‘Monster Trucks’ Lost Paramount $115 Million—And The Film Isn’t Even Out

To be clear, director Chris Wedge doesn’t deserve all the blame here. He will surely get some of it, like this assessment by Variety’s Peter Debruge: “Like other directors who’ve hailed from the animation sphere (including John Carter helmer Andrew Stanton and The Chronicles of Narnia’s Andrew Adamson), [Wedge] seems overwhelmed by the transition, resulting in exaggerated acting and clunky staging.” But, Wedge was a hired hand on the project, brought on board by former Paramount Pictures president Adam Goodman, who dreamt up the concept with the help of (per the Wall Street Journal) his son, who was four years old at the time. (Goodman is currently running a movie production company owned by Chinese tech conglomerate LeEco.)

A write-down, to be clear, is not an actual loss of money, but a reduction of the book value of an asset. In the unlikely event that Monster Trucks becomes a hit—I personally can’t wait to see it, though maybe not for the right reasons—Paramount can decrease or reverse the write-down.

Animated films and directors have caused plenty of write-downs in recent years. Dreamworks has taken write-downs on numerous films, including Flushed Away ($109 million), Rise of the Guardians ($87 million), and Mr. Peabody & Sherman and Penguins of Madagascar ($57 million apiece). That’s nothing compared to Andrew Stanton, whose live-action debut John Carter resulted in a $200 million write-down for Disney. The numbers are unclear on Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, but industry trades pegged the write-down on the film at around $120-140 million.