Celedhring

It's such a pity though. Some of those movies are wonderful and they deserve to be seen more - and not in a snotty "watch this thing that will bore you just because critics say it's great" way, the movies are very enjoyable and emotional, but for some reason they just don't catch on. I guess stop-motion just doesn't appeal to the GA, can't really chalk it all to poor distribution/marketing. Kubo is one of my favorite animated movies ever.

Heh, you're right. I looked at the wrong dates for last years' Easters. Dumbo might be able to finish not too far behind Jungle Book, then. Somebody slap me.

Shazam has bomber over here, unsurprisingly (it was dumped by WB), and it will struggle to reach €5m (for sake of comparison, Aquaman did nearly €14m in Spain). Conversely, Dumbo is doing great; it's fallen less than 20%. Easter Holidays will cut off legs (moviegoing slows considerably as people travel), but it's poised to gross in the middle €10s. It has already surpassed Cinderella, although it won't match Jungle Book or BATB.

Us is really well filmed and scripted though - one of those excruciatingly planned films where everything on screen eventually is there for a reason. It's a much more confident film than Get Out, and despite its controversial storytelling (it really asks a lot from the audience in regard of suspension of disbelief) it really makes me feel Peele is far more than a "lightning in a bottle" kind of filmmaker. Really looking forward to his body of work.

Must be the one with the girl at the bus stop that's afraid a double is going to replace her? That is a brilliant one. You can borrow concepts and still be original, though. There are dozens of doppelganger stories out there.

The marketing here was awful, I tell you. It had DUMP written all over it. The film is called "Shazam: Trainee superhero" (in Spanish) over here. When they make up these awful localised titles (rest assured, Captain Marvel wasn't "Captain Marvel: Kickass blonde" nor Aquaman was "Aquaman: Khal Drogo learns to swim") is always a sure tell of absolute lack of confidence in the movie.

It seems to be doing pretty badly over here (no #s yet, just anecdotal evidence of empty screenings). The marketing made it feel like a dumped film nobody should care about, and people seem to have got the message. Which is a pity. It's strange, since even though Spain is not a big superhero market (Marvel films do well, but not nearly as well as in other places) it is a huge family market, and this looked like a way to scratch the family and superhero itches in one go. Then again, Warner Spain (which are extreme tightwads) probably chose not to try to risk their marketing euros selling a complete unknown character. It's a fun film, deserved better.

I'll say this: origin movies usually bore me to death (and stuff like Solo). I don't want to see how X became Y. I want to see Y doing Y stuff. Y is the interesting character, he/she is who I want to see. That said, this one has Phoenix in it, so I'm going to be there no matter what. He's an incredible actor and I can't see him having accepted this part unless he finds it interesting.

Thanks to BOT and this thread I realized the tickets came out today, I have been able to secure two for the very first show, with great seats. All the hundreds of hours wasted lurking in this place finally vindicated.

He's a bit of hit and miss to me. But he's always an interesting guy. Slither was good, Super was both good and bad, Belko Experiment was meh. I think he's at his best when he can mix in oddball humor into the proceedings, which he should be able to in SS2. Honestly, I think WB expects SS2 to be GOTG with villains (and presumably earthbound). That would be fine by me, even if he doesn't try to push the envelope. Incidentally, his PG Porn shorts are simply hilarious.

What are the PC issues? The racist crows and children going on an acid trip? Actually, is there a version of the "pink elephants on parade" scene in Burton's version? Now that's something I might wanna see.

I think you're being slightly unfair. Yes, they are cynically double and triple dipping on remakes, but current Disney has produced some remarkable original animated films too (Frozen, Zootopia) that have no doubt garnered enough appreciation to get their own remakes in due time.

Us has one of the better scripts (as in, purely from a craftmanship aspect, not going into whether the story itself is compelling or not) I have ever seen in a horror movie. The way it sets things up and reuses them later, hides details, etc... is amazing. I really want to watch it again because I feel there's barely a wasted moment. Even what feels like throwaway stuff becomes key later on. I'm in love with it. Happy that it's making so much money, we need more successful original films.

I can confirm that Disney Spain seems very confident in this. They have spent more on localisation and marketing than they usually do for their family releases (which is usually very little, Illumination otoh spends loads).

From a "where do I take my children this weekend" point of view, all those films you cite are probably more enjoyable to them - they have more jokes, rather simple plots, more slapstick. You need Pixar levels of reception/reputation to pull off incredible legs with more sophisticated animated movies like HTTYD. Nonetheless, all the movies in the saga still made good money. They hardly failed.