Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2016

Gee, I'm not a math expert, but it looks to me like the first one made a $100M profit -- that is, if you assume it had to make a minimum of $280M to break even. The second one would have had to have made $370M just to break even, but it lost almost $30 million. There's a big difference between making $100M and losing $30M.

If they had knocked the budget of Star Trek: Beyond down to $120M, then they might have had a fighting chance. It's not just the final gross that determines profitability -- it's what the movie cost to make.

That film was made for an amazing $12 million, which was a bargain by any means. They saved money by using the sets and costumes from the previous film, plus they actually had a minimum of "planet" scenes, since most of the film takes place on one of two space ships (Khan's ship and Kirk's ship). What helped more than anything was that it was a very good film, very fast-paced and well-written.

 

That's actually the point I was making. A few sentences later, I said this: "The financial situation is an easy fix: Cut the budget and release it outside of the Summer blockbuster season." Yes, it lost money, but the next one doesn't have to if they make a couple of adjustments.

 

I'm not at all convinced that those type of 'adjustments' will be made or even considered. Their mentality would be, since the last two couldn't make bank, we need to make it even bigger and flashier and we need to spend a lot more on advertising and marketing, like the Star Wars movies, so more people come out to see it and stuff. Script? Plot? Logic? Economy? Bah - these are not the things we're look for...

 

Bear in mind that the studios don't make movies to break even -- they make movies to make big money. A movie that breaks even does not make good business sense. These films would have to go way over $500M to really make the studio execs happy, and that is just not happening.

 

Last two? Are you referring to the last two Star Trek films? If so, Into Darkness was the highest grossing of the franchise. It was only Beyond that under-performed. Based on the fact that it didn't make its money back, it's a strong possibility that the budget will be cut, not expanded, for the next film.

 

So? It doesn't mean it was profitable. According to Box Office Mojo, STID made $467m world wide. Its production budged was $190, so in order to breakeven, it would have to have grossed around $475m (using the accepted multiplier). So, it didn't even break even. But even if you're being generous and say that it did break even, it's not profitable. As vidiot said above, it needs to make a big(ish) profit to be considered financially successful - and that it was not. The latest one is of course worse.

But my wider point was that the mentality of the bigwigs is to throw more money at it in the hopes that it makes it big (ie, big profits) next time.

 

It was profitable.

"Calculating in all expenses, Deadline.com estimated that the film made a profit of $29.9 million."
Star Trek Into Darkness - Wikipedia »

 

Khan originally started out as a TV movie of the week for ABC, if memory serves. It was produced by the television division. That's why the budget was miniscule.

Ironically, in spite of the tiny budget, it still looks as good as - or better than - most of the subsequent films in the franchise. I think only maybe six and First Contact bested it, prior to nu-Trek, anyhow.

That's abysmal given the money invested in the thing. However, Trek does well on video, and that's probably worth another $100 million to the studio.

 

The general fan theory is that the even-numbered films were generally good, and the odd-numbered films were bad. Star Trek V might be the worst film made in the entire decade, just jaw-droppingly awful.

 

It was cringeworthy. Particularly sad coming after IV which was good, funny, gave the rest of the cast a lot to do and made boatloads of money.

 

I will always defend "Final Frontier". It's flawed but I like its ambition - at least it tries to do something thought-provoking, unlike the goofy comedy of the vastly overrated "Voyage Home":

Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (Original Motion Picture Collection) [Blu-Ray] (1989) »

 

There's some little missing piece of the puzzle when it comes to studios continuing to greenlight bloated budgets for franchises.

Either the "accepted multiplier" for going into profitability is wrong or not taking something into account, or there's something on the studio's end not being taken into account.

I would agree; if "Into Darkness" only pulled a profit of $29 million, that's essentially "breaking even" territory, or an "averting total disaster" scenario. Not particularly good. But the studio doubled down (well, not literally, but they upped the budget) to do another one when there was no evidence that interest and fandom and all of that was on any sort of uptick in the aftermath of "Into Darkness."

So why did they do this then? Is it really as simple as movie executives just being lazy and just making a few HUGE bets at the figurative card table instead of making a lot more smaller, safer bets? Are they really just hoping somehow they have a huge breakout hit, and going so far as to budget film so that even "relatively big hit" territory results in barely breaking even? Sadly, this may be the simple explanation in many cases.

