Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

And I did not see Solo. Still have not. If I am setting out a Star Wars related film, there are cracks in the franchise. I will go see Episode IX, but that is not really the point. They should have been able to produce endless profitable spin-offs, but have hurt the brand.

 

I don't believe MNS had difficulty raising money for "Glass" - I believe he chose to finance it himself.

"Split" was a big hit - there's no way Universal would've refused to pay for a sequel...

 

Coming out in May when all of the big blockbusters start rolling out...no doubt the budget is low maybe it will find an audience.

The Tomorrow Man (2019)

The Tomorrow Man (2019) - IMDb

 

The director's point about us living in strange times and that there is no present, only the past and the future couldn't be more spot on. But I don't think his use of the mid west as backdrop is going to convey that as much as what I saw several nights ago on PBS...

People's Republic of Desire | Step Into Virtual World of Livestreaming Showrooms | Independent Lens | PBS

You have to keep up with the subtitles from the start to figure out that what you are watching is not a real world. Once you figure out what's going on, it's very disturbing on so many levels.

It makes the future look terrifying.

 

I think that's exactly what happened. Glass cost $20M and has made $241M so far, so I would bet after (say) a $50M breakeven, the top 4 people could get 10% of the gross. 4 people splitting $19M each (based on $190M additional gross) is great for everybody, so that would mean Shyamalan, Willis, McAvoy, and Jackson all did very well. I assume the other actors got a point or two as well. All this is just a guess -- they haven't commented on what the split was. [Get it? "Split"?]

 

We discussed this earlier. Those stars got a % of profits instead of a big upfront payment as the director self financed the film.

 

I'm really surprised it doesn't happen more often for established directors with a few big stars.

 

You never know who has their fingers on the button in the studio's. It might not be a question about the studio's financing the picture. But wanting to have a say in it's production and to glom a big chunk of the profit's (many producer's).

This was an inexpensive picture to produce. I would have done the same thing. Kept creative control and all of the profit's.

Sorry, my bad, I did not recall that.

 

No worries. It’s not easy keeping up with these long threads.

 

I think it's a good trend to pay the actors less money so that they also take the risk when a film like this is made. Otherwise, each actor and the director would've probably received upwards of $7M-$10M each, which would have doubled or tripled the cost of the film (potentially $60M instead of $20M). I remember very well an editorial that then-Variety editor Peter Bart wrote as advice to Eddie Murphy, who was having career problems at the time and had about 6 bombs in a row. Bart suggested that Eddie stop asking for $15M-$20M a film and instead just work for scale (which is I think $50K a week) plus a big percentage of the film. You could make the same argument now for Will Smith, who's in a similar career slump.

Years later, Tom Cruise started doing that and that's how he winds up making $80 million on a film like Mission Impossible: Fallout, which grossed about $790 million worldwide. 10% for Cruise is perfectly reasonable from what I see.

 

I also think this would contribute to everyone trying to make the best movie possible.

 

Agree that this was a smart choice by MNS.

My comment simply refuted the notion that MNS had to finance it himself...

 

I assume that percentage would be from the film's 'takings', rather than from the film's profit, because as we all know, no film in Hollywoo ever makes a profit!

 

Hard to believe the entire industry's still alive. Every movie ever made has lost money!

 

Thats true what you are saying..
with lack of originality and over stuffed blockbusters that often fail.
I wonder how some studios can still be around.?

 

Gee thanks for spoiling it for me.

 

The usual formula is the big Hollywoo stars get gross points instead of net points, because as Art Buchwald discovered with the famous Coming to America, even with a monster hit movie, it rarely gets into net profit as defined by contract. (I have a close friend who worked on Star Trek: Next Generation who revealed that Paramount kept telling Gene Roddenberry that Star Trek had never made a profit, but they still wound up settling with Gene and paying him $3 million as a lump sum "in good faith" despite the lack of profits, just to convince him to get TNG up and running.)

