Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

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

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  1. Exit Flagger

    Exit Flagger Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Oh I ageee that Disney continues to be a juggernaut, I was just pointing out the cracks in the foundation and the number of non-Marvel/Star Wars turkeys pointing to a lack of imagination and frankly questionable judgment.
     
  2. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Not even close. Even their contemporary duds smoke the garbage they were pumping out in the '70s and early '80s. And they almost all seem to turn a profit in theaters (not to mention home video and streaming).
     
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  3. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    When you look at the big picture, their "duds" are still in the minority.

    Star Wars has but one movie to go and we will have to see where the Marvel Universe will go next year?

    I think that these franchises are so huge that it takes away from their other valuable properties.

    For the present time.

    The heavy non-Star Wars, non-Marvel hitters that Disney has coming out, will be later in the year.

    When they hit, they will be BIG!
     
  4. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    I am really curious how Alita will do in physical media sales and streaming?
     
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  5. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    It should do ok, hopefully well enough to lift the movie into breakeven territory. Still waiting for official word.
     
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  6. Exit Flagger

    Exit Flagger Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    Disney had 3 out of the top 5 money losers of last year.


    Mortal Engines (Universal): -$174.8 million
    A Wrinkle in Time (Disney): -$130.6 million
    Robin Hood (Lionsgate): -$83.7 million
    Solo: A Star Wars Story (Disney): -$76.9 million
    The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Disney): -$65.8 million
     
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  7. Mirrorblade.1

    Mirrorblade.1 Forum Resident

    But , for how long?
     
  8. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    As I noted at the time, there were dozens of people fired at Warner Bros., mostly because of the relative failure of the DC comics movies. It sure didn't help Zack Snyder's career. The first casualties were the marketing & ad/pub department heads, then the heads of production, then some development people, and then they put a whole new person in charge of the DCEU at the studio. And don't forget Josh Whedon going over and doing several films (some only as writer). It was a significant mess, mainly caused by excessive expectations.

    Alita: Battle Angel cost $170M and wound up grossing $403M worldwide, so I don't think it lost money in the end. I think that's a "break even," which is not a total disaster, but it would've had to have done well over $500M to really be profitable. $170M is a lotttttta money for a movie. Given how much control Jim Cameron had over the film as producer, you wonder if now there's some doubt on the future of Avatar next year...
     
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  9. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    Both Godfather and Lawrence of Arabia have natural intermission points, so that wouldn't necessarily be a disaster. They can do 3 hours on a Blu-ray (and a 100GB 4K Blu-ray), and I think there's a way to drop the bitrate for simple stuff like end credits and low-movement/low-detail scenes that would help reduce bandwidth (or as they call it in that business, "the bit-bucket").

    I think good or bad, this is the difficult technological future we face. Look at it this way: in the 1980s, most people subscribed to cable and bought VHS (and in some cases Laserdiscs). As the 1990s progressed, some people switched to DirecTV (or Dish) satellite and DVD. By the early 2000s, people started embracing HD, Blu-ray, and streaming. So now things are changing yet again and we're all being pushed to 4K and all-streaming... only you have to pay for each service.

    I think I spent an average of $5000+ per year, every year, from about 1985-2010 just on video software, and there were years where I easily spent twice as much. Granted, I'm atypical, and a lot of that software became obsolete over time, which is the price of progress. One big issue is that now, the number of titles we have access to is actually reduced, plus you can't really "own" it in a traditional sense. If it's just a monthly streaming bill from Netflix, it's not that bad since it's an all-you-can-eat buffet. But what if they start dinging us 99 cents per film? I could easily be back to a $500-$1000 monthly bill on video entertainment.
     
    Last edited: Apr 14, 2019
  10. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    I would find something more reasonable considering Blu-rays are my main expense as I like to own my favorite movies...I only watch Netflix when there's something not out on BD or a movie only available on their site....
     
  11. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I'm very grateful that people are still buying Blu-ray discs, because I make a good chunk of my living on remastered films. And I agree there are a lot of movies that have "fallen through the cracks" to the point where they're impossible to find on streaming services, and anything that's up on YouTube or Vimeo is extremely ugly to watch. It's nice to restore these little cult films and see them get released to an appreciative audience.
     
  12. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    exactly and I'm sure contributing to the cause!

    P.S. if you ever find the time I'd love to know which Blu-rays and DVDs you've worked on...It would be neat knowing how many I own...: )
     
  13. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR! Thread Starter

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    They all merge together after awhile! I know I've done about 100 titles just for Vinegar Syndrome, and that's roughly 25-30 films every year for the past 4 years. Before that... my eyes get blurry. I worked on The Egyptian for 20th Century-Fox, along with Poseiden Adventure, Phantom of the Paradise, and a bunch of others. For Disney, I did about 15-20 cartoon shorts plus Black Hole and a few others. In all fairness: I was part of the restoration team, so there were two of us doing color and a huge staff doing dirt removal, grain management, and other kinds of image processing.
     
  14. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Yeah, but all three losses were probably more than covered by one hit. It was their second-biggest year in history, topping 2017. Infinity War crossed $2 billion, Black Panther was the 3rd highest domestic grossing film of all time, crossing $1.3 billion worldwide, and Incredibles 2 was the biggest animated title ever in North America. All three films crossed $1 billion worldwide, and even "lesser" titles like Ant-Man and The Wasp soared past $500 million.

