El Squibbonator

If they'd put it on Hulu, it would have just been a long episode. Putting it in theaters emphasizes that it's not just an extra-long episode of the TV show.

I was skeptical when I saw it too. But it's similar to what The Simpsons Movie cost, so I can only assume they were hoping it would produce similar results. Speaking of which, I wonder whether the success of the Bob's Burgers Movie, or lack thereof, will have any effect on Fox's plans for a second Simpsons movie.

Still. . . I don't envy Fox in this situation. Not one bit. If the movie did cost $60 million, it's going to have to do a lot better than we anticipated just to break even. I can tell they were hoping to have another Simpsons Movie on their hands, but I just can't see that happening with Bob's Burgers. On that note, I wonder if the almost inevitable underperformance of this movie might discourage Fox from producing the long-rumored second Simpsons movie.

Bob's Burgers: The Movie apparently cost $60 million, and the long-range forecast currently has it earning $12 million in its domestic premier. That seems awfully low to me, especially considering a) how much the movie is being promoted right now, and b) how high the ratings for the show still are. But if it does open that low, it's going to need spectacular legs in order to earn its budget back.

Christopher Moore's Pine Cove novels (Practical Demonkeeping, The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, and The Stupidest Angel).

Molly and Emmett Based On: Characters created by Marilyn Hafner Studio: The Workshop, Inc. Director: Dan Walker Genre: Animation/Fantasy/Children's Release Date: Friday April 4th, Y9 Theater Count: 1500 Rating: G (very mild peril) Format: 2D Animation Budget: $10 million Runtime: 90 minutes (1 hour and 30 minutes) Cast: - Annie Jeong* as Molly Park - Billy Westwood* as Emmett - Chae-won Yang* as Mrs. Park - Stanley Miller* as Arthur Z. - Jane Pearson* as Samantha - Dee Bradley Baker as Angelina *fictional Tagline: Things are about to get fuzzy. Synopsis

One thing a lot of people seem to be overlooking is that Avatar was a product of a different era of cinema. When it was being made, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had barely gotten started, Disney didn't own Marvel, Lucasfilm, or Fox yet, and most streaming services didn't exist yet. Netflix was around, but back then they were more about delivering movies in the mail than about streaming them on your computer. If you took someone from 2009 and told them about what the landscape of cinema was like in 2022, they would think you were nuts. In short, Avatar was created in an era when a major studio could release a big-budget, completely original blockbuster (for a certain value of "original", of course). That just doesn't happen anymore. Disney might own Avatar now, but it's hard to imagine them, or any major studio, picking it up if it were pitched to them today. Even Dune, arguably the most Avatar-like movie of the past few years, was still an adaptation of a classic book and a remake of a previous film. So the landscape of cinema in 2009 was very different from what it would be 10 years later, let alone today. So how does this affect the potential success of Avatar 2? I'm not sure. Ever since Nick Fury showed up in the end credits of Iron Man, which came out the year before Avatar, franchise movies have essentially become the norm for major studios. Avatar, despite its astonishing success, never really felt quite right as a franchise movie, and I say this as a fan. It's a self-contained story with no sequel hook, no hint at further adventures for the heroes. Every major plot thread is wrapped up at the end. Compare that to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, whose movies always contain hints and spoilers for upcoming sequels. I mentioned, too, that Avatar was a product of the pre-streaming era. Nowadays, virtually the only movies released in theaters are those that are part of franchises, or have some connection to existing IP. But if franchise movies are eating all the other original movies, they certainly don't seem to be extracting much nutrition from their corpses. Even before the pandemic, ticket sales were declining as more and more people turned to streaming services to watch movies. And studios are now beginning to give their movies shorter theatrical releases in order to get them on streaming as soon as possible, a practice that won't likely end anytime soon. It seems as if franchise films have to cannibalize the rest of the cinema industry just for theaters to survive at all. And-- again, speaking as a fan-- Avatar hasn't really established itself as a franchise, at least not in the same way the likes of Marvel and Star Wars have. This is what I think people mean when they talk about it not having a "major cultural footprint". There haven't been many supplementary works derived from it recently-- no comic books, no video games, no spinoff TV shows, none of the usual things that successful sci-fi franchises tend to get. The movie got a bonanza of merchandise when it came out, but it wasn't very long-lived. Finally, one must consider Avatar's biggest selling point. It wasn't the story, or the characters. It was the idea of seeing a fully realized alien world, one so lifelike you could almost forget it was produced entirely through computer animation. The idea of lifelike computer animation wasn't a new one, but Avatar attempted it on an unprecedented scale. It was so lifelike, in fact, that James Cameron refused to call it "animation", even though that is exactly what it was. Audiences, even those who disliked the story, were astonished by the computer-animated setting. It was like nothing that they had ever seen before. Thirteen years later, lifelike computer-animated backgrounds are the norm rather than the exception for major Hollywood blockbusters. In 2019, for example, Disney produced a computer-animated remake of The Lion King, featuring lifelike computer animation used not only for the background but the characters as well. So Avatar 2 has a lot of factors to take into consideration that the first one didn't. It's being released at a time when theater attendance is still down, especially for movies that aren't part of well-established franchises. Studios are more willing to give movies streaming releases instead of theatrical releases. But perhaps most importantly, the unique selling point of the first movie might turn out to be an unrepeatable phenomenon. Now, I should probably emphasize that none of this is to say Avatar 2 won't be successful. But the specific set of circumstances that led to Avatar becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time are unlikely to ever be re-created.

