Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2016

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Dec 18, 2015.

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  1. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    If they hype it anywhere near to the extend that they've hyped up The Force Awakens, Rogue One will do well, I think. Hell, there's enough hardcore Star Wars anoraks in the world that'll flock to go see it, that's all they need for it to do well.
     
  2. ZAck Scott

    ZAck Scott Senior Member

    If that's the case, why didn't Episode one overtake Titanic in 1999? Star wars needs to be ross over to other audiences and not just the fan base. This is why The force Awakens is now #2 in all time domestic gross.
     
  3. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    My guess is regarding Episode 1, word of mouth from the aforementioned Star Wars anoraks that the film basically sucked killed any chances of it overtaking Titanic. Not that Titanic was really any great shakes either, mind ya:laugh:
     
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  4. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    But "Titanic" was much beloved by millions. Some people claim there was tons of hype behind "Titanic", while that's not true at all. After its release, it generated lots of press attention, but that was because it was so popular - people couldn't get enough about the film. "Titanic" was a "grass roots" hit for the most part - it was a true cultural phenomenon.

    On the other hand, "Phantom Menace" was massively hyped - and viewed as a massive disappointment by many fans. I agree that the word of mouth damaged it - if fans liked "TPM" as much as they like "TFA", the former would've been a bigger hit.

    As it stands, "Menace" made a ton of money - it's still #7 on the all-time US box office list - but it should've done better. "Force" demonstrates how powerful the "Star Wars" franchise can be when fans actually like the movie!
     
  5. daglesj

    daglesj Forum Resident

    Location:
    Norfolk, UK
    Yeah I remember the buzz was huge before release but within a few days after release, people were coming back to the office going "No..don't bother!" It nosedived from then on.

    This time round the conversation is -

    Person A - "Went and saw the new Star Wars movie the other day!"

    Person B - "Oh yes? What did you think?"

    Person A - "Actually pleasantly surprised, quite enjoyed it!"

    Person B - "Yes I was very surprised at how good it was, especially after how crap the prequels were!"


    Never bothered to see Titanic at the cinema and still to this day still haven't watched it from start to finish. I watched some of the final hour or so a few months ago and some of the CGI effects are sub Asylum Pictures quality now.
     
  6. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    In the US at least, "Phantom Menace" actually held pretty steady at the box office. It made about one-third of its gross in its first 10 days, which shows it had decent legs.

    Movies with really bad word of mouth tend to be much more front-loaded. Take the 2001 "Planet of the Apes", for example: it grossed $180 million US - a very nice take for 2001 - but $96 million of that came from the first week.

    "POTA" opened well but sank like a stone after that first week, as word got out that the movie wasn't good. It fell almost 60% after Week One, and then dropped another 51% after Week Two.

    Clearly bad WOM hurt "Phantom Menace", but the "Star Wars" brand remained strong enough that it never nose-dived...
     
  7. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    Well here's a poll from Variety about the year's most anticipated movies and guess what's at the top?

    http://variety.com/2016/film/news/star-wars-rogue-one-2016-anticipated-movies-1201670942/
     
  8. lbangs

    lbangs Senior Member

    Good golly, I hope besting Titanic isn't our definition of doing well!

    The Phantom Menace was a terrible bore and still pulled in over a billion. I think most films, even blockbusters, would love to run those numbers, whether or not they become the number one top grossing film.

    The Star Wars name will be enough to spark great interest. A decent trailer will get butts in the seats. A good film (or heck, a fan pleaser, not always the same thing) will be enough for Rogue One to succeed wildly.

    Shalom, y'all!

    L. Bangs
     
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  9. Bryan

    Bryan Starman Jr.

    Location:
    Berkeley, CA
    True. Depends how they market it, though. I could see that being balanced out by lots of casual fans who simply assume it's the next episode in the main saga. Fairly uncharted territory for Star Wars.
     
