Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2017

You forgot he's also an actor, since he decided to insert himself into several of his films for no discernible reason.

 

The reason: large ego. Not a rarity in his business.

 

I caught "Split" last night, and it was about on par with "The Visit." That is, an interesting enough premise and well made overall, but kind of a weird hybrid of old style Shyamalan and "Blumhouse" dime-a-dozen horror flick.

I think "Split" has some tone problems. But there were certainly some compelling moments, and it's an interesting premise.

I will say that there is a key element to the film that everybody is talking about that requires you to have seen another specific movie; and I'm pretty sure a good hunk of the people who are seeing "Split" haven't seen that other film. It's not that the film entirely hinges on the other film or anything, but it has to be leaving some folks at the end scratching their head, because it's painfully clear even if you haven't seen the other film that Shyamalan is trying to reference *something* else and use that as a "twist." Weird. I was (unfortunately) in a theater full of pretty young folks, and nobody seemed to "get" what the reference was to the other movie.

I have to credit McAvoy, as it would be so easy for his performance to veer into camp. It may even veer that way at a few moments, but you have to be a solid actor to pull his performance off. Yes, one of the voices basically just sounds like Drederick Tatum from "The Simpsons" (itself a spoof of Mike Tyson), and I find it implausible that his character could to wardrobe changes so quickly. Anya Taylor Joy is undoubtedly solid (and once again playing a downbeat, dour character as she does in "The Witch" and "Morgan"), while the other two girls in the film seem ripped from a generic b-grade slasher flick. I think the three girls have a few moments of being conveniently either too smart or too dumb, but it only happens a few times thankfully.

Betty Buckley as the "Doctor" is a weird one; she kind of ends up coming across shockingly almost as weird as McAvoy's character. I kind of wish they had developed her character a bit more.

Overall, a solid effort that I wouldn't say is anywhere near Shyamalan's best work, and I'm not even a huge fan of "The Sixth Sense" or much of his work. "Signs" is probably my favorite of his, and I'm actually not as hard on something like "The Village" as others are. But yeah, a lot of other stuff is pretty bad.

I think Shyamalan has found a good "model" for getting out of his rut of being mocked and criticized, but it's coming at the expense of doing something a little more organic. I feel like he's hybridizing his style with the current trend of cheap, crappy but easily profitable horror movies.

I sense that the degree to which "Split" is a "hit", that has more to do with it being akin to cheap youth-oriented horror flicks than it is a huge swath of people really looking at this as a "Shyamalan Event Movie."

 

Shyamalan seems to be a serviceable actor in his little quick bit part in "Split." If you don't know what he looks like, you'd never know it's a cameo from the director and wouldn't give it a second thought. But if you do know what he looks like, it immediately becomes silly and distracting in the moment and comes across as indeed rather ego-driven. It isn't like the Hitchcock thing where he just walks by in front of the camera in a few seconds.

 

I'd like to see Shyamalan "return to form" but I don't think he does so with "Split" - or with "The Visit".

Honestly, I think both are pretty bad movies. Saw "Split" yesterday and felt it was poorly constructed and overly campy...

 

I have not seen either yet, so I will not comment on the quality of the films.

But, the 75% critic score and 83% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, combined with box office success is certainly a comeback. As to him reaching the heights of the first four films, who knows?

Sixth Sense - 85% critics, 89% audience
Unbreakable - 68% critics, 77% audience
Signs - 74% critics, 67% audience
The Village - 43% critics, 57% audience (I love this film)

 

I actually had to take a college course in "Young Adult Literature" back around ten years ago, and one of the books we read was "Running Out of Time", which unbeknownst to me at the time, was something that many claimed "The Village" had ripped off, to the point where lawsuits were bandied about but apparently never happened.

After watching "The Village", I thought it was an interesting premise with some interesting bits, but that "Running Out of Time" might have been a better item to make a movie out of.

 

Tried to see 'Manchester by the Sea' twice, each time sold out. But was playing in a very small auditorium, like 50 seats. (Should have bought tickets online.) Anyways, anecdotally, it seems like around here the film wasn't given much of a chance to cultivate an audience. I wonder if with some films, the marketing whizzes (whizi?) should reverse the model of a few limited showings to garner Coastal City Hype and eventually release the film in secondary markets 2 or 3 months after the initial reviews. (I guess secondary markets are everything outside of IMPORTANT BIG CITIES ON THE COASTS.) Why not start in the Midwest and build awareness outward?

 

One major thing is that they were able to get the film done for $10 million, which is downright cheap these days. It won't have to make much money in order to do well.

Haaaaaaaaarible.

Actually, if you read the book The Man Who Heard Voices: Or, How M. Night Shyamalan Risked His Career on a Fairy Tale and Lost, Shyamalan is a much more insecure guy than you think. He claims he occasionally has worked as an actor because a) he enjoys it and b) he works cheap. Read the book and you won't get the impression of a guy with a large ego. I think he was really stunned by the failure of movies like Lady in the Water, and I think making smaller, inexpensive films is a much better strategy for some of his stories.

