Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

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

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  1. PH416156

    PH416156 Alea Iacta Est

    Location:
    Europe
    Interesting article and thank you very much for sharing, but...

    When Liz met Dick? :eek:
     
  2. Isaac K.

    Isaac K. Forum Resident

    It’s a prime candidate for the drive in circuit, or would be if it was drive-in season.
     
  3. Isaac K.

    Isaac K. Forum Resident

    They should have gone for more current action stars, like Jason Stratham or Vin Diesel. Most people under 30 weren’t even born when T2 came out. To them, the franchise is an antique. I don’t even think most of them would even care about Star Wars if it wasn’t for the prequels.
     
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  4. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Hollywood, USA
    Yes to all of this. I'm baffled by it... but as I often say, I'm clearly not the intended market for this film. But man, does it look bad. I've seen this exact trailer in theaters, and there were "crickets" from the audience after it played.
     
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  5. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    I think they have moved far away from the original TV series conceptually speaking.

    People thought the 2000 version was cute and it did OK.

    The 2003 Version fell $100k short of being profitable.

    Not such a good idea to greenlight another one?
     
  6. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Terminator: Dark Fate is an interesting case. The formula of rebooting franchises and ignoring poor sequels has worked well recently (Halloween for instance).

    Also, the reviews are very good for the film, calling it a return to form and worthy finish to the Terminator/T2: Judgment Day Trilogy.

    Yet, it is a financial bomb. My guess is that people did not buy the reboot after the terrible sequels. At least for Terminator fans, they now have a solid trilogy. Also, it is probably for the best, as they were planning on making more if this went well. A critical success and solid film is probably a good place to leave the franchise.
     
  7. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    The key words here are, "leave the franchise".
     
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  8. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    I think, to quote Tallulah Bankhead, there is less to this that meets the eye. I think people are not really interested in these movies anymore, it's like flogging a dead horse. They have seen it already. I am a big fan of the first two, don't mind a couple of the others, really liked the TV show, but I have zero interest in seeing this film. I will wait 5 years until it pops up on TV. And if I feel like that, and I'm a big fan, how do you get normal people in to watch it?

    And really, the thought of seeing a 72 year old Arnie and 63 year old Linda Hamilton running about trying to save the world makes me want to see it even less.
     
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  9. The Slug Man

    The Slug Man Forum Resident

    Location:
    North Carolina
    They also tried to revise it as a rebooted TV show around 2011, probably hoping that some of the reasonable success of the rebooted Hawaii 5-O would rub off. It didn't work, though.
     
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  10. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    And then this came out a week ago with very little fanfare:



    The horror... the horror!

    Cost $50 million, and has made a little more than $3 million bucks so far, with really, really bad reviews (17 on Rotten Tomatoes, 28 on Metacritic). How the hell does stuff like this get greenlit? I am utterly baffled.
     
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  11. Somewhat Damaged

    Somewhat Damaged Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    What really baffles me nowadays is why anyone finances art movies (I'm talking about the money people, not the creative people involved). There can be no money in it so why bother? Do they want to lose money or are they really into spending lots of money and then waiting eight years to recoup their investment and never making an actual profit worth talking about. Even if they make a well-reviewed movie that wins festival awards and gets lots of positive PR via magazine interviews etc. they will still struggle to make a mere two million dollars at the box office.

    Who finances a film like The Souvenir (2019) and its sequel? Apart from the creatives getting to indulge their egos, and a few pretentious film critics no one trusts, who actually gets anything out of a film like that?

    The Souvenir (2019) - IMDb
     
  12. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

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    Hollywood, USA
    If it's a modest film in the $7M-$8M price range, you can sell enough of the rights to a couple of dozen territories around the world plus TV syndication plus streaming and make a reasonable profit in a year. But there definitely isn't huge money in it. Once in a blue moon, a small indie film really takes off and goes crazy, even better if it gets lots of award chatter and critical accolades.

    Moonlight (back in 2016) is a good example: it only cost about $4 million and wound up winning Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Screenplay, and made $65 million, which is a really, really profitable film. It made the top 10 "best of the year" lists from a hundred critics, and I think everybody associated with it did very well. So sometimes people will do a really artistic film for very low money if they can shoot it in 6-7 weeks and know it's something special that will do well critically. And there are those actors who make big blockbuster films and then will do a small side indie project, partly to flex their acting muscles, or maybe to try something radically different (even directing or producing).

    Green Book was at a higher level: it cost $23M (on the high end of indie films, but very low for studio productions) but grossed a whopping $323 million and won Best Picture, Best Screenplay, and Best Supporting Actor. Both are atypical stories that fall outside the range of what you normally see from studios, and I think even Scorsese would say "they qualify as Cinema."
     
