Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2018

Purely anecdotal story here, but in Seattle, the Cinerama opted to hold over Black Panther for a few more weeks, and canceled a planned run of A Wrinkle In Time as a result. (They then went straight to Tomb Raider this past weekend, but a cursory glance at the seating availability indicates that one isn't doing too well for them either.)

 

March 2018 vs March 2017 : not good, out of the $722.5 million for 2018 - Black Panther accounted for 195.4 million or 27%.


Box Office: Hollywood Suffers Worst March Downturn in Recent Memory

The month's last hope at the U.S. box office is Steven Spielberg's 'Ready Player One,' which opens Thursday, the eve of Easter weekend.
With less than a week to go, Hollywood's major March releases have failed to bloom at the North American box office, triggering the worst year-over-year decline for the month in recent memory.

March revenue through Sunday was an estimated $722.5 million, a 28 percent decline from the same time period last year ($997.3 million), according to comScore.

The last hope for redemption is Steven Spielberg's pricey Ready Player One, which Warner Bros. and Amblin Entertainment open in theaters Thursday, the eve of Easter weekend.

Last year, films released in March ultimately generated north of $1.2 billion in domestic ticket sales, led by Beauty and the Beast ($504 million), Logan ($226 million), The Boss Baby ($175 million) and Kong: Skull Island ($168 million) And in 2016, that same stat was $939 billion, fueled by Zootopia ($341 million) and Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice ($330.4 million).

 

I really hope they take their time with the FF. That's a tough property to get right. I think they need to quit trying to make it hip or diverse or whatever and just go back to the comic book and see what made it tick in the first place. We need a grand, epic space saga with Doomsday level consequences. It's weird having the MCU come alive before our eyes and not having the FF be a part of it. They are the first family of Marvel comics after all.

I regret is that it's too late to introduce the 4 Horsemen narrative thread into the movies: that Reed Richards, Tony Stark, Bruce Banner and Victor Von Doom all went to college together. That might have been a great foundation to build on had all of the characters been under one roof from the outset. Ah well. No crying over spilt story lines.

 

These are all artificial 'milestones' designed to fill a narrative of impending doom & gloom for Hollywoo. Pick a category, March, and then run some stats that agree with your thesis (or perhaps the other way around). This is nothing but p-hacking.

How is it not good that a monster hit made well over a billion dollars in takings worldwide? Again, nothing but numerology. A real disaster would be if no big tentpole films made money in a year.

 

the trailers for Ready Player One are not making me want to see it.

 

My parents went to see the new Chappaquiddick movie which is about Ted Kennedy today and both did not like it at all. In fact, they thought it was boring.

 

I'm telling ya, I have a terrible hankering for a movie featuring an oversized albino ape and a pro wrestler. What do you know?

 

Bring on "Soldado" already!

 

Look at what Jumanji did.

 

The Predator trailer is up IMDb and looks meh. Been wrong with trailers before.

 

any 80's remake is a dive.

like that new karate kid one, wow, talk about dribble, came on tv one morning, and after less than 7 minutes, i turned it to watch law & order reruns,

 

Must admit enjoyed the bare knuckle thrill ride The Commuter.

 

Life of The Party Bombed I think carrer is done in movies..
and Overboard bombed too..

 

SOLO headed to a financial hit in the range of $50-$80 million, not what Disney hoped for that's for sure, maybe they could reduce Iger's compensation package to make up the difference.

'Solo' Will Lose $50M-Plus in First Defeat for Disney's 'Star Wars' Empire

Solo: A Star Wars Story. In one of the biggest box-office surprises in recent times, Solo is badly underperforming and will become the first of the Star Wars movies made by Disney and Lucasfilm to lose money.

Wall Street analyst Barton Crockett says Solo will lose more than $50 million. Industry financing sources, however, say that figure could come in at $80 million or higher, although no one knows the exact terms of Disney's deals for home entertainment and television, among other ancillary revenues.

Solo, directed by Ron Howard, isn't likely to gross much more than $400 million globally against a budget of at least $250 million and a major multimillion-dollar marketing spend. The movie lost major altitude in its second weekend of play to finish Sunday with a domestic total of $148.9 million and a global cume of $264.2 million.

 

How on earth is Solo on a budget of $250m? That's crazy. I suppose though they did have to literally shoot the film twice, so if that mess hadn't happened it would probably be making money.

 

An effects-intensive movie like that will be expensive anyway, but the change in directors and all the reshoots clearly added to the cost...

 

That's what I'm thinking also, how much of the original work had to be scrapped, re-shot, added CGI work outside the original scope, all of it adding up to probably $75-$100 million more in production costs? Then you have the marketing blitz which failed to connect. Maybe this will cause Disney to hit pause and slow things down a little on the Star Wars front.

 

One Star Wars film a year Disney, at the most.

Here is the problem Star Wars has, that Marvel does not. The original fans are very picky and protective. So putting a different actor in as Han Solo excites none of those fans. And Star Wars as an IP does not seem to attract very many fans, with material that is not connected to the original films. So how do you make 2 films a year that connect to the Original Trilogy?

Hardcore comic book fans are a small part of the MCU's fanbase. I do not care if they make the Ancient One a white woman. I do not care if Thor is just an alien. But change those kinds of things in a Star Wars film, and you lose your audience.

I think Lucasfilm should make the Obi Wan film. McGregor was well regarded from the prequels, and sufficiently distanced in age to be accepted by fans. I think that movie would turn a profit. Episode IX will obviously make big money, but I would not bank on future installments with the new characters. Few people I have talked to are attached to them after Luke, Leia and Han are gone (the characters that clearly drove the sales of the new films). Finally, I think an obvious money maker is a Vader film. Set between Episode III and IV, where he hunts down the Jedi and grows in power in the Empire. That would make huge money.

 

Anyone want to make a prediction on the first Transformers related movie not directed my M.Bay?

 

It will be excessively noisy, too busy with fast cuts and pans, have dialog designed with 12 year olds in mind, have an insipid plot and yet make a lot of money.

 

For some reason I don't know these Transformers film do very well in global terms so I expect it to do well. Probably because you can watch them without needing to read subtitles as it's just big things fighting. The last one i saw was defending statutory rape which I found bizarre and rather distasteful. Why not just make her a bit older??

 

The thing I find odd is that films 2 and 3 in the MCU (Hulk and IM2) were not very well received critically and didn't do that well but they kept to the plan and didn't let it worry them yet we have one SW film that does the same and everyone says Disney have got to change course, scrap this, scrap that etc.

 

Well, that didn't make me vomit.

 

Wait till the remake of S and the B comes out.