Han and Eric's (Not-So) Controversial Predictions of 2023

[SchumacherFTW]

9 hours ago, WrathOfHan said:

April 14

 

Suzume: Makoto Shinkai's box office footprint rose with Weathering with You, which made nearly 10M when it was only wide for two days. This is the first Crunchyroll title to be released since Funimation was absorbed, and they/Sony haven't been slacking with recent anime releases. The only downside to releasing right after Mario will be the lack of PLF space, but that won't be a big issue. 10/22 (2.2x)

 

Renfield: April feels like an odd time to release this. The concept sounds fun, but will anyone actually care once Nic Cage as Dracula gets memed in the first day? Unberable Weight of Massive Talent struggled to latch on with audiences as a Nic Cage meta movie, and Universal (among every other studio) has been struggling with more niche comedy concepts lately, and until proven otherwise, I'll assume the same here. 5/15 (3x)

A lot higher than I would go for Suzume, but I'd be delighted if it went that high. Having anime movie break out globally beyond the big Shounen stuff would be great news for the industry

[Eric Duncan]

May 12

Book Club 2: The Next Chapter What did Downton Abbey 2 do? *checks* Uh...yeah, let’s go with half of that. 6/24 (4x)

 

Love Again: Reading the plot for this sounds pretty corny and for the olds, who don't go to movies anymore. So...yeah. 5/15

[Eric Duncan]

May 19

Fast X: The new cast members are cool, but like...there’s no new hook for this franchise anymore. They already did the space thing in the last movie (badly I might add), the last couple movies have been critical duds, the franchise has been on the decline for a while anyways (doubt F9 would have done that much better with less COVID in the world), the new cast members probably won’t do much. What else is there to get people excited? And with all the Justin Lin drama, I doubt the film’s going to be all that good anyways. Sorry Vin, but your micromanaging has killed your golden goose. Good thing Avatar will save your ass. 65/150 (2.31x)

[Eric Duncan]

May 26

The Little Mermaid: Racist trolls found dead in a ditch. When that first teaser trailer dropped, both Stan Twitter and Black Twitter went crazy solely on Halle’s pipes. Tiktok was full of viral vids of little Black girls in awe of that teaser, excited to see somebody who looks like them play a top 5 favorite Disney Princess. Regardless of quality, this movie will mean a lot to certain demographics and Disney knows that. Add on cool underwater visuals and the other fun aspects people love about these remakes, and this will be a big, big deal. Honestly the only problem the movie faces is the dreaded Disney+ factor and Spider-Verse competition, but I think the hype is strong enough that it won’t matter. Could obviously be wrong, and it should still be a huge hit either way, but I think this will be competitive for the top three of the summer and the year in general. I even think its 3-Day for the Memorial Day weekend will even outpace TGM. That's how confident (and I guess controversial 👀) I am being. 128/150/435 (3.40x)

[DAJK]

I agree, TLM is going to be huge. How huge, I’m not sure yet. My gut tells me to expect Aladdin numbers for OW, and then wherever the film goes from there is going to depend on WOM.

Edited December 30, 2022 by DAJK

[JWR]

I'll be curious to see if it has those kind of legs (pun intended).

[JustLurking]

TLM will probably have no problems domestically, I think it's going to do real well. Whatever audience it loses from the casting choice it should have no problem replacing. Will struggle overseas, however, atleast compared to other disney LAs.

[JWR]

June is going to be... interesting.

[Verrows]

11 hours ago, JustLurking said:

TLM will probably have no problems domestically, I think it's going to do real well. Whatever audience it loses from the casting choice it should have no problem replacing. Will struggle overseas, however, atleast compared to other disney LAs.

I don't think it'll lose many people due to the casting choice at all. Those voices are magnified and projected on large populations of people (conservatives, Republicans, whatever) because outrage culture is popular. It's a pathetic minority on the internet that should just be ignored. Instead, everytime a troll tweet gets some.likes actual articles are written about it to make it seem like we've got a massive racist troll problem. It's tiresome. The internet is very deceptive. It's one big, massive distortion of reality.

 

Anyway, this will be huge! Especially if they don't try to get too cute with it and go with the classic Disney fairy tale feel, like Beauty and the Beast did. If they get the songs right, domestic audiences will eat this up!

Edited December 30, 2022 by Verrows

[TMP]

idk i can't really see tlm making more than aladdin dom. mario also feels like detective pikachu 2.0 (but not as severe, prolly $200m range dom)

[Verrows]

3 minutes ago, TMP said:

idk i can't really see tlm making more than aladdin dom. mario also feels like detective pikachu 2.0 (but not as severe, prolly $200m range dom)

I think the brand power of Pokemon was overestimated though. Mario is far more popular with the general audience than Pokemon. A whole different beast altogether.