But I also wonder if, for instance, the "multiplier" isn't taking the *studio's* position on a given film into account. That is, if a film can bank another $100 million on home video/streaming/cable, etc., is THAT why the studio is continuing to bankroll big budget movies that continue to simply "not hugely bomb" in most cases? If so, then the "accepted multiplier" thing isn't really very accurate, and some other multiplier needs to take into account all of those ancillary revenue streams if we're trying to *understand* why studios continue to greenlight stuff. Maybe, on films that can pull in another $100 million in post-box office revenue within a year or so, that 3x multiplier needs to be reduced to 2x or something. Earlier this year, I pointed to "The Good Dinosaur" being the top DVD seller and one of the top Blu-ray sellers, outperforming other more "successful" films on home video. Between huge home video sales and solid toy sales, "The Good Dinosaur" has most likely moved well into "profitable" for Disney/Pixar despite the bloated budget due to essentially making the film twice.

In some cases, merchandise is a huge revenue stream. Not so much for "Star Trek" though, at least as it pertains to movie-specific merchandise (not a ton of "Star Trek Beyond" action figures; there were some "Pop" figures, but not a ton of stuff). And, often when films bomb or underperform, their merchandise bombs as well ("Ghostbusters 2016" figures on clearance; I still remember those untouched "Prince of Persia" figures back some years ago). But there are also cases where so-so performing films probably bring in another $100 million in merchandise. Past years saw "Ice Age" toys huge (not so much this year). "Good Dinosaur" was another. Toy sales are surely a HUGE part of why Pixar continues to crap out "Cars" sequels; that franchise gets its *own aisle* in some toy stores on a permanent basis.

Or, on the studio end, is there some accounting/tax reason why it's better to lose $50 million on a $250 million movie than break even on bunch of little movies?

In any event, $150-$250 million films needing to make three times that budget (meaning needing to head towards $1 billion to make meaningful profit), and almost always *not* doing so (especially for studios outside of Disney), and those studios *continuing* to make those films has to have more of an explanation than the studios just ignoring simple math and hoping for a breakout, random, surprise Earth-shattering hit.

 

Well, clogging the theaters with these things certainly keeps smaller, lower-budgeted rivals out of the game. That kind of market control is worth a lot of money.

 

That's the vibe I'm getting as well.

 

I quote from Wikipedia:

Critics generally gave The Final Frontier poor reviews. The film holds a 22% rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 43 reviews, with the critical consensus "Filled with dull action sequences and an underdeveloped storyline, this fifth Trek movie is probably the worst of the series." At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average out of 100 to critics' reviews, The Final Frontier received a score of 43 based on 16 reviews.

Rob Lowing of The Sun Herald called the film "likeable but average". The Chicago Sun-Times' Roger Ebert and The Washington Post's Rita Kempley gave the film negative reviews, calling the film "a mess" and "a shambles", respectively. The New York Times's Caryn James considered the film to be disappointing to fans and non-fans alike, while Chris Hicks of the Deseret News disagreed, feeling that the film approached issues in the same vein as the television series and that fans would enjoy it. Ansen and Lowing considered Shatner's direction during action sequences weak, with Lowing adding that the second half of the film felt directionless. Hicks wrote that the film's broad humor gave the film an inconsistent tone.

What I will say is that even though Star Trek V was a terrible film, it didn't completely bomb: it cost $33M and made $68M, so it made some money. It was still considered a major disappointment, given that Star Trek IV made $133M.

 

Thanks for all that - I wasn't already aware that most people hated it!

I have my own opinion. I explain my opinion in my review. Telling me that it's in the minority doesn't suddenly change my mind...

 

Star Trek V is worth watching every now and then for Lawrence Luckenbill's performance. He steals the movie.

 

He should have kept it.

 

Fantastic Beasts.
Not such a fantastic film, realise I'm in the minority, but couldn't wait for it to end. Didn't like any of the characters, music ..nothing.

 

Rogue One is pulling in some nice receipts - would like to know why the thread on the actual movie disappeared......

Variety reports that Rogue One: A Star Wars Story‘s opening weekend domestic box office take is a staggering $155 million, and that the film has so far grossed $290.5 million worldwide. Rogue One has yet to open in China, the biggest film market outside of North America, so its foreign total should get a significant boost when it lands in Chinese theaters on January 6th, 2017.

 

The gorts nuked the main "R1" discussion thread? Really?

Maybe it started to get political in some way?

 

I looked yesterday and nothing to be found, not even a locked thread.

 

Collateral Beauty goes splat.....lots of big name talent wasted in this movie apparently. Also I wonder how the bad reviews for Passengers will affect their numbers for next weekend, they're spending a ton on promo for a potential bomb?

 

It's back now.