BK007

Luca is also clearly the bigger loser. Were families going to unsub just because it didn't show on Disney+? Going by T&J, Raya, the Croods - Luca could have at least made $50m which is $50m more than $0. Pixar employees were grumbling about it, and rightly so. And for those who claim "it's a pandemic", Raya and Cruella were released to the cinema and also on Premiere Access. For whatever reason, they threw Pixar under the bus twice.

Where are you getting Demon Slayer numbers? Thenumbers haven't had that movie for weeks in the charts. Yeah, I forgot about Father's Day since it's not a big thing here. But it lost 48% of its theatres and dropped 17%, so it did seem like fudging - don't have to be so condescending about it.

And yet Peter Rabbit, In the Heights, Cruella etc. These proclamations are always ridiculous. Never in the history of anything has only one factor made a difference. So basically follow the money? I don't think anyone watched TFATF franchise for diversity, but I won't complain if that's what Hollywood took away from it. Seems like their takeaways more often than not completely miss the point. As a minority, I don't think we like diversity for the sake of, so shoehorning comes across like how being China funded meant you needed a Chinese actress to deliver some irrelevant lines in a blockbuster. Also GvK was clearly fudged this weekend. Only a 14% drop? I'm sure it could've eventually made it to $100m anyway though.

I mean, does anyone really care for LMM? As someone who doesn't live in the US, I only heard his name after it was tied with Moana, which I assume is where most people outside of the US heard of him & then Hamilton was also in the same year so I remember vaguely about discussions of the two. But, if what others are saying is true, about there not being very catchy songs in In the Heights, then what does it really have as a musical? People calling the death of the musical or only talking about Broadway spawned ones when we've just recently had La La Land and The Greatest Showman earning over $150m. Of course people are also saying that In the Heights is a crowdpleaser like the other two, but it definitely lacked a story from the trailers and of course starpower which you could say was massive for La La Land at the time, and Hugh Jackman is no slouch though TGS I feel was more to do with the feel-good nature of its songs. I don't think any other musical movie besides Frozen and A Star is Born (Gaga) had songs transcend onto radio/charts/etc. Based on that evidence, I don't think Dear Evan Hansen will do very well especially with its very weird premise. West Side Story has the years of awareness and Spielberg but has no one with any clout as a star besides the sex assaulter Elgort who may sink the whole thing anyway.

Does Mitchells vs the Machines qualify? Haven't seen it mentioned whether it had any qualifying run unlike Luca. Would be sad for the Sony Animation team, being sold to Netflix and then not even being considered? I didn't like it but the animation is the best since Spiderverse (same team) and should try and convince the likes of Disney, Pixar, Dreamworks, Illumination etc to all not use the same general style. Well Illumination's is different, but very cheap looking. The rest are like the former 3 or mimicking them at lower budgets.

Does that clown even proof read his work? Calls Luca, Lucas and Turning Red, Seeing Red. And I saw an article recently where he declared Lost City of D and Bullet Train the last hope giving a lot of irrelevant examples as to what they should make and what movies worked and didn't work. Seems to know absolutely nothing for a person who claims to have followed box office for decades.

Yeah, but we all know twatters don't actually intend to watch the movie. All had to rush on to the next faux outrage spinner. I have a hard time believing those clowns really believe in anything. As I mentioned, time to ignore them completely.

Anyone know why FlixPatrol doesn't show many of the 2021 WB movies on its charts? Besides WW1984, even Godzilla vs Kong doesn't top the streaming charts whereas whatever Netflix or Disney drops shoots to the top. Is it incomplete data? Why wouldn't HBO Max subs watch those 2021 movies when they are free? Weird.

I think it's long past time to tune out of Twitter and ignore the demographic that uses it. They were never going to see the movie anyway, they are just try hards looking to manufacture outrage. No one needs that kind of toxicity in their lives. And this is just an irrelevant movie. These wankers are always up in arms about whatever social justice issue is on the menu and yet don't turn up to fucking vote. I can't take your views seriously if you can't do the bare minimum. Btw it always blows over because they need to find the next topic to make noise about. And in fact, paradoxically, their self-absorbed cycle probably inhibits progress more than expedites it because each issue is dealt with superficially and for such a brief moment before being collectively forgotten.

