Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Vidiot, Dec 17, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Unless "Alita" does gain this huge audience on home video that some predict, I doubt a studio would approve a budget that high.

    I really don't intend to nay-say the whole "Alita" franchise - I didn't think much of the first flick, but I'd see a sequel and I'd hope it was better than the first.

    I just think that it's gonna be tough for a studio to get behind such an expensive sequel when the first didn't find a huge audience... :shrug:
     
    Vidiot and SandAndGlass like this.
  2. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits....

    Hobbs & Shaw
    Any prediction on this f&f spin off ?
     
  3. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    is this not incredible?! even at the ridiculous prices they charge at the box office!
     
    Vidiot and SandAndGlass like this.
  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    My guess is that Tarantino considered it one long shoot, then when he finished the film, the studio asked him to cut it in half for release, so he did so. Each part made a huge amount of money ($150M+), based on a production budget of $30M per part, so those were very profitable films -- or film, if you prefer. I'm disappointed that he never went back and recut the films into one continuous show for wide release.
     
  5. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    True to a point, but many of the great episodes of the original Star Trek involve them doing just that - "saving the universe" (or at least an important chunk of it). Even plenty of mediocre to bad episodes had that as their theme.

    Just look at this list of the 10 best old-Trek episodes from Newsweek. Several of them have "saving the universe" (or the galaxy, or the Federation, or at least earth) as their plot, including:

    Season 2, Episode 6: "The Doomsday Machine" - Kirk & company save the galaxy from a rampaging planet killer

    Season 1, Episode 14: "Balance of Terror" - The Enterprise thwarts a new Romulan weapon, one that could reignite a hundred year old war.

    Season 1, Episode 18: "Arena" - Kirk's actions head off a potential war with a new enemy, the Gorn.

    Season 1, Episode 28: "The City on the Edge of Forever" - Kirk & Spock prevent Hitler from winning WWII, at great personal cost...

    Two of the other episodes on that list had a life well beyond their initial airing. "Space Seed" introduced Khan and gave rise to two separate Trek films, The Wrath Of Khan and Into Darkness. "Mirror Mirror" gave us the whole concept of a "mirror universe", something that could definitely be exploited for a Trek film.

    I'd also argue that the biggest problem with the Trek movies is that they all end up being "Enterprise must save universe", when in fact over half of that list of Trek episodes had little or nothing to do with that. So the precedent exists for telling a great adventure without the stakes being quite so high. The biggest grossing film of the original batch, The Voyage Home, was a "save the earth" adventure, but it went about it in a very different way and drew an enormous audience in the process. So even if you limit yourself to "save the ____" stories, there's still tremendous latitude in how they're executed. The fact that Paramount is stuck in a boring rut says more about their piss poor management than any limitations imposed by the series itself.
     
    Pete Puma and SandAndGlass like this.
  6. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Let's keep things on topic with Predicting the Hits and Bombs of 2019, which is the point of this thread. (Not Star Trek per se. You want that, start a new thread.)

    Meanwhile: there's a hilarious new story about the burden Disney now has in inheriting a whole bunch of bombs from Fox, which contractually have to be released. Things are not going well over there...

    Disney Left With a Slate of Film Flops After Fox Deal

    It's a very interesting problem, but you have to balance that with the fact that Disney is above and away the biggest studio so far this year, just because of the success of Avengers: Endgame, Captain Marvel, Toy Story 4, Aladdin, and Spiderman: Far from Home. Each of those is at or close to making a billion dollars (or more) worldwide, so they're doing great overall... but the number of Fox bombs coming out is alarming.

    You mean ticket prices? I don't think they're out of control. Going from $7.50 to $9.00 over the last decade is less than the inflation rate of gasoline.

    [​IMG]

    Annual Average U.S. Ticket Price
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2019
    SandAndGlass and Matthew Tate like this.
  7. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    One error, Spiderman is Sony. The other issue that the article fails to mention is the purchase and sale agreement between Disney and Fox, there might be a clause in there that will allow Disney to re-coup any loss generated by Fox movies that they had no part in, this is quite common in acquisitions and works both ways.
     
    SandAndGlass and Matthew Tate like this.
  8. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    Depends on where you are, the theatre, the format and there's always discount Tuesdays :thumbsup:.

    I would also add three more upcoming releases to the 2019 "B"billion $ club. It might be a record year.

    Lion King
    Frozen 2
    Star Wars
     
    SandAndGlass likes this.
  9. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    Ticket prices have risen pretty consistently on a logical basis. With inflation, the average price is pretty close to what it was decades ago...
     
