Mango

Optimism has been a dangerous to thing to have over the past year but I'm really holding out for things to keep improving and hopefully by the time Spider-Man and Matrix come out it's a major Christmas season for the box office. I guess that season could bring some higher covid numbers but with any luck (and a few miracles) there will be enough vaccinations by then to make it a minor factor.

Maybe there is hope for the box office after all. Too bad Black Widow moved, even if they had decided to stick with the $30 Disney Plus release it probably could have hit around $50 million opening in May based on how Godzilla vs Kong is doing.

It's hard to get excited about anything from DC tbh. They just throw everything at the wall and see what sticks. I'm looking forward to James Gunn's Suicide Squad and they peaked my interest in bringing Keaton Batman back but that will still be a wait and see. I disliked BvS and the characterization of Superman in it but I've always thought Cavill deserved a second shot with a writer/director that was better suited for the character than Snyder. Unfortunately I guess that probably won't happen.

I have no idea how I would rank the first three. I think I have to give props to the original. It's a really simple story done exceptionally well with great writing, characters, and world building. TS2 and TS3 are about equal, IMO. They take both concepts touched on in the first film and flesh them out while also introducing new ones done equally well. Headcannon wise, I generally prefer these three as a cohesive trilogy. Toy Story 4 was great as well. It proved the Toy Story world still had stories to tell, but as well done as it is it just feels "different" for some reason. Can't explain it, maybe it's nostalgia. Anyway I liked TS4, but not as much as the first three. I prefer to look at this movie as an "optional epilogue" or "alternate reality" continuation of the original three, which are about as perfect of a trilogy as you can get.

It's true that Buzz's arc was complete in the first movie, but TS4 did dumb him down a bit more than he had been prior. TS2 he led the team of toys across the city to find Woody and helped convince Woody out of his delusions that living as a collectible is the best way to go (essentially flipping the switch opposed to Woody getting him out of the space ranger delusion from the first film) and in TS3 pretty much led the group of toys at the daycare until being brainwashed.

Snyder really is the king of edginess. Doesn’t surprise me that he commissioned something like that before Jenkins signed on. I swear the dude’s brain is a 2009 deviant art account. Superman being angsty and miserable, Batman being a mass murderer, and Wonder Woman posing with beheaded victims. Snyder should just complete his edgelord transformation into an edgegod by making an angsty Shadow the Hedgehog film to go alongside the Sonic movie now.

I agree for sure. The mid-week openings definitely contributed to the fantastic multipliers for the films. Though I will say the percent of the total gross each film managed to make after the holidays (post-New Years) is still really impressive. I imagine Oscar hype and the later theater count boosts played a big part in that as well. Definitely understandable why the Pre-Christmas slot became the go-to for big fantasy blockbusters like Avatar and the Star Wars sequel trilogy after the LotR trilogy (and Titanic, for that matter).

