Predicting the Movie Hits & Bombs of 2022

Avatar I have to admit the Aliens have the the most twisted look ...what are they? there is no appeal to their look at all for me.

 

It's probably the next thing I'll go to the theater for. Nothing out now interests me. I missed "Amsterdam", blinked and it was gone.

 

Break even is typically 2.5 production budget. Disney gets a much bigger take than 50% of the box office. Black Panther will be decently profitable even with short domestic legs.

 

The humans are the aliens in Avatar but I get your meaning, they went thru a lot of different looks for the Na'vi in Avatar before they settled for an appearance that was less threatening to the audience (not like Alien/Predator/Independence Day etc...). No one cheers for the aliens in those movies in Avatar we are supposed to empathize with the Na'vi.

 

gotcha...I am not a fan of the story or the look.

 

Is this like a record? Can't remember a film hitting the $300 mil mark.

 

There's been a handful that have budgets of $300 million.

 

There's a few that cracked the $300 million mark. I had no idea that Tangled cost so much $$$$$$

List of most expensive films - Wikipedia

$250 million and UP!!!

1- Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides 2011 *$379
2- Avengers: Age of Ultron 2015 *$365
3- Avengers: Endgame 2019 $356
4- Avengers: Infinity War 2018 $325
5- Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End 2007 $300
6-Justice League 2017 $300
7- Solo: A Star Wars Story 2018 *$275
8-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker 2019 $275
9- John Carter 2012 *$264
10- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice 2016 $263
11- Star Wars: The Last Jedi 2017 $262
12- Tangled 2010 $260
13-The Lion King 2019 $260
14- Star Wars: The Force Awakens 2015 *$259
15- Spider-Man 3 2007 *$258
16- Beauty and the Beast 2017 *$255
17- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 2009 $250
18-Furious 7 2015 $250
19-The Fate of the Furious 2017 $250
20-No Time to Die 2021 $250
21-Thor: Love and Thunder 2022 $250
22-Black Panther: Wakanda Forever 2022 $250

 

It probably won't break even if it cracked a billion dollars.

 

Yeah, if you by the "2.5X multiplier" theory, they'd have to make $850 million just to barely break even, and the realities are that the costs of distribution and advertising (what they used to call P&A) would easily be another $150M for a film this big. Very tough to break even on a film this costly. I'm flummoxed why it had to even cost half that: $175 million is an enormous amount of money, even in 2022.

Yeah, six that cost more than $300 million -- more if you go back in time and readjust budgets for inflation.

What happened with Tangled is that they spent 4 years writing and re-writing the script, then shot a lot of the film, then they fired and replaced the two directors and basically completely started over again with a new idea and a new film. And one of the original directors was so stressed-out, he had a heart attack. So essentially... it was shot twice. I think The Good Dinosaur was another rare Pixar film that tanked, and it was also shot twice (from what I was told), even with two completely different voice actor casts. Animation is not an easy business.

 

Presumably long term profits have to factor into the equation. If studios had to depend purely upon box office receipts and nothing else then the entire industry would be in trouble.

 

But you must remember most of the post-theatrical opportunities films used to have aren't there anymore. A film usually leaves a theater forty-five days after its release straight to its corporate streaming platform (Paramount+, HBO Max, Disney+)

 

Well, Fast X is still not done yet, so maybe it will take out Pirates. That would be special.

 

Wakanda Forever is looking like a 63% drop for its second week. That’s better than many recent Marvel movies like Dr. Stranger, Thor Love and Thunder and Black Widow. And it’s even with Black Adam, which generally held well for a recent superhero movie.

The Menu opened with a healthy $15m against a budget of $30m. This should be a modest hit with decent legs, as audiences and critics are giving the horror comedy positive marks.

 

Due to weaker international results Black Panther has no chance of making the $1B club, my guess is that it should finish somewhere close to or slightly above The Batman/Thor Love and Thunder. $750-800 million range?

 

I think you’re in the right range. I don’t think we’ll see another Marvel movie over a billion outside of the huge crossover events.