Having said that, The Happening is one of the worst films made in human history. Even Mark Wahlberg has blasted that on interview shows in the last few years.

 

"The Happening" is an interesting one, because it's perhaps the biggest-budget film that kind of enters that realm of "The Room" or "Troll 2" in terms of "so bad it's funny."

I have a recollection that Shyamalan tried to claim the humor was on purpose, but I'm not so sure.

I actually rank "The Happening" above some of his other films because some of the other ones are just flaccidly bad, while "The Happening" is hilarious in several spots.

 

I obviously understand that HUGE movies can't be made for that price, but why can't more of the studios find talent that can take $9 million and make around $100 million? That's a pretty nice profit margin even using the highest multipliers.

Four or five movies like that spread across the year would be the equivalent of a "Captain America" or "Rogue One" for any studio. Actually, considering those huge films are around $500 million but cost $200+, five "Split" scenarios would end up costing around $50 million but making around $500 million. All hypotheticals of course.

It's a bummer that this tact has been taken more in recent years with *super* crappy horror flicks. Shyamalan's "Split" has that vibe a little bit (again, the Blumhouse connection as mentioned before), but is a step above that stuff.

 

I would guess it is no easier to get a "hit" under this scenario. There is just not as much at stake.

Split made $40 million and is #1, but that is an accomplishment.

Sleepless opened last weekend to $8 million (it cost $30 million, but even if it cost $10 million like Split, it would not be profitable), which will not be helping the studio's bottom line.

I guess what I am saying is, it may be just as hard to get "Split" numbers out of low budget, low advertised films, as it is to get $1 billion out of tent poles.

 

I'll see Kingsman, Dunkirk, Wonder Woman.

 

I have a couple of stories on that:

1) when Matsushita first bought Universal Studios in 1990, the top Japanese executives flew out and had a big meeting with the heads of the studio. The execs (including Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg) gave them a thorough presentation on all the upcoming films planned over the next 2-3 years. The Matsushita execs listened patiently and said, "our only request is that you make better films that make more money. You need to avoid making unsuccessful films." The American execs were perplexed, and tried to explain that making films is not the same process as making the same electronic device over and over again in a factory and selling thousands of them in stores. The Japanese execs were taken aback when they realized how terribly risky the film business is, since you're basically starting from scratch every time you make a new film. Five years later, Matsushita unloaded Universal on Seagrams, glad to be out of the movie-making business.

2) back in 1991, then-head of production for Disney, Jeffrey Katzenberg, wrote an infamous 21-page company memo that detailed how they needed to curtail expenses and avoid making costly "blockbuster" films, which were too risky. He felt that it was better to go for a bunch of small single-base hits and a few 2- or 3-base hits a year, rather than make a big swing for a home run, which was too much of a gamble. Katzenberg felt it was far smarter to make (say) a dozen $10 million films a year, rather than make two $50 million films and one $20 million film. Much to Jeffrey's consternation, the memo was widely circulated and laughed at, but I think he has some sobering thoughts... including some that I suspect he now wishes he had adhered to while at Dreamworks Animation.

Jeffrey Katzenberg's Letters of Note: Some Thoughts on Our Business »

It's fair to say that, in the aftermath of Avatar and all the Marvel films and the Batman films and all the Harry Potter franchise pictures, the studios have abandoned that plan and would rather make a $150 million film that has the potential to make a billion dollars, rather than make a $10 million film that has the potential to make $100 million.

 

The audience I was with was thoroughly bored by a lot of it, but they did laugh at some of the scenes. It's a perplexingly strange film.

BTW, getting back to current bombs, Ben Affleck's crime drama Live By Night was such a big disaster, it lost $75 million...

Ben Affleck’s ‘Live By Night’ Flop Results in $75 Million Loss»

I think the pressure is on for him to make a hit Batman film, and fast.

 

He's not the only one under pressure - a few years ago Dennis Lehane was the flavor of the month in the literary/adapted screenplay world. He had transitioned from writing a very good detective series into the rarified world of the popular novelist with literary credentials with the (excellent) Mystic River.

When Clint Eastwood adapted it faithfully into an equally excellent movie and Affleck picked up his best detective novel, Gone, Baby Gone and directed a really good (if minor) movie version, it looked like Lehane had reached the top of the heap.

Then came the abominable Shutter Island. The book was completely unlike anything he had written before and its big ending was telegraphed so far in advance, and its characters were so boring, that you reached the end with a sigh of relief and pitched the book across the room. I hated it so much I never bothered with the big budget movie version, which pretty much tanked.

Lehane then decided to write "major" historical novels. The first, Any Given Day, was a Ragtime ripoff that mainly made you wish you were reading Ragtime and the second, Live by Night, was a Godfather II copy, with cardboard characters and ludicrous action scenes, that may have sunk LeHane's Hollywood career while putting serious holes in Affleck's. ( Do you get the idea sometimes that no one really likes Affleck? His talent is respected, more as director than actor, but there's some serious Shadenfreude going on when his projects aren't wildly successful.) The third, World Gone By, picks up a few years after Live by Night, and I know I read it, but I can't remember a single thing about it (never a good sign.)

