TServo2049

Lasseter with the Cars franchise seems to be like George Lucas with the Star Wars prequels or Peter Jackson with the Hobbit trilogy. It's hard to tell where filmmaking ends, and overgrown kid playing with toys begins. Cameron could end up being the same with the Avatar sequels...if he actually finishes building the toys with which he is going to play.

Cars 3 has been in the works for a while, it's just been under the radar. There have been rumblings since 2013. And nobody cares enough about Cars 3 to actively seek out information on it, the way they will report anything and everything that pertains to Frozen 2.

The issue is not success, it's that there is absolutely nowhere to go. Even the Cars franchise is conducive to telling additional stories. Granted, not necessarily GOOD ones, but it's an "open sandbox" world. Those others are not. And yes, MOICHANDISING!

DreamWorks is the loser in all this (domestically). HTTYD3 will now have to face TS4's third weekend (again) along with JW2's second weekend. And I thought Minions WAS the Shrek the Third in the Illumination narrative.

As I said, let them get Cars 3 over with. Unless they keep mining the same franchises over and over, they will HAVE to ramp up originals in the 2020s. And we know they have originals in development. Pete Docter is starting one.

No, you posted same time as me. I was responding to MovieMan

I thought IO was Pixar's redemption and the end of the rut they were in, as if it was magically going to end the sequels, but I guess things aren't as simple as all that. IO did increase my trust in Pixar nonetheless.

Whatever, get this over with I say.

Steven Spielberg is almost singlehandedly responsible for PG-13. (Yes, I know Gremlins was Joe Dante, but remember who produced it...)

Thelma & Louise made almost 3x its budget just in domestic theatrical, I'd say it was a solid hit even before video. Black Rain was also quite a hit WW, $134M on a $30M budget (though only $46M came from domestic; not as much of a gulf as the insane-even-now 77% OS-to-WW of Licence to Kill, but still). Black Rain made more money OS than Lethal Weapon 2 did. But it's all but forgotten now.

12%

2015: Go big or go home.

Hyena Road is some Canadian movie. I had to look it up. It's releasing in Canada this weekend, but is it releasing in the U.S. too? BOM makes no mention of it.

My point is, it was a hit. That is completely independent of it being a good movie. The fact that it's sort of forgotten/not looked upon that fondly speaks to that. I'm saying it was a hit, you're saying it wasn't very good, we can both be right. Hannibal the book sounds like The Lost World the book, not even remembered enough to be criticized like the movie is.

What the hell are you talking about? $352M WW on an $87M budget is a hit, isn't it? Not saying it was a good movie, I'm saying it made money. And everyone was talking about the brain scene - that was shocking as hell in '01. People swore up and down they actually saw the knife go into the brain, when it came out on DVD they swore they had cut out the knife going into the brain because they were positive they'd seen it in the theater, even though there was never such a shot in any released cut of the film (I believe the cutaway was to secure an R rating). That's the kind of effect it had on audiences.

Has Ridley Scott ever had anything that qualifies as a "streak" of hits? It seems he has only ever had two consecutive hits at a time - Black Rain/Thelma & Louise and Gladiator/Hannibal. (I had no idea Black Hawk Down was not a hit, but it does look to have not made much more than its budget.)

Also, Scott Mendelson also thinks the whole "AOU was a failure" meme is a load of BS (and this despite having problems with the movie itself), and he often calls out silly media narratives based on overzealous predictions (he still talks about how films like Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle and King Kong were unfairly framed as failures based on unrealistic pre-release forecasts), so he would be the first to argue that SW shouldn't be considered a disappointment just because it doesn't meet the loftiest expectations. In fact, he HAS stressed this point, on multiple occasions.

Having seen it both on a "regular" screen (largest screen in an older 6-screen multiplex) and in IMAX, I think it worked on both. (My first viewing was regular 2D, then I went to another theater to see it in full-size IMAX 3D - I don't like 3D and actively avoid it, but I had to make an exception that time.) I wish I could see it in 2D 15/70. A pity they didn't make any prints (to my knowledge).

I do need to watch it again in HD at some point. A hotel room TV is probably the least desirable way to watch it on the small screen...

Gravity deserves to be periodically re-released in theaters like The Polar Express was; it's one of those movies that really does lose something on the small screen (even if there are people who still enjoy it there).

The Tl;dr version of my post.

Oh, and fuck you people who trash Gravity, I was at the edge of my fucking seat watching that movie for the first time, because I went in blind and had no idea if Sandra Bullock was going to survive - even though I should have known it wasn't going to be THAT kind of movie. (Astronauts-in-peril movies always manage to leave me clutching the armrests the first time I watch them, because I deliberately deny myself any spoilers - this time, I didn't even look up anything about the novel.) The problem with Gravity is that it only truly works on a big screen in a darkened theater. My mother and I loved it in the theater, but when we watched it on hotel PPV it just didn't feel the same (and I fell asleep!) My father didn't understand what the fuss was about, because he didn't see it in the theater (believe me, I tried to get him to go, but by the time he was available, the only theater playing it in 2D was far away). I wish WB would periodically re-release Gravity in theaters, the way they were doing with The Polar Express for a while. People need to be reminded why it worked originally, in the intended environment. I know some people had problems with the movie even in theaters, but it was such an experience that most people didn't pay attention to them.

It's still the #2 opening, and with the considerably smaller 3D share and no IMAX, it probably still sold as many tickets as Gravity (perhaps a smidge more, but we'll never be sure). Gravity had a higher 3D share than Avatar; it may have had the highest average paid ticket price of any wide, over-$50M OW. In short, stop whining. I enjoyed both movies, I'm happy to see either hold the October record.

I dunno, but there was a family with kids near me. Maybe it wasn't "plenty of", but there were definitely kids there.

I posted this in the Martian thread, but I'll repeat it here: Martian has no IMAX and a much smaller 3D share (though it has PLF - but if my theater that always shows 2D for RPX is only an exception, that means the 42% 3D share includes almost all the PLF admissions). And it has a longer runtime, and my showing had plenty of kids, while my opening Saturday showing of Gravity was perhaps the oldest audience I've ever seen for a #1 $50M+ opening weekend. In short, Martian had to sell more tickets, with fewer showtimes, to get to an almost equal number. Martian may have two extra years of inflation, but I can just take a wild guess that Gravity sold fewer tickets per showtime than Martian. (And could Gravity even be the lowest number of tickets ever sold for an opening weekend over $50M? Maybe not the highest average price for a $50M+ OW - I'd guess that's still Avatar - but there's no way to know...) And Gravity's amazing 2nd weekend hold probably attests to the fact that it did not reach as large a portion of the moviegoing public as other over-$50M openers. Next weekend will be interesting for sure. This is not meant to undercut either film's success at all, I was just thinking about all this stuff...