Weekend Thread (8/11-13) | Demeter 750K Previews

[Squire]

18 minutes ago, LonePirate said:

If there had been a full reunion in TFA of the three (four? six?) principals from the original trilogy, the film would have cleared $1B domestically. The nostalgia factor was already through the roof. A reunion of that nature would have sent the gross into orbit.

Top Gun Maverick proved what happens if a legacy sequel is done right. Nobody reasonably complains about that movie. Meanwhile, the Disney Star Wars and new Jurassic movies have not aged well.
 

The difference is Cruise took years to make TGM because he wanted to make something that would hold up once the nostalgia wore off. If only Disney had done the same. 

[Liiviig 1998]

Despite some foundational flaws TFA started well it's just the sequels well didn't exactly follow up on what was setup in TFA.

 

But in hindsight . Think they should have gone for the obvious things and made Luke ,Leia and Han the three main leads with Rey,Finn Poe and Kylo as secondary characters and passed the button .

Ashoka started as a secondary sidekick character and now she's a fan favorite and one of the mainline popular starwars characters.

 

[emoviefan]

2 hours ago, John Marston said:

Dead Reckoning isn’t a mega bomb but it’s definitely a massive disappointment. Hopefully Part 2 can do better. Interesting, it seems now there seems to be a large amount of people saying the MI franchise is overrated and DR sucks and no doubt the box office has contributed to that perception. 

Those people are f-ing morons

[emoviefan]

3 hours ago, Squire said:

Sorry, but your opinion doesn’t mean it’s the true. 
 

IMO, Ghost Protocol is just as obtuse, but there’s no use in debating that with you. 

This all the way. The conversation around this movie from some people makes my brain leak out my ear.

[Darth Lehnsherr]

It will be interesting to see if a multi-year gap will have an effect on the "Part Twos" for Fast & Furious and Spider-Verse. You could potentially add Dead Reckoning Part 2 if the strikes keep going. 

 

Normally we see Part Twos follow up within 12 months but alot of that is due to them being filmed back to back.

[Kon]

3 hours ago, Liiviig 1998 said:

Despite some foundational flaws TFA started well it's just the sequels well didn't exactly follow up on what was setup in TFA.

 

But in hindsight . Think they should have gone for the obvious things and made Luke ,Leia and Han the three main leads with Rey,Finn Poe and Kylo as secondary characters and passed the button .

Ashoka started as a secondary sidekick character and now she's a fan favorite and one of the mainline popular starwars characters.

 

 

I don't think there is any guarantee that Luke, Leia and Han will be so attractive as main protagonists for a new trilogy. I mean, Indy5 shows that age could be a real issue for action movies.

 

I don't think the OT characters should have been relegated, but Disney focusing on new younger characters wasn't really a mistake.

 

 

PS: They will also have a lot more problems for the third movie, but no one could foresee that.

Edited August 14, 2023 by Kon

[Celedhring]

4 hours ago, Squire said:

Top Gun Maverick proved what happens if a legacy sequel is done right. Nobody reasonably complains about that movie. Meanwhile, the Disney Star Wars and new Jurassic movies have not aged well.
 

The difference is Cruise took years to make TGM because he wanted to make something that would hold up once the nostalgia wore off. If only Disney had done the same. 

 

One confession: I have never seen the first Top Gun. When it came out my parents weren't too keen on taking me to pro-military movies, and once I grew up I just didn't have much of an interest anymore. So, I had zero nostalgia for TGM.  I enjoyed it all the same, that movie is just fun. Movie-as-a-rollercoaster-ride at its finest.

 

TFA was lazy. A bunch of Empire/Vader cosplayers as the villains, a bigger badder Death Star, a young force user from a desert planet saves the day... Once the nostalgia wore off, that movie had no rewatch value to me. The younger characters were actually the most interesting part of it, mostly because they were blank slates and thus fresh, although they ended up squandering that promise.

 

The Jurassic World movies did have some hooks that the original trilogy teased but never explored in full: the functioning park, the dinosaurs escaping and living among humans. But they just didn't do much with these ideas.

