DOA: Dead or Alive (the movie) - What Happened?

[Music] let's see [Music] [Applause] [Music] before we get to all of today's Sunny Beach fun I want to thank magic spoon for sponsoring today's video I've been looking to change up my snacking habits lately so whenever I've been having Saturday morning Cravings I've been satiating it with bowls of magic spoon and specifically my favorite flavor blueberry muffin magic spoon's been a great choice for me due to the fact that they have zero grams of sugar 13 to 14 grams of protein and four to five net grams of carbs in each serving you can either build your own custom variety box with all the different flavors or give the new cereal bars cinnamon roll and s'mores a good old Chomp it's really up to you to do so check out the link in the description below or scan the QR code on the screen then use the code Mick muscles to get five dollars off your order today thanks again to Magic spoon for sponsoring the channel and without further Ado let's start the show hello and welcome back to another high kicking low scoring episode of what happened the show that investigates the problematic pitfalls of video games movies and in extremely specific cases both mashed together in a Frank but light-hearted manner this week we're entering the bright sunny beaches and inexpensive drab sets of dead or alive the movie one of the prestigious members of the fighting game film so bad they're almost kind of good Club of infamy now as many of us are aware tecmo's Dead or Alive series of martial arts and not so martial arts video games aren't exactly the most story-rich Universe to mine material from but you know that there's enough there for some amount of drama to unfold right I mean there's a bunch of people fighting and How could a movie about that go so wrong well let's find out as I answer the question what happened to DOA dead or alive dead or alive it's 2002 and hot off the heels of the recent Xbox launch and high profile exclusivity for Dead or Alive 3 1 Mark a ultimate of mine fire entertainment was option rights to video game series left right and Center refusing to stop for any reason as Brands like Pitfall Shinobi Crazy Taxi dead or alive and fear effect were among his would-be victims now if you're a hardcore fan of video game movies you might already be familiar with the name Mark Altman as he is credited as the writer and producer of 2003's House of the Dead film Spanish for death in case you don't speak Mexican and that concludes this exhaustively answered episode of what happened if you know of any other games or movies with tragically troubled Tales do let me know in the comments below see you next time and thanks for okay there's there's a bit more to it than that Altman had founded mine fire entertainment and had just shifted their business model into grabbing commercially viable licenses and adapting them with Indie size budgets as they were struggling to succeed with all original indie films around that time lower budgets also meant minimal risk which would then be more attractive to the likes of Sega Tecmo and many others in the book lights camera game over how video game movies get made where much of the following information comes from Altman explained his strategy and how they were able to grab so many licenses despite being such a small player in the film industry the argument we made essentially boiled down to do you want to get paid a lot of money by a studio who will never make your film or a lot less from us but actually get your property made as a feature this was an interesting tactic because all throughout the 2000s we constantly heard about various games comic books and Anime get an option to movie companies without ever actually seeing a film materialize in the end but to be rather Frank mindfire wound up making a tiny percentage of all the things they got the license to so in March of 2002 mindfire issued a bit of a nothing press release announcing their intent to bring Dead or Alive bouncing onto the big screen with a token vote of confidence from Tecmo themselves notably they also mentioned the film's expected release window which was sometime in 2003. most of you DOA fans out there will know that they were slightly off with this estimate as the film wouldn't arrive in until 2006 or 2007 if you are a North American which truly demonstrates the need for a what happened episode mindfire then teamed up with impact pictures best known for the 17 live-action Resident Evil movies which was founded by Jeremy bolt and Paul WS I directed The Monster Hunter movie Anderson yes I know he directed the first Mortal Kombat and Event Horizon I just want to remind people that the Monster Hunter film was indeed a real thing that happened what are we like Guardians of the Galaxy now anyway there was a brief possibility of Anderson himself taking the director's seat but his plate was already full with Death Race Resident Evil apocalypse and of course not making the unmade driver film a writer by the name of J.F Lawton had been chosen to pen a script for Death Race which bolts and Anderson passed on but still recommended him to Altman as a good choice to tackle Dead or Alive what were Lawton's past credits you ask well that would be under siege Chain Reaction a pretty woman and being the creator of the hard-hitting dramatic television series VIP which probably prepared him best for the task ahead not only did he have to craft something that would please producers and fans but also need to impress Tekken Enthusiast and future nft death Merchant tobinobu itagaki as part of the deal included him having final say on the script so with all those elements in play it's safe to say that Lawton had an extremely tough task ahead of him [Applause] Lawton was not familiar with any of doa's deep lore or nuanced characters but felt it best to immerse himself in all the high octane action strike reversals and ample curves the universe had to offer during this research phase he apparently took quite a liking to the source material yeah I bet so much so that he originally wanted to incorporate the exact move sets of each and every fighter who would appear in the film so for example Tina would have exclusively used Pro Wrestling during all of her fight