Harpospoke

See? That's what's killing "jobs". All those R rated movies with lower budgets? Think of all those CGI artists who can't get work because the studios are too cheap to shell out for the more expensive PG-13 stuff! And the children! Think of the children! All those cool movies they can't watch! Won't someone think of the poor children who are longing to see a Deadpool movie but are being stopped at the door by the heartless Fox studio? But you guys don't care about "jobs" and the "children" because you just want your stabby bloody splattered brain shots wedged between scenes filled with expletive filled dialog about having sex with a duck-billed platypus. What is the world coming to?

So you are saying the Fox X-men movies will be good/great from this point forward? Nice!! About time! But I thought you guys wanted to keep more R rated movies?...which employ less people than a typical Marvel movie. You heartless beast! How dare you be so insensitive to all those jobs! Why aren't you rooting for PG-13 Deadpool movies so there will be more jobs?? I'm standing up for "jobs". (It's a great buzzword so you can be on the "right side")

Just like 99% of all movies ever. This "rooting for heroes to die" thing is brand new. Leave out Star Wars. Every time it tries to build tension, Han Solo, CP30, or R2D2 will make a joke and ruin it. That's why Star Wars is forgotten today. Pretty much impossible to watch that movie and take it serious. Harrison Ford's character did it again in Raiders of the Lost Ark. That guy sucks. Yeah this is about Disney. Almost no one ever mentions that Fox is selling. It's "Disney is buying everything!" And Comcast might as well not be a part of it because no one is interested in them either. If Fox were selling to Comcast the story would suddenly become unimportant. That sounds like making an effort to drink as much water as possible out of a stagnant pond before getting clean drinking water from indoor plumbing. Doom! We are doomed! Or is it now somehow "political" to point out that most of these doomsday predictions don't come true? When this one doesn't come true it will just be forgotten like all the other ones. (which of course frees up the doomsayers to make brand new doomsday predictions) Honest question: Isn't it relevant to this thread to discuss the possible changes to the Fox CBMs under Marvel? I say that as someone who rolls their eyes at the idea that Fox was somehow doing a great job. The Deadpool example is a bad one in my mind because it was good because Fox stayed out of it. We all saw the DP Fox came up with: Now that DP was such a huge hit, let's see how DP2 goes with Fox being more interested before we anoint them as some kind of visionary studio. Fox is in a good spot here. If Disney buys them, it looks like history will be rewritten to erase all their epic fails in past. They will start to become deified.

Ditto the Superman feeling. The problem with Flashpoint is they have not established anything with the Flash. Why would anyone care that history is being changed before they get acquainted with the original history? It would be like DoFP being the first X-men movie. Sounds like WB rushing things again.

Now that's an indication of how well Marvel has done this past decade. In early 2008, no one would have said, "Marvel has a stacked bench!" It was more like, "Marvel wants to make their own movies? With what? Iron man? (snicker)...Captain America? (guffaw)" Marvel's only big characters were at other studios. Now after a decade, Marvel has altered the landscape so dramatically that adding X-men and FF is seen as adding "extra insurance". Not sure it will change any "200 million movies" in the marketplace. If it's a movie Fox would have released, that changes nothing. Now if you are saying that Marvel will make X-men and FF into more successful movies than they would have been at Fox, I'll buy that. It's always been weird that X-men were one of the lower tier franchises and the FF failure at Fox is pretty embarrassing. So Marvel could be adding 200 million X-men and FF movies at certain times that would have been lower grossing at Fox. But there is also that thing that no one seems to mention...that Marvel has the ability to NOT make a movie if they have the characters. So we could (I say should) get less X-men movies because they will only be made when needed at Marvel instead of how Fox has to fulfill a contractual obligation.

