Melvin Frohike
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Posts posted by Melvin Frohike
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I'm a modest student, I don't pay €8.50 just to watch a short.
That's certainly understandable. To be honest, I just wanted to take another shot at Disney's live-action "remakes" (generally not a fan of these).
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And I'm confused about Frozen's short
I mean I want to watch it, but I don't want to watch Cinderella, what a dilemma!
Personally, I don't see the dilemma. After watching the short simply stand up and walk out. And be sure to sit near the front so that everybody else can see you do it.
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Visual Effects Society Awards are currently going on. Big Hero 6 has won 4 awards so far (with 1 more still possible)
Update: Big Hero 6 won all five awards for which it was nominated, while all of the other animated features were shut out:
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I'd argue this movie was more entertaining than How To Train Your Dragon 2 + it was better shot (cinematography: The Japanese/US culture mix was really, really good looking. Might be just me having a thing for Japanese culture, though). The only thing How To Train Your Dragon 2 leads in is the story itself as it wasn't too predictable, unlike Big Hero 6.
I agree about the predictability, although to be honest HTTYD 2 was unpredictable in ways that I feel are a bit forced and came out of nowhere. Big Hero 6's story feels more solid despite its predictability and a couple of plot holes of the kind that one could expect from a superhero story (not a blanket excuse, although many can overlook them with suspension of disbelief); for that matter, I think it holds up better in this regard than The Incredibles, which I talked about earlier in this thread (most people don't see the fundamental flaw in the latter, but it's a doozy!).
Out of the American animated features this year, BH6 and HTTYD 2 are still my favorites. I liked BH6 a bit more overall, but I'd take either by a long way over The Lego Movie and the others. It'll be interesting to see which of the two, assuming that they are the front-runners, will take home the Best Animated Feature Oscar (not because it really means anything, but out of curiosity). HTTYD 2 would seem to have the best chance given the awards it has won to date, but then again the Oscar (AMPAS) voters don't always play along. For example, Wreck-It Ralph won both the Annie and Critics' Choice awards for Best Animated Feature, but lost the Oscar to Brave. Granted, Brave won the Golden Globe as did HTTYD 2, but the latter wasn't even nominated for the BAFTA and The Lego Movie wasn't even nominated for the Oscar, so as far as I'm concerned anything can happen and I wouldn't count BH6 out yet, especially for the Oscar.
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Big Hero 6 did pretty good in Latin America. Its run is not over yet and it's already doing 75% of Frozen (in admissions). I think it still could reach 80%.
That's not bad, I guess, but unlike North America, Japan, South Korea, and Europe, I had thought that Big Hero 6 had greater potential than Frozen in Latin America.
Don't take this as a downer, as maybe I simply expected too much, but it just seemed to me like Frozen's numbers in this region were nothing that special, even among animated features, and I had thought the people there would collectively go for this kind of movie more. I have the same feeling about China, and I sure hope that I'm right about this, at least (it was true of the smaller Asian markets, in which BH6 did generally outperform Frozen).-
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Frozen Fever!! In just a little bit more than a month!!
So I guess the "cold" does bother Elsa after all...just not the same kind of "cold."
Disney won't be able to resist : Frozen 2 will come, if they can resist to the pressure I will admire them lol
It depends on who exactly you're talking about and for what reasons. It's no problem whatsoever for the directors, Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee, because they'd rather work on a new project--in their view the story is complete and there is no pressure from within themselves to make a feature-length sequel. Note that this is rather unlike the case of Rich Moore with regard to the WDAS movie that he directed, Wreck-It Ralph--he's dying to make a sequel, but Disney going ahead with it is questionable at best, at this point.
As for Disney the corporation, they are certainly under pressure to maximize the value of the franchise, and this certainly involves the potential for one or more sequels, but they seem to be in no hurry to press the issue. Iger, at least verbally, considers a sequel (to a story that was not designed with sequels in mind) a risk to the franchise as a whole, and seems content, for now, with developing a Broadway show and cashing in on the first movie, which still sells merchandise like crazy. If a sequel is inevitable after all, it will likely eventually be used to revitalize the franchise rather than subject it to unnecessary risk too soon. In short, for one reason or another there is no hurry (and in such a scenario, I suppose there is the potential that a sequel will never happen--it depends on a lot of factors, among them WDAS' success in creating new IPs and probably Lasseter telling Iger something like WDAS' sequels always flopping because the public only wants new movies from WDAS).
