Welcome to Marwen

Welcome to Marwen is a 2018 American drama film directed by Robert Zemeckis, who co-wrote the script with Caroline Thompson. It is inspired by Jeff Malmberg's 2010 documentary Marwencol. The film stars Steve Carell, Leslie Mann, Diane Kruger, Merritt Wever, Janelle Monáe, Eiza González, Gwendoline Christie, Leslie Zemeckis, and Neil Jackson, and follows the true story of Mark Hogancamp, a man struggling with PTSD who, after having his memory erased from being physically assaulted, creates a fictional village to ease his trauma. The film was released in the United States by Universal Pictures on December 21, 2018, and received generally negative reviews from critics. It was also a box office bomb, with projected losses for the studio running as much as $60 million.

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Premise
On April 8, 2000, aspiring artist Mark Hogancamp (Steve Carell) became a victim of a violent assault when five white supremacists beat him up and left him for dead, all because he told them that he liked being a cross-dresser. Following the attack, Mark was left with little to no memory of his previous life due to brain damage inflicted by his attackers. In a desperate attempt to regain his memories, Hogancamp constructs a miniature World War II village called Marwen in his yard to help in his recovery. Unfortunately, Mark’s demons come back to haunt him when he’s asked to make a victim's impact statement at the sentencing of those who attacked him.

Cast

 * Steve Carell as Mark Hogancamp, an aspiring artist who was beaten up by five men and creates a miniature village called Marwen.
 * Leslie Mann as Nicol, Mark's neighbor.
 * Merritt Wever as Roberta, a kind friend of Mark who works at the hobby shop where he buys the models and toy figurines he uses to build Marwen.
 * Janelle Monáe as Julie, a friend Mark makes in rehab.
 * Eiza González as Caralala, Mark's friend at the bar where he helps out a few times a week.
 * Gwendoline Christie as Anna, Mark's Russian caretaker.
 * Leslie Zemeckis as Suzette, Mark's favorite actress.
 * Neil Jackson as Kurt, Nicol's rough and poorly mannered ex-boyfriend.
 * Diane Kruger as Deja Thoris, the Belgian Witch of the fictional Marwen.
 * Falk Hentschel as Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Topf, Deja Thoris's henchman.
 * Matt O'Leary as Benz
 * Stefanie von Pfetten as Wendy
 * Siobhan Williams as Elsa

Production
On April 28, 2017, it was announced that Robert Zemeckis would next direct an untitled fantasy drama film that would star Steve Carell. On May 19, 2017, it was announced that Leslie Mann and Janelle Monáe had joined the cast. On May 23, 2017, Eiza González joined the cast. In June 2017, it was reported that Diane Kruger had joined the cast to portray the villain while Gwendoline Christie also joined the cast. In July 2017, Merritt Wever and Neil Jackson joined the cast of the film. On August 6, 2017, the studio hired a German actor Falk Hentschel to play the role of a villain, as Hauptsturmführer Ludwig Topf, a Nazi captain to a squad of SS Storm Troopers who terrify the people of Belgium. On August 21, 2017, the director's wife, Leslie Zemeckis, was cast in the film for an unspecified role; she plays an actress in a pornographic film that Hogancamp watches.

Principal photography on the film began in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, on August 14, 2017. The filming was completed around October 19, 2017.

In June 2018, the film was officially titled Welcome to Marwen.

Release
The film was released in the United States by Universal Pictures on December 21, 2018.

The studio spent $60 million on promotion and advertisements for the film. The original plan was to spend $120 million on promoting, but after early test screenings went poorly, the costs were cut.

Box office
In the United States and Canada, Welcome to Marwen was released alongside Aquaman, Second Act and Bumblebee, and was projected to gross $7–9 million from 1,900 theaters over its five-day opening weekend. After making just $909,000 on its first day (including $190,000 from Thursday night previews), three-day weekend estimates were lowered to $3 million. It went on to debut to $2.4 million, finishing ninth and marking the worst opening of Zemeckis' career. Following its low opening, insiders estimated the film would lose Universal $50–60 million, the second straight week the studio released a film that was a box-office bomb following Mortal Engines.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 27% based on 98 reviews, with an average rating of 4.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Welcome to Marwen has dazzling effects and a sadly compelling story, but the movie's disjointed feel and clumsy screenplay make this invitation easy to decline." On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 40 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it a 57% overall positive score and a 37% "definite recommend".

Writing for IndieWire, David Ehrlich gave the film a "C" and wrote, "In trying to celebrate the healing powers of art, Zemeckis has created a sometimes fun, often morbidly compelling, and always ill-advised testament to the ways in which those healing powers can create problems of their own." Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune gave the film 1.5 out of 4 stars and said, "The way Zemeckis shapes these stop-motion animation scenes, they're meant to be exciting, funny, scary, a little of everything. But they whack the movie completely off-kilter. We lose the strange, quiet intimacy of Hogancamp's careful manipulation of this world. The real-life scenes don’t feel like Hogancamp's real life; they feel like a Hollywood falsification of it, despite Carell's and Mann's valiant efforts."

Caillou Pettis of Starburst Magazine scored the film a 4/10, and stated that "Despite a great performance from the increasingly impressive Carell and an interesting story at its heart, Welcome to Marwen sadly fails to impress with its lacklustre script and pacing issues." Original Cin writer Liam Lacey rated the film a D, saying "The amazing-but-true story of the idiosyncratic artist Mark Hogancamp has been turned into a bloated Hollywood techno fantasy that has to be seen to be disbelieved." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal wrote that the film was "Mind-numbingly immense, joylessly violent and utterly lifeless...You've got to see it to believe it, though I wouldn't advise doing so."

Contrarily, Richard Roeper of The Chicago Sun-Times praised the film, giving it 3.5/4 stars and saying, "Leave it to the innovative and greatly skilled veteran director Robert Zemeckis to deliver a beautiful and endearingly eccentric movie based on the life and the imagination of Mark Hogancamp. And leave it to the chameleon everyman Steve Carell to deliver a subtle, layered, empathetic and memorable portrayal of Mark — both the man and the doll."