Jake Gittes

Bones and All wasn't produced by these corporations, only acquired by them for distribution. Which doesn't magically make it mainstream. The subject matter and style are exactly what makes a movie more or less accessible, not the logo in front of it.

Somehow I feel like I never see this concern over the budgets when some useless franchise movie fails to turn a profit. A quality movie should cost what it needs to cost, and I think Amazon can just about survive spending 55m on this.

It's a competition-for-attention issue. 2015 was the year of the first Netflix Original film (Beasts of No Nation) which was followed by Adam Sandler, the star of one of the movies you brought up, going to work with them exclusively. That got the streaming ball rolling. Before that point movies that weren't big-screen spectacles didn't have to do as much to prove they were worth a trip to the theater, so of course they made more money. To answer your question, I'd say Trainwreck, Get Hard, The Intern and The Imitation Game (that's a 2014 movie, but whatever) make significantly less or are streaming exclusives today; Spy, with its combo of ensemble, reviews and action element, probably makes close to as much (it actually didn't make as much as it could/should have in 2015, relative to McCarthy's earlier much less well-reviewed star vehicles); Goosebumps, an IP thing starring Jack Black, surely does fine as well; Pixels is either a Netflix movie with Sandler or it obviously stars Ryan Reynolds and is bigger if anything. But also, like @AniNate said, what's the point? We are in both a post-streaming and post-COVID world, not in 2015, and it may be more relevant to note that both Civil War and Challengers are surely making more than they would have in 2021-22. Some ground's been gained back. The issue is not the product, it's making it look worth the effort of going to the theater with all the other options around - and worth the money, too, since there is also apparently the unresolved issue of the high ticket prices.

I am not.

Aster gave A24 two of their most popular films, which both made many times their budgets. And he now has Oscar winners lining up to work with him.

Hot.

Neon has Sean Baker's film so it better be his year.

So nice of John to take a break from all the killing to present.

Tag-teaming is what IMAX was made for.

no need to worry there. (seriously)

It always did. It showed up in the top 250 a few times over the years, starting in 2007.

Every once in a while I think about how Nolan is the one guy who could bring back Master and Commander, if he wanted to.

He had the script before he even filmed Fury Road.

So what?

It's the difference between using AI to augment a visual effect and using it to literally generate an image that the creators could have tossed a few bucks to any artist to design, with the benefit of it not looking like AI vomit.