The Marvels | November 10, 2023 | Abandon All Hope Ye Who Enter

[TMP]

3 hours ago, ZattMurdock said:

Literal the same can be said about any giving film. I’m going because I’m a Marvel Studios fan die hard and I love all the characters, especially Kamala Khan, but what I think this film has going for it when it comes to the average moviegoer is oddly enough 1) the online incel backlash that has kept the film in conversation more than any film from the superhero genre this year, 2) the short runtime and 3) the release date. 
 

I sincerely don’t know what the public reception for The Marvels is going to be, but I do think that the online backlash against it makes people that would otherwise not be that interested in the film curious about it. And in that, that’s actually not that different than people’s perception of Barbie before it was out and we were sure that it was a great film. Online misguided hate towards a MCU film that is lead by three women and directed by another woman might, in fact, make people want to check The Marvels. Just like you could make a case for an Scorsese film that people support because ‘absolute cinema’ or whatever.

I can assure you no one in the real world thinks about this

[Sckathian]

8 hours ago, ThomasNicole said:

Yeah people won´t fall for the narrative that Disney is succesfully selling for years anymore. The movies have to be good, not just allegedly important.

 

 

And of its a man declaring this! Maybe perhaps Barbie both focused on a brand women recognised and also on a message they connected with.

 

MEANWHILE CAPTAIN MARVEL PUNCH HARD.

 

One of the sexist things in media is the Buffy finale where disgusting man Whedon decides his feminist message is if you punch hard you won’t be the victim of domestic abuse. Who could know he was a sexist person?!

[Bob Train]

1 hour ago, ZattMurdock said:

 

Ignore for a second that this is coming from an obvious Captain Marvel fan (they are part of a Captain Marvel fan site or something), and also ignore the fact that we in fact do have reasons to believe that The Marvels will open fairly below Barbie: I think they do have an actual point here: the whole framing narrative behind box office prospects for The Marvels seem heavily biased against superhero films in general.

 

Barbie isn’t an indie, neither is The Marvels. Both are films made and backed by multi billion corporations. The fact that both films were officially tracking around the same long box office range forecast 22 days before it’s release is of note. Phenomenons like Barbie and Captain Marvel before can’t be predicted that far along. What we can see here is that there is a lot of biases going around. It’s hard to explain how one could be ‘excited’ for Barbie to open around $70-80m 22 days before it’s release and being doom and gloom about The Marvels tracking around the exact same forecasts.

Barbie had a much lower budget, released in Summer when legs are better, is not a CBM, and is not the sequel to a movie that opened to $155m DOM. Expectations were lower for it initially, but it became the textbook definition of a breakout hit.

 

As for why Barbie succeeded and why The Marvels is failing, it is simple: CBMs are inherently more appealing to men than to women. No CBM will ever pull a 70%, or even a 55% female audience like Barbie. The "strong female character" archetype is the idea of male studio execs who think they know what is appealing to women (they don't). Barbie succeeded partially because it was a blockbuster that wasn't just another superhero/action movie. It looked like a creative, fun movie, and had great marketing.

[ZattMurdock]

3 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Barbie had a much lower budget

That is a talking point that doesn’t hold water whatsoever. And it almost feels disingenuous when it’s posted here on BOT out of all places. 
 
Yeah the small indie film Barbie had a measly reported $145m budget. With that said, it also had a $150m reported by Variety marketing budget:

 

https://www.nme.com/news/film/barbies-marketing-budget-was-more-than-it-cost-to-make-the-film-3472627

 

Quote

Now, it has been reported by Variety that the marketing budget for the film was a staggering $150million (£117m), eclipsing the $145m (£113m) it cost to actually make the film itself.

Barbie’s success didn’t happen out of thin air, neither it’s only because it’s a great film. Lots of great films come and go without that success, either indies or blockbusters themselves. 
 

9 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

released in Summer when legs are better, is not a CBM, and is not the sequel to a movie that opened to $155m DOM. Expectations were lower for it initially, but it became the textbook definition of a breakout hit.

 

As for why Barbie succeeded and why The Marvels is failing, it is simple: CBMs are inherently more appealing to men than to women. No CBM will ever pull a 70%, or even a 55% female audience like Barbie. The "strong female character" archetype is the idea of male studio execs who think they know what is appealing to women (they don't). Barbie succeeded partially because it was a blockbuster that wasn't just another superhero/action movie. It looked like a creative, fun movie, and had great marketing.

I wouldn’t discard the potential of a blockbuster released during the holidays season, especially a Marvel Studios one. Wakanda Forever and No Way Home both succeeded on similar dates, and I think that the doom and gloom around The Marvels has been greatly exaggerated. I do think that me and Shawn made similar points about how people might be surprised by The Marvels female audience weeks ago, and I do think that unlike the Captain Marvel, there is an world and potential for The Marvels to skew more towards a female audience than that first film. The female Marvel Studios audience is bigger than most people here seem to give credit for.

