Counting on seeing the untitled BIONICLE ® feature film theatrical release in late 2005/early 2006? Don’t count on it.
Back in mid-July of this year, I was floored when a source told me that there are “no plans for a theatrical release in ’05.” Since that time, I have been trying to get official confirmation that the project has been shelved. I still don’t have that confirmation, but I also don’t have any assurance that the project is still on. The official word is that there is no official word and there probably won’t be any until around the time when BIONICLE® 2 is released.
Dating back to this Press Release in July of 2002, when Miramax and LEGO Media first announced a BIONICLE feature film for release in 2004, we have been eagerly awaiting BIONICLE on the big screen. That theatrical release was still in story development and Mask of Light had not yet shipped when Miramax and LEGO Media announced a third movie, a direct-to-video release we now know as BIONICLE 2: Legends of Metru Nui , to be released prior to the theatrical release. That third movie pushed the release date of the theatrical release back to 2005, as seen in this Press Release from February of 2003.
This DVD Exclusive article last year listed the feature film’s theatrical release date as “late 2005/early 2006,” but it also offers a clue as to why the project might be struggling. In the article, Miramax VP of Aquisitions Jeff Tahler says the expectation for the direct-to-video BIONICLE movies was to be even bigger than the Barbie movies. Although Mask of Light did very well in sales, it was thoroughly trounced (in DVD sales) by the contemporaneous Barbie of Swan Lake . For example, Barbie of Swan Lake currently ranks in the top 5000 DVD sellers on Amazon.com, whereas Mask of Light is just outside the top 7000 DVD sellers. The older Barbie as Rapunzel ranks near 3000.
Mask of Light is the better seller on VHS (at least on Amazon.com), but this is probably due to the price differential between the Mask of Light DVD and VHS releases ($30 versus $20). Barbie of Swan Lake is priced at $20 for either medium, prompting buyers to go for the DVD over the VHS tape. In today’s mindset, it is the DVD sales that really count.
The last word we received about the BIONICLE feature film theatrical release was on November 13, 2003 when Brett Matthews was named, in an article by Borys Kit in The Hollywood Reporter , as the writer of the screenplay. Since then, nothing. Nothing, that is, until an unexpected, unconfirmed offhand remark six weeks ago: There are “no plans for a theatrical release in ’05.”
P. S. In exceptionally belated movie news, while researching this story I noticed that Mask of Light won a 2003 DVD Exclusive Award for Best Visual Effects in a DVD Premiere Movie. Our apologies for not reporting it earlier, and our belated congratulations to everyone involved.
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