I'm sure Marvel could do a lot of things and just make up new characters. They've proven they can make minor characters popular. But that doesn't help fans of X-men and FF who want them to be in good movies. 17 years ago a lot of X-men fans probably were excited at the prospect of seeing characters like Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Nightcrawler, and Colossus onscreen. That turned into Fox's Wolverine and Friends franchise instead. And how exciting it must have been to think about Dr Doom, Silver Surfer, and Galactus being put onscreen back in 2005? That dream was squashed by Fox. So it's really more about the characters than about Marvel being successful in my mind.

His job is to show up, trip over stuff, run into things, knock stuff over. Pretty much the same job as Jar Jar. Lowbrow "comedy" that I expect from lesser studios. Doesn't matter in the end though. The movie rises above that horrible character.

This movie will make you cry tears...in a happy way. Just fight through the first part of the movie where a Jar Jar Binks character comes really close to ruining the movie. It's totally worth it to get to the good stuff at the end. You'll probably guess the plot but that's fine too.

So John Campea seems to think Marvel gets the rights back to X-men and FF no matter what happens. 1-Fox sells to Disney...rights go back to Marvel 2-Fox sells to someone else....rights go back to Marvel. If that's true then I don't really care who buys Fox's assets. Would be interesting to see the reactions if Fox didn't sell to Disney and Marvel still got the rights back. Agendas would be revealed methinks. Thanks to Fox. We live in a world where Starlord, Gamora, Groot, Rocket, and Drax are a bigger deal than the FF. Thanks to Marvel Studios knowing what they are doing and Fox not knowing what they are doing. Oh...and also Ant-Man, Dr Strange, and soon to be Black Panther.

You are free to refute my points with all new doomsday claims if you want. I'm sure the world is coming to an end just like it always has been in the past. I've actually done this experiment. If you are with a group of people and say something like "things are getting worse all the time" you'll just get heads nodding in agreement. You don't have to provide any proof at all. Doesn't matter if they are conservative or liberal either. Everyone is convinced the world is getting worse and worse. But if you point out that the world is improving in almost every way we can measure complete with actual facts, you'll get arguments and even anger. Conservatives tend to see it as an affront on their religious belief that the world is heading for judgement day, liberals see it as an affront on their religious belief that the world is heading for judgement day. No wonder we see so many movies every year about a dystopian future. We love that stuff. (heck...I like it too) People are able to ignore reality in favor of belief.

For 60 billion, eh? Wise use of their money. *cue Disney investors selling all their stock* No my comment was about the predictions for global warming which did not come true. They were of course replaced with all new and improved doomsday predictions. This is pretty much an annual event. Same thing happened with other religions in the past. Doomsday is coming...the earth is doomed...and of course it is the fault of humans. (We are always dooming the planet with our "sins"...that's a favorite with doomsayers) Leo is one of the biggest hypocrites in history. I'll just follow his lead with my carbon footprint. I'll need to increase it at least 10x though to keep up with him. There are always going to be negative things happening in the world. The mortgage crisis happened and then ended. Those who sold their 401ks when the stock market fell to 7000 now look like idiots since the stock market is currently above 24,000. Doomsayers were wrong again. I don't see any issue with internet providers. We all appear to be using the internet just fine. The Middle East has been screwed up for centuries but is actually improving over time. The Trump stuff is eye rolling. Supposedly the world is coming to an end again just because the "other party" won the White House. Heard the same nonsense when Obama was elected twice. Everything was supposedly getting worse and we were doomed. (yawn) Same with Bush before that and Clinton before that. Meanwhile if you turn off the news everything continues as before with the usual improvements over time. No idea why people keep falling for that same stuff over and over. Well if Disney did that in the past...and buys the studio that does what they used to do.....what does logic say about that? Would it be more logical to claim they are buying them to shut it down or that they will have all the infrastructure in place to make those kinds of movies again? All the pain that it would normally take to start up an operation like that would be done for them with Searchlight. Disney bought Marvel and Pixar and didn't shut them down. With Pixar, they could have shut them down to help the Disney animation studio if they were of that mindset. They gave them the freedom to do what they want too. The last Pixar movie before Disney was Cars (yuck) so their winning streak was over before Disney. They've had some stumbles since but have also released Ratatouille, Wall-E, Up, Toy Story 3, Inside Out, and Coco. They obviously gave Marvel the freedom to do what they want. Heck...they put Feige in a bigger position of power. If this deal goes through, I see a club about how much Marvel will increase the box office for FF and X-men.

