It’s still super early, but Guardians 3 is having probably the best 2nd weekend for a Marvel movies since Black Panther. Word of mouth and nostalgia for the franchise seem to be bringing in people who might otherwise have passed on a comic book movie. Dark moments aside, this movie seems to be connecting with people.
Guardians now updated to $60M - a decline of 49.3%, much better than most MCU/DC movies indicating legs and good word of mouth on this one. Weekend Report: GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY VOL. 3 Exceeds Second Weekend Expectations with Strong $60M+ Hold; BOOK CLUB 2 Still Pacing for $8M+
Glad that "Guardians of the galaxy 3" is doing great numbers and having great reviews, possibly the best MCU film since "Endgame" On a side note, "The Pope's exorcist" is now at $66M with a $18M budget; it's been a loooong time since a movie starring Russell Crowe made a profit. A loong time. Should make it to $70M easily "John Wick 4" is at $418M global with a $100M budget; will be available for streaming in a couple weeks but it could make it to $430M while still in theaters; well done Keanu, Chad and everyone at Lionsgate
I'd say both of them were not successful financially. Wikipedia says about Tenet: Box office analyst Jeff Bock estimated the film would need to make $400–500 million to break even. In November 2020, rival studios expected the film to lose up to $100 million, but Warner Bros. insisted losses would not top $50 million. Nolan reportedly received twenty percent of the film's first-dollar gross. It's pretty standard these days in Hollywoo that if you make a film for $200 million dollars, it's going to need to make at least $400M-$500M just to break even (because of advertising and distribution expenses). And really it's not into profit until they hit about $550M-$600M. A much more-interesting and recent bomb was the Marvel film Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, which cost $200M, made $475M, and was pretty much slammed by the fans and the major critics. I think that was a cold awakening for Marvel, because they thought films like that were licenses to print money. The previous Ant-Man films had made $622M and $519M, respectively. It didn't help that the new Ant-Man film looked awful, which shocked the hell outta me. Some of the scenes looked downright cheap, like a marginal TV show. I think I would agree with that, though I do think Guardians 3 was a bit long at 2-1/2 hours. Not all entertainment has to be fun 100% of the time. Without revealing anything, I can say that the film ends on a very upbeat, positive moment, even implying there could be future Guardian films. I won't say Guardians is "the Marvel Shawshank Redemption," but there are some very bleak, borderline-horrifying scenes. Not for the little kiddies.
Oh, I agree with you there. Just pointing out that little Alita stood her ground against a much anticipated Blockbuster such as Tenet had hoped to be. Heavy duty director and all! Still, we have Avatar and now we have WoW. It is perfectly clear that Cameron needed to perfect certain critical technologies in order to make the visuals in WoW as impactful as they were. Alita was this bridge. Given the use of cutting edge 3D and performance capture in Alita, I think it is fair to say, if Alita was made post WoW, it would be made for considerably less money making it clearly profitable. It is a bit ironic though? Marvel action movies find typical criticism in that their content is juvenile comic book stuff. Then they interject grown-up movie drama into the film and now they are criticized for not being fun... After other recent marathon length movies, 2-1/2 hours I can handle. I don't find this length to be overly long, providing the action moves along and the movie warrants being longer than two hours. Almost all of the Harry Potter movies were this long. In fact the eight movies totalled 1180 minutes, which averages to 147.5 minutes each. It was only the last movie, Deathly Hallows Part 2 that was short enough (130-minutes) to lower the overall average. If we remove the last movie, the previous seven movies average exactly 150 minutes! But movies with 2:30+ running times, like Intersteller and Dune, not so much...
This is why there's a lot of Marvel (and Star Wars, etc) criticism I just can't take seriously; so much of it just feels like knocking statues off pedestals just for the sake of being contrarian and hating popular things.
GOTG vol 3? Pleased it’s getting the accolades „best MCU film since Endgame” That was my immediate conclusion after seeing Vol 3 the other week. Think it’ll hold its own against Fast x for a week or two.
I can see how people think this way and it's not like they're wrong. Reviving a property like Star Wars is tricky. People want the same as the originals but different. With an aging cast and heightened expectations it's hard to do something new/different that "feels" like Star Wars at the time.
And in current box office news... the new Robert Rodriguez/Ben Affleck film Hypnotic totally bombed: Ben Affleck's New Thriller Is His Second-Straight Box Office Flop In 2023
Today is the first I've even heard of it. I'll have to look and see if its maybe any good, despite the bomb.
