Barnack

I am a bit curious how you calculated that, what number did you use ? Sony projection was to make only 14m on that movie during is lifetime, while investing over 500m on it, that movie profit margin were below 2.5%

Yes

I would blame english being a second language, but I am not really better in my first.

Still current Dwayne Johnson seem to limit itself to a very small and narrow genre, both in term of movies he does but also in characters he plays, far far from being able to sell anything, compare is output to DiCaprio, 80s/90s Cruise, Hanks. He does not seem to me that he feel like he can sell anything, to me it feel like he think that is movies need action-humor, cheesy crowd pleasing, visual over the top spectacle while playing a likable hero, with some clear distinction between family fun movies and is not those, to not hurt the first. He seem really aware of is limitation, what work for him and to stay in that very narrow band of possibility right now. It feel extremely calculated with a marketing team metrics for all is projects, not I would just do what I love or what director I admire and want to be part of is universe for 8 month and it will work because I can sell anything.

That sound a lot what marketing had to work with once they saw the movie and what test trailers they made scored better with test audience, not sure how conscious in advance that plan was. It is still a bit of a reach to think someone accept to do one of the biggest franchise of the 90s adaptation in a popular genre thinking that he is able to sell anything (there were very few project with a theatrical release easier to sell than that, regardless of the cast, how giant is box office was with a has wrong it could go marketing and reception just show how safe it was), if he was trying to sell something like Under the Skin to world audience....

A bit like the transformer, 50 shades, etc... if people still go see this in theater after BvS it become a subset much easier to please that loved BvS and SS, more in sync with those movies I imagine, than the rest of the population (and critics)

According to the leak even if the first one made the planned at greenlight profit of 69m that it did hurt the brand (you can find Sony e-mail saying that the "biggest box office title" the 2012 box office was not a good year, Men In black and Spider man franchise were both in trouble). Amazing spider man 2 was certainly not a success It was greenlight with 300m domestic, 550 intl, 850m WW box office in mind and with a profit of 123m in mind (16% ROI) It went 91m below Sony success bad threshold in profits, the movie made less than 10m for the studio and investor combined (14m for the studio a loss of 5m for the investors), on a multiple year's between the expense and all the revenue to come in, 600m total spent, on something that is purely made for a cash grab endeavor. Not sure on which metric it can be seen as a success, the planned sequels and movie universe were cancelled for a reason. Profit is not a sign of success, you need a depending on the project and the studio a ROI of 8% to 25%, that tend to be significantly above the break even line, otherwise the studio would have been better to buy stock at the stock market instead of investing in a movie.

Not sure it is really a good example of an anything project, Baywatch is far from a project sold only on Dwayne Johnson, not only it is using a franchise of the most watched fiction show of the 90s (or some not sure if true statement around that, but it was a giant world phenomenon), a popular genre mix (raunchy comedy-action) and had a supporting cast like Efron. There is a reason that very meh looking movie still made over 175m, it was an really safe and easy sell. He seem to play it so safe in is proposition's, in term of fun time crowd pleaser, not even trying to sell something audience maybe would not want if he was not involved. Yet to see him take a risk since he became really big (post Pain&Gain), he is following a very calculated career plan.

I guess if Tarantino is getting 20% gross dollar, Dicaprio 10%, Pitt and others and other 10% (and thus the movie costing 180m if it does 400m at the box office) could raise the break even point really high but that does not make much sense. If it need 375m to just do 0% ROI, how much will it take to make 15%, 475m, 540m ? That is much more than Django that already stared Dicaprio in a Tarantino movie that went extremely well. Django Unchained break even point was estimated at 204.9m by Sony (94.9dbo, 110intl). If Django Unchained would have made 370m the studios estimated they would have made 76m in profit (18.4% profit margin) and Tarantino/Dicaprio/Sam Jackson and others 72m in bonus. If a similar movie today would need to do almost the double than in 2013 to break even ) Tarantino and Co are asking for much bigger first dollar gross than before ) The dvd market disparation is having catastrophic consequence on plummeting movie revenues. ... or Feel like the reporting is misleading people between return break even point (were the use of capital is considered neutral, from where the movie need start to be a good investment for the company wanted annual ROI, say at 375m the ROI is 14% and that is there return break point that they often call and sometime describe how much the movie made or loss from that objective with annual break even point, were the money loss actual money and not just lost opportunity to make money with your capital. I.e. the movie need to do 375m to start making sense finnacially speaking became the movie need 375m to break even.