[JustLurking]

i think you might want to check out shawn's forecast

[ZattMurdock]

Just now, JustLurking said:

i think you might want to check out shawn's forecast

I’m well aware. But if The Marvels surpasses expectations, that would be hardly the first time that a forecast of his or the trades themselves prove them differently. Hell, we just need to look at the trades box office forecasts of Barbie at the exact same time frame for that. 

[JustLurking]

2 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

I’m well aware. But if The Marvels surpasses expectations, that would be hardly the first time that a forecast of his or the trades themselves prove them differently. Hell, we just need to look at the trades box office forecasts of Barbie at the exact same time frame for that. 

I urge you to go look at Barbie's daily pace and then come back and look at this film's

[Bob Train]

1 minute ago, ZattMurdock said:

I’m well aware. But if The Marvels surpasses expectations, that would be hardly the first time that a forecast of his or the trades themselves prove them differently. Hell, we just need to look at the trades box office forecasts of Barbie at the exact same time frame for that. 

Barbie isn't a CBM. The potential for a better presale pace was always there, and better walkups as it is more walkup friendly than a CBM.

 

In order for a CBM to be a huge hit, it needs to have massive day 1 presales. Captain Marvel did. Endgame did. NWH did. MoM did. The Marvels did not.

[Zakiyyah6]

Barbie tracking to do 70-80mil was good because Barbie cost 60mil less to make and although Barbie was never an underdog and had the power of WB's marketing team there was no guarantee that a movie about a 60 year toy that was going down in value would do well. Robbie and Gosling are well known but they aren't box office draws.

 

The Marvels tracking to do 70-80mil is bad because a film tracking to open with half of its previous installment is bad. A 25-30% drop? Sure that's reasonable but a 45-55% drop? I'm sorry but that's bad. The Marvels on paper had way more going for it than Barbie. It is a sequel to a billion dollar movie and it is part of a beloved franchise that has made billions of dollars. 

Edited October 21, 2023 by Zakiyyah6

[ZattMurdock]

19 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Barbie isn't a CBM. The potential for a better presale pace was always there, and better walkups as it is more walkup friendly than a CBM.

 

In order for a CBM to be a huge hit, it needs to have massive day 1 presales. Captain Marvel did. Endgame did. NWH did. MoM did. The Marvels did not.

I’d point out that The Marvels is the only major Marvel Studios film to open its ticket sales during the SAG-AFTRA strike, and I think it’s disingenuous to expect that would behave like the films you’ve mentioned (EDIT: And I mean this even if there wasn’t a strike going on, which I kinda explained on my post above with a graphic of MCU films domestic grosses throughout the years earlier on the thread). I think there is still an world where The Marvels opens around $100m and it has some mighty legs, it’s now more about the film been actually good more than anything else, and that’s something we just can’t judge as of yet. People commenting on how the trailer looks isn’t a valid point because people shitting on how MCU films look it’s a thing since Iron Man. It will always be a thing. I’m very curious about Marvel Studios release strategy for this one and if they are having press screenings early for this. I’ve been too busy to track any smoke on social media, but I could almost bet that those review blurbs we saw the other day are actually real and some press screenings happened without we realizing as of yet.

Edited October 21, 2023 by ZattMurdock

[TomThomas]

16 minutes ago, Zakiyyah6 said:

Barbie tracking to do 70-80mil was good because Barbie cost 60mil less to make 

The Marvels budget is 273 mln, so Barbie was 123 mln cheaper.

[Willowra]

31 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

That is a talking point that doesn’t hold water whatsoever. And it almost feels disingenuous when it’s posted here on BOT out of all places. 
 
Yeah the small indie film Barbie had a measly reported $145m budget. With that said, it also had a $150m reported by Variety marketing budget:

 

https://www.nme.com/news/film/barbies-marketing-budget-was-more-than-it-cost-to-make-the-film-3472627

 

Barbie’s success didn’t happen out of thin air, neither it’s only because it’s a great film. Lots of great films come and go without that success, either indies or blockbusters themselves. 
 

I wouldn’t discard the potential of a blockbuster released during the holidays season, especially a Marvel Studios one. Wakanda Forever and No Way Home both succeeded on similar dates, and I think that the doom and gloom around The Marvels has been greatly exaggerated. I do think that me and Shawn made similar points about how people might be surprised by The Marvels female audience weeks ago, and I do think that unlike the Captain Marvel, there is an world and potential for The Marvels to skew more towards a female audience than that first film. The female Marvel Studios audience is bigger than most people here seem to give credit for.

