Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2016

I have a theory that for every superhero made, there's are a dozen potential classic films that will never see the light of day for lack of funding.

Here's my new favorite quote on the subject:

"To me, special effects are a fantastic idiocy. I see no emotion in that... All these crazy idiot supermen look the same. It's terrible. They all have the same goal: To find money, to save money, to make money."
-- Alejandro Jodorowsky, 2016

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I love crazy Jodo.

 

That is the frustrating part. I still rank the Nolan Batman trilogy, the greatest among superhero films (with the Captain America Trilogy not far behind). How can DC be in the wilderness all of a sudden?

 

There's nothing stopping you from making movies for television - they do quite a few. Also miniseries, and anthology series.

 

I don't think it's that simple. I think if it wasn't superhero films, they'd be making some other crap. The key to think about is what I said earlier: the studio would rather make two $250 million films -- with the potential for making $1 billion each -- than they would making ten $50 million dollar "regular" human dramas or comedies. Chances are, at best, most of those films would be lucky to make $50M-$70M each, and that's not as much potential profit as $2 billion.

I'd like to see a world where half the movies they made were nutty action/epic/superhero films and half would be "serious" human dramas, comedies, documentaries, historical films, and so on. But we're going in the other direction, where each studio seems to be trying to "out-super" the other. Mark my words, eventually one studio will make a whole buncha bombs in a row, and they'll have to rethink this thing.

Eh, Supergirl kinda lost me...

 

I think to answer your question would require a book, and I think a lot of Hollywood executives don't really have satisfying answers to these points. I think they're doing the best they can to hold on to their jobs and try to make money for their studios and keep people employed (and profits up), any way they can.

Midnight Special was a Warner Bros. release, so a re-release of E.T. (a Universal picture) wouldn't be happening with it. I also think you can draw your own conclusions as to whether they'd want two very similar movies coming out together.

I would argue that sometimes there are good movies that the critics enjoy, but unfortunately a mass-market audience doesn't want to see them. If they had spent ten times the advertising budget they had on Midnight Special, do you think they would've doubled the box office revenues? I'm looking at this only from a business point of view. Bear in mind that I'm the guy who wishes they would balance out the $200M superhero movie release slate with more mid-budget regular dramas and artsy films.

 

This reminds me a bit of when Capitol released the then-new Beach Boys album Carl & the Passions as a twofer with Pet Sounds in 1972. Nowadays the decision is widely mocked as reflecting a lack of confidence in the new album, so I fear a cinematic version -- a double feature with a known classic of the genre -- would these days be received in much the same way. Plus the one major other recent double feature -- Grindhouse -- was a disaster.

IMO Midnight Special, which I liked, was always going to be a hard movie to sell, since so much of its impact is based on mystery and metaphor that's hard to encapsulate in a trailer or poster.

 

sure, I understand that actually pairing E.T. with Midnight Special was never going to happen, for a lot of reasons. But just as a suggestion to try something that's relevant but different. IDK that it was ever a matter of spending much more $ to promote Nicholls film as much as rolling it out differently. IIRC, it started getting spectacular reviews, but didn't show up in Wisconsin for another 5 weeks. And in just a few theaters. If a studio can't get behind a film with those kind of reviews, what can it do?

Similarily, did Richard Linklater's "Everybody Wants Some" disappear or has it even been released yet? Perhaps this is telling: Richard Linklater Sued by Financier Claiming to Have Been Cut Out of 'Everybody Wants Some' »

 

Yeah, it came out, though it never played more than 454 screens in the US...

 

Exactly. There seems to be this notion that if only Popular Genre A didn't dominate, studios would devote all their energies to non-blockbusters, but that's not gonna happen.

It's like when someone would complain that a studio was re-issuing a movie on DVD when they still hadn't released some other movie, as if the two had anything to do with each other. They didn't - it's not like the 3rd DVD version of something was the only thing keeping some other movie off the shelves...

 

But it's always been part of studio rhetoric, "The more we make on Big Budget films the more resources we have for our indie division and won't have to worry about the losses so much."

