Barnack

Maybe you made some typo here by saying eurocorp, do you mean worlds distributors instead ? There is many entity involved: http://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/valerian-luc-besson-180-million-indie-cara-delevingne-dane-dehaan-europacorp-1201851376/ Valerian sold overs 100 market among I think over 70 different distributor, it pre-sold for 80m in just one day at Canne. Every of those 70+ entity (one of them being EuroCorp) can individually loose or make money, most will loose money some will probably make money, Eurocorp being the distributor in one of the market Valerian did the best (France) will probably not loose much money if any. https://qz.com/1033865/valerian-luc-bessons-sci-fi-epic-is-the-most-expensive-non-american-film-ever-made/ Shmuger told Forbes the company was on the hook for a little more—around 10% of the budget. “The cost to EuropaCorp to mount the largest European production ever made, the largest independently-produced non-studio production ever made, the dream project of the company’s founder—the total cost to the company is not $200 million or $150 million, but under $20 million of financial exposure,” Shmuger said. Not necessarily, even if Eurocorp made good money on it we will not necessarily get a sequel, the next time Besson go at Canne and the other buyer market trying to sales Valerian 2 he will not find many buyers, not at that price tag at least. And he cannot make it by having Eurocorp funding it.

I'm using broadly that definition of Director (from wiki): A film director is a person who directs the making of a film. Generally, a film director controls a film's artistic and dramatic aspects and visualizes the screenplay (or script) while guiding the technical crew and actors in the fulfillment of that vision. The director has a key role in choosing the cast members, production design, and the creative aspects of filmmaking.[1] Under European Union law, the director is viewed as the author of the film It is not a clearly defined role and it change from director to director, but often a director on a movie do what he want to do and the producer jobs is to do what he does not want to do (when things go really well) That is such a low bar to use, DC franchise movie, but still I have the feeling Snyder did cast people, Snyder did choose is color palette and a lot of the production design, was the one choosing is film and camera (35-65mm, etc...) option was deeply involved in the script and theme, and I'm not sure Reeves have no say into who Batman will be. Same for Nolan trilogy. That is absolutely obvious and I would not argue about this, financier do what they want to do with their money and directors that want control can always say no to project if they do not have final cut and control, free choice here. I am not talking morality, good/bad here.

That your projection, never said anything of the sort, long list of classic from Gone with the wind, Casablanca, etc... are studio/producer products Empire Strike Back also, the subject had little to do with good or bad (or that was not explicit to me). But for that your are right, a lot of it is saving money and not having a fight out of a director style by hiring people without a strong voice or style.

Not sure how you would know any of this, but using a second feature/first big one director on a movie franchise universe as some bar now (would it not be the last example to use) ? What next, better than on Star Wars side stories director ? Judge by her second WB movie if she does one.

Except casting, colour palette, camera, product placement, many product design/costume choice already made, and a long list of obligation of that genre no ? A lot of a director way is in pre-post production, the hired team, the cast, etc.. their is a lot of variable that will not be under your control if you go direct a universe movie (even in the context of a fixed script). Not many case when you watch a Marvel movie that you would be able to name the director if they would have not said is name, just by watching a segment with is recognisable visual style, is usual theme, etc.. Not always for big name with final cut director doing their vision. Has for the director between interchangeable that is a bit overblown, Guardian of the Galaxy sideline being a counter example, but for some entry it does feel like it.

The rating in itself should probably not be too much of a big deal Similar movie with a pg-13 rating first weekend according to cinemascore 3 days to kill: 80% over 25 Jack reacher 1: 76% over 25 Jack Reacher 2: 82% over 25 Bourne: played so old that they used an over 35 metric (60%) Considering that the 17 to 24 are more than 18% of the ticket sold annually... and would be most of that 15-20% those under 25 audience for movie like those and not affected by the R-rating either, that does not leave many at the door. Seeing John Wick success I imagine the hard R is not a plan either.

Guardian of the galaxy did 86m in 2014 -> 100.6 in 2017. Doctor strange had a lot going for it for that market and did 109m in 2016. It is not an optimistic take for sure but not that unreasonable. X-men went from 116m in 2014 to 120m in 2017. Exchange rate went from 0.160484 (Yuan to USD) to 0.149431 between the 2 spider man release, it need to do 6.5/7% better just to do the same in USD.

