Is it possible for non-American movies to be worldwide blockbusters?

[cannastop]

1 hour ago, terrestrial said:

Another detail they seems to slow down the non-English movies is, see the posts others already made, the unwillingness of in especial Americans to watch dubbed or per subtitles, and....... :

to many movies per country already, the US produces too many too, see one of the major reasons the smaller movies, indies,... do not get good results = gA is the carrier of the huge blockbuster hits, GA watches ~ 3-4 movies a year (some only 1), how would they even get aware about a great movie from country XY, if they do not even know which locally made movies are actual released / will soon be released =

I think if a reduction per years will happen (what I doubt, see streaming now too takes away chances for a BO success for a part 1 movie), then maybe.

 

Yes, foreign movies are not popular in America. The limited audience who does watch foreign language media tends to like authenticity, so they do not want dubs. So they're subtitled.

 

I don't know how you would get fewer movies made in the USA though.

[JB33]

I don't mind subtitles at all actually. Because of my hearing issues I use English subtitles for TV and watching blu rays anyway. I just haven't been bothered to watch many foreign films, at least in cinemas. I have Wolf Warrior 2 on blu ray and love that!

 

Downfall is one of my favourites as well.

Edited September 2, 2019 by JB33

[terrestrial]

12 minutes ago, cannastop said:

I don't know how you would get fewer movies made in the USA though.

Hence why I wrote I doubt that it will happen. I mean in 1980, as cinema was still big, in dom 161 movies got released, then a high days in release count was normal, WoM had a chance for a build up.

In 2018 dom had 879 titles released in cinemas, this year its already 520 titles (and for the first time since years the average ticket price fell instead of going up, last time that happened was 1989)

 

Can only happen if distributors / cinema owners push for some limits. But then I am afraid even less of the ones many of BOT would call 'deserving' it would make the cut.

 

Why I mentioned it is, not sure to what kind of cinema  'landscape' all those streaming services, - and other kinds of distractions - will lead to,  I think there is a possibility of a new wave of cinemas 'dyings' mid-term to long-term based on the many actual changes. Not saying it will happen in any case, just there is a possibility.

[TalismanRing]

It's not just the IP, it's the $$$$$ spent on production and the technical quality & spectacle of movies local film industries can't replicate.   LOTR at it's production levels wouldn't or just couldn't have been financed and made by a UK studio.  It's also why many US dramas and comedies don't do as well comparatively overseas unless they're award players or have an internationally popular US actors  - O/S counties already have their own locally produced dramas, comedies, thrillers etc.

 

Ne Zha is enormous in China, but from the looks of the trailer that's more due to the cultural awareness/importance of it's story - not the quality of it's animation.

 

 

[Barnack]

13 minutes ago, TalismanRing said:

LOTR at it's production levels wouldn't or just couldn't have been financed and made by a UK studio.

It would have to be financed by pre-selling market/governmental support with many many player because of some IP, powerful producer/director and/or actor pushing it, a bit it happened for this:

 

 

or this:

 

 

Not sure how much cheaper they were, specially with the China market buyer number going around, something based on the biggest book of all time today (if it was not already turned into a movie) I could see happening without a significant investment from an MPAA studio and/or Netflix-Amazon.

 

For a little while we had stuff like The Great Wall/Air Strike and other english speaking massive Chinese production with big Hollywood name, they could make a come back.

Edited September 3, 2019 by Barnack

[cannastop]

1 hour ago, TalismanRing said:

Ne Zha is enormous in China, but from the looks of the trailer that's more due to the cultural awareness/importance of it's story - not the quality of it's animation.

 

The animation looks OK.

 

Not just any old Ne Zha story would have been a huge hit. They've been done before.

Edited September 3, 2019 by cannastop

[Parasite]

8 hours ago, Barnack said:

That usually a sign that the original didn't play that well in those market no ? (Or that it became popular after the remake project started), would be hard and strange to sell to audience a remake of an show they already watched.

Yes and no. 

