A Haunting in Venice | September 15, 2023 | Branagh's moustache is back at it again!

[Chrysaor]

5 hours ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

 

To be fair, Death on the Nile's international release was more fragmented, it opened in Spain and China one week later and in Japan 2 weeks later, so it's hard to compare when AHIV has been released in every major market the same week. 

IMHO it's more likely to end in the 100-120 M WW range, which would be decent for a mid-budget movie, but still not good enough to cover the expenses. 

As for a sequel, can they cut the budget down to 20 - 30 M and still have a star-studded cast and a visually appealing movie? Only Wes Anderson manages to do that currently, but he has stars working for him for free...

 

Of course, you're right, it's not an apples to apples comparison. However, AHiV also missed out on Russia/CIS and Ukraine altogether, whereas DotN had grossed $6.5 MM between those markets after its second weekend.

 

Overall, AHiV's global total after its second weekend is a little under 5% behind where DotN was after its. If AHiV continues DotN at that rate (again, admittedly not apples to apples) it'd final at $130.9. It absolutely could final less (although $100 MM feels like overcompensation to me). Some majors are pacing behind DotN at this point, and others are pacing ahead, so we'll see if the gap widens or shrinks after next weekend.

 

And yeah, in theory, they absolutely should be able to make these on $30 MM budgets. I'm almost as fascinated by actors' salary histories as I am with by the box office, and it's not uncommon at all for popular-but-not-quite-box-office draw level actors to take $250k-300k paydays for roles in ensemble films. They should be able to cast one of these for $5 MM (with half of that going to Branagh) pretty easily. They could probably even do it for $4 MM if they stuck to a lot of once-upon-a-time box office draws that the target demo would be familiar with (and probably excited to see) but haven't done much lately (in fact, give me a couple of does and I'll throw together a sample cast). With a $5 MM cast, you should, in theory, be able to do the film for $25 MM total pretty easily as long as you stayed away from expensive location shootings, visual effects, etc. and didn't have any abnormally large expenses, for example, if they had a crazy deal where they had to pay the Christie estate $20 MM a film.

Edited September 26, 2023 by Chrysaor

[dudalb]

On 9/20/2023 at 10:38 PM, Chrysaor said:

The only Wimsey I'm familiar with is Whose Body? But I think eventually introducing crossover characters like that would be a great way to keep vitality in the series. Years ago, when we realized some Holmes material was in the public domain, my brother and I came up with the idea to do a story set across two time periods where Holmes and Poirot are both working to solve the same case. It was kind of convoluted, but Holmes solves his portion and helps lay the groundwork for another great detective (Poirot) to solve it when a recurrence of the crime happens decades later. Each chapter would switch between detectives.

Jesus no crossovers. everything is not a comic book franchise.

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

On 9/26/2023 at 1:39 AM, Chrysaor said:

 

Of course, you're right, it's not an apples to apples comparison. However, AHiV also missed out on Russia/CIS and Ukraine altogether, whereas DotN had grossed $6.5 MM between those markets after its second weekend.

 

Overall, AHiV's global total after its second weekend is a little under 5% behind where DotN was after its. If AHiV continues DotN at that rate (again, admittedly not apples to apples) it'd final at $130.9. It absolutely could final less (although $100 MM feels like overcompensation to me). Some majors are pacing behind DotN at this point, and others are pacing ahead, so we'll see if the gap widens or shrinks after next weekend.

 Looks like I was right and this will fall in my predicted 100-120 M WW range. Might actually end up at something like 116 M WW. Not a complete flop but a huge disappointment nonetheless. Unless it does huge business on streaming it's not going to get any more sequels; even with a 40 M budget there is a solid risk of not getting its budget back, and I really can't see them making another one with a 30M budget. 

[Bob Train]

48 minutes ago, ThePrinceIsOnFire said:

 Looks like I was right and this will fall in my predicted 100-120 M WW range. Might actually end up at something like 116 M WW. Not a complete flop but a huge disappointment nonetheless. Unless it does huge business on streaming it's not going to get any more sequels; even with a 40 M budget there is a solid risk of not getting its budget back, and I really can't see them making another one with a 30M budget. 

Meh, people also said DOTN would not get a sequel (or that it would go straight to streaming). $120m on a $60m budget during an actors strike is not bad, and these movies always do crazy business on Hulu. I would not be surprised if Disney greenlights a 4th to maintain a working relationship with Branagh.

[ThePrinceIsOnFire]

1 hour ago, Bob Train said:

Meh, people also said DOTN would not get a sequel (or that it would go straight to streaming). $120m on a $60m budget during an actors strike is not bad, and these movies always do crazy business on Hulu. I would not be surprised if Disney greenlights a 4th to maintain a working relationship with Branagh.

It's quite a different story here though. The OS to DOM ratio is smaller for AHIV than DOTN, despite the latter opening at a time were most countries were still dealing with covid and had theaters shut down. This got a a full theatrical run so streaming will also likely come with a smaller margin than DOTN. It might still get a sequel but they somehow need to bring the costs at about 30M, which isn't impossible ("The Menu" was made for 30M and got 80M WW and had a pretty good cast) but a very tough ask. We shall see.