(CHATSWORTH, CA) — Twentieth Century Fox has sent a cease and desist letter to adult film studio Digital Sin/New Sensations, currently in post production on a parody of its television series ”X-Files.” Their X-rated drama, set to release in late September of this year, was given a title ”The X- Files: A Dark XXX Parody.”
In the letter, a representative from Fox demands that Digital Sin/New Sensations change the title of the film and cease use of the X-Files mark. Digital Sin/New Sensations does not believe that its intended product infringes the rights of Fox. However, in the spirit of cooperation, the Company has decided to respond to Fox’s concerns by adapting the title to ”The Sex Files: A Dark XXX Parody,” removing the website associated with the film and changing the names of the main characters.
The film, set to raise the bar on adult features, will be the largest budget adult production to date that has been shot entirely on the Red One Digital Cinema Camera, a task that a handful in the industry have ever attempted and never on a film of this magnitude.
The adult studio has successfully parodied a growing list of the primetime line- ups from current and past, with spoofs of ”the Office”, ”Scrubs”, ”Seinfeld”, ”Friends” and ”30 Rock” resulting in sales that have given a heartbeat to an otherwise slumping industry.
For press inquiries contact Janeen Gensen at (800)748-6767 or JaneenG@newsensations.com.
First, I hate porn parodies, a bunch of talentless whores reading chessy, stupid lines before getting to vannila, run of the mill fuck scenes. Why these parody craps sell? Because bored, ignorant people filled with nostalgia are looking for things that can’t be found in these parodies: excitement and genuinity. But as long as there are sleazy fucks who shamelessly steal others’ ideas and turn them into parodies, these type of movies will be made and ignorant people will pay to watch them.
Having said that, this time they crossed the line: they in fact stole the complete X-Files title. There was The X-Files porn parodies in the past, The XXX-Files, etc. But nobody had ever attempted to steal the complete title like this. I don’t know what the hell they were thinking, but they’re lucky Chris Carter didn’t personally go to their shitty office to shove his foot up their ass.
As for The X-Files, I’ve been a fucking X-Phile since the day one. I have a huge collection containing everything X-Files, the complete series, both movies, novels, everything The X-Files, you name it, I have it. By the way, I don’t know how many people here watched The X-Files: I want to Believe which came out last year. I love this movie very much and every time I watch it, I enjoy it more. Hopefully they’re going to make the next one soon, this time following the series mythology arc.
THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.
I think Fox have had a humour bypass over this.
I’m not an X-Files fan,but I am a hardcore fan of Doctor Who (And a fan of Harcore porn)and I for one would love to see an X rated parody of my favorite show.
At the end of the day, what harm could it do?
I’m a fan of Doctor Who as well, the longest running sci-fi show on the history of television, even though I don’t love Doctor Who as much as The X-files. I gotta admit that I’m an X-Files junkie.
As for what harm could porn parodies do, none, while they’re annoying, boring, clueless, inane, unimaginativ, uninspired, badly acted, badly executed and insultingly, utterly stupid. They don’t do any harm except for committing every cardinal sin in the entertainment industry.
Unfortunately, the failure and refusal to create an original work from the scratch, stealing other’s successful ideas and coat tail riding has been spread like an epidemic throughout the entire entertainment industry and not just the adult section: the theatres are filled with redundant sequels and shitty re-makes. Film makers hardly have any original ideas, instead they prefer to produce endless Harry Potter installments, re-make obscure movies from the 60’s and 70’s and make movies based on fucking toy characters (Tranformers, G.I.Joe, etc.) This year’s summer movies were indeed hell on earth with the exception of Michael Mann’s Public Enemies.
How have other porn parodies been able to avoid the fate that befell the X-Files hardcore sendup? As last I checked, all of those other titles just put ‘not’ before (and/or with XXX parody afterwards).
Oh and I hate to break it to you Colonel, but the second X-Files movie was such a bomb financially, it’ll be a while before they try making another one (which is a shame, as there’s still a lot of fertile ground to cover and secrets to unlock). In fact, I dare say, your grandkids will be bitching some day in the future about how Hollywood is filled with idiots re-making movies or relaunching franchises that were first made during the late 90s and into the 2000 decade.
colonel, do you have any mulder and scully action figures. thanks for the e-mail address i’ll drop you a message soon, thanks.
