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[kswiston]

Sources say it needs to make 450-500 million dollars to get even. I dont know how that Chinese money comes in play, because it's almost 100% income for Legendary/Wanda.

Its close enough that ancillary revenue will put it in the black later this year or next.

The bomb label should be reserved for films that do less than 1.5x their production budgets worldwide.

 

[BronsonLee]

Warcraft wasn't made for the US anyway

Anything you get here is just a bonus

 

[3N16MA]

You have been going on about this for around a year, typically only bringing it up when the numbers are significantly off.

Here is every prediction that boxoffice.com has made since the start of March, taken 1 week before release (42 films in all). I had to include estimates for the 4-Day takes for this weekend's films to match their 4-day predictions. Two of the estimates are official. Tarzan is mine, but I doubt it is off by more than 5%. Not enough to make any difference.


23 of 42 opening weekend predictions were within $5M
33 of 42 predictions were within $10M


Number of films that beat expectations by at least 50% - 3 (Money Monster, The Purge, and Tarzan)
Number of films that beat expecatations by at least 75% - 1 (Tarzan)

Number of films that were overpredicted by at least 50% - 8 (only 4 when the prediction was over $15M)

So 11 out of 42 predictions were significantly off.

If you want to discount the low grossing stuff that skew the results, 7 out of the 29 predictions of over $15M were significantly off. 16 of the 29 predictions were within 20% of the actual gross. The other 6 were somewhere in between.

If you know of public numbers that have a better hit to miss ratio than the above, let me know. Boxoffice.com's predictions have been on par or better than the tracking that Deadline quotes, and we have regular access to the predictions a lot earlier in most cases.

Tarzan defying the odds. I knew BO.com was off.

 

[WaterAstro]

Sources say it needs to make 450-500 million dollars to get even. I dont know how that Chinese money comes in play, because it's almost 100% income for Legendary/Wanda.

That's with Chinese money. There's no way they could even make up for the production costs alone with America.

 

[ZoddGutts]

Will Spielberg still do ready player one after this bomb?

Wish it wasn't him doing that movie, dude has not made a good movie in over a decade.

 

[Violence Jack]

Saw this coming a mile away. Tarzan looked meh, but the most interesting of the movies coming out, and BFG trailers looked weak. The surprise was Purge who I thought was making a mistake by not releasing it the weekend before Election Day.

But it's amazing to me that Turtles, ID4, Warcraft, and Tarzan won't even make $100 million domestic.

 

[kswiston]

That's with Chinese money. There's no way they could even make up for the production costs alone with America.

They dont need to. $55M from China, 60-65M from the other overseas territories, $25M from the domestic take. That's pretty close to production budget, not counting any extra money that Wanda recoups from AMC or their Chinese cinema franchise.

 

[Sean C]

Wish it wasn't him doing that movie, dude has not made a good movie in over a decade.

Whatever you think about the rest of his output in the last decade (and I don't think he's made anything that wasn't solid, if unexceptional), Lincoln was one of the most acclaimed films of 2012 (as was Bridge of Spies, somewhat less understandably to me).

 

[Magwik]

Man this year has been weird for the BO.

 

[3N16MA]

I think some people want War of the Worlds, Jurassic Park, Minority Report, Saving Private Ryan type films back from Spielberg. At least that is the feeling I'm getting.

 

[WaterAstro]

They dont need to. $55M from China, 60-65M from the other overseas territories, $25M from the domestic take. That's pretty close to production budget, not counting any extra money that Wanda recoups from AMC or their Chinese cinema franchise.

Theater takes a cut. Gross =/= Profit

 

[3N16MA]

Theater takes a cut. Gross =/= Profit

If anyone in this thread knows that it's kswiston.

 

[kswiston]

Theater takes a cut. Gross =/= Profit

If you've looked at Warcraft's gross, you'd realize that I have already removed the theatre cut. China is over $220M for Warcraft.

 

[BronsonLee]

The only thing swiss knows how to do is to sling terrible rumors about me to his Canadian brethren

 

[WaterAstro]

If anyone in this thread knows that it's kswiston.

Ah okay.

 

[kswiston]

The only thing swiss knows how to do is to sling terrible rumors about me to his Canadian brethren

I have to do something while waiting for those $5 Tuesday films to start.


Anyone want to post their last minute Secret Life of Pets predictions.