From the third season of the norvegian show, they started to receive more and more requests for foreign subtitles, which they refused. So it had international interest, but it wasn't available in another language or in any other country. The show was an instant hit in Norway, being responsible fir more than half the online traffic of the channel. 

The "remakes" are pretty loose. They all have the same concept : each season deals with a different teenager and his.. typical teenager problems. They post small clips and messages on the social media and TV, and then the "episodes" are just the clips gathered and aired.

Stories are pretty similar, but a fan will probably be hooked by his country version, then watch the other ones. 

Each season is independent, so people probably take each remake as a another season, just in a different language. 

[Jonan23]

I used to think that a non-English film or non-Hollywood production could be a hit in most countries except in the USA. That seems like the hardest market to penetrate for foreign films. Now it has become doubly hard in the age of franchises and reliance on popular IP's.

I do think some foreign TV shows have broken out worldwide on Netflix though its impossible to confirm with no numbers. The Spanish show Money Heist for example seems to have a huge following all over Europe and Asia. The Korean series Kingdom and German series Dark were both amazing and seem to have garnered a following in the U.S. as well. Hard to really measure but I think Netflix is slowly opening the doors for many foreign shows to reach a global audience so maybe that could pave the way for a film to do the same in theaters in the future

Edited September 3, 2019 by Jonan23

[terrestrial]

24 minutes ago, Jonan23 said:

but I think Netflix is slowly opening the doors for many foreign shows to reach a global audience so maybe that could pave the way for a film to do the same in theaters in the future

that is what I meant about the streaming too, on the one side it might take away from the cinemas,  on the other side it might help getting people worldwide used to new 'franchises' / IPs or however to call that.

With so many movies to choose from, a basis of some recognition seem to be needed for reaching people in the most of the cases.

 

Plus I think every TV-series US audiences watches per the streaming services playing obviously not in the US might help those to open up for movies playing outside the US as well, that is another detail I read a lot about US audience reactions, at least some seem to simply not have any interest to watch anything outside their own's life-details.

 

[Avatree]

14 hours ago, cannastop said:

Oh yeah, maybe I should have phrased it better.

 

Still, Potter was made with American money, with an American director for the first two movies.

 

Lord of the Rings was made with majority American actors, I think?

Not many American actors in LOTR, the only ones I can think of in main cast are Orlando Bloom and Steven Tyler's daughter. Majority of actors are British (all hobbits, Gimli, Boromir, Gandalf, Saruman, lot of elves and townpeople like King Theoden). And some from our friends down under (Karl Urban, Hugo Weaving, Galadriel etc)

Then some outlier like Viggo Mortensen is Danish.

 

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Avatree

[terrestrial]

1 hour ago, Avatree said:

Not many American actors in LOTR, the only ones I can think of in main cast are Orlando Bloom.....

 

Then some outlier like Viggo Mortensen is Danish.

Orlando Bloom is from Canterbury, Kent, England, UK

He lives now in London and (I think for work....) in L.A., but that addition he made only after LotR

 

Viggo Mortensen was born in the US, but as me and others already mentioned, as he is multilingual and other reasons, he works in other countries too.

He is part Danish, part American per his parents (has the citizenship for both), but lived during parts of his childhood in Denmark, Venezuela and Argentina as well. One grandparent is a Canadian, there is some Finnish or Norwegian or was it Swedish.... ancestry as well (forgot which one), he speaks / understands e.g. also Swedish, Norwegian, Italian, is in addition to Spanish, Danish, English fluent in French as well. plus speaks a bit Catalan

As an adult he lived in UK, Denmark, and Spain before he moved back to the country of his birth, and lives now in Spain again.

