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Ben Affleck's Live by Night joins list of costly film flops

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S

Slayven

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http://variety.com/2017/film/news/ben-affleck-live-by-night-flop-1201971025/

“Live By Night” mostly fired blanks when it debuted in theaters last December, and its failure has resulted in a lot of financial carnage.

The expensive gangster picture was a passion project for Ben Affleck, who directed, wrote, produced, and starred in the story of a Florida rum runner. But critics ripped the picture, calling it dramatically inert and a muddle. That’s left Warner Bros., the studio behind the film flop, looking at a $75 million loss, according to insiders with knowledge of its financing and rival studio executives.
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Warner Bros. has a long relationship with Affleck, having backed and made money on his previous directorial efforts such as “Argo” and “The Town.” He also played the Dark Knight in the studio’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice,” “Suicide Squad,” and the upcoming “Justice League.” Affleck plans to direct a standalone Batman film.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38773378

Yet the 44-year-old should perhaps take heart from the fact that Live by Night will occupy a fairly lowly position on any rundown of expensive film flops.

Indeed, it would have had to lose more than twice as much to challenge 47 Ronin, a 2013 martial arts fantasy starring Keanu Reeves.

With worldwide grosses of $151m (£119.4m) set against an estimated budget of £225m (£179m), the film is believed to have left Universal with a $149m (£118m) hole in its coffers.

Variety called it "one of the costliest box office flops of 2013", citing rewrites, reshoots and a "novice" director as factors in its downfall.

Then there is Mars Needs Moms, a 2011 Disney fantasy that made use of the performance capture technology popularised by 2004's The Polar Express.

Estimated to have cost $150m (£119.3m) to make, Simon Wells's film took just $38.9m (£30.9m) at cinemas - landing the House of Mouse with an estimated write-down of $130.5m (£103.7m).

Other Disney offerings that had their bean-counters running for cover include 2012's John Carter - estimated to have lost the company $125m (£99.4m) - and 2013's The Lone Ranger, thought to have accrued losses of around $150m (£119.5m).

Yet even these may be dwarfed by The 13th Warrior, a 1999 action fantasy that is rumoured to be the biggest box office disaster ever.
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kswiston said:
Live by Night lost 2659 venues in its third weekend (94% of its total last week), for the biggest theatre drop of all time.

My guess is that the weekend was down somewhere between 85-90%, and last weekend was pretty low to start with.

WB doesnt bother with estimates when films hit those sub $1M weekends. Fantastic Beasts isnt listed either. We will get numbers for both tomorrow with the weekend actual report.
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"I owe my soul to the company store"
 
D

Discotheque

Banned
seems pretty hard to make a good classic gangster movie these days

Gangster Squad was terrible
Lawless wasn't good
Public Enemies had some notable moments but its Mann's worst movie
Apparently Live By Night is Affleck's worst movie

at least we have Boardwalk Empire, show was so good.

What did he mean by this? said:
Lone Ranger and John Carter deserved better
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best live action blockbuster films from Disney in years tbh. damn shame how bad they flopped. i was hooked for a John Carter sequel :(
 
B

BlackGoku03

Member
Like I said in the other thread, it wasn't terrible but it wasn't good either.

Cool action but long, unfocused plot did it in. Cinematography was great as was costumes though.
 
Glass Rebel

Glass Rebel

Member
Discotheque said:
best live action blockbuster films from Disney in years tbh. damn shame how bad they flopped. i was hooked for a John Carter sequel :(
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I see you have upgraded your Disney trolling game something serious
full
 
Grizzlyjin

Grizzlyjin

Supersonic, idiotic, disconnecting, not respecting, who would really ever wanna go and top that
And now Batman is on his shoulders. Yay...
 