That's all just perception. Disney won't own the world. "Disney" sounds like it doesn't fit with DP and the Simpsons just like all the R rated movies they've made.

I somehow hear Cap going crazy with "Language!" with DP in the room.

That literally happened in the post directly above yours. Then there was: So yeah, there are people who believe Disney would spend 60 billion just to shut down movies. No they did not. And they made doomsday predictions anyway. Just like how no one knows what is going to happen here but that of course doesn't stop the doomsday predictions. When those predictions fail, we'll get the same excuses like you just offered: "Well...no one knew xxxxx was going to happen back then! How could we know it was going to result in a major improvement in xxxxx?" That's why doomsayers always fail. They never take into account the fact of human ingenuity and how the market reacts to changes. I know how those go too. Big predictions of doom and then excuses later when they fail. Here is one of the early doom predictions for "climate change" complete with the "point of no return" BS: http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_product=MH&s_site=miami&p_multi=MH&p_theme=realcities&p_action=search&p_maxdocs=200&p_topdoc=1&p_text_direct-0=0EB33CF66D507218&p_field_direct-0=document_id&p_perpage=10&p_sort=YMD_date:D&s_trackval=GooglePM But then later excuses are made when we don't see it happen. Now "Well it's happening even though you can't see it" and "The new point of no return is now in the future instead of the year 2000!" The "doom" keeps being moved into the future as with all doomsday predictions. Climate change doomsayers are just doing what other religions have been doing for centuries. The doom date is always moved into the future when the apocalypse doesn't happen. We are currently feeding more people on LESS LAND than at any time in human history. We are setting records for grain production worldwide and less people are starving than ever before. The only reason anyone starves today is because we can't get the food to them. That is the problem we should solve. Paul Ehrlich got it all started in the late 60s with his doomsday predictions about over population: 1969: “By 1985 enough millions will have died to reduce the earth’s population to some acceptable level, like 1.5 billion people” and “By 1980 the United States would see life expectancy drop to 42 years because of pesticides, and by 1999 its population would plummet to 22.6 million”. 1970: “In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish” and “Sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come. And by the end I mean an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity”. 1971: “By the year 2000 the United Kingdom will be simply a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people. If I were a gambler, I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.” He of course was wrong about everything he said and so were all the doomsayers who copied him afterward. The funny thing is that Ehrlich is still at it and pretending he was right all along. Here is where we are today thanks to human innovation: World grains production will break records again this year. Although usage also is expected to rise, ending stocks will be higher and export availabilities will be ample. http://www.world-grain.com/articles/news_home/Features/2016/11/Another_record-breaking_harves.aspx?ID={F66FAB2B-AE1E-40B6-95F7-A7F92CD9B379}&cck=1 More claims of knowing what will happen. Naturally it's bad. The claim has always been "things will get worse"....and yet the OPPOSITE happened. Things have improved in almost every way over the years but that never stops doomsayers. I bought up Youtube as an example of something that happens that no one can predict. I did not go any further and offer up a prediction. Innovation always makes predictions impossible. One example no one predicted was the cell phone. Phone companies used to charge customers for "long distance". ...Long after there was no need to do that. That created a market for something like the cell phone and now the old phone companies are hurting. Amazon can do what they want but there will be market consequences if they try to exploit customers. Someone else will fill a need if they create one. Ebay is already a great alternative to Amazon for me. I never shop with Amazon. According to you. Naturally the movies you like are "more important". It's "larger implications" when it's movies you like...naturally. More doomsday predictions. Based on the idea that Disney would spend 60 billion to shut down movies. If we want to talk about jobs, how about those end credits for Marvel movies? A lot more people get work on them than Fox employed for Deadpool or Logan. So "jobs" are only "important" when it's convenient?

