Father’s Day/Juneteenth Weekend Thread | Flash implodes with 55M, Elemental bombs with 29M, holdovers hold atrociously | Theaters are dead, streaming is dead. Everything is dead really.

[MightyDargon]

1 minute ago, IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son said:

It says a lot that Transformers dropping nearly 70% in its second weekend off of a $61m OW isn't even in the top 2 biggest disappointments of the week

Transformers isn't THAT big a franchise anymore though. Bumblebee still made money but had to be leggy to do so. I don't think it's a nonviable franchise (yet) but they should probably avoid crowded summers in the future. But with Beasts I don't think it ever was projected as "movie of the summer" material by people online so there's not that much of a visible disappointment either.

[21C]

12 minutes ago, MightyDargon said:

Do you have any actual arguments other than "everyone undersold Aquaman 1" repeated endlessly? People can literally tell the DCEU is dead now. Flash had a LOT more industry hype than Aquaman and it's underperformed pretty badly (and people on here called it for about the last 2 weeks or so). No one HAS to go to the movies for Christmas and if something looks like a dog, they'll just skip it and spend money some other way. 

 

The telltale thing will be if they do what they did with Flash where they have industry people talk about how "great" it is but don't actually show reviews like Spiderverse did.

I told you my actual arguments. The first Aquaman's success was never the result of industry hype, brand hype, or anything of the sort. It relied entirely on its visuals and the fact that audiences gravitated to that sort of environment during the holidays,so couple that with a serviceable blockbuster story and they were all set to go. It's not that hard of a formula to follow, and there's no reason to believe that it's 100% destined to be a failure in a winter where it'll have everything all to itself. Keeping it in the date it's at and releasing it is a completely reasonable thing to do. Even if you wanna say the odds are 40% it'll make a billion this time... I'd take those odds. 

Edited June 17, 2023 by 21C

[MightyDargon]

Just now, 21C said:

I told you my actual arguments. The first Aquaman's success was never the result of industry hype, brand hype, or anything of the sort. It relied entirely on its visuals and the fact that audiences gravitated to that sort of environment during the holidays,so couple that with a serviceable blockbuster story and they were all set to go. It's not that hard of a formula to follow, and there's no reason to believe that it's 100% destined to be a failure in a winter where it'll have everything all to itself. Keeping it in the date it's at and releasing it is a completely reasonable think to do. Even if you wanna say the odds are 40% it'll make a billion this time... I'd take those odds. 

Blah blah blah. It ain't making a billion. Even Guardians 3 didn't make a billion. Making a billion is very rare now and I'm doubtful anyone was passionate enough about Aquaman 1 for that to happen again. Unless if Aquaman 2 is the equivalent of Avatar in VFX terms it's absolutely not happening.

[TheDarkKnightOfSteel]

Henry Cavill today after filming a scene for this and they used a bad cgi shot of him…

 

[JustLurking]

6 minutes ago, 21C said:

I told you my actual arguments. The first Aquaman's success was never the result of industry hype, brand hype, or anything of the sort. It relied entirely on its visuals and the fact that audiences gravitated to that sort of environment during the holidays,so couple that with a serviceable blockbuster story and they were all set to go. It's not that hard of a formula to follow, and there's no reason to believe that it's 100% destined to be a failure in a winter where it'll have everything all to itself. Keeping it in the date it's at and releasing it is a completely reasonable think to do. Even if you wanna say the odds are 40% it'll make a billion this time... I'd take those odds. 

I think the odds are more like 1% on aqua2 making a billion

 

Will still undoubtably perform better than flash though

Edited June 17, 2023 by JustLurking

[Belakor]

Just now, TheDarkKnightOfSteel said:

Henry Cavill today after filming a scene for this and they used a bad cgi shot of him…

 

Warhammer is proably going to be a bigger franchise than DC in a couple of years lmao

[21C]

Just now, Belakor said:

Warhammer is proably going to be a bigger franchise than DC in a couple of years lmao

If he can even get that off the ground because he has zero creatives attached yet. 

[MightyDargon]

They were using bad CGI shots of Cavill in the DCEU even while he was still under contract though.

[Marathon]

The vast majority of the animated superhero stuff by WB/DC has been either television or straight-to-video/streaming. I wonder if they should try theatrically released animated superhero feature films (or would it be a case of redundancy/oversaturation?). Since live action superhero stuff seems to be on shaky ground right now (even Guardians would have underperformed without the great word of mouth), maybe that's an option to explore.

[eddyxx]

55 minutes ago, MightyDargon said:

Also I'm REALLY laughing hard at anyone using Guardians 3 as an example of "superhero fatigue" after what fucking Flash did.

 

 

I think Guardians and Spiderverse has shown that audiences are threw paying for shit quality  cbms and will only come out now for the best of the best. If it sucks, why waste 20-60 dollars when you can wait 2 months and see it on whichever streaming service it’s on.

[Mulder]

3 minutes ago, eddyxx said:

I think Guardians and Spiderverse has shown that audiences are threw paying for shit quality  cbms and will only come out now for the best of the best. If it sucks, why waste 20-60 dollars when you can wait 2 months and see it on whichever streaming service it’s on.

