Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2018

I saw the trailer ahead of "Equalizer 2" the other day and I admit I felt underwhelmed.

I like Tom Hardy, but based on the trailer, he sports a terrible accent - maybe not "Cumberbatch at Doctor Strange" bad, but bad nonetheless.

I'll see "Venom", but I go in with low expectations...

 

Be careful, it's just mindless entertainment!

 

You have to factor in marketing too and theaters take in half the profit. It doesn't seem that profitable for JL

 

I watched "Juno" again last night, a wonderful little film, but I don't like referencial dialog because it dates itself and can become unfathomable. This music and band references work cause that so universal, but references to infomercials (?), minor celebs, odd TV shows of 15 years ago, just fall flat because they've become too obscure.

The fashion and fads of the 80s are the WORST offenders as far as tainting and dating the cinema. The .synth. The perms. The clothes. HEAVEN HELP US!

If I could enter the cold room of a diner and go back in time, I'd go back to 1982 and eradicate all traces of the "Flashdance" script.

 

Ellen Page was fabulous in JUNO...really love that one on BD.

 

It is amazing how dated some movies become, particularly contemporary films. I've noted before that the Spielberg films that seem to hold up best are the ones that either take place in the distant past or in the future. The ones that take place in their own "present" (like Jaws or Always) are a lot more dated. Even Close Encounters is a little rough. They're all products of their times, and some modern audiences may resist them.

 

who cares if you love the movie...just a space in time on film...hey! a time machine. LOL...

 

Yep, loved Ellen Page ever since she came on my radar with her amazing performance in Hard Candy.

 

o' yea...great revenge movie...
and Super...

 

Yes, I'm well aware of the multiplier necessary for movies to turn a profit for their studios.

Theaters don't get half the profit.

I already said that the profitability of "Justice League" was questionable. "MoS" probably made a pretty slim profit, too.

The others clearly made money - and in the case of "WW", it made a LOT of money.

There's this belief that all the DC movies except "WW" bombed and Warner lost buckets of money on them, but that's not true.

As I noted, I think it's mainly the comparisons with the MCU that make the DC flicks look bad...

 

The trick is, when they commit $200M to making a movie, it starts in development, goes to pre-production, then production, then post, then release... and that might cover a period of 3 or 4 years. When $200M is tied up in a project like this that long, the interest keeps on ticking. And studios don't want to make movies that barely break even or make a slim profit. If they wanted that, they could just take their $200M and put it in the stock market for 3 years, and most likely they could make more than just a slim profit.

I think the studios (particularly Universal and Warner Bros.) are frustrated at their inability to come with a winning formula that they believe Marvel has. I think there's more to it than just a formula, and what's very hard to simulate is a creative staff that really cares about what they do and is personally involved with their productions... and people like Kevin Feige, Jeph Loeb, and James Gunn are at that level. Those people are very hard to imitate, and even harder to replace. The recent failure of Solo shows that it's not just a question of hitting all the bullet points in a script and hiring a big-name director.

I hope it doesn't happen, but you can make a good argument that, after 20 successful pictures, Marvel will eventually release a clunker that totally tanks. (I don't count the non-Marvel Studio films, since those had different creative people attached.)

 

She should have gotten the Oscar for Juno. She was excellent.

 

I think it's fair to say that the studios distributor gets about 52-53% from the sale of a ticket, in China it's apparently 20%.

How your ticket price is divided | Letters | Roger Ebert

To illustrate this, I have open in another window Regal Entertainment's most recent 10K filing with the SEC. For the year ending Dec. 29, they took in $1,842.6M at the box office. They paid out 953.7M as film rentals. Dividing, that means they paid about 51.8% of ticket revenue as film rental. No where near the percentages people sometimes think. Regal is a big company and might be able to negotiate slightly better terms but I believe the rest of the industry would be very similar.

During that same period they took in $708M at the concession counter. Concessions cost them (presumably not including labor) 96.6M for a gross profit of 611.4M. Ticket revenue minus film rentals were 888.9M

The 10K forms may be found on the investor part of their website.



Cineplex Odeon is the largest chain in Canada, they're a public company.

Financial statements for the year ended Dec 31/2017. (see page 26) Box Office Revenues and Film Cost

http://irfiles.cineplex.com/reports...ports/2017/5528 - Cineplex AR For Online2.pdf

Using Justice League as an example.

Total Worldwide Box Office Revenue = $657,924,295

Less: Theatre take excluding China 48% - $315,803,662
China 75% (rough estimate) - $79,539,259

Net Box Office Rev = $262,581,374

It's easy to see how this movie lost $$$$ before re-couping some of that loss in the home video/ppv/rental market.

 

one thing I have wondered sometimes about movie grosses and calling things bombs etc especially with the DC movies is how much does a movie drive ancillary revenue like increased sales in comic books prior movies being rented action figures etc. while the movie may be a failure based on its budget and gross maybe the additional benefits overcome that in the end? (note I have no idea if the same company owns and profits from comic book sales etc but hopefully my question is still valid in most cases)

 

Those other sales, product licensing and whatnot, certainly help. But no amount of gravy will make up for a lack of meat and potatoes.

 

She was the best actor in her season of Trailer Park Boys. Not that that is saying much.

 

DC will have its next big hit in December 2019 when Wonder Woman 1984 is released. They will have another big hit when the Batgirl film is released. Female superheroes are the present and future of the DCEU.

 

Disney has said that while the Pixar Cars films were not huge successes, the merchandising was massive... so they still sold a ton of Cars toys and tie-ins. So that is all part of the formula.

 

The fact we're already counting down to a Wonder Woman sequel yet no such follow-up to Man of Steel confirms just how little faith DC and WB have in their present cinematic depiction of Superman, despite Henry Cavill easily being the best actor in this role since Christopher Reeve - it's an absolute travesty that he's unlikely to ever get a script that matches his potential!

 

yea, like this one for $300.00 bucks list.

 

2 cool ones...I'm watching.

 

Cavill is a solid actor, with the rare ability to convey 'what he's thinking' beyond his scripted lines.

 

After directing Henry Cavill in the newest Mission: Impossible sequel, I've read that Christopher McQuarrie would be open to reuniting with the actor on a direct follow-up to Man of Steel. That might just work, though I'd still prefer a "soft reboot" of the overall DCEU to remove some of the darker tone established by Zack Snyder and David S. Goyer. Wonder Woman is the most likely element from the ongoing continuity to be salvaged, though I consider Gal Gadot more of a wooden training horse than a supposedly well-trained war horse! Ideally, I feel it would have been great to see Christopher Nolan fully involved with giving Superman a similar treatment to his earlier Dark Knight trilogy, but just as Hans Zimmer quickly grew tired of scoring genre movies, it's clear the director's heart ultimately wasn't in it, even though he sat down with Richard Donner for an absolutely fantastic discussion about their respective successes in this field that demonstrated a reverence for the source material few others have yet shown.

 

Don't let my five year old see that, he'd want it sure as hell, to go along with the four or five other Lightning McQueen cars of various sizes he already owns...

 

lot's of laughs...that thing is alive!