BoxOfficeFangrl

The Sony fiscal year runs from April to March, with the 2022 FY beginning on April 1. Their movies have already made so much money for this fiscal year, shifting Morbius to its new date puts its entire gross under "next year" in their books. A similar sort of thing happened with Warner Bros after The Dark Knight, it made much more than they ever could have dreamed of, so they were fine with moving Harry Potter 6 from November 2008 to Summer 2009 and having the money count later on. I guess it's a problem for a studio if theatrical is two billion one year, and $200 million the next-businesses always like to seem like they are growing. It all sounds a bit greedy to the average fan, a public health excuse is way better PR. Sony probably figures people won't entirely forget about how much they love all things Spidey in two months. It could be a bit of Column A and Column B, if they are shooting additional footage or editing it in some way...

Oh, I remember lots of gnashing of teeth about Joker on Twitter come nomination morning. Todd Phillips got widely blamed for Gerwig missing Best Director (but they both missed at DGA - Taika easily could have been in sixth with AMPAS). From what I recall, the people who hated it clung to the Metacritic score and the idea of it being an incel movie, clearly existing in a curated feed where everyone held the same contempt/scorn for it that they did. They had resigned themselves to Joaquin winning a "career award" and Joker getting some nominations, but 11, plus Phillips in Director... "How could they nominate him? It was just watered-down Scorsese! He blamed 'woke culture' for ruining comedy!" All the signs along the way of Joker being successful--the Golden Lion, the billion dollars, the guild response--were ignored/dismissed by the non-fans, who lashed out pretty badly on Oscar morning. Maybe others remember it differently. It's easy to see the same sort of thing happening with Don't Look Up, plus, it's Netflix, so the viewership numbers will be dismissed as fake, somehow. The campaign is too smug, Sirota and McKay will tweet themselves out of contention, "...but Metacritic/Rotten Tomatoes!" It might get 2-3 nominations, it might get 10. Either way, Don't Look Up has "Oscar Villain" written all over it, and Twitter tends to be very vocal about those....

I looked it up, thinking that can't be right. The first three seasons of Yellowstone are on Peacock?! The current season won't be on Paramount+ until after the finale? That's crazy, but explains why they're doing two spin-offs (besides the huge ratings). Brutal drop for Matrix Resurrections: fanboy rush, bad WOM and HBO Max combined for a real box office death spiral.

I figured they were just being euphemistic about Hammer's unavailability, but maybe the reshoots happened before everything blew up. It's almost a year since the allegations went viral and he started getting dropped from roles, plenty of time for new footage to have been filmed in the aftermath. The timeline will be cleared up soon enough, I guess.

Just Google Fassbender's name with "allegations" and the articles will come up. It's nothing as out there as Armie and it's only one person (so far) and maybe that's how it will remain. Not to derail the thread, but I wonder if things like that come up when a studio is weighing their options. "Do we go forward with the guy who got canceled, or replace him and pray no one else involved in the movie also ends up with #MeToo headlines?"

I guess they better cross their fingers that the Fassbender allegations don't gain traction before the movie's out... Sometimes it takes a few rounds (and yesrs) before people will actually listen.

If NWH and Don't Look Up both get into Best Picture, the meltdowns... AMPAS literally shunted the "Unique and Artistic" movies off to the side in their first ceremony and consider the big action-packed populist production of its day the "real" Best Picture winner that year. I like following the Oscars but you can't put them on too much of a pedestal.

Wow, the current cover of People Magazine is an interview with her about turning 100. I remember thinking, "Don't jinx it!" almost jokingly, but damn. Sucks for that editor... It's wonderful that Betty got to see how many people loved her when she was still here.

Jason Bourne was the one where they brought Matt Damon back after the flop Jeremy Renner reboot, so just 2016, but it's not great if that's what you're referencing. I feel like I have seen a lot of ads for it during sports. It seems like a spy movie, at least? It's nearly the tenth anniversary of The Devil Inside! What a beautiful one weekend wonder... I honestly expected more movies like that in theaters during the leanest months of the pandemic.

Oh, really? Hadn't heard that about MGM. That's honestly not a great look for PTA. How much it will matter to voters is anyone's guess. Next to the "important message" of Don't Look Up, Licorice Pizza might seem slight as an Original Screenplay. BFCA nominations/wins are a snapshot of where the race is at that time, and Oscar can do its own thing. After the reviews dropped, DLU seemed like a much weaker contender than it's shaping up to be now. Don't Look Up does have potential nominees in all four acting categories... I doubt it will happen, but if JLaw got in and Gaga missed it would be the most hilarious thing ever, especially since Lawrence's press tour has been limited for obvious reasons and the extent of her "method acting" involved smoking a bowl (filming was last year, before she was pregnant). I do think that someone everyone expects to get in for Best Actress will miss.