Didn't see a thread for this and thought these films deserved a spot here! After decades of false starts and various names attached to the project, the highly believed "unfilmable" Lord of the Rings trilogy that we got today began production in 1997. While this thread is specifically about the box office of the films, if you are unaware and have some spare time, reading about the actual development/production of this trilogy is an extremely fun and detailed read for film fans, and I'd highly recommend checking it out. Here's a good starting point. The first film, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released on December 19th, 2001 domestically. It's opening Wednesday gross earned $18.21 million, leading to a $47.21 million opening weekend and a 5-day opening total of $75.13 million. The film excelled throughout the remainder of Christmas/New Year holidays, dropping only 18% in it's second weekend, scoring $174.1 million by New Years Day, and $205.5 million by the end of the January 4-6th weekend. Despite an already great total, the film was in no hurry to slow down. The film had fantastic legs throughout the cold, early months of 2002, even playing well into the spring months of March/April. The film was still playing in 1,120 theaters on Easter weekend (March 29 - 31, 2002) and made $2.38 million that weekend. After that, the film continued it's run on a lower scale all the way up until August of 2002, closing with $313,364,114 domestically by the end of it's run - placing 2nd place in both domestic and worldwide box office rankings for 2001, only beaten by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on both fronts. The second film, The Two Towers, released on December 18th, 2002. Making $26 million on it's opening Wednesday, en route to $62 million first weekend and a $102 million 5-day total, the sequel was in a position to ramp up the gross of the first film. The film hit $200 million at the end of it's second weekend, and had $261 million by the end of it's third weekend, right after New Years. Unlike most sequels, The Two Towers didn't just open big and sputter out, but maintained the legs of the first film fairly well. It crossed $300 million by MLK Weekend, and stayed in over 1000 theaters up through Valentines Day/President's Day weekend in 2003 ($3 million from 1,422 locations) and had $325 million in the bag at that point, topping the first film's gross. The film's last weekend at $1 million+ gross was March 14-16, where it had a $333 million total. The film continued to play on throughout the spring/summer to a $339,789,881 total, placing it 2nd for the year behind Spider-Man domestically, but handily topped it on worldwide numbers, ranking #1 with $936,689,735. The final film, Return of the King, was released on December 17th, 2003. The finale factor was strong with this one, with an opening of $34.45 million on Wednesday, leading to a $72.6 million opening weekend and $124.1 million 5-day total. Despite being a "grand finale" of sorts, the film only dropped 30% in the second weekend, with bringing in over $50 million and a post-Christmas total of $222 million. It held on strong with holiday weekdays and had amassed $290 million by the weekend following New Years. While the film's legs weren't quite as amazing as it's predecessors, it still held on extremely strong, even by the standard then. Making $329 million by the end of MLK Weekend and $357 million by Valentines/Presidents Day weekend. The film had one last major push after sweeping the Oscars, expanding 791 theaters (1,903 total) on March 5th, for a weekend of $3 million and a $368 million total. Return of the King went on to be the highest grossing film in the trilogy with $377,027,325 domestically, the highest that year. In addition to the stellar domestic gross, the film managed a staggering $763,654,686 in international numbers, leading to a massive $1,140,682,011 total. The second film to ever hit $1 billion in global earnings, right after Titanic. The films were all met with critical and social praise, and their overseas earnings are arguably even more impressive than the domestic grosses. That said, one thing that has always fascinated me about the runs of this trilogy is that they completely bucked the trend of "high profile frontloaded" releases. The first film had a very strong opening week, and word of mouth and anticipation led it to a shelf-life well beyond the holiday season it opened in. The second film, while definitely increasing in opening revenue/total gross, still didn't have an immediate massive increase. It had a very solid $15 million gain on the first film's opening weekend (though the higher Wed/Thurs totals likely do make up for a good bit of that), but still went on to have prolonged interest over the coming months. Even the final film, Return of the King, managed a 5x multi from it's opening weekend, in a year where X-Men 2 and The Matrix sequels were doing the whole, "bombastic opening/frontloaded" thing. No film in this trilogy has less than a 5x multi. The global box office results could probably have an entire thread to themselves, as this movie was one of several in the 2000s that really started changing the landscape of international earnings for films, making bank in markets thought unprofitable before. If I missed anything, or anyone has additional information, feel free to add!

It's roughly 30 minutes to the nearest theater, and about 35-40 minutes in the opposite direction to the second nearest. And we've heard about Starlink from Space-X, and it is sounding pretty great. It's just a matter of being widely available. My dad and grandparents are both signed up for the Beta waiting list. I'm not sure what quality it was in, it looked HD, but definitely not 4K, my dad has a 4K TV and you can 100% tell when something is using it to the fullest. I'm guessing it was streaming at around 720p but I'm not entirely sure. It might have dipped a bit here and there, not really sure. Either way, a little disappointing.

The movie has it's flaws but I really enjoyed it! Diana wasn't a Mary Sue in this one, and they actually brought her character down to earth and gave her a real arc, and the character beats were surprisingly warm compared to your usual run of the mill comic flick. I loved the CAMP. Reminded me of old Superman and Raimi Spider-Man in a good way. And while they had the final battle with Cheetah it felt way less like a "video game final boss" like so many of these movies (even the otherwise GREAT first film) and overall it actually did feel "restrained" compared to other comic book films which I quite liked.

I was watching Wonder Woman 1984 today with my dad at his house earlier. Since Covid sort of threw a wrench in my plans this year, I've had to move back with my parents in an extremely rural part of the state - in the country, no less. My dad has about the best internet he can find (I think he's using some 4G hotspot thing), but it is a far cry from cable/fiber, and even DSL. The only other option is satellite, which is even SLOWER and pricey on top of that. What I'm saying is, there aren't really any good choices for internet out here, and it is virtually impossible for major downloads or online gaming. We watched the movie and probably had to stop for buffer upwards of 20 times. We didn't stream it at 4K, either. Sometimes there were stretches of up to 5 minutes of buffering, and other times it would be 30 seconds to a minute. We started the 2.5 hour movie at just a little after 8pm, and it didn't finish until after 11. While this isn't at fault of Warner/AT&T, I do think it is worth mentioning. They may not be a majority now, but there are decent amounts of people with a less-than-desirable internet service for which these things just kind of ruin the entire experience. If they're really dead set on this sort of "changing of the landscape" thing (AT&T being an internet provider themselves), I feel like it is at least something they should acknowledge. And yeah, I'm sure there's always the "lower the video quality settings" but, honestly, absolutely not. Who wants to watch the brand new blockbuster premiere in DVD quality? Nobody. If I were to live around here and have to deal with this stuff the rest of my life, I'd definitely rather just go to a theater. Where I pay to watch the film and it play in a set quality with the stability of something as fragile as my internet connection will hamper the experience. EDIT: The most ironic part about this, is the only phone/landline providers around here are AT&T, who have opted on not providing faster internet to this area.