I think that Disney has a bigger capacity than any other studio to resist creating a sequel to a hugely successful film.
Yes, at least when it comes to WDAS, that is, and their history and catalog certainly reflect this. Even in their recent history, Tangled was pretty darn successful, so where is the sequel? It's not even being considered, as its directors, like Frozen's, consider the story complete and aren't interested in making a sequel, so that's that. Obviously Frozen, being so much bigger a hit, is a bit different, but then again if this were any studio other than WDAS/Disney, then I could virtually guarantee you that a Tangled sequel would have been in theaters by now, or at least in production. Instead, what did Disney do when Tangled proved to be a hit? They gave Frozen, a fellow princess musical but still a different and new movie, the green light. I'm sure that the subject of a Tangled sequel came up, but WDAS was like "Nah, we'd rather do this."
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YES! I'm hoping this lack of competition will allow BH6 to continue reigning the weekly Box Office charts and pass $80 million USD!
Looking back, we weren't exactly talking about a lack of competition during OW, that's for sure!
Rather than compare Big Hero 6's run to those of Yōkai Watch (massively front-loaded OW phenomenon [for Japan, anyway]) or Frozen (leggiest run of a major release in history, at least that I know of), let's compare it to that of another western animated feature involving superheroes, Pixar's The Incredibles, which opened with ¥751.8M/$7.3M (bigger than Princess Mononoke and pretty close to Frozen) and finished with ¥5.26B/$51.1M for an OW multiplier of almost exactly 7, while BH6 opened with ¥600.4M/$5M and has so far, with the movie still at #1, grossed ¥7.29B/$62M (using today's exchange rate) for an OW multiplier of over 12 and still climbing.
I guess Japanese people like the movie after all.If its legs hold up, with any luck, BH6 should have a shot at coming within striking distance (in yen) of Monsters University (¥8.96B per Corpse), which is pretty rarefied air for animated features even in Japan (BH6 is currently #15 all-time--not bad). $80M with current exchange rates, if it were to happen, would mean that BH6 will have passed MU and The Secret World of Arrietty, and would threaten Monsters, Inc. for #9 all-time among animated features.
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Well let's ask Rocket Raccoon and Tony Stark about the sharp sting of Katniss' arrow after she's been doubted.
Point taken, although I'm sure that Stark was consoled by his $350M advantage WW.
This looks more like the aftermath of Elsa literally blowing past him WW.
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It also has the added benefit of direct goodwill from Frozen, something all the other preceding animated films lacked.
Would this be more true of South Korea than other markets? Historically, at least in NA WDAS animated features have tended not to benefit from their immediate predecessors being mega-blockbusters. For example, right from the beginning Pinocchio, considered a true classic today, lost money after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs wowed everybody and literally bought Disney their current studio lot and headquarters. Also, Pocahontas didn't seem to benefit from The Lion King being such a huge hit, and if anything it seems that Frozen has overshadowed Big Hero 6 to some degree.
Maybe given South Korea's general views on animated features, it can be supposed that Frozen might have changed some views on animation or at least WDAS specifically (like The Little Mermaid did in NA and much of the world), but I'm not sure about that, as even DWA's fortunes have varied greatly there. The Kung Fu Panda movies, particularly the sequel, might have been bigger than any of their other movies because of their subject matter, and this too might apply to Big Hero 6 in relation to WDAS' previous movies (with the exception of Frozen). Basically, maybe it is more appealing to Korean children than most other WDAS movies because it's about Asians and robots
, but doesn't necessarily benefit from Frozen's still-exceptional status as a four-quadrant animated phenomenon.I'm just brainstorming here--if anything, you'd know better, of course.
To which animated musicals are you referring to? Most that I'm aware of were released when the box office wasn't as large as it is now. With films like Tangled, the musical numbers was very poorly received hence the bad numbers.
That's one example.
Why Frozen was such a success there and Tangled was a flop? Both movies are pretty similar and the targeted audience is the same.
