JediJones

Good reviews will definitely help. I just think people are looking for grounded comedies. Not things that get too silly. Comedy tends to be funnier when it keeps it feet firmly planted in the real world, and doesn't include things that can't happen in real life (unless it's a flat-out parody movie). I think this movie could be fairly successful, but not when you take into account its $200M budget. It basically has an extremely similar premise to Lost City, about a female writer who gets caught up in games of life and death because powerful people think her books hold secrets to the real world. This movie will probably be better directed, but Lost City itself was fairly well-received and made just under $200M. Also, the title of this movie doesn't contain the hook in it, which presents a marketing problem. Granted, this is apparently an Apple TV co-production, and we know streaming productions have inflated budgets due to paying out all of the talent fees upfront instead of on the backend. So, if it makes as much as Lost City, we might be able to get away with calling it a success. Vaughn's top gross as a director is just over $400M, which would be only approaching breakeven for a movie at this budget. So the studios probably aren't expecting this to break even theatrically by normal standards.

The average Rotten Tomato score for 2023 Disney movies with budgets of $100M or more is only 60.5%. Barely fresh, and a step down from even the last two years. The superhero movie which The Marvels appears to be tracking closest to now in daily grosses is Birds of Prey. Looks like it won't be finishing far off from that one's $205M WW gross, and won't make $100M domestic. The overall ensemble cast looks like one of the best lineups in 2023 though. And it's Henry Cavill's first big movie since M:I Fallout. Cavill is one of the most underused actors in Hollywood relative to how popular he is. Men find him a credible action star and women swoon over him. Problem is the movie cost $200M, and no movie in this action/comedy genre has been able to justify that kind of budget in a long time, if ever. The trailer also ends with a CGI cat, and CGI cats are the last things that anyone wants to see in a movie. We know that now more than ever. Too bad the trailer couldn't keep the fairly grounded feel it had up until that final shot.

We all understand how to relate to fantasy creatures, since we're used to learning about new animals in the real world. So we have a "BS detector" that works for those effects and can tell when they're working or not. But pure, surreal, reality-warping effects are a little different, because no one can say how realistic they look or not. They can be entertaining, but it's harder for me to call those awards-worthy effects, because they get to skip over the realism challenge that other effects have to meet.

The Dr. Strange trailers have a lot of cool shots in them. I'm pretty confident that might be the best-looking superhero movie since Aquaman. At the same time, pure fantasy effects don't quite have the same impact that believable, lifelike ones do. Looking at his face divide up like sliced cheese, isn't something I can relate to in the real world. So I don't really know how realistic or not realistic that looks.

Yeah, other than the bridge fight, the action itself in NWH wasn't dynamically directed at all. And they didn't think of anything new or original for the villains to do that would require any creative applications of effects. Even if the effects work is passable in modern movies, it's not usually giving us the kinds of breakthroughs that defined an effects blockbuster back in the day. That can come from merging the right concept with the right emerging effects technology. Star Wars and Jurassic Park gave us more dynamic and realistic spaceship and dinosaur scenes than we had ever seen before. Superman invented flying technology during production to take the old "Peter Pan-style" flying to a new, more realistic level. Who Framed Roger Rabbit made breakthroughs on merging animation and live-action. Terminator 2 was a case where a brand new idea for a movie villain (albeit inspired by the comic book Sandman) dovetailed with a very new effects technology. In current movies, how can Spider-Man swinging around and fighting Doc Ock look any more impressive than it did in 2004? How can an X-Wing swooping through a Death Star trench look better than it did in the Special Editions or Prequels? The lack of bringing original ideas, or at least the right kind of revisited ideas to match to improved effects, can be just as much of a drag on a special effects movie as flawed effects work. New advancements may be more subtle now, and harder to explain to audiences, than they were when CGI came on the scene. But the kinds of camera advancements that made the first Star Wars possible still had a major impact in what kind of scenes that movie could create. I think we know the facial capture tech in Avatar made the Na'vi more relatable, and prevented them from looking like cartoons or uncanny valley characters. That meant we could buy into his fantasy world in a bigger way, and get more immersed in the story, just as we were able to in Star Wars and Jurassic Park. He could shoot the characters in close-up, and get more emotion across in their performances. I don't know exactly what the purpose of the technology Cameron is cooking up for Avatar 2 really is, nor understand how it will specifically make the movie look better. But based on his track record, I have a feeling it will help bring his story to life in a vivid and convincing way. I imagine it will give him the freedom to attempt scenes that are different in some way from anything we've seen before.