Seems like a really patronizing and douchey line of thought for someone seemingly no more qualified than anyone here tbh. (the Twitter post not yourself)

In all fairness, Tenet made more money than anything else "post-COVID" and even if it didn't I don't believe anybody in the industry is going to hold it against him.

Nolan can really go anywhere. There isn't a single studio out there that will turn him down. They might not all give him a $200M+ budget to do whatever with, but he can certainly secure $100-150M from Disney, Universal, Sony... any of them. My guess on Nolan's next destination assuming he really does cut ties with WB will be Paramount. It's the studio he most recently worked for outside of WB (Interstellar) and arguably the one that needs someone like him the most.

If Nolan and Warner do actually end up parting ways, I would be inclined to believe Inception and Interstellar will both be given sequels at some point. I think I read not long ago from either Variety or THR that they were looking into an Interstellar sequel already anyway (of course they wanted him to be involved with writing or producing at the least).

I'm not sure about domestically, but The Matrix was a HUGE international earner when the original trilogy was being released. And that was well before the markets for many international markets had the explosions they had. If all these wildness flip flops and Covid is somehow a distant dream nightmare by the time it releases, I'd be willing to bet money on Matrix 4 being an absolute behemoth in international earnings.

My point wasn't that is will necessarily be terrible, but that the outcomes for various different factors are fairly unpredictable. If you thought Hollywood was "corporate" before, things are about to get way, way more "corporate". At least, I would assume. Like I said, no telling where this will lead.

I understand not pitying the wealth of the higher ups, I personally don't either. That said I would like to point out that there tons of people that work for these films that aren't on nearly as high of a payscale, for whom these ripples through the industry directly affect as well. We don't know what the ramifications for this shell shock to have throughout the industry on creative or general operating levels yet.

Reddit is cancer

Probably a reach but have any of our fellow forum goers that are in the industry spoken about this at all? Understandably it seems like even those in the industry were completely sideswiped by this move but some input from them would be nice to read!

I saw Gravity at a drive-in theater with my family a couple weeks after it released. The 3D was absent but I still found the movie to be an enjoyable film on my viewing, but definitely a "well that was really cool but I doubt I'll bother to see it again" kind of way. It was paired in the drive-in with Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 which I thought was a really odd choice. Great write up, btw. Hunger Games and Frozen frenzy were wild times on the boards.

Location hasn't allowed me to! Not a ton of options but that will be changing once the world is managing the virus better. Certainly something I should try out one day. One positive to this could be the added challenge to really change up the set up of theaters I guess. Better projection, better seats, etc... the usual "premium" stuff. Do whatever you can to really make it an experience you can't get at home. Knock down some walls and make the screens large format... you don't really need 25 screens anyway. One thing that someone should at least consider should be the revitalization of 70mm IMAX. Now THAT'S something you can't beat.

There's also kind of a social aspect to it as well. It's always fun to go to a movie with friends or a date and then the movie becomes a point of conversation for whatever you decide to do after. Obviously people still talk about TV shows and movies they've recently streamed but... it just isn't the same. Who knows, maybe I'll get into going to the actual theatre (like plays) lol

I feel immensely bad for independent theater owners right now. This is a deathblow for the chains as well as all of their managers/employees but specifically so for independent theater owners. I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I haven't seen a ton of information on Disney's release of Mulan (admittedly at $30 it probably wasn't going TOO high) but it obviously wasn't a huge enough success for them to immediately put Black Widow and a lot of their 2021 releases on there. So clearly the number crunchers at Disney still see some need for theatrical releases. But it isn't like Tenet or any of the other recent theatrical releases did any better. I understand studios taking whatever measures to try and keep a profit in the past year, as everyone else is doing, but I can't help but just see this as greed on AT&T's part. They want that HBO Max subscriber base up, and are willing to sell out theaters in order to get it. I'm not sure if that is a wholly warranted reaction, but it's on my mind nonetheless. I love the theater-going experience and certainly hope there is some way that it survives this, but I guess we'll just have to wait and see. I don't know all the ramifications of a potential "simultaneous streaming release" plan will have on the industry, for both the business and creative sides, but whatever it will be, will be incredibly different I imagine.

Well the longer they take to release it the longer my prediction goes down so... Probably nothing too great unfortunately.