Looks like you’re a fan of The X-Files, too, Sammy. Great. Let me explain the second X-Files movie’s total gross. Production budget for that movie was $30 million. Here is the theatrical lifetime grosses of The X-Files: I Want to Believe:
Domestic: $20,982,478
+ Foreign: $47,386,956
= Worldwide: $68,369,434
Add to that $15,607,127 in DVD sales and rentals, and $1.5 million that HBO paid to purchase the primary cable broadcast rights; and of course other cable companies including Show Time, Cine Max, Starz, etc. are yet to follow. They made close to $85 million profit out of a $30 million investment, and if we add merchandise sales (soundtrack CD, novle and comic book adaptations, t-shirts and other collectibles), the numbers will be close to $100 million, more than triple the amount of the initial investment. So I have to disagree about this movie being a bomb financially. I agree it had a rather lukewarm performance in domestic box office, and that was mainly due to Fox’s flawed marketing strategies, the timing of theatrical release and the fact that it came out the week after The Dark Knight, and no movie could compete with The Dark Knight in the summer of 08. However and despite that fact, the movie’s global grosses were excellent, and that’ll easily pave the way for the third installment which is already in discussion, and more likely will deal with the series’ mythology story arc rather than being a stand alone story. Like you said, there’s still a lot of fertile ground to cover and secrets to unlock. In other words, the truth is still out there.
And Jerry, Mulder and Scully sculptures are a part of my X-Files extensive collection, as well as the sculptures of other characters including John Doggett, A.D Skinner, The Cigarette Smoking Man, Alex Krycek and the alien from the first movie Fight the Future. Yes my friend, I’m the ultimate X-Phile.
Some of my favorite lines from The X-Files: I Want to Believe:
Mulder: Scully, I need you on this one.
Scully: And that’s what scares me.
ASAC Dakota Whitney to Mulder: I called you in because I valued your belief.
Mulder: Look, I don’t need the sweet talk.
Father Joe to Mulder: So you believe in these kind of things?
Mulder: Let’s just say I want to believe.
“I am a hardcore fan of Doctor Who (And a fan of Harcore porn)and I for one would love to see an X rated parody of my favorite show.”
Complete with Brittish accents please.
Yup — I loved the series up until the first movie came out (then I felt, it was a slow steady creative nosedive until they finally put the show out of its misery).
Anyhow, you’re totally correct in box office data of the second movie. Now normally, I would say the studio SHOULD be 110% gung-ho to do another movie (since as you pointed out, they made their money back, plus the advertising and whatever else ‘Hollywood Studio Accounting’ tacked on). Yet like Porn Valley, Hollywood is a fucked up place that often doesn’t make a lot of sense.
For example, Troy is also considered a box office bomb (and for a while, people were wondering if it was really worth paying Brad Pitt $20M to topline a movie). Yet if you look at the numbers, it did over twice as much foreign what it did domestically (and as you point out, you add in DVD, cable, VOD, et cetera and that’s just gravy). So everyone should have walked away happy. They didn’t and there was a lot of grumbling in the wake of the film about Pitt’s viability as an A-list star (yet he went on to be successful in ensemble films such as the Oceans series and more action/comedy fair like Mr. & Mrs. Smith). As for the director Wolfgang Peterson, he went on to direct the disastrous remake of The Poseidon Adventure (which was a true flop).
Now, I’m sure Fox would have loved for the X-Files sequel to have made the bulk of it’s money in the US…as Hollywood studios are not know for making movies for foreign audiences. Their attitude is, well if other countries like and can help pad the numbers…great. Yet they’re not going to go out of their way to make a film that is going to play primarily better in say the UK/France/Japan and secondary in Iowa/Utah and New York. That’s just too much of a risk for them to stomach – too hard to spin to their bosses that it was going to do great in Germany, but not so good in Nebraska…and at the end of the day, it did neither, so now someone is up shit creek without a paddle.