I don't think special effects have been all that impressive lately compared to 2000-2009. The new Star Wars movies look incredibly dull next to Lucas' prequels. Jackson's 2005 King Kong had a much better Kong and battle scenes than the current 'Monster-verse' stuff. Heck, Universal recently posted videos of the dinosaur fight from that movie on YouTube and racked up 100s of millions of hits in a couple years. Far more hits than people who actually saw the movie in theaters in 2005. While the sheer number of superhero movies has produced some with impressive effects, most of them aren't that visually exciting. Remember that cool shot from Captain Marvel? Me neither. Aquaman was one of the only superhero movies that ever had as many dazzling visual effects as Avatar. Dr. Strange is still recycling effects concepts from Inception, a 12-year-old movie. The Pirates and Transformers movies had some of the coolest effects starting in the 2000s, but those series died out due to story issues. So I have COMPLETE confidence that Avatar 2 is going to have truly dazzling, jaw-dropping effects that look much better than almost anything else we've seen since Avatar 1.

Here is a comparison of The Batman's international opening weekend numbers from its top 10 countries to past Batman films since Batman Begins. Past numbers pulled from Box Office Mojo:

And you can't build up to a big payoff with a crossover movie like IW and Endgame when you don't keep all the characters in a shared universe. We've seen how the road map works over at the MCU to do big crossover movies and get audiences interested in unknown characters like Captain Marvel and Shang-Chi. The MCU wrangled Spider-Man back into their universe because they could see the value he had as a part of their canon. WB voluntarily starting a big Batman franchise outside of their shared universe is shortsighted at best. Sure, they can open up a magic portal and cross them over someday, but even if that worked for one big movie, you're losing a lot of smaller team-ups and cameos along the way. Like you said, they now have a Catwoman developed, but she can't meet Harley Quinn or pop up in the Batgirl movie. It's not too efficient to now have to develop a DCEU Catwoman in some other movie when you could've just made use of the one you already set up.

Someone on this forum already seemed to know some weekend data Sunday morning. He knows Ghostbusters: Afterlife debuted in fifth place. http://worldofkj.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=55322&sd=d

The Sing 2 Early Access is absolutely blowing off the roof at theaters around here, in Pennsylvania. Saw a guy on Reddit who works at a theater say the single showing is out-selling Raccoon City's 5-day run. Here's how Sing 2 is doing at a big RPX theater outside Philly. Most of this from advance sales already banked this morning. Sing 2 is previewing in at least a third of the theaters within 250 miles of Philly. So this is definitely affecting Encanto's box office negatively:

Oh, got it. Nevermind!

$40-60 is just not a prediction. Why not predict $20-80? These people need to pick a horse.

Here's a little comparison of my theater's IMAX sales for GB2016 vs. Afterlife so far. This is King of Prussia, PA. The gulf is pretty staggering...35 tickets then, 209 tickets now. Granted a couple more showings included for Afterlife, but even without those the difference is huge. I included screenshots, including ones I took 5 years ago. This theater is also one of 20 running the Fan Event on Friday night, so that may have shifted some sales away from Wednesday and Thursday to Friday. They've sold 83 tickets for the Fan Event so far. Obviously the 33% jump in preview dollars for Afterlife over GB2016 wasn't as dramatic as these numbers show. I don't know how to explain that, other than this theater being an outlier, or many more people opting for IMAX over basic tickets this time. GB2016 Thu 7:30 PM (27 sold): https://i.ibb.co/q0Cdmtd/Ghostbusters2016-Thursday730.jpg GB2016 Thu 10 PM (8 sold): https://i.ibb.co/bg2g5cb/Ghostbusters2016-Thursday1030.jpg Afterlife Wed 7 PM (77 sold): https://i.ibb.co/hysw8KK/GBAfterlife-IMAXEarly-Access-Wednesday-King-Of-Prussia20211117.png Afterlife Thu 4PM (21 sold): https://i.ibb.co/zQDMkhd/GBAfterlife-IMAXThursday4-PMKing-Of-Prussia20211118.png Afterlife Thu 7PM (80 sold): https://i.ibb.co/jMthq12/GBAfterlife-IMAXThursday7-PMKing-Of-Prussia20211118.png Afterlife Thu 10PM (31 sold): https://i.ibb.co/VvTpp48/GBAfterlife-IMAXThursday10-PMKing-Of-Prussia20211118.png