Those supposed expert often have an hard time distinguishing about correlation/causation and love creating narrative to have year long content talking about a one day event. If you go look at the indies of 2005: Best Feature Brokeback Mountain Capote Good Night, and Good Luck. The Squid and the Whale The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada Best First Feature Crash Very similar to AMPAS already at that time, same for the: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19th_Independent_Spirit_Awards A shift happened where the result between the 2 started to look more similar, late 90/early 2000, did the indie spirit award changed ? or did independant movies became mainstream and studio's became acquisition/distribution machine of them while producing less and less of their own movie every year, with the dvds/streaming making it easier to reach AMPAS voters with your movies than before and them voting less for the movie of their own studio ? Pulp fiction won in 1994, Fargo in 1996. It is hard to distinguish how much a movie like Moonlight winning both at the indie spirit and the Oscar last year is the spirit trying to become predictor or the AMPAS enlarging the array of movie they accept to consider that would have been confined to indies awards in the past. There is also the fact that in the past oscar type people worked with larger budget than now.

Because independant does not mean much nowaday and would really be hard to define, they are more a low budget movie award than independant movie award They reserve the right of breaking the rules and make exception but in general: https://s3.amazonaws.com/SA_SubForm_etc/2018_SAsubmissions_RulesRegs_080917.pdf Cost of completed film, including post, should be less than $20 million. Any variations are at the sole discretion of the Nominating Committees and Film Independent. Logan Lucky 30 million production start to be a bit big for them. The Witch won 2 spirits last year, Swiss Army Men has 2 noms, ... Isn't it more AMPAS that started to accept smaller movie than a shift the other way around ?

A bit of a circular argument here, but I also feel WB are the best for the theatrical release marketing, but they also use the most money (circular in the sense that if the audience react well to trailers you do and your marketing work, normal to spend more on it) For example in 2015 : http://variety.com/2015/film/news/mid-year-movie-report-warner-bros-dominates-top-tv-ad-budgets-1201539126/ They had 7 of the top 9 domestic tv spending of the summer (that is only TV and I would not surprise me only US not canada also), a lot of those are above 50/55m domestic release: 1. Get Hard (Warner Bros.): $44.5 million 2. Focus (Warner Bros.): $43.3 million 3. Mad Max: Fury Road (Warner Bros.): $41.8 million 4. Jupiter Ascending (Warner Bros.): $41 million 5. Entourage (Warner Bros.): $40.6 million 6. Run All Night (Warner Bros.): $39.3 million 7. Jurassic World (Universal): $32.4 million 8. Hot Pursuit (Warner Bros.)? $31.8 million 9. Furious 7 (Universal): $31.7 million Would they not feel like the best, that would be an issue it does seem to be a part of their core strategy to go really big (Live by nights giant marketing budget for an recent example of that)

Isn't Jim Gianopulos very highly regarded ? When him and Tom Rothman runned Fox for 12 year's they had a ridiculously good run, what was one the most profitable run by a studio ever. I'm not so sure how relevant Paramount before march 2017 will be versus after, I imagine that a lot of people in key role are still the same, but it still a different person running the show.

It is a bit different but they were still in the black from theatrical alone because they sold the rest of the world market and dished only half of the domestic P&A, they made around 93 million from domestic Home Video/domestic streaming /domestic TV (something they would have never achieved without a giant theatrical release), selling that much to pay for P&A would have been a really bad gamble. And that what Soderbergh say, it would be surprising that achieve to sell markets the exact budget price, P&A being the exact first streaming windows price, etc... it is maybe just an expression of almost. It is either a gamble (meaning that it is possible to win or loose) or not a gamble (and sure gamble is a choice, Daniel Graig probably have an hard time to care much about compensation on movies by now if it is not a 50 to 60m on a James Bond... It is gamble for Amazon, for the distribution company Bleecker Street for the international distributor, for the cast and everyone working on profit sharing and Soderbergh themselve. A movie production/distribution model need to be evaluated has a hole, does all is actor make money from it ? To be sustainable and for other filmmaker to have that possibility it need for the people experimented with it to make money for the financier, not making money themselves (that does not help the future people to copycat what they did) You can talk about Soderbergh/Tatum other production company itself point of view having made the good gamble and not being the one that will absorb the loss, but if you talk about the movie I would think you need to see the aggregate to judge if the movie is a success (vs the movie was a success for Actor X), we need to see how much the people that bought the movies right will make and what kind of value it will have on an Amazon catalog (say they paid 10-15m for a movie that does not end up being much more popular than an beast of no nation, would it not have been better for them to have an exclusive at that price point ?). Robocop remake was maybe a nice success for MGM, not for Sony that had the domestic market for example, Valerian for Eurocorps vs the distributer buyer, etc.... Not that much different here.

