THE UNMARVELOUS WEEKEND THREAD | FEATURING MELTDOWNS, ARMCHAIR ANALYSIS, AND SEXISM

[James]

7 hours ago, grey ghost said:

Speaking of YA remember Mockingjay Pt 2 floppage and how Divergent 3 never came out? 

 

It looks like it'll take more than that to kill the superhero genre.

 

 

Mockingjay Part 2 made 660m on a 160m budget (+55m in advertising). That’s 4x it’s budget. Or 3x if you include advertising.

 

Not only was it not a flop, but it made Lionsgate a ton of money from theatres alone.

 

Was it a disappointment compared to previous Hunger Games movies? Yes. But to compare it with mega bombs like The Marvels is utterly ridiculous. They don’t belong in the same conversation and neither does MJ2 belong in the same conversation with Divergent, which was indeed a flop/bomb.

 

Marvel spends way more on their projects nowadays and they keep flopping/bombing one after another. That’s the problem.

Edited November 12, 2023 by James

[Torontofan]

7 hours ago, John Marston said:

 

 

This is why phase 1 to 3 worked well.

 

The ending payoff of many storyline in endgame elevates the previous films a lot.

 

Iron man sacrifice at the end of endgame makes all these scenes way more powerful

[James]

Also wild to me that Maze Runner gets dragged into this conversation. Those are some amazingly profitable movies. All of them. Their combined budget was under 160m and they earned almost 1b at the box office. Which is why the director was hired for the new Apes movie and now for Zelda.

[Spidey Freak]

57 minutes ago, Torontofan said:

This is why phase 1 to 3 worked well.

 

The ending payoff of many storyline in endgame elevates the previous films a lot.

 

Iron man sacrifice at the end of endgame makes all these scenes way more powerful

 

The Whedonisation of MCU dialogues was a real issue even in Phases 2 and 3. Gunn has also been guilty of this for the GotG films with the drop down options of "Why did you say that?/What does that mean?/That's not what that means!'. The novelty of a wisecracking interconnected universe was why ppl didn't mind as much back then. There hasn't been a drop from 100 to 0 in quality in the MCU. It just doesn't have the novelty anymore.

[Liiviig 1998]

35 minutes ago, James said:

Mockingjay Part 2 made 660m on a 160m budget (+55m in advertising). That’s 4x it’s budget. Or 3x if you include advertising.

 

Not only was it not a flop, but it made Lionsgate a ton of money from theatres alone.

 

Was it a disappointment compared to previous Hunger Games movies? Yes. But to compare it with mega bombs like The Marvels is utterly ridiculous. They don’t belong in the same conversation and neither does MJ2 belong in the same conversation with Divergent, which was indeed a flop/bomb.

 

Marvel spends way more on their projects nowadays and they keep flopping/bombing one after another. That’s the problem.

Well that's BOT.

 

Mocking jay 2 was quite profitable. Made 4x it's budget.

 

Had debates on breakeven points on all summer . 

There is theatrical revenue and ancillary revenue.

They are domestic ratio ,overseas minus  china ratio, china ratio of what revenue comes back to studios (50-55/40%/25% ) respectively.

 

Deadline and major trades use 2-2.5*. production budget  I've seen multi as high 2.7*  production budget for  Very OS heavy films with a large china gross.

 

Assumption is ancillaries will cover marketing budget in long run .

 

2-2.5* rule is not perfect  it's the best we have got.

 

MI7 was bailed out 70m of it's budget so think will breakeven . Otherwise it was like 50 -100M+ money loser for paramount. 

 

So don't think we can put in the same league as Indy,flash,marvels,haunted mansion.

 

 

[M37]

4 hours ago, Hatebox said:

But that’s my point - if those jobs are that dependent on MCU sustaining itself then the industry is already in a bleak place. In a healthy industry there’d be a ton of other projects they could easily work on outside of that, because in a healthy industry the mid-market wouldn’t have been gutted out. 
 