 

Edited August 14, 2023 by Celedhring

[CJohn]

@MCKillswitch123 TMNT tanked badly with just ~12.300 tickets sold on OW. Below Elemental's 5th weekend (and barely above MI's 5th weekend).

 

Putting Dracula in the title of Demeter was pointless as it bombed with ~7.900 tickets sold. The lack of space (it was not a ultra wide release and many of the theaters where it is were only showing it at night) and the fierce competition certainly didn't help but there is no scenario where this would go much above ~10.000 tickets sold on OW.

 

GT was OK but nothing special, following the same that happened in many other European markets. It was 4th on the weekend in tickets sold with ~26.500.

 

This weekend sees the arrival of two new wide bombs (Um Filme do Caraças and Blue Beetle) and a major dump (Strays).

[M37]

8 hours ago, John Marston said:

 

nah the domestic gross is pathetic and should have been much higher 

MI7 is going to finish around  ~$175M, or 10% below from Rogue Nation. Should we also say GOTG3 had a “pathetic” domestic gross since it had an ~8% drop-off from GOTG2? 
 

All of this whining about MI7 got old weeks ago - it’s one of just 20 US releases to pass $500M WW post-pandemic

 

6 hours ago, Liiviig 1998 said:

the film and media industry, if a film released in theatres fails to break even by a large amount, it is considered a box-office bomb (or box-office flop), thus losing money for the distributor, studio, and/or production company that invested in it. 

 

Sorry to bring  this up again. 

 

Indy5, Flash,HM and likely MI7 are all bombs . It's just flash and Indy are mega ones.

Maybe this is just semantics, but to me there is a distinction between a massive underperformance relative to expected/implied outcome, as determined by the greenlit budget, aka “flops” and “bombs”

… and a film being shot pre-pandemic, seeing its budget balloon from COVID related delays, and then also facing a more hostile market once released. Financially a loss for theatrical release by the traditional, basic calculation? Sure, but it’s not like the studio & investors saw this as a justified $300M spend & $1B grosser, a mis-read the of the market that put them in the red. 
 

And this assumes there aren’t any potential pandemic loss tax write-offs that may change the final profit/loss calculation for any given film in these circumstances 

[baumer]

 I can't believe there's actually members here who think that if a movie doesn't break even it's a bomb lmfao. That's all I have to say about that.

[The Dark Alfred]

Lot of members here are not thinking and don't understand how the film industry works. Some still don't get why FAST X is losing MORE money than TLK or MI7.

[Mr Terrific]

That definition of bomb makes a film that scratches just short of even as the same as Indy 5. 

[Noctis]

16 hours ago, MovieMan89 said:

I doubt it’s a “bomb” at that gross, but agree it’s not a positive number at all when I’m sure everyone involved assumed this movie would push $1b. 
 

It’s funny, if you swap Opp and DR grosses, that would prob match up with what the studios were actually expecting. 
 

Also adds further fuel to the argument that you can’t put such 40+ skewing blockbusters so close and not expect one to be affected. There was prob never a scenario where both Opp and DR could have been so huge so close together, one of them had to pay a price. 

 

I loved DR1, but it is a flop. 

 

It'll eventually break even in a few years with digital sales, streaming, TV, etc but the box office is 100% a flop. 

 

That $290m production budget is insane.

[Celedhring]

A film that will break even "in a few years" can't be a flop. A failure? Sure. But we're talking about relative magnitudes here. It's like calling a 4-3 NBA series a sweep.

[John Marston]

1 hour ago, M37 said:

MI7 is going to finish around  ~$175M, or 10% below from Rogue Nation. Should we also say GOTG3 had a “pathetic” domestic gross since it had an ~8% drop-off from GOTG2? 
 

All of this whining about MI7 got old weeks ago - it’s one of just 20 US releases to pass $500M WW post-pandemic

 

Maybe this is just semantics, but to me there is a distinction between a massive underperformance relative to expected/implied outcome, as determined by the greenlit budget, aka “flops” and “bombs”

… and a film being shot pre-pandemic, seeing its budget balloon from COVID related delays, and then also facing a more hostile market once released. Financially a loss for theatrical release by the traditional, basic calculation? Sure, but it’s not like the studio & investors saw this as a justified $300M spend & $1B grosser, a mis-read the of the market that put them in the red. 
 

