Melvin Frohike

January 26, 2015

DWA runs their franchises to the ground.

Not just their franchises, but ultimately their brand, quite possibly--not unlike what Katzenberg (along with Eisner) did while at Disney (especially with the direct-to-video crap). JK doesn't think long-term, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that he has long-term goals but does not run his business in a way that actually builds toward them--when times are good, he lives in the moment and seems to think that the good times will last forever no matter what he does.

Did Panda series really start after?

Yes, I looked it up (like I should have earlier ), and Kung Fu Panda 2 was released in May of 2011 while the TV series began airing in September of the same year.

Well, then it really still is the #1 WTF disappointment. Something must have contributed to that movie's non-event status.

I don't know, maybe a big reason the original movie was such a hit was the whole panda-doing-kung-fu thing, and once that was done, it was no longer so novel. The movie was well liked, but not spectacularly so, which is why I think it shouldn't be so surprising that not everybody came back for more (of something that has been done before). I mean, I like these movies, myself, but it's not as though the original had the kind of WOM and legs that HTTYD did, for example. To me, this makes HTTYD 2's underperformance (based on expectations, and in regard to the DOM market here) more perplexing, although as discussed earlier perhaps its TV series had something to do with this, in part.

By the way, I think that in general the franchises whose sequels perform better than the original movies at the box office are the ones that get hyped in some way after the original finishes its run, and catch on in a big way on video and in the pop culture, for example. In such cases, it is only natural that the sequel would gross more overall, with a good example being Despicable Me 2 in 2013. Without this, a sequel with its built-in audience may still open bigger than the original but may well finish with less, as well. Let's face it, deserved or otherwise (I say otherwise, but that's just my opinion), the Minions and whatever else from Despicable Me had much greater pop culture penetration than the characters of KFP and HTTYD--even the fantastic WOM of the latter did not translate to huge post-theatrical popularity and longevity, beyond the more hardcore fans.

January 26, 2015

HTTYD2 still made a bit more than KFP2 even with two seasons of a TV series.

Well, of course there are many other factors involved, including the incredible amount of hype for HTTYD 2 (largely deserved, don't get me wrong)--even though the hype didn't result in $300+ million DOM and $1+ billion WW, it still probably counted for some of the movie's gross (unless it's just the specific people who post on the Internet ).

I wonder if Penguins was hit much, much harder because it's a "comedy antics" film, the trailer was sold on gags and antics, and there were no real stakes evident from those trailers.

Could be, in the general sense that the movie might have been perceived as being nothing more than an extended episode of the series. That said, it has an origin story, and the trailer seemed to get very good reactions as opposed to "Yawn, more of the same." In this light, it's still a little perplexing that the movie bombed this hard in the DOM market. Perhaps the theory that the Penguins themselves are only popular in small doses as comic relief characters is the dominant factor, although fatigue/overexposure from their TV series still seems to be a contributing factor.

January 26, 2015

Though I have to correct on Kung Fu Panda: the TV series started six months AFTER KFP2, so it couldn't have contributed to KFP2's drop from the original.

Oh, thanks for that (should have checked, even though I was going along with an argument). In any case, I'm pretty sure that it would have made things worse to some degree, considering what has happened with the other franchises, and of course there is the upcoming Kung Fu Panda 3 to consider.

January 26, 2015

Not shocked by the numbers. Disney dumbed it in Jan and didn't really promote it.

I agree for the most part, with the exception that I've seen A LOT more ads for it on network and local television than I did for Frozen in 2013 (maybe cable and other channels were bombarded with Frozen commercials, for all I know, but I only watch over-the-air TV). In fact, I only recall having seen two commercials for the latter--both were little 10-second spots on late-night TV--while I've seen on the average several 30-second commercials for Strange Magic each day for the past couple of weeks. So while this is a dumping, they haven't entirely abandoned it, apparently in the hope that some amount of advertising would give them a decent return on investment, considering that Disney probably paid little if anything for the movie.

January 26, 2015

I actually think DWAs branding of their movie franchises into TV is a major reason of why their franchise films are doing badly.

Yes, this theory has gained credibility with every release.

I hope they actually make money off the series because now all three of Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon and Penguins have disappointed. The former two having great WOM, great DVD sales and great goodwill. Why pay for something you can get for "free"? Penguins, I predicted that after Dragon 2 disappointed as well. It just cannot be a coincidence, plus it has some anecdotal proof with some people having reported the parents telling the kids exactly that.

I hope they make good money off video rentals, too, because that's what people are waiting for in regard to the movies specifically, and the short waits these days for most movies only encourage them to bypass the cinema altogether. I think that this actually lends impetous to a vicious cycle between declining attendance and higher ticket prices.

The TV series are just not up to the quality of the cinema release. Perhaps story-wise maybe, I'm not sure, but animation, no, and perhaps being bombarded by that week in, week out would convince parents that it's more like the Nut Job than the old HTTYD or other movies out.

For the most part, I think it's the fact that the audience is bombarded by the characters' schtick--at least this is what I get from what I've seen of the Kung Fu Panda and Penguins series.