Film Twitter has been Discoursing all about that, and the age gap, since it premiered and started in limited release. You never know what controversies will become a big deal in an awards season and I think so many things are so overblown that there's a Chicken Little effect. Voters are burned out from "La La Land is fascist!" and "Joker will inspire mass shootings!" and "Promising Young Woman is copaganda!", so something worthy of objection ends up up skating. But I think a lot of voters will have a "depiction is not endorsement" attitude about casual racism, especially in a period piece. I'm surprised no one read the script and raised the alarm, though, because it's an awards play and a mock Asian accent in 2021, really? This was so easily avoided. Saw so many jokes featuring a particular Don't Look Up quote when the CDC announced they were reducing the recommended isolation period this week. McKay and Sirota are engaging with the criticism on Twitter, which might backfire but irritates a lot of critics/pundits, who tweet about it. The 28-day figure for the viewership will be staggering. Every time Leo is nominated for Best Actor, he brings along a Supporting player on Oscar morning: The Aviator - Alan Alda (Cate won but she is nobody's coattail) Blood Diamond - Djimon Honsou Wolf of Wall Street - Jonah Hill The Revenant - Tom Hardy Once Upon a Time in Hollywood - Brad Pitt Don't Look Up - ????? Except for Brad Pitt, these Supporting Actor nominations were hardly sure things ahead of time.

I mean, that's the thing, even audiences didn't like Vice that much, so it was just inertia and industry goodwill that kept it in the race. Don't Look Up got a ton of people to watch, many of them liked it and you have industry types are calling it their movie of the year. It's ostensibly about an important issue they can feel passionate about voting for, much more than Cheney/Bush in the Trump era. The DLU fans think the critics are being ridiculous and unfair and the voters will want show them. So if Film Twitter tries one of their takedowns ("Leo says he cares about the planet but flies private jets and has socialized with Jeff Bezos, that robber baron space explorer!" or "Adam McKay acts like he's against big media corporations but took Netflix’s money!"), it's not going to make the fans like it less and might push people on the fence to throw it some votes, a la Green Book. And in the nomination stage, it's all about how many fans a person/thing has, not how many "haters" there are, and critics don't vote in the Academy. But it hasn't even been out for a week and Oscar nomination voting is a ways off. It'll be interesting to see what Netflix prioritizes next month.

There's a month before voting starts, but right now, I would be surprised if Don't Look Up missed the Best Picture lineup. It's going over a lot better than I expected (even the unverified audience score on RT is ~20 points higher than the critics), and a lot of blue checks are dismissing the reviews as critics being butthurt about how the movie portrays the media. That's a convenient scapegoat, but it's painting the critics as operating under bad faith. So, whatever Discourse that Film Twitter tries to start will have even less of an effect than usual and might make voters rally around it even more. You'd think they would've learned after Green Book and Joker, but nope...

I'd take $40-45m at this point. Still, WSS is holding well now, it's just that opening weekend was so low. Relative to all the other "awards bait" titles, it will have the best box office next to House of Gucci (BTW, did y'all know that "House of Versace" was a 2013 Lifetime movie starring Gina Gershon as Donatella? It's on YouTube for free right now, at least in the US). WSS will lose some theaters soon but its not doing so badly that its count will plummet in the next weekend or two.

Hmmm, is it the calendar configuration? What is the "best" day of the week for Christmas to fall on?

I feel like pre-Covid, King Richard opens to $15-20 million and gets to $70-80 million, maybe $100m if it was leggy. A nice total but no where near The Blind Side, though still big for a tennis movie. When Will Ferrell was making Talladega Nights and Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro, I was hoping he'd throw a tennis movie in there. I love tennis, it needs a box office hit. Chess movies also do pretty grim numbers domestically, but Queen's Gambit was a sensation. Maybe a tennis show will be a huge streaming hit someday. With superhero and horror movies recovering to pre-pandemic levels, it's easy to say that anything that flopped was just boring or unappealing or whatever. But whole genres are just dying right now, their audience is just waiting for streaming, or the mythical time when Covid disappears. It really sucks to consider how hits of recent years would be lucky to make a third of what they did, if they were released right now: Knives Out, Hidden Figures, La La Land, 1917, Ford v Ferrari, Hustlers... Even stuff like The Upside and The Mule crossed $100 million and critics hated tthem. IMO the more types of movies that succeed in theaters, the better. Of course blaming the MCU is stupid: things change, some genres benefit, others don't.

Interesting breakdown of how moviegoers are feeling about Omicron, from Deadline's writeup:

LOL, didn't Journal For Jordan get excluded as an awards hopeful once that first trailer dropped and it looked like a Hallmark/Lifetime Christmas movie? And 2 PM previews on Christmas Eve amounts to, like, one showing.