The following article was sent in by frequent site visitor Jeff Thomas.
Good morning/evening all!
Here is a look at some numbers… an extrapolation to put numbers into context following the aforementioned premise.
Blade Trinity sold 7,729,894 tickets. Lets assume that some of the ticket buyers came as a couple… lets say 25% of those. The contrast being a “couple” at home watching Blade the TV series. So that narrows the Blade Movie Target audience for the TV series to 5.8 Million potential viewers. So of this viewership only 2.5 Million show up to the Premiere. I am wondering if the other 3.3 Million were aware of the TV series. Those fans that believe the “majority” of fans watching the premiere were Blade the Movie fans would suggest that at least the Blade fans would have been aware of the
Pilot on Spike… Where were they?
Did they not tune in because WS was not the Lead?
Did they not tune in because they were unaware of the TV series.. or potentially Spike?
Did they not tune in because they were unavailable Wednesday nights at 10:00 p.m.?
Perhaps they did not have Spike in their programming line up?
To move this premise forward. If you are New Line…
a) are you going to cater your TV series to the movie fans?
b) are you going to dare attempt a 4th movie without WS as the lead?
c) are you going to look for a new Network/Cable host based on a retention of 1 Million (approximate) fans post episode 7? Is it worth shopping another network?
These are my thoughts to invoke specific conversation if wanted. I suggest a) and b) are futile and perhaps option c) is the direction New Line takes. I further suggest that if the movie fans were to be lenient and accept a new character in the role this franchise would survive. There is still the feint possibility this franchise could survive regardless as I believe there are enough existing movie fans that did enjoy the product combined with the potential new viewership that remains relatively untapped in my opinion.
I suggest that New Line and Goyer knew that for this project to be successful and subsequently an option of producing a Blade 4 they had to cater to the TV viewing demographic not just the Movie Fan demographic and that is exactly what they did. They needed to find a large demographic that would not have predisposed concepts as to what Blade is/was (a.k.a. WS). I was personally disappointed in the 2.5 Million viewers as I suspected it would be a much larger turn out but as I have stated before I still believe Spike was not the right host. Unfortunately the pilot was not very good.
Action scenes were definitely weak and as a stand alone episode it just was not that entrancing. I do believe, as seemingly a few others to the tune of 1 Million, that the continuing episodes increased in value and the storyline continued to intrigue many. If the TV series remains in Cancellation land I suspect Blade the franchise follows suit.
d) What are your thoughts on the Blade Franchise?
e) Where does New Line go now?
f) Is Blade on the big screen or small screen gone for good?
If there are any takers on the potential of a new TV series or even if you
think this is an impossibility I pose this question:
g) Hypothetically would you watch if they changed the Lead?
Take care!!
First off, thanks to Jeff for the great article! There's a lot of great information and speculation in there.
Now, he brings up a few questions in there for everybody to toss in their input - namely:
d) What are your thoughts on the Blade Franchise?
e) Where does New Line go now?
f) Is Blade on the big screen or small screen gone for good?
g) Hypothetically would you watch if they changed the Lead?
I'll post my own thoughts on those questions here and hope that you all will add your input in the comments below.
d - I personally love the Blade franchise. I love the movies and I love the television series. I admit that I haven't read any of the comics, so I can't comment on that part of the franchise.
e - In one of the previous poll results I gave my nod to the Sci Fi channel being a great possible home for the show as well as mentioning a few other decent possibilities. We know New Line is still behind the show and I'm sure they are going to do everything they can to keep it alive on a new network if at all possible.
f - No. Blade will be back in some form or another. The comic has just started up and hopefully the television series hasn't come to an end.
g - Would I watch? Yes. Do I want them to change the lead? No. I feel Sticky is a fairly weak actor in my opinion. However, he's already made his mark on the character and I've come to know the "TV" Blade as the one Sticky has portrayed. As such, I hope he remains the Daywalker, though I'd definitely still watch if he weren't.