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A mockbuster (also known as knockbuster or drafting opportunity) is a film created to exploit the publicity of another major motion picture with a similar title or subject. Mockbusters are often made with a low budget and quick production to maximize profits. "Mockbuster" is a portmanteau of the words "mock" and "blockbuster".
Such films fit the B movie model, being produced on a small budget and derivative of the target film and other similar projects. The lower costs of using modern video and computer graphics equipment and the tie-in to the mainstream film's advertising have allowed the mockbuster to become a profitable niche in the home video market. Blockbuster, once the largest DVD rental chain, implied support to the concept by buying 100,000 copies of The Asylum's version of War of the Worlds during the theatrical opening week of Steven Spielberg's film based on the same novel starring Tom Cruise.
Most mockbusters capitalize on the popularity of theatrically released films, but some are derivative of a TV series. The 1979 film Angels Revenge bore many superficial similarities to the popular TV series Charlie's Angels; its promotional materials even resembled Charlie's Angels' graphic style. In reverse, Glen A. Larson was accused of producing mockbusters at the height of his career, with his television series plagiarizing popular films of the time ( Battlestar Galactica, for example, capitalized on the popularity of Star Wars, while Alias Smith and Jones was a take on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).
Following the deaths of Haas on December 8, 2015 and Ickert on November 14, 2019, their relatives inherited the studio and its equipment. On May 26, 2021, the independent label Vier Sterne Deluxe Records announced that it was negotiating with the current owners of Dingo Pictures to release the films as radio plays; the new CEOs, Simon Bohnsack and Josef "Jimmy" Roederer, also had plans to make new films and a documentary behind the studio. In August 2021, the first radio play, Wabuu der freche Waschbär ( Wabuu the Cheeky Raccoon), was released.
A 1993 science fiction horror film titled Carnosaur, produced by Roger Corman and starring Diane Ladd as a mad scientist who plans to recreate dinosaurs and destroy humanity, is loosely based on the 1984 novel of the same name by John Brosnan, but the two have little in common. It was released by New Concorde two weeks before the blockbuster Jurassic Park. Carnosaur may be considered a mockbuster. (Diane Ladd's daughter Laura Dern starred in Jurassic Park)
In some cases, the knockoff film may bear little or no resemblance to the original. In 2012, Super K – The Movie, an Indian fantasy/science-fiction animated film about an artificially created boy named "Super Kloud" with superpowers, was released direct-to-video in the United States as Kiara the Brave. Its title and cover art focused on an incidental female character with red hair, in an attempt to evoke the design of Brave's protagonist Merida, despite the fact that Kiara was a minor character in the movie, because Super K is not a mockbuster.
In other cases, the knockoff film simply renames an already existing film into a name that is similar to a popular film. For example, when Phase 4 Films acquired the US distribution rights to The Legend of Sarila, the company renamed the film to Frozen Land to cash in on Disney's 2013 film, Frozen, complete with a logo that was made to look similar to the official logo to the film. In another case, a collection of animated shorts from the 1990s animated series, Britannica's Tales Around the World, was rereleased under the name Tangled Up by Brightspark to cash in on Disney's 2010 film, Tangled. Brightspark also rereleased the film The Adventures of Scamper the Penguin under the name " Tappy Feet: The Adventures of Scamper" to cash in on Happy Feet.
The Asylum CEO David Michael Latt responds to criticisms about loose plot lines by stating that "We don't have spies at the studios. We have a general sense of what the film is and we make our movie completely original, just based on that concept".
Mockbusters are low budget, and their revenue is based entirely on the sales of their DVDs. Low budgets also mean that directors need to think of creative yet cheap ways to achieve the endings that they desire. For example, Snakes on a Train capitalized on the Internet hype surrounding Snakes on a Plane. Consumers wanted what they saw. Latt said, "With only four days left of shooting my partner called and said everyone is really excited about Snakes on a Train, but they're more excited about the poster, which showed a snake swallowing a train. It was meant to be, you know, metaphorical. But the buyers wanted it, so I was given the mandate that the ending had to have the snake eat the train." At the same time, another representative of Asylum, David Rimawi, says that while a handful of their films do have "artistic elements", that's just not something they're concerned with. The Asylum does not claim to be an "artsy" production house.
Released by The Asylum in 2015, Avengers Grimm is a mockbuster hybrid of and Once Upon a Time. Released in 2018, Tomb Invader is a mockbuster based on the Tomb Raider series.
Two Italian directors directed unofficial sequels to George A. Romero's 1978 Dawn of the Dead: Lucio Fulci's Zombi 2 sold itself as the sequel to that film (which was called Zombi in Italy), and even used a line originally written for Dawn of the Dead. In a similar, more infamous Italian example, the 1990 goblin-themed Troll 2 was hastily marketed as a sequel to Troll.
The Philippine film industry is also known for its unauthorised adaptations of popular Western films. The popularity of the Batman films, most especially the 1966 TV series, has led to numerous unauthorised remakes and pastiches, such as James Batman starring comedian Dolphy, Batman Fights Dracula, and Alyas Batman en Robin. Dolphy also played leading roles in other mockbusters, including Wanted: Perfect Father, a comedy-drama based on the 1993 film Mrs. Doubtfire, and Tataynic, a 1998 parody of James Cameron's Titanic. Other Filipino knockoffs include Bobo Cop (a parody of RoboCop) and Rocky Plus V (a spoof of the Rocky series).