I do no think Deadline ever said something like that, they probably quoted people saying something like that. Deadline estimated a 100m profit to the studio's with a 55m in bonus to the above the line people from a 873m box office excluding merchandising sales, their break even point must have been considerably smaller than 800m, must have been smaller than 740 (without merchandising sales): http://deadline.com/2017/03/batman-v-superman-box-office-profit-2016-1202049201/ And from the Studio point of view (RatPac and others investor type being still in the red when a studio turn in the black usually) merchandising revenues and so on, could have been has low has 500m for BvS if those reasonably small 250m budget and small 160m world release number are true. Those movie are domestic heavy with many revenue source from lunchbox to complex video game. If we do not consider merchandising, Amazing Spider Man 2 could be one of the best example available to estimate break even point (Sony having sold them to Marvel) Amazing Spider Man 2 break even point from the studio point of view was estimated to 616.7m (216.7 dbo/400 intl) Amazing spider Man 2 estimated cost with that box office performance were expected to be by the studio accounting: Direct net production cost: 260.95m Domestic Release cost: 86.58m Intl Release: 108.43m World home ent release cost: 46.15m World TV releasing: 1.42m Overhead: 31.21m (just a rough 12% of the budget formula to spread the cost of running the studio on the movies) Residual: 14.87m Participation bonus/creative share: 39.5m Lone Star (investor on the movie) share: 55.9m Total: 645.01m Under that performance scenario they estimated those sources of revenues: domestic theater rental: 125.93m Intl theater rental: 167.6m Domestic Home Ent: 91.05m Intl home ent: 54.29m Domestic TV: 36.3m International TV: 78.2m Airlines: 3.43m Marvel settlement deal: 21.58m (Marvel during that time was giving up to 30m to Sony if they made Spider Man movies) Lone Star investment in the movie: 66.63m Total: 645.01m So a movie with a total cost (from the studio point of view) or nearly 600m needed to make in theater only 293.53m, for a movie domestic heavy that would not have needed to do 600m, but for Spider man that was expected to be 616m.

Yeah, from the current momentum it sound safe to say that no one will ever come close to John Wayne domestic star power and domestic box office track record.. According to this: http://www.ultimatemovierankings.com/john-wayne-movies/ 50 movie adjusting to 100m domestic (Tom Cruise has 26 of them for a comparison)

Her last giant box office year's was 2010 (2 movies above 200m the same year) not that long ago, she was still in the top 10 favorite domestic actress has recently has 2015: http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/Tom-Hanks-Favorite-Movie-Star.html The top 10 favorite actor among Americans adult was in 2015: Hanks Depp Washington John Wayne Harrison Ford Bullock Lawrence Eastwood #9 : Brad Pitt/Julia Roberts Money Monster did more than RDJ The Judge, why would Roberts be a box office poison ? And how can Wonder open that well with a box office poison in it ?

400m would be really small and that would make JL one of the most profitable movie of the year, big world release tentpole tend to go higher than that, Angel&Demon in 2009 total budget was almost 550m, Amazing Spider Man 2 total budget was around 580m It is rare for a production budget to get has high has 50% of a movie total cost, the average is around 35%. WB just had 3 really good year financially, including this one.

10 year's ago a big WB release accounting allegedly leaked and can give an idea of the releasing cost breakdown: World release cost: Prints: 29.2m dubbing, subtitles for other markets: 5.6m Markerting: 131.12m Taxes and duties fees: 8m Trades: 4.45m Freight: 3.5m Others: 1.662m Total: 180m (214m in 2017 dollars) Amazing spider man 2 release cost breakdown: Theatrical only Domestic advertising: basic: 25.58m Pre-open media: 42.255m Support media: 3.065 Prints: 8.46m others: 5.35m Intl advertising: 75.4m intl prints: 21m others: 10.78m Total: 191.89m (199,94m in 2017 dollar, same has Justice League rumored cost, I imagine those 200m figure are reported because they are the standard giant flagship movie average figures) Those do not include home video release costs.