 

Not always. Some films just crater after release and make zero money. Famously, I once took longer-than-estimated to master a few episodes of Star Trek for Paramount, and the exec told me, "please, take your time. We don't care. All the expenses get charged back to the show... that thing will NEVER go into profit." So in many cases, there are no long-term profits. Well, at least for those who share in profit-participation.

Wakanda made $67 million domestic this weekend, which ain't bad. I don't think Marvel would be unhappy if it grossed $750M-$800M worldwide (half what the first one made).

Box Office: ‘Wakanda Forever’ Posts $67M 2nd Weekend; ‘Menu’ Beats ‘The Chosen’ – Deadline

 

Do you count "Spidey: No Way Home" as a "crossover event"?

 

I would. That was much of the film’s appeal.

 

And BTW, in the latest shocking news from Hollywoo... they just brought back Bob Iger to run Disney as CEO:

Bob Iger Replaces Bob Chapek as Disney CEO - Variety

This is a huge deal for the film industry, because everybody just "assumed" he had retired and was going away peacefully. I think Disney freaked out because their stock is down 37% for the year.

I actually thought this was an Onion headline, but nope... all the major news services just picked up on the story. Stunning news.

 

By your logic then that would just be breaking even. Which in Hollywood terms is failure (simple logic is that you would make more if a profit investing the money in stocks).

Studios don't make films to break even, unless they are really cheap like Blumhouse.

 

And I can't disagree, but it does depend on the definition of "crossover event", I guess.

Only Dr. Strange "crosses over" from other properties, but obviously the inclusion of Spideys/villains from previously unconnected Spidey franchises makes it a "major crossover", I suppose.

I tend to look at something like "Captain America: Civil War" as closer to "major crossover" since it boasted so many characters.

 

Respectfully, repeating the same incorrect notions doesn’t make them true. BP2 will be decently profitable. The estimated break even point has been explained many times ($625m).

The film was heavily impacted by COVID, injury to the lead and other issues. While ideally the budget could have been $50m or more lower, it’s still turning a decent profit.

If you dislike Bird of Prey or Black Panther or whatever has you currently irate, fine. But trying to change the financials to suit your own perceptions or pin the failure of a movie on just one person is exhausting and untrue. I’ll leave it there. I have nothing else to say to you as everything is just a looping argument.

 

I totally agree -- Wakanda Forever shows every sign of being a profitable film for Disney/Marvel. Just not as big as the first one.

 

Disney/Fox/Lightstorm on the risk being taken with Avatar The Way of Water.

from the new GQ article on Cameron.
The Return of James Cameron, Box Office King


In September, he still wasn’t done. The Way of Water was expensive to make—How expensive? “Very f******,” according to Cameron, who told me he’d informed the studio that the film represented “the worst business case in movie history.” In order to be profitable, he’d said, “you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”

But as Cameron worked late into the evening, day after day, solving the infinite problems that The Way of Water continued to present, he seemed to be enjoying himself. “I like difficult,” he told me. “I’m attracted by difficult. Difficult is a f****** magnet for me. I go straight to difficult. And I think it probably goes back to this idea that there are lots of smart, really gifted, really talented filmmakers out there that just can’t do the difficult stuff. So that gives me a tactical edge to do something nobody else has ever seen, because the really gifted people don’t f****** want to do it.”

Cameron is proud to work at the biggest scale possible—Terminator 2: Judgment Day, True Lies, and Titanic were all among the most expensive films ever made at the time of their release. “And I used to be really defensive about that because it was always the first thing anybody would mention,” Cameron said. “And now I’m like, if I can make a business case to spend a billion dollars on a movie, I will f****** do it. Do you want to know why? Because we don’t put it all on a pile and light it on fire. We give it to people.” That money was going to be spent somewhere, Cameron said: “If the studio agrees and thinks it’s a good investment, as opposed to buying an oil lease off of the north of Scotland, which somebody would think was a good investment, why not do it?” To date, all of his films have made their money back, many of them spectacularly.