PlatnumRoyce

What are the benchmarks for youtube views these days? A/k/a what does that actually mean?

That Hungarian tax credit document I linked to shows Production on Dune 1 starts on 6/25/2018 and runs through 2020/12/22 with filming starting on 3/18/2019 production on Dune's Additional photography starts on 2020/03/05 and ends on 2020/12/22 with filming starting on 2020/8/10 (matching Oscar Isaac's comments at the time). Production on Dune 2 starts on 11/4/2021 and runs through 12/31/2023 with filming starting on 7/11/2022 So there's likely a little over a year of downtime in Hungary between wrapping the first film's production starting the next one and 1.5-2 years before filming begins. I have no idea how to interpret that to answer this question but I thought it would be useful to explicitly lay out.

I think you're onto something but it's still a romcom even if it has guy's POV leading to a 60% female OW. Zombieland is also partially a "road movie" and the marketing could stress "rules to survive a zombie apocalypse" zombie-com stuff.

Yeah. I don't think it's self-evident (WandaVision -> Doctor Strange seemed to help) but I think The Marvels showed it to be an active negative and I think the way it arguably taps into the Kang narrative they were setting up is going to be a problem. I'm also confused because I thought Disney was sending active signals that they believed this was a problem too.

I don't really see how "generic secondary character from WandaVision is a lead on the Marvels" is treated as a "massive" problem for The Marvels but "the core premise of Loki is borrowed for Deadpool" is obviously only a positive. Prior to Echo, the D+ series have been treated rhetorically as the equivalent to a film. "How the ending of Loki/Loki and the Marvels connects to Deadpool 3" is the type of content that's going to quickly exist and this sort of stuff seeps downwards to some degree. I mean, we're not talking about specifics, just the vague elevator pitch of how a new superhero movie connects to either the comics or movies they haven't seen. I mean, the number of people who knew who Thanos was multiplied tenfold the week after Avengers came out even while comic les were unchanged.

And Loki was genuinely a hit based on an existing Avengers character (like Wandavision). Whether or not it's pedantic, I personally didn't like the trailer and had similar thoughts. I think it's a concern even if you shouldn't take it to the bank. Of course, "this movie costars Wolverine" was baked into my knowledge" so I'd have liked to see Jackman as the co-lead of the film but perhaps that's the takeaway the generic superbowl watcher will take away.

Why would people link Ms. Marvel to the tv show Ms. Marvel when the marketing doesn't reference the show? People pick up on this sort of elevator pitch stuff. I just think "from the comics" reads differently than "from that TV show you don't know about or didn't watch" in part because audiences clearly know the MCU reintroduces comic aspects instead of being a continuation of them.

Yeah, that's baked into the film itself but does that hold for marketing? Could they basically have just "yada yada'd" Deadpool entering the multiverse and just sold the character/vibes after that's been established. That's the most realistic expectation. However, honestly, I was half-expecting "a superbowl commercial" as a deadpool ad in the vein of that korg-deadpool-Free Guy bit.

Yeah, I still think it will be big but most of the trailer was spent setting up the TVA framing of the film. "You have to watch the TV show" is a narrative that's going to exist (even if they're always exaggerated)

"The TVA, first introduced in the TV show Loki, recruits Deadpool as an agent Did Disney really not learn the obvious lesson from the Marvels? At least Loki Season 1 was a big hit.

I didn't completely recreate it, but here's the big official government spreadsheet (I'm about 90% sure I saw the image/HTML table on this website) Look for " Dűne 2" ( and Dune/Royalty for Dune 1) I see a claim of 64M in production costs for Dune Part 2 and 8.5M for Part 1 at a VERY VERY quick glance (got to watch football) so it's probably just Hungarian specific data. https://www-nemzetifilmiroda-hu.translate.goog/aktualis?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

Yeah, but at least the Chosen thing is weird and interesting (even if union contracts are presumably why it's not generalizable - does anyone know the residual impact of this. I spent a few minutes trying to skim SAG or WGA contract and realized I just didn't want to spend time needed to parse). It's getting a ~50% drop on the second weekend of showing the same episodes (much better than prior episode drops which saw 80% falls). I didn't see anything on tracking thread released to the next tranche of (episodes 4-6) pre-sales. Is this retaining or is it going to steeply decline? This "pre-SVOD window" is turning slightly over "200 million minutes" (which would make you the 2-4th most streamed original on a non-Netflix streamer per TVGrimReaper's recent charts) viewed into ~$6M. Obviously the religious element is relevant but what would happen if something like House of the Dragon did this.

I agree though it also really feels like sour grapes. Ben Affleck made comments while promoting Artists Equity (it was a big, long profile in the trades that I'm struggling to find) that imply he got a similar deal for his movies like "The Town" (which he announced was recently re-licensed by him for an 8 figure payment). That means Affleck got the 8-10 year reversion this article mentions Coogler sought (and Affleck did so a decade ago at WB). To me, that begs the question as to why there aren't any examples cited of people getting such aggressive reversions for major films.