[Reddroast]

1 minute ago, Verrows said:

I think the brand power of Pokemon was overestimated though. Mario is far more popular with the general audience than Pokemon. A whole different beast altogether.

I highly doubt that Hollywood will touch Pokemon again because the fandom became toxic after dexit

[robertman2]

6 minutes ago, Reddroast said:

I highly doubt that Hollywood will touch Pokemon again because the fandom became toxic after dexit

Hollywood doesn't care about that lol

[JustLurking]

3 hours ago, Verrows said:

I don't think it'll lose many people due to the casting choice at all. Those voices are magnified and projected on large populations of people (conservatives, Republicans, whatever) because outrage culture is popular. It's a pathetic minority on the internet that should just be ignored. Instead, everytime a troll tweet gets some.likes actual articles are written about it to make it seem like we've got a massive racist troll problem. It's tiresome. The internet is very deceptive. It's one big, massive distortion of reality.

 

Anyway, this will be huge! Especially if they don't try to get too cute with it and go with the classic Disney fairy tale feel, like Beauty and the Beast did. If they get the songs right, domestic audiences will eat this up!

Yes, which is why I've said it won't really make a dent on it domestically, where I expect it to be big. My main concern with TLM is always overseas, where black-led films struggle, even moreso in markets that typically play very strong for Disney LA films (i.e. Japan).

[Mulder]

4 hours ago, Verrows said:

I think the brand power of Pokemon was overestimated though. Mario is far more popular with the general audience than Pokemon. A whole different beast altogether.

Lmao what? Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world and outsells Mario....consistently. The issue with Detective Pikachu wasn't that it was Pokemon.

[BadOlCatSylvester]

5 hours ago, Reddroast said:

I highly doubt that Hollywood will touch Pokemon again because the fandom became toxic after dexit

The underperformance of Detective Pikachu will be the main reason for that, not the fandom.

34 minutes ago, Mulder said:

Lmao what? Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world and outsells Mario....consistently. The issue with Detective Pikachu wasn't that it was Pokemon.

Exactly. It's a weird, meta movie that felt like it was made by Reddit users. complette with Ryan Reynolds of all people as Pikachu. And as we all know, meta storytelling is basically a financial kiss of death, which is why Matrix Resurrections bombed and the new Chip N' Dale movie went straight to Disney+.

[Mulder]

15 minutes ago, BadOlCatSylvester said:

The underperformance of Detective Pikachu will be the main reason for that, not the fandom.

Exactly. It's a weird, meta movie that felt like it was made by Reddit users. complette with Ryan Reynolds of all people as Pikachu. And as we all know, meta storytelling is basically a financial kiss of death, which is why Matrix Resurrections bombed and the new Chip N' Dale movie went straight to Disney+.

Yeah the bigger issue with Detective Pikachu is like you said just...everything with the film itself. From the weird tone, to not adapting an iconic game in the franchise but instead a weird spin-off that was forced on Legendary by TPCi, and just ultimately not really pleasing anyone. The most positive response I feel like I saw for Detective Pikachu was "meh".

 

EDIT: Not to mention its close proximity to Endgame (Its third weekend was DP's OW) which just totally steamrolled it only to be followed up by Aladdin gobbling up the kids and family audiences in its third weekend.

Edited December 30, 2022 by Mulder

[Verrows]

1 hour ago, Mulder said:

Lmao what? Pokemon is the highest grossing media franchise in the world and outsells Mario....consistently. The issue with Detective Pikachu wasn't that it was Pokemon.

Wow really?? I had no idea. I mean I know Pokemon is obviously big but it feels like Mario is more iconic to the average person.

[JWR]

5 minutes ago, Verrows said:

Wow really?? I had no idea. I mean I know Pokemon is obviously big but it feels like Mario is more iconic to the average person.

 

Even so, popularity online and video game sales don't directly translate to big box office.

[BadOlCatSylvester]

1 hour ago, Mulder said:

EDIT: Not to mention its close proximity to Endgame (Its third weekend was DP's OW) which just totally steamrolled it only to be followed up by Aladdin gobbling up the kids and family audiences in its third weekend.

Don't even get me started on that horrendous release date. The worst part is that Legendary placed both Pikachu and Godzilla 2 in the same month before the Universal split and didn't even bother to shift the date of the former when it went to Warner. Had Pikachu went to, say, August when it shifted from Universal to Warner then it would've performed better. Not by much mind you, the movie itself would still be too quirky and meta for the average Joe/Jane/whoever, but it might've been able to reach $500M worldwide at least.