"Tenet" gets the "non-profitable asterisk" because Nolan insisted it go theatrical smack dab during COVID - heck, tons of theaters hadn't even reopened when it hit screens in September 2020. Won't claim it woulda been a hit if COVID hadn't happened, but it clearly woulda made a lot more money. Even movie buffs largely avoided theaters in 9/20. "Alita" had no such excuse since it came out a year pre-COVID.
I liked Tenet to a degree, but only watched it on Pay TV. I see that the negative stories about Hypnotic contiue: Hypnotic Marks Career-Worst Opening for Robert Rodriguez, Ben Affleck – The Hollywood Reporter Rodriguez is a good guy, but he's had very bad luck with theatrical films over the last few years. And yet.. he might be the best director Mandalorian ever had.
It was more impressive on a real IMAX screen. My dad passed away 9/20, and the only good thing that came out of that event is that it allowed me to see "Tenet" on real IMAX. I had to fly out to Phoenix for what ended up as dad's dying days. He was essentially unconscious and in a care facility the last 2 days, so there was nothing I could do. We knew he wasn't gonna make it long, and I said my goodbyes. That left me and my stepmother just to wait, so she encouraged me to go distract myself. Arizona Mills Mall has a real IMAX screen, so I saw "Tenet" there. Didn't fix the movie's flaws, but it nonetheless made for a more exciting experience. Here in the DC area, our 2 real IMAX screens are in Smithsonian locations, so they were closed when "Tenet" hit. I saw it LieMAX at a local AMC but if I'd not gone to AZ, I never would've seen it on real IMAX.
I think you are right in this regard. I saw it in the theater and this is when larger venues like theaters were just only recently reopening. In Tennessee, they had staged reopening. I remember the larger venues, like Dollywood were only reopened I believe in August. I was working at a live venue show when it reopened. Might have been in late July. There were still a lot of restrictions in place. Wearing masks when out of your seats. The venue had a capacity of around 750 and they limited it to only around 400 per-show. I don't think that Alita needed an excuse. A no-name movie comes out of nowhere and brings in over $400M. Alita was a sacrificial lamb for Cameron. It was necessary to further advance technology from motion capture to the level of performance capture that was necessary to make WoW. WoW wowed audiences with lifelike facial expressions. I think Alita's visuals did a better job. At the end of the day, the Navi were still big blue cartoon monkey like characters, with human-like emotions. Even though she was a cyborg, Alita was convincing with her stark human expressions. No prior movie took performance capture technology this level in motion picture history. Without Alita, WoW would have never been as successful as it was, not even close!
I was one of those movie buffs that drove from LI all the way through Manhattan to Jersey City NJ to see TENET in a theater (Jersey had reopened) and damn covid wasn’t gonna stop me. Glad it did it, it was wonderful to be in a theater once again. And I still have never gotten covid!
Nowadays, I would actually say that the 4K digital laser IMAX screens have better quality than the 70mm film IMAX screens. I wouldn't have said that 10-12 years ago, but digital projection has come a long way. Film purists like Quentin Tarantino cling to watching film, insisting that the flaws -- dirt, scratches, slight jitter and so on -- are all part of the experience. Me, I'd rather not see that... but 4K laser projection is the real thing, very powerful and very intense. They call it "IMAX with Laser" to distinguish it from the earlier "LieMAX" theaters... but it's hard to find a list of what theaters show which specific format.
AMC Lincoln Square didn't reopen by September 2020? I guess NYC had stricter COVID closure rules than NJ - or VA, as our AMCs reopened in August 2020!
My comments don't reflect projection/source - they reflect aspect ratio. 1.43:1 real IMAX stuns. 1.90:1 LieMAX doesn't.
I only saw the trailer once. Looks ridiculous and at least a couple of decades behind the times. Should have gone directly to streaming.
I don't think this is due to the superhero market shrinking. Of course, it is... But the market is not shrinking because the audiences don't want to see good superhero movies. The market is shrinking because the audience is being exhausted by greedy franchise owners who are now consistently cranking out too many expensive "B" grade superhero movies. The studio's, as specially the one that has the mouse ears logo, have acquired and then beaten every franchise to death. They announce a new movie and the audience is going, "oh crap, not another one"!