Generally the deal is they studio waits until the film hits a certain breakeven number, and then they get an upwardly-sliding scale of profit participation. Once a blockbuster hits $1 billion, I think they even start cutting the caterer some checks. (OK, that's an exaggeration, but still.) The Zucker Brothers, who made Airplane, said that they were the living examples of a rare case where a movie cost so little and made so much money, Paramount was forced to pay out net points for the first time in decades.

There's a difference between the studio losing money and the movie losing money. There's net profit, gross profit, actual profit, and studio profit... and they all mean different things. Since the studio takes their chunk right off the top, the film itself will be paid for... even if on paper, it's "defined" as not breaking even. As one example: Joe Straczynski of Babylon 5 has said that he's convinced that his TV show made money for Warner Bros., but he and his attorney discovered the studio deducted all kinds of expenses for other shows as part of the structure of the profits & losses, so it literally might never break even.

Speaking of profits & losses, FOX TV just lost a case from the stars and producers of the long-running show Bones, and they have to pay out a whopping $179,000,000 in profits:

Fox Rocked by $179M 'Bones' Ruling: Lying, Cheating and "Reprehensible" Studio Fraud

The story is that this could have repercussions on how future deals are made, particularly as they apply to TV shows. Traditionally, TV actually makes more money than movies, particularly if the show runs for 7-8-9 years.

 

You know, they really do want to make the best movie possible, almost every time. That's how it starts out. But I've been part of projects where it was clear 2-3 weeks in that the thing was a steaming pile of **** and no amount of rewriting or editing or sound or great lighting could fix it. A lot of these projects had conceptual problems where it just stank from the get-go. It's sad when this happens, particularly when the producers frantically throw the kitchen sink at the thing to try to "fix" it. Particularly bad in TV when the show gets cancelled but they still have to go through the motions of shooting the last couple of crap shows, and everybody is demoralized and down. Haaaaaaaarible.

 

Reminds me of the saying. Every idea seems like a good one until they become bad.

 

Neither of us are privy to the story.

There is always money out there. It all depends on the terms that you are willing to accept in order to get the money.

It doesn't matter what industry you might be talking about.

The two main factors are usually having another entity have a bigger say in the project and taking a bigger cut.

So when you can't get money in terms which are acceptable to you form the usual sources, they working out a way to finance it yourself becomes an option.

We don't know if the director took actual money out of his pocket, or borrowed against assets that are his.

For someone who already has an established franchise, with two prior movies under his belt, it is not big stretch that the director was able to make deals with the talent and get the 20M he needed to get the picture made.

20M is not a great deal of money to make a film.

 

I think he chose it to finance to keep as much of the back end profits and to also maintain control.

 

My bet is that if Night had allowed an outside studio to bankroll the film, he would get outvoted in terms of casting, story, and other factors, which he clearly does not want. His only way of getting 100% control was just to pay for the whole thing himself and gamble on it being a hit. Clearly, if he had done that with After Earth (which cost $150 million and only made $243M, which is not profitable), he would've been in the hole on that one. It's a lot easier to finance a $20M film, which he could probably get with a bank loan or two. [CelebrityNetWorth.com says he's worth $50M, but I think that's low.] Shyamalan is legendary for the degree of control he exerts over his production; Samuel L. Jackson has said he bristled at having to endure "line readings" from the director on Unbreakable, which is generally frowned-upon when working with experienced actors.

Note that several directors and producers have tried to finance their own productions and failed miserably, even with the best of intentions. That happened to Coppola with One from the Heart (and to some degree with Apocalypse Now), and I think Kevin Costner lost some money in Waterworld. Hell, even going back to D.W. Griffith, the famed silent filmmaker went broke making Intolerance in 1916. The only filmmakers I can think of who have done well financing their own films were George Lucas (in the 2000s) and Tyler Perry today. There may well be others, but it's rare.

 

Curious as to how they handle the marketing costs which were more than double the cost of actually making the movie est. $50 million.

 

Dark Phoenix >>> bomb?

 

Small wonder.

Intolerance, with its massive sets and hundred's of extra's, had to be a stupid expensive film to make back in 1916.

I would think that it might have been the most expensive film to make up to that point.