January 26, 2015

BH6 UPDATE:

Weekend: 349M yen(-19%),268k admissions

Total: 7.03 billion yen, 5.51 mil adm

Big Hero 6 (Japan) over Penguins of Madagascar (DOM)?

January 26, 2015

Dreamworks really should lower their films' budget.

That's what the layoffs are about, in part.

I read Ed Catmull once said that even if the animation is incomplete, as long as the story resonates, audience won't even notice that there's something wrong with the animation and they'll still love the movie.

That rings true to me, but doesn't explain Pixar's bloated budgets in recent years, especially considering that individual wages have been artificially suppressed.

Seriously, not even Disney can deliver at the pace Dreamworks is trying.

That's right, historically WDAS have never been able to sustain, for very long, an average release rate higher than about one movie per year, and neither have Pixar. A pipeline of 4-5 movies in development/production at once seems to be some kind of "structural" limit of the manner in which they work.

Perhaps if they hadn't so willingly colluded with Ed Catmull to suppress animator wages, they might've had more creative people and ideas around to play with.

For all we know, they may have better ideas--the problem starts at the top with the ideas that are getting the green light.

I'm glad that they are closing down PDI if they had to choose one, because that kind of blocky character animation present in Madagascar movies and the ugly ones in Puss in Boots were the ones I least liked.

For me it's not just the designs but the character animation, which often has a kind of "uncanny valley" effect. The animation done at DWA's Glendale studio is closer to the Disney tradition.

I'm sure Rise of the Guardians came out from there too?

Rise of the Guardians was a DWA (Glendale) production.

But my whole argument in the first place was that it's nearly impossible for a studio to put out something that high caliber everytime when you have 2-3 animated films releasing a year. The size of the staff would have to be massive to make sure that each film gets the required attention to detail and effort put in.

While I agree with what you're saying in the broadest terms, the problem is not having enough good filmmakers (who each have to spend so much time on these movies).

Animation is an exhausting process, three films a year for one studio is a ridiculous idea to start with. At least some people in the studio are being ran ragged by that turnout. Not to mention a studio with that many people and teams is far harder to manage and ensure quality than a normal sized one. We will see it with Pixar and WDAS if they adopt the multiple releases every year, I guarantee it. In fact, we'll probably see it this year already with Pixar.

While I agree with you in principle, as I said, maybe this would not be the best example because one of the releases this year was delayed from last year, when Pixar had no release. They have staffed up to increase their production rate, to some degree, but thus far have not actually been able to increase it (they're still averaging about one movie per year). If one or both of their movies this year fall(s) flat creatively (and possibly at the box office), then it would not be because they happened to release two movies in the same year (in fact, they took more time to try to make one of them better).

I think Katzenberg should try and focus on the films rather than over expand into theme parks, malls, live entertainment, television etc its his obsession of trying to make DWA into Disney 2.0 is what is partly the root of the problem

But in general it is risky to the extreme to depend on a single source of revenue and, if they're lucky, profit. Diversification is an important way for companies to increase their odds of succeeding or even just surviving long enough to have a chance of succeeding. In fact, DWA has recently partially cashed in one of their successful side businesses to help make up for shortfalls in their core business.

January 25, 2015

This will only be Disney's opening salvo in 2015. The heavy artillery is still scheduled to come as the year progresses.

It's more like an anticipatory fart, really.

For the record, Disney had nothing to do with making Captain America: TWS, Guardians of the Galaxy, Avengers: Age of Ultron, Inside Out, Ant Man, St James Place, Good Dinosaur and Star Wars: The Force Awakens. It was all Marvel, Pixar, Dreamworks and LucasFilm. Just something for people to keep in mind when these movies do well critically and financially.

Most of us have no difficulty with telling "Disney" the media conglomerate apart from Walt Disney Animation Studios and other actual things "Disney" based on context. As far as the box office is concerned, whichever entity owns these production studios is what counts.

so.. has George Lucas officially lost his mind now?

Just now?

Lucas didn't actually direct this, to be fair. I know we all love to blame him for everything, but Rydstrom doesn't really come across as a yes man in interviews.

So, then, based on the result here Rydstrom must instead be surrounded by yes-men.

I can't believe Disney gave this a larger theatre count than Into the Woods! WTH Mouse?

Maybe this is partly because it's a new release during a relatively quiet period for movies, while Into the Woods was released during a crowded period.

January 24, 2015

Disney is golden in Japan right now.

True, albeit it didn't seem to help Planes: Fire & Rescue any. Popularity is still very much on a per-movie basis for these movies in Japan, even when a brand seems to be hot. Now, obviously this example wasn't from Walt Disney Animation Studios specifically, but the rule is true even for Pixar, as we saw not long ago with Brave, which flopped.

All execpt marvel

That's true in terms of business (The Avengers doing well notwithstanding), but in terms of brand/image there isn't much, if any, of an association between Disney and Marvel in Japan, is there? For that matter, I doubt that there is much of an association anywhere.

Lots of young women across Japan buying advance tickets for the Cinderella movie. Apparently, you get some cutesy charm when you book early.

There is that and maybe Frozen Fever as motivating factors.

December 31, 2014

No, it's really not.

When I said more brands/studios you can buy, I obviously meant "name" brands.

