Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

I'm not sure what the film financing scene is like these days but when I was last involved, there was no shortage of LLP set ups or Enterprise Investment Scheme scenarios around that would allow rich people to defer/avoid tax, while investing in films, which don't need to make money for the rich people to benefit. Any profit they might make is just a bonus. In the UK they came down hard on these schemes but they still exist. So, I agree, I think it would've been fairly easy for him to find the $20M, relatively speaking. He likely didn't put it all up himself or expose himself to much loss.

 

My guess is that the distributor (Universal I think) would've taken on a lot, if not all, of those costs.

 

UK lottery contributes.

 

Many people believe that Hollywood financing is as much about money laundering, as it is about making movies.

 

No, Gravity was what they call a "negative pickup," where an independent film is made and the investors shoulder most of the financial burden, and then a studio acquires it for distribution and gets a piece of the gross profit and gives the rest to the filmmakers. It's even possible that Universal in this case only owns the rights for a certain number of years, and then they revert to Shyamalan. There's a lot of different ways they structure those deals; for example, Rodgers & Hammerstein wound up owning most of their Hollywood films after a certain number of years.

Note that Disney also got some of the profits, because Night used his characters from Unbreakable and even some scenes (unused and also previously-seen) from that movie.

 

Disney probably has its hands in most pies at this point, since it's like half of Hollywood.

 

Shazam ?
Nice place to see Jimmy Fallon get some work.

 

Captain Marvel a huge hit then, well done.

 

BTW, now that Mary Poppins Returns has faded from theaters, we can report that it wound up in the "broke even but wasn't a big hit" category, grossing $348 million worldwide on a budget of $130 million. If it had gone north of $400 million, that would've been a modest hit; $500 million would have been a really decent hit. I don't think it was a bad movie at all, but I also don't think it was very good, hindered by lackluster songs and kind of an "OK but not great" storyline and cast. And yet at the same time, I don't know how much else you could have done to have bolstered a sequel set in depression-era London with several of the same characters as the first film.

Note that Captain Marvel (a very different recent movie from Disney) cost $175 million but has made a fairly stunning $760 million+ in less than 2 weeks. That's a very, very, very big hit by any measure -- and a lot more than I would have predicted. Some are predicting it will hit about $1.5 billion, making it one of the biggest films ever made.

 

I went to see it a couple of times as a AMC Stubbs A-List member.

When a movie does poorly or at least under-perform's, I like to examine the reason's why?

I think the the cast was not a problem at all. I thought everyone in the cast was excellent and perfectly cast in their parts.

The songs. I think the reason that the songs were not memorable, was that they were overly complicated. In a movie like this, people want simple tunes that they can remember.

Thinking right this moment, I honestly can't remember any of the songs, off the top of my head and that is with seeing the movie three times. If I watched the movie again, my mind would say, "oh yeah, I remember that song...".

I think the major problem with the movie was that they wrote a script that involved the adults and the families financial situation. Fr what it was, the script was well written and the actors, including the children, did their best to make it work.

The sort of thing simply did not exist in the books. Children's stories, should be children's stories and the adult situational aspects should not have entered into the story line.

This is or should have been strictly a movie about the children and their nanny.

Maybe the times has something to do with the way a movie like this is made too.

Disney has had nothing but success with music in their animated movies. But, I'm not sure that real children running around singing captures the same hold on the audience as it did back in the early sixties?

The songs and the situations have a big part in this too.

After the original MP, everyone, adults and children knew the songs, not so much with this one.

 

I'm still standing by my prediction that Dumbo flops. During the trailer I watched yesterday before Captain Marvel there were only crickets at the conclusion.

 

I can't imagine a legacy Disney property like Dumbo flopping.

But, I didn't get much out of the Trailer either. More info needed.

The worst trailer so far is the trailer for Aladdin. There is nothing shown that would give anyone the incentive that there is something in the movie that would be worthy of seeing.