Some filmmakers can get away with the upsideness of this — like say, Woody Allen. If I’m not mistaken, his films over the past decade have done a lot better overseas (but then, if I’m not mistaken, he gets most of the money to make his movies from overseas investors). So no one really cares in America about Woody; he gets to make his small movies that Europeans love and Americans don’t and everyone walks away happy (because a US studio can pick it up to just distribute instead of having the added headache of production).
Add in how DVDs used to account for close to 60% of a film’s total revenue, and Hollywood has become a lot more cautious since the start of the decade (when most any movie, good or bad, could make a boatload of money because you could count on DVD sales).
Fox most likely just doesn’t want to go back down the road of trying to do new talent deals with the two leads and Carter — as from what I understand, they all wanted a LOT of money to do the sequel (and studios are tightening their belts in this economic climate). That $30M might not be the ‘real’ number, as I imagine just to get those three back might have cost between ten and fifteen million when you throw in their upfront salary, backend points, merchandising points, and other royalties (so it could really be closer to $40 or $50M). Throw in Fox having to cover other films that year that didn’t do so well, and again, it might seem like a hit on paper — but if they had to cover the losses from other films and it did better overseas than domestically, you have another strike against them (fair or unfair).
Fox has, like all the studios do, likely run numbers on a possible sequel that factors in everyone’s relative box office: so if they feel that Gillian Anderson just doesn’t pull in enough people, and Carter won’t do another movie without her and David starts getting pissy about not having Carter on board…again, the studio might feel like cutting their losses instead of bending over backwards to satisfy everyone. For to try and do another movie with say Doggett as the star isn’t going to fly (as again, the studios have their numbers and data and sadly, as much as we like Robert Patrick, he just doesn’t put a ton of people in the seats).
As a devoted fan of the series, I’m sure you remember reading about how Carter had to sue Fox just to get all of the money owed him from the series…so he’s not one to just roll over and take it in the ass to get a movie made. You think corralling crazy porn chicks is hard…try getting Hollywood creative types to agree on making a simple movie!
As an avid fan, I love the entire 9 season of The X-Files, though season 6 is my least favorite. That’s when they tend to break out of their cult status and become more hosehold friendly with too many comical episodes. Season 6 took on subjestcs that everybody wanted to see The X-Files dealing with for years: Area 51 and the Bermuda Triangle in the episodes Dream Land (2 part story) and Triangle, respectively. However, many hardcore fans including myself were disappointed by the fact that both subjects treated as stand alone comical stories while they could have been dramatic and fit in the mythology story arc.
Chris Carter and Co. realized they took things too far and disappointed their loyal fans, so in Season 7, they went back to their cult roots and the result was one of the best seasons of The X-Files; and since there was a possibility that it might be the final season, many questions were answered, we learned about the final fate of Mulder’s long lost sister, the fate of the Syndicate and much more. Besides, everybody got to write and even direct their own episodes: David Duchovny wrote and directed Hollywood A.D guest starring his wife Téa Leoni, Gillian Anderson wrote and directed the brilliant All Things, and William B. Davis wrote En Ami. After David Duchovny’s departure at the end of Season 7, they did the best they could with what was available to them, and even though agent John Doggett played by wonderful Robert Patrick was not a match for agent Fox Mulder, but he was an interesting, solid character on his own terms, and Season 8 and 9 episodes featuring him were very well written and executed, Via Negativa, Medusa, Dæmonicus, 4-D and Release just to name a few. When the series was eventually ended on May 19, 02, they closed the door, but didn’t lock it and left the room for the future movies whether stand alone stories or mythology tie-ins.
As for the production budget of The X-Files: I Want to Believe, Chris Carter was the main producer, he along with Frank Spotnitz financed the movie. Carter used the money he received from his settlement with Fox to make this movie, so basically he took the most profit out of his investment.