Perhaps I'll use a sporting analogy, look at a team like Chelsea/Manchester City/PSG in football.

Bought over by oil tycoons and spending unlimited amounts of money on players. So, if you say, "Hey, they've got a good team,"

Well, no shit. Do they deserve any accolades for winning anything? Nope.

We've been over all this before. :rolleyes: First of all, I'm looking at this from a business point of view. In my view Disney died with Walt in 1966, with the exception of a few pieces that remain such as WDAS and the theme parks.

Your notion of "deserve" and "accolades" in the sense of devoted sports fandom don't apply to my argument because I'm talking about the box office and making money. If I wanted to talk about movies and accolades and such, I'll discuss the individual production studios that Disney owns instead.

Once you buy up the best players in the world you're expected to win. It's never surprising or amazing because really, it's expected.

It's more complex than your sports analogy because so many more people are involved--each individual production studio here is not guaranteed to do well because so many things, including a fickle audience, are involved. In my view, living on a near-100% diet of high-budget tentpole movies is risky business, but somehow they've been pulling it off, which is quite a feat (even if it involves luck, like most every successful enterprise does). I think about this every time I wonder whether I should be selling my Disney stock before it drops and I can decide whether to buy it back again anytime soon (not selling yet).

So, when you unfortunately describe "smaller hit or miss movies" you are insulting creative people.

Not at all because I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about box office performance here. It's impressive that Pixar, for example, has been able to be so consistent--and occasionally huge--at the box office, releasing only one movie a year or so. And it's also impressive that Disney can survive (speaking only of the movie business), let alone thrive, on a scaled-up version of this model (including Pixar itself, of course). Quantity provides a level of safety that they don't have, and have chosen not to have. I'm not saying that this is necessarily a good idea at all (if you assumed that, then we're not seeing eye-to-eye at all), but so far it has worked. These things are impressive regardless of the artistic aspects, which I have no problem separating out.

I don't think that each studio is comparable to an individual athlete at all--your analogy only works at the most abstract level and from a certain point of view regarding how respect is earned and how brands are perceived. Well, there are different ways of looking at this, such as the perspective that I'm currently using and the way that the public at large, as a whole, views this.

Props to you if you're just another person willing to lap up stale franchises and only brands.

I'm looking at this from a box office perspective, which seems to be a problem around here lately. :huh:

Yeah, other studios have put up a lot of dreck, but they are also willing to take creative risks. There's a reason Disney live action has not produced any Oscar nominated films.

So what? And in our previous discussion on this, I stated outright that with only a couple of exceptions, I'm not even a fan of Marvel's movies, for example. In addition, I consider their two most successful movies (at the box office) among their worst. But it's still impressive what they've been able to do--at the box office--with the lesser properties that they hadn't sold off. Disney took a big gamble on Marvel based on the surprising success of Iron Man, and it sure has paid off, but there was never any guarantee of this.

And I have no idea whether Lucasfilm will produce more dreck like their last three Star Wars movies. Those were all successful, though, so this acquisition is probably less of a risk, except for what many said at the time, which was that Disney overpaid for an old, used-up brand. Their first movie will be the main franchise's seventh, after all. We'll see in about a year.

So, if you want your diet of CGI, superheroes and Star Wars, be my guest, but there is no credit for a company that is simply rich enough to purchase the studios actually producing the movies. They should be, with all their capital, the ones taking risks but they play it safe, generic and boring.

And every studio is made of a group of people that changes over time, so I don't tend to put much emphasis, in the big picture and in the long term, on a sense of identity besides the brand names. For the time being, "Disney" has been doing well with the production studios and brands they have acquired, as well as their original studios which have been doing comparably well per tentpole, and I for one didn't think there was any guarantee of success over such a long period of time. They've also put their studios in a good position to succeed and maximize the value of what they create, which is always impressive.

I don't even understand your praise.

I think that your idealized concept of "praise" is different from what I'm saying. I'm not bestowing the kind of praise that I would on an individual who has committed an heroic deed, for example. And it's not a matter of "deserving" praise in the same way, either.

Do you expect a studio who owns Pixar, WDAS, Lucasfilm and Marvel to not succeed with limited resources?

Earlier this century WDAS was crap, Pixar could turn to crap at any time because they similarly produce few movies and struggled with developing each one, Star Wars is old and while the prequels made a lot of money they pissed off the fanbase who were none-too-pleased with Disney's acquisition on top of that, and Marvel had already sold the movie rights to their most popular properties to other studios, so I did not think, as all of this was being put together at the time, that Disney would necessarily be firing on all cylinders for the past several years. Yes, I did bet on them with my own money, but that was because their stock was so cheap at the time (for a reason), and I still wondered whether I would actually lose money on this investment if Disney kept screwing up as they had been for some time.

Let's not forget that Pixar was developed outside of Disney, Marvel was helped up by Paramount and Lucasfilm by Fox. It's not like Disney nurtured them from young.

So what? OK, if you care so much about studios as entities, then Disney (WDAS) "nurtured" John Lasseter and a number of other Pixar principals by educating them at CalArts and then hiring and training them at the studio. Or does that somehow not count, in this way of viewing things?

