Predicting the Movie Hits and Bombs of 2019

I agree. I personally don't think it is doing that well. Bumblebee is close to 100M ahead of it in worldwide release.

I didn't see Mamma Mia but I did see Les Miserables and I thought it was a very moving movie. But, I did not think that it would do that well at the box office. I thought it would be very soft and they did spend a good amount to make it. How wrong I was!

Mamma Mia making 616M worldwide, that is completely crazy! Who would have thought?

Since retiring, I bought a AMC Stubbs A-List pass, as I have only of only two dine-in theater's in Florida, right down the street from me. They charge $15 to see a single 3D movie! So, I figured $20/mo. wasn't such a bad deal.

I had some time and a reservation to kill on Saturday, so I thought I would sit through Mary Poppins Returns again and give it another chance.

I really like the casting and the production values are first rate, but I find that I can barely get in to the story and I still don't recall any of the songs.

What ever success it does or does not have, I don't think it has anything to do with it being a musical. Where Mamma Mia and Les Miserables have everything to do with being a musical.

The Greatest Showman came out of nowhere and did fantastic! I was very shocked at this one. Musical's usually have a hard time at the box office, with only well known ones doing well at all. Nobody ever heard of it before. You never hear of this kind of success happening with a musical.

I had been given to hear that Replicas cost around 30M to make. I had found this out about Replicas, that I was not previously aware of, "The film was sold after a private screening at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival to Entertainment Studios for $4 million. It was then released in the United States on January 11, 2019. The studio spent $10.5 million advertising the film.

When you spend 30M and then sell your film for 4M before it is released, that tells you that the producer's knew that they had made a real stinker!

4M was the average production cost of a movie over forty years ago! You buy a movie today for only 4M and it makes only just over half of that the first week, OUCH!

Escape Room looks like it might be entertaining. I'm considering that I might catch it this week. It only cost 9M to make and it has just entered its second week, it has done 32.4M. It was #5 domestically, ahead of Mary Poppins Returns and Bumblebee, so it looks like it will do well.

 

Goddamn hell of a year for new movies, though the majority of them listed here are remakes, sequels, and reboots. I want to see at least half of them.

I'd think it's safe to say Star Wars & Avengers will be smash hits. Captain Marvel I'm wondering about. Very much interested in Joker, Spider-Man: Far From Home & Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. Definitely will be seeing It: Chapter 2, and I'd be interested in seeing if they can better the original (and damn creepy) Pet Semetary adaptation.

Interested in Glass as well. I saw the long trailer for the Godzilla sequel before a recent movie, and it looked boring. Been burned by the last two or three Terminator sequels / reboots, so I may wait for BD on that one.

 

Noting that the critic's hated Pearl Harbor and Armageddon, I really liked both of these Michael Bay movies a lot.

Here is someone who probably has more explosions in his movie's than anyone else in Hollywood. Granted, that there was going to be a lot of Explosions in Pearl Harbor. But, I thought that both of these films had a very human element to them.

Here is someone who makes money, with almost anything that has explosions in it. The more the explosions, the more money the film makes.

I just can't watch his movies. I just can't do it!

I'm glad that Bumblebee went down the way it did. I really liked the movie, all the way through.

 

Think it might have something to do with these?

 

I was a pretty big fan of the Japanese Godzilla movies and the most recent American one was decent, but the sequel doesn't look too promising. The cast seems pretty b-list and I don't know the director either. It almost seems like a vaguely low budget film from what I've seen.

 

Japanese Godzilla movies are supposed to have "B" list actors.

Godzilla was a man in a rubber suit, they were always "B" list movies.

 

Obviously this is a suposedly a big budget production though, isn't it? There are no actors on the level of Bryan Cranston is what I'm getting at.

 

OK, so Godzilla movies are big budget "B" movies. Has anything really changed?

 

Really like the - John Wick - stuff, don't know why as I'm not into extreme blood and guts movie's anymore.
Can't wait till May.

 

The level of seriousness that the film projects is a good start.

 

Godzilla movies start with a level of "seriousness"?

For me, "seriousness" starts when there is a GIANT moth in the movie! Way more serious than some old big lizard.