BTTF doesn't have the same cosplay factor. There are regional factions of Ghostbusters cosplayers that form groups, just like there is for Star Wars. BTTF actually has a bigger female fan-base than SW or GB do. So the fan-base has a somewhat different character to it. And because BTTF3 was a real conclusion, there isn't so much anticipation for another movie. But I think a BTTF4 with Lloyd and Fox could be a $125m opener. The big problem with BTTF is where to take the story. Parts 2 and 3 were radically different in their premises. The potential for a misfire is there if the wrong idea is used. Star Wars, Indy and GB are all much easier to get right in terms of the PREMISES. While GB needs to break out of the repetitive formula that brought down GB2 and GB16, you still always know the movie has to have the good guys fighting ghosts in the present day and probably in NYC. In BTTF, the villain and the setting are totally open-ended. A BTTF remake, however, would likely be a box office failure, the way so many '80s remakes have been (Robocop, Total Recall and, yes, the certain-to-be-unprofitable GB16). Children of the '80s grew to love movies in general because of these classics and they remain big moviegoers. The prevalence of home video since the '80s has even convinced younger generations to feel just as protective of these movies. There is no appetite to see them remade. If you turn off the big existing fan-bases, you lose a big portion of your audience right out of the gate. It's hard to think of ANY '80s movie that should be remade. The '80s defined the style of today's movies in many ways. Since the style hasn't significantly changed, remaking them is pointless. And if you guys are seriously arguing that GB didn't have a rabid fan-base primed for a real sequel, you are absolutely blind to reality. It is this very fan-base that has driven the UNPRECEDENTED movement against this movie. You are seeing huge numbers of people become a national phenomenon and refusing to believe they actually exist. A small amount of people cannot become recognized by the national media like that. The fan-base is as big as for Indiana Jones. ID4 isn't even worth a mention. It didn't have a fan-base to speak of. Ghostbusters was a COLOSSAL hit in 1984 which spawned nearly a decade of cartoons and toys and merchandising, far more successfully than Indiana Jones was able to. It was one of the top 5 or so most important movies to children of the '80s.

I'm a lifelong rabid fan of Star Wars and Ghostbusters. Yes, it was at a fever pitch. Not saying Star Wars isn't an order of magnitude bigger than any other franchise, but Indiana Jones and Ghostbusters are RIGHT on par with each other, and were two of the movies people were anticipating sequels for the most in between the '80s and the eventual release of the next movies in the franchises. You only need to follow the constant updates and rumors on the development of GB3 before Feig was announced to be involved. The wind was let out of those hopeful sails as soon as Feig said he was doing a remake.

TMNT2 was in June, not May. Everything? You disagree that Ghostbusters is a brand name? Some of these things are just basic facts. Peanuts had a massive increase on its first Saturday. Still didn't end up with the final gross GB16 fans seem to be expecting for it. Angry Birds isn't heading to a 3x multiplier either because it's another frontloaded brand name franchise.

Real Ghostbusters had a major influence on GB2. Slimer was made friendlier, Janine's look was revised, and they borrowed two major premises from episodes, the idea of a medieval bad guy exiting from a painting (or tapestry) and the idea of rivers of goo flowing underneath NYC. The arc of the franchise is no different than Star Wars. Star Wars disappeared from the public consciousness for several years after Return of the Jedi. Interest slowly started to rebuild in the early '90s until anticipation for Episode I reached a fever pitch. Interest in GB fell dormant after GB2, but slowly rebuilt itself over the years until anticipation for GB3 was at a fever pitch. Sony took that anticipation and squandered it. Admittedly they and Reitman tried to do a GB3 but gave up after Murray showed no interest. But they never should have settled for Feig's pitch. A GB3 without Murray would have been preferable or even a remake that recast Venkman, Spengler, et al. with younger actors. Because Ghostbusters' success is about the original characters, not the hardware and special effects. That's why Real Ghostbusters was the successful cartoon, not the Filmation Ghostbusters with the ape. It's up to you if you want to agree with my points or not. I'm not going to soften my language about the movie any more than Richard Roeper did in his well-written review.

Christina Ricci did Winona Ryder better than Winona Ryder ever did.

Was it fantastic when Ninja Turtles 2 did it too? It's playing like a kids movie because most of the adult fan-base is turned off by the premise of the remake. That led to very depressed Thursday preview numbers compared to other franchise films like Star Trek and superhero movies. Playing like a kids movie is theoretically good for legs, but the movie is starting so low from where it needed to to be a success that it won't matter much. This opening weekend was pumped up with a last-minute marketing infusion that will evaporate next week. It had an unfortunate lack of competition (for the other studios) because it would have been easy pickings for Star Trek or Suicide Squad. Star Trek will overperform due to the presence of a hot alien babe in the trailers, just as Avatar and Guardians did. The GB16 competitive advantage is ending next week. The drop-offs will be closer to TMNT2 than to Paul Feig's adult-aimed comedies. Peanuts was better-received than GB16, got the same opening and even that only ended up with $130m. Even for kids, there is still a major brand name built into this opening, which means it's more frontloaded than an original, non-franchise comedy. Any hopes for more than a 3 multiplier are pure fantasy.

