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.

[XXR & Friends]

Ran some scenarios based on Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbuster" format and depending on exactly where The Flash ends up theatrically ($280-330M lets say), it's looking like a $90-130M loss for WB/DC. Some others using the same format...

 

Quantumania 

$20-40M loss

Shazam 2

$80-100M loss

 

The Super Mario Bros. 

$550-650M profit

 

GOTG V3

$190-220M profit 

 

 

[excel1]

Just now, XXRkham Asylum said:

Ran some scenarios based on Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbuster" format and depending on exactly where The Flash ends up theatrically ($280-330M lets say), it's looking like a $90-130M loss for WB/DC. Some others using the same format...

 

Quantumania 

$20-40M loss

Shazam 2

$80-100M loss

 

The Super Mario Bros. 

$550-650M profit

 

GOTG V3

$190-220M profit 

 

 

 

I really wonder where BARBIE is going to end up on here...the trailer reaction in the theater was immense. Sheer creativity + Margot Robbie's simply all-time beautiful face unleashed. 

[grey ghost]

47 minutes ago, Eric Prime said:

The whole “these movies are unappealing” stuff doesn’t track IMO. The Lion King remake is the lamest, most shameful “we only made this to make money” movie ever, and it still opened higher than the first Spider-Verse’s entire run. If anything, the only movies that breakout are almost all of the same action spectacle ilk and audiences have the least diverse taste and interest in movies ever.

 

Audiences are getting pickier.

 

Savings for Americans has gone down post-covid due to inflation.

[John Marston]

50 minutes ago, Eric Prime said:

The whole “these movies are unappealing” stuff doesn’t track IMO. The Lion King remake is the lamest, most shameful “we only made this to make money” movie ever, and it still opened higher than the first Spider-Verse’s entire run. If anything, the only movies that breakout are almost all of the same action spectacle ilk and audiences have the least diverse taste and interest in movies ever.

 

Lion King remake was awful but it was very appealing. A remake of one of the most beloved animated movies, creating powerful nostalgia, and the whole “it’s photo real!” Aspect

[Reddroast]

1 hour ago, Eric Prime said:

Largely agree with this sentiment, though it's important to remember that 18-34 year olds are the biggest moviegoing demographic right now. If anything, people like my parents are the audience that's never going to come back to the theater, especially when they recently got a 4K TV set with a soundbar. Although I can see a good argument for kids younger than that seeing this as obsolete and weird, especially since taking kids to the movies has always been an annoying hassle. Which can definitely lead to bad repercussions down the road.

 

I mean that demographic never goes to the movies? Moviegoing has generally skewed towards urban and metropolitan, and post-COVID, it's been skewing younger and more nonwhite than ever. The last few big movies have had it where Black or Hispanic viewers were the biggest demo. And obviously they aren't monoliths, but younger, minority groups generally don't skew conservative wackjob.

 

I do think we are in a bad state with this "anti-woke" shit, and it has scary repercussions, but not really for box office IMO.

Mostly agree here but from what I've seen is lots of families got to the movies this month

[Mulder]

1 hour ago, Cmasterclay said:

People got used to streaming and like staying home. Most people I know laugh when they find out I see movies in theaters anymore. Many don't even realize they ever reopened. To people younger than me (29) the idea of going to a theater is probably how I thought of using payphones. I guess it's just obsolete technology. We have to come to grips with this reality.

I'm younger then you (24) and no that's not how people in their 20s view going to the theater dude.

[Redolent]

5 minutes ago, excel1 said:

 

I really wonder where BARBIE is going to end up on here...the trailer reaction in the theater was immense. Sheer creativity + Margot Robbie's simply all-time beautiful face unleashed. 

The main issue with Barbie is that people seem to be expecting a purely light, fun family movie, when it’s actually written by Gerwig and Baumbach and contains serious political, feminist and adult themes. We know this from test screenings. We know Margot Robbie’s reaction when she first read the script was that this movie would never get made. It will be contentious.
 

Some people will love it but imo it has the potential to be divisive, and that will limit its ceiling.

[grey ghost]

42 minutes ago, MovieMan89 said:

I think theaters are dying is a bit doomposting-ish, buttt Gen alpha/z are concerning. They def don’t care about theatergoing as much, and if that’s the case what gonna happen with their kids if the “tradition” isn’t passed down? It could be a real problem in 20 years or so. 

 

Stuff like Super Mario will be core memories for gen alpha. So that type of stuff will be the last hope for theaters.