Well you can if you pre-sales other windows or world market or depending of the co-financing deal. calling it a profit at the theatrical window is playing a bit with the expression. Not that different than what studios sometime do, take Sony point of view on a movie they pre-sold the intl market like American Hustle: DOMESTIC THEATRICAL REVENUE 68,339 DTH MARKETING (24,130) (Annapurna Pictures paying for half the theatrical release cost) DTH PRINTS (COS) (1,330) DTH WPF, DUES, OTHER (COS) (625) DOMESTIC THEATRICAL MARGIN 42,255 DIRECT PRODUCTION COSTS (9,100) (net of intl presales) There is a difference between someone making a profit from a film vs the film making a profit (that is usually the aggregate of all players), Liongates probably made a good profit from Power Rangers, Power Rangers didn't made a profit. Maybe most player will loose money out of it and maybe all the cast that worked at SAG minimum price would have lost their "bet" financially speaking including a big name director/producer that worked for nothing on it, vs what they would have done on a normal project that would have flopped.

From what I understand they usually buy from an specialized external firm like Nielsen/NRG/etc...: http://variety.com/2015/film/news/nrg-stagwell-mark-penn-1201641475/ NRG conducts over one million tracking survey interviews annually online and by mobile phones across the 13 largest movie markets around the world. It also conducts research through movie screenings, focus groups, exit surveys, ad/trailer testing and studies. They keep data (First choice, top 3 choice, awareness, unaided awareness, Interest, etc...) for every movie they tracked (90 days before release, week before release, day before release) and by using that historic of variable with what the opening weekend ended up to be they build predictive formula using the variable (in a empirically way a bit like you do in excel in science class), they can look like those: OW tracking by genre: Family movie: 2,371,644 + (First Choice O/R 2 * 18,077) + (Definite Interest All 2 *15,594) + (Top 3 Choice All 2 * -10,150) + (Total Awareness 2 * 1,089) Science Fiction : 2,147,711 + (Unaided Awareness * 517,422) + (First Choice O/R 2 * 28,064) + (Definite Interest All 2 * -7272) + (Top 3 Choice All 2 * 10,737) + (First Choice All 2 * -34,585) Comedies with no rating: -2,855,969 + (First Choice O/R * 195,717) + (Total Awareness * 98,772) + (Definite Interest All * 183,375) (those were used by the research group Troy in the Mexico market around 2010) Something can be super important for Sci fi like unaided awareness (will you mention that movie if the pollster say nothing about it) and not even used in the formula for family movie (were parents just need to know that a kid movie is opening, they do not need to know what it is about or being fans of the concept like for Sci-fi) That why movie with a lot of comparable in a recent pass or a really clean genre will tend to have a clearer tracking numbers, giant first weekend like Force Awaken with no previous comparable become wild prediction, stuff that they do not know if they should use their Superheroes or R-rated comedy formula like Deadpool become a crapshoot, Family movie or action SH for Wonder Woman ?. For those you will often see 2-3 different numbers throw around, those people are probably made with pretty similar awareness/top choice numbers but using them in a different equation with some thinking that it will play like the bank of comparable movie X and other thinking that it will play closer to the bank of movie Y.

That feel just wrong, she was still getting 5m in advance + points for a movie for a reason. Iron Lady went over 100m, August over 50m (not that far from Fences) Awareness Metric in 2014: Australia 0.888241011 Brazil 0.919242273 France 0.8444666 Germany 0.843156843 Italy 0.93731919 Japan 0.561072493 Korea 0.660831034 Mexico 0.834160874 Russia 0.796731981 Spain 0.898 UK 0.914427861 Int'l Average 0.827059105 Her awareness and popularity among woman over 25 worldwide is just nuts, 91.8% and 78% that is all time elite http://www.theharrispoll.com/health-and-life/The_Equalizer_Knows_No_Equal__Denzel_Washington_is_America___s_Favorite_Movie_Star.html In 2009 streep was number 8 most favorite movie star among american adults, in 2012 she was number 9, 2013 she was still number 9, 2014 up at number 7. Put her a good movie that appeal to older people (woman in particular) with a wide release and a 35m P&A and she will move the box office needle, put her in a successful award release platform release and she will also move the needle. People do not get excited with those legends with hundreds of movies just because they have any movie out (look at Tom Hanks Inferno, The Circle or A Hologram for the King) but they will be a big draw from time to time (Hanks in Sully).

WB, never know, could be the week of release even with greats reviews (MadMax, Wonder Woman were both less than 48 hours before the first market opened I think), with that studio dangerous to read anything about embargo date.

Less than before (video and tv), theatrical is getting a larger and larger part of the pie (streaming, EST didn't made up for the dvd/physical rental / tv decline). But has a more general rules, the movie tend to get a lot of attention and value if it does go through theatrical (it is almost always costing more in p&A than ticket), it gain value in all is future windows versus a strait to video affair, your tv revenue depend on how much the movie made at the box office and so on.

