Snowden | September 16, 2016 | Trailer on Page 6. Special screening at SDCC Thursday

[trifle]

23 minutes ago, el sid said:

I'm surprised that almost everyone of you is predicting Snowden to fail so hard boxoffice-wise. But of course The Fifth Estate was a big flop and I can't estimate it from Europe very well.

Here in Germany several newspapers already reported about the film and posted interviews with O. Stone and some other members of his crew. There could be a pretty big difference marketing-wise.

Like in the US the first reviews here show no clear picture: Some reviews are mediocre and say the film is not bad but unnecessary. OTOH a very big movie website (filmstarts.de) scores it really good and says it's an intimate, well-played, eclected film. And it gets a lot of talking here but that doesn't mean automatically that it will be a big hit. Personally in case of doubt (if it stays so undecided from reviews) I will watch it and by the way I had no interest to see the Steve Jobs movies in theater (I've seen them now on DVD).


 

 

I had no interest in seeing the Steve Jobs movie either, but as a civil libertarian I want Snowden to do well. 

[babz06]

Yes, this will flop. The reviews are not good enough and its hurt by all of the competition for adults in the next four weeks. 

[filmlover]

32 minutes ago, el sid said:

I'm surprised that almost everyone of you is predicting Snowden to fail so hard boxoffice-wise. But of course The Fifth Estate was a big flop and I can't estimate it from Europe very well.
 

Movies like this need good reviews to survive at the box office, and the mediocre ones for this won't push the target audience (adults) in its direction. But even with good reviews, the marketing campaign is pretty much nonexistent (aka: no ad push) so it's death sentence has already been written.

[Alpha]

Watch Citizenfour instead of paying to see this.

[el sid]

50 minutes ago, Alpha said:

Watch Citizenfour instead of paying to see this.

This is exactly what the mediocre reviews say ;): If you have seen „Citizenfour“ you don't need this movie. But I haven't (yet). In the next days I will rent The Fifth Estate (overall mediocre reviews here, too biased) so that it can only be an improvement to see „Snowden“ afterwards.

Of course I know (now) that this film would have needed better reviews but OTOH Steve Jobs had fantastic reviews and even that didn't help. Maybe the average will rise furthermore (at least it improved from 25% to 45% now) but I think the success or let's say non-debacle depends mostly on if there is an interest of the public or not.

 

[Ezen Baklattan]

So...when do I bring up the fact that so far this is outselling Blair Witch at my theatre? This has 8 tickets sold tonight, BW sold 7.

[DMan7]

36 minutes ago, Spaghetti said:

So...when do I bring up the fact that so far this is outselling Blair Witch at my theatre? This has 8 tickets sold tonight, BW sold 7.

[The Futurist]

Tris on :

 

On American politics: “I have a hard time having political conversations in Hollywood. Most people there are so privileged, they don’t see the 99% of America, because they don’t have to. It’s hard for people like that to see another perspective.”

 

Read more: http://www.justjared.com/#ixzz4KMuyCkx2

[WrathOfHan]

5 minutes ago, THE PHENOMENAL BKB said:

So according to the title of this thread, this is being screened at SDCC??? Are they trying to purposely bore the folks who attend these sort of things??? This doesn't seem like a movie you'd screen at a place like Comic-Con...

It was screened two months ago  

[Ethan Hunt]

30 minutes ago, THE PHENOMENAL BKB said:

 

The title of the thread suggested it happened recently though..

Its the damn Snowden thread, no one cares about updating the title

[grey ghost]

On 9/12/2016 at 6:44 PM, trifle said:

 

I had no interest in seeing the Steve Jobs movie either, but as a civil libertarian I want Snowden to do well. 

 

Yay, another civil libertarian. 

 

There should be more of us. 

[filmlover]

If Fassbender and JGL ever made a movie together it would probably deliver minus zero box office results. Love 'em, but they can't sell tickets even if their life depended on it.

[CoolioD1]

not many actors can sell tickets. i think it's pretty clear they pick work that doesn't have a ton of audience appeal is all. i'm not sure which lead would turn an edward snowden movie into a real smash.

