AHepBurn

Most Marvel movies don't get the amount of praise SM:H has gotten. Most Marvel movies don't have RDJ/IM, and thost that do consistently pulled $400mil DOM, $1bil WW in recent history. Most Marvel movies don't have Spider-Man, Marvel's most popular character. And most Marvel movies don't have all the above things yet are pulling in SM:H's numbers, which while "good" are below what the above factors dictate they should be. Hence the concern.

Suicide Squad is a bit of a sore spot for me. Because I think all of its individual parts - the cast, the costumes, the art design, the well deserved makeup recognition, etc. - were excellent. But sadly it was unfortunately undone by how all those individual parts were put together. That said, I'm now actually actively rooting for SM:H to come underneath SS. Largely because it would be an interesting factoid and meta note in the overall history of the movie industry. And also because that, in addition to the freakout over SS winning an Oscar, whatever level of disappointment I had in how SS came out would be vastly overshadowed by the sheer comedy it will have brought me. For me, SS just seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Oh, there's definitely capacity for growth. Wonder Woman hitting $400mil alone shows that. There just needs to be good franchise management.

So as I said yesterday, ~$50mil OW for War is pretty in-line for the franchise as a whole. There's absolutely no reason to be really upset about this number. The OW should increase a bit due to walk-ups and the studio likely even anticipated the drop compared to Rise since they lowered the budget from both movies. Yes, it'll be lower than Rise, but this is the third installment on what's been solidified as a strongly adult-leaning series. So at this point you really know what you're going to be in for and you're either in or out. Additionally we've seen threequels drop from the second regularly the past few years instead of surpass them as in the past. The end result will be the same as the previous two installments - a solid, if unspectacular box office for a highly received series that should see some longevity through syndication and home video.

I don't think it's going to come into play at all. This is the sixth Spider-Man solo in 15 years, that's one Spider-Man movie every 2.5 years on average with three different actors and a 2-year gap between the Webb Spider-Man and the MCU Spider-Man appearing in an ensemble. There was an 8-year gap between the Burton Batman series and the Nolan Batman series ('97 to '05) and a 4-year gap between the Nolan Batman series and the first appearance of the DCEU Batman in an ensemble ('12 to '16) with a 7-year gap between solo series at best ('12 to '19). As I've said before, there's simply no novelty with Spider-Man at the moment due to overexposure. And if the relatively tame-to-good performances of GotG2 and SM:H indicate anything it's that we've kind of really hit the point for the MCU where they've just released so many movies and they've all been reasonably similar that the GA is starting to build up a tolerance to any possible hype or review scores because there have been so many movies, they all get reviewed roughly the same level, etc. The next few years are going to be really interesting. With DC, we've had three major cinematic Supermans and five major cinematic Batmans now that a changing of the guard is probably about as anticipated and accepted as having a new Bond. They've also seemingly benefited from appearing in ensembles recently to whet the appetite of audiences without giving them too much. They also have massive names in the comic book world like Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn, the Joker and the Flash that haven't had as much exposure recently that they can pursue. With Marvel, it's going to be problematic with the original cast basically winding down and needing replacements soon. The problem is this will be the first time they'll be replacing them for the general audience so reception can really go either way. Additionally, the characters they can branch off too like Ant-Man, Doctor Strange, Captain Marvel and Black Panther are largely C-list compared to the above names. And then we're back to the Spider-Man problem, who I believe is currently overexposed but we're getting more sequels for. So we'll see where it goes. At the moment, I think people need to temper their expectations for Thor: Ragnarok and with RDJ facing his first sub-$400mil DOM, $1bil WW MCU movie we should probably think about Avengers: Infinity War as well and consider possible heavily front-loaded possibilities for both.

I don't understand the worries over this number for Apes. The numbers are pretty in-line for the franchise and I think are indicative of a third installment that's solidified itself as a strongly adult-leaning film. Previous installments: Rise of the Planet of the Apes Budget: $93mil OW: $54.8mil DOM: $176.8 MULTI: x3.23 Dawn of the Planet of the Apes Budget: $170mil OW: $72.6mil DOM: $208.5mil MULTI: 2.87 War of the Planet of the Apex Budget: $150mil OW: $50mil DOM: ? MULTI: ? Clearly the studio expected the drop and compensated with the lower budget. Neither of the first two Apes movies actually broke out big but did just solid business. I think this is basically a case of a solid series of movies receiving a third solid installment to close it out. As anticipated (at least by myself), this is going to be just another solid if unspectacular performance for a good series that will likely live on for a very long time through syndication, video, etc. The same goes for Dunkirk next week, which will be fueled by Nolan's solid fanbase regular Nolan-like numbers but is highly unlikely to break out big.

Batman's a special case. Dark and dour makes it's audience orgasam spectacularly with joy.

ANOTHER DELIVERY FULFILLED BY AMAZON PRIME

Amazon Prime keeps delivering earlier and earlier every day.

I'm honestly just here to make frontloaded jokes with Dolly Parton pictures until the franchise war posts wind down.

CRASHING DOWN! Spider-Man: Homecoming is more frontload than Dolly Parton.

So is this no longer the Pokemon thread?

I'd argue that oversaturation did more harm to Spider-Man than bad reviews ever could. This is the sixth Spider-Man movie in 15-years with a 5-year and a 3-year gap between solos (2-year gap between last solo and ensemble). It's not a very ideal situation. We had an 8-year gap between the Burton to Nolan series for Batman, allowing the character to recover. Then we had a 4-year gap between the Nolan to DCEU series with the character in an ensemble role instead of a solo, again giving time for the character to recover. The next Batman solo will happen a full 6-years after the last at worse. I just don't think there's really any novelty with Spider-Man right now.

I see this comment in this thread and I can't really buy it. Below are the domestic totals for all the Spider-Man movies made by Sony. Spider-Man has had a steadily declining domestic take for each subsequent movie without fail, even after the extremely beloved Spider-Man 2. I think people just need to come to accept that Spider-Man, despite being Marvel's biggest character in everything but the movies, is likely just experiencing a loss of interest in the general audience in the US. Rank Title (click to view) Studio Gross / Theaters Opening / Theaters Date 1 Spider-Man Sony $403,706,375 3,876 $114,844,116 3,615 5/3/02 2 Spider-Man 2 Sony $373,585,825 4,166 $88,156,227 4,152 6/30/04 3 Spider-Man 3 Sony $336,530,303 4,324 $151,116,516 4,252 5/4/07 4 The Amazing Spider-Man Sony $262,030,663 4,318 $62,004,688 4,318 7/3/12 5 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Sony $202,853,933 4,324 $91,608,337 4,324 5/2/14 6 Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $117,015,000 4,348 $117,015,000 4,348 7/7/17

GotG2 is still currently under even BvS WW. I have a hard time seeing JL go under GotG2 WW.

Wonder Woman skews female to a before unseen level for a CBM. It also pulls in a heavy old crowd. Both those are terrific for late legs. SM:H is going to have neither of those and it'll play like a standard Marvel flick.

If you count the Fast and Furious movies, Gadot has half that number in just two years.

So the SM:H OW is looking like to be within most average to above average expectations. I said last week that I don't think SM:H really breaks out big because it just doesn't have the sheer novelty factor to it and these days novelty trumps reviews. There's been a lot of Spider-Man movies. There's been a lot of Marvel movies. The Marvel movies all have around the same range of reviews. Moreover, I just don't think the demographic makeup for SM:H is going to allow it to have a WONDR style run since the latter pulls in an audience that tends to view movies later in runs. I think SM:H will be really successful have the average to above average Marvel movie legs, but WONDR should comfortably remain Queen of the Summer. I really don't think the next Thor movie hits it big for the same reasons above. I know a lot here are excited for the Black Panther movie and the idea of a predominantly black cape movie does have some novelty, but I don't think the audience and curiosity for that is anywhere as huge as the first big female-led cape as that's targeting 50% of the population. JL I think will do fine because of WONDR spillover and curiosity over Flash (big right now) and Aquaman and the generally solid DC fanbase. I think Aquaman will do above most expectations here as well since there's some proven merit to introducing a character via cameo in a team-up then following up with a solo (Spider-Man in CW, Wonder Woman in BvS). The big question for myself with these numbers actually concerns RDJ's audience pull right now. This will likely be the first Marvel movie of his that breaks both of his $400mil DOM and $1bil WW streaks. And it's not like SM:H is an outlier, since it has Spider-Man which is arguably Marvel's most popular character. We've seen that while he's largely the primary reason for a Marvel movie to cross $1bil WW, his pull has decreased with each movie over time. I've been really unsure about Avengers: Infinity War matching the success of the first two Avengers movie and with this and GotG2 unable to hit $1bil marks I'm even more confident it doesn't now. Most Marvel movies, other than say GotG which was a novel concept at the time, just aren't an event right now. I'd argue that it's probably viewed as basically a long-running episodic show. So I guess IW's performance is going to really depend on if it gets the kind of season finale bump some shows get if people see it as the sort of end of an era and Marvel/Disney goes through with essentially retiring some or most of the original cast.

What a flop.

