El Squibbonator

It seems poised to make about $20 million in its opening weekend worldwide, which is better than I would have imagined. But like a lot of movies this year, it might end up being heavily front-loaded, especially since it's also out on Paramount+ already. I predict a worldwide total of around $45 million, give or take. The question is, will that be enough to cover its budget? The production values definitely look higher on this movie than they are on the TV show, but then again some very good-looking computer animated movies have had surprisingly low budgets. And in any case, as a Paramount+ same-day release, it won't necessarily need to earn back its budget in theaters to be a success for the studio. Space Jam: A New Legacy did that, after all.

Are you sure? This movie is tracking to open in the mid-single-digits. I'm normally wary about assigning budgets to movies that don't have them, but if it's like other low-tier CGI movies, it could be somewhere around $25 to 30 million. Even with a budget like that, a $7 million opening weekend is weak to say the least.

Let's see if that score lasts. Remember, Space Jam: A New Legacy also had a 100% score early on in its release.

I think a big reason this movie didn't do as well as everyone thought-- at least in theaters-- might just be the title. It's called The Suicide Squad. We already had a Suicide Squad movie five years ago, with one of the same main characters, no less. So when people saw ads for this one, they most likely thought "More of the same? I'm going to skip it, or just watch it on streaming." If they had called this movie something else, that wouldn't have been an issue.

What about the domestic totals? What are those?

Agreed. The 737 MAX was controversial, but not to the extent that a documentary about it would realistically break box-office records. I know CAYOM isn't supposed to take place in "our" world, but since this movie is based on a real-life event, its performance should reflect people's reaction to that event. By the way, what are the worldwide totals right now?

Are we sure it's that Doug Walker?

The question is, how much is this movie making from HBO Max? There's no chance it'll earn back its $150 million budget from theatrical revenue alone at this rate, but could it do well enough as a streaming title for Warner Bros. to deem it a success?

Can't tell if that's a joke or not. If it is, ha ha ha, very funny.

Maybe so, but there's been a big shift over the past couple of years over how movies are evaluated. It used to be that movies made all their money in theaters. If they were lucky, a movie that failed to earn back its money in theaters could make extra money on home video, but studios usually didn't care about that-- they considered a movie a lost cause once it failed in theaters, regardless of how well it did on video later. Take the case of Warner Bros.'s own The Iron Giant. It flopped in theaters, but it was a strong seller on home video. However, studios are usually only interested in theatrical ticket sales, so even though The Iron Giant was literally one of the best selling movies on home video of its day, it was declared a failure. But with the rise of studio-owned streaming services, studios have another option for movie releases that gives movies more wiggle room. And that's what we're seeing now. A lot of big movies are getting hybrid theatrical and streaming releases, so even if they earn what would be a disappointing amount of money from the theatrical component, they'll still have a chance to do well on streaming at the same time. Still sticking with Warner Bros. for the time being, that was what happened with Tom and Jerry earlier this year. It earned $124 million on an $80 million budget, which would be a flop in most circumstances. But since it was released simultaneously on HBO Max, and was very successful there, Warner Bros. considers it a success. In other words, studio-owned streaming services have forced us to re-consider what counts as a "successful" movie.

So I'm hearing projections of a $20 million-$25 million opening weekend. Normally, that would be pretty weak in context of such a huge budget, but considering it's also going to HBO Max, that could change things.

That's a genuine surprise, considering the sort of reviews the original got.

I'm honestly not sure. The bigger question is, will they be able to earn it back?

What are they spending it all on? Coke?

This: https://web.archive.org/web/20200420142010/http://film.ca.gov/wp-content/uploads/CA-Tax-Credit-Progress-Report-2019.pdf And no, I can't believe it either. That is, like, stupidly expensive for a Warner Bros. animated movie.

What I'm wondering is, how much will this make in theaters? It apparently cost $150 million, which is a lot by the standards of a Warner Bros. animated movie.

Regardless, there needs to be a rating like that for movies, so that G can be reserved for things actually aimed at General Audiences. That way PG can mean Parental Guidance again, and the whole rest of the rating system can go back to its original meanings too.

I think a good solution to that would be to create another new rating for movies that are aimed specifically at young children, as opposed to truly "general" audiences. The ESRB, which rates video games, has such a rating-- EC, for Early Childhood, which is distinct from the E for Everyone rating. We need something like that for movies.

It's apparently rated PG. The MPAA is officially dead to me. (grumpy old man voice) Back in my day, PG actually meant Parental Guidance.

Why is Luca not eligible?