Turkish cinema was known, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s, for knockoff films done at a cheap, amateur level. The Man who Saved the World became infamous for its theft of clips and songs from Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, to the point that the film is popularly known in English-speaking realms as "Turkish Star Wars", where it typifies the concept of so bad, it's good. Three Giant Men involved a battle between Marvel Comics characters Spider-Man and Captain America, both unauthorized and dressed in cheap costumes, decades before covered the same concept to greater success.
Mockbusters have also had legal complications with false advertising. They supposedly tweak the plot lines and the titles just enough to skirt legal trouble and yet ride on the publicity of major blockbusters. Until the Hobbit case, mockbuster production houses have been able to achieve soundalike titling to such an extent that even actors in the films have been confused about which film they are starring in. Some actors starring in the original have gone on to become fans of the mockbuster model. Kel Mitchell was the star in the mockbuster Battle of Los Angeles, the mockbuster to the original . His friend was in the original and they began promoting both films together. Kel has since then became a fan of the studio's formula: "I laugh out loud when I see that a film is coming out; I wonder what The Asylum is going to do with it. They're going to remix that name and put it out."
In December 2013, The Walt Disney Company filed in California federal court to get an injunction against the continued distribution of the Canadian film The Legend of Sarila, retitled Frozen Land. In their suit, Disney alleges: "To enhance the commercial success of Sarila, the defendant redesigned the artwork, packaging, logo, and other promotional materials for its newly (and intentionally misleadingly) retitled film to mimic those used by Disney for Frozen and related merchandise." The suit was filed against distributor Phase 4 Films. Phase 4 and Disney settled out of court with Phase 4 paying US$100.000, changing the name of the movie back to The Legend of Sarila and also changing the logos and other promoting material that resembled Disney's.
In one such lawsuit, Walt Disney Pictures sued the UK-based studio Brightspark, complaining that the studio was "misleading consumers with numerous releases that confuse and undermine the trust those consumers have in Disney". Among Brightspark's films mentioned in the lawsuit were Braver, Tangled Up, The Frog Prince, and Little Cars, which resemble Disney's Brave, Tangled, The Princess and the Frog, and Cars, respectively.
Warner Bros. similarly sued The Asylum over their release of Age of the Hobbits. The judge ruled in favor of Warner Bros., writing that "There is substantial likelihood that consumers will be confused by Age Of Hobbits and mistakenly purchase the film intending to purchase ."
Most mockbusters follow the trend of releasing their films close to the release dates of the original:
The Asylum defend this practice, stating their intention is not to confuse customers. The Asylum cites reports from both Blockbuster LLC and Hollywood Video that show that less than 1% of customers who rent one of their films ask for a refund; the low return rate of their films has been used to argue that consumers are renting The Asylum's films deliberately. "There's a segment of people who watch them because they know they're bad and they're funny, and they're fun to make fun of with their friends," says Kyle Ryan, the managing editor of The A.V. Club, a sister publication of The Onion.
The Asylum claimed that they were justified in using the word "Hobbit" as a fair use of scientific terminology after some scientists borrowed the term from the Hobbit stories a few years prior to describe a human species in Indonesia. The Asylum argued that it provided warnings stating that this was not the Tolkien creature. The films also featured major plot differences: "In an ancient age, the small, peace-loving Hobbits are enslaved by the Java Man, a race of flesh-eating dragon-riders. The young Hobbit Goben must join forces with their neighbor giants, the humans, to free his people and vanquish their enemies."
The Federal Court found that Warner Bros. had a valid trademark on the word "Hobbit". The court rejected The Asylum's scientific fair-use claims since there was no evidence to suggest that the film was about a prehistoric group of people who lived in Indonesia. The court rejected all of The Asylum's defenses: (i) that it was permitted to use "Hobbits" in the title of its film pursuant to the free speech test of the Second Circuit's decision in Rogers v. Grimaldi, (ii) that its use of the mark constituted nominative fair use to indicate plaintiffs' films and (iii) that the "Hobbits" mark was a generic name. The court decided that The Asylum had failed to prove its defenses and on December 10, 2012, found in favor of the plaintiffs and entered a temporary restraining order. This restraining order prevented the use by Global Asylum of the title Age of the Hobbits. The Ninth Circuit court of appeals affirmed in 2013. The film was then released under the name Clash of the Empires.
The cult television shows Mystery Science Theater 3000 and the German similar show SchleFaZ have featured mockbusters of other films (eg. Atlantic Rim, Pod People). Mockbusters: The Art of the Knockoff Film - Game Rant
Two of Vídeo Brinquedo's productions were parodied in an episode of The Amazing World of Gumball called "The Treasure", in which Gumball picks up a mockbuster DVD called How to Ratatwang Your Panda. The fictional production is a cross between The Little Panda Fighter and Ratatoing, mockbusters based on Kung Fu Panda and Ratatouille, respectively. "The Amazing World of Gumball" The Treasure (TV Episode 2012) - Connections - IMDb
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