Well, Tangled and Frozen seem rather different to me, and I'm American. Their styles of music and overall tone, just for a start, stand in stark contrast, in my opinion. Koreans just didn't see the appeal of Tangled (which I adore, personally, don't get me wrong)--at least not enough to overcome the widely-held perception in this market of animation being a children's medium (one that to be fair persists in the NA market to a significant degree, as well--just not as much anymore).
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Lol those WDAS films look like a complete flop in comparison to Frozen.
On a per-capita basis in a first-world market that has ticket prices comparable to those in NA, they all are flops, while Frozen is a monstrous blockbuster. The population ratio is close to 7:1, so using simple arithmetic it would be as though in the DOM market Toy Story 3 grossed only a little more than Penguins of Madagascar, and every other WDAS or Pixar animated feature grossed less than $70M, while Frozen grossed about $530M.
I'll boldly increase my prediction for Big Hero 3 from $15 million to $20 million. Unless the movie drops drastically, I see it reaching $15 million in the upcoming weeks and if it has good holds, it should reach $20 million.
For a WDAS movie in South Korea, I would consider $20M a breakout, relatively speaking. Even many/most DWA animated features don't fare better, so it would be really good for an animated feature in South Korea in general (even $15M would be quite good).
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Ice Age 4 made 161.3M
That's DOM, and it made $715.9M OS.
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Here is a new (actually updated) article that sums up what has been going on and adds a few bits:
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/how-dreamworks-animation-can-claw-767789
It's interesting how when Katzenberg was at Disney, he was so into making "Disney" animated movies, but after he left he seemed to become obsessed with making stuff that was the antithesis to Disney.
That was hardly an amicable split, and I bet that JK felt quite disillusioned about some things. Combine this with his own inclinations that he could indulge more in and those of PDI's filmmakers (who really got things rolling), it's not too surprising that he and DWA would do things differently. WDAS had a lot of success while he was the studio chief at Disney, although it was really them doing their thing, and maybe JK felt he had to do something different as counter-programming and/or to show them up.
Earnestness and "heart" seem in short supply, which is part of why so many people's reaction to HTTYD1 was that it felt closer to a Pixar movie than a DreamWorks movie.
For whatever reasons, JK seemed to give Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, who both came over from WDAS, more or less free rein to make the kind of movie they wanted to make, I believe. Maybe he fully trusts them, or maybe it's what they demanded when they joined DWA, given what happened between Sanders and John Lasseter with regard to American Dog (which later became Bolt under different directors).
He was a meddler in his Disney days, but he didn't seem to be obsessed with making aggressively in-your-face stuff.
They all meddle
, but my understanding is that he rarely absolutely put his foot down about things, except maybe toward his last days at Disney.Though obviously, they won't be the whole story - DisneyWar mentions Katzenberg helping Pixar through early story problems on Toy Story by suggesting they watch The Defiant Ones and 48 Hrs., but says nothing about the later "Black Friday," which was, from what I've read, caused in part by them following prior story notes by Disney execs to make the film "edgy." Some accounts (I think Steve Jobs' biography is one of them) say the main person at Disney pushing the "edgy" line was Katzenberg.
Pixar was struggling early on because none of the principals had shepherded a full-length feature through story development, but for one thing Joe Ranft (rest his soul), who had worked on a number of projects including the Disney Renaissance features, came in and helped get them on the right track, developing Pixar's working process with John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, and others, and then joining Pixar on a permanent basis. JK's interference wasn't helping at all--in fact, it was making things worse.
Toy Story was another, Katzenberg wanted it to be edgy and Pixar listened to him and the first test screening was a disaster and he asked Tom Schumacher who was head of animation why the film had turned out so badly, in which Schumacher replied. 'Because it's not their movie anymore.'
That was some pretty valuable and timely insight, I have to say.
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in retrospect you get why Frozen did so well. It's a fairy tale Disney film using a time tested formula.
But not all of these movies even meet their baseline expectations at the box office, much less explode like this, and there were some key ways in which Frozen pointedly deviated from the "formula" as well. I knew the movie was going to be huge when I first saw it, based on certain aspects of the movie itself as well as the audience reaction, although even I didn't predict it would become this huge. So while I agree with you that we can see why now, it's not for the reason you gave.