Was it Kloves or Cuaron who decided in PoA to give that foreboding line about Sirius in the tea leaves in Trelawney's class to a random kid who had no name and was not in the books lol. Not like the rest of the actual kid characters got many lines in the movies, so I still remember in the cinema thinking why couldn't they have Dean Thomas or Neville or Parvati etc. say that lol.

Crimes of Grindelwald was pretty shit. No idea where they wanted to go with that, but this whole franchise has been all over the place really. Rowling should've written out the whole thing before production even began, but it seems like that didn't happen? Anyway, besides that, have no time for the Rowling hate on Twitter. Keep defaming her, sure. Twitter people like to think they are the centre of the universe, and it's a wonder how anyone is actually influenced by such a tiny portion of Western society. Biggest echo chamber there is. Lots of faux outrage and zero real life results except oversized egos and narcissism. Most people who have time for Twitter are privileged folk who are out of touch.

I think what's sad is that they made two great trilogies in Kung Fu Panda and How to Train Your Dragon and they just weren't that successful. Yet Ice Age and Despicable Me went on and on. I don't get how Illumination has been so successful with so many crappy films.

Oh, and let's not forget that most people on this forum, in the industry and on Twitter are privileged. ITH might have banked on the Hispanic audience turning up, but they are one of the worst affected by covid. Do they have money to throw at this? Inequality was already awful pre-pandemic and it just made it worse. Kind of like all the tone-deaf WFH articles and opinion pieces when so many sectors cannot WFH. (And the even more tone deaf CEOs and billionaires) Social circles/spheres/bubbles have never been smaller it seems.

Is Peter Rabbit 2 really that surprising? Sequels to mediocre family films almost always drop. And it's not like many of those, or even any of those got good reviews. Sing 2 will be the next one. Or actually, maybe Boss Baby 2 which opens soon and inexplicably on streaming as well. Stupid from Universal - what happened to the 17-45 day exclusivity window? What was the point of making all those deals with theatres, and then abandoning it?

Without getting too political, just wondering if the current (and increasing) partisanship in America since Trump has had or is having any impact on the box office? The views on the right veering into conspiracies and extremism is the antithesis of 'liberal' Hollywood. Are they still going to be able to turn off the cognitive dissonance? Or will they easily fall into herd mentality and reject it wholesale? Just look at how easy it is to convince the Chinese to turn against any movie/celebrity/person who they feel has slighted them. No reason that can't be reproduced elsewhere where a population is heavily propagandized to.

What acronym is that? DCOM? Yep, doesn't help that Mackie has starred in quite a number of bad streaming movies or at least it seems like he has. As I mentioned earlier, Netflix is spending billions and how much value is retained? They need to figure out how exactly they can make their movies more valuable long term. The erosion of popularity IMO is much higher than a similar movie that was released theatrically. Personally I loved 6 Underground, the Michael Bay/Ryan Reynolds action movie on Netflix, would have seen it in the cinema - but it was something I just stumbled upon. In my country, zero marketing, it (and really all their 'big' movies; Extraction, Old Guard etc.) quickly disappeared from view. You cannot have something topping the charts for a week and then disappearing forever as a sustainable business model. It would make sense for them (IMO) to acquire some cinemas, since the rest would not play ball, and then release their movies there as well as on their platform. Market it like an event, give it that prestige, but then also give your subscribers the ability to see it how they usually do. If it can't be done for all of their slate, at least do it for ones that they know have got good reception. It's all about perspective.

But Paramount also sold off rights to most of their other films. Of course we don't know their critical reception yet, but if any of them were going to be hits, they just lost themselves IP in an IP/content war. People like JamesWorthyClap think they represent more people than they actually do. What kind of idiotic take is that? But Twitter is full of that and what makes Twitter a joke is that so few people are actually on it, that the "hot takes" are actually functionally single takes. Another example of how Western media amplifies certain viewpoints when it's reflective of hardly anyone. I just don't think the musical audience is as big as people think it is, but lots of other good analysis so far in this thread. I'm sure the deals aren't equal for all films, so it's kind of hard to say which ones benefit most and which ones get screwed. Wonder Woman 1984 probably made it out OK because BO wasn't great and reception wasn't either. Maybe ITH, if it were destined to not connect, would actually be better? Not sure anyone really knows. Actually Infinite was used for Paramount+ so they didn't sell that to anyone. Don't know why they sold Coming 2 America, and although it may yet be bad, the Tomorrow War with Pratt would've been something I would've seen in cinemas and would have done well worldwide.