I lived through the downfall of Real Ghostbusters in real time. I think it pretty much lost its mojo after Lorenzo Music was replaced with Dave Coulier. Venkman is too important to the franchise to get wrong and Music really nailed it, Coulier not so much. Arsenio Hall being replaced was another nail in the coffin. I think that's when I mostly stopped watching. Slimer's solo cartoon was really a spin-off in a more kiddie style. His presence in the normal cartoon was a very good one during the good years of the cartoon. It looks like there were 78 "good" episodes produced and 82 after the voice replacements started happening. with exactly half of those airing after Ghostbusters 2's release. But 160 episodes was still a very long run for a cartoon. 1987 Ninja Turtles apparently had 193, but that was the core media of the franchise, while the live-action movies were just spin-offs. You can stretch it and add in the 40 Extreme Ghostbusters episodes too, which aired only a year after TMNT ended. And of course the 13 Slimer episodes if you want. G.I. Joe had 139 episodes in its two related series and Transformers apparently 98. Looks like He-Man had 130. You could argue that if Ghostbusters 2 had been a real hit, either the toy line or cartoon could have been popular enough to continue on, or that both had simply run their course or succumbed to other competition in toys and cartoons. However, there is definitely no evidence that Ghostbusters 2 helped give the franchise's tie-ins the boost in success that the original movie did.

Ghostbusters 2 more or less killed the franchise. The cartoon and toy line limped along for only another year or two, the normal amount of gas left in the tank you'd expect after a movie release. I watched every cartoon, had every toy and watched the original movie 200 times on VHS by the time of the sequel's release, and felt it was a big let-down. Ghostbusters 2 was unquestionably a disappointing film for most people, especially judging by how it opened on par with Last Crusade but ended up grossing not much more than half the total in the end. Siskel and Ebert's review of it was right on the mark. Nevertheless, fans like myself would've been pumped to see a redemption of the franchise by a superior Ghostbusters 3. No one expected it could be as good as the original, but it certainly could have been as much of an improvement as MIB3 was over MIB2.

Is that the kind of warm welcome you provide all your new members? I made a rock solid point and you reply with a personal attack instead of anything to dispute my argument. I'm hardly new to box office analysis. I've been a longtime reader of BoxOfficeMojo and was an active member of their old forums. Turning me away because you disagree with me is as petty and cheap as you could get. Is this forum for debate or to be an echo chamber?

Here's another box office measurement to look at. GB1 was the 2nd biggest movie of 1984 and GB2 was the 7th biggest movie of 1989, domestically. Based on last year's chart, making $131 to $150 million would put GB16 at position 23 in the top 100. Again, the entire premise of making a sequel, reboot or remake based on a brand name is to get a built-in audience to prop your box office up. It's not supposed to start you off at a disadvantage because you did something to tick off the original fans. There was simply no point in making this movie if that was going to be the approach. They should've used the budget to let Paul Feig make 3 of his cheaper, non-brand-name movies instead.

Do you think you can just recast all the male characters in ANY movie with females and have it come out exactly the same or exactly as good? How about in the other direction? Can you recast Bridesmaids with all men and have it work just as well? Why do some people demand that more movies focus on womens' issues and concerns if you can supposedly make a movie with either gender and put the exact same content in it and have it work the same? Ghostbusters was a hybrid of many genres, one of them being an Animal House-style frathouse comedy. Much of the comedy came from Bill Murray spending a lot of his time trying to get laid. All the 4 Ghostbusters had in their own way, some very specific male traits that are much less common in women. You put those traits in men and vast numbers of people can relate to them, recognize them and identify with them, leading to a well-liked movie. You put those traits in women, and the amount of the audience who can relate to it goes down considerably. And if you ignore all those traits and come up with radically different characterizations for your remake, you're not really remaking the original at all. You're just making a different movie and slapping a misleading brand name on it. And that type of approach has always been viewed as a rip-off and spelled poor box office returns. Ghostbusters, judging by the people who made this movie, was simply about the technical premise of a company that busts ghosts. To them it wasn't about specific characters. That would be like saying Star Wars was about spaceships shooting at each other and that Disney could've just rebooted it with completely different characters and had an equal success to what they did. George Lucas knew Star Wars wasn't about its superficial premise, it was about its characters, most notably the Skywalker family. Disney continued with that attitude and had a popular movie because of it.

Spare me the name-calling and dispute my analysis if you disagree.