  10. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    I was living in London when Titanic came out...I seem to remember it got quite a bit of pre-release hype at the time, mainly focusing on the whole "most expensive movie ever made" aspect. When I took my flatmates to go and see it, I put it to them like this: "C'mon, let's go see the most expensive movie ever made!" And, boy, did I feel cheated...I was expecting a disaster movie (and I loves me a good disaster movie...and even some of the bad ones too) and got a g-ddamn love story instead:laugh:
     
  11. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    I went to see Titanic without knowing much about the production. I came away impressed and entertained. Excellent movie.
     
  12. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Most of the pre-release attention given to "Titanic" was negative - it was about the super-high budget and the production delays.

    There wasn't much positive focus on these matters, as I recall. The general thought was that it would be a financial disappointment at best...
     
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  13. Maggie

    Maggie like a walking, talking art show

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    Star Wars is now the highest-grossing film in North American history, having just bested Avatar's $760 million take.

    I must admit, I way underestimated the interest in this movie. Even after having seen it, I'm not sure what the big deal is. It's fine. But historically, hits of this size have given a mass audience an experience they've never quite had before, which isn't really the case for this picture. It feels very familiar in all respects.
     
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  14. Ken_McAlinden

    Ken_McAlinden MichiGort Staff

    Location:
    Livonia, MI
    The exception seems to be getting less rare for me:

    Last five Pixar films:

    Cars 2
    Brave
    Monsters University
    Inside Out
    The Good Dinosaur

    Up Next: Finding Dory

    Last five Walt Disney Feature Animation Films

    Tangled
    Winnie the Pooh
    Wreck-It-Ralph
    Frozen
    Big Hero 6

    Up Next: Zootopia

    Inside Out is by far the best film of the bunch, but taken as a whole, I would say that the Disney films have been just as good or better since Toy Story 3.

    Note that I am not including stuff from DisneyToons Studio such as Planes and Planes: Fire and Rescue
     
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  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I gotta say, the Zootopia trailers have really made me laugh. This is a clever, funny idea for a movie, and the performances and animation are terrific.

    I can buy into an alternate reality where animals have taken over the world, though I still get a little grinchy over the whole opposable thumb issue... but if you take the movie as a goof, it's fine. I don't have the problems with Zootopia that I do with Cars.
     
  16. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I've seen the "Zootopia" trailer numerous times. It's a very funny, cute scene with the sloth. But the trailer tells zip about the movie. True, most trailers give away too much. But this one kinda of doesn't tell me enough; not that a Disney animated movie needs a gripping narrative.

    My guess is that "Zootopia" will be a solid film, but typically I'd worry at least a *little bit* when the trailer is less a trailer and more a scene excerpt. I also sometimes worry that they put the funniest such scene in the trailers.

    While I'm not surprised at the middling success (e.g. it'll probably turn a profit eventually despite the ballooned budget, once all the worldwide receipts and home video receipts come in) of "The Good Dinosaur", I actually think the film is a LOT stronger than a lot of reviewers have given it credit for. Simple, but often quite poignant themes in that one. I thought it was stronger in it's simplicity than the more pandering, cloying "Inside Out." I think there's a slight chance that "The Good Dinosaur" might end up being a bit of an "Iron Giant" where animation fans look back on it a decade or two from now and appreciate it more.

    Separately, "The Good Dinosaur" has the most stunning CGI animation I've ever seen. Doesn't mean squat as to the actual content of the film, but given how the stunningly banal "Avatar" skirted by mostly on the visuals, I'm surprised animation buffs who don't scoff at CGI haven't talked more about the jaw-dropping visuals in "The Good Dinosaur." There truly are times that it looks like it's a live-action setting. Somehow, the actual textures of the cartoony dinosaur designs are still more realistic than those found in "Jurassic World" (and that's coming from someone who liked "Jurassic World" more than a lot of folks).
     
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  17. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    The industry was so sure that Titanic was gonna be a flop, there was a weekly "Titanic Watch" column in Daily Variety talking about the latest production delays, cost overruns, schedule snafus, and so on. Six months before it came out, I said, "there's no way this film came make any money! It's a historical costume drama, everybody knows the ending already, and all the characters die at the end!" So much for me.