    Vidiot and Matthew Tate like this.
  10. NickCarraway

    NickCarraway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gastonia, NC
    Except that wages have not kept pace with inflation. In 1968, the minimum wage was $1.25 and a movie ticket was $1.31.
     
    sunspot42, SandAndGlass and brownie61 like this.
  11. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I think that's a separate issue. Can't blame movie theaters for keeping pace with inflation just because wages haven't risen as much.

    Also not sure how average wages from 1968 to today have changed and compare...
     
  12. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    Perhaps not, but if their target audiences can not afford to go to see the movies that they run because the cost of seeing a movie lacks a competitive advantage, with their patrons earnings, then they will draw less and less patrons.
     
    sunspot42, Deesky and brownie61 like this.
  13. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    Lets see how Disney, drive fox, into the ground even further..
     
  14. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Well, minimum wage in LA is currently $12/hour; a movie ticket for us is around $15.00 at many theaters ($18-$20 for IMAX). What will make you broke are the cost for concessions and parking.

    Postscript: just got tickets five minutes ago at our usual haunt, and the bastids raised the ticket prices a couple of bucks. $17 for seats at the "deluxe" theater. :realmad:
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2019
  15. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    The Spiderman movie grosses are now split with Disney, and while they're keeping the nature of the formula secret, the word is that once they go into profit, it's 50/50 with Disney/Marvel. Since Marvel is hiring the writers, producers, and directors, it's a de facto Marvel Production. I think the identifying logo is "In Association with Marvel Studios," and then you know they have a big piece of it.

    In the other non-Marvel movies, I think they take the losses out of the "Fox account," and just chalk that up to what happens when you buy a troubled business. The whole point of Disney buying Fox was not about new movies -- it was all about the library. If they lose $200M on bad movies, it won't kill 'em. That's three months of gross in Europe on Avengers: Endgame, so it's paid for.
     
    SandAndGlass and Deuce66 like this.
  16. Jack White

    Jack White Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    Money in the bank.
     
    DreadPikathulhu likes this.
  17. DreadPikathulhu

    DreadPikathulhu Senior Member

    Location:
    Seattle
    We’re actually paying less for tickets than we ever have. We have Movieclub, and the fee for that goes towards a free ticket, plus we get 20% off concessions, plus points towards more free tickets. It’s actually cheaper to have movie and lunch at the dine-in than it is to do it separately

    Ticket prices only seem to be outrageous when you have to see it in 3D IMAX on the opening evening.
     
  18. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    True. One possibility might be to introduce pricing tiers such that the really expensive tent-pole movies retain the current pricing, but less expensive non-blockbusters all the way down to indy films are priced at lower levels. This would also have the benefit that more people would see smaller films, which they would normally not see (at current prices), and in turn it might make those types of films more attractive to produce (once again).
     
    SandAndGlass and Vidiot like this.
  19. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    In 2019, movie theaters suffer more due to intense competition from other forms of entertainment than prices.

    In 1979, most people had 3 or 4 TV channels, no home video, no Internet, no video games.

    Yeah, videotape existed, but it wasn't commonplace. Same with videogames: Atari 2600 existed in 1979 but it wasn't really big yet.

    A consumer in 1979 could never have imagined the incredible array of entertainment options that exist today!
     
  20. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    I'm getting into movies on the cheap because I joined AMC's A-List.

    I saw 12 movies over the last month, so I paid $1.83/movie - and that included some 3D IMAX! :pineapple:
     
  21. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    Hmm.. I wonder because it's between cleaning times at the theater.?
    I just found out there 18 plus germs on the bottom of theater floors
    Ooo.. so much fun
     
  22. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Bingo!
     
    SandAndGlass likes this.
  23. JohnG

    JohnG PROG now in Dolby ATMOS!

    Location:
    Long Island NY

    I have A List but man their are so many bad movies this year, it’s actually not worth it. Just saw Crawl today, another really stupid film.
    At least I have Once Upon In Hollywood coming up.
     
  24. Oatsdad

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

    Location:
    Alexandria VA
    "Crawl" was pretty bad. I don't mind that it's stupid - I expected that - but it's "boring stupid", not "fun stupid".

    At least with A-List, you don't kick yourself because you dropped $12 on some POS! :)
     
    SandAndGlass likes this.
  25. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    So in most businesses, you lower prices in order to compensate for the competition.

    Yes BINGO!

    And what the ticket price issue has completely sidestepped is the incredibly stupid price at the concession stand!

    I get that the "average" ticket price in the U.S. is nine dollars and change. But in South Florida, it is more like $12.

    To share a large popcorn of two is $9, and $6/ea. for large soda.

    So, it costs $45 for a couple to see a movie with drinks and popcorn to share.

    This is NOT in keeping of what it cost to back in 1979.
     
    sunspot42 and brownie61 like this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine