Weekdays | Aug 21 - 24 | Thursday Numbers | 2.29M BARBIE | 1.35M BLUE BEETLE | 1.28M OPPENHEIMER

[eddyxx]

10 minutes ago, Bob Train said:

Clearly, Latinos are more interested in movies with Italian plumbers in them than movies with Latinos in them

 

I thought latinos liked movies about a diverse group of former thieves turned super duper govt agents who are FAMILY.

[Kon]

8 minutes ago, vale9001 said:

Seems like last year story with Bros. We have every year hundreds of new movies, TV series and stories in general about lgbqt people , but somehow that movie with things seen already million times was "the thing you have to see or you are a gay doesn't care about gay representation". Representation aka you give me money to me 😄

To be fair, the point of Bros promotion was this movie being aimed towards gay men, which is really pretty uncommon.

 

Movies and TV series about gay men couples tend to be aimed towards (straight) women. 

[LonePirate]

45 minutes ago, Kon said:

To be fair, the point of Bros promotion was this movie being aimed towards gay men, which is really pretty uncommon.

 

Movies and TV series about gay men couples tend to be aimed towards (straight) women. 

You are absolutely correct on both points you make here. Bros was about gay men, starred openly gay men and was made by gay men for gay men. When you combine that with the highly polarizing (aka unlikeable to some/many) Eichner, the movie was always going struggle at the box office, no matter how funny it was - and I thought the movie was very funny.

 

Contrast that with the recent Amazon Prime movie Red, White and Royal Blue which was also about bi/gay men. However, it did not star openly gay men. The book upon which it was based was written by a straight woman (I believe) although I think the director is gay. Most importantly, the movie was made for straight women - the same audience who made the book a massive success and who are posting TikTok videos by the truckload where they are fangirling and swooning over the movie.

 

You don't need to be a studio executive to determine why Bros failed and RWRB is succeeding. How the representation is used is far more important than the representation itself. Blue Beetle is learning that painful lesson that representation will only take you so far.

[eeetooki]

18 minutes ago, LonePirate said:

You are absolutely correct on both points you make here. Bros was about gay men, starred openly gay men and was made by gay men for gay men. When you combine that with the highly polarizing (aka unlikeable to some/many) Eichner, the movie was always going struggle at the box office, no matter how funny it was - and I thought the movie was very funny.

 

Contrast that with the recent Amazon Prime movie Red, White and Royal Blue which was also about bi/gay men. However, it did not star openly gay men. The book upon which it was based was written by a straight woman (I believe) although I think the director is gay. Most importantly, the movie was made for straight women - the same audience who made the book a massive success and who are posting TikTok videos by the truckload where they are fangirling and swooning over the movie.

 

You don't need to be a studio executive to determine why Bros failed and RWRB is succeeding. How the representation is used is far more important than the representation itself. Blue Beetle is learning that painful lesson that representation will only take you so far.

 

Yes...as a straight women I absolutely adored RWRB...

[JustLurking]

22 minutes ago, LonePirate said:

You are absolutely correct on both points you make here. Bros was about gay men, starred openly gay men and was made by gay men for gay men. When you combine that with the highly polarizing (aka unlikeable to some/many) Eichner, the movie was always going struggle at the box office, no matter how funny it was - and I thought the movie was very funny.

 

Contrast that with the recent Amazon Prime movie Red, White and Royal Blue which was also about bi/gay men. However, it did not star openly gay men. The book upon which it was based was written by a straight woman (I believe) although I think the director is gay. Most importantly, the movie was made for straight women - the same audience who made the book a massive success and who are posting TikTok videos by the truckload where they are fangirling and swooning over the movie.

 

You don't need to be a studio executive to determine why Bros failed and RWRB is succeeding. How the representation is used is far more important than the representation itself. Blue Beetle is learning that painful lesson that representation will only take you so far.

The thing is, Bros failed at even targeting and bringing out its own niche: obviously it was never going to be a megahit but even if you're bringing out 90% gay men there's still space to make it work for a film with a fairly low budget

 

But then again this kind of romcom is pretty dead at the BO even under normal circumstances, so...what can you really expect I guess

 

As for Blue Beetle I don't think representation alone is a hook, it can be a selling point but if there isn't a movie those audiences could be interested in regardless of representation it's just not gonna work. And of course, while representation can help in bringing out more of a certain demographic, you still need other demos to actually support the film, especially because otherwise the international support for the film will be abysmal (I mean BB opened to like freaking 33k admits in germany...that is just sad)

[ringedmortality]

20 minutes ago, eeetooki said:

 

Yes...as a straight women I absolutely adored RWRB...

you’re a women?

