Predicting the Movie Hits & Bombs of 2022

Yes. I remember being FURIOUS as a 13-year-old when Empire Strikes Back ended with a 'to be continued in three years' ending. Man, what a rip off!

 

Unobtainium? Really?

I can understand what you are saying. I'm not complaining that it exists or is successful. I'm just trying to understand why it is the biggest movie in the history of everything.

Even the people who like this film aren't selling me that this is anything other than a really fancy SFX reel. The story sounds pretty much like any other movie of its type, only less original.

It would be interesting to see what the actual attendance numbers are and how they compare to other big movies. Factor out the far more expensive IMAX ticket prices and see how popular it really is.

 

This thread is going to seed…

If you really want to know why a specific movie is popular with people, go to the movies and watch it with a big audience. That’s always been the answer. If you don’t care enough to go, you don’t care enough to know.

Acting like understanding the appeal of a film is some kind of complicated math problem that you can sus out in Excel from the comfort of your armchair, misses the point and then some. The worst thing about streaming is how out of touch some people are with the experience of sitting in a dark room with strangers and just reacting to the medium.

 

Well, since I'm not going to spend 50 bucks to maybe possibly get an answer, I guess it will always have to be one of life's little mysteries.

 

from: Box Office Theory

$27M international Wednesday for Avatar: The Way of Water. International total at $1.052B. Allied with a $7.25M domestic Wednesday (total at $465M), global total has reached $1.517B, taking out both Top Gun: Maverick and Furious 7 to become the 10th highest grossing film of all time

 

I don't...

I grew up on Science Fiction and Monster based Horror movies. These movies have been with us as long as Scorsese's movies and longer.

This type of argument could also be applied to literature. Are Jules Vern and H.G. Wells not "authors" because they don’t write classic literature like War and Peace?

There are always those individuals who seek to define things and any deviation from "their" norm is less than acceptable because it does not measure up to "their" standards.

While I think that Scorsese is a good director, I think he is stuck in his own mold. Thus is the opposite of Director's like Tarantino, who never had a mold.

 

Disney is in a completely different position than any of the other studios, with the exception of Universal.

Disney has a theme park featuring Avatar. If the movies sink, the theme park goes down in the swamp with it! You can loose money on a movie and more than make up for it with the theme park and all the merchandise sales.

 

Going back a few weeks ago, I really had to chuckle. How can anyone make any realistic projections about a sequel made a decade after the original? Then, Christmas and New Years fall on the weekend's this year. And, we have the record "once in a generation" freezing cold (It was 4°F here in Tennessee on Friday morning before Christmas).

On top of all this, you have a stupid long movie, which not only limits the number of showings but can discourage attendance because of its length.

Still, there were an exceptional number of reviews and comments that predicted a failure. These I also considered to be unfounded. Some predicted that WoW wouldn't even hit $1B. Big predictions that future Avatar sequels would not get made, which I thought were nonsense.

Really, with a movie like this, it is a movie that was bound to pick up momentum after the holiday's. In addition, there is little else to detract audiences during January...

My predictions were for a realistic $1.4B as a minimum and more likely $1.8B.

 

I thought the same thing. The commercials on TV made it look like a video game. I thought the great James Cameron is making one of those video game type movies?

Then, quite by accident, I stumbled across a documentary about the making of the movie. I was dumbfounded. The movie was completely different (in a good way) then it appeared to be in the TV commercials.

In seeing the actual movie, the 3D was so much more than any other 3D movie from the past. I thought it represented as much of an evolution in the cinema experience as going from silent movies to talkies, from going from B&W to color!

Avatar delivered an experience like no other movie had ever achieved in the entire history of the cinema.

You usually had to go to a Disney park to get an experience like this. Then you pay a lot of money, stand in long lines for an hour or more, just to go on a ride that might last five minutes.

Here, you get into your car and go to your everyday neighborhood movie theater.

 

Most movies are like that. As specially Advdnture, Science Fiction, Monster and Fantasy movies.