 

Early tracking for domestic is $50-60 million = minor hit.

Tim Burton's 'Dumbo' Tracking for $50M-$60M U.S. Opening

 

I did not realize it opened already. Lets see how wrong I am (my predictions usually suck).

 

It opens on March 29.

 

So the 50-60 million is in pre-sales? Or is that just an estimate?

 

Market research evaluation/estimate.

 

thought you would find this interesting Shazam sequel announced 'Shazam' Director And Producer Returning For Sequel

 

I think there's more to it than that. If you remember the original Mary Poppins, a lot of it involves the children accidentally causing a panic at the bank where many customers tried to pull all their money out, which resulted in their father losing his job. (This is preceded by the somewhat-memorable song "Tuppence." The children take the tuppence and run away, and wind up taking the money to the old lady sitting on the steps ("Feed the Birds")... all scenes without Mary Poppins, all integral to the plot, as the father realizes his children are growing up with the same twisted ideas about money and finance that he does. So it's more than just children's stories.

But I'd say the biggest problem with Mary Poppins Returns is that it's not very good. Like too many movies I see these days, it kind of falls into the "OK, not great" category. Not terrible, not fantastic, but just kinda "eh" to me. I think they tried, but there were a lot of mistakes made at the core: casting, music, story, editing... there's a lot of things that made me kinda wince. For all I know, the key problem is that it was made 15-20 years too late... but I think they might have had more legal problems had they tried to make a sequel while Pamela Travers was still alive. As it was, this still is not a story from any of the books, because the door to those are slammed shut.

 

But that was caused by the children and it did not control the entire story the way MPR did.

OK, certain things were not going to happen while Pamela Travers was still alive.

I think that it was also OK that MPR was not an original book. As long as it was written by someone who knows the MP universe, then a respectable job could be done.

Going back to the original Star Trek paperback novels, the were all written by different authors, as were scripts for the TV show. But, both the script writer's and the novel author's understood the ST universe.

James Bond movies have continued long after Ian Fleming's books had run their course.

Too late by 15-20 years, why? Just out of date with the times?

Which was what I was commenting on, with regard to the musical part, where real people are dancing and singing as opposed to being music within an animated movie (like Frozen).

You mentioned casting. What do you see wrong with the casting? I thought that all the actors fit their respective character's very well.

 

And on a different tactic (but relating to studio bombs and problems over the years: Warner Bros. has now admitted they're giving up on a "DC Comics Universe" approach to films and is no longer going to try to compete with Disney/Marvel on that level:

DC Films Finally Admits Marvel Studios Was Right All Along

And as I predicted about six months ago, they're firing WB CEO Kevin Tsujihara (but that's happening mostly because of his ill-timed affair and text messages leak, in addition to the superhero movie disappointments)...

Warner Bros.' Kevin Tsujihara to Exit as Studio Chief

So that means the other shoe has dropped. It looks like WB studio owner AT&T is making very tough decisions on the future of the studio, particularly as it transitions to doing more streaking through WarnerMedia...



Call me old-fashioned, but I much prefer the Warner Bros. shield.

 

Whoops, make that streaming. (But it's possible the former WB CEO did do some streaking in his private life.)

 

with DC (even before the departure, just announced) seemingly doing well at the B.O. (Aquaman , WW , and now Shazam looking like it will not miss -so that is 3 out of the last 4 , performing very well (or looking to (Shazam )

Is there any room (as far as BO numbers) for non-DC/Marvel comic book superhero films??

Seems like it will be nearly impossible for anything else to find room ????

 

Maybe a bigger question is how much room will there be for ordinary human dramas, historical films, biographical films, romantic comedies, musicals, Westerns, and so on. We're in difficult times when 75% of the industry's effort seems to be around tentpole blockbuster action/superhero films that potentially can make $1 billion dollars every time, and not smaller "artistic" films with smaller audiences.

 

very good point ....