sequences what a mark this is a detail that in retrospect he felt wouldn't transition to the big screen in the end and thus was cut out not sure exactly what he meant by this but I assume he felt that the vast majority of viewers wouldn't really notice or care I don't know his first script revolved around Kasumi Tina Christie and a brand new character a 14 year old French school girl named Violet a large number of other Fighters would appear in this take on the film as well including gen Fu John Lee another girl character named Mickey and Leon who originally had a much bigger role than what he ended up with the contestants are invited to a fighting tournament on DOA Tech Island which is made up of different biomes these included a Snowy Mountain Aid Japanese martial arts Palace and a Roman Colosseum all of which were caged with an electrified fences I the steel cage the tournament itself was to be hosted by Fame Douglas Helena's father who had previously been an unseen villain in the games his Insidious plan involved sampling DNA from all the Warriors in attendance to make some sort of super fighter thing named Epsilon oh and there was a Oh this is a real thing a submarine base below sea level with a subservient Clone Army consisting of Tina Christie Kasumi and violet Lawton had made an effort to keep the film's tone comedic But ultimately that worked against it Mark Altman recalls that while the producers found the script enjoyable it was ultimately not what they wanted and described it as fun but not particularly complex iragaki as you'd expect really really like the new 14 year old school girl protagonist but for whatever reason did not want fame Douglas appearing in the movie at all they like it too they like scratchy one kids seems to love this 14 year old school girl no really and light's camera game over Lawton expressed that he never really understood why itagaki was so against Fame Douglas being the central villain Lawton continued with further drafts swapping out Fame for Donovan keeping the Epsilon monster thing around and at one point making sure to include the fact that Fame at Donovan was making literal love slave clones out of certain fighters in the tournament these slaves would appear uncared for and emaciated and by the end of the film's climax they would literally eat Donovan alive and what I'm sure would have been a moving and poetic portrayal of zombie revengeance so uh try to be shocked when I tell you that the producers then finally decided to pass on Lawton's takes altogether although Mark Altman recalls them being important to honing in on their Central characters so it wasn't all for naught just mostly during this process esteemed martial arts film director Corey Ewen would come aboard and after Lawton was dropped the project would then pick up the writing Duo of siblings Adam and Seth gross whose only notable credits I could find were episodes of Bill Nye the Science Guy very quickly they began slashing and cutting gone were the zombie clones John Lee Mickey Violet and the electrified fences and in were the fighting style absorbing sunglasses which to be fair was probably an improvement compared to the zombie slaves Mark Altman still wasn't a huge fan of the script and had wanted to make some adjustments but itagaki was on board and signed off on the script so cameras were finally ready to start rolling in 2004 or were they [Music] Altman and fans of the series and itagaki weren't really pleased with many of the choices Corey Ewan had made during the casting process in the book I will never stop quoting lights camera game over Altman shared a pretty critical opinion there are some bad casting decisions in this movie so let me just say I did enjoy some of the performances I wasn't that involved at this stage in the movie and am glad I don't have to take credit or lack thereof for a lot of the casting when asked about the film in a 2006 IGN interview itagaki didn't really offer an opinion on the film one way or another but noted particular disappointment in Kasumi and ayanes casting but he had no power in this regard unlike the script the cast included the likes of Devon Aoki Holly Valance Jaime Pressly Eric Roberts Kane kosugi of Godzilla final Wars fan among other things big sexy daddy cool himself diesel Kevin Nash oh yeah I got this what a patent and finally Robin's shoe in what's more or less a cameo as the pirate boss this marked Robin's third of four appearances in fighting game adaptations which absolutely merits something a hearty congratulations at the very least I don't have time for these stupid games all of the actors sweated it out in an intensive martial arts training camp before the movie began filming and while many describe those months of prep as fun and exciting there were less enthusiastic about the actual shoot which was mainly done in and around rural China and I mean really rural China this was done for the Exotic locales but also to keep the budget on the more frugal side which reportedly came in at 30 million dollars going by the official press release but IMDb States 21 million dollars which I mean when you actually look at the film you wouldn't be surprised if it wound up being the more accurate figure so much like the costumes and bikinis in the DOA wardrobe the purse strings were going to be kept very tight thus the cast had to be put up in the local Village far away from the Comforts of Hollywood there were are very few ways to easily contact the outside world which would have probably been used to complain to their agents about the catering as several members of the cast came down with food poisoning that lasted for almost the entire shoot Altman himself did not accompany the crew on this journey but he was keenly aware of these less than ideal conditions when discussing the film in lights camera game over shooting in China was very hard the crews worked very hard but Corey was very demanding on the actors and it was tough things have gotten better in the last decade in terms of shooting there definitely the food in that sense DOA was a little ahead of its time I think we could have really benefited more from the sense of scope and Grandeur that China offers but we didn't necessarily completely take advantage of as if that