    What I hadn't considered is that Cameron had the great idea of making the story a wraparound for a 100-year-old woman who knows the secret of a missing jewel, along with a brief but torrid romance that happened in the few days she was aboard the ship. Once I saw the movie, I was floored. I think it had a lot of cornball and stereotypical elements, but it's clearly a crowdpleasing movie and there's a lot of fun and pathos in it. I totally get why it did so well... proving once again that you can't always tell just from a vague description of the idea how a movie will turn out with a mass audience.
     
  18. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I just watched this again and laughed my azz off all over again. This goes far beyond the "Sloth" scene.



    The difference is that Iron Giant cost $70M and made $30M (losing more than $40M); Good Dinosaur (still in release) cost $200M and has only made $244M, which is not even half what it needed to break even. This is a good example of a big film that really needed to make $500M+. Losing $200M is a much bigger problem than losing $40M, and I think there were huge expectations on Dinosaur as well.

    BTW, I really love Brad Bird's Iron Giant and got it on Blu-ray not long ago. It's a terrific movie that should've done better. But there are an awful lot of films like that these days.
     
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  19. mikeyt

    mikeyt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Where did you get it?? I was under the impression that it was going to be released this year and no date had been made official yet.
     
  20. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Doh, I saw where it had a limited theatrical reissue run and just "assumed" it would be out any minute. A friend of mine actually promised it to me for Xmas -- that would explain why it hasn't shown up yet. What's with the studio? I think I even read there were going to be a couple of hours of extra bits on the Blu-ray.
     
  21. mikeyt

    mikeyt Forum Resident

    Location:
    Los Angeles, CA
    Ahh. I've been waiting for this disc so I was like, "HOW DID I MISS IT?! WHERE DO I ORDER??! AMAZON SHOWS NOTHING WHAT IS HAPPENING??"

    I have no idea what the hold up is, I don't have friends at WB content anymore. The Signature Edition DVD has come out so I don't know what could be holding up the blu ray.
     
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  22. ohnothimagen

    ohnothimagen "Live music is better!"

    Location:
    Canada
    That's how I remember it as well. Keep in mind that when I was going on about Titanic "hype" earlier I never specifically said if it was positive or negative, just overhype almost on a Force Awakens scale...that the damn thing ended up being a runaway success took a lotta people by surprise.
     
  23. Oatsdad

    Oatsdad Oat, Biscuits, Abbie & Mitzi: Best Dogs Ever

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I remember my friend mocked the notion that "Titanic" would make money. It needed to earn $500 million US to go into the black, and this was when precisely zero movies had ever made $500 million unadjusted.

    Of course, "Titanic" went on to make $600 million! :eek:

    IIRC, I was hopeful that it'd be good, but I didn't think it'd be a huge hit. I thought it might do okay but certainly didn't expect the enormous ticket sales...
     
  24. balzac

    balzac Senior Member

    I haven't seen the other trailer for "Zootopia", so I'll definitely check it out.

    In the case of a possible long-term critical reassessment, I was talking purely about reviews and critical opinion shifting over time. Nothing to do with budget or profit. In ten years, nobody is going to care what the film cost or how much it made. Most people don’t care now.

    Especially when the math doesn't even have any overtly internal logic. If "The Iron Giant" cost $70M and made $30M and therefore "lost" $40M, how did "The Good Dinosaur" cost $200M, and make $244M, and still "lose" $200M? By that measure, if a film needs to make at least twice its budget to "break even", would it not at least be more accurate to say that "The Iron Giant" lost more like $90M? (Based on needing to make $140M to break even on a budget of $70M)? And then, $90M in 1999 adjusted for inflation would be more like $128M in today's dollars. I know the two films are not entirely analogous, and I really like both films. But people LOOOOVE "The Iron Giant" 16 years later and it probably still hasn't turned a big profit. Considering "The Good Dinosaur" has been merchandised up the wazoo like most Pixar/Disney films, those ancillary items are also helping it a lot more than something like "The Iron Giant" that had and has relatively few such merchandising lines.

