Christmas Weekend Thread | Avatar 95.6m, PiB 20.05m, Babylon 4.85m 4 days

[John Marston]

The reason why loads of film enthusiasts hate theaters now is because RedLetterMedia hates theaters. Online film enthusiasts follow what they say to a tee

[filmlover]

16 minutes ago, Eric in Boots said:

I mean all these music biopics emphasize the sad stuff of these artists' lives (which they should. If people don't want to acknolwedge the artists they loved had bad experiences or lives, that says a lot about them). Elvis wasn't really a breezy walk in the park, especially near the end.

9 minutes ago, M37 said:

Don’t disagree, but also not much different than the life of Freddy Mercury and story arc of Bohemian Rhapsody 

 

I think the biggest difference is that’s it’s still too soon, where the loss is still felt. This biopic should have been made 10-15 years later, when it was more of celebration and less of a downer, while also a new experience/introduction for the younger generation (hello nostalgia gap - see also Elvis, Rocket Man)

Pretty much this. No one is saying that they want to see the rough part of her life glossed over (indeed, everyone from those close to her to her fans have been trying to find a culprit for the past decade as to what ultimately led to her downfall) but with Whitney it's different because it all happened not that long ago. It's also probably limiting appeal when you consider the world treated her demons as a joke until it was too late (Being Bobby Brown should've never existed in the first place even when you consider all the lame "reality" shows during the genre's peak explosion in the mid-2000s) and there's likely a portion of the public who don't wish to be reminded of that so soon again. The same problem is going to face that Amy Winehouse biopic, if it gets made.

[4815162342]

2 minutes ago, IronJimbo said:

$135m second weekend if not for snowstorm

 

You don't lack for confidence I'll say that

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

29 minutes ago, poweranimals said:

Did they even market the movie? I wouldn't even have known it was coming out if not for this forum.

There were TV ads, I saw a billboard IRL, they even started marketing it as "The Whitney Houston Movie - I Wanna Dance With Somebody" a couple of weeks ago. The review embargo was pretty late and they didn't take it to fall film festivals. But it's pretty rare that a movie with "no marketing" was actually not marketed on any level, it's just that people see less ads in general.

 

 

29 minutes ago, filmlover said:

Honestly, Elvis was the perfect biopic for Baz's wild filmmaking sensibilities. For all the talk of that movie bringing back older folks to theaters I feel like it really caught on with the social media crowd who began dissecting the craziest moments ("That's the thing *zooms in* he's white!" - Underused Oscar Nominee Kodi Smit-McPhee) once it became available on the streaming. Don't see that happening with Whitney (especially if we're talking an estate-controlled biopic in which most of the participants are still very much alive like I Wanna Dance... was).

Elvis had made $137 million domestic before it hit PVOD on August 9, on its way to $150 million domestic and a 4.84x multiplier. It's not like the Minions where the GentleMinions stuff was huge on opening weekend and got news coverage early into the box office run. TikToks and tweets are not the reason Elvis made the bulk of its money in the real world.

 

 

What Happens in Vegas showed up on a Box Office Game recently and I'd forgotten how well it did: $218 million worldwide in 2008, for a romcom that was seen as just okay at the time. Cameron had a good run, Ashton Kutcher also had more hits than I remembered.

Edited December 24, 2022 by BoxOfficeFangrl

[Ipickthiswhiterose]

4 minutes ago, Eric in Boots said:

"Oscar bait" is frankly the most tiring buzzword in film discussion. Not just because of how it's liberally thrown around for everything, even movies that frankly wouldn't appeal to the average Academy voter, but it's frankly an annoying pejorative that only exists so people can mock decent-to-good dramas, all to sound like you're above those "snooty elites". As if making a good movie that could win accolades and gives good directors and actors a chance to tell compelling and important stories is somehow a bad thing. Give me a break. 🙄

 

 

The only films I would generally call "Oscar Bait" are in the acting category - I think I would happily refer to Judy, Vice, Harriet, King Richard, Theory of Everything, King's Speech as Oscar Bait. Especially given the proven track record of just-carely-decent biopic performances in forgettable getting Oscars.

 

For other things, there are films that aren't so much Oscar Bait as Oscar Assumed - Fablemans, Roma, Once Upon a time in Hollywood, Irishman, BlackKklansman - where you have directors who are treated as royalty and the red carpet is brought out and regardless of what other films come out that year the perception is that it's almost a slight not to give these films nominations. But that's not to say that the films THEMSELVES are actual Oscar Bait. Even The Irishman - the epitome of a film that I think criminally clogged up nominations by default the year it came out despite very few people sincerely believing it was a Top 5 film of the year - I don't think was Oscar Bait as far as Scorsese or those involved were concerned. Such clogging is an issue of the voters and media, not the filmmakers themselves.  