I'm making a list of 50. They are in no particular order, just think of this as a list of the 50 I like most. 1. Fritz The Cat 2. Pinocchio 3. Akira 4. Wizards 5. The Iron Giant 6. Toy Story series (I'm giving this place in the list to the series as a whole) 7. Antz 8. The Prince Of Egypt 9. Big Hero 6 10. Heavy Metal 11. The Secret of NIMH 12. Beauty And The Beast 13. The Lion King 14. Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind 15. Moana 16. Coco 17. Inside Out 18. Up 19. Isle of Dogs 20. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse 21. The Incredibles 22. The Land Before Time 23. Fantasia 24. Princess Mononoke 25. Pokemon I Choose You 26. Lilo and Stitch 27. The Little Prince 28. Your Name 29. American Pop 30. South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut 31. The Simpsons Movie 32. Anomalisa 33. Sausage Party 34. WALL-E 35. Shrek 36. Chicken Run 37. Persepolis 38. Waltz with Bashir 39. Mary and Max 40. Paprika 41. Metropolis 42. Grave of the Fireflies 43. My Neighbor Totoro 44. Zootopia 46. The Emperor's New Groove 47. Watership Down 48. Happy Feet 49. The LEGO Movie 50. How To Train Your Dragon

It may look like live-action, but the fact remains that it is not. Even the "casual viewers" of whom you speak obviously understand that Disney did not film talking lions in real time. That would have been impossible. They know this movie isn't really live-action, because no matter how "realistic" it looks, it still depicts things and events that can't be done in real life. Lions, meerkats, and warthogs can't talk and sing, and real animals can't make the poses and expressions of the ones in the movie. I don't think anyone seriously believes that the Lion King remake was filmed in live-action, talking animals and all. It's also hypocritical on Disney's part for them to promote it as live-action. The 2000 movie Dinosaur is officially included in the Disney Animated Canon-- which is to say, the line of movies produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios-- but it is a combination of live-action backgrounds and photorealistic CGI characters. But Disney considers it an animated movie regardless. In the remake of The Lion King, everything, backgrounds included, is CGI, so it arguably has more right to be called an animated movie than Dinosaur does. Yet Disney doesn't call it one. One could argue that, since there are obviously no dinosaurs around today, playing the "live-action" card with Dinosaur wouldn't work. But that's besides the point. The point is that one of these photorealistic CGI movies is referred to by its studio as an animated movie, and the other is not. There is one final point to consider, and it is probably the most important one of all. Regardless of what they look like, these films were made by animators. They were the result of hundreds of thousands of collective man-hours of computer work, modeling these characters. This is the same process that goes into movies from the likes of Pixar and DreamWorks, and no matter what you think of the Lion King remake, to see this technique used in such a way is astonishing. So referring to these movies as "live-action" erases the efforts of the animators-- many of them underpaid, working for bare minimum wages-- who poured their lives into creating them. These people deserve credit for their role in bringing photorealistic movies to life. The least we could do is acknowledge the work of these animators, and call these movies what they are-- animated. TL;DR: Saying only certain animated movies deserve to be called animated movies isn't respecting animation as a medium. It's a middle finger to it.

It's animation, regardless of what it looks like. Are you saying that, just because a movie crosses an arbitrary line into realism, it suddenly stops being animated? Think about it. Toy Story is an animated film. So is Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. So is South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. And so is The Nightmare Before Christmas. All of those movies are made using wildly different techniques, but we classify them all as animated films. Why should a film that uses CGI to approximate live-action be excluded? To put it another way, the 2019 remake of The Lion King is far more similar to Toy Story, in terms of its production technique, than it is to the original The Lion King. And in turn, the original The Lion King and its remake have more in common with each other than either does with a live-action film. To say that the original The Lion King and Toy Story are animated and The Lion King remake is not, when they are more similar than different, is inaccurate. Also, you allow stop-motion and puppets on the list, despite those two methods of filmmaking having far more in common with live action than any sort of CGI does. And a final point to consider. There have been hand-drawn animated films that aim to be photorealistic as well (A Scanner Darkly, for example). How come these are acceptable, but an equivalent CGI film is not? It's hypocritical and smacks of selective bias. As I said before, there is a wide variety of techniques we group together under the umbrella of "animation", and you can't just arbitrarily eliminate one of them when they all have so much in common. The 2019 remake of The Lion King is an animated film. That's all there is to it.

I think 100% CGI films should be eligible regardless of whether they "recognize themselves as animated" or not. Animation is animation no matter how it's used, and if the whole movie is animated, IT IS AN ANIMATED MOVIE.

So Dash Shaw, the director of 2016's My Entire High School Sinking into The Sea, has another animated film. This one is called Cryptozoo, and I'll let the description speak for itself: "As cryptozookeepers struggle to capture a "Baku" (a legendary dream-eating hybrid creature) they begin to wonder if they should display these rare beasts in the confines of a cryptozoo or if these mythical creatures should remain hidden and unknown." Independent film distributor Magnolia Pictures will be releasing the movie on August 20th, though whether said release will be theatrical or streaming is currently unknown.