China Box Office Thread | Oppenheimer-August 30

[LPLC]

1 hour ago, cax16 said:

A new person to add to the list! 

What list ?

[cax16]

15 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

Permission to suggest?

 

PS. Am I in the list. Only person I know I am on ignore list is @titanic2187

You? Never! 

[Mau]

2 hours ago, WandaLegion said:

FK was able to increase in $ at least, but it was only 14%. I suspect that’s a bit less than HW performance in China grew from 2015 to 2018, but finding a clean source is proving annoying.

Frozen 2 increased from the first one by a lot

[peludo]

6 hours ago, LPLC said:

$35M-$40M lifetime is more than the OW you predicted last week. In addition to a disinterest in the film, the movie sucks and the reviews are bad. Another DC Comics film to forget and forgettable like sucide squads or shazam ... . Luckily Marvel and movies like Shang Chi, Eternals, and Black Widow will catch up in 2021.

87% in RT

[Gavin Feng]

21 minutes ago, peludo said:

87% in RT

That doesn’t matter to most audience. 

[Krissykins]

4 minutes ago, Gavin Feng said:

That doesn’t matter to most audience. 

Yeh I think he was saying critic reviews are good, which they are. 

[pepsa]

7 hours ago, WandaLegion said:

FK was able to increase in $ at least, but it was only 14%. I suspect that’s a bit less than HW performance in China grew from 2015 to 2018, but finding a clean source is proving annoying.

I would guess something like Days of the furure past increased big time over the previous one, but that was during the SH boom so yeah.

[charlie Jatinder]

Seems like ¥48-50mn Saturday.

[Gavin Feng]

After the disappointed numbers this weekend, there are something we can still believe or learn  :

For superhero movie, weak pre-sale equals box office flop. Days ago, I still thought there was chance even miracle that most audience would buy tickets after releasing. It happened on many underestimated titles and brought unexpected box office performance. But for Hollywood blockbusters especially superhero movies, most people wouldn’t see it without buy tickets in advance. Dark Phoenix proved it, and now WW84 prove it again. If we get bad pre-sale numbers, there is zero chance it could be a hit. 

 

Don’t add too many anti-type stuffs to your blockbusters. Both The Rescue and WW84 have the problem. For the local pic, I heard director Lam wasn’t very happy that some movie fans thought he could shoot nothing but action scenes. Operation Red Sea, a movie filled with action scenes only, earned nearly $600M here. But Lam decided to challenge a very emotional story he could never tell in The Rescue, proving those harmless reviews were wrong about his incredible filmmaking ability. Then, the movie got lots of negative reactions that could really hurt its box office. They tried to save it by reediting after Covid-19 caused its delay, but the materials were too bad to improve much. Now the $100M budget movie probably would end with $70M lifetime. For WW84, I can see Patty also want to tell a very emotional story that she is good at, but she use too many unnecessary pages to show the emotional depth that simply  could’ve been done with few shoots and scenes, just like the first WW movie. And now, many people even fans couldn’t enjoy it.

 

 

 

 

[charlie Jatinder]

So I watched the trailer of The Rescue. Where did they put the $100mn budget? The VFx and action looks pathetic.

[peludo]

1 hour ago, Gavin Feng said:

That doesn’t matter to most audience. 

I know it. Just saying that I do not see the same kind of critics than Suicide Squad or BvS, as it has been said. If certain markets like China do not like it, it is a different problem than just the film sucks.

[charlie Jatinder]

One film I very surprised Chinese didn't like is Baahubali. It should have done HUGE there.

[Gavin Feng]

Something I still don’t understand: Why the buzz and pre-sale were so bad for WW84. 

 

Was WW84 meant to be a billion level movie? I did expect that result because some factors I wrote, and I also knew it was not a top level IP. So it was not totally going to happen and could miss my expectation. The question is why it miss so much. If it end with something like $80-100M lifetime, I might still figure out why. But at this point, it couldn’t even catch Mulan. That’s very shocking and “unreasonable”. It feels like some kind of mysterious power kill Wonder. Will we know what the power represents? Would it do the same on other Hollywood titles? What kind of results that 2021 WB titles would have? So many things I’m looking forward to seeing.