 

 

[vafrow]

23 minutes ago, datpepper said:

I don't feel like starting long-winded arguments on this thread, so I'll say that I strongly disagree with some of the narratives presented here and leave it at this post. I've seen more evidence that things will work out OK for theaters eventually than that which points to the contrary. Overall revenue is still ticking upwards year-over-year post-reopening, the arthouse/specialty scene is showing signs of life (Past Lives is expanding nicely, Asteroid City's PTA this weekend was terrific), talent working in the industry continue to back movie theaters, the theatrical revenue stream still generates the most direct revenue for a single title out of all the windows (Yes, including PVOD/TVOD/EST, based on the numbers I've come across), and the theatrical model still gives movies more attention when they hit those later windows. I'm a firm believer that the quality and marketability are what's going downhill, along with costs that have ballooned far too high, and those are issues on the studio end, not theaters or consumers abandoning the model.

 

I agree with this take. I think audiences are hungry for something to be excited about, but studios have largely dropped the ball.

 

Studios leaned hard into their biggest franchises right before the pandemic to the point of saturation, and, have been slow to find the next thing.

 

And to be fair, it's not easy to figure that out. But that's their job, and it feels like they've been on autopilot for years.

[PlatnumRoyce]

48 minutes ago, Jonwo said:

I'm not sure how it is in the US but in the UK, the market for the more premium cinema experience with comfortable chairs, great food and a curated film selection has seen growth and those are 3-6 screens. 

 

There will always be room for the PLF experience but I think you can draw audiences especially those who aren't into blockbusters back to see the smaller and mid scale stuff like Asteroid City, you just need to make the experience better.

From what I've heard/read, it seems similar. I don't know the hard numbers but both the movie theater industry trade group ("NATO")/their new nonprofit ("the cinema foundation") has aggressively pushed "premiere cinema experience" as the major post covid area of growth/a necessity. The Quorum's polling has also shown the same thing.

Edited June 18, 2023 by PlatnumRoyce

[ringedmortality]

15 minutes ago, XXRkham Asylum said:

Ran some scenarios based on Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbuster" format and depending on exactly where The Flash ends up theatrically ($280-330M lets say), it's looking like a $90-130M loss for WB/DC. Some others using the same format...

 

Quantumania 

$20-40M loss

Shazam 2

$80-100M loss

 

The Super Mario Bros. 

$550-650M profit

 

GOTG V3

$190-220M profit 

 

 

 

Can you run it on Spider-Verse as well?

 

At this point what's gonna be the top 10 with Deadline?

 

1. Mario

2. Spider-Verse

3. Guardians

4. Dune

 

After that idk. Hunger Games will probably have a relatively low budget so that should end up on the list. I imagine Evil Dead Rise will end up on there now that so much has flopped. Oppenheimer and Barbie probably.

Edited June 18, 2023 by ringedmortality

[grey ghost]

37 minutes ago, Cmasterclay said:

I refuse to accept the narrative that Air was a "success." It was a well-reviewed, heavily marketed crowdpleaser about Michael Jordan that starred several above-the-title names that used to headline hits by themselves. And it crawled to 50 million. If that's a success then that is very, very depressing.

 

 

Star Power was replaced with IP Power which on the surface would be fine if the studio's weren't mismanaging the biggest franchises.

[Reddroast]

55 minutes ago, Spidey Freak said:

 

Inexplicably shoving Turning Red to Disney+, giving Encanto a very shortened theatrical window, the mishandling of the parks + the donations to DeSantis which forced his LGBT employees to object in the first place was all Chapek.

 

I'm not caping for Iger and I know he left several cracks in the foundation for Chapek, but c'mon. It was a whole other level of inefficiency.

 

 

I actually think Disney made the right choice on how they handled turning red and encanto. COVID still effects kids and both were both released during colder months of the year when that type of virus can spread more easily.

Add to the fact that Omnicron was starting to really spread in November ( which is when encanto was released) and that there wasn't a vaccine approved for ages 5-11 until late April 2022. You can see why it was an issue

[grey ghost]

18 minutes ago, XXRkham Asylum said:

Ran some scenarios based on Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbuster" format and depending on exactly where The Flash ends up theatrically ($280-330M lets say), it's looking like a $90-130M loss for WB/DC. Some others using the same format...

 

Quantumania 

$20-40M loss

Shazam 2

$80-100M loss

 

The Super Mario Bros. 

$550-650M profit

 

GOTG V3

$190-220M profit 

 

 

 

What if Spider-verse 2 hits 700m?

[Maggie]

Marvel movies destroyed star power, but i notice now they are in trouble, they want stars for their upcoming movies. What is the wish list for Fantastic Four? I believe they want Emma Stone, Margot Robbie

Edited June 18, 2023 by Maggie

[ThomasNicole]

IMO, what some people fundamentally don’t get it is that the failure of some movies is way less about the movies or the brand, but about the culture. 
 