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Admissions
Day Frozen Big Hero 6
1 84.387
2 165.861 94.691
3 169.536 99.446
4 429.047 274.096
5 434.903 286.875
6 156.831 67.273
7 186.830 75.594
Tot 1.543.008 982.362
If this keeps up, Big Hero 6 looks to perform very well indeed for an animated feature, even in comparison to those from DWA.
Seems like South Korea isn't embracing BH6 like they did with Frozen.
They haven't embraced any other WDAS (or Pixar, for that matter) animated feature like they have Big Hero 6, either, though. For what it's worth, it's doing a lot better than I expected Frozen to do last year, and close to the upside that I merely hoped for and considered remotely possible.
It's not dreamworks and it's not a musical so it's to be expected. I don't see frozen's record as the most successful animated film being beaten anytime soon.
Well, BH6 has surpassed other animated musicals and seemingly will surpass some (or most or maybe all, who knows?) DWA movies, too.
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This is nuts. They spent an enormously larger amount of money promoting Frozen than Strange Magic.
This may well be so, and would make sense, but this was certainly not reflected in my personal experience at all. There were some of the usual things like theatrical trailers and posters, of course, but with a couple of tiny exceptions on late-night TV, I never saw any TV commercials like I do all the time for most every major release. In fact, as I pointed out earlier, I saw several full-length commercials for Strange Magic each day, leading up to its release (not lately, though). I also saw a large number of commercials for Big Hero 6, for that matter, but virtually none for Frozen (note that as I also pointed out earlier, I only watch over-the-air TV).
In any case, the relevant point to this thread is that at least from my experience there has been a fair amount of exposure for Strange Magic despite its late announcement, and the comically mistaken rumor of this being a Frozen sequel gave it a fair amount of exposure on the Web. It was dumped, to be sure, but not merely into theaters to die--it opened in 3000+ theaters and was advertised, complete with the filmmakers (including George Lucas) and cast making the rounds. Disney, despite apparently disavowing the movie in some ways, actually gave it a decent chance to succeed.
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Aladdin is another one which had a fantastic run, outgrossing Home Alone 2 which was expected to be the holiday hit that year. It did 10 times its OW.
Also, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast grossed less, but still had impressively leggy runs with 14X and 15X OW multipliers, respectively.
Have there been any other instances besides New Moon/Blind Side of two films opening wide on the same weekend, and the lower opener being so leggy/the higher opener so frontloaded that the gap between the two closed considerably by the end of their runs? (And I mean big hit films.)
No such perfectly-aligned comparisons immediately spring to mind, but a pretty close one would be The Hunger Games: Catching Fire versus Frozen, the former opening the previous weekend with $158.1M and the latter opening with $67.4M for Friday-Sunday (it opened on Wednesday); additionally, the former on its second weekend actually out-grossed the latter on its OW with $74.2M. By the ends of their runs, the gap had closed considerably, with THG:CF grossing $424.7M and Frozen grossing $400.7M (even with its late legs taken out by a premature video release); their OW multipliers were 2.69 and 5.95, respectively, obviously indicating quite different types of box office runs.
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OTOH: the snow certainly didn't bother Frozen's Box Office run when it was out.
I think it actually helped because there were probably people heading somewhere else sliding around on ice that appeared out of nowhere and being blown, as though by magic, toward the nearest theater playing Frozen.
I wouldn't put anything past Disney--they never miss a trick. -
All those awful Frozen trailers probably cost the movie 10m on OW.
I don't know, it seems that those who would have been the most turned off by the trailers (aside from the online-only "For the First Time in Forever"/Elsa trailer) were the ones who would show up anyway because they knew better, while the general audience, at the risk of me being condescending here, would largely be attracted by the cheesy ads.
Well, as much as I, and apparently some of the Internet hated how Frozen was marketed making it look stupid and immature, you cannot deny it worked.