They were conceived as entertaining movies, nothing more. Eat your popcorn, enjoy your Icee!

People have been so overcritical of the plot and script. It is a Science Fiction / Fantasy movie. Get over it.

Wanna talk about dumb scripts? It doesn't get any more stupid than any Star Wars movie.

The number one reason that it will never beat #1, is that Avatar was unique. Not unlike the way the first Matrix movie was unique. While WoW may have improved on certain elements, it is no longer unique, the way the original was.

 

Avatar - The Way of Water: #1 for 2022 releases & #9 All-Time Worldwide (not adjusted for inflation)

Week #1 Dec 16-22
Domestic: $197.68 million - 30%
International: $463.9 million - 70%
Total: $661.4 million

Week #2 Dec 23-29
Domestic: $160 million - 31.6%
International: $347 million - 69.4%
Total: $507 million - Drop of 23.3% over prior week

Week #3 Dec 30-Jan 5
Domestic: $114 million - 30.1%
International: $264 million - 69.9%
Total: $378 million - Drop of 25.4% over prior week

Totals: $471.8 million Domestic - $1.075 Billion International = $1.55 Billion

 

I think Avatar probably will have enough gas to make $2 billion. It still has over a month before any real competition hit theaters and it’s continuing to have reasonable drops.

 

If it drops 40% per week it still has enough fuel to hit $2.1B, I'm guessing it finishes in the $1.85-$2.1 Billion range. I'm sure meetings over the future of A4-5 are already underway.

 

I would say those are good numbers. We contributed another $50 by seeing Avatar 2 in IMAX Laser HDR HFR 3D last night, and "in general," it was pretty good. The 48fps HFR scenes were a little jarring, but I really liked the story and characters. And there were little things I noticed in the second viewing that I missed the first time... though I still didn't get to witness the fate of Edie Falco, who kind of disappears from the movie once her ship gets hit. I hate loose threads like that, especially for major characters.

 

I think he does. I've seen long articles written about how Tarantino steals from 3-4-5 movies, changes a few details, and then creates a new "Frankenstein"-pieced-together film out of the idea. Having said that, I think he's generally a fine filmmaker who does a great job, and I've liked most of what he's done over the years. So Tarantino's mold is knowing the last 50-60 years of cinema history extremely well, and borrowing a few pieces here and there to incorporate in his own films. I'd agree it's not 100% original, but his approach is 100% original, as is his style, which I think is kinetic, exciting, and wastes very little time.

 

Were we watching the same movie?

I didn't get the idea she was a "major" character? Kind of reminded me of the SW #9.

 

Edie Falco was billed 9th in the credits, and I call that a major character. Bear in mind I just saw the film 16 hours ago.

 

OK, out of curiosity, where was Kate Winslet in the credits?

Thinking that Kate might be a bit higher on the totem pole, as an alumni? I didn't remember seeing her in the movie. Though I have watched some videos which included her doing some underwater scenes.

Without regard to her position in the credits, I don't recall Edie Falco doing much of anything??

I can understand not recognizing anyone who is blue. But couldn't just about anyone play her part?

 

Falco was the military boss of everything from Earth, and built that big facility. And she brought Col. Quaritch back to life (along with his other men who had died). She was important in terms of story, in that she was one of the few human characters who had massive authority and control. If it were me, I would have clearly shown her dying on the sinking ship (kind of like that final close-up of Peter Cushing in Star Wars, and I think Lucas told me that was Marcia's decision).

Kate Winslet was "Ronal," I think one of the wives of the other clan:



To me, most of the aliens were indistinguishable. Buncha blue people and a bunch of turquoise people.

 

I understand that she was the big "boss". But I think she was more important in terms of story than anything she contributed to on the screen.

When I saw Kiri I was intrigued. Knowing Cameron had hired children to do the performance capture and the underwater scenes, I was intrigued as to what new possible ingenue we had here. After I got home I looked Kiri up and discovered that the ingenue was Sigourney Weaver.