I think one of the big things that people need to take from the box office performances of blockbusters in this period is that novelty really makes a much bigger impact than reviews right now. Reviews are good for increasing or decreasing a tentpole's potential but novelty is really where the watermark is set as for overall box office performances. Since we're still in the DC movie conversation, BvS and SS did well overall because the novelty factor was so high but the overall gains were muted. WW had an initial trepidation to it due to the female lead but still had a really good novelty factor that the later reviews and audience acceptance later really boosted. This is one of the reasons why I think Aquaman will still hit $100mil OW and $700mil WW, as I seems to be the level of interest that franchise is at. And this blockbuster season is basically littered with franchises that have failed largely in part because I believe the audience is simply tired of them. Transformers have always had bad reviews yet the novelty and demand for them was so high that their box office defied expectations until now. Pirates, Cars, and Despicable Me are also all in retread territory. Franchises like Alien Covenant that had good reviews were simply DOA because nobody really wants or cares about the franchise at the moment. And then you have things like live-action Disney remakes which seem to be the in-demand thing right now as well as a Star Wars resurgence. Same for the Fast franchise, which has always gotten bad to decent reviews but has high demand. We've talked about how the Marvel audience hasn't really been growing but just maintaining for the past few years. And that shows in GotG2's performance, which got good reviews and acceptance but only had a relatively okay increase over the first because the novelty factor just isn't at the same sort of level. It's a situation that favors studios that have a deep IP catalog like Disney and WB and it'll be interesting to see what IPs can hit even in the short term. Jurassic World hit big because it was a big novelty at the time and because of that I'm somewhat pessimistic about the chances for the sequel's success. Same with the Deadpool sequel.

So the Wonder Woman over GotG2 domestic possibility grows stronger every day. What a year. That only cherry on top at this point would be if she takes home another Oscar for DC/WB.

A little late with the Aquaman OW talk, but I really don't see it missing $100mil OW. Unlike the MCU movies which have obvious peaks and valleys depending on RDJ/character, the DCEU movies have been pretty ridiculously steady from a numbers standpoint regardless of the star/character. Until we see otherwise, I'm going to assume that $100mil OW, $300mil DOM, $700mil WW is the absolute floor for that franchise. And those are great numbers since it looks like after the larger budget for BvS to try and kick-start things, WB has kept budgets in a reasonable mid/upper blockbuster level (SS $175mil, WW $150mil, AQM $160mil).

I'm with the others in saying that I really don't think SM:H is going to massively break out. It's going to do well, have a good up-front presence, and likely hit numbers it probably wouldn't have solely because of he RDJ factor. But there simply isn't a novelty to it other than the idea that this Spider-Man is in the MCU, which is pretty meaningless for most people. We've had a lot of Spider-Man movies. We've had a lot of Marvel movies. Most Marvel movies get the same range of reviews. I don't think there's really anything in there that's a massive curiosity pull like the biggest female cape character at last getting her movie with WW. Nor is there a big demo-pull that will help it out in the long run like with having a female-centric pull with WW. The last Marvel movie to truly break out was... what? GotG? That was a novel concept and it's sequel did well, but far below the lofty +$400mil DOM, +$1bil WW expectations many had long before release. And that's not even going into the fact that were getting guaranteed decent performers like Apes (already well reviewed) and Dunkirk (Nolan has a strong fanbase).

Flash was scheduled for 2018 but the project is delayed due to a director change. There's simply not enough time to get a new DC production in. I'm not really concerned about it, since this year seems to be a little big-release heavy with Kong, King Arthur, Wonder Woman, Dunkirk, It and Justice League. Also Warners, of all the major studios, isn't really the one that lives and dies with their big releases. Their signature is the smaller budget films that rack up a ton of cash as well as the various Oscar bait movies that they tend to release. Blockbusters are also in a real transition state at the moment since there's a lot of franchise fatigue setting in. They've got the appropriate people and vision for their DC properties now, so I think that's set. They really need to reevaluate doing these larger budget tentpoles based on older properties with little interest like Tarzan (did okay), King Arthur (didn't do okay) and Jungle Book (don't anticipate it doing okay). I think the kaiju (Godzilla, Kong, etc.) franchise needs to be reevaluated a bit from a creative standpoint to see where they want to go with it. I don't think there's going to be any problem with them sort of skipping out on the summer this year. I think the time off will benefit them and I hope they reverse course on the idea of doing more blockbusters and fewer small budget films a few years back with the state of the industry as it stands. They'll also be pretty busy from an organizational standpoint with the AT&T merger that's all but assuredly going to be completed. That's going to entail all sorts of work and analysis on new digital distribution methods for their media that's going to open up with being with AT&T, continuing on looking into the possibility of early video-on-demand releases that will be much easier facilitated with AT&T's network, etc.

I suppose you could, but that's part of the failure of RT. Nobody is going to go into that sort of depth to decide on a movie. The vast, vast majority who use RT just look to see if it's tomato or splat followed by the percentage.