Total Lifetime Grosses Domestic: $101,530,738 52.8% + Foreign: $90,800,000 47.2% = Worldwide: $192,330,738 It was still quite successful it tripled is small (for a Denzel movie) 63m net budget with a 79 to 85 million world theatrical release cost. At 190 million WW (100dbo/90intl) Sony expected to do 31.6m in profit (13.4% ROI), their partners 9.6 million in profit and the above the line people 15.4 million in bonus (that a nice 55 million in gross profit shared around on a 63 million movie....). From the studio point of view that movie break even point was estimated at Domestic: $59,200,000 + Foreign: $59,200,000 = Worldwide: $118,400,00 The Return break point/good use of money estimated needed box office was at around 2.6x the budget Domestic: $82,000,000 + Foreign: $82,000,000 = Worldwide: $164,000,00 And it was greenlight with a 200m ww potential in mind. If they can get half the budget co-financed like on the first (Denzel Washington usually achieve to do that, he is predictable like a good clock like almost no one ever was) on a 75m or less net production, it is really not a big risk.

http://investor.amctheatres.com/Cache/1500096868.PDF?O=PDF&T=&Y=&D=&FID=1500096868&iid=4171292 In thousand 2016 Admissions : $2,049,428 2015 Admissions : $1,892,037 Film exhibition cost 2016: 1,089,501 (53%) 2015: 1,021,457 (53.9%) I thought that meant they paid around 53% in rental in average, that number from theater chain financial statement match exactly the number used in Sony leaked accounting (they got 53% of the box office on their movies). Are you sure you are not talking about the old model ?, that was before the mid 2000, when the box office became too front loaded and theater chain started to go under it changed to almost always flat fee by now. Look in that movie released in 2007: http://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/ Even on a Potter movie 10 year's ago the rental was already just 55/56% (162m/292m) the theater keeping 44-45% on a title like that one.

Would have been hard to get that bank loan to finance it if they didn't presales at least 80% of that net production cost. Pre-sales are not only foreign market in the French system, French TV stations also pre-buy an portion of what they expect your movie will cost them and give it to movie production in advance to help to make possible the production. That is a strong policy for Eurocorp to achieve a 80/85% coverage of the cost pre-release via international market pre-sales + tv pre-sales + tax credits in general not just for Valerian in particular, and outside the studio system it is also the norm to finance movie like that. It is really hard to go to a bank get a loan for your movie without those (and you will need some rich venture capitalist help you). Europa Corps total annual spending on movie/tv production (year being mars to mars, in Euro) has no spike indicating spending most of a single 197m movie (they released/made after 2014 at least 15 movies/3 tv series and 2 tv movie other than Valerian during that time frame): 2012: 99.7m 2013: 51.8m 2013: 77.19 m 2014: 120.922 m 2015: 102.87m 2016: 176m 2017: 133.7m Annual global pre-coverage of production budget cost (Some year's they went over 100%): 2013-2014: 85% 2014-2015: 107% 2015-2016: 101% 2016-2017: 70% Internationales annual sales: 2011: 34 909 2012: 73 857 2013: 71 725 2014:112 045 2015: 95 747 2016: 55 497 2017: 48 820 He could downplay the situation (the 80-90% is maybe more 70%), but I would imagine that it was mostly pre-sold like their entire annual slate is. If that was complete bullshit it would show in those annual report no?: http://quicktake.morningstar.com/stocknet/secdocuments.aspx?symbol=ecp&country=fra For everyone to see.

Would it be supporting ? Because lead actor is a really thought and competitive category usually (and harder to have some oscar buzz for it). Fox/Patrick Stewart started is campaign for best supporting in Logan for example, I doubt Jackman have much expectation in comparison.

Bad moms had a 58% RT score and some of the best recent legs, comedy tend to be really trailers dependent and that trailer scored huge.

With that Cinemascore THB should do about 3.3 legs, RT has some small correlation with legs (more than OW) but not by that much.

A bit of a bigger Split multiplier I guess (I would not have predicted Get Out legs correctly obviously).

I imagine it is a bit like many of the Game of thrones cast getting big roles in major release or WWE wrestler lie Batista jumping on big movie right away, a mix of special physical feature director want and a: https://socialblade.com/instagram/top/100/followers That studios like, 40+ million follower on Instagram alone, that is a publicity level put in clear number that is tempting to get and control fear (and that was in 2013/2014 when it was not really known if Instagram/twitter following would translate in effective publicity for a movie or not). That said, is a : Worldview Entertainment Ruby Films Distributed by Weinstein count as a major release now and not an indie film ? It is a borderline case for a mini-major like that, but it is on the independent side. Not sure about big role either.