 

The mid-market hasn’t been gutted out, so much as lost to streaming. Besides the ever-shrinking frequent movie-goers, films now have to be an “event” to get people into theaters. And event movies (usually) are expensive to produce, and as we’ve seen this year, that alone is no guarantee of success, so come with a good deal of financial risk to studios

 

I believe we’re still in a transition period, and eventually the market will stabilize, with streamers making fewer movies and/or having theatrical releases, an increase in PLF screens to help boost revenue/ticket (and minimum 2-week exclusives for big films), a greater emphasis on non-film content for theaters, etc 

 

The theatrical industry is not healthy, with COVID, streaming and now strikes all cutting into revenue, but there is room to adapt, leave behind the old school mindset, modernize and become sustainable 

[M37]

7 minutes ago, Liiviig 1998 said:

MI7 was bailed out 70m of it's budget so think will breakeven . Otherwise it was like 50 -100M+ money loser for paramount. 

 

So don't think we can put in the same league as Indy,flash,marvels,haunted mansion.

To be fair, I wouldn’t say it was “bailed out” so much as that was money they never intended to spend on the budget, so a $500-$600M WW total was probably the target for profitability. And that was without knowing how a pandemic would affect international exchange rates and greatly diminish the second largest market in China

 

Indy’s budget was high in part because they rolled in cost of previous stalled attempts into this film, so $50M+ was a sunk cost they hoped to cover, not a fresh spend they didn’t make back. Still a money loser though 

 

Haunted Mansion was made in part to add to D+ family catalogue, so theatrical loss is an “investment” in keeping or growing subs

 

Flash and now Marvels were just flops, failed to bring in the expected audience necessary to justify the budget spend

 

I generally don’t care about budget/profit/loss of films, but if we’re going to talk about, let’s do so from the perspective of the studio heads making these calls, with the knowledge of higher costs/lower revenue now than when films were approved, and the understanding in the steaming era, that the goal may not be to turn a profit on theatrical release alone 

[Johnny Tran]

43 minutes ago, Spidey Freak said:

 

There hasn't been a drop from 100 to 0 in quality in the MCU. It just doesn't have the novelty anymore.

 

Completely disagree.  GOTG Vol 3. simply a better made film than most of what MCU is currently putting out.  It's not even close. 

[Johnny Tran]

14 minutes ago, M37 said:

Haunted Mansion was made in part to add to D+ family catalogue, so theatrical loss is an “investment” in keeping or growing subs

 

This could be said about any movie that comes out from a studio that has a streaming service.  I'm sure a ton of people ended up watching MI7 at home on Paramount or whatever.  I'm sure a lot of people are watching The Flash on Max.   Etc.  

 

Is something like Haunted Mansion really helping Disney+ all that much,  I doubt it.  Not because I don't think people are watching it,  it's just that these streamers have so many problems that whatever little boost a movie might add does nothing to the bottom line or addresses all the issues they have. 

[Johnny Tran]

By the way,  the claws are out.   Scathing piece on The Marvels and the MCU as a whole. 

 

Box Office: The Marvels $47M Lowest for MCU – What Went Wrong – Deadline

 

 

[Reed121]

10 hours ago, Arlborn said:

Assuming slightly above 2X OW legs like Quantumania and 45% DOM / 55% OS split  that has sorta happened for the last 4 or 5 MCU movies, I give it just over 200M WW:

 

95M DOM

110M OS

 

205M WW

 

Is this for real? I thought 200m OS was possible

[Torontofan]

9 minutes ago, Johnny Tran said:

 

Completely disagree.  GOTG Vol 3. simply a better made film than most of what MCU is currently putting out.  It's not even close. 

 

Will say Gunn does a great job hitting the emotional moments in his films.

[Zakiyyah6]

13 minutes ago, Reed121 said:

Is this for real? I thought 200m OS was possible

With all due respect, why would you think that? The film is routinely opening with 75-85% less than Captain Marvel in most markets. 