I guess that I'll go with $85M.

 

[Irishonion]

Just seeing the previews of spielberg creating bfg lulled me to sleep.

 

[jmood88]

I've been looking for any excuse to go to a movie theater the last month but absolutely nothing has looked worth spending money on.

 

[mreddie]

Disney screwed Disney

4-3 AVG this year.

It's really fucking crazy.

What are the other studio AVG for success/flops?

 

[Imperial Bishop]

The Big Flopping Giant. I expected it to be #2 at best, but damn.

I kept hearing more people around me talk about the Purge and not even mention Tarzan or BFG once.

 

[3N16MA]

I have to do something while waiting for those $5 Tuesday films to start.


Anyone want to post their last minute Secret Life of Pets predictions.

I guess that I'll go with $85M.

I going to go with mid 80s. I think it's going to be big.

Could give Illumination their first big film outside of the DM/Minions franchise. If Sing also takes off that would really expand Illumination as a studio.

 

[kswiston]

I sort of wonder if Ice Age 5 will come in even lower than is currently expected. We have had a lot of big animated films this year.

 

[melonrabbit]

Disney played themselves.

Because they're the only ones on the board.

Saw Purge. Didn't realize it would be this lucrative. Decent movie.

 

[vinnygambini]

I sort of wonder if Ice Age 5 will come in even lower than is currently expected. We have had a lot of big animated films this year.

I think so too, especially domestically. Still think we are looking at high $600M or low $700 for this next entry of the franchise ww.

 

[kswiston]

Saw Purge. Didn't realize it would be this lucrative. Decent movie.

The Purge 3 opened $1M higher than the second film and $3M lower than this first film. This isnt a breakout entry for the franchise or anything. It just avoided the drop off that tracking was calling for.

 

[MIMIC]

Holy mother of God @ Finding Dory. That movie just keeps on going. Anyone have any predictions as to where it will end at domestically?

As for the bombs: I called the Tarzan bomb (as I'm sure a lot of other people did as well). The BFG? It looked weird and it seemed like a gamble to me. Not surprised that it bombed. I saw someone say that it looked like a Christmas-type movie and I kinda agree. When I saw the commercial for the movie for the first time, I always referred to it as the "Big Fucking Giant." =p

For the "Purge," I sort of like those movies. I've never seen them in theaters, but it's a nice movie to catch on TV.

 

[melonrabbit]

The Purge 3 opened $1M higher than the second film and $3M lower than this first film. This isnt a breakout entry for the franchise or anything. It just avoided the drop off that tracking was calling for.

I see. I'm not familiar with franchise. Are they generally profitable by being so cheap like the RE movies?

 

[Rydeen]

I assume those of you who didn't know what The BFG were aren't from North America or the UK. Roald Dahl is essential grade school reading in the US/Canada/UK, BFG included, at least it was when I was in second grade over 20 years ago.

 

[crazy monkey]

difference between jungle book and civil war is only 50 millions in domestic market with civil war being much more expensive movie.

 

[M.W.]

Spielberg is a great director, but his recent outputs are not appealing, not a fan of historical dramas. Wish he go back making movies like Minority Report

*Was* a great director. Might be time to hang em up Steve.

 

[kswiston]

I see. I'm not familiar with franchise. Are they generally profitable by being so cheap like the RE movies?

More or less. The last two made $65-70M domestic. This one will probably end up in a similar range. Budgets were $3-10M.

difference between jungle book and civil war is only 50 millions in domestic market with civil war being much more expensive movie.

Civil War has a lot more merchandising muscle behind it. Its not Finding Dory or Star Wars, but I wouldnt be surprised if merchandising paid for a lot of that budget.

 

[aeolustl]

Will The Jungle Book able to join the 1B club?

 

[3N16MA]

Will The Jungle Book able to join the 1B club?

Depends on Japan.

 

[aeolustl]

Depends on Japan.

It still hasn't open in Japan?

 

[ElBoxyBrown]

Disney is doing something where it's making people only want to see their movies. Bomb after bomb after bomb after bomb.

 

[kswiston]

It still hasn't open in Japan?

I think it opens in August. It will need $60-65M in Japan to hit $1B

 

[aeolustl]

I think it opens in August. It will need $60-65M in Japan to hit $1B

So basically, they have to pull another Zootopia BO in Japan.