I for one never have, although for the sake of curiosity it is another revealing example of just how boy-focused/femininity-averse Disney's DOM marketing of WDAS' movies is. There is also an appealing irony in how a movie that ended up selling itself so well wasn't deemed worthy, in a way, by Disney's marketers to be sold for what it really is. Some have supposed that this was a brilliantly calculated marketing strategy, but I seriously doubt it--the marketers were, as usual, simply afraid of scaring away little boys, and were therefore motivated, using their logic, to hide the type of movie Frozen is. Fortunately it all worked out anyway, albeit it's hard to screw up a movie that generates its own viral hype like this.
Anyway, my point was that even though Strange Magic is being dumped because Disney execs don't like it, it was given a pretty good amount of pre-release advertising--very likely enough to succeed more than it has so far, if that were ever in the cards. Putting aside my own opinion of its ads, I've seen and heard about interest in the movie being expressed by children, including those in my own extended family. However, it seems that their parents aren't that keen on this movie, and they are ultimately the ones who decide. In retrospect, maybe the marketers should have tried harder to hide the true nature of the movie, but then again I wouldn't be surprised one bit if they thought the ads were wonderful--just the kind of thing that they like to sell.
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IS warranted repeat viewings?
Well, I had to watch it like five times to piece together the experience like a mosaic because I kept falling into a deep hyper-sleep. Does that count?
I'm not positive whether I've seen the whole thing yet, but the EMTs who kept waking me told me to stop wasting their time and go watch something else. -
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FFS, the movie was a success.
Yes, but one that did it relatively quietly and without all that much to talk about, regarding box office, aside from people trying to convince others that the movie is, in fact, a success.
Frozen's an anomaly.
It shouldn't be taken as the standard and it's REALLY unfair to try and hold BH6 to what Frozen did.
No argument here, except that a fair number of us had been expecting/hoping for $250 million DOM (or maybe a little more to challenge for the #1 animated feature of 2014). I don't recall anybody here expecting $400+ million DOM to match/surpass Frozen--the latter is mostly used as an example (extreme for illustration) of what it takes to perform beyond the expectations of most.
Haha, I've never heard anyone say before that Beast/Adam comes closer in some ways to Stockholm Syndrome. XD
Even after 23 years, I can still surprise people with this basic observation.
Actually, although Beast was under greater psychological stress, he no more had Stockholm syndrome than Kristoff did--I only said this (jokingly and rhetorically for contrast) because Beast was the one who had the big epiphany and changed his whole perspective rather than Belle, but that was because he had learned to care about somebody (the basis of love) besides himself, and it's not as though Belle had imprisoned and threatened to kill him or anything like that. For Belle's part, she's a very nice girl for sure, but she was also a bit aloof, sometimes tricky (uses her wiles, too), and could be pretty tough when she needed to be--personally I fail to see why she is commonly associated with Stockholm syndrome. I guess people think "girl falls in love with captor = Stockholm syndrome," but this is an oversimplification and gross misrepresentation of the character, story, as well as the actual condition in real life.
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I think the problem was that a lot of Big Hero 6's potential opening weekend press went to opinion pieces on Interstellar's "disappointing" opening, with a side note that said "oh yeah, and a Disney cartoon opened too".
And Interstellar would also have dominated the headlines if it had opened in first place instead, so more generally speaking it just plain overshadowed Big Hero 6, which is both not-Nolan and not-Frozen (besides, how many animated features had much media hype last year?). Short of Disney doing a huge media blitz as they've sometimes done in the past or Big Hero 6 opening with $90+ million, the movie was never going to get the attention of the media. I suppose the good news is that a WDAS animated feature performing well is no longer news
, but obviously this doesn't exactly help boost its box office performance.That just kind of sucked the air out of the room, and prevented BH6 from really establishing itself with the press. Penguins flopping a couple of weeks later didn't help either, as it kept attention off of BH6 doing well and back on to DreamWorks' continued financial woes.
The only way Big Hero 6 was ever going to get any significant media hype, short of generating controversy, would have been to generate its own like Frozen had to. I thought it could do this more than it did for several reasons (e.g. Baymax, superheroes, cool technological stuff in this age of nerds and "makers"), but given the lack of hype and penetration into the pop culture, in addition to how animated features and family movies have generally performed in 2014 (poorly), I'm very happy with how the movie has done--could have been even happier, but oh well, I'll take this and be sincerely glad about it, and so will WDAS and Disney I'm sure.