It's hard to see where Lehane goes from here. He published a weak Gone, Baby, Gone sequel in the middle of his epic binge, but you could tell his heart wasn't in it and it sank with barely a ripple. He's like the indie rock band that has an unexpected Top Forty hit and sells out for the sales.

Affleck, on the other hand, will probably be okay, regardless of how the whole superhero thing turns out. He's seriously talented, but every time I see him I'm reminded of Joey Tribiani's "smell the fart" acting lesson in Friends.

 

When these "bombs" come up, I always end up asking "Is anyone *really* surprised this film didn't perform well?" I don't mean that as a rhetorical device to deride the film being made. I mean it in the literal sense, as in, "Are film industry writers/journalists inventing/feigning shock at a film bombing when everybody knew it was going to be a poor performer?"

There are certainly cases where a film stunningly underperforms. In recent times, this ironically comes about with films that still sell *tons* of tickets but were expected to sell more. "Batman v Superman" would be one example of a film that was one of top grossing films of the year, but was considered an underperformer because it only hit $860 million or whatever instead of over a $1 billion.

But this glut of movies that nobody outside of the filmmakers and the studio seemed to have any belief would perform extremely well (and even then you can only assume the studio felt that way; even they may not have), followed by shocked "Bomb!" headlines is, I guess in some weird semantic way, is bothering me more and more.

Weeks and months before "Live by Night" came out, I think most everybody knew it was not going to be a huge hit. Same thing with "Monster Trucks" (which even the studio admitted far in advance was going to bomb).

I suppose one could argue that people could see something like "Alice Through the Looking Glass" bombing from a mile away, but writers had to wait to deride the film until the actual official box office receipts came in.

But these box office prognosticators (Box Office Mojo, etc.) seem to be pretty darn good at pegging a movie's performance. They're *very* rarely far off. In other words, a movie's performance, especially a "bomb" (versus an unexpected boost in sales), is almost always easy to predict within a certain range.

If "Rogue One" had been expected to do $500 million+ domestically and ended up at $100 million or something, if it was expected to have a $100 million+ opening weekend and only did $20 million or something, then *that* would be a legit story.

 

Blockbusters: Why Big Hits - and Big Risks - are the Future of the Entertainment Business by Anita Elberse explains that money made from one source is worth more than money made from multiple sources (concentration of marketing dollars etc). These small movies just aren’t worth the money to advertise when they could use that money for TV ads for a superhero movie instead. Not a great book but worth a read if the subject interests you.


Blockbusters: Why Big Hits - and Big Risks - are the Future of the Entertainment Business eBook: Anita Elberse: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store »

 

January is the traditional dumping ground for bad films, so pretty much anything released in the month is guaranteed to be a critical bomb and probably a box office bomb as well, unless the film had a very small budget (like Split).

 

I think that's changed over the years. Studios still "dump" a lot of movies in January, but they've put out movies for which they have bigger financial hopes as well.

I think "Paul Blart" was the movie that changed a lot of minds - it seemed like standard "dumping ground" material but it made a ton of money.

"American Sniper" showed the power of the January release as well. While technically a 2014 film, it didn't go wide until mid-January 2015 and it earned massive $.

I think a lot of the "dumping ground" trend was because those movies still competed with hits from the prior Christmas. I guess studios figured the big "previous year" flicks were still churning out $ so they didn't want to compete with themselves.

It's not like studios haven't known for a long time that there's lots of money to be made in January. For instance, "Titanic" made only $116 million of its $600 million in its release month of December...

 

Shutter Island cost $80M and made $295 million, so that's actually a good-sized success (financially).

Well, that's kind of the point of this thread: it's interesting to sit back in the comfort of our living rooms and pretend to be armchair studio execs and question whether a certain film is going to be successful or not. I've often said, "oh, there's no WAY this film can possibly make a dime," and sometimes I'm right, sometimes I'm wrong. I can say two films I pegged as being massive bombs: Turbo and Mr. Peabody for Dreamworks, and those films were so disastrous, they basically had to sell the studio and the CEO had to walk away.

You'd be surprised. Once in awhile, a little film comes from out of nowhere and manages to become a huge hit -- critically, financially, and artistically. As a recent example, La La Land only cost $30M, but it's already made north of $180M and has 14 Oscar nominations. That'll do $250M, easy. It's great to see a film like that that's actually decent, well-made, does all the right things, didn't cost a ton of money, presents a (more or less) original story, isn't a sequel, doesn't have any explosions or action scenes, but tells a simple tale and does it very well.

 

And related to this thread, today's news: Sony just revealed that their film studio has lost $962,000,000 over the last year or so, but insists the studio "is not for sale."

Sony Warns of $962 Million Goodwill Loss, Says Studio is Not For Sale »

Guaranteed, there's gonna be a lot of heads rolling in the executive suites very soon. They need some hit movies and fast.

 

Yikes. I don't agree with everything in this article, but its fundamental premise is correct.

Why Hollywood as We Know It Is Already Over »