As for the future movies, like one of the Fox’s executives said, it’s up to Chris Carter, David Dochovny and Gillian Anderson to decide. Both Carter and Dochovny as well as Frank Spotnitz have hinted they’re interested in making the next movie with a story about the 2012 and the final alien invasion. Now regardless of what anybody believes or thinks about the whole business of 2012, the fact remains that if The X-Files deals with that subject, it’s going to be a phenomenon, and it’ll sell tickets like hot cakes. The thing about the successful franchises is that they never go out of fashion and there’s always a high demand for them. Whether there would be another X-Files movie remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure: Chris Carter has good stories that he wants to tell as much as we want to listen.
Coronel, what is yer take on District 9?
Awful, Harvey, District 9 was an awful, disgusting, horrible movie. The story makes no sense whatsoever, these aliens crash land on earth and dispite their advance technology and weaponary, become the drag of human socity, live in ghettos and eat cat food.
The aliens of District 9 create no sense of horror, mystery or superiority, they’re cartoonish creatures who look utterly ridiculous, their heads look like the head of fly while their bodies seem to be made out of toilet paper. There’s not one character, human or alien, in this movie you can care about and relate to, none of the plot twists make a damn sense and action sequences are few and far in between and redundant. It’s the worst sci-fi movie I’ve seen since Battlefield Earth. Don’t waste your time and money on this pile of crap.
it was so hot out the other day i went to the movies just to cool off and saw ‘500 days of summer’.. good flick, funny and fucked-up just like real relationships
Saw that one studio had already 1billion in grosses this year, but I they spent 1.5 billion to make that. Roger Ebert said he saw the trailer to “Avatar” the new $200m James Cameron flick and wasnt 100% impressed. I will take Cameron over Michael Bay any day though. Steele, you dont have a/c in your hovel? Where is BDD to kick Steele in the sac?
I do have a/c, Larry, but the place is huge and it takes forever to cool down. If you’re looking for BDD, he’s in San Diego. You should go down there and suck his LD since you love him so much.
The trailer for James Cameron’s Avatar came out last week, and from what I saw it’s going to kick some major ass. I understand why Roger Ebert wasn’t %100 impressed, in some close-ups, the blue aliens look a bit cartoonish, but everything else that I’ve seen including the lavish landscapes, giant dinosaur like creatures, sophisticated labs and intense fight sequences look absolutely amazing.
In fact, I had an off the board chat about Avatar with Third Axis a few days ago. He went to an exclusive screening of 16 min. of footage in IMAX 3D and he was very impressed by what he saw. Maybe he can stop by and explain further.
Hey Colonel, what movies now playing are worth seeing?
I never played with G.I. Joe dolls but that movie looks worth seeing. Quentin T I sense is gonna be a let down and Brad Pitt is pretty lame.
Jeremy, the only movie now playing that’s worth seeing is Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds. I don’t know if you liked Tarantino’s previous movies. I was a bit let down by Death Trap, but here he’s back at the top of his game. Inglourious Basterds is his best movie since Pulp Fiction and definitely worth seeing. But on the other hand, J.I.Joe which I haven’t seen, seems to be nothing but another soulless Hallywood bag of visual trash.
Holloween 2 is coming out tommorow, but I’m not thrilled about that, either. I didn’t like what Rob Zombie did with his first Holloween movie. He stripped Michael Myers from his legend and mystery, created a background stroy for him and turned him into a fucked up kid, growing up in a trailer with a stripper mom and an abusive alchoholic step dad. Typical trailer trash bullshit. That was a wrong approach to the story, because characters like Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are the modern day boogeymen. You don’t need to know their roots, you don’t need to know where do they come from and why do they do what they do. All you need to know is that they jump at people out of the shadows and anybody who comes across them will ene up dead and hacked up. They don’t need an orogin story. We’re talking about a horror movie, not a psychology case study for god’s sake.
The dialogue in “Death Proof” was ridiculous. I couldn’t stand that movie until it got a little interesting at the end when the chick is hanging from the car. I’ve read his latest has his signature of jumping all over the place back and forth. That suggests an emphasis of style over lack of substance. I’ll check it out though. It doesn’t sound great but a lot of people seem to like it. I still am not too happy that Quentin reincarnated Travolta’s career.