It sounds doable, right?

 

[Last Hearth]

it's amazing that there are a bunch of handsomely-paid people who do things like spend over $180 million on a Tarzan movie.

Part of that exhorbitant budget is to handsomely pay the people who green light the film. These guys make money even when the movie doesn't.
That part of the reason these movies have bloated budgets, all the palms gets greased along the way.

 

[kswiston]

Freeza spent a long time writing the post below in last week's thread which should probably be left to die.

Moving it here so it doesn't get buried.

Yes, pre-digested and shoved down their throats so they never have to think or consider more complex meanings and emotions. I should explain.

This is not me blaming Pixar for it. Nor blaming Disney in particular. This is just the general cultural trend we have been in for two to three decades now. Just look at depictions of war movies and you're going to find that Saving Private Ryan, now nearly two decades old, is probably the last time, aside from a very small intermission in the form of Rambo 4, when you saw war violence actually being depicted in a non-sanitized-yet-still-very-sanitized cinematic form. As much as TV has gotten smarter and more complex, movies have been going in the other direction, making them easier to digest, less complex, and safer.

You would not get 8MM made today, despite the average horror movie actually having far more 'gore' in it. The result is that movies increasingly cease to understand, visually and emotionally, what violence is (leading to a very frustrated Ed Harris as director of A History of Violence and Quinton Tarantino as a director). Or complex emotions in general.

Maybe I'm reading all of that wrong and using selection bias to make up for the difference, but you can't deny the rampant loss of R-ratings and movies now being made 'R' for just having the word 'motherfucker' in it. I mean, the entire movie catalogue of Eddy Murphy would now be RRR-rated. It's off the fucking scale-R. Even Half! of that is still waaay off the current scale. And Blazing Saddles wouldn't even be fucking made.

Now this could be a necessary adjustment for earlier negligence, or our generation (70s-80s cohort) abhorring the kind of violence we grew up with. Which I very much doubt, since the only 'violence' we 'suffered' was the blood-less Halloween, the arguably far creepier Nightmare on Elm Street, the cartoon violence of two Rambo sequels and many actual cartoons we watched (80s cartoon syndrome: PEW!-PEW!-PEW! and nobody gets hit or dies). And the 70s have some of the best movies (if not all of them) ever made, including the actually scary and violent Alien. Now that one I could understand wanting to get away from. But even so, much like Carpenter's earlier movies, that movie has class in ways no movie today seems willing to do. Even The Terminator, made on a shoe-string budget, has both lack of blood / excessive gore, classy portrayal, and screaming terror on the side of it (which I love about it, AM's burning pillar of 'HATE' in the back of the terminator's mind, so awesome. Hell, Reese even has to explain that because people couldn't grasp it otherwise: "it can't be argued with, it can't be reasoned with, and it will never stop.. until she is dead." ).

The reason I'm bringing these all up is because they have much greater complexity than movies today do, AND more importantly, Ronald Dahl's style is very reminiscent of those horror movies. The monstrous Lovecraftian egg aliens swarming in the void of space, in Charlie and the Lift, for instance (and those are just one of many such things btw). Or the mental -and physical- abuse in Mathilda. And for some more horrific things in his earlier non-children work. Uncle... something. It goes to very dark places.
Dahl stands in a line of the brothers Grimm as a style of being both scary, complex, and yet suitable for children. Not because it forces a meaning or message on them, but because things work towards a 'good guys finish first' type deal.

Similarly, I grew up watching Jim Henson's Storyteller and I, Claudius, which both have violence, complexity (good lord does it have that) and lack of a grand meaning other than that things have a way of surprisingly working out, despite having horrible people in it. Hell, I'm convinced that the character of Livia became GRRM's starting point for Cersei, where the line "power is power" could be said by either one without being out of character. I was six when I watched that. Can you imagine a parent thinking that that is safe for kids today? (despite being perfectly harmless. Sure, there's a severed head in it, but Jacobi's horrified response to it is absolutely correct, and even a child would get that)

Now, movies (and TV) are starting to get around to reversing that into more excessive depictions of violence (which is just mean and I don't agree with it) and classier, yet very violent, depictions of it (Hannibal, The Americans, Bone Tomahawk) to get back to being more complex and therefore worth watching, but that's mostly at the intellectual fringes now, not the mainstream cultural core production.