 

2021 could be more uncertain but determined  for the fate of Hollywood titles here.

 

 

Edited December 19, 2020 by Gavin Feng

[Gavin Feng]

8 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

One film I very surprised Chinese didn't like is Baahubali. It should have done HUGE there.

China don’t even want to see their own history-war epic. No way this kind of movies outside can do huge here.

[Gavin Feng]

19 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

So I watched the trailer of The Rescue. Where did they put the $100mn budget? The VFx and action looks pathetic.

Of course because they trusted Lam after he directed a $570M box office blockbuster. But this time, he use too many vfx things instead of real shots he always did. And in China, it’s a director-central creative system. Studios could only trust him. 

[charlie Jatinder]

12 minutes ago, Gavin Feng said:

Something I still don’t understand: Why the buzz and pre-sale were so bad for WW84. 

I think marketing. The film releasing all of sudden in December was surprise. I still can't believe WB is dumping it like this. Usually you have cast of film doing rounds of interviews and promotional events.

 

When the first trailer came, it was red hot but that was so long ago. After that all the promos were basically footage from first trailer. So there wasn't any reignition in the buzz.

 

Other reason I would like to believe though could be just something I think, in MCU you want to watch every film because something happens in every film. If not general audience, after 10 years there's a big enough 100mn plus hard core fans across world who are keeping up with what's happening and then there are millions of casual fans. WW84 felt like a standalone film. DCEU is going nowhere. So there wasn't any thrill as such.

 

To top all these, the film is coming in free next week. It will be interesting to see how the traffic of film outside America is next week after its HBO Max release, when it hit piracy platform. I think China social media will be best judge of it. 

[charlie Jatinder]

13 minutes ago, Gavin Feng said:

But this time, he use too many vfx things instead of real shots he always did

My question was, where did he spent $100mn because VFx are bad. $100mn should give you very decent VFx. Is he paid too much like $20mn? or some big actor in film paid too much.

 

This is what a $25mn Indian film look and $15mn of it went to just two actor's fees.

 

 

[charlie Jatinder]

30 minutes ago, Gavin Feng said:

China don’t even want to see their own history-war epic. No way this kind of movies outside can do huge here.

The story had chance to work really well. I guess you have seen it?

 

It did very well in Japan. Ran for like 10-11 months there in limited release, and have random screenings every now and then.

[Gavin Feng]

7 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

My question was, where did he spent $100mn because VFx are bad. $100mn should give you very decent VFx. Is he paid too much like $20mn? or some big actor in film paid too much.

 

This is what a $25mn Indian film look and $15mn of it went to just two actor's fees.

 

 

oh, I see what you asked. The real cost is more like $70M. But in China, real budget doesn’t matter. If studio give director $100M, and the filmmaker can finish the movie with $60M, he/she can keep the rest $40M. That’s allowed in Chinese film industry. Also, film business is more like a gamble here. Many studios would invest something they don’t really understand and bet it. They thought Lam deserved $100M, so they just gave him that much money and power without seeing any details of its development. 

[Gavin Feng]

29 minutes ago, charlie Jatinder said:

I think marketing. The film releasing all of sudden in December was surprise. I still can't believe WB is dumping it like this. Usually you have cast of film doing rounds of interviews and promotional events.

 

When the first trailer came, it was red hot but that was so long ago. After that all the promos were basically footage from first trailer. So there wasn't any reignition in the buzz.

 

Other reason I would like to believe though could be just something I think, in MCU you want to watch every film because something happens in every film. If not general audience, after 10 years there's a big enough 100mn plus hard core fans across world who are keeping up with what's happening and then there are millions of casual fans. WW84 felt like a standalone film. DCEU is going nowhere. So there wasn't any thrill as such.

 

To top all these, the film is coming in free next week. It will be interesting to see how the traffic of film outside America is next week after its HBO Max release, when it hit piracy platform. I think China social media will be best judge of it. 

 

I agree that marketing sucked. But Mulan also didn’t do much in marketing due to many sensitive reasons and was hurt by piracy and 3-day window pre-sale. WW84 didn’t have a situation that bad but made worse numbers. That’s what I couldn’t understand.