Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

Printed list and release dates:

Predicting the biggest box office bombs of 2019

Serenity - January 25, 2019
Alita: Battle Angel - February 14, 2019
Fighting with My Family - February 14, 2019
Five Feet Apart - March 22, 2019
Captive State - March 29, 2019
The Best of Enemies - April 5, 2019
Doom - May 17, 2019
New Mutants - August 2, 2019
Dora The Explorer - August 2, 2019
Rambo V - TBD Fall 2019
The Tax Collector - TBD Fall 2019
Gemini Man - October 4, 2019
Joker - October 4, 2019
Terminator 6 - November 1, 2019
Cats - December 20, 2019

I agree with them -- it looks like there's potential for some very, very bad films on that list. I've seen the Alita: Battle Angel trailer 3 or 4 times now, and I'm not feelin' it. (But I readily admit I'm not the audience for this film.)

 

That's funny because that's the only film on the list I'm actually interested in seeing at some point. Oh, and the new Terminator film.

 

Ehhhh... the eyes are creepy.


Alita: Battle Angel's eyes freaking you out? Blame James Cameron

 

In fact, that's what I like about the character. She looks interesting...

 

Trailer impresses this forum member.

 

A pity no interviewer ever asks him why they - and he in particular, being the studio's then on-set hatchet man - treated David Fincher so despicably on Alien3...

 

They enlarged the irises and pupils after that shot was generated, didn't they? I noticed she looks much less creepy in the newer shots.

 

The eyes are exactly like the manga, the only thing that is human about Alita is her brain.

 

Alita is 100% CGI, they use performance capture technology.

 

Yes, I know that. I'm just saying that they went back and increased the size of her irises after that shot was rendered, because lots of people complained she looked "crazed". The larger irises and pupils helped to balance out her eyes and make her look less nutty.

 

Still very creepy, a lot of Uncanny Valley with that character. There's so many blow-'em-up sci-fi films that have been out in the last few years and have yet to come out this year, I'd be concerned about audience burn-out. As far as manga goes, Alita: Battle Angel could be another Speed Racer-sized disaster that doesn't find an audience in America.

 

This Battle Angel movie is to James Cameron what The Mortal Engines was to Peter Jackson -- a project they've been talking about doing for years, that took so long to get off the ground they eventually lost interest or realized they'd never get to it and passed it off to someone else (in Jackson's case, one of his underlings).

I feel like it might have the same fate, but you never know.

 

I didn't post it here, but a few days before Mortal Engines was released, I said on my Facebook account that if Mortal Engines took more than $10 million the first weekend in America I would eat my hat. Even I was surprised at how little it took in! But Mortal Engines was just a stupid concept through and through, like it was imagined by a 12 year old. It's the cinematic equivalent to that Simpsons episode where Homer was given free reign to design a car. What were they thinking? Entire cities fighting each other like monster trucks?! This is precisely why people shouldn't surround themselves with Yes-Men: They might actually save themselves $200 million.

I don't see that level of Stupidity with Alita, but then I have yet to check out a trailer.

 

Neither would I, but I thought the trailer's to be interesting. With Cameron/Rodriguez behind it, that is about a powerhouse of a team as you can get. There people don't make bad movies (we will ignore Terminator sequel's).

Look at it this way. the last Fantastic Beasts was made for 200M, the same budget as Atila, and FB is now at 626M.

This will have an already built in huge audience in Asia. I can't see it doing any worse at the Box Office than FB.

Thoughts?

Cats,

Different than Evita or Phantom. While both of these movies made Broadway hits, I think their theatrical audience would naturally be a bit smaller, which it was.

Still, Phantom should have done far better, having survived more that 12,800 performances on Broadway.

Les Misérables, (not ALW), a huge Broadway hit with more than 6,600 performances, was produced in movie form at a cost of 61M and did 441.8M at the box office. Very respectable!

Cats was a huge hit on Broadway in 4th place as far as number of performances go, with 7,485. And has been hugely successful on the road.

Cats is a bit different because they did film a video of the stage production, which none of these other plays have done. The video was filmed on a stage with an all star Cats cast, making it a definitive production.

But, unlike these other movie adaption's, cats was based on a book of children's poems and therefore has a built in children's audience that these other films did not have.

Cats also made it's premier on Broadway more than 35-years ago, and so today has a wide audience appeal range.

Timing is not that great, being up against the Star Wars IX.

But I will predict, that it will make money and will be a big holiday family type film.

I think that bringing in a strong cast, including Taylor Swift was a wise move.

In addition, is is directed by Les Misérables director Tom Hooper.

I think success for it is in the stars.

We shall see...

 

Rumors are afoot that Dark Phoenix is a huge bomb waiting to happen. Test screenings didn't go very well at all...

 

And I believe we have the very first new bomb of 2019...

The weekend's third new offering, the sci-fi thriller Replicas, bombed with $2.5 million to mark the worst wide start of Keanu Reeves' career. The Entertainment Studios release was slapped with a C CinemaScore after getting skewered by critics. It couldn't crack the top 10 and instead landed at No. 13.

Weekend Box Office: 'The Upside' Beats 'Aquaman' With $19.6M; 'Replicas' Bombs

 

A Dog's Way Home, opened at #3, behind The Upside and Aquaman, at 11.3M. Looks like it is going to make some money, as it has a budget of only 18M and it has not opened overseas yet!

I think it's interesting to note that Hailee Steinfeld is in both Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which is #4 this past weekend, and Bumblebee (#7), with both movies doing well at the box office. Bumblebee is killing it with a world wide gross of almost 365M (made on a $135M budget). I doubt that anyone anticipated this!

Mary Poppins Returns, has now passed up the lifetime domestic grosses of Les Misreables ($148.8 million) and Mamma Mia ($144.2 million), which were considered to be very successful musical's.

 

The "Transformers" films have been super-big business overseas for a long time.

"Bumblebee" is unlikely to come close to the money made by even the weakest of the "Transformers" flicks. "Last Knight" was the weakest performing of the 5 - and it still made $605 million WW!

 

Not to worry. John Wick 3 is coming.

 

I think that's true: Bumblebee has done very well, plus the reviews were remarkably good.

You need to look at total negative cost and total worldwide gross. Mary Poppins Returns cost $130M and has made $287M worldwide, which is not exactly a hit. I think it would have to make north of $350M to do well. Bear in mind that they spent about $70M promoting the film. By comparison, look at The Greatest Showman, a musical film some predicted would not do well, but it would up making $435 million on a budget of $84 million, which is a big hit. When you make four times the negative cost (or more), they break out the champagne. I think Mary Poppins has a ways to go.

For comparison, Les Miserables cost $61M and made $442M worldwide, and Mamma Mia cost $52M and made $616M worldwide. Those were monster hits by any definition. Dreamgirls cost $80M and made only $154M, which was looked upon as a huge disappointment -- not quite a bomb, but maybe barely breaking even, after home video and TV syndication. They were hoping the film would do twice that.

 

they don't fit! LOL...

 

And it's most likely creepy as it is in other movies with similar distortions because it doesn't serve the story and/or there's no real convincing reason pointed out within the plot as to why it's part of that character's trait. It just becomes a "Look what I can do with Photoshop" one trick pony effect.

Yeah, I saw the trailer now for the third time. It's still creepy every time I see it.

 

It's very depressing to me to see how many of the upcoming movies are remakes or sequels - Hollywood seems to have run out of original ideas

Looking forward to the Tarantino though

 

Go see one of the many other films that are original and not the typical Hollywood blockbuster. Be adventurous. They are out there.... lots of good films.

 

Another Margaret Keane Adventure?