Weekend Thread (12/10-12) | WSS 800K Previews

[ThomasNicole]

18 minutes ago, Menor said:

How do you think studios should sell them? It's not like studios are trying to lose money on these. I think audience behavior shifts (much of it related to streaming) are a much more likely explanation for the shifts in the composition of BO that we've seen than just "bad marketing." 

Hard to know for sure, but i usually think there's a dissonance in marketing campaigns for some type of movies when it comes to social media, which these days is something very important for any title.

 

I could be wrong but to me these "serious" movies sometimes focus well on traditional marketing, but it looks like people behind it have no idea how to make it look cool or appealing for social media overall, and i'm sure is very hard to do, but i think it's a way.

 

For example, Netflix work very hard for The Power of the Dog not only with traditional media but i'm seeing a lot of promotion and buzz for it on social media. From memes, jokes about who is Bronco Henry, things that doesn't even match the actual movie but it's making it relevant and appealing for a wider audience take a look on it. It seems to be working, it's doing shockingly high numbers at Netflix from what i saw.

 

Promising Young Woman try to do it too, using pop songs on the soundtrack, very stylized trailer etc, and it gone viral. But sadly with the pandemic Focus just dump it.

Edited December 12, 2021 by ThomasNicole

[Menor the Destroyer]

2 minutes ago, ThomasNicole said:

Hard to know for sure, but i usually think there's a dissonance in marketing campaigns for some type of movies when it comes to social media, which these days is something very important for any title.

 

I could be wrong but to me these "serious" movies sometimes focus well on traditional marketing, but it looks like people behind it have no idea how to make it look cool or appealing for social media overall, and i'm sure is very hard to do, but i think it's a way.

 

For example, Netflix work very hard for The Power of the Dog not only with traditional media but i'm seeing a lot of promotion and buzz for it on social media. From memes, jokes about who is Bronco Henry, things that doesn't even match the actual movie but it's making it relevant and appealing for a wider audience take a look on it. It seems to be working, it's doing shockingly high numbers at Netflix from what i saw.

 

Promising Young Woman try to do it too, using pop songs on the soundtrack, very stylized trailer etc, and it gone viral. But sadly with the pandemic Focus just dump it.

Well, this is the key point here, right? It's quite possible for a wide variety of genres to do well on streaming. The BO is where many genres are struggling, and I don't think that can be changed by a marketing magic bullet. 

 

Put another way, it's not that people only want to watch blockbuster action movies, it's that they view other films as still being just as good when watched on streaming. I don't personally share this view, I like a lot of movies more with the theater experience (I saw Power of the Dog recently in theaters and was quite glad I did) but it's how a lot of people view this.  

[CoolioD1]

it's incredible how much last years oscar movies don't exist. they actually just handed out awards to a bunch of made up titles.

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

30 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

I haven’t seen any of these movies. They didn’t seem appealing to me 🤷‍♂️
 

You’re actually right about the Promising Young Woman trailer though — it did a pretty good job of seeming like a thriller and made me interested in seeing it (plus Bo). So did some of the synopses and such. It wasn’t until near it was coming out and I got a more full idea of the plot+ some (positive) reviews from friends that I realized it probably wasn’t going to be my cup of tea (it sounded kind of depressing with some heavyhanded social commentary — sort of similar to The Last Duel actually).

Does anything without the Marvel logo appeal to you?

 

Does "heavy-handed" social commentary even bother anyone? Feels like an internet complaint that doesn't reflect general public. Get Out was sold on it, Marvel did it with Black Panther and Captain Marvel or hell, even Eternals.

[Eric Prime]

11 minutes ago, Menor said:

How do you think studios should sell them? It's not like studios are trying to lose money on these. I think audience behavior shifts (much of it related to streaming) are a much more likely explanation for the shifts in the composition of BO that we've seen than just "bad marketing." 

You hit the nail on the head right there. People love to complain about the studios and streamers for not marketing films or not putting their muscle behind it. I get why, since it's easy to point fingers at the corporate conglomerate for being everything wrong with the world (and they are in all other respects, let's be clear here. Never forget that capitalism will kill us faster than the virus will)

 

But the fact of the matter is that audiences today are the least demanding they've ever been. They actively repel against artistically-minded pieces. Films that aren't designed to sell toys to children or tickle their nostalgia. The idea of something new and bold or from an exciting director is just too much for them. Even on Netflix the biggest films are stuff like Extraction and Red Notice. The idea of a movie being more than a commercial for toy lines or other movies, or anything more than a mildly amusing attraction is just too much for a good chunk of folks. People love to act like Film Twitter is just a bunch of stuffy hipster fuddy duddys who hate all movies, but the fact is they are far more overshadowed by people who do Ant-Man fancams and bring up Harley Quinn or whoever in every conversation. That's Film Twitter.