[eeetooki]

18 minutes ago, ringedmortality said:

you’re a women?

typo woman*

[ListenHunnyUrOver]

2 hours ago, JustLurking said:

The thing is, Bros failed at even targeting and bringing out its own niche: obviously it was never going to be a megahit but even if you're bringing out 90% gay men there's still space to make it work for a film with a fairly low budget

 

But then again this kind of romcom is pretty dead at the BO even under normal circumstances, so...what can you really expect I guess

 

As for Blue Beetle I don't think representation alone is a hook, it can be a selling point but if there isn't a movie those audiences could be interested in regardless of representation it's just not gonna work. And of course, while representation can help in bringing out more of a certain demographic, you still need other demos to actually support the film, especially because otherwise the international support for the film will be abysmal (I mean BB opened to like freaking 33k admits in germany...that is just sad)

Is it even possible to get 90% of a demographic to see a movie?

[JustLurking]

38 minutes ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:

Is it even possible to get 90% of a demographic to see a movie?

No, what I mean is even if 90% of the people showing up the film were in that demo, not that it's bringing out 90% of it

[harry713]

6 hours ago, ListenHunnyUrOver said:

I feel like we’ve gotten to a weird place with how Hollywood goes about representation. Movies now seem to have a marketing angle of being “important” due to representation, and hence audiences need to go out and see them to ensure further representation for some group, but this makes these movies feel like chores or homework rather than the representation being an organic element. It also causes problems for critics who criticize these movies. A lot of men who didn’t like Barbie got called sexist when there are clearly script issues a mile wide. I also didn’t like Shang-Chi but not because I don’t want Asian representation. 

Have you asked them why? Most weren’t talking about plotholes lmao. Their widdle egos were hurt. 

[HummingLemon]

@XXR Was Right

 

Blue Beetle had a 7.6x IM so it turns out that XXR wasn't right

 

Gonna have to change that username

[HummingLemon]

@XXR Was Right

 

National cinema day and reception seems to be a bit more positive than other B+ films so my arbitrary guess is that the O/U is $12M (-52%)

 

 

 

 

Edited August 23, 2023 by HummingLemon

[BadOlCatSylvester]

7 hours ago, Arlborn said:

I don't think anyone was surprised. People did get a little more hopeful with the reviews, and I guess they were surprisingly positive considering expectations after The lash, but nobody was really surprised in the end with its box office numbers, just a bit sad perhaps.

 

What I am really curious about is how Aquaman 2 will do, considering everything surrounding it, from the amazing success of the first, to the co-lead, to the implosion of its universe, to the flops coming before it, to the whispers of its possibly shaky quality, and to the timing of the strikes. So much happening around it, I find it really hard to predict what will happen to it.

Aquaman 2 has an Alice 2-style collapse written all over it. Hell, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it collapses harder than even that.

[BadAtGender]

6 hours ago, LonePirate said:

The book upon which it was based was written by a straight woman (I believe)

McQuiston is queer and non-binary.

 

Their other two novels are both sapphic.

[SpiderByte]

5 hours ago, BadOlCatSylvester said:

Aquaman 2 has an Alice 2-style collapse written all over it. Hell, I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it collapses harder than even that.

I'd wait for a trailer before saying that. Though now that I mention it, it's surprising that there hasn't been one already.

[vale9001]

The director (and maybe One of the screenwriters too) of Bros Is a married straight man. The main producer of the movie is Judd Apatow. So a "movie made by gay men for gay men"...i don't know if It was exactly that. 

 

For gays the fact actors are gays is really not important and btw It wasn't a news. The numbers of lgbtq movies with gay actors was already big before that.

 

The problem of that movie (and maybe of most of these "repsentation movies") Is big productions of Hollywood saying "they're doing something new" when a specific target already has watched and knows a big world of productions there are made that and more than that. So most times It's not really a new thing like they try to sell. 

 

Apparently gays felt like they don't really Need too much the producer of knocked up telling them he made a" never seen gay movie" (?) In 2022. 

Edited August 23, 2023 by vale9001

[LonePirate]

48 minutes ago, SpiderByte said:

I'd wait for a trailer before saying that. Though now that I mention it, it's surprising that there hasn't been one already.

I know others will disagree; but the lack of a trailer this close to the release reeks of major quality issues with the movie. It reminds me of the late arriving trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder which was an awful movie. WB needed to have an Aquaman trailer in front of Flash, Barbie and Blue Beetle. The marketing department and/or DC and Gunn all royally screwed up here.

[upriser7]

 

[vale9001]

 

[SpiderByte]

25 minutes ago, LonePirate said:

I know others will disagree; but the lack of a trailer this close to the release reeks of major quality issues with the movie. It reminds me of the late arriving trailer for Thor: Love and Thunder which was an awful movie. WB needed to have an Aquaman trailer in front of Flash, Barbie and Blue Beetle. The marketing department and/or DC and Gunn all royally screwed up here.

I'll give you Blue Beetle, but Flash and even Barbie would be really, really early for a December release