was bad enough concerns about the language barrier between Corey who did not speak English and the cast also reared their head an onset interpreter was needed to translate between director and the actors which slowed things down dramatically and would sometimes lead to miscommunications which when working on an action film can potentially be disastrous eventually Corey would start to dispense with the process altogether and often simply pantomimed what he wanted in terms of acting and positioning in addition to Altman not being on set both gross brothers were also unable to join the shoot in China now while it's true you don't need direct access to every producer at all times the writers may have been particularly useful as it's not unusual for dialogue and elements of the scenes to be tweaked and adjusted on the fly when the cameras actually start rolling while this is merely speculation on my part I think it's likely that having the writers on hand would have helped smooth out some of the film's rougher narrative elements you believe the CIA will stop me I don't think so so in in July of 2005 after a grueling three-month shoot filming for DOA was finally complete but because I guess mine fire and impact pitchers were busy with so many other projects they hadn't actually netted a theatrical distribution deal for the film or for where most people would see it on DVD thus DOA Dead or Alive sat on the shelf for a few months that is until November when Dimension films the Distributors of Halloween the curse of Michael Myers blackest diet the devil's eyes announced they had grabbed the rights to bring DOA to fans worldwide kinda while the press release went out in November they said to expect the film in the fall of next year I guess the Sci-Fi sunglasses special effects were going to need that whole 12 months to perfect what's even more confusing about this is that even though the press release seemed to indicate a global release it didn't actually get one dimension for whatever reason wanted to release DOA in a few test markets first to gauge the fan response which included the UK Australia and the Philippines which kicked off in September of 2006. it's here where DOA made the vast majority of its money generating six million dollars from all three markets which given the almost non-existent marketing was a pretty decent start show me the money North American fans however would be left waiting and waiting and waiting well into the next year eventually leaked Prince and online bootlegs from other territory series started filtering into North America despite the continued lack of formal announcement for a local theatrical release Altman even recalls that there was supposed to have been a big Comic-Con panel with the cast that would presumably kick off a larger media campaign but was abruptly canceled for reasons that are still unknown even to him it took until the summer of 2007 for a dimension to finally announce and or admit yeah okay it's coming out you happy which it actually did on a whopping 500 screens which technically downgrades it to a limited release in its first weekend it made around 260 thousand dollars and by the time it was pulled from theaters just three weeks later had only generated 480 000 in North America bringing its grand total to roughly 7 million dollars against a budget of 30 or 21. 21. I won it's possible that DOA Dead or Alive wound up profiting through the Home Video Market and eventually streaming but those numbers of course don't really exist now despite everything the wonky scripts the grueling shoot and the disastrous release model Mark Altman looks back at DOA Dead or Alive more positively than you'd think saying in lights camera game over I have movies that have done that I love I also have movies that I'm utterly embarrassed by this is neither I don't love it and I don't hate it I like it had it been more successful in the US I think we could have really done a great sequel fix the casting maybe had a director who could work better with the actors and a stronger script and it really could have been something special Mark wasn't kidding about this belief in a sequel as he felt it could have continued as a serialized TV show and even contacted a writer to do such early on in the process though he had failed to get any investors jazzed about the prospect so the whole thing fizzled out rather quickly good old Polly Anderson was less critical about the original film also sane in lights camera game over I think Dead or Alive is for a lot of people a real guilty pleasure and it certainly is for me we knew we weren't making War and Peace that's for sure and if you take the movie at face value for what it is which is a rollicking 90 minute piece of fun the movie Just delivers in Spades Paul WS I made the Monster Hunter movie Anderson producer you know who didn't think it was a rollicking bit of fun though well that would be Tecmo who are not happy with the final product there was even a rumor they had reportedly banned the practice of Licensing any of their franchises from being adapted into live-action film but I guess they made an exception for a 2014's Fatal Frame movie so even though some fans point to it as a cheesy popcorn fueled romp its failure to turn a profit and the generally really a bad reception made sure that any chance of a sequel or reboot is now far more dead than alive if you out there know of any other bouncing beautiful bumbles in the video game or movie Industries let me know in the comments below over on my Twitter or hey if you'd like to see me take the DOA cast to suplex City in Dead or Alive 3. check out my gameplay channel in the description below where you can also find a link to purchase lights camera game over which is filled with other fascinating stories about failed video game movies which is uh almost all of them actually see you next time and thanks for watching foreign [Music]

Channel: Matt McMuscles

Views: 302,149

Keywords: matt mcmuscles, What Happened?, wha happun, DOA: Dead or Alive, Dead or Alive Movie, Dead of Alive, Koei Tecmo, Video Game Movies, Fighting Game Movies, Video essays, video game documentaries

Id: ApZWFutnk6I

Length: 21min 28sec (1288 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 14 2023