N

Ninja Scooter

Member
Discotheque said:
seems pretty hard to make a good classic gangster movie these days

Gangster Squad was terrible
Lawless wasn't good
Public Enemies had some notable moments but its Mann's worst movie
Apparently Live By Night is Affleck's worst movie

at least we have Boardwalk Empire, show was so good.



best live action blockbuster films from Disney in years tbh. damn shame how bad they flopped. i was hooked for a John Carter sequel :(
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I feel like the audience for those movies, or the place to do them best these days, is on television. Narcos as a 2 hour movie probably would have bombed too, conversely I think something like Black Mass would have worked better as a series even if you don't get to attach a huge star like Johnny Depp.
 
R

robotrock

Banned
The day I will respect ben affleck as a director is the day he changes his opening credits to read "Starring Me, Written by Me, Directed by Me"
 
S

smokeandmirrors

Banned
Slayven said:
Now I feel bad i was going to make a post about how i think Great Wall is going to flop.

Considering the subject matter, the shit just looks dull.
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from what one of my friends in the industry said it's less "white man leads savages to victory and shows them the light" and more "let's get a white dude to play and feature him prominently in our ads to get the american audience". iirc it's even made by a Chinese company and director.

but we'll see. he might be wrong.
 
S

Seiryoden

Member
If WB spent a fraction of that cash on script editors... I'm with Goldman on "Nobody knows anything" but even so...

Also: 13th Warrior is a really good movie.
 
F

Forsaken82

Member
Discotheque said:
best live action blockbuster films from Disney in years tbh. damn shame how bad they flopped. i was hooked for a John Carter sequel :(
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John Carter failed due to horrble miscasting IMO. Taylor Kitsch shouldn't be a headliner for a blockbuster (one could argue battleship was just a bad idea, but still... A movie like that, you should expect a bigger box office draw). He can't act and he isn't an audience draw. Lone Ranger on the other hand was a shame... I think the casting of Johnny Depp in a film "From the Director of POTC: At Worlds End" killed that movie in theaters. People were expecting the downward trend of the POTC films to bleed into Lone Ranger.
 
S

Slayven

Member
smokeandmirrors said:
from what one of my friends in the industry said it's less "white man leads savages to victory and shows them the light" and more "let's get a white dude to play and feature him prominently in our ads to get the american audience". iirc it's even made by a Chinese company and director.

but we'll see. he might be wrong.
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So like this?

51CZTHM7JJL.jpg


Jackie Chan plays an unnamed character that appears a smoove minute and a half.
 
J

J_Viper

Member
Live by Night has a fucking stellar shootout at the very end. It's a shame it took what feels like three hours of boredom to get to it.

I'm thinking WB didn't give a damn about the movie, and only let Affleck do it as part of the Batman deal. There's no way they saw that final cut and thought it'd make any money.

Pretty good article here on how this may not matter to WB at all.

Grizzlyjin said:
And now Batman is on his shoulders. Yay...
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To be fair, this is his first miss. His previous films were fairly well received.

That, and The Batman will be an entirely different production thatnLive by Night, which was a vanity project.

Messofanego said:
Last great classic gangster film I saw was Road To Perdition. Paul Newman!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGFLyA3u_rw

roadtoperdition.jpg
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I own this on Blu-ray and still haven't watched it. What's wrong with me?
 
S

SURGEdude

Member
Slayven said:
Now I feel bad i was going to make a post about how i think Great Wall is going to flop.

Considering the subject matter, the shit just looks dull.
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Yeah, isn't Great Wall one of those co-productions where they take some random American actor and hope that's enough to appeal to the west? I suppose they've stepped up now that it's not a has-been.
 
Glass Rebel

Glass Rebel

Member
Forsaken82 said:
John Carter failed due to horrble miscasting IMO. Taylor Kitsch shouldn't be a headliner for a blockbuster (one could argue battleship was just a bad idea, but still... A movie like that, you should expect a bigger box office draw). He can't act and he isn't an audience draw. Lone Ranger on the other hand was a shame... I think the casting of Johnny Depp in a film "From the Director of POTC: At Worlds End" killed that movie in theaters. People were expecting the downward trend of the POTC films to bleed into Lone Ranger.
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I don't see how POTC would have affected Lone Ranger in any way. The last one made a billi clean and even the one before that did over 900m.
 
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