So, what I'm going for with this overly long argument on presentation, is that Ronald Dahl's style is just not what we seem to be comfortable with these days. Why or what that means I don't pretend to know, but I kind of hate it because it's a lack of trust in children's ability to form ideas of their own. They're tiny people, not dolls to cram stuff into. But they don't get to choose what we feed them, and that's the point. Spielberg or not, we've altered the cultural diet to a place of discomfort with things that aren't black & white, that is: easy to digest.

Thanks for reading all that. Not really the thread for it, I know, but I felt like saying it.

I disagree with some of your points. There are still a lot of R-Rated films, and a good number of them still push the envelope each year. I think the major difference is that none of these films are Top 10 of the year material like they might have been in the 1970s or 80s. American Sniper was so surprising because we don't expect adult films (even if you consider that a sanitized adult film) to make blockbuster money any more.

I also think that there have always been sanitized children's films with easy to digest messages. We just tend to forget a lot of them over time.

One of my favourite films as a little kid was the Original Land Before Time. The film is now 28 years old, but there's nothing in it that requires a child to think anymore than they would when watching Finding Dory.

 

[3N16MA]

Films aimed at children have for the most part always been straightforward and not too complex. It's the nature of the beast considering the audience. You will always have films that veer off and push what some parents consider acceptable for younger children. Sometime those films are intended for older children and not the wide age group that Disney goes for. That is where films like Coraline, Corpse Bride, Monster House and other come in.

Despite Disney animation losing some luster for most of the 70's and 80's, they still produced many of the most watched films for children. Nothing was too complex about The Aristocats, Robin Hood, The Great Mouse Detective, or Oliver & Company. I believe Pixar actually pushed the genre when they created films that more adults started to enjoy (regarding major animated films). They raised the bar with their storytelling.

You can always point to a few films or TV shows from the past few decades and say they buck the trend when it comes to children oriented entertainment. More complex, more violence, darker stories. Those films are usually intended for an older child. For the most part G rated films make up the majority of films for children dating back to 30+ years.

 

[FreshCakes]

*Was* a great director. Might be time to hang em up Steve.

He can still direct the fuck out of a movie, no matter the source material

 

[DeathyBoy]

He can still direct the fuck out of a movie, no matter the source material

Spielberg is a great director. But holy shit is he wasting his time on garbage like BFG.

 

[Discotheque]

Spielberg is a great director. But holy shit is he wasting his time on garbage like BFG.

what's so garbage about Roald Dahl. His material yielded Charlie and Chocolate Factory and Fantastic Mr. Fox.

Witches was a freaky ass movie too.

 

[wachie]

You have been going on about this for around a year, typically only bringing it up when the numbers are significantly off.

Here is every prediction that boxoffice.com has made since the start of March, taken 1 week before release (42 films in all).

Stopped reading there. It's called "long term" forecast for a reason. It's easy to get 3rd party tracking data one week before and adjust down or up accordingly. BO.com can keep basing their "predictions" from Facebook likes and Twitter mentions and I'll keep having a laugh.

 

[AmaterasuOni]

Spielberg is a great director. But holy shit is he wasting his time on garbage like BFG.

You've seen The BFG already?

 

[Log4Girlz]

BFG would have worked better 100% CGI and cartoony.

 

[WhiteRabbitEXE]

BFG would have worked better 100% CGI and cartoony.

I don't imagine it making too much more money as an animated film, unless they changed literally the entire movie as well (in such as way that it was much more diverged from the source).

 

[andthebeatgoeson]

That's an ugly looking giant. You supposed to make the giant endearing.

 

[faridmon]

I am quite surprised to read that not many Gaffers are familiar with BFG. Its one of the Dahl's famous stories and even if you haven't read it/ read to you by you parents, you know the story by osmosis since everyone around me knew it. There was even plays in my school and even reading sessions when I was younger.

Maybe Dahl is not popular in America or something.

 

[AmaterasuOni]

I am quite surprised to read that not many Gaffers are familiar with BFG. Its one of the Dahl's famous stories and even if you haven't read it/ read to you by you parents, you know the story by osmosis since everyone around me knew it. There was even plays in my school and even reading sessions when I was younger.

Maybe Dahl is not popular in America or something.

I'm pretty sure it's a European thing.