I never expected GI. Joe Schmoe to have any substance whatsoever, so I wouldn’t stand to be disappointed in that respect. “Substance? Like, huh?, what’s that?” fans might say. But thanks, I’ll stay away from that flick and District 9, as well.
Hey Colonel, what did you think of “Public Enemies”?
Give us your porner’s perspective: If you have the ambition, you can become the next Bill Margold. Harrumph…
I loved Public Enemies, the best movie I’ve seen this year so far and an instant classic ganster hit, along with Once Upon a Time In America, Scarface and Good Fellows. Great story, great perfomances, great cinematography and great music. Using hi-def video cameras instead of 35MM creates a realistic, documentary style vibe that also adds up to tension specially in the action sequences, most noteably the Little Bohemia shootout scene.
My most favorite scene is the final scene in which John Dillinger is watching Manhathan Melodrama in theater while Mulvin Purvis and his men are waiting outside to catch him. There’s a sense of morbidity and tragedy in that scene, as if Dillinger realizes and accepts his fate and walks right towards it once he walks out of the theatre. Consequently after he’s gunned down, Purvis doesn’t feels relieved, he walks away from the scene with confusion and uncertainty. All in all, Public Enemies is what I call pure cinema.
Agreed on public enemies. But it lacked the flash of other Michael Mann movies. A bit like a documentary.
GI Joe, the only thing worth saving is Sienna Miller as the Baroness chanelling Sarah Palin!?!?!
Harvey Dent says:
‘Agreed on Public Enemies. But it lacked the flash of other Michael Mann movies, a bit like a documentary.’
I don’t know what you mean by ‘lacked the flash’, it’s Michael Mann’s best movie since Heat. Maybe even better than Heat in some aspects. It intentionally looks like a documentary, because it’s based on true events.
As for G.I.Joe, I can’t say anything because I haven’t seen it and I’m not going to. If film makers want to persuade me to buy tickets and spend 2 hours in a dark room watching their movie, they should do more than dressing a hot chick in fetish outfit and having her shooting blank bullets.
Do people even masterbate to this type of porn? Girl’s who don’t get turned on are “not hot”, no mater how hot they are. I think Jessi James is hot, but the last porn I saw her in was so COLD, I wondered is she even alive? The guy I was with had to turn it off because it was turning us off! And it wasn’t because Belladona and Jessi Jane wern’t hot. It was because the heat that was sapposed to be between them, wasen’t there and because I believe Devils films had one scene on a loop, that kept showing the same dead scene over and over. I’d like to thank Devils films for making an artsy-fartsy, overly edited, dead porn.
Both Miami Vice and Collateral were great. As far as QT, yes Deathproof sucked but nobody wants to give Jackie Brown the props it deserves. It was Elmore Leonard novel but it imo was his most mature film to date.
But yeah, PE was one of the better films this summer, but that aint saying a whole lot though. Justhesame, it was wonderful but Mann is in the top tier of directors out there.
With regard to the parody porn I agree it’s just f’ing stupid! You can’t get off to that type of stuff. I assume it’s for the non-type of porn goer. None of the scenes that I’ve watched are sexy or hot in the slightest.
Miami Vice was fine, but Jamie Foxx ruined it. What happened was that while filming on location in the Dominican Republic, some shots were fired accidentally. Jamie Foxx packed his stuff and left and refused to come back to shoot the finale scene. That forced Michael Mann to re-write the ending and the result was a lackluster ending.
As for Jackie Brown, I like that movie. But Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino’s best movie since Pulp Fiction. Great story with a surprise ending that you have to see it to believe it.
Yep, bad on Miami Vice, but Michael Mann is top notch.
I also remember well Manhunter. I liked PE but something was missing. The final scene was outstanding. Yet, something was missing for me. Maybe his visual style.
Going back to TV shows, I was wondering, Colonel, have you ever seen “The Wire”? I think its the best police procedural ever made and David Simon is a genius when it comes to dialogue writing.
