WEEKEND THREAD | 3-DAY ESTIMATES: Pirates - 62M ; Baywatch - 18M; Alien - 10.5M (71% drop) like. F8 crosses 1B OS.

[CJohn]

2 minutes ago, PRESIDENT BKB said:

 

I think people are done with the ALIEN franchise.. It had it's run and moment in history and that should be a wrap..

Nah, if anything Prometheus proved there was a lot of interest in it. You don't do 400M WW out of thin air. 

[John Marston]

1 minute ago, CJohn said:

Nah, if anything Prometheus proved there was a lot of interest in it. You don't do 400M WW out of thin air. 

 

Prometheus was not marketed like an Alien movie. It was marketed like a 3D visual sci fi movie

 

 

Since Alien 3, Alien movies have not done great business. Even Aliens was a hit but it wasn't a Terminator 2 or anything.  Alien Resurrection flopped in 1997

[Blaze Heatnix]

Prometheus was really divisive. Many liked it, many hated it. 

 

Alien Covenant is a Prometheus sequel pretending to be Alien, but still a Prometheus sequel regardless. 

 

It'll probably finish its run with less than half of what Prometheus made worldwide. That's definitely terrible and I doubt Fox will give it another go. 

[MovieMan89]

Shoulda went with the Prometheus: Paradise Lost  route instead. Couldn't have turned out any worse at the box office and at least it would be more interesting than the half baked Prometheus sequel Covenant is. 

[John Marston]

it was a mistake to try and make a full Alien movie a summer blockbuster in the first place. From the beginning, budget should have been kept under control, should have not released in a competitive month, should have been released in 3D etc. Until it proves otherwise, Alien needs to be treated like a smaller movie. 

[CJohn]

3 minutes ago, John Marston said:

 

Prometheus was not marketed like an Alien movie. It was marketed like a 3D visual sci fi movie

 

 

Since Alien 3, Alien movies have not done great business. Even Aliens was a hit but it wasn't a Terminator 2 or anything.  Alien Resurrection flopped in 1997

Are we really pretending all the hype that movie got wasn't because everyone knew it was an Alien prequel?

[MovieMan89]

1 minute ago, CJohn said:

Are we really pretending all the hype that movie got wasn't because everyone knew it was an Alien prequel?

The "is it or isn't?" factor definitely helped, but to be honest I think the fact that the teaser and the trailers were some of the very best in modern movie marketing history had the most impact on the hype. 

[Ozymandias]

There wasn't a single shot of the Alien in any of the Prometheus trailers and there wasn't any in the movie itself unless you count the one that popped in the last few seconds of the movie(which I would've cut out or replaced with something else).  Covenant's trailers were jam packed with the Alien and its gonna be lucky to make half the money Prometheus did.  

 

Thats funny.

[grim22]

4 minutes ago, CJohn said:

Are we really pretending all the hype that movie got wasn't because everyone knew it was an Alien prequel?

 

It had some amazing marketing - they really used viral marketing well for that movie through the Ted talk and the teasers etc. I remember when people were wondering whether Noomi Rapace or Charlize Theron were supposed to be the next Ripley (the correct answer was none of them).

 

The poster campaign was also a great one as well and they had some awesome trailers. The mystery box worked against them in the end though.

[Harpospoke]

4 hours ago, John Marston said:

when the movie is always testing well, how would you know what to change? I can see what they are getting at.

 

Good point.   It's not that they are "learning the wrong lessons"....those movies were testing well and the critics hated them.

 

4 hours ago, LaughingEvans said:

It would best work if as a user you could follow only critics you trust and get an average score/percentage from them.

 

Oh that needs to happen now!   Great idea.   There are quite a few critics who are of no use to me.   What possible benefit could I get from a review by a hipster critic who gushes over the latest grim, "dark", introspective angst-filled Oscar bait movie while looking down their nose at comedy and blockbuster type movies?   I would love to just put those on "ignore" and get opinions that more closely match my own.

[Goffe]

50 minutes ago, filmnerdjamie said:

All due respect, I don't buy that calling this Prometheus 2 would have helped the box-office one bit. It was such a divisive film that year and the four-year wait would have been a killer. Hell the marketing hid that this was its sequel and instead suggested its just another Alien... which it wasn't.