 

That's a separate discussion. I'm referring to people who believe that if Studio A stops spending $200 million on one movie, those resources will instead go to fund 6 $50 million movies instead. "Oh, if they'd only stop making those expensive superhero movies, they could pay for all sorts of smaller dramas!"

Not an equivalent - as Vidiot mentioned, no more expensive superhero movies means some other expensive genre flick instead...

 

Oh. Gotcha.

 

Here's an interview with director Jeff Nichols (Mud, Midnight Special) where he mentions studio budgets.

“When I went to Warner Bros., it was before Mud opened. They told me ‘We make $100M films to make $400M, not $25M to make $50M."

‘Midnight Special’ Director Jeff Nichols On Final Cut, ‘Aquaman’ & Why HDTV Evolution Is More Important Than The Screening Room »

 

It came out and even made it across the border - I saw it during its opening weekend - although it did an unusually quick fade too.

 

Here's a question: any film that you thought was particularly well promoted or marketed this year?

 

Not sure. But the opposite would be Stephen Chow's The Mermaid which had virtually nil promotion from Sony and still did gangbusters for a limited release film.

How Sony Buried ‘The Mermaid,’ The Most Popular Movie In Chinese History »

 

The answer is Deadpool. It's probably the best example of a studio's marketing department pushing a movie way beyond its expected box office. It was cleverest pre-release campaign we've seen in years and years.

Fox was merely hoping to break even on Deadpool after the Fantastic Four disaster. No one expected it to become one of the highest grossing R films of all time.

 

I think it faded because crowds didn't go. It attracted decent audiences its first 2 weeks and then that was that...

 

I think a big part of that was that Ryan Reynolds and the director promoted the crap out of the film last summer at ComicCon and had a pretty strong following on social media. And a lot of that was done beyond Fox studios. I can't recall seeing even a single Deadpool TV commercial, though I did see some (but not many) billboards and posters out there. I absolutely saw tons of Fantastic Four TV commercials, and all of them looked cheesy and bad. You can't lipstick on a pig: even a great ad campaign can't turn a bad movie into a hit. I'm not even convinced it could do a lot for a movie like Deadpool, where there was so much word of mouth going on there.

A week before the movie came out, people were going nuts talking about it on Facebook and other services. So the word had already gotten out. I saw it (by a fluke) the night it opened and grabbed a midnight show, and it was about 99% sold out already. I saw it only because the R-rated red band trailer cracked me up, and the initial couple of reviews were great. It was far better than I had expected, and I totally get why it's made $760 million so far.

I think now they're just saying, "the more we make on big budget films, the better our quarterly earnings will be and the higher our stock will go."

 

I dunno, my experience was the opposite. It was clear the studio was trying to bury Fantastic Four with the bare minimum of marketing. But, in Toronto, at least, there was a huge Deadpool billboard on practically every block (and there is again for the DVD release). It was heavily promoted as Valentine's Day counter-programming, and (in my social circle, anyway) that went a long way toward selling it. For what it's worth, I liked the movie OK when I finally saw it, but I don't understand the hysterical response. I didn't find it especially edgy or funny, and the ubiquity of the ad campaign in this city made me cringe.

As for other movies that were well-promoted, Civil War had nothing but great trailers, which nonetheless managed to withhold some surprises -- a rare thing! Zootopia's initial trailer and poster helped sell the setting and characters without touching on the more challenging subtexts of the movie, which in a way also counts as holding back a surprise. The Star Wars promotions were a total master class for what was, IMO, a meh movie.

 

I think the scenario you envision already exists. In my area there is no shortage of indie, foreign, classic revival movies playing at the local art house. It has been like this since at least the mid 90s when that was my scene. These are movies that will never crack the top ten and will almost never take in even $20 million.

Such movies exist and people can enjoy them regardless of where they land on Boxoffice Mojo's lists.

 

Probably didn't help that it had absolutely no name stars in it whatsoever. Linklater is well-respected among critics, and has a pretty devout following who will see everything he puts out, but he's not exactly box office dynamite.

 

Not easy to do in LA, a city of 10 million people.

 

What other Genre can played enough up to waste all kinds of money..
That hasn't been done over past 30 years...