I get the feeling that some people think Disney is going to spend 60 billion so they can just shut down Fox and make all those movies they make go away. All this "doomsday" stuff. It will be about as accurate as most doomsday predictions...not at all. (We were all supposed to have AIDS by now, undergoing mass starvation due to over population, and be in the throes of catastrophic climate change....according to predictions made decades ago) Doomsayers never factor in things like human ingenuity and market reactions. The market will decide what movies get made just like they always have. If there is a need for another studio to do what Disney supposedly won't do (according to doomsayers) then that will happen. There are thousands of filmmakers in the world just looking for an opening. Not to mention that the world is changing how we entertain ourselves. Youtube already offers a huge outlet for people to express ideas and entertainment. Who knows what else is coming? We certainly don't. This "world" you talk about here is...movies. In other words you are claiming movies you like are more important than movies other people like. Fans of the X-men have just as much right as you to be invested in this either way. Your movies are not more important to anyone but yourself. Don't forget that whole quote from Feige. “I don’t think it’s out of the question. When I started at Marvel seventeen years ago, the Blade franchise was doing very well. A lot of people didn’t even know that it was based on a Marvel character because at the time they sort of hid the fact it was Marvel. So, not out of the question, but not something we’re working on right now,” That's not really a "no". That's genius. Same as above. You are talking about movies you like as if they are vastly more important than movies other people like. If a person is concerned by X-men cartoons and video games more than your Searchlight movies, that's a valid view. I notice someone bumped up the value to 68 Billion for that article. Wonder if Fox is involved there. Exactly. Notice how it isn't a problem if someone other than Disney buys the Fox assets? Fox is going to sell to someone...but that is not the focus. Nope...it's all about Disney instead. So there is some kind of rooting interest thing going on here.

I'm opposed just because having someone at Fox involved might be someone who thought Fox's version of the X-men was a good plan. But it could be a genius move politically. Hollywood already has a stronghold with the left side of the aisle. Disney bringing in someone that the right might identify with could broaden their reach.

I apologize because I can't quite understand what you are saying. You appear to be citing outlier movies as proof that studios don't spend less on movies that are expected to make less. You did point out that they won't make them at all if they have to spend too much on a movie that won't make enough to justify that type of budget. Again...I don't think it's just a coincidence that R rated movies have lower budgets than the PG-13 tent pole movies. Ewww....why would Disney want the Fox stink on their stuff?

I'm not seeing anything that changes the fact that they have lower budgets for movies that are expected to make less. That changes according to how they view the risk. The budget for DP 2 went up and we know why. It's now seen as less risky to spend more on Deadpool. The first time it was thought it would make less than X-men or Wolverine movies so they spent less. They only spent 32 million on Baby Driver for the same reason. I don't see how it can be argued that these budgets are lining up with expectations by accident. I also don't see how anyone can expect a studio to lose money for "art". The studios have always been run by people who want to make a lot of money. And that's never stopped the creation of great movies. Art and commerce are not mutually exclusive. Mozart wrote all his music to make money. Paul McCartney and John Lennon sat around trying to write hit songs. (John would call it "Okay! Today let's write a swimming pool.")

But this could be Disney doing something about that. Now they could have Fox to release those kinds of films.