Absolutely, Origen, The Wire is one of the best drama series of all time. David Simon, in addition to being a powerful writer, is a former police reporter, and that’s what makes his scripts so realistic, genuine and intriguing. Furthermore, the cast of character actors is amazing, most noteably Dominic West, Lance Reddick who currently plays the head of Fringe Division in Fringe, probably the best sci-fi series since The X-Files, and of course wonderful Glynn Turman.
The Wire and The Sopranos are the best HBO series ever.
“deadwood”, too. i also really liked “john from cincinnati”. and i thought the whole world’s knee-jerk reaction of contempt for jfc was completely stupid and short sighted. critics so butt hurt over the end of “deadwood” never even gave the show a chance to develop. once again revealing the inane stupidity of the average american media consumer.
I liked the first season of Deadwood, when Al Swearengen was the ultimate bad ass murderer pimp and Wild Bill Hickok was in town to kick ass and drink raw whisky. In Season 2, they mellowed out and the episodes became sequences of not so interesting long dialogues and Al Swearengen coping with some kind of illness to the point where they had to hold him up just so he can take a piss. Season 3 was much better, but that’s when they halted the production because each episode reportedly cost $1 million to produce. Ever since Season 3 ended, there were talks about concluding the story with two speacial TV movies which would be great if happens.
As for John From Cincinnati, it was definitely an ambitious project with good potentials, but the audiences were not patience and found the philosophical hints and gestures too confusing; and that’s why the series couldn’t continue beyond the first season even though I for one would have loved to see more. I think an idea like John From Cincinnati works better in the format of a feature length movie in oppose to an ongoing series.
maybe so, colonel, maybe so (in regards to jfc). at any rate, “the wire” was frickin’ awesome. the omar little character was the king of fuck mountain. pretty much all the characters were great. my only tiny little critique is that when kima got got she should have stayed got. i bet they wrote her back in because people liked her character so much. but then she didn’t really contribute much to the rest of the storyline. plus, if you think about it, not one cop got blown away in the line of duty. not one. but the show was so good it’s easy to overlook that fact.
i really liked the season dealing with the dock workers and the demise of the american working class. the american working class has been so fucked over by the criminal robber baron class that i often wonder why there isn’t a new civil war. but then i remember to light up a joint and watch some more pornography.
oh yeah! i also watched “appaloosa” as per your suggestion on this message board. and i agree, it was a fantastic movie. kinda reminded me of “deadwood” to a certain extent (obviously). it was also extremely well written and acted. and watching it on a 58″ high-def television really highlighted the movie’s amazing cinematography. word.
Right on, Chip Love. You know, going back to John From Cincinnati, my impression was that David Milch is suggesting John might be in fact god: the ultimate truth that does not need to be comprehended or validated by ignorance, does not need to pick sides, if you’re in tune with him, good for you, if you’re not, that’s your loss, etc. It’s a noble idea for a story, but the execution of that idea also matters.
If you liked John From Cincinnati, I suggest you watch Improbable, one of the stand alone episodes of Season 9 of The X-Files, written and directed by Chris Carter and starring Burt Reynolds as a mysterious man who might as well be god. The agents meet him while they’re hunting down a serial killer. I’m not going to spoil any further details, but I guarantee you’ll love it if you haven’t seen it already.
The Wire was a great and under appreciated show, it should’ve bagged Emmys left and right. Ian McShane’s acting and David Milch’s crazy ass mind made Deadwood great. McShane is a great talent, the career he has now is the career Oliver Reed could have had had he lived his life in some moderation. Though it can be said that a lot of these actors today are major pussies compared to the guys of the past.
True, Larry, The Wire is such an under appreciated series that should have won many Emmy awards, most notably for writing and acting. Probably The Wire’s biggest competition was it’s roomate, The Sopranos which by the way earned 21 nominations for outstanding writing for a drama series, winning the award six times and won at least one Emmy for acting in every eligible year except 2006 and 2007.
Looks like the folks at Emmy had to choose between two HBO great series: The Sopranos and The Wire; and they kept choosing The Sopranos repeatedly. As much as I love and admire The Sopranos, but I have to admit that was unfair to The Wire.