 

Nah, I think that the trailer for the upcoming Godzilla sequel is way too serious - that's the level of seriousness I'm getting at. The 2014 film seemed serious in the previews and trailers, but it was actually quite camp all things being equal. I hope the sequel is too, and doesn't try to be "dark and gritty".

 

Big eyes = a bigger expressive and emotional canvas

A common anime character design convention is exaggerated eye size. The animation of characters with large eyes in anime can be traced back to Osamu Tezuka, who was deeply influenced by such early animation characters as Betty Boop, who was drawn with disproportionately large eyes.[73] Tezuka is a central figure in anime and manga history, whose iconic art style and character designs allowed for the entire range of human emotions to be depicted solely through the eyes.[74] The artist adds variable color shading to the eyes and particularly to the cornea to give them greater depth. Generally, a mixture of a light shade, the tone color, and a dark shade is used.[75][76] Cultural anthropologist Matt Thorn argues that Japanese animators and audiences do not perceive such stylized eyes as inherently more or less foreign.[77] However, not all anime have large eyes. For example, the works of Hayao Miyazaki are known for having realistically proportioned eyes, as well as realistic hair colors on their characters.[78]

 

I like the series of movies so far and I'm really looking forward to the next one. They're fun movies. I've never watched any at the cinema but I'll try and make an effort for this one. I should see one at the cinema.

 

I doubt that we will have to worry about that...

 

Abba movie w those songs and after the hit play was no surprise being a worldwide hit. Especially outside of America.

 

AMC's - Get to know Alita Battle Angel (the basics).

Get to Know Alita: Battle Angel


The film industry tends to run on familiarity. Franchises are built around characters and stories that audiences already recognize, which is why long-running comic books and trusted brands like Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes inspire the bulk of our entertainment at the multiplexes. So, when a semi-original property comes around, like February’s anticipated release of ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, we tend to get very excited.

We say “semi-original” because Robert Rodriguez’s ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is inspired by a beloved manga comic “Gunnm,” which also goes by “Battle Angel Alita.” But for many outside that fan base, the pending movie will be the introduction of this incredible new character and the world she inhabits. To help get you prepared for the new movie, let’s run through what you need to know about the title character, Alita.

Who is she?

This gets complicated, right off the bat. Alita, played on screen by Rosa Salazar using cutting-edge motion capture technology, isn’t really a she at all. She’s a cyborg creation with very few body parts left, who is unearthed in a local garbage dump by Dr. Ido (Christoph Waltz).

At the time of her discovery, Alita suffers from amnesia. But, as Ido rebuilds her, Alita realizes that she has a vivid and lethal past and that she’s way more important to the state of the world — socially and politically — than either she or Ido ever believed.

Alita’s Path to the Big Screen
There’s a chance you might have heard about an ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL movie making its way to theatres over the years. That’s because Oscar®-winning filmmaker James Cameron has been shepherding this adaptation as far back as 2000.

Cameron always envisioned a multifilm adaptation of Yukito Kishiro’s “Battle Angel Alita” manga that would focus on, initially, the first four books in the comic series. The film project started then stalled so many times (as blockbuster franchises often do), and eventually Cameron shifted his attention to another original project that would break significant visual and technological ground: AVATAR.

But 20th Century Fox still wanted to make ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL, and producer Jon Landau worked tirelessly behind the scenes to find the right creative partner to step into James Cameron’s massive shoes. Landau found the right collaborator in Robert Rodriguez, a director who tested the boundaries of mocap technology in his SIN CITY movies, as well as his family-friendly SPY KIDS films. Cameron stayed on as a producer and creative consultant, and the team moved to Weta in New Zealand to begin perfecting the special effects needed to bring ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL to life.

Other Characters
ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is set in a post-apocalyptic world and is filled with wildly original characters. But there are a few, in addition to Alita (Salazar) and Dr. Ido (Waltz), that you will want to familiarize yourself with before heading to AMC theatres in February to see this action-adventure.