Are some suggesting that Fox is the only studio producing small budget indie type films? Going back to last year, there are 736 films listed at Box Office Mojo. I'll bet no one has watched a quarter of those films. If anyone ran out of films to watch I would love to know your schedule. And that's just one year. There are still thousands of movies from previous years to get around to. Only 30 of them broke the 100m barrier so the overwhelming majority of them were smaller movies. We are drowning in smaller films of every genre. If Disney buys Fox it's really not going to be noticeable. (that's assuming Disney does not add to the huge pile with a former Fox division) That's what I meant. Spending a ton of money on a Star Wars, Avengers, or JL movie isn't seen as risky because it is assumed they will make a ton of money. You'll get your under performers just like you'll get under performing 20m movies. Some times you'll get a JL or a Lone Ranger. But they went in thinking it was safe to spend that much. Studios set that budget and it's not an just chance that they spend more on some and less on others. They don't spend as much on R rated movies for a reason. It is to reduce the risk. Their goal to make the risk exactly the same for every movie they make. It doesn't always work out that way of course...but that's what they are shooting for. They aren't going to spend 200m on a Deadpool movie ever (maybe 50 years from now). THAT would be risky. The budget for Deadpool was such a low risk for Fox that they pretty much let RR do what he wanted. (Surprise....it's the highest grossing Fox/Marvel movie when Fox isn't as involved) We'll need to define what you mean by "blockbuster". Cause there aren't many of them by any studio. I count only 160 of them that have ever broken the 100m threshold. Some of those were Disney movies released under the Miramax and Dimension banner.

Speaking of Saving Mr Banks. Just watched that one last week and it's amazing. Really emotional stuff at the end. Tears. There is no such thing as "risky". Unless you mean all movies are a risk...which is true. When you lower the budget you mitigate the risk. That's WHY they lower the budgets. "Risky" would be Fox making a 200m Deadpool movie...which of course they didn't do. They made a 60m Deadpool movie instead.

Disney would make R rated movies the same way they always have. Again...Fox didn't make them either until Ryan Reynolds wore them down over the course of a decade. Marvel could make the same kind of X-men movies Fox made....which are all PG-13. Just check out those numbers for Deadpool. You think Disney won't act on something like that? That's a huge pile of money. Disney has released R rated movies too. I frankly only care about the Marvel and Star Wars stuff to be honest. The rating matters so little to me I doubt I could tell you which of my favorite movies are rated R with any confidence. I either like the movie or not. An R rating doesn't give one film any advantage over another one. Interesting how it's "challenging PG-13" when Fox does it. This really smells something like this: "What is something Marvel hasn't done? An R rated movie? Let's act like that is super duper important now!"

There is a reason why you used those two movies as an example. Because 2 years ago Fox had only made PG-13 movies like everyone else. That includes TWO Wolverine movies. It took a decade for Ryan Reynolds to talk them into it and even then he had to resort to leaking the Deadpool footage online to get the fans behind it to give Fox a push. Then by an amazing coincidence they were suddenly interested in making an R rated Logan. Let's just forget about those two PG-13 Wolverine movies. A lot of people are trying to rewrite history and make Fox into this "brave" studio that was passionate about spitting out R rated X-men movies left and right. That's not what really happened. What they really are is the studio that utterly wasted great characters like Dr Doom, Storm, Silver Surfer, Cyclops, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, and Colossus and epic failed on great stories like Dark Phoenix and Apocalypse. They are also the studio that has gotten the least amount of interest from public of the major 4 studios making CBMs....even though they had the rights to the freaking X-men. Marvel did better with lower profile characters like Capt America, Iron Man, Thor, Dr Strange, and Guardians of the Galaxy. Seems pretty simple to understand. Disney likes money like everyone else. You think they wouldn't notice this? Deadpool ww groos- $783,112,979 Deadpool budget- 58 million Or LESS CBMs a year because Marvel isn't contractually obligated to release movies to keep their own characters like Fox and Sony are. Marvel can make another Cap movie...or not. Cap isn't going anywhere if they don't. Marvel having the rights to their own characters means they can act like WB and release movies only when they feel it fits their goals. Narrative reasons over contract reasons. Sounds like a MASSIVE improvement to me. Might actually make the CBMs they do release more profitable due to a less saturated marketplace.

Not a bad point. We often point to the "novelty" aspect of Avatar to help explain its box office run. Doesn't "novelty" suggest "original"? It's probably because Titanic is actually in theaters at the moment? That's the part Empire missed I think. It's a relevant topic in the weekend thread.