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No, Belle's Stockholm Syndrome doesn't count!
Wait, isn't Stockholm syndrome when a hostage, supposedly as the result of a psychological survival mechanism, sympathizes with and even adopts the criminal/deranged perspectives of their captor(s)? I don't recall Belle being so afraid that she "snapped" and irrationally started to take Beast's side. It seems more like she wanted to go home the whole time, stubbornly refused to comply with his demands, and chastised him for his poor behavior, while it was Beast who eventually changed his own perspective. If anybody had Stockholm syndrome in this movie, it would seem to be Beast.
No, not really, but he comes closer in some ways. -
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They put more effort in promoting Strange Magic than Frozen before those movies came out out. Unfucking believable!
Not in every way, probably, but I assure you that what I said earlier is literally true, at least based on my personal experience. It could be that I happened, purely by chance, to miss every Frozen TV commercial besides the two that I saw, but that would be unlikely to the extreme (especially given how many Strange Magic commercials I've seen--I doubt that I would have ignored the former while noticing the latter).
To think... Frozen could have gotten a much bigger OW if Disney had actually given a shit before its release, instead of fawning all over Monsters University and Saving Mr Banks, two movies the Academy couldn't care less about to even bother nominating.
Ironically, Disney CEO Bob Iger genuinely seemed to like Frozen before it was released, and his chief animation henchman John Lasseter certainly adored it. It was Disney's marketers who didn't know what to do with it (given the level of responsibility that an expensive tentpole release entails and the lack of a male lead), aside from doing anything they could think of in order to trick people into seeing it on OW, and then letting the movie sink or swim on its own (well, they did make one spectacularly good trailer for it that didn't hide what the movie is about, but it was only released online instead of in theaters). Now, in some other countries (e.g. Japan) I've heard that Frozen was hyped like crazy everywhere, but I didn't see this in the DOM market (from Disney) before its release.
I was actually quite surprised at how much advertising I saw for Strange Magic in comparison (mostly without looking for it), despite the extremely late start it got--Disney executives might have washed their hands of this movie, keeping the Disney brand away from it, but since the late announcement they haven't exactly been trying to hide its existence, either. In my opinion, the movie had its chance for a decent OW in terms of exposure, but the ads apparently didn't connect with enough people. Now let's see what its WOM is like--I'm not expecting much.
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Interstellar hurt BH6 in terms of the media/press coverage. It was the hyped movie of its release, not Big Hero 6. Even when BH6 became #1 on the box office, headlines were like "Interstellar underperforms", "Why Interetellar did not do great" instead of "Big Hero 6 take the box office".
Interstellar and, I think, perhaps ironically, Frozen.
Did we really need 2 pages of discussion about Frozen?
This poor movie can't even get a break on its own thread...
See what I meant above? And yes, I was a part of that.
Congrats on the oscar nomination. The exclusion of LEGO movie was a surpirise.
I was surprised, but not that surprised, as earlier in this thread I did say of the movie: "it is hardly the type of movie that I'd expect the voters to go for." By that I meant I didn't think it would win the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but I did think it would be a contender, in all honesty, given all of the critical hype for it, in addition to its blockbuster DOM gross. However, this wasn't as surprising, to me, as last year's snub of Pixar's Monsters University in a field in which the likes of Despicable Me 2 and The Croods received nominations.
Frozen had an incredible run and the hype was immense. It's unfair to ask of BH6 to harvest much more from those fruits. Disney Animation is only good for so much, they're not Pixar.
This is true in that as a baseline Pixar still seem to have a larger fan base, and will therefore tend to have higher grosses on the average currently, but I'd hardly say that WDAS is "only good for so much"--they've been good for more before and may well be again. For the long run, I'm more concerned about Pixar being able to maintain their reputation at this point.
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I guess Japanese people like the movie after all.
BIG HERO 6 | 435.3 M overseas | 657.8 M worldwide
in International Box Office
Posted
I think the general idea is that if Frozen could gross nearly $50M in China, then Big Hero 6 could potentially gross $75-100M. Even though it was released in China in early February last year, wasn't Frozen already widely pirated by then?