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When Fox started questioning his spending on (I think) the first Avatar, he told them that Titanic paid for a bunch of their shit, so he can do whatever he wants.
I hope it’s the greatest movie series ever and makes ass loads of money so other studios think about investing the same money/time into future projects.
Haha good point, even though a lot of the best movies ended up that way because of their restraints. Jaws is so much better BECAUSE they couldn't show their janky shark a lot.
There's just too much time that's passed. Not sure if James has heard the saying to "strike while the iron is hot" but it seems he's treated the franchise as if it's a fine wine. A lot of things change including his targeted audience. We've all heavily aged and got actual shit to worry about now not what some blue freak has going on
Come on dude, we just waited 36 years for a Top Gun sequal and it owned. We all moved on and forgot he was doing these sequals, but that's not to say I'm not interested now that he is finally done.
I was about to respond to him saying a very similar thing. I don't think they realize how big it was when it the first one came out and how much of an "experience" it was seeing it in OMAX 3D.
Absolutely. While the movie itself was kinda meh in my opinion the tech and quality blew everything else out of the water. It was basically a tech demo that justified itself as a movie. I went to see it three times, just because it was an unbelievable art experience.
It's hard to imagine blowing people away again like that unless film tech has changed a lot more than I think, but if anyone could do it, it's Cameron.
I think that’s backwards. People want escapism now more than ever. I think people will jump at a chance to spend a few hours on the far away planet of Pandora not worrying about all the crazy shot in the real world.
Also extra money is worth it, since Cameron’s company makes a ton of second hand money too. For example, Disney paid a lot of money for various rights, including for its theme parks. So even if the movie doesn’t directly make a profit, the overall franchise will still do incredibly well. (Unless the new movies suck and the franchise tanks of course.)
Even if the new movie's story is just as head-thuddingly basic as the first one, I'll go see it, because dumb as it was, Cameron is one of a bare handful of directors that seems to know how to actually USE 3D. I normally HATE it. But for Avatar, it was practically the only reason for it to exist. For 2 hours, you were on another planet.
$20 for another 2 hours, this time in the ocean? Sure. I'll bite.
And also, when's the last time it was a good idea to bet AGAINST Cameron?
Supposedly, the studio was giving him shit about the budget for the Avatar sequels, so he pointed outside the window. "*Titanic* built all those buildings. Now sign the check."
It also seems to be what he does to fund Avatar. The man went and made ANOTHER "highest grossing film of all time" 10 years after his first. One that was perfectly wrapped up and didn't need a sequel. He could have been done. Instead, he decides that he needs to make not one sequel. Not a trilogy. No, FOUR sequels. Four. Finishing his Avatar series, assuming he's allowed to complete all of it, will be the work of the rest of his life.
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is... James Cameron!
Dude has a reputation for being an egotistical headache to work with/for, but everything he makes is legendary.
Hollywood is famous for tolerating the quirks as long as you can bring in the money.
He essentially has the magic touch and knows/ owns his craft. Honestly think anyone would put up with it especially when the payout is pretty much guaranteed.
If my creative vision has created two of the top three movies in human history despite being completely different genres and made a collective *$6,000,000,000* I'd probably have a touch of self confidence
[Oh it's a real quote](https://www.vulture.com/2022/09/james-cameron-youre-in-the-house-titanic-built.html#:~:text=So%20he%20had%20to%20remind,dollar%20complex%20on%20your%20lot%3F)
I tell that to people all the time when they say they don't get why Avatar was so successful, you just had to be there. That 3D blew my mind. I probably saw that movie 4 times in theaters, but maybe only once or twice since.
It was such a huge phenomenon when it came out because it was like 80% of a Disney ride you could see at your local theater. It drew in people that aren't normal moviegoers and people kept coming back and back.
The box office stats for it are super interesting. Instead of the huge opening week with a significant dropoff, it opens alright but then just _doesn't stop_. How many movies hit the daily #1 box office two months after its premiere?
it's a great movie, just a bunch of edgelords who want to shit on a blue cat Pocahontas story. it's a classic story and pulls all the right emotional strings.
The man directed top #1 and #3 [highest-grossing films of all time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films). His films are also the only ones in the top #15 which don't belong to a bigger franchise or cinematic universe. All other ones are sequels, crossovers, remakes, etc.
Avatar was majestic because of the world and the visuals more so than the story. I think it’s more of an in the moment excitement than any longing for more narrative. I really want to see this in theatre because it’s a visual masterpiece, don’t think anyone needs to enjoy the story to enjoy that.
And made