And people still want to argue that streaming only movies have the same value as theatrical releases. They don't. It doesn't take a genius to see it - but movie execs seem to be idiots. Many of these "streaming" films in the past year and a half of covid only have carry-over prestige from being initially a theatrical release and having those marketing efforts etc. DTV movies have been around for decades and hardly make any dent in public consciousness or awards or anything really. Do we really think that stigma has gone away in a couple years? Until the streamers actually make a streaming film an event (I suppose Premier Access is kind of a way) these films will be lumped into DTV - not good enough for theatrical. Luca for Pixar, animation, Disney, film/box office followers might still have that prestige, but if it's true in America that that link was lost before marketing started or whatever, then it could already be the first Pixar film to have that baked in perspective of not being good enough irregardless of the quality of the final product. As someone mentioned before, HBO has made (apparently) great DTV movies before, but public awareness is pretty much non-existent. There are no secondary marketing channels or etc. It's just stupid to give up box office. Until the streamers/studios find a way to reverse that perception, it'll stick. The quality people see in their libraries are mostly going to be original specialty limited series or series in general, past popular series and past theatrical releases. No one cares about DTV filler.

Falcon & the Winter Soldier is terrible. Super generic and Mackie and Stan aren't exactly great actors either. Contrast that with Hiddleston in Loki's first episode. Night and day. The first two are side characters and it really shows, but the material was also pretty bad. Reminiscent of all the bad Marvel and superhero movies. Really B-grade TV. If they continue with FATWS quality, it will only hurt the brand. Probably doesn't help that there are 'superhero' series like The Boys (which I hate tho) and Umbrella Academy. I would mention the Marvel TV shows but I haven't watched any besides Daredevil, and that became pretty bad too. But it's first couple seasons were a lot better than FATWS.

Do you have a link to the article or thread? Tried searching for it but couldn't find it.

This is Well there's that rumour or maybe actual articles that have Pixar employees feeling affronted that Soul went to D+ for free (and Luca as well) but Mulan and Raya and now Cruela got PA. So those films can still be attributed a profit whereas Pixar's can't and obviously the marketing or data teams aren't going to let Pixar employees know how well their film has done. It's a definite morale tanker going straight to streaming when it was produced for theatres. I wouldn't be surprised if HBO Max higher ups have no idea what their data means. It's great to have all the movies announced but then you can't really assign value. It's always estimated. Of course they can have their own internal formula, but it comes down to whether or not executives know what they are doing and in most cases (don't know if it surprises people or not) corporations are clueless making it up as they go along.

Just needs to be the biggest of the pandemic so far for me. That should signal the impending return of the box office.

They will revert to premiering in theatres because streaming is just a non-event for movies. Anyway, subscriptions is just an extremely poor way to judge whether a movie is doing well, if I wanted to watch Raya or Cruella or Black Widow, I could have subscribed at any time after they made the announcement - not just on OD. Or I could subscribe after a month? 3 months? Whenever it is it becomes free to watch instead of PA. Also, take HBO Max for example, they announced the whole year's slate in December. So should all subs be attributed to WW84 or would it be other movies impending drop that convinces people? Until streaming services are more transparent, the data is useless and they probably never would want to reveal their hand at that. The only way to really measure whether your content is succeeding is by going into details of how many subs streamed them, when they did, how long they did it for. How many new users compared to existing users streamed the content etc. which no 3rd party can ever ascertain. Estimates are BS let me tell you that. Depending if they are competent or not, they may not even have set some tracking up until months into launch. Probably would need shareholders to force the information out, and then, how many would even know what to ask instead of being led to ask? Anyway, I liked Raya. Hope it overtakes T&J eventually if that's possible.

Nice, bring on the recovery.

I saw this last week. Didn't like it that much, but hope that it can ignite the US box office with the amount of vaccinated steadily rising. Still don't think it'll do much better than any of the pandemic movies so far but hope I'm wrong.