[The Futurist]

2 hours ago, CoolioD1 said:

not many actors can sell tickets. i think it's pretty clear they pick work that doesn't have a ton of audience appeal is all. i'm not sure which lead would turn an edward snowden movie into a real smash.

 

Chris Hemsworth.

[el sid]

Let's wait for the first Friday estimates in a few hours (with Wednesday included of course). Maybe it's not such a flop as expected (6-7M as predicted at BOM, boxoffice.com e.g.). It's only 1% behind Blair Witch at MT (9% to 8%) and much more of a weekend film than BW. If Blair Witch is not heavily underperforming or has much more walk-ups this should be a good sign.
 

 

 

[tonytr87]

On 9/12/2016 at 6:54 PM, el sid said:

This is exactly what the mediocre reviews say ;): If you have seen „Citizenfour“ you don't need this movie. But I haven't (yet). In the next days I will rent The Fifth Estate (overall mediocre reviews here, too biased) so that it can only be an improvement to see „Snowden“ afterwards.

Of course I know (now) that this film would have needed better reviews but OTOH Steve Jobs had fantastic reviews and even that didn't help. Maybe the average will rise furthermore (at least it improved from 25% to 45% now) but I think the success or let's say non-debacle depends mostly on if there is an interest of the public or not.

 

 

Steve Jobs' failure was one of the biggest bummers for me in recent memory. My favorite film of 2015 and nobody paid attention cause everyone thought it was going to be your standard biopic. 

[antovolk]

So, this was actually pretty good?

Yes, it's essentially a classic Hollywood retelling of the whole Citizenfour story with flashbacks and whatnot but the way people seem to be dismissing just because a fantastic documentary version already exists is sort of annoying but eh.

Those expecting The Fifth Estate 2.0 - this is a much, MUCH better film, although it is similar in a couple places (one particular sequence comes to mind). Main thing here is the performances though - JGL is excellent as expected, surprised how much I liked Woodley and Ifans too actually. Rest of the big names - Cage, Leo, were basically glorified cameos unfortunately but they were pretty good too, Quinto was slightly OTT in one scene but good in the rest.

Yes, it's a tad preachy in this classic Sone way (which seems to be what the reviews are bashing out at - Stone's tricks and flourishes dragging the film down - honestly didn't feel that they did at all) and what he does in the last few minutes is really gonna divide (film) people, but for what I'm guessing a whole bunch of people will see as the Snowden story, this is really solid. Maybe it could've been something more but it's solid and it works and it's good. Hell, the Swedish crowd seems to have bloody loved it if the packed out theatre, reactions and the applause at the end are any indication.

7/10

P.S. the theatre cocked up big time though - for the first 10-15 mins they showed a 2.40 crop of a 16:9 crop. like

[el sid]

1 hour ago, tonytr87 said:

 

Steve Jobs' failure was one of the biggest bummers for me in recent memory. My favorite film of 2015 and nobody paid attention cause everyone thought it was going to be your standard biopic. 

IMO Steve Jobs was way better than that one with A. Kutcher but it still took its time till I was paying attention (in an emotional way I mean).

 

Probably people also thought there's already one biopic and that was not good/terrible.
Plus I don't know how it was promoted in all the other countries but in Germany the reviews were very good but always mentioned that there's lots of talking and you have to pay attention and that also discouraged some moviegoers I guess (as ridiculous as it sounds).

 

[tonytr87]

39 minutes ago, el sid said:

IMO Steve Jobs was way better than that one with A. Kutcher but it still took its time till I was paying attention (in an emotional way I mean).

 

Probably people also thought there's already one biopic and that was not good/terrible.
Plus I don't know how it was promoted in all the other countries but in Germany the reviews were very good but always mentioned that there's lots of talking and you have to pay attention and that also discouraged some moviegoers I guess (as ridiculous as it sounds).

 

 

You're supposed to be paying attention intellectually before the emotional part kicks in. "Lots of talking" doesn't explain it. Look at The Social Network, another Sorkin drama with lots of brilliant dialogue but it did pretty well. 

[JennaJ]

5 hours ago, The Futurist said:

 

Chris Hemsworth.

 

When has Hemsworth ever been a draw outside of Thor? He's right next to JGL and Fassbender in the "All you do is flop" line, aside from the MCU.