    Solo hauled in almost $400 million. It may ultimately break even once streaming and video sales are factored in - it certainly won't be a large loss in the scheme of things.

    Their only real bomb was A Wrinkle In Time. But the 2018 gross for The Last Jedi and Coco probably covered most of that, and they were holdovers from 2017.
     
  15. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US

    Well they need to make the big Marvel bucks now, because, I don’t care what franchise it is, you can only wring so much out of an idea before it gets watered and stale — sort of what some Star Wars fans feel Is happening to that series, which, consequently is being put to bed. I mean, five years ago Would “Solo” have been met with a lukewarm response as a “new Star Wars film?” Doubtful. People were still hungry for anything SW back then.
     
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  16. Michael

    Michael I LOVE WIDE S-T-E-R-E-O!

    WOW! very impressive! thanks Marc...I think we mentioned Blood Harvest in a thread somewhere...Nice job on that one! never looked do good...
     
  17. Jim B.

    Jim B. Senior Member

    Location:
    UK
    Both? The Scorcese is a Netflix exclusive, how is that going to get a big box office? It may have a very limited run so it qualifies for the Oscars but they want people to watch it on Netflix.

    It's impossible to know how well Netflix films do anyway. Even if 40 million watch Bird Box that doesn't mean 40 million people would have gone to the cinema and paid money to see it. People will watch anything if it's 'free' (they already have the service).
     
  18. rjp

    rjp Senior Member

    Location:
    Ohio
    i'm not arguing, you win, you are right.

    i take it back, geez.
     
  19. Luke The Drifter

    Luke The Drifter Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Plus, folks like me live in rural areas and streaming is not an option. And I do not think it will be for awhile yet.
     
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  20. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (Disney):

    Domestic Box Office $54,858,851 Details
    International Box Office $115,435,048 Details
    Worldwide Box Office $170,293,899

    Against a production cost of 120M would mean they would need about 360M to break even all said and done.

    DVD and Blu-ray sales are about 8M so far.

    So it didn't fare so well.
     
  21. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    I doubt if Avatar will have any issues. I doubt very much is Disney want to publicly get at odds with Cameron and Avatar, considering how much the original made and Cameron's track record.

    Disney has to know that it can't bet the show on superhero movies and Star Wars is about burnt out. They will need to develop other successful franchises to continue their momentum.

    Plus, with an Avatar based theme part, they are more than somewhat vested in Avatar's continued success.

    It would kink of suck to have a theme park around a failed franchise.

    If Dumbo ultimately fails, parents will still stand in line for the ride with their children.

    The main issue with Avatar sequels at this point is that the first sequel was promised for 2014 and that didn't happen. Even then, that would have been a full five years after Avatar came out, which is a long time. People forget...

    With the first sequel scheduled for December of 2020, that is 11-years after Avatar and could very well effect the box office receipts.

    Alita might have done better a decade ago, when the material was fresher?

    At this point, there undoubtedly has already had a good bit of money invested in the #2 and #3 so putting the brakes on at this point, doesn't look like a good idea.

    I have previously commented, that I didn't think that Cameron would have spent that much money on Alita, if he was not planning on using the technologies that he invested in, it the Avatar sequels.

    This have given him a big head's-up, on what these technologies will look like, way ahead of Avatar 2.

    I imagine that Alita will be out on streaming, DVD and Blu-ray, next month or so. It will be interesting to see how much additional income it might bring in and also demonstrate to the studio if there is continued interest enough to continue the franchise.

    I would think that the future for Alita is on the fence at present. A good home media or streaming showing could guarantee a sequel being made.

    I feel positive that it will.

    Having already spent the money to develop the technology used in Alita, If they make the movie again, I would guess that it could be done for $120M, which is what they might budget for a sequel.

    Even it they had a larger budget in mind initially, they may have to scale it back a bit to get it made.

    I'm sure that they can make an acceptable Alita movie for 120M. At that budget, a sequel will make money for sure.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2019
  22. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    No high speed internet in your area?
     
  23. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada
    December 2020 is wide open for Avatar II - expect the Disney/Fox promo machine to be running full tilt for this one, if it fails it won't be for lack of marketing. Also they just announced another cast addition today.


    Michelle Yeoh is headed to Pandora.

    The actor will play a scientist named scientist Dr. Karina Mogue in the upcoming series of Avatar sequels.

    “Throughout her career, Michelle has always created unique and memorable characters. I look forward to working with Michelle to do the same thing on the Avatar sequels,” Avatar director James Cameron said in a statement.


    [​IMG]
     
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  24. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    Being that the fate of a franchise and possibly a theme park is dependent of the success of Avatar 2, I bet the Disney is going to put forth a monumental effort to see that it works.

    I see it as so important, that Disney would rather put more money into the budget, even it they feel the return will be riskier, just to insure that the franchise is ultimately going to be successful.

    I think that the single biggest factor against Avatar 2's success will be the amount of time that has passed since the original was released back in 2009.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2019
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  25. Deuce66

    Deuce66 Senior Member

    Location:
    Canada

    Posted by Jon Landau on Facebook - that line "the remaining Fox team" it must hurt to say that given the long history, a lot of good people being shown the door.



    Very thankful for our past several decades of collaborations with Twentieth Century Fox... but now we are excited by the prospect of collaborating with Disney (and the remaining Fox team) for many future decades. — with James Cameron.

    [​IMG]
     
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