Disney have developed a stubborn and arrogant fanbase that defends them to the hilt.

They're not the only ones who are arrogant.

Is that what you think when I said, a while back in a previous discussion, that Disney has been dead for nearly 50 years? They're nothing more than a remnant of a brand and a global media conglomerate, but nevertheless what they've done from a business and box office standpoint has been most impressive. I reject the argument that any of this was guaranteed from the start, when many people felt that all they would do is screw up the studios and brands that they were acquiring. For that matter, there was never any guarantee of any of the individual studios succeeding.

December 31, 2014

Seriously, why is it that lack of direct (and timely) competition is universally accepted by nearly everyone who tracks box office as a huge benefit for a big movie,

Because people generally have a tendency to view everything in a zero-sum kind of way, as well as in a myopic way when it comes to a special field of interest. Reality is more dynamic and offers alternatives to spending money at the box office unless movies can draw people in. There have been times when two big movies in direct competition have both fared very well, and there have been other times when movies that had big expectations have underperformed in relative isolation. Logic would suggest that competition therefore is hardly the only factor in the success of a movie or the lack thereof. People also have a tendency to ignore facts when they disagree with their pet theories.

except from the Frozenites only when concerning Frozen?

The truth does not apply only to Frozen, but some people keep trying to play down this movie in this way, and obviously this will draw a response from its fans.

Bring up that fact and then all of a sudden you clearly must be hating.

It's not necessarily a case of hating in every instance, but it often seems that way because it is so very obvious that the Frozen phenomenon is way more than just the movie's box office gross. Need I spell it out here for those who have been living on another planet for the past year? To say or imply that the lack of direct competition last year was the main reason for the movie's success is to conveniently ignore the phenomenon as a whole, as well as the fact, for example, that Frozen faced much heavier competition in Japan and came out unscathed. Given the foregoing, it stands to reason--although the absolute truth can never be known--that in a presumptive zero-sum scenario Frozen would have hurt any competition way more than it would have been hurt by the competition. At the very least, it makes Frozen a poor example of a movie making it big due to a lack of competition--find some other example because this one has a huge cultural phenomenon that surrounds it and will persist for years. In addition, there are clear counterexamples such as the aforementioned HTTYD 2, which underperformed in the face of zero direct competition.

December 31, 2014

I'll tell you guys what for sure would have caused the film to earn more, more surefire than a Thanksgiving release date: Frozen level lack of direct competition. Annie, Night at the Museum, Penguins, and Into the Woods all went after the exact same target audience this Holiday and will likely combine to over 400m DOM when they're finished.

And accordingly the similar lack of direct competition was, of course, why HTTYD 2 cleaned up at the DOM box office this summer, exceeding even the most optimistic predictions by grossing as much as Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 did last summer combined, amiright? :bop: Wait, it actually underperformed? :huh: Do you have an explanation for this discrepancy?

These legs for this have been downright phenomenal when all the direct competition is factored in.

Its legs improved when the competition started--seems more like a "because of" than an "in spite of" scenario, if anything.

December 31, 2014

Hm...while it is true that some superhero movies really knocked things out of the ballpark such as The Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy, the Spider Man movies, and the Dark Knight movies, in the past few years, there were other superhero movies featuring characters that were arguably more high profile than any character in the Big Hero 6 comic series that underwhelmed at the domestic box office such as the Thor movies, X-Men: First Class & X-Men: Wolverine, and the first Captain America movie. Big Hero 6's domestic gross is likely to surpass that of the Thor movies, the first Captain America movie, The Amazing Spider Man 2, and exceed or come close to matching the domestic grosses of the X-Men movies.

My point was that it's a superhero movie, a WDAS movie, and a Disney movie all at once--all at the right time--and in addition it has a strong hook in Baymax. $200M DOM is what Disney expects and what I consider a "baseline" (give or take some) for the movie to be considered successful, but honestly I felt that it could and would do quite a bit better, even $250M DOM. It's not over yet and currently looks to get a fair part of the way there from $200M at least, so I'm not feeling much disappointment, especially given the current DOM market, but so far it's not quite as strong as I had expected it to be. If the general state of the market could be blamed, then Big Hero 6's performance would be right on the money, based on expectations, I suppose, but ultimately this is not knowable.

Note that I wasn't predicting $300+M DOM and $1+B WW or anything outrageous. I thought I was being realistic. And once again, for the record I am happy with how it's doing, but there are different ways of looking at this.

Also, just considering unadjusted grosses alone, of the 14 movies that were released by Pixar, only six of these movies grossed above $250 million at the domestic box office on their initial runs, two of which were sequels. BH6's domestic gross will probably wind up somewhere between Wall-E's and Brave's domestic grosses. Being Pixar releases and all, I'm genuinely curious as to whether people also felt that Wall-E and Brave failed to surpass domestic box office revenue expectations when they were first released .

