Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2017

Lego Batman... it has come to that? I remember a movies thread at another music site and I said I was planning on seeing Trumbo and got all kinds of trolling for it, but while I'm not a snob and really do like some sci-fi effects type movies too... I just don't know about the future of movies, so many corporation owned 'properties' and I can't see that a lot of it exists for any reason other than to exploit. I think all people deserve better, but then if movie theaters are really only a maze of giant tv rooms now...

 

Well, this is coming from a full on Lego geek...I collect the larger adult sets, but I saw the Lego Movie recently as my kids got it for me for Christmas. I politely said thank you, thinking there was absolutely no chance I was going to like it. I watched it and you know what? It's a good film! Very smartly written, and funny with good voice characters. I haven't seen the Batman movie yet, but if it's in the same vein than I understand why it's popular. I did not feel exploited in the least. Whether that's the best we can do with movies in general I can't say, but I CAN tell you I saw a movie last week and before it, watched at least ten trailers (And I'm sick of having to sit through all that crap at the movies, finishing my popcorn before the feature even begins). Not a single one was even remotely interesting to me. I just don't get it...what is going on? Just banal, stupidity all over those trailers.

 

I'd argue that all those films made decent profits with ancillary media (home video, streaming, Pat TV, TV syndication, and so on). This explains massive cast changes and time delays between the original and the sequel. A case can be made where the studio agrees to do a sequel, but only at a drastically-reduced budget; they run the numbers and determine the risk is minimal. This happened on the Halloween pictures, remakes of Friday the 13th, and many others.

Another big factor is foreign sales. There have been cases where a studio felt a feature franchise had kind of hit the wall and weren't willing to do any more, then suddenly an overseas investor calls up and says, "we'll kick in half the budget if you make another Movie Y." When they can make a movie for almost no risk at all, they'll do it even though it's almost guaranteed to be only a very marginal success in America.

You know, if you look on it just as a fantasy cartoon for kids, it's not that bad. And there are some laughs in it. Not every movie has to be 100% realistic or artistic or profound. There's room for silly movies as well. I enjoyed Zootopia quite a bit and understand why it was such an enormous success -- it's a very well-made film with a lot going on in the story. It ain't Citizen Kane, it ain't the Coen Brothers, but it's a nice, innocuous 90-minute movie for kids that isn't boring and has a few laughs.

 

I'm sure tired of American film companies feeling like they have to pander to foreign countries in regards to making films. No wonder we are getting crap movies with no substance. If everything they make has to make sense to people of multiple nationalities it is no wonder we are getting films that in many cases should insult the imtelligence of the average American. I watch those trailers and dang it if virtually every single film marketed to kids has a fart joke, and the adult films seem either incredibly bland or are simply full of loud visual action scenes with characters we care nothing about. How can they tell interesting stories if the stories have to appeal to such a ridiculously wide audience of most of the entire world? I can't stand what corporate America has become. They don't serve us anymore. I love movies and I don't go anymore because corporate theater chains have to spend 20 minutes selling me banal stupid movie trailers first, followed by mostly films that just don't resonate anymore. I feel completely insulted by these trailers. As if I possess so little intelligence that I will go watch most of them. But people pay to see them, so clearly I'm just incredibly way off on this issue. It's really sad that the majority just accept how low we have lowered the bar imo, just so corporations can make more money by selling them to a bunch of other countries. Geez, these are not phones or material goods. You have to be able to relate to a film to really enjoy it. How can we relate to things that have to resonate to folks in completely different countries? And why folks in other countries like this garbage....in theory they should be having the same issues! Wow....what a rant. Sorry guys!

I'm glad the rare smart movie can float to the top on occasion, like the light hearted Lego movies, where time was clearly spent trying to make something smart and fun. Sometimes a good film makes it, but it only serves as a reminder of how bad most of the others are. My hat is off to Vidiot. You seem very intelligent to me. Kudos to you for having to sit through some of this stuff while working on it!

 

That's a very long bow to draw. Hollywood has been making stupid, lowest common denominator films for decades (and more), way before overseas markets became a significant profit generator. It's just the nature of the beast - risk averse, lack of vision, originality, courage to make something new, reliance on mega-blockbusters at the expense of smaller more considered films, and then there's the whole cultural anti-intellectual undercurrent permeating society.

This is why I don't consider movies an important source of entertainment. Sure, there are still some good movies that come out each year (most recently Nocturnal Animals and The Edge of Seventeen), but you have to be selective. TV based entertainment if far, far superior as a source of intelligent., engaging and original content.

 

Slightly surprising that "Lego Batman", while still coming in at #1, underperformed compared to estimates immediately preceding the weekend. Box Office Mojo anticipated it would do about $76 million (compared to the studio's always purposely overly-conservative estimate of about $60 million), and the weekend numbers (not yet "actuals") look to be more around $55 million. Usually Box Office Mojo isn't off by almost 30% like that.