I looked up Kate Winslet as well and her character's name meant nothing to me.

I didn't realize those things that you clarified about performance capture technology.

I didn't realize that the capture produced uneven movements that later had to be redrawn by hand, effectively a rotoscoping process.

I did think they had better detail in their faces and expressions, making them more human-like.

But still, at the end of the day, they were indistinguishable. "Buncha blue people and a bunch of turquoise people."

With that respect, I thought that Alita was amazing!

 

I thought her name was Kitty! That's what it sounded like to me. I guess it is "Kiri," which is more "alien-sounding."

 

Do you think Cameron should just forego the variable frame rate and go full on 48fps moving forward? Based on what I experienced I think HFR works very well with this world.

I think Edie's role will expand quite a bit in A3. Other new additions in A3 that we can expect to see are Michelle Yeoh as Dr. Karina Mogue, Oona Chaplin as Varang and David Thewlis as Peylak.

 

TOP 25 Worldwide of 2022 as of Jan 5/2023.

Rank/Title/Total $ W/W/Domestic $-%/International $-%

1- Avatar: The Way of Water: $1,546,789,379 $471,789,379 30.5% $1,075,000,000 69.5%
2- Top Gun: Maverick: $1,488,732,821 $718,732,821 48.3% $770,000,000 51.7%
3- Jurassic World: Dominion: $1,001,978,080 $376,851,080 37.6% $625,127,000 62.4%
4- Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: $955,775,804 $411,331,607 43% $544,444,197 57%
5- Minions: The Rise of Gru: $939,628,210 $369,695,210 39.3% $569,933,000 60.7%

6- Black Panther: Wakanda Forever: $823,808,321 $442,039,616 53.7% $381,768,705 46.3%
7- The Batman: $770,945,583 $369,345,583 47.9% $401,600,000 52.1%
8- Thor: Love and Thunder: $760,928,081 $343,256,830 45.1% $417,671,251 54.9%
9- Water Gate Bridge: $626,571,697 $117,294 <0.1% $626,454,403 100%
10- Moon Man: $460,237,662 - - $460,237,662 100%

11- Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore: $406,950,844 $95,850,844 23.6% $311,100,000 76.4%
12- Sonic the Hedgehog 2: $402,656,846 $190,872,904 47.4% $211,783,942 52.6%
13- Uncharted: $401,748,820 $148,648,820 37% $253,100,000 63%
14- Black Adam: $392,918,341 $168,118,341 42.8% $224,800,000 57.2%
15- Elvis: $287,340,048 $151,040,048 52.6% $136,300,000 47.4%

16- The Bad Guys: $250,162,278 $97,233,630 38.9% $152,928,648 61.1%
17- Bullet Train: $239,268,602 $103,368,602 43.2% $135,900,000 56.8%
18- Lightyear: $226,425,420 $118,307,188 52.2% $108,118,232 47.8%
19- Too Cool to Kill: $217,254,604 $185,882 <0.1% $217,068,722 99.9%
20- Smile: $216,135,048 $105,935,048 49% $110,200,000 51%

21- Nice View: $211,019,042 - - $211,019,042 100%
22- DC League of Super-Pets: $207,357,117 $93,657,117 45.2% $113,700,000 54.8%
23- The Lost City: $190,844,029 $105,344,029 55.2% $85,500,000 44.8%
24- One Piece Film: Red: $179,444,905 $12,775,324 7.1% $166,669,581 92.9%
25- Nope: $171,235,592 $123,277,080 72% $47,958,512 28%

 

You are not alone. I thought her name was Kitty too. That's exactly how it sounded to me in the movie.

I also thought that Kitty was a rather unusual name for an alien teenager?

When I went home to look her up, I was looking for "Kitty" and I found Kiri, because her picture was attached to her name.

Her full name is: Kiri te Suli Kìreysì'ite.

 

Also true when it comes to LSD