Speaking only for myself, while I thought that Wall-E deserved to gross more, I can understand why it didn't--it has the Pixar brand, but it's not the kind of movie that generally has mass appeal, of which Big Hero 6, in my opinion, has considerably more. The same could be said for Ratatouille, for that matter. And as for Brave, I'm actually surprised that it grossed as much as it did because the movie is such a dud on a number of levels (my opinion, but it's hard for me to see it any other way in this case), so based on this it overperformed. An even more extreme case would be Cars 2, which frankly was an awful movie that deserved to flop even though it didn't, making it, too, an overperformer.

The thing is, with the exception of Frozen, WDAS hasn't produced a full length animated feature that has cruised comfortably past the $200 million mark at the domestic box office for the past 20 or so years.

I was probably one of the first to point this out, so I definitely consider this a valid perspective. That said, ultimately each case is unique, especially in its time, and the bottom line is that a number of people, myself included, thought that it would have done even better by this point because it seems to have so much going for it.

Frozen might have garnered legions of fans and renewed recognition for WDAS among some groups of individuals, but the amount of hype and exposure that Frozen had received could just as easily have turned other cynical/jaded (?) groups of individuals away from the WDAS brand.

This is something I've brought up myself, so it's not as though our thinking is completely different. I was concerned about the backlash effect (a silly but very real human emotional reaction) in addition to Frozen overshadowing Big Hero 6 in the opposite way, given some folks' (especially children's) obsession with it.

Thus, I felt that a domestic gross of $200 million was a wild card and just hoped that BH6 could exceed the $200 million mark domestically.

The difference is that I decided to put aside such concerns and bet on potential. Actually, my MO is to have it both ways by establishing a "realistic baseline" prediction to go with a "reasonable" upside prediction. For example, for Japan my baseline was $50M (you can look that up in the BH6 OS thread) with an upside of 100+M, even up to $150M (seems crazy but this movie is tailor-made for Japan in ways that go beyond its superficial trappings, in my opinion). I'd be satisfied with $50M, but if that's all it makes, then it would be slightly disappointing (I'll live, and I won't hold it against the movie). For the DOM market, my baseline is $200M (so is Disney's, I'd imagine), so I'm satisfied with that, but I still think it should have grossed $250M (who knows, maybe it still will, so I haven't thrown in the towel just yet, but it doesn't look like it will). My future predictions for WDAS movies will probably be closer to the $200M DOM baseline, and would have been regardless because I currently don't see as much upside in them (until I can learn more about them, at least).

I also wonder what Frozen's final domestic gross would have looked like if its release date had been swapped with Monsters University's summer release date.

I doubt this would have made that much of a difference. Frozen was destined to become the cultural phenomenon that it became, at least in this era. I don't mean Destiny with a capital 'D' (or Fate with a capital 'F'), but because of the movie itself, "Let It Go", and the zeitgeist that the movie captured. For that matter, I thought that Big Hero 6 would capture a diffent zeitgeist, but this apparently didn't happen to any major degree with regard to the public.

Although Frozen's whole wintry theme might seem at odds with a summer release date,

On the other hand, the movie probably mentions summer more than winter, and the eternal winter would have made for a nice contrast against the summer in real life, nicely framing the eternal winter spell that Elsa had inadvertantly cast (summer in real life, summer at the start of the movie, eternal winter in the middle, and then summer again to take us back to real-life conditions). In fact, the movie itself slipped in extra little bits of exposition to remind the audience that it was supposed to be summer in Arendelle (e.g. Anna telling Elsa at the party that it was warmer than she had thought it would be and Oaken saying that it was July), so in my opinion it would not have suffered due to a summer release date (and in actuality it did just as well in California where last winter was unusually warm, in stark contrast to the rest of NA).

and it would have faced competition from Despicable Me 2,

If Monsters University could still score like it did, then Frozen would not have had a problem.

most children also did not need to go to school for at least 3-4 consecutive weeks on end. Could it have surpassed Toy Story 3's and even Shrek 2's unadjusted domestic grosses?

Oh, you meant to ask whether Frozen would have made more. :slaphead: I don't know, but I doubt that the difference either way would be that great. As for the DOM market, it did sell a couple of million more tickets than Toy Story 3, for what it's worth; the latter had the advantage of opening when 3D was at its hottest, and had a 3D percentage more than double that of Frozen (or anything else released these days).

I wonder if this is due in part to the "contrast effect", i.e., that general audiences felt that the other functional alternatives such as POM, Annie or Night at the Museum 3 were really really terrible especially when compared with/contrasted against BH6, and made them all the more likely to eschew repeat viewings/first time viewings of these three family movies in favor of repeat and first time viewings of BH6 over the holiday season. In this unique instance, could it be that "bad" competition helped a "good" movie's box office performance more so than if this "good" movie faced no competition from other family movies?

This certainly is an interesting theory. :thinking: I think it is possible that all of the December family releases generally got people and their children raring and planning to go to the theater initially, perhaps even delaying/eschewing views/repeat views of BH6, and then switching to BH6 based on WOM and reviews when they actually had to make a decision. That's basically what you said in different words, and it sure seems true-to-life to me.

My basic point earlier was that it's not as simple as competition is bad and no competition is good, and that each scenario is unique, and your theory fits it perfectly for this case.