I’m talking about Elemental here, the awful OW is not because Pixar can’t make movies that connects with the audiences anymore, Elemental have strong PostTrack data on previews / A CinemaScore / equally strong PostTrack data for the whole weekend. People still like what Pixar does, overall they just don’t want to pay and not only for Pixar, for original stories, for movies that they don’t know what to expect prior. 
 

This is the OW for original animated pictures since 2018: 

- Smallfoot: $ 23M (WB)

- Abominable: $ 20M (DW) 

- Onward: $ 39M (Pixar) 

- Raya: $ 8M (DIS) 

- Encanto: $ 27M (DIS) 

- The Bad Guys: $ 23M (DW) 

- Strange World: $ 12M (DIS) 

- Elemental: $ 30M (Pixar) 

 

The last big original animation is Coco from 2017. The failure of Elemental is still the biggest OW for an original since the pandemic. This is a problem that is developing for years now, it’s not just about Disney+, actually, the Disney+ strategy is probably a response to all of this. 
 

Pretty much all these movies was well received by audiences, the Pixar movies sent to D+ are among the best received ones for the studio, yet people won’t pay for them, no matter what studio is doing them. 
 

Pixar won’t be merged on DIS because DIS is also fucked. Pixar isn’t destroyed, original stories are destroyed. This isn’t about people trained to watch movies from one brand at streaming, this is about an entire Hollywood system that acknowledges the financial struggles of the audiences but instead of searching for solutions, they trained people to simply choose for the IP’s since they can’t pay for many movies anymore, this is why animations are still big, they just need to be Minions, Mario, Spidey. 
 

Hollywood chooses the easy path for a decade now, they decided to invest everything in projects that doesn’t need much effort because what they sell is convenience, what they say to audiences is “come see something you already know you’ll like it because you’ve seen some variation or version of it before”. This is the logic behind every franchise these days, and original stories of any kind overall doesn’t have space inside of this logic.
 

It was easy to understand why movies like The Fabelmans failed, but is harder to understand the failure of a Pixar movie because it’s a brand, it’s highly commercial, it should sell. But now being a brand doesn’t matter anymore unless they’re selling convenience, and original stories aren’t that, even mainstream ones. 
 

The problem is that we’re seeing cracks even in the IP’s movie now. Like i said many times recently, i’m curious what the industry will do when the franchises stop working and there will be nothing original left to work with. I hope they can find a way back in selling original stuff as relevant again, this is the only way for a healthy industry based on art.

 

The next huge failure will be from DW in 2 weeks, let’s see if Wish or Elio can be the ones that will finally reverse this trend, at least when it comes to animation. 

[PlatnumRoyce]

1 hour ago, Cmasterclay said:

I agree! Things are just accelerating. COVID was throwing gasoline onto sparks.

 

A movie like 1917 (which I didn't even really like) or Ford v Ferrari making what they did in 2023 would be an absolute fucking miracle

Nope isn't that far off of those films. I'm pretty sure Don't Look Up would have made over 100M if it had been released in theaters. 

 

[cookie]

2 minutes ago, PlatnumRoyce said:

Nope isn't that far off of those films. I'm pretty sure Don't Look Up would have made over 100M if it had been released in theaters. 

 

Nope coasts on Jordan Peele's name. Give that movie to anyone else and it may have done half its gross.

[Reddroast]

57 minutes ago, datpepper said:

I don't feel like starting long-winded arguments on this thread, so I'll say that I strongly disagree with some of the narratives presented here and leave it at this post. I've seen more evidence that things will work out OK for theaters eventually than that which points to the contrary. Overall revenue is still ticking upwards year-over-year post-reopening, the arthouse/specialty scene is showing signs of life (Past Lives is expanding nicely, Asteroid City's PTA this weekend was terrific), talent working in the industry continue to back movie theaters, the theatrical revenue stream still generates the most direct revenue for a single title out of all the windows (Yes, including PVOD/TVOD/EST, based on the numbers I've come across), and the theatrical model still gives movies more attention when they hit those later windows. I'm a firm believer that the quality and marketability are what's going downhill, along with costs that have ballooned far too high, and those are issues on the studio end, not theaters or consumers abandoning the model.

I agree ALL of this especially Marketing. Does anyone remember when studios used to out a poster and a teaser trailer a year in advance for their events? I do. 

[XXR & Friends]

9 minutes ago, grey ghost said:

 

What if Spider-verse 2 hits 700m?

 

13 minutes ago, ringedmortality said:

 

Can you run it on Spider-Verse as well?

 

At this point what's gonna be the top 10 with Deadline?

 

1. Mario

2. Spider-Verse

3. Guardians

4. Dune

 

After that idk. Hunger Games will probably have a relatively low budget so that should end up on the list. I imagine Evil Dead Rise will end up on there now that so much has flopped. Oppenheimer and Barbie probably.

 

ATSV @ $700M is looking at $260-320M profit with everything else factored in.