JWR

Fully a Doo Doo

I can't believe I live in a world where the seventh Alien movie made more money than a sequel to Joker in its opening weekend.

Andrew Stanton wasn't even in director's jail for a long stretch, anyway. A year after John Carter flopped, he announced he was making Finding Dory and now he's direction episodes of TV shows like Obi-Wan, Stranger Things, and other Apple projects.

Zaslav being a jackass who doesn't give a shit about animation is nothing new for him, nor is it new for a lot of execs.

$190-200M is a lot. But other recent flops have cost more and lost their respective studios more money than however much Joker 2 costs Warner Brothers. At worst, this is just yet another flop from DC that will make James Gunn's job that much trickier.

Phillips is going to be hurt the hardest by this disaster, but it won't end his career. Likewise, I don't think Phoenix will be in trouble either. He's always been selective with the movies he stars in.

Exactly. This isn't a Josh Trank scenario where the director was difficult to work with, abusive on set, going over-budget and shit talking the studio. Todd Phillips just made a dud. A very expensive dud, but a dud nevertheless. Assuming he doesn't start lashing out, he'll just stick to mid budget comedies or dramas. At worst, he'll have to go to Netflix.

He won't be allowed near a major tentpole blockbuster again (assuming he has any interest), but he'll probably go back to making $20-30M movies.

Unthinkable 6 months ago. But here we are...

Never seen a movie meltdown like this one has within a month.

2024 feels like the year Disney thought they would have had with 2023.

I mostly dug this. Some on the nose fan service and problematic elements aside, it's a tense, well-shot, brutal, and atmospheric return to form.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

That's somehow even less than the already poor projections.

- Abysmal word of mouth right off the bat - Opening weekend is DOA - Alien: Romulus will be taking all of the PLF screens I think we could be looking at a 60-70% drop.