December 31, 2014

I'm hoping Big Hero 6 get's nominated for an Oscar. However, the chances of it winning are not in its favor as How to Train Your Dragon 2, LEGO Movie, and The Tale of Princess Kaguya are all big contenders and each movie has been praised immensely by critics, the latter even being one of the most acclaimed animated film in a long time.

Yes, the awards competition is a lot tougher this year than last year, when Frozen was a virtual lock for the award (unless the AMPAS would have gone for The Wind Rises instead, which was unlikely for a variety of reasons, or they went stupid, which isn't without precedence ). I would say that the odds of winning each award for this year, including the Best Animated Feature Oscar, are not in any of these movies' favor (i.e. one will win, obviously, but none of them are individually more likely to win than not).

Top Oscar nominees for Best Animated Feature (Predictions):

~ LEGO Movie

~ How To Train Your Dragon 2

~ Big Hero 6

~ The Tale of Princess Kaguya (winner)

~ ???

I'm sure the LEGO Movie will win the Oscar over The Tale of Princess Kaguya but I'm also certain both Big Hero 6 and How To Train Your Dragon 2 will give both movies a run for their money.

They each have their strengths over the others, so which will win depends on which more of the AMPAS members go for over the others. And believe me, the vast majority of them don't care a whole lot about this award category, so little effort and thought will go into their votes (even less than usual, which is little to start with), whatever this may imply.

To me, this year was a very poor year for animated features box-office wise, probably because everyone's trying to recover from the Frozen Fever (lol) but that does not disregard the fact that many of the animated features released this year were some of the best in terms of substance in my opinion.

I actually think that this aspect is a bit overrated, personally (there have been stronger years for sure), although 2014 was definitely a stronger year in this way than 2013 overall. For me, last year was all about Frozen (among the major animated releases, that is), as everything else underwhelmed to some degree, but there were several really good animated features released this year.

December 30, 2014

So BOM just posts what these studios say? Is that what you are saying?

From what I've seen, the vast majority of websites and reviewers simply repeat what studios tell them, regarding classification. Off the top of my head, I don't know about BOM specifically, but since they post classifications for movies that have yet to be released, they must have a source for this besides their own views. Additionally, in general we may not all individually agree with somebody else's classification of a movie anyway. To me it is something that we can discuss with some interest, but not something that should be taken as definitive.

December 30, 2014

Um, that's cause they have Pixar, Star Wars, Marvel etc.

And WDAS and their own live-action studio, which are separate, too, but all owned by Disney nevertheless.

They don't make any films or hardly any, so really it's nothing to be proud about.

Well, these production studios collectively don't make that many movies, but collectively they are still very successful. Does that count for anything, or does Disney's live-action studio specifically have to produce a great quantity of smaller hit-or-miss movies to count?

The more money you have and the more brands/studios you can buy, of course you'd be expected to be top all the time.

Seems to me that Disney owns some of the best ones, not just a vast number of them, and have allowed them to do what they do best while successfully selling their movies to the public. But I guess none of this counts, right?

Everybody knows that the Disney of today is not the original Disney under Walt (except for WDAS, which is THE original Disney studio). But it's still a thing unto itself, and a "studio" that succeeds with a limited number of releases (not sheer volume), which is impressive.

December 30, 2014

I fail to see how BH6's domestic performance is "somewhat lackluster", especially when compared with Tangled's, WIR's, HTTYD 2's,

As I've said, it depends on the perspective being used. From the general perspective, Big Hero 6 is performing very well and is a big success, especially in light of how movies--particularly family/animated movies--have been doing lately. Disney should be happy with its performance, and that's how I feel about it, too, from this perspective.

On the other hand, like many others I thought it could and would do better. It's less of an expectation and more of a hope, but even so from this perspective I'm a bit disappointed that it didn't break out beyond the more "realistic" expectations. With WDAS, Disney in general, and superhero movies being so hot--and with some such movies having exceeded expectations this summer--I thought that Big Hero 6 was in a good position to gross more like what Pixar movies typically gross, but unfortunately that didn't happen, and likely won't unless the movie's spectacular holiday performance carries over with really strong late legs (something to watch for).

Regarding the latter, I just made a big deal about it in this thread because otherwise there has been so little to talk about regarding BH6's DOM box office run (we were talking more about foreign grosses even here). If it hadn't been lackluster in some way, then there would have been more excitement and activity in this thread.

Again, I'm not saying that BH6 hasn't been doing well. It certainly has, and in that sense is definitely not a disappointment, but meeting the most "realistic" expectations is kind of boring. If it weren't, then this thread would have had a lot more pages by now, I bet.

and the much hyped about Interstellar's domestic performances.

I'll take boring over lamenting over what went wrong, but even with a successful run, we can still talk about how it might have been better (unprovable though that may be).

Maybe it's just me, but I was hoping BH6 would gross more than $200 million domestically, and thus far it has met and will exceed my expectations...

It all comes down to expectations and perspective. For many of us, not underperforming is more of a consolation prize than something to get excited about.

And, of course, this is getting compared to Frozen, which is crazy.

I haven't seen anybody here set such a lofty standard--in fact we've talked at length about avoiding it--although many seem to expect BH6 to get a boost from Frozen. The latter is something I had hoped for myself, but lately I've been thinking that the opposite, if anything, may be true.