If they release a sequel to a female-led CBM movie after 4.5 years, they can't expect that the female audience will care about it, especially when the first one was just average & character had just cameo appearance in 1 Avengers movie. The character faded away from the minds of females in those 4.5 years. In those 4.5 years, they introduced half a dozen new female characters and saturated the market. They also took away the X factor (the most powerful hero) from the character and gave that tag to Wanda. The trailer didn't even focus on its lead character. Females don't much care about Captain Marvel now because Marvel Studios didn't give shit about Captain Marvel after Endgame.

[Sckathian]

We can’t remove the context of the MCU from individual films. We have a situation where new characters intended to feed into the overall project are failing, existing characters are leaving, and remaining characters are hitting 400M-500M.

 

Personally I would focus on Strange and Spider-Man right now and just pause a lot of the rest. 

[ZattMurdock]

1 minute ago, TomThomas said:

The Marvels budget is 273 mln, so Barbie was 123 mln cheaper.

Barbie’s marketing budget is more than $150m. That goes without its $145m reported filming budget. Both of these numbers were confirmed by a trade. The whole talk about The Marvels budget costing $273m came from a Forbes article, not really a trade. I’ll wait until a trade report on that before assuming anything, but somehow I honestly doubt that $273m is what The Marvels actually costed. Inflated numbers thrown around Marvel Studios film budgets from not usual sources always seem fishy to me.

[ZattMurdock]

8 minutes ago, Willowra said:

If they release a sequel to a female-led CBM movie after 4.5 years, they can't expect that the female audience will care about it, especially when the first one was just average & character had just cameo appearance in 1 Avengers movie. The character faded away from the minds of females in those 4.5 years. In those 4.5 years, they introduced half a dozen new female characters and saturated the market. They also took away the X factor (the most powerful hero) from the character and gave that tag to Wanda. The trailer didn't even focus on its lead character. Females don't much care about Captain Marvel now because Marvel Studios didn't give shit about Captain Marvel after Endgame.

The film isn’t even out yet. We don’t have even reviews for the film and the promotion for it - even if without the stars - hasn’t kicked into full gear yet. I do genuinely think people here and online are underplaying the amount of Marvel fans that are actually female or interested in a female driven MCU film. I think that the whole narrative about how ‘pre-order heavy’ Marvel Studios films are might still be defied by this film if Marvel Studios has an winner with this one. If the film is good, we will know soon enough. And I expect audiences to follow. 

[SpiderByte]

9 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

Barbie’s marketing budget is more than $150m. That goes without its $145m reported filming budget. Both of these numbers were confirmed by a trade. The whole talk about The Marvels budget costing $273m came from a Forbes article, not really a trade. I’ll wait until a trade report on that before assuming anything, but somehow I honestly doubt that $273m is what The Marvels actually costed. Inflated numbers thrown around Marvel Studios film budgets from not usual sources always seem fishy to me.

Even the Forbes article also said it got 50-60 million in tax breaks.

[ListenHunnyUrOver]

Female audiences are leading the charge in divesting from superhero films. 

[TomThomas]

13 minutes ago, ZattMurdock said:

Barbie’s marketing budget is more than $150m. That goes without its $145m reported filming budget. Both of these numbers were confirmed by a trade. The whole talk about The Marvels budget costing $273m came from a Forbes article, not really a trade. I’ll wait until a trade report on that before assuming anything, but somehow I honestly doubt that $273m is what The Marvels actually costed. Inflated numbers thrown around Marvel Studios film budgets from not usual sources always seem fishy to me.

It's still over 200 mln production budget and I don't think marketing budget is lower than 100 mln. Studios lowball public budgets in most cases. MoM actually cost significantly more than what was initially reported.

Edited October 21, 2023 by TomThomas

[Valencia]

1 hour ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:

When the trailer played before KOTFM, the audience seemed so disinterested. I think the MCU has worn out its welcome.

According postrak the under 25 crowd was only 20% of the audience.

 

So yeah.
 

There isn’t going to be much of a overlap between audiences for Marvel and Scorsese.

[ZattMurdock]

9 minutes ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:

Female audiences are leading the charge in divesting from superhero films. 

We will see about that soon enough. They certainly aren’t leading "the charge" to watch KOTFM though. I do think it’s kinda hilarious how people go out of their way to underplay how big of a female audience Marvel Studios does have. Captain Marvel alone had something of $69m out of its $154m OW from that film’s female audience, and that’s more than what Wonder Woman was able to get from the same demo. From my list of friends that are usually movie goers and not really usual Marvel Studios die hards, there is more interest for both Loki and The Marvels than let’s say Quantumania. Two of my friends that are going to the premiere with me are female, they never even watched Quantumania, but did watch WandaVision, Ms. Marvel and are now watching Loki. Just like before Endgame, the interests over MCU films are far more varied from my anecdotal evidence than people seem to assume online. 
 

I’m the single one of my real life friends that do talk on forums about films online. With the amount of weirdness and how toxic the online discourse is, I can’t blame them. 

Edited October 21, 2023 by ZattMurdock