Maybe (it did quite well in market that would not care about the guy much I would have imagined, same for Fast 7) but they would have still sniffed it, yeah maybe Dark Knight miss the billion it is so close but it would have still have done really close to it, no ? Specially Fast 7 there is such a big margin, Fast 7 do the same than 6 everywhere and just get the China boost and they reach a billion. Is it that big of a factor or a factor at all ?, Ledger real last movies The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus didn't do 10m domestic. Gandolfini, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Robin Williams (is last movie didn't even reached 130 thousand.....) and is last Night at the museum franchise entry released 3/4 month just after is death did by far the least of that franchise, there is a long list of death beloved actor having a posthum release that seem to have zero effect on their box office. People that were well aware and into a story like the actor in a movie being death before the release were probably already sold to that movie and fan's, that would have seen it anyway.

Dark knight rises also made over a billion.

I imagine it is not impossible, If Infinity war do between Ultron and Civil War (434m), Deadpool need a 363 to 435 jump (82 million or a bit over 22%) R-rated passion of the Christ did 370m in 2004 after all, It 326m this year, Sniper 350m, that would maybe be the r-rated maximum, but maybe possible (even if it does sound very unlikely).

Really ? Didn't the movie used a cheap trick of not being really him at all and having zero responsibility because of brainwash ? Was it not obvious or even explicitly said ? Or we learn that after ? I guess we can get mad for all kind of reason, did feel mad when honest working most of them father cops were getting attacked and their life engendered just to protect Bucky from the law by someone called Captain American and presented to us as virtuous.... the reason for it not being fully obvious to me outside friendship.

It is hard to prove that it does, now quality seem to affect the saturday/sunday performance, word of mouth kicking in much faster, so yes now quality affect even the first weekend now starting the monday when people talk about the movie at work/school. But it cannot affect the Thursday preview numbers that much, no one know if it is a good movie at that point (and that number told pretty much everything about JL), except indirectly, there will be a correlation with quality and the marketing material the distributor can work with (but that become strange, we can take every trailer/teaser and call that marketing and not movie quality and Suicide Squad and others movie can prove that). Has for the critical reception, that is hard to tell if it affect the OW and by more than say 15% in extreme case, if you look at doing correlation between RT score and OW for example, you will need to do a lot of work to find a small one (isolate not just theater count obviously, but movie budget, release date, genre, etc... to find a small one) it will not be an obvious one at all, at least not when a tried to do one and many other before me. Legs and critical reception are much more obviously correlated (and that would be because audience taste and critics taste tend to be mostly the same for the blockbuster type and audience word of mouth is almost the same than the critical score and make them difficult to isolate one from the other)

That would be a terribly small sample size, but Teenage mutant ninja turtle in 2014, made a 2.915x with a 22% RT score. There is no MCU entry with reviews has bad, not many Superheroes movie except SS and Bvs and Fan 4 with has bad reviews, such a small pool of movies. If we define good legs to be 2.5 for those deep sequel movies now(considering good reception like Civil War did 2.27, Guardian 2 2.66 and bad one can do around 2.2 or less), Suicide Squad got close with 2.43 (and considering how giants is OW was those could be called good legs I think, they were a better multiplier than Iron Man 3)

What make it hard, is that often that 95% RT will be correlated with the marketing, Thor had great trailers, JL not so much, when you achieve a great trailer from a terrible movie (Suicide Squad) it still open like crazy. Pre-sales JL were already bad before the RT score (and vice versa about every metric about Thor being really good before the reviews) It is really hard to isolate RT effect on movies like those (versus say the smaller movie that get over 90 on metacritic/Baby Driver type that seem more obvious)

550 million releasing cost would be unheard off, I think Biggest world P&A&shipping&tax and others in the leaked Sony accounting, in millions: SPIDER-MAN 3 243.218 DA VINCI CODE THE 221.690 2012 201.416 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 1 199.078 AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 191.790 ANGELS & DEMONS 187.835 HANCOCK 168.421 MEN IN BLACK 3 145.862 Warner brother leaked distribution accounting did show a 180m-190m for an giant Harry Potter world release if you include the translation cost, shipping, taxes, etc .... and everything like that. With print cost being lower by now and current exchange rate, I do not see why Justice World releasing cost would be significantly more than say 175 to 220m