Now, Moana, apparently being a princess musical, is the WDAS movie that I think many are setting unrealistic expectations for, especially this early on.

It's more about maximising the potential money that the film will make, releasing it in late January means they can take advantage of half term and the competition is nowhere near as tough. Disney knows what they doing and it's a strategy that works for them and other studios do it too like DWA which released Madagascar 3 and Turbo in October and both did good.

Uh...Turbo did well?! :blink: It grossed only $83M DOM and $283M WW with a $135M budget--it was a money-losing flop that I'm sure DWA had way higher expectations for.

The other animated film to have broken $200m was The Lego Movie and that had no competition for almost a month. It's a success and WDAS will be very happy with how it's done so far,

And Big Hero 6 had a lot more competition than Wreck-It Ralph did in late December, but still performed MUCH better than the latter, and relatively speaking much better than itself before the additional competition came along (i.e. I doubt that the competition has hurt it). Meanwhile, HTTYD 2 had no real competition (and is actually a good DWA movie ) but underperformed in the DOM market (OS made up for it and then some, but its DOM gross was weak)--even in comparison to "realistic" expectations--anyway (i.e. the lack of competition in no way implies success).

December 30, 2014

This is opening with THE MARTIAN. I know the target demo is different but what exactly is it about? BOM says it's a 'drama.' Isn't it a sci-fi film? BOM lists INTERSTELLAR as 'sci-fi adventure' and that one had a lot of drama.

I wouldn't take these classifications too seriously. For example, Frozen is generally classified as a comedy-adventure as that is what Disney tells everyone and sells the movie as, when it's actually neither. It has a fair amount of comedy, but it's not structured around this and its adventure component is minimal (originally intended to be much more of an adventure, but the story very much evolved away from this). It's really a musical-fantasy-drama, but Disney didn't want the public to know this (they wanted as much association and confusion with animated comedy-adventures such as the Ice Age series as possible), so it's not how the movie was classified. Ultimately this is far more about marketing than academic classification--sometimes a studio want these to align and at other times they pointedly do not.

By the way, of late Disney have classified all of WDAS' movies as comedy-adventures, and the same probably goes for Pixar's, too, whether it's true of the individual case or not. It's what they believe sells best with animation. To take another example, Big Hero 6 is more of a superhero action movie with family/personal drama at its core, but sure enough Disney marketers say that it's a comedy-adventure.

December 30, 2014

Hindsight is 20/20, but if they'd decided to move it early enough, they wouldn't have been trying to muscle in on PoM, but instead would have been going head-to-head with Home. Even if I'm feeling a lot more anticipation for that than possibly anyone else around, I don't think DWA would have left it up in a direct competition.

All true, but regarding the hindsight aspect, there were many who felt--months before the movie was released--that Disney should have moved Big Hero 6 to Thanksgiving. Yes, they've had success with both release periods, but Thanksgiving (or a bit later), despite the characteristic large drop of the second weekend, is believed to help with a movie's legs, in regard to movies that rely more on legs, which is typical of "family" and animated movies.

Admittedly this doesn't always work out, but there is a potential for the movie to really clean up during the holiday season and position itself well for late legs. In hindsight this actually happened this time with Big Hero 6, but with significantly smaller numbers because it was released three weeks earlier.

The PoM/Home switch still would have happened, but they'd have dropped PoM into the early November slot. It probably would have done better, too.

I agree--my guess is that both movies would have benefited from swapping their release dates.

Wonderful! Amazing! Crazy! Surprising! Encouraging! I'm so glad BH6 is successful, and I can't wait to watch it in France in 6 weeks

God, I hope that the movie meets your expectations! :unsure:

same here in Korea. don't understand why the release schedules are all so over the place worldwide.

like would it be benefited from it or hurt?

I think that with some exceptions the situation in each market is assessed independently. Given how "small" the world has become due to how we communicate these days, perhaps a more global view should be taken, however I haven't noticed a general trend of markets that get a movie late resulting in disappointing grosses. That certainly didn't happen with Frozen in Japan last year, for example. And even if the global view is being considered, which could be the case, it would be by those who know each individual market and whether a movie's box office gross would be impacted by a late release in that market.

really hope this could do $650M+ WW.. but not looking promising.

To me it looks promising so far with Big Hero 6 outperforming recent WDAS animated features in many markets (that are not named Frozen, although it has outperformed even this movie in a number of markets, as well). With most of the biggest markets still left (and Japan just getting started), I think that BH6 still has a chance to reach such heights.

I don't see the point in gnashing teeth over it. The movie's a hit. Can't we just leave it at that?

Do you happen to know of any good forums where people can discuss the box office in detail?

Save the "what-ifing" for when films actually disappoint.

That it could--and perhaps should--have done better sounds like disappointment to me. It's not disappointing in the big picture, but in terms of predictions and expectations its DOM performance has been somewhat lackluster. Both perspectives are valid and can coexist.

I'm pretty sure Disney knew exactly what they were doing when they set this for an early November release.

Disney are far from infallible, especially, it seems, when it comes to their animated features. The lack of faith that Disney's marketers (not WDAS--they just make the movies) had in Frozen last year was a pretty good example.