 

Oh, all of this though excludes Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. That was 100% reprehensible Oscar Bait. That is the exception that proves the rule.

[StreamBO]

7 minutes ago, Nero said:

Agree with everything except kgf 2

[filmlover]

1 minute ago, BoxOfficeFangrl said:

Elvis had made $137 million domestic before it hit PVOD on August 9, on its way to $150 million domestic and a 4.84x multiplier. It's not like the Minions where the GentleMinions stuff was huge on opening weekend and got news coverage early into the box office run. TikToks and tweets are not the reason Elvis made the bulk of its money in the real world.

Oh for sure, just saying that Elvis had plenty of youthful appeal that likely helped it achieve the high end at the box office ala Bohemian Rhapsody, vs. something that only attracted an older and/or more limited demo (which is proving to be the case with Whitney).

[Ms Lady Hawk]

45 minutes ago, excel1 said:

Controversial take but I just don't think Whitney Houston had the star power later in her career to leave a large fanbase hungry for a film for her. She had an insanely high career peak in the early 90s, but that was about it, and then torpedoed downwards as everyone knows.

This is not true. Didn’t Elvis also have a spiral? How about Judy Garland? What was so spectacularly unusual about Whitney’s? The fact that there’s been so much content in a short period of time is the better explanation in my opinion. 

[cookie]

19.5

13

24.5

 

$57m 3-day?

[grey ghost]

16 minutes ago, Maggie said:

Wasn't Bohemian Rahpsody a sanitized version of events? I remember Sacha Baren Cohen had to drop out from the project because he wanted to go in hard .

 

I think that for the movie to be a big hit, a sanitized version is a must. If you wanna go art house and flop big, go in detail about the life of the person.

 

Whitney flopped because there was too much content about her life. A biopic of Britney Spears at this time would flop too

 

Rocketman did pretty good.

 

Whitney was known mostly for her drama. You can't skip over the juicy bits that dominated most her life.

 

It's the elephant in the room.

 

I guess unlike Elton John there was no happy ending for Whitney. I still bet a movie that showed Whitney's rollercoaster relationship and drug use would've opened higher than 5m.

[excel1]

12 minutes ago, filmlover said:

The same problem is going to face that Amy Winehouse biopic, if it gets made.

 

Winehouse doesn't have anything resembling the status or fanbase of Whitney Houston tho, which in a way may help the film as people want to learn about her.

 

2 minutes ago, Ms Lady Hawk said:

This is not true. Didn’t Elvis also have a spiral? How about Judy Garland? What was so spectacularly unusual about Whitney’s? The fact that there’s been so much content in a short period of time is the better explanation in my opinion. 

You know that people who haven't seen the movie - which pretty much everyone - aren't aware of how much content is crammed into the film, right?

 

Those others all had spirals, they were just much, much longer ago and less fresh in memory. Everyone around in 2005 remembers "crack is whack" and "bobby take me behind the shed and work me over" from that horrible reality show. 

[Fancyarcher]

19 minutes ago, Maggie said:

Cameron Diaz was/is a big star. She had BO hits and it's not only about hits. She was one of the few women who headlined movies. THey were sold on her name. Also, her media presence and her light and sunny personality were a plus.

 

Not to mention her movies opened consistently. When people focus on if an actor is draw or not, they seem to talk about the utlimate gross of their movies, when really it's the opening weekend that matters most.

 

Cameron Diaz regularly headlined movies that had 14m + opening weekends, and only one of her wide-released films failed to reach the top five (The Box). That's not bad at all for an actor. 

[cookieleeann]

This makes me wonder how the MJ movie will do. It almost feels unadaptable. I think it's too soon and MJ was very controversial starting in the BAD era. Also his drug problems with repeated allegations of pedophilia. How do you make an MJ film and skip over all of that? A much more controversial figure than some of his peers(& some of them had their own problems to deal with). 

[filmlover]

4 minutes ago, cookieleeann said:

This makes me wonder how the MJ movie will do. It almost feels unadaptable. I think it's too soon and MJ was very controversial starting in the BAD era. Also his drug problems with repeated allegations of pedophilia. How do you make an MJ film and skip over all of that? A much more controversial figure than some of his peers(& some of them had their own problems to deal with). 