 

If anything, slapping on the Alien title (Something I have no doubt was a requirement on Fox's part to agreeing to let Scott do his Prometheus sequel) helped. 

AC was sold as a pure Alien film and still opened to middling 36m. One could make a pretty good case that selling it as a tired retread actually hurt its box office chances.

 

Not that I buy into the notion that AC was Ptheus sequel, because it wasn't. It acts like a crossover between Alien and Prometheus at the very best.

 

Maybe making it feel like a proper Prometheus sequel would have generated more interest, but we'll never know. 

Edited May 28, 2017 by Goffe

[Harpospoke]

17 minutes ago, Blaze Heatnix said:

Prometheus was really divisive. Many liked it, many hated it. 

 

Alien Covenant is a Prometheus sequel pretending to be Alien, but still a Prometheus sequel regardless. 

 

It'll probably finish its run with less than half of what Prometheus made worldwide. That's definitely terrible and I doubt Fox will give it another go. 

 

Well...it is Fox so you never know.   They are still supposedly planning more Fantastic Four movies in direct opposition to all sane logic.

 

8 minutes ago, Ozymandias said:

There wasn't a single shot of the Alien in any of the Prometheus trailers and there wasn't any in the movie itself unless you count the one that popped in the last few seconds of the movie(which I would've cut out or replaced with something else).  Covenant's trailers were jam packed with the Alien and its gonna be lucky to make half the money Prometheus did.  

 

Thats funny.

 

Interesting.   I also liked Prometheus more than Covenant.   So maybe the Xenomorphs are overrated and the movies would work better without them.

[Chewy]

Is Alien pulling a BvS? Sub-2x multi? 

[CJohn]

14 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

The "is it or isn't?" factor definitely helped, but to be honest I think the fact that the teaser and the trailers were some of the very best in modern movie marketing history had the most impact on the hype. 

Yes, which combined with that fact that everyone knew it was an Alien prequel push the hype to high levels.

9 minutes ago, grim22 said:

 

It had some amazing marketing - they really used viral marketing well for that movie through the Ted talk and the teasers etc. I remember when people were wondering whether Noomi Rapace or Charlize Theron were supposed to be the next Ripley (the correct answer was none of them).

 

The poster campaign was also a great one as well and they had some awesome trailers. The mystery box worked against them in the end though.

Did it really worked against them? I mean, that movie did 400M WW on a 125M budget. A decrease for any sequel was always gonna happen. Prometheus was the peak, just like Jurassic World or The Force Awakens were the peak (on a much higher level, of course). The return of old franchise is always the peak. It goes downhill from there.

[MovieMan89]

1 minute ago, CJohn said:

Yes, which combined with that fact that everyone knew it was an Alien prequel push the hype to high levels.

Did it really worked against them? I mean, that movie did 400M WW on a 125M budget. A decrease for any sequel was always gonna happen. Prometheus was the peak, just like Jurassic World or The Force Awakens were the peak (on a much higher level, of course). The return of old franchise is always the peak. It goes downhill from there.

Be that as it may, a 50% admissions drop off from Prometheus is hardly a normal or healthy drop off for AC. 

[Chewy]

People only watch superhero movies and the occasional reboot of their favorite 80s/90s popcorn franchise

[The Futurist]

But, but, Rildey Scott was back with the Red Planet guy 18 months ago ...

 

[Ozymandias]

7 minutes ago, Harpospoke said:

Interesting.   I also liked Prometheus more than Covenant.   So maybe the Xenomorphs are overrated and the movies would work better without them.

 

Prometheus was marketed as an original scifi movie with vague connections to Alien and thats pretty much what the movie actually was when people saw it.  I love Alien and Aliens as much as the next guy, but I do think the Xenomorph has been wildly overexposed to the point of it being impossible to be scary or interesting again.  Its just fucking boring now IMO.  Hell, Prometheus will end up having noticeably better legs than Covenant.

Edited May 28, 2017 by Ozymandias

[Noctis]

I love Prometheus. Fuck the haters. 

[CJohn]

2 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

Be that as it may, a 50% admissions drop off from Prometheus is hardly a normal or healthy drop off for AC. 

That is because Prometheus wasn't that well received, and Alien Covenant is having toxic WOM.