Yeah, I know how adjusting for inflation works. The point is that even when you do that, the huge Superman and Batman films from back in the day still don't hit these numbers.
It's absolutely a new craze and I think it is (or will prove to be) unsustainable, because everyone pushes for it now and we're starting to see talk of films flopping simply because they don't hit it (as BvS proves) which will lead to a situation where studios, instead of setting more realistic targets, could conceivably burn through a fucking ton of money chasing it, and end up going out of business.
The point s older films don't just hit those numbers they exceed them.
The only difference today is popular films have a bigger market: so big hits today make more outside US. You don't think that the old films that made more money and had higher attendance wouldn't have also exceed modern films globally if they had access to same markets?
You've completely missed the point. The 1 billion is not unsustainable. Look at the trend. More and more films are breaking 1 billion or getting close to it and this will continue unless the global market changes.
People are thinking BvS flopped because it definately underperformed. The flip side is usual internet hyperbole but the underlying issue is real.
WB make most of their money from domestic business with lesser percentage from other markets (so far as I'm aware of how global distribution works).
So let's look at it.
Domestic BvS is well below $400 million. It's declared costs are around $450 million. So domestic (and don't forget WB doesn't get all of that only a percentage) doesn't even put WB close to a profit.
That leaves them their smaller share from other markets.
In short compared to similar films they've made far less money than their competitors and the film did not balance the cost put into it vs comparable titles.
Defend it or try and avoid it if you will it WB obviously expected over 1 billion and it's obvious if it had actually pleased the market the film would easily have achieved this. It's close to $900 million with horrible reviews and word of mouth and horrible attendance decline.
If even slightly better received it would have broke $1 billion and if well received would have hit 1.3 to 1.4 billion
The film contains global brands so strong it made close to 900 million while being crap. Think on that. Batman and Superman (batman particularly) remain enormous draws. It's lucky for WB they're so strong they make even a failure like BvS modestly profitable. It also makes it clear how badly they mangled delivery though because they're surely 400 to 500 million shy of what they could have achieved with a quality product.