FWIW that Tony-winning Broadway musical that's one of the few hits they've enjoyed since reopening ends at around 1992 (before the "Wacko Jacko" side of his career took over) so any biopic would likely stop at around the same point.

[JWR]

34 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

People bashed Lightyear for "flopping" but it's hard to winover kids these days. 

 

You basically need to go viral for certain audiences to succeed in certain genres.

 

Boomers, kids, and DC fans aren't showing up en mass for most of the stuff marketed towards them these days.

 

Lightyear had a confusing marketing campaign and was a niche concept. But children's movies have been struggling as of late. Hoping that things improve in 2023.

[BoxOfficeFangrl]

32 minutes ago, Ipickthiswhiterose said:

 

 

The only films I would generally call "Oscar Bait" are in the acting category - I think I would happily refer to Judy, Vice, Harriet, King Richard, Theory of Everything, King's Speech as Oscar Bait. Especially given the proven track record of just-carely-decent biopic performances in forgettable getting Oscars.

 

For other things, there are films that aren't so much Oscar Bait as Oscar Assumed - Fablemans, Roma, Once Upon a time in Hollywood, Irishman, BlackKklansman - where you have directors who are treated as royalty and the red carpet is brought out and regardless of what other films come out that year the perception is that it's almost a slight not to give these films nominations. But that's not to say that the films THEMSELVES are actual Oscar Bait. Even The Irishman - the epitome of a film that I think criminally clogged up nominations by default the year it came out despite very few people sincerely believing it was a Top 5 film of the year - I don't think was Oscar Bait as far as Scorsese or those involved were concerned. Such clogging is an issue of the voters and media, not the filmmakers themselves.  

 

Oh, all of this though excludes Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. That was 100% reprehensible Oscar Bait. That is the exception that proves the rule.

Personally, I don't think of "Oscar bait" as a pejorative term at all. For me, it just means, "Was this movie funded with hopes of drafting off the awards season economy in some fashion?" If the answer is yes...maybe it's not full on "Oscar bait", but the production company/studio had some idea of it being an awards player early on. Like The Departed, it's not what you'd call Oscar bait, but with the cast and director involved, the eventual awards attention/wins wouldn't have been a total shock at any point in the discussion.

 

IMO there's nothing wrong with that: movies get made for all sorts of reasons, Hollywood is a business and the Oscars were made up as a promotional tool, so...

Edited December 24, 2022 by BoxOfficeFangrl

[Cap]

47 minutes ago, M37 said:

Don’t disagree, but also not much different than the life of Freddy Mercury and story arc of Bohemian Rhapsody 

I think it’s pretty different. Freddy had a more active role in his own fate than Houston, I would argue. He has more of a traditional rockstar, rise and fall compared to Houston, who is a textbook example of a woman being exploited by the business. She is more Judy, Britney, Diana. 
 

I also don’t know if Bohemian Rhapsody is the best example of how to handle one of these bio pics, since they somehow managed to turn Freddie Mercury into the antagonist who (they claim) selfishly attempted to Queen breaking up, when Deacon was playing with other acts and Taylor was the first to put out a solo album. Also they were already back together when they played LiveAID. 
 

and even that movie, doesn’t tell the full story. I’m still a little miffed, but they didn’t end it with the recording session for The Show Must Go On. It’s such a bad ass moment. 

 

1 hour ago, excel1 said:

Controversial take but I just don't think Whitney Houston had the star power later in her career to leave a large fanbase hungry for a film for her. She had an insanely high career peak in the early 90s, but that was about it, and then torpedoed downwards as everyone knows.

Maybe no one is hungry for a film of her life, but didn’t leave a large fanbase?! Even if she peaked In the 1990’s, she still stayed culturally relevant. We all had to sit through the Glee Tribute Episode. 
 

AND!

 

There are a whole bunch of folks who have discovered her after her death. Whitney is still, and will forever be, Whitney. 

I legit had a phone call conversation with my aunt this morning. And I said to her, are you listening to Whitney? She said, I actually am. How do you know? And I said, ‘ cause I can hear saving all my love for you in the background funny enough, I was listening to It’s Not Right, But It’s Okay (Thunderpuss Remix) when you called. 

[Maggie]

I'm tired of biopics winning Oscars. This is one of the reasons i want Colin farrel to win this year. Exceptional movie and performance

[excel1]

Whitney stayed culturally relevant mostly as a joke. Sad but true. 

[Cap]

I see while I was writing up a post, people are mentioning Judy!