Yeah, which highlights the annoyance of not having a combined Digital number. DEG said & So Elemental is clearly outside of the top 10 on digital sales/rentals and probably outside of the top 15 but we don't have an aggregate report saying how spots 11-50 fall https://www.degonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/f1_Year-end-2023-Digital-Entertainment-cover-note-with-grid.pdf

The cool thing about Lionsgate is that they're small enough to let you infer data rom their quarterly reports. e.g. I read this current one as saying Hunger Games: Songbirds probably only spent 50M +/-10M on all aspects of marketing Lionsgate controls. In the final 3 months of 2024, Lionsgate released 2 films - Silent Night ($8M through end of year) and HG: Songbirds (160M out of 166). (with the dregs of Expend4bles adding 3.5M & a good chunk of Saw X's run adding 35M). > The increase in distribution and marketing expense in the three months ended December 31, 2023 is due to higher theatrical P&A and Premium VOD expense due to higher expense associated with the theatrical release of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in the current quarter, partially offset by lower expense for films to be released in subsequent quarters. In the three months ended December 31, 2023, approximately $10.5 million of theatrical P&A and Premium VOD expense was incurred in advance for films to be released in subsequent quarters, compared to approximately $15.5 million in the prior year's quarter in the Motion Picture segment * 54.4 - 10.5 - ?? for silent night + post-OW & PVOD marketing for SAW X (October 10th) + $0 for Exp4debles marketing = 44 - [5-10M(?)] & Last Quarter> Even when nothing is coming up (i.e. Q1 2024), Lionsgate still spent $10M in P&A but let's call this $10-$15M and let's zoom back one more time to 9 months ago - But most of that would have gone to Joy Ride, releasing on July 7th. Moonfall was in a similar position and saw ~$7M in advance P&A spent (but Lionsgate clearly pushed Joy Ride - "After SXSW, Lionsgate screened Joy Ride early on for exhibitors at CinemaCon, where the pic was the centerpiece of the studio’s session."). Let's say that's a max of <$5M So 44 - [5-10M(?)] + [10-15] + [<$5M] = 44M to 59M 44 - [5-10M(?)] + 19M * % of P&A spent prior to Oct 1 going to Hunger Games versus other films (found a citation in prior month quarterly report giving 19.xM as an aggregate number of outstanding Given that the average blockbuster spends slightly over ~60% of its P&A in the US, lets say this extrapolates to a ~58-81M for a film where we'd have global P&A info (using 2/3rds instead of 60% to account for Lionsgate releasing in more than just the US).

Matt Belloni claims the Moana TV Show was greenlit at a budget of roughly $150M (he had no idea of how much that increased with the film)

Yeah, there are plenty of mean spirited or unpleasant films that are good and interesting but bad and unpleasant is a pretty toxic combo to baseline enjoyment. However, expectations also matter: I don't really think any of the ideas in the script actually match well to the explicit sales pitch of the film being a homage to Jules Verne style adventure stories. That really is constantly a problem for a film seemingly allergic to expressing any sense of adventure and constantly trying to turn inwards. Again, I'm not denying I'm on the very low end of audience reception.

I thought the meme was a winking to not really wanting to reopen the rant about the film. I genuinely didn't enjoy the scenes in the kids movie that felt like the writers were expressing a troubled relationship with their parents on screen as a form of therapy. Feels sort of mean to say about the writers so I'm trying to just tiptoe around it.

Remember that 80 for Brady made a deal with theater chains to make all showings of the film cost matinee prices (so I'd assume it had better weekday numbers). OTOH that would imply a weak Tuesday bump. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/80-for-brady-tickets-sell-lower-prices-1235316300/

Let me tell you all the reasons that Strange World was both a terrible adventure movie and a morally unpleasant film. Basically, of all of the Disney/disney adjacent films I've seen in my life, I'd only rank Mulan 2 below Strange World. Perhaps its not fair but I'm very low on it. I'm really not sure exactly where Wish and Strange World fall relative to each other on average.

How can you say that? The Skrulls are left homeless and SWORD's destruction means Fury's returned to earth. This is a direct lead-in for that upcoming Secret Invasion show where millions of extra skrulls infiltrate earth society and Fury's forced to deal with the situation. Because that's the accidental genius of the post credit tease. The film ends promising two previously unannounced big crossover events (young avengers & X-Men).

Bad theatrical films will also cause significantly more brand damage. The whole "Disney Princess" line is one of their crown Jewels (e.g. it's the biggest merch franchise) and they just had a big flop with Wish. It also costs more money. This is why I don't think the Mean Girls analogy works - iterative games have a very different dynamic than one off cash grabs. Moana 2 and/or Moana: Live action really could be huge but if you have a big theatrical release of a bad moana film a year or two before you roll out another Moana work, the latter is going to get sucked down by the former. I'm not saying the film can't be mediocre and get bad reviews, I just think it pretty much can't be terrible like Strange World and is probably presumptively better than Wish. Looking at how Disney praised Elemental to the heavens, I really wonder if "brand rebuilding" is seen as very valuable right now.

Yeah, that makes sense if they went that route but there are real roadblocks. As the 2014 Sony Hack detailed, "Spider-Woman" is in a messy rights situation for Marvel (while basically being free for Sony to fully use as a Spider Man adjacent character) Without a revision to the Sony-Marvel contract (which could have occured), the MCU can't use basically "stuff that reminds people of Spider-Man" in their uses of Spider-Woman (including the character's name and costume) but they can use the [Spider-Woman character name] with [powers list].

Basically, if Moana 2 is as bad as Disney knew Strange World was, there's no reason for them to make it a big, splashy theatrical tentpole (save for perhaps studio/boardroom politicking) instead of making it a cheaper and smaller planned D+ release. It's not like kids disliked those direct to VHS/DVD features.

Argylle's marketing budget was reported as 80M split 50/50 between apple and distributor. Anyways, For Apple - yes but I don't think that's the only possible lens. For example, given the film's marketing budget was "only" $80M, I don't think it's at all unfair to compare the film's box office results to significantly cheaper big tentpole spy releases if we're looking at "how big of a hit/flop" style box office discussions (because they're ultimately going to be very similar films given similar theatrical releases just with a different financial structure).