Most stories need a villain, and Alita eventually finds herself on the run from assassins played by Ed Skrein (DEADPOOL) and Eiza González (BABY DRIVER). These two play cyborgs whose mission is to eliminate Alita, once their boss realizes that she has been revived.

The centerpiece of ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL is a deadly sport known as Motorball, and a handful of characters in the new movie are associated with the fast-moving game. Vector (Mahershala Ali) tends to rig the games so that they favor whomever he wants to win. Meanwhile, Hugo (Keean Johnson) is a Motorball expert who takes time to teach Alita how to play. As you might have guessed, Hugo is also a love interest for our title heroine.

Finally, there’s Chiren, Ido’s one-time girlfriend and an ally of Alita as the cyborg attempts to complete her ultimate quest. To fill this pivotal role, Robert Rodriguez tapped Jennifer Connelly, last seen on the big screen in the 2017 firefighter drama ONLY THE BRAVE.

Robert Rodriguez’s ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL opens at your local AMC theatre on February 14. We have been lucky enough to screen footage from the movie and can tell you that ALITA features some of the best on-screen 3D we’ve witnessed in some time, possibly since Cameron improved the tech for AVATAR.

 

Problem is "Alita" isn't a Japanese anime movie. It's live action and thus diminishes and distracts from the expressiveness of cartoon animation. I worked for an animation studio and I am a cartoonist so when I see this bug eyed treatment in live action features with no convincing explanation for it being part of the character, I get really turned off by its way of telling a story. When the visual overrides or draws more attention than it deserves than the story telling, there is an emotional disconnect for me.

Even if Alita is a robot or toy brought to life why make everything look real but the eyes?

 

Don't know the market outside of America. Knew that Abba was big in Europe, more so than in America, but they were also popular in America during the mid and late 70's and also the early eighties. Sold a few hundred million records, I knew that.

I know that the play was successful, but that was back around 2000. But it came in on Broadway, ranked at #4, all time box office and 324M WW, actually edging out the movie version!

I never realized that the movie or the play would have been that popular. I never had any interest in either of them.

Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again, came up to just below 400M.

Across the Universe, with BEATLES songs, did less that 25M in the US and only another 5M WW. It did not even break 30M total.

I thought that Across the Universe, was an excellent movie. There was nothing that I didn't like about it.

Am I missing something somewhere? Are Abba songs more iconic than the Beatles?

 

I loved Across the Universe but as a Julie Taymor film probably not as audience friendly in a basic level. I agree it’s a great film and somewhat more Artsy too. And great music arrangements of Beatles songs by T Bone Burnett.

Abba like Queen songs, are a different sort of feel good music. Plus there have been so many movies surrounded by Beatles songs. Mostly failures like SGT Pepper.

 

Remaining true to the source material, I don't think it's anymore complicated than that.

 

Being true to anime as the source material?

Or is there a story line that says Alita has large pronounced eyes because...? What?...She's a doll or puppet like Pinocchio? Is Alita a designed android? To mimic what? A real live person or to express the artistry of the doll designer? I'm confused by what's being communicated.

The look of James Cameron's Avatar made more sense. At least the explanation behind those creepy looking creatures was made clear in the story line. It drew me in and suspended my disbelief in such a fantasy world.

 

I guess that we would have to consider it to be a "live CGI action, anime movie".

They made Ghost in the Shell as a real live action movie, without the "creepy eyes", that the animated versions had. Not to mention the backlash of casting Scarlett Johansson in the role of an anime character, despite not being Asian.

But, she can do the creepy eye thing pretty well on her own.



Alita is not a real live action movie, on purpose. Otherwise it would have a live action character.

As was stated above, the only part of hear that is real is her brain. The CGI character is human-like, not human and the eyes deliberately reflect the mechanical anime character that she is.

 

Anime is animation of a drawn character. It is not expressing a mechanical world. So there's no point in making a cartoon look like a live humanoid and then say it looks like that because the source is a cartoon character unless the plot of the movie is bringing an anime cartoon world come to life. I think you're getting confused in what the story line is about.

It's not about anime. It's about a character who fights like a Ninja with special powers. That's not anime. anime is a style of cartoon animation.

 

Read post #192 above - she's an advanced weapon with a human brain.