  13. Somewhat Damaged

    Somewhat Damaged Forum Resident

    Location:
    UK
    The film I'm specifically thinking of is The Square (2017). It got into Cannes (the top tier festival most films don't get into) and won the very top prize (Palme d'Or). They then waited about 10 months to release it in the UK with a lot of PR. It got a lot of mag interviews and reviews and think piece articles. I think I read it grossed £200,000 in the UK and the distributors considered that to be acceptable. Where is the profit in that, if accurate?

    Budget $5.5 million
    Box office $8.6 million [which surprises me that it's so high]

    To me it just seems like a business that is high risk with little chance of reward. I feel they would have been better financing a classy genre film instead that is easy to advertise. That goes into the Spielberg high concept argument. I'm not judging making art films for artistic reasons, just as a business. I enjoyed Vox Lux (2018) on Netflix a few days ago but I'm hard pushed to imagine why they financed it. [My review of Vox Lux: Interesting subject matter. The elements of the story don’t really add up in a linear way. They could remove any scenes at random and the film would still make as much coherent sense. The various bits don’t seem to connect to each other in any meaningful way. The script doesn’t add up to anything or go anywhere but it held my attention. The concert climax seemed a bit disappointing. It’s a self-consciously arty and deliberate mess that fails to actually say anything.]

    PS I loathed The Square. A truly awful movie by an inept writer-director.

    The Square (2017 film) - Wikipedia
     
  14. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Actually, given these tiny budgets, indy is a pretty low risk business. High risk is ploinking $250 million into some dud that only makes $25 million at the box office. A rich guy dumping $100k into a $4 million budget indy film isn't really risking much. He stands a good chance of making much of it back, and there's an outside chance he could make a million or more if the thing takes off.
     
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  15. Isaac K.

    Isaac K. Forum Resident

    It does amaze me, though. Most of the epic Hollywood bombs of late I have been able to predict just by the titles alone. How can the producers behind these things be so completely out of touch?
     
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  16. eddiel

    eddiel Senior Member

    Location:
    Toronto, Canada
    And if the investment is done via some approved investment scheme, he'll be able to take the tax deduction :)
     
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  17. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    Now that week#1 is in the books it looks like Terminator Dark Fate will be hard pressed to reach $75 million. A disastrous result for all parties involved.
     
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  18. neo123

    neo123 Senior Member

    Location:
    Northern Kentucky
  19. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
  20. Slackhurst Broadcasting

    Slackhurst Broadcasting Forum Resident

    Location:
    Liverpool
    Charlie's Angels has never been anything but rubbish, and exceptionally dumb rubbish at that. But people remember the show and it has a kind of media hook - a new version can be publicised as "the original Girl Power TV show" or "a feminist reimagining" and journalists will parrot it out. There might be more mileage in remaking it as it really was, a piece of "jigglevision", and putting in as much stuff to offend 2019 sensitivities as possible.
     
  21. malcolm reynolds

    malcolm reynolds Handsome, Humble, Genius

    Location:
    Oklahoma
    I don't usually care what a movie does at the box office but I want Rian Johnson's Knives Out to bomb.
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That would be a money-losing disaster by any measure.

    You wonder if people deliberately set out to lose money, or if they make a movie purely for ego and don't care if it makes money or not, or if they're just completely clueless? I dunno. I've been in this "thing we do" for more than 40 years, and I still don't know. I have very definitely been part of shows and films where all the technicians knew it was a steaming piece of ****, but the director and producers were convinced they were golden. The only studio people I've ever met who are completely honest on good/bad profitable/bomb conversations are the marketing people. Even they'll say, "well, we're certain the movie will get bad reviews, but our research indicates we'll make a profit, so our bosses are OK with it." They have no illusions about it -- it's just a business.

    The trailer made me laugh, but it's a very weird-looking film. I sure wouldn't go out of my way to see it. I can see where toxic fans who disliked Last Jedi would want Johnson to fail, but note that he's already left Disney and is not set to do any more Star Wars films, so you got your wish there already.

    As the Ellison family has learned (Annapurna Films and Skydancer), you can only make so many bomb films before you start running out of money. And their father, Larry Elison, is worth $68 billion dollars. Even at that amount, it's not a bottomless pit to fund movies that are never, ever going to make money. You can only claim losses for so long before the IRS says, "hold it -- you're not running a business. It's just a hobby."
     
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  23. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    The thing is, then when the TV series first premiered, it was a tongue-in-cheek TV show.

    We were never meant to take their detective work seriously, it was just an intentional TV farce.
     
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  24. NickCarraway

    NickCarraway Forum Resident

    Location:
    Gastonia, NC
    Hmmm... Rotten Tomatoes 98% fresh, Metacritic 84, and where else are you going to see Captain America, James Bond, Sonny Crockett and Captain von Trapp on the same screen? Plus Jamie Lee Curtis, the girl from 13 Reasons Why, the boy from It, and oh yeah Michael Shannon & Toni Collette too.

    [​IMG]
     
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  25. Got to disagree as,the original trilogy resonated even with younger folks.
     
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