 

And even when more original titles or non-franchise fare does well and gets a big ad campaign behind it from the studio, it's still not enough. Even movies that do hit and reach the cultural conversation still pale in comparison and gross way less than they would have even a few years ago. If Yesterday or Ford v Ferrari came out in 2006, they would have grossed significantly more than in 2019. Sure there's the occasional 1917, but those are merely exceptions to the rule than anything else.

 

I know we all like to think that there's a clear appetite and that audiences don't want to stick to the same old franchise glut, but it's not the case, and all we can really do is hope that people wake up and realize there's more than just cheap thrills when it comes to film.

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

3 minutes ago, CoolioD1 said:

it's incredible how much last years oscar movies don't exist. they actually just handed out awards to a bunch of made up titles.

Blame the pandemic. At least 10 movies that wouldn't normally be in talks benefitted. 

 

Next year should be a decent return, though with Scorsese and another Spielberg

[Cooper Legion]

1 minute ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

Does anything without the Marvel logo appeal to you?

Sure, lots of stuff.  
 

4 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

Does "heavy-handed" social commentary even bother anyone?

I can’t speak to what you might mean by “heavy-handed” social commentary, but I assure you that heavy-handed social commentary bothers many people.    
 

7 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

Feels like an internet complaint that doesn't reflect general public. Get Out was sold on it, Marvel did it with Black Panther and Captain Marvel or hell, even Eternals.

Get Out leaned into it cleverly, Black Panther and Eternals weren’t heavy-handed imo, and CM was a little overwrought on that axis for me but has plenty of positives as well — this is just one factor among many.

[ThomasNicole]

8 minutes ago, Menor said:

Well, this is the key point here, right? It's quite possible for a wide variety of genres to do well on streaming. The BO is where many genres are struggling, and I don't think that can be changed by a marketing magic bullet. 

 

Put another way, it's not that people only want to watch blockbuster action movies, it's that they view other films as still being just as good when watched on streaming. I don't personally share this view, I like a lot of movies more with the theater experience (I saw Power of the Dog recently in theaters and was quite glad I did) but it's how a lot of people view this.  

I agreed with you, this all come to accesibility in the end, go to a theater is increasily expensive and i do believe this is the major answer to why this year for example is having so many bombs.

 

I only think that the lack of more compelling promotion also have some factor when it comes to these underperforms. Netflix for example manage to do a great campaign for a movie like TPOTD and it payoff (the movie available for "free" at their platform sure helps it to be fair), but it's rare to see something like this for original movies for theaters recently, the last great example i could remember is knives out which was brilliant to me, and maybe Free Guy but this one is very pop culture oriented which helps.

[Menor the Destroyer]

13 minutes ago, Eric Feels Pretty said:

But the fact of the matter is that audiences today are the least demanding they've ever been. They actively repel against artistically-minded pieces. Films that aren't designed to sell toys to children or tickle their nostalgia. The idea of something new and bold or from an exciting director is just too much for them. Even on Netflix the biggest films are stuff like Extraction and Red Notice. The idea of a movie being more than a commercial for toy lines or other movies, or anything more than a mildly amusing attraction is just too much for a good chunk of folks. People love to act like Film Twitter is just a bunch of stuffy hipster fuddy duddys who hate all movies, but the fact is they are far more overshadowed by people who do Ant-Man fancams and bring up Harley Quinn or whoever in every conversation. That's Film Twitter.

I mean, I would argue that the people who are doing Ant-Man fancams get more out of the movies they like than "mildly amusing attractions." This seems a little condescending towards people who just have a different taste from you. 

 

Plus I think the rise of prestige TV can't be ignored when it comes to the decline of "art" films (setting aside by many issues with that particular term). 

Edited December 12, 2021 by Menor

[Cooper Legion]

10 minutes ago, Eric Feels Pretty said:

I know we all like to think that there's a clear appetite and that audiences don't want to stick to the same old franchise glut

I would like to be excluded from this narrative 😛 

10 minutes ago, Eric Feels Pretty said:

but it's not the case,

👍

11 minutes ago, Eric Feels Pretty said:

all we can really do is hope that people wake up and realize there's more than just cheap thrills when it comes to film.

