Jason Friedberg (born October 13, 1971 in Newark, New Jersey, USA) and Aaron Seltzer (born January 12, 1974 in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada) are a film director and screenwriter team known for making parody films. They were part of the writing team for Scary Movie and Spy Hard and have written and directed films such as Date Movie, Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, Disaster Movie and Vampires Suck.
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| Year | Film | Directors | Producers | Writers | RT Approval Rating |
Metacritic | Worldwide Gross |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996 | Spy Hard |
|
7% | 25/100[1] | $26,960,191 | ||
| 2000 | Scary Movie |
|
53% | 48/100[2] | $278,019,771 | ||
| 2006 | Date Movie |
|
|
|
6%[3] | 11/100[4] | $84,795,656[5] |
| 2007 | Epic Movie |
|
|
2%[6] | 17/100[7] | $86,865,564[8] | |
| 2008 | Meet the Spartans |
|
|
|
2%[9] | 9/100[10] | $84,646,831[11] |
| Disaster Movie |
|
|
|
2%[12] | 15/100[13] | $34,816,824[14] | |
| 2010 | Vampires Suck |
|
|
4%[15] | 18/100[16] | $79,658,108[17] | |
| 2012 | The Biggest Movie of All Time 3D[18] |
|
|
Date Movie has been the pair's best-selling movie so far. It opened with $19.1 million and earned $48.5 million overall.[19] Disaster Movie opened with $5.8 million and earned $14.2 million total in the United States.[19] Vampires Suck, which opened on a Wednesday, earned an estimated $18.7 million in its first five days.[19] A new movie, called The Biggest Movie of All Time 3D, is currently being filmed and will be in theaters somewhere in 2012. It will mainly be a spoof of Avatar.
"Yes, we all know that a lot of movies put aside the more artistic aspects of film making to solely make a profit; we're not naive. But, the films that these two directors make are so blatant at being nothing more than a juvenile finger pointing at an image or mention of a popular trend that, to me, they seem exploitive of a young culture raised to have an ever-decreasing attention span, thanks to the internet and channel surfing and, this may sound a little crazy, but, I think it shows a slight de-evolution in what people will accept as entertainment."
The critical reception of Friedberg and Seltzer's movies has been consistently very negative.[21][22] Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans were rated the two worst films of 2008 by The Times newspaper.[23] Additionally, every film they have directed has made it into Rotten Tomatoes' "Worst of the Worst" for the 2000s, only scoring one spot outside of the bottom 25.[24] The duo received a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Screenplay for Epic Movie at the 2007 Razzies[25] and were nominated for Worst Picture, Worst Director, and Worst Screenplay for both Meet the Spartans and Disaster Movie at the 2008 Razzies,[26] as well as nominated for 'Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay and Worst Prequel, Remake, Rip-Off or Sequel at the 2011 Razzies for Vampires Suck. The pair appears on noted British film magazine Empire's fan voted top 50 worst movies of all time more often than any other person. Almost all of their movies appear with a rank, and all are mentioned in the full review text.[27]
Critic Josh Levin of Slate commented that "Friedberg and Seltzer.. are not filmmakers. They are evildoers, charlatans, symbols of Western civilization's decline..."[28] Josh Rosenblatt of the Austin Chronicle said that "Writer/directors Friedberg and Seltzer are a scourge. They’re a plague on our cinematic landscape, a national shame, a danger to our culture, a typhoon-sized natural disaster disguised as a filmmaking team, a Hollywood monster wreaking havoc on the minds of America’s youth and setting civilization back thousands of years."[29] Korey Coleman of Spill.com has claimed that he is "bothered" by the duo's films, as he believes they are dumbing down the film industry and popular culture in general.[20]
Among all of their films, Friedberg and Seltzer had cast MADtv alumni Crista Flanagan and Ike Barinholtz.
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