Hence the wordings like earlier, all over the world, in a way he is a 'Terran actor' 😉

 

Sometimes its handy to watch so many extras / hear the audio commentaries.... (I watched e.g. each and ever minute of the LotR extras, but also lots of them of other movies with and without him in it, including movies filmed outside the US. I am an extra junky, if the extras are more than pure promotion)

[TalismanRing]

2 hours ago, Avatree said:

Not many American actors in LOTR, the only ones I can think of in main cast are Orlando Bloom and Steven Tyler's daughter. Majority of actors are British (all hobbits, Gimli, Boromir, Gandalf, Saruman, lot of elves and townpeople like King Theoden). And some from our friends down under (Karl Urban, Hugo Weaving, Galadriel etc)

Then some outlier like Viggo Mortensen is Danish.

 

 

Bloom is British, while most of the non leads were I think from NZ and Australia. 

 

US: Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Liv Tyler and Viggo (born in NYC and lived there from age 11 thru college) are American.  Also Brad Dorif (Wormtongue) 

 

NZ & Australia: Blanchette, Urban, Otto, Weaving, John Noble, Makoare, Csokas, Wendam

 

UK: McKellan, Bloom, Boyd, Monaghan, Lee, Bean, John Rhys Davies

 

Regardless, it was a Newline studio production (U.s.) financed under their parent company Time Warner.  But to show how precarious an "independent" studio's viability is when dealing with big budgeted films - even with the success of LOTR with the failure of Golden Compass after 40 years they lost their independence and Time Warner put then under WB as a unit.

 

Similarly Besson's studio is now in bankruptcy largely due to Valerian.

 

This is why big budget fare is usually the domain of large studios - b/c they can absorb the failure and loss better.

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by TalismanRing

[Walt Disney]

17 hours ago, cannastop said:

This was inspired by @Eric!'s post about box office stories, and one of the stories was Ne Zha. He wondered if Chinese animation will ever have a worldwide hit.

Now Ne Zha is already as huge as many of the biggest hollywood movies ever worldwide, but just in China. Ne Zha is based on Chinese mythology, so it in particular is probably not a good candidate for international breakout, although it was shown in some IMAX screens in North America.

 

But then again, why would Chinese mythology be more impenetrable than say... Spider-Man?

 

I don't know. I'd like people to speculate if a non-American movie will ever make $1 billion worldwide, and with significant numbers from other countries.

Yes. Crocodile Dundee was an independent Australian film that was a WW blockbuster. It is very hard though, as no other foreign film since Crocodile Dundee has duplicated that success.

[Avatree]

Interesting that I think of Elijah Wood as English and Orlando Bloom as American, despite knowing they are not.

 

Huh.

 

Regardless on topic - yes it's obvs an American production. Made by Hollywood.

 

Edited September 3, 2019 by Avatree

[cannastop]

1 hour ago, Walt Disney said:

Yes. Crocodile Dundee was an independent Australian film that was a WW blockbuster. It is very hard though, as no other foreign film since Crocodile Dundee has duplicated that success.

hmm true, but it also had the advantage of being in the English language.

[cannastop]

4 minutes ago, Avatree said:

Interesting that I think of Elijah Wood as English and Orlando Bloom as American, despite knowing they are not.

?

 

Why would you think this?

[Avatree]

1 hour ago, cannastop said:

?

 

Why would you think this?

Dunno, I guess I just see Orlando Bloom as a generic Hollywood star - and Hollywood stars are American.

 

And Elijah Wood I just associate completely with Frodo, even though I've seen him in other movies where he plays an American. I just see him = Frodo.

[terrestrial]

2 hours ago, Avatree said:

Regardless on topic - yes it's obvs an American production. Made by Hollywood.

In my POV mostly only paid by Hollwood. One of the movies I'd even say the least made by Hollywood out of the big ones.

 

I feel like its a bit with accents, another flair or... for music, movies, TV-series,... even if paid for by US based people, if the majority of the incolved people incl some department heads are out of other regions, the result has often an own 'accent'

 

For a TV-series an example would be Farscape, and that one has a way more US involced crew part than LotR, but still there is a 'freshness'/  accent, something other than the usual.

 

I still have not seen it beside a scenes and some of the intros, but I guess GoT too has that other little extra / otherness.