It is a lot, movies that will have worldwide release with studio budget (mid range and higher, not superheroes necessarily, but still certain to play in multiplex around the world) Just looking at live action / live action issh, many animated big movies outthere. List of movies with major world wide release in mind (bolded non superheroes movei with I suspect production that rival the smaller superheroes entry size): Maze runner 50 shades Red Sparrow Wrinkle in Time Tomb Raider Pacific Rim Ready Player One Rampage Ocean Eight Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Skyscraper Alita: Battle Angel Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again Mission: Impossible 6 The Equalizer 2 The Predator Barbie The Meg Robin Hood Jungle Book Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Creed 2 Mortal Engines The Women of Marwen Bumblebee Mary Poppins Returns Solo Less sure but maybe they will: Alpha The Girl in the Spider's Web Holmes and Watson Overlord Did I forgot some ? So Ready Player One Rampage Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom Skyscraper Alita: Battle Angel Mission: Impossible 6 The Meg Robin Hood Jungle Book Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald Bumblebee Mary Poppins Returns Solo Just 13 live action movies the size of the smallest superheroes (say Logan/Ant-Man) movie and up, could be missing some (like all the animated movie) and it is still more than the SH entries but it is getting close.

If you hang out in a male type on the younger range/geek website like here it can give that impression, but this year and all the year since 2012 will have probably only one superheroes in the yearly top 5 (and for 2 year's in the last 3, no SH movie in the top 3). 2017(Star wars will push everyone by 1 step to leave space to at the very maximum one SH movie): 1 Beauty and the Beast (2017) BV $1,263.5 $504.0 39.9% $759.5 60.1% 2 The Fate of the Furious Uni. $1,235.8 $225.8 18.3% $1,010.0 81.7% 3 Despicable Me 3 Uni. $1,031.8 $264.1 25.6% $767.8 74.4% 4 Spider-Man: Homecoming Sony $880.1 $334.1 38.0% $546.0 62.0% 5 Wolf Warrior 2 HC $870.3 $2.7 0.3% $867.6 99.7% 6 Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 BV $863.6 $389.8 45.1% $473.8 54.9% 2016: 1 Captain America: Civil War BV $1,153.3 $408.1 35.4% $745.2 64.6% 2 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story BV $1,056.1 $532.2 50.4% $523.9 49.6% 3 Finding Dory BV $1,028.6 $486.3 47.3% $542.3 52.7% 4 Zootopia BV $1,023.8 $341.3 33.3% $682.5 66.7% 5 The Jungle Book (2016) BV $966.6 $364.0 37.7% $602.5 62.3% 2015: 1 Star Wars: The Force Awakens BV $2,068.2 $936.7 45.3% $1,131.6 54.7% 2 Jurassic World Uni. $1,671.7 $652.3 39.0% $1,019.4 61.0% 3 Furious 7 Uni. $1,516.0 $353.0 23.3% $1,163.0 76.7% 4 Avengers: Age of Ultron BV $1,405.4 $459.0 32.7% $946.4 67.3% 5 Minions Uni. $1,159.4 $336.0 29.0% $823.4 71.0% 2014: 1 Transformers: Age of Extinction Par. $1,104.1 $245.4 22.2% $858.6 77.8% 2 The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies WB (NL) $956.0 $255.1 26.7% $700.9 73.3% 3 Guardians of the Galaxy BV $773.3 $333.2 43.1% $440.2 56.9% 4 Maleficent BV $758.5 $241.4 31.8% $517.1 68.2% 5 The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 LGF $755.4 $337.1 44.6% $418.2 55.4% 2013: 1 Frozen BV $1,276.5 $400.7 31.4% $875.7 68.6% 2 Iron Man 3 BV $1,214.8 $409.0 33.7% $805.8 66.3% 3 Despicable Me 2 Uni. $970.8 $368.1 37.9% $602.7 62.1% 4 The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug WB (NL) $958.4 $258.4 27.0% $700.0 73.0% 5 The Hunger Games: Catching Fire LGF $865.0 $424.7 49.1% $440.3 50.9%

Just rephrase it by: It's just that the people that continue to say that comic book film abominations like Batman vs Superman were well liked by audience despite mediocre legs with some dvd collection item for hardcore fans sold very well or some poll on the Internet featuring a disproportionate amount of active young male/fans score... its now clear the general audience has spoken that they didn't find those film good at all.