[grey ghost]

The Game is in my top 3 Fincher movies but I haven't seen many of his movies after Benjamin Button.

 

I couldn't get into Zodiac.

[Torontofan]

17 minutes ago, Johnny Tran said:

By the way,  the claws are out.   Scathing piece on The Marvels and the MCU as a whole. 

 

Box Office: The Marvels $47M Lowest for MCU – What Went Wrong – Deadline

 

 

 

The idea that a late night comedy show appearance would really boost a film in 2023 is so hilarious.

 

Youtubers get bigger audiences then those shows now. 

[Arlborn]

18 minutes ago, Reed121 said:

Is this for real? I thought 200m OS was possible

Yes, going by early numbers and going by the consistent logic of MCU numbers since  Endgame, this should have just slightly above 2X OW legs and a 45%/55% DOM and OS split indeed. 
 

And considering that the expected OW is between 45M and 47M, my numbers seem valid. 
 

It could still surprise with better legs though and/or a breakout OS market, but looking at audience reception, I doubt it, sadly.

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by Arlborn

[M37]

5 minutes ago, Johnny Tran said:

 

This could be said about any movie that comes out from a studio that has a streaming service.  I'm sure a ton of people ended up watching MI7 at home on Paramount or whatever.  I'm sure a lot of people are watching The Flash on Max.   Etc.  

 

Is something like Haunted Mansion really helping Disney+ all that much,  I doubt it.  Not because I don't think people are watching it,  it's just that these streamers have so many problems that whatever little boost a movie might add does nothing to the bottom line or addresses all the issues they have. 

To be clear, I'm not saying the theatrical loss was justified to cover whatever boost there is to streaming by new content (hence why I used the " "s for investment), just that with all these studios having a streaming arm in some form, that secondary consideration has to be factored in

 

Like how much would it have cost to make a low-budget version just for streaming content? Maybe $50M? [I genuinely don't know, just throwing a number out, adjust as one sees fit]. So they could make a $50M version with no theatrical revenue, or a $150M version plus P&A spend - that delta is the figure on which the gross (after sharing) should be compared, because the initial $50M [or whatever] is the investment to add content to the streaming service. I can tell you that's the way the studios are viewing these projects, trying to balance theatrical releases and also feeding the streaming beast

 

I don't know that we can quantify how much a single piece of new content helps a streaming service, but I do know that without consistently updating the catalogue, a service will start to lose subs, so its a cost they have to bear

[Issac Newton]

Tiger 3

 

Saturday Premieres

 

$1,007,330 (760 locs)

 

$653,002 | USA

$354,328 | Canada

[grey ghost]

Ronan 2.0 from The Marvels is one of the clearest signs that Marvel Studios no longer cares.

 

I mean I would blame the writers' strike but that was after the Marvels finished preproduction I think.

[Kon]

26 minutes ago, Johnny Tran said:

By the way,  the claws are out.   Scathing piece on The Marvels and the MCU as a whole. 

 

Box Office: The Marvels $47M Lowest for MCU – What Went Wrong – Deadline

 

 

 

The demographics revealed by Deadline are interesting:

 

Other diagnostics on The Marvels: 65% male leaning, with 45% men over 25, 22% women over 25 (giving it the best grades at 82%), men under 25 at 20%, and women under 25 at 14%. Biggest demo was 25-34 at 33%. Diversity demos were 36% Caucasian, 27% Latino and Hispanic, 17% Black, and 14% Asian. The Marvels secured all of the PLF screens and IMAX, which rep 38% of the weekend’s take. The movie is playing best in the South, South Central, and West with the AMC Disney Springs the pic’s no. 1 venue, with close to $91K so far.  

 

I should mention The Marvels seems to be low on female audience even compared to other MCU movies.

Edited November 12, 2023 by Kon