Yeah that's the vibe I'm getting. Quantumania suffered from bad WOM, Shazam 2 suffered from not looking interesting enough+Shazam's lack of staying power+mixed (at best) reviews. We'll have to do a post-mortem on Flash but I do think there's a bunch of different factors at play there including the reviews being just ok, Ezra's behavior and antics really dominating news cycles and making the movie come off poorly, and the trailers just not looking good enough to get people interested. I also do have to wonder how much Flash was hurt by coming off of a 95 million 3 day Little Mermaid OW, a 120 million 3 day Spider-Verse 2 OW, and a 61 million 3 day RoTB OW. Audiences only have so much money and it seems like demand for superheroes got burned out quick with GoTG 3 and ATSV.

[MightyDargon]

2 minutes ago, eddyxx said:

I think Guardians and Spiderverse has shown that audiences are threw paying for shit quality  cbms and will only come out now for the best of the best. If it sucks, why waste 20-60 dollars when you can wait 2 months and see it on whichever streaming service it’s on.

This is basically my takeaway. Although Spiderverse was coming in with a massive tailwind from the fact that Spiderverse 1 became the first iconic Gen Z movie.

[IronJimbo & Sheldon's Son]

1 minute ago, Marathon said:

The vast majority of the animated superhero stuff by WB/DC has been either television or straight-to-video/streaming. I wonder if they should try theatrically released animated superhero feature films (or would it be a case of redundancy/oversaturation?). Since live action superhero stuff seems to be on shaky ground right now (even Guardians would have underperformed without the great word of mouth), maybe that's an option to explore.

I've been saying this for a long time (not on this forum since I only signed up a few months ago) that animated CBMs are the way to go. Anyone who follows the anime world knows that live action adaptions are treated as a joke over there. Some of the panels and stories are simply impossible to adapt with the restrictions of live action even with an avatar budget. I suspect the same is true for CBMs. This is why ATSV was a breath of fresh air for me and the first CBM I saw in theatres since Joker. Do you think ATSV would have looked as good if it was a $200m budgeted live action movie? Of course not, there's no way you can recreate some of those crazy scenes with just a green screen and CGI. Action scenes and fights flow so much better in an animated format.

 

There is the stigma that animation = for kids and I think if a studio does go down this route it would hurt their box office returns in the short-term, but as Spider-Verse has shown if you keep delivering quality, the audience will show up and the box office returns will climb. The MCU didn't start off with billion dollar hits out of the gate either, it had to build its way up over time and I think an animated superhero universe could do the same.

[toutvabien]

With Blue Beetle and Aquaman, there's gonna be a total of ten (10!) films in the DCEU since Justice League flopping in 2017.

[baumer]

Guys one thing that Aquaman had that the sequel will not is Amber heard. She was a huge box office draw and because she won't be in the sequel that most certainly will mean the box office will drop huge. 😜

[Brainbug]

This thread has been a joy ro read through (well, mostly a joy).

 

I havent been able to post much for some time now, but for once, two predictions i made earlier this year (that both The Flash and Elemental wont be very successfull) actually happened. Its not often that im kind of right, so ill have to celebrate these rare occasions 😅

In the case of Flash, i dont want to repeat many points here that others already made, but from the start i was questioning myself who really wanted to see a Flash movie? Who cared really about that? Especially with Miller as the lead? It was a recipe for a bad run imo.

 

With Elemental, i think it has less to do with the movie itself, but with the fact that Disney+ has destroyed Pixar as a cinematic event. Pixar films (especially it seems, original films) are now to be seen at home, not in theaters for many people. Disney has really shot itself in the foot here for years to come.

[CJohn]

What an amazing weekend thread. Only the DCEU can deliver greatness like this with their MEGA BOMBS. This will barely reach 100M total. Amazing job by everyone involved who called this the greatest superhero movie ever which will now be an eternal Internet punchline.

[FunkMiller]

55 minutes ago, Mulder said:

We'll have to do a post-mortem on Flash but I do think there's a bunch of different factors at play there including the reviews being just ok, Ezra's behavior and antics really dominating news cycles and making the movie come off poorly, and the trailers just not looking good enough to get people interested. 

 

I'm honestly not sure how much all the Ezra controversy has factored into it. Let's face it, people are more than willing to see movies starring actors with dubious personal lives. Cruise's attachment to scientology, and everything that goes with it (sexual and physical abuse the most heinous) has never seemed to affect his box office.

 

I maintain the absolute biggest factor in Flash's demise is the fact the audience hates the DCEU. Absolutely hates it.

[Mulder]

3 minutes ago, FunkMiller said:

 

I'm honestly not sure how much all the Ezra controversy has factored into it. Let's face it, people are more than willing to see movies starring actors with dubious personal lives. Cruise's attachment to scientology, and everything that goes with it (sexual and physical abuse the most heinous) has never seemed to affect his box office.

 

I maintain the absolute biggest factor in Flash's demise is the fact the audience hates the DCEU. Absolutely hates it.

Think you're deluding yourself if you think this is why tbeh.

[FunkMiller]

3 minutes ago, Mulder said:

Think you're deluding yourself if you think this is why tbeh.

 

Every DCEU movie for years has flopped. Non DCEU stuff has succeeded.