And this assumes there aren’t any potential pandemic loss tax write-offs that may change the final profit/loss calculation for any given film in these circumstances 

 

why are you comparing it to RN and not the film that right before it? Fallout?

 

 

MI: Dead Reckoning’s gross is a disappointment plain and simple, but I think there is no doubt Barbenheimer severely crippled it 

[Deep Wang]

 

7 minutes ago, John Marston said:

why are you comparing it to RN and not the film that right before it? Fallout?

 

why aren't you comparing it to the original's unadjusted gross?  I mean, if you really want to muck around and be sad about it, that's what the real G's would do!

[MCKillswitch123]

1 hour ago, CJohn said:

@MCKillswitch123 TMNT tanked badly with just ~12.300 tickets sold on OW. Below Elemental's 5th weekend (and barely above MI's 5th weekend).

 

Putting Dracula in the title of Demeter was pointless as it bombed with ~7.900 tickets sold. The lack of space (it was not a ultra wide release and many of the theaters where it is were only showing it at night) and the fierce competition certainly didn't help but there is no scenario where this would go much above ~10.000 tickets sold on OW.

 

GT was OK but nothing special, following the same that happened in many other European markets. It was 4th on the weekend in tickets sold with ~26.500.

 

This weekend sees the arrival of two new wide bombs (Um Filme do Caraças and Blue Beetle) and a major dump (Strays).

 

Not surprised with Turtles, it presumably has little OS appeal, a very Spider-Verse-ish run. And Demeter always screamed bomb lol.

 

Gran Turismo didn't come that far off from 2014's Need for Speed in tickets sold, which given ticket price inflation and the bigger popularity of the NfS franchise is positive imo 👏

 

Um Filme do Caraças looks like a fucking abomination lol. Is it really a bomb in the making, though? That kind of movies always performs well. I've seen ads attached to Liga Portugal games on Sport TV too. As for Blue Beetle and Strays, RIP.

[Valonqar]

6 hours ago, Darth Lehnsherr said:

It will be interesting to see if a multi-year gap will have an effect on the "Part Twos" for Fast & Furious and Spider-Verse. You could potentially add Dead Reckoning Part 2 if the strikes keep going. 

 

Normally we see Part Twos follow up within 12 months but alot of that is due to them being filmed back to back.

 

I think that interest will diminish to various extent. SV should have decent retention but it won't outgross the second movie. Momentum is gone. But these movies keep their budgets in check, unlike the other 2, so it's going to be ultra profitable as always. Furious will nose dive. DR2 may come out next year after all but they'll need some spectacular marketing and hook to give it a bump over DR1. Since DR1 did the worst of the 3, they can't afford to go lower given its pricetag.

[M37]

27 minutes ago, John Marston said:

 

why are you comparing it to RN and not the film that right before it? Fallout?

 

 

MI: Dead Reckoning’s gross is a disappointment plain and simple, but I think there is no doubt Barbenheimer severely crippled it 

Because Fallout was clearly a female heavier, lack of competition, anomaly for the franchise? And Ghost Protocol had benefit of holidays to boost total, leaving RN as the most logical comp. Even comparing to average of last 3, a $175M total is still only -15% from that domestic baseline 

 

“Disappointing” is fair, and I would agree the monster that came after (mostly Oppy) helped keep down the total, but the amount of BOT pages filled with lamenting despair over a totally reasonable - if not underwhelming - performance has grown pretty tiresome

[emoviefan]

44 minutes ago, Noctis said:

 

I loved DR1, but it is a flop. 

 

It'll eventually break even in a few years with digital sales, streaming, TV, etc but the box office is 100% a flop. 

 

That $290m production budget is insane.

It's been explained over and over here why the budget was that high for this and a lot of other movies. They were not just out there throwing money around like crazy. COVID affected things massively.