Meanwhile, "Fifty Shades" and "John Wick" slightly outperformed their expected numbers.

However, I would expect "John Wick" and especially "Lego Batman" to have much better second week hold-over numbers compared to "Fifty Shades." The first "Fifty Shades" film had a 74% drop off on its second week. Whereas, the original "Lego Movie" only had a 28% drop-off. In addition, "Lego Batman" has little direct competition next week.

 

I caught "John Wick 2" on Saturday night, and it was pretty solid overall. It wasn't drastically different from the first one. I can't say it was better, but it maintained a level of quality compared to the first one that something like, say, "Taken 2" did not.

"John Wick 2" falters just a tiny bit in terms of character motivation. The first film has Wick with a very simple, clear motivation for doing his thing. Not so much in the second one. Or rather, it's a clear force motivating him, but not one that is nearly as compelling.

But if one were to ever admire stunt work and real, in-camera fighting and stunt work both from stunt men and the actual principals (including Reeves), one can't help but admire this film.

There were a few absurd parts, where I almost have to wonder if they were purposely absurd and meant to elicit a laugh. There's one bit where two characters are walking through a subway area, one below and one above on a raised level, and they literally engage in a silent gun fight unbeknownst to everyone around them.

 

There was some nasty weather in the Northeast which may have disrupted the numbers a little for a family film. I am guessing that Lego Batman will have some legs.

 

Well, I guess I need to get to where you are and simply not count on film to be a major source of entertainment anymore. I love the theatre going experience, and it's disappointing that it isn't the same anymore. I didn't know that it's been years and years since the studios, as policy, were looking for properties primarily for world wide release. What a tall order. No wonder we're getting what we're getting. I'm astounded people even bother.

 

When we went to see the dog movie, the people in front of me were there to see Fifty Shades. The theater just converted to lounge seating and they have a screen where you pick what seats you want (I'm not a big fan of that...we picked seats that were too low and I would have normally just walked up another flight). Anyway, I couldn't believe that on a Tuesday night it was 95% full! The dog movie? There were maybe four other people. Glad we picked our seats in advance!

 

I think it's a safe bet we weren't supposed to take not only that but anything else in the movie seriously. That was just the place where the tongue was most firmly in cheek.

 

It's true I haven't seen any Lego movies. To quote The Wailers (the Bob Marley one) Judge Not!

I've never seen 'foreign countries' blamed for lame Hollywood effects movies before. I thought it was pandering to teenage-brained American fanboys/girls and if there were fanboys/girls elsewhere that was just a bonus.

 

"Pandering" to non-US audiences is a fairly new phenomenon, but it does exist. Action movies have always been easier to "translate" so that's one reason they got so much attention, but it's become more country-specific in recent years.

In particular, studios will amend movies to cater to the Chinese audience. Some controversies have arisen due to this - like a recent movie whose name I can't recall where the story was changed to make some country other than China the villains...

 

Chairman Mao has a lot more to answer for then!

 

I haven't been much of an admirer of any of Zhang's forays into historical fantasy/martial arts (that includes Hero), but it is of note that this is his second film with a non-Asian actor in one of the principal roles; the first was 2011's The Flowers of War with Christian Bale.

 

So whatever works for $$OTOH, Hollywood is all about the artistry.

 

Were you thinking of the 2012 remake of Red Dawn?

 

Is there anyone out there who doesn't think that the live character version of Beauty and the Beast isn't going to make an incredible amount of money?

 

Yes it will...but it boggles my mind why this needs to exist. It's the SAME movie as the animated film!! Down to the talking teacups...

I know I know, new audiences blah blah blah, but it feels like such a lazy cash grab imo

 

Maybe so. But the animated version was so good. It was nominated (and should have won, in my opinion) for movie of the year. I think the live version will also be very good. Good story, good actors, great songs. They'll get my money a second time. It's got to be better than Cars 4 or Monsters # whatever!

 

Not blaming foreign countries, was blaming the studios for dummying things down to the point where movies will be understood by other countries.

 

I'm dumb enough to pay to see it again! I think it will do well. Not much else to see.

 

It is a problem of modern filmmaking that you have to bring in a lot of foreign investments in order to ease the debt burden for the Hollywood studios. If China pays $30 million towards the cost of a $150 million Marvel movie, then there's a good chance there will have to be scenes deliberately put in the movie to placate those investors. I don't think it necessarily makes the movie dumber, but it will add different kinds of culture to the story. Sometimes this will work, sometimes maybe not.

 

robocop meets the matrix

 

You may be completely right as far as Hollywood lingo goes, but if I am an investor I'm interested in the NET profit over a given period of time, ie. it's the profit margin that matters.

Say we use your example and say the net profit in the first film is 60 M, and in the second its 100 M and it takes the same amount of time to make each film. Obviously the company is better off in the second case even thought the other one is considered the bigger "hit".

I think it entirely conceivable that the bigger "hit" might not be as good for the company as a lesser "hit".