Kind of a condescending way to put it imo. I’ll just hope for more movies I enjoy, be they franchise or not (more Knives Outs and Kubos and such would be great).   
 

Anyway, I have said my piece. I know it’s contentious around here, and we’re starting to go in circles. I’ll try to bow out of the conversation for now.

[Menor the Destroyer]

2 minutes ago, Product Driven Legion said:

(more Kubos would be great).  

If only 😢

[Porthos]

1 minute ago, Menor said:

I mean, I would argue that the people who are doing Ant-Man fancams get more out of the movies they like than "mildly amusing attractions." This seems a little condescending towards people who just have a different taste from you. 

 

As someone who sympathizes with Eric's position a great deal, I do agree with this.  Engagement is engagement and in the case of fancams, quite a bit.

 

For the more general topic, a lot of films just won't lend themselves to viral marketing, so that prescription really wouldn't work for some. WSS might have/should have leaned into it more, perhaps.  On the other hand, whooooole lot of stuff circulating around that movie that could have also gone viral, so perhaps a mixed bag there (and, no, not just thinking about Ansel here).

 

We're in a phase right now where sfx laden, "fun" entertainment rules.  Will that always be the case?  Hell if I know.

 

Wanted to make a crack about "I bet if Shawshank Redemption was released today I bet it couldn't clear 10m OW, either."   But then I saw not only was it a platform release, it barely went wide for the era and never cleared 2.5m in any weekend.  So while the joke could have worked, not as well as I would have liked.

 

Sooner or later the market will shift.  Whether it shifts to something better or not is, as always, in the eye of the beholder.

[RRA]

You know how I know Marvel isn't just the world's biggest franchise but also the most dominant cultural zeitgeist force today? People are talking about that company and Oscars in a box office weekend thread because...I'm too lazy to go back and check how that happened on a weekend when WSS tanking made ITH's failure seem not so bad in comparison. I'm used to general movie discourse going sideways into Marvel chat lol. 

 

Anyway some folks are "bothered" by social commentary are very vocal online which overstates their actual numerical presence. If they complain about something being "heavy handed" or "too political," its code talk for "it's not MY politics." 

 

Speaking of Get Out: It's funny but I noticed this as a board member at Awards Watch forums (Oscar-related) I noticed the countless local so-called liberals get anal when Get Out won that WGA poll for Best Script of the last 20 something years, beating out all those (you can look up the list) damn "indie dramedies" from that same era that's become a stereotype onto themselves. Of course same Get Out was voted by industry members when polled by THR (iirc) as among their favorite movies of recent years, including Endgame and Wonder Woman and so forth.

 

Get Out is one of those few horror movies that hit the karma lottery this side of Exorcist or Silence of the Lambs. A blockbuster hit, won awards, was able to please the masses/Film Twitter/actual industry professionals/etc. Weirdly Get Out also did something alot of those so-called "elevated horror" movies of recent years failed to do: win an Oscar. Who's elevated now? 

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

I don't think anything Eric has said is condescending at all. It is frankly correct there is more than film than cheap thrills lol. People like to call people who don't favor one particular genre of film "pretentious" or "condescending" but what they're saying is true that it's an artform and source of entertainment with many different varieties. And many varieties are becoming boxed out due to mass preference over a certain genre or property nowadays. 

[Cooper Legion]

1 minute ago, Product Driven Legion said:

I’ll just hope for more movies I enjoy, be they franchise or not (more Knives Outs and Kubos and such would be great).   

Actually a final point here — a successful “nonfranchise” movie will more often than not become a “franchise” movie afterward. Franchises are built off successful nonfranchise first entries, be it Iron Man or A New Hope. It’s pretty natural that you will get more and more franchises as time goes on (because new ones get created easier than they get permanently killed). And it’s pretty natural that people expect to like an average franchise movie more than an original — the franchise movie is literally the result of selection pressure acting on originals, so it could hardly be otherwise from a process point of view.

[Cooper Legion]

3 minutes ago, RRA said:

Anyway some folks are "bothered" by social commentary are very vocal online which overstates their actual numerical presence. If they complain about something being "heavy handed" or "too political," its code talk for "it's not MY politics." 

Yeah, see, I think that’s what @BestPicturePlutoNash was trying to hint at as well with their not-so-subtle addition of air quotes, and I just want to nip this in the bud. That is a gross overgeneralization. I find heavyhanded social commentary even more annoying when it is “MY politics” because it reduces the effectiveness of an overall  good message.

Edited December 12, 2021 by Product Driven Legion

[Flopped]

5 minutes ago, RRA said:

You know how I know Marvel isn't just the world's biggest franchise but also the most dominant cultural zeitgeist force today? People are talking about that company and Oscars in a box office weekend thread because...I'm too lazy to go back and check how that happened on a weekend when WSS tanking made ITH's failure seem not so bad in comparison. I'm used to general movie discourse going sideways into Marvel chat lol. 

 

Anyway some folks are "bothered" by social commentary are very vocal online which overstates their actual numerical presence. If they complain about something being "heavy handed" or "too political," its code talk for "it's not MY politics." 

 

Speaking of Get Out: It's funny but I noticed this as a board member at Awards Watch forums (Oscar-related) I noticed the countless local so-called liberals get anal when Get Out won that WGA poll for Best Script of the last 20 something years, beating out all those (you can look up the list) damn "indie dramedies" from that same era that's become a stereotype onto themselves. Of course same Get Out was voted by industry members when polled by THR (iirc) as among their favorite movies of recent years, including Endgame and Wonder Woman and so forth.

 

Get Out is one of those few horror movies that hit the karma lottery this side of Exorcist or Silence of the Lambs. A blockbuster hit, won awards, was able to please the masses/Film Twitter/actual industry professionals/etc. Weirdly Get Out also did something alot of those so-called "elevated horror" movies of recent years failed to do: win an Oscar. Who's elevated now? 

 

The one thing Get Out failed to do as a horror movie was actually be scary. 

[Cappoedameron]

Maybe this will get people to stop casting Ansel Elgort in crap. He was easily the worst part of West Side Story.

[Menor the Destroyer]

2 minutes ago, BestPicturePlutoNash said:

I don't think anything Eric has said is condescending at all. It is frankly correct there is more than film than cheap thrills lol. People like to call people who don't favor one particular genre of film "pretentious" or "condescending" but what they're saying is true that it's an artform and source of entertainment with many different varieties. And many varieties are becoming boxed out due to mass preference over a certain genre or property nowadays. 

It's not disfavoring the genre that I took issue with, it is assuming that nobody else could get anything but cheap thrills from said genre.

[BestPicturePlutoNash]

Just now, RRA said:

You know how I know Marvel isn't just the world's biggest franchise but also the most dominant cultural zeitgeist force today? People are talking about that company and Oscars in a box office weekend thread because...I'm too lazy to go back and check how that happened on a weekend when WSS tanking made ITH's failure seem not so bad in comparison. I'm used to general movie discourse going sideways into Marvel chat lol. 

 

Anyway some folks are "bothered" by social commentary are very vocal online which overstates their actual numerical presence. If they complain about something being "heavy handed" or "too political," its code talk for "it's not MY politics." 

 

Speaking of Get Out: It's funny but I noticed this as a board member at Awards Watch forums (Oscar-related) I noticed the countless local so-called liberals get anal when Get Out won that WGA poll for Best Script of the last 20 something years, beating out all those (you can look up the list) damn "indie dramedies" from that same era that's become a stereotype onto themselves. Of course same Get Out was voted by industry members when polled by THR (iirc) as among their favorite movies of recent years, including Endgame and Wonder Woman and so forth.

 

Get Out is one of those few horror movies that hit the karma lottery this side of Exorcist or Silence of the Lambs. A blockbuster hit, won awards, was able to please the masses/Film Twitter/actual industry professionals/etc. Weirdly Get Out also did something alot of those so-called "elevated horror" movies of recent years failed to do: win an Oscar. Who's elevated now? 

I mean, you can like Get Out and not think it's the best script of last 20 years lol. That doesn't undermine politics or make anyone "so-called liberal". There's a lot in that film, especially the 3rd act which relies on overly broad plot contrivances and deteriments to pacing. Just because an indie dramaedy is a "stereotype", doesn't make it any lesser a writing achievement. Manchester By the Sea is a marvelous screenplay with creatively unfolding structure that examines the impact of grief on its characters. It's a really good movie and the box office was well-deserved but it's valid to have complaints about it? Why that is relevant to box office and this thread, I'm not sure.