December 29, 2014

Big Hero 6 BV $4,854,000 +33.3% 2,065 -342 $2,351 $199,933,000 $165 8

Biggest jump from the major holdovers.

For comparison Big Hero 6 has grossed over twice what Wreck-It Ralph had grossed over the last three weekends of the year (including the weekdays in between), and about 2.3X over the past two weekends--so much for the concern of there being too much family competition this year. Although the amounts involved are not huge, all things considered this is a spectacular result!

I wonder whether Disney should have released Big Hero 6 on Thanksgiving instead. Hindsight is 20/20, yes, but many were saying this long before the movie was released.

So close to 200. Maybe it'll get there with actuals.

If this were Paramount, the estimate would definitely have been given a bump.

December 29, 2014

Disregarding Deadline.com's reports for the moment and extrapolating from opening day grosses which were definitely reported way before their second weekends, it is highly likely that BH6's opening weekend gross is somewhere between that of WIR's and Frozen's respective opening weekend grosses, though I could be wrong.

I don't know whether these days falling on a Wednesday (Wreck-It Ralph), a Thursday (Frozen), and a Friday (Big Hero 6) makes any difference, but that's encouraging, in any case.

Admittedly, I know very little about the box office in Australia, so I'm not trying to make any bold assertions here, myself. The data for this market on BOM is often incomplete and difficult to interpret with consistency, as well.

Also, another thing to note is that BOM reports four-day weekend grosses for the Australian market, so the second weekend grosses that you're seeing on BOM for Frozen and WIR reflect their Thursday-Sunday grosses, not Friday to Sunday grosses. BH6 opened officially this Friday, and has only been out in Australian cinemas for 3 days. Maybe Deadline.com was comparing what BH6 made over this 3 day opening weekend to WIR and Frozen's Friday-Sunday second week grosses (excluding their Thursdays)?

That could well be, although Deadline also said that BH6 opened on Christmas Day :huh: , which this year was on a Thursday. Given all of this uncertainty, perhaps a better--and fairer for all--comparison could be made with BH6's second weekend. As a reminder we should take into account the significant differences in exchange rate, which once again unfortunately work against BH6 (the strong US dollar of late = fewer dollars from overseas markets than before).

December 29, 2014

I actually think that Big Hero 6's opening week in Australia is pretty decent.

Well, it's decent enough, but doesn't seem that big in comparison to other openings.

As a frame of reference, BH6's Australian opening weekend is 19% stronger than Wreck it Ralph's opening weekend, and only 18% behind Frozen's opening weekend.

This seems odd because that's just about how it compares with these movies' second weekend grosses. :thinking: Did both Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph have close to 0% drops from their OWs? I don't have that data, but unless the foregoing is true, what Deadline is saying seems suspect.

I too crave drama, something of the Frozen variety

Yeah...that was something special.

December 28, 2014

Australia in second place on $3.2m.

That's a bit weaker than I had expected for Australia, but not too bad--Big Hero 6 could still gross $20+M there with strong legs.

Coming up are Germany and South Korea on January 22, the UK on January 30, France on February 11 and China on March 1.

There are lots of big markets bringing up the rear, which is good because the movie still has a long way to go. Looks like China is the "closer" this time--it will be largely up to this market (and France if its legs are good there) to push Big Hero 6 past any milestones it may still be approaching at that point. To be honest, I'm just hoping for some kind of drama to make this run more interesting and entertaining--opening against Interstellar in NA (and winning!) was neat and opening against Yōkai Watch in Japan (and surviving ) was, too, but I still want more drama.

December 28, 2014

To be fair to Exodus, I don't think God having a child avatar is too out of character. Jesus really up talks the Children and it also fits the Biblical theme of the small and meek being the most.

It's an interesting directorial choice, I don't see how it's insulting.

The child thing with Jesus is about viewing the world in an innocent, loving way instead of a cynical one. God Himself, however, is viewed as a father figure (we're supposed to be His children), and given what goes on in the story of Exodus we're not exactly talking about innocent love here, so the most obvious implication of this depiction would be that God is childish (in a negative sense). Perhaps the intention was for God to be childlike (I don't know--maybe not), which has a totally different connotation and is basically what you're saying, but in this context I can understand why people would be offended.

December 28, 2014

A few pages ago we pretty much agreed this is a contractual obligation film.

Which means that it must have been important to somebody, namely George Lucas. Lucasfilm had been trying to make this movie for years before Disney bought the company, and still kept at it despite the fact that it was a disaster the whole way through. They brought Brenda Chapman, who had recently resigned from Pixar, in as a story consultant a couple of years ago and put Gary Rydstrom, also formerly of Pixar, in as the new director. The result is still obviously garbage but Disney must have agreed, in writing, to release it no matter what, so that's what they're going to do--the absolute minimum that is required by contract, I'd imagine.

Note that Disney is trying to avoid identifying themselves with the film. Which means it must REALLY stink.

That's right, although they sure don't seem to mind making sure everyone knows that this movie is from Lucasfilm and George Lucas himself. This makes one of Disney's key brands look bad, although I guess this will be forgotten before long.

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