Shadow of the Comet Studio: Fossil Record Animation Director: Harold Kingsley Genre: Action, Science-Fiction Release Date: April 25th Y9 Rating: PG-13 for language, violence Budget: $25 Million Runtime: 2 hr 25 min Format: hand-drawn animation Theater Count: 2,086 Main Cast: Samuel L. Jackson as Lee Richards Janet Maheswaran* as Valerie Acharya John Wilkins* as Michael Schwartz Peter David Meyers* as Ian Seymour Andrew Harrow* as Joseph "Big Joe" Creed Summary:

Now, to be fair, that was the 90s, when pretty much any animated movie that wasn't from Disney was practically a guaranteed flop, regardless of what genre it was. I also wouldn't put Quest for Camelot in the same category as the rest of those-- it was a more conventional Disney-style musical, with all that entailed. It was however, originally planned as a darker action movie aimed at a teen audience, and it was re-worked into a Disney ripoff because it was thought that would sell better. Lauren Faust (yes, that Lauren Faust) worked on the movie, and did not speak fondly of the experience. Anyhow, in the early 2000s, Disney tried reaching out to young male audiences with a merchandise line called "Disney Heroes". The logic was that it was supposed to be the counterpart to the Disney Princess franchise, with the core character group consisting of Aladdin, Tarzan, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, King Arthur, Simba, and Hercules. So why wasn't it successful, while the Princess franchise was successful? Probably because the Princess franchise was successful. As some of you guys mentioned, the audiences they were trying to reach were the same ones who considered Disney to be somehow beneath them. I know that, because I was a 12-year-old boy once, and that's how we think. In fact, it's been argued that the failure of the Heroes franchise, along with that of movies like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, was an inciting factor in Disney's acquisition of Marvel, Lucasfilm, and eventually 20th Century Fox. What does this have to do with Strange World? A lot. See, Disney went through at least two distinct phases when they tried to reach out to the teen male audience, both of which happened during times when they were in dire financial straits. The one I just described, in the early 2000s, was the second. The first happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and involved movies like Tron, The Black Hole, The Black Cauldron, and The Watcher in the Woods. Neither of these two "phases" resulted in a new major audience for Disney, and they only found success again when they returned to their traditional fare of family films. But Strange World is different. For one thing, it's being produced at a time when Disney is actually doing very well. For another thing, Disney no longer has a reputation as a "girly" company-- at least, not to the extent it did 20 years ago. Marvel and Star Wars are now deeply incorporated into the Disney brand. And finally, there's a case to be made that teens and young adults today don't see animation as "immature" to quite the same extent as past generations did. If there was ever a good time for Disney to attempt a movie in the vein of Atlantis or Treasure Planet again, it's now.

Come to think of it, is there any particular reason this is the case? Or are teen male audiences just not willing to give Disney the time of day?

So let's say WB isn't satisfied with how well this movie does, even if it does end up turning a profit. What then? What does the future of the franchise look like? I'm not expecting them to sell off the rights to another studio, but then, stranger things have happened.

420-450M on a supposed 200M budget still isn't much to write home about. If Warner Bros. wasn't having second thoughts about making Fantastic Beasts a five-movie series before, they probably are now.

I think we're looking at 120M domestic and 300M worldwide when all is said and done, and that's being very generous. As for the future of the franchise, I think Warner Bros. is probably going to make more movies regardless. Not because they're necessarily popular, but because nobody really wants to be the guy who pulls the plug on it.

I will. The movie I wanted to switch with a later movie wasn't that one.

Is it permissible to change a movie we originally had planned for Y9 to Y10, or vice versa?

That said, $500 million is still not a good showing for a movie in the Harry Potter franchise, and definitely wouldn't bode well for said franchise's long-term viability.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them just never felt quite right as a movie series. It's easy to blame J. K. Rowling's beliefs for the movie's tepid reception, but even before that became common knowledge, there was a lot of skepticism regarding the idea of a five-movie adaptation of what amounted to an in-universe textbook. The first movie was really the only well-received one, and a big part of that is because it actually focuses on Newt Scamander and the titular Fantastic Beasts. Afterwards, the Dumbledore-versus-Grindelwald subplot takes over, and Newt feels more and more like a bystander in what's ostensibly his own movie series. Even if you ignore all the baggage associated with J. K. Rowling, that would be a huge issue for these movies. Consider, too, that the central conflict of these movies-- the threat of Grindelwald exposing the Wizarding World-- is one that has clearly been resolved by the time the original series takes place. This is often an issue with prequels, but it's usually not too big a problem. The Star Wars prequels worked, for example, because they told us the story of a character whose backstory we had never seen before. But this is different. We know how the battle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald will play out, and we know that, at least by the 1990s (or the 2020s if you consider Cursed Child canon) the Wizarding World hasn't been exposed. There's no mystery, no stakes, at least from the perspective of anyone who follows the series. And that begs the question, where does the franchise go from here?

Has there been any speculation in this thread regarding Bob's Burgers: The Movie? Its marketing has been surprisingly low-key for a film adaptation of a popular TV show, so I'm not sure what to make of it. I'm picturing an opening weekend of $10-15 million, with a domestic gross of somewhere in the $50 million territory if Jurassic World: Dominion doesn't do too much damage to it.

This is neither here nor there, but I've turned one of my planned Y10 movies, The Magic Coin, into a webcomic.

Yeah, Doctor Strange isn't enough of an A-list character to be that big, pandemic or no.

I think it's still going to theaters. Raya and the Last Dragon and Encanto both did, even when contemporary Pixar movies were shunted onto Disney+. And Lightyear is getting a theatrical release too.

Speaking of animation, what's your prediction regarding Strange World?

Is that domestic or worldwide?

Which do you see doing more?

Across the Spider-Verse over Jurassic World? I can't see that happening.