassic World).
If his father wants to support this project, it is because he wants to launch a new successful franchise, like Transformers, with Monster Cars. In addition to developing the universe in cinema, he would like to launch a range of toys in parallel. But the American giant’s financial forecasts put an end to all that.
Paramount
A critical and financial failure
It sometimes happens that studios predict, just before the launch of their film, a future financial failure. For Monster Cars, all the lights were green. After disastrous test screenings and much too long post-production, Paramount announces by press release that it forecasts losses of up to $115 million.
Behind-the-scenes bickering led Adam Goodman himself to walk out of Paramount in 2015, causing production delays. The release will be postponed twice. And he did well: in addition to the financial failure, the critics finished burying the brand. In France, the press was not kind to Monster Cars, giving it a catastrophic rating of 1.7/5. On the spectator side, it’s a little better (2.6/5) without being exceptional.
Monster Cars is available on Netflix.