    (I should point out I actually bought the supposedly full-scale "replica bolt" from the "Iron Giant" put out by Mondo recently and I love it!)

    I know one of the main ideas behind a thread like this is to look at the financials. But there’s a point at which it's missing the point. Objectively, if two films sell the same amount of tickets, by at least *one* measure, they are equally as successful or popular even if one film had a budget ten times as large.

    Knowing what a film cost, or knowing that it may not or probably won’t turn a profit, doesn’t make me like it more or less. I think knowing the back story of a troubled production, with cost overruns and whatnot, can color our expectations going into a film. I was stunned how solid “The Good Dinosaur” was, and I’m guessing some of the folks working on it know that if they had simply done their thing to it from the outset (which is an easy theoretical to suggest), it would have saved Disney tens of millions of dollars, perhaps close to $100 million.

    I find the whole issue of movie budgets quite interesting, but I also care more about what I like than whether Disney or whichever studio turned a profit. If someone made a good film, I don’t care how much it cost. And even if we *do* want to start throwing blame around, it kind of appears as though at least some of the team that “rescued” something like “The Good Dinosaur” salvaged it *after* the bad decisions and problems had arisen.

    I think too much of the financials have crept into seemingly “critical” assessments of movies. It’s one thing if the trade papers are reporting on cost overruns and budget issues at the studios. And even a quick aside about a ballooned budget or production problems sometimes makes sense within a film review. But if someone just asks me whether I liked a film or not, at no point does the budget or profit margin for the film come up.
     
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  25. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I've gone into this many times in past discussions in the 2015 and 2014 thread. The short version is:

    1) studios generally only get to keep a percentage of the money than theaters take in -- averaging roughly 50-60% over the commercial life of the film.

    2) bank interest is charged against the budget from the day the film starts to the day it breaks even, so that adds up over time

    3) studios typically charge overhead (distribution fees, office space, equipment rental, soundstage rental, and other expenses) against the budget as well

    4) there are "gross profit participants" that get money from the unadjusted gross, generally the stars of the film; the actual profits are calculated after these people get their percentages.

    5) there are "P&A expenses" (prints and advertising) involved with getting copies of the film to theaters and creating trailers and TV commercials to promote the movie to audiences, often adding as much as 50% to the budget. It's been said that Disney spent more than $250M on P&A for Star Wars, which cost roughly $200M to make... meaning their total investment was north of $400M.

    In round numbers, a movie that costs about $100M has to make at least $200M (2X negative cost) just to break even. By about $250M, it's made a profit. But a small-budget film -- say, a little indie like Whiplash, which only cost $3.3M -- might actually take more than 2X to break even, because the promotion expenses are still extremely high. They could easily spend $10M on TV commercials for a movie like this, so it would have to gross more like $15M to break even.

    There's also the complication of "Hollywood Accounting," where the studios define profit in a certain way to avoid ever having to pay anybody their net profit participation. Famously, in a 1988 lawsuit involving the Paramount picture Coming to America, Eddie Murphy referred to net points as "monkey points," meaning only a monkey would be stupid enough to believe the movie would ever really be profitable by the studio's definition. Here's a profit & loss sheet from Warner Bros. showing why Harry Potter 5 made no money, even though it cost over $300M and made $612M, it's made no profit... and in fact is in the hole over $100M:
    [​IMG]
    A lot about how film profits work came out in the Art Buchwald vs. Paramount "Coming to America" lawsuit. This was a case where writer Buchwald won the case, but because he only got a percentage of the profits, the court ruled that the movie had only made about $100,000 in profits... even though the movie technically grossed over $250 million more than it cost.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coming_to_America

    It's fair to say that when a movie makes ridiculous crazy money -- films like Airplane, which cost $3M and made $130M, or American Graffiti, which cost $800K and made $140M -- there's so much money, the studio can't hide it and so they actually had net profit points that they had to pay the various people who got points in their deals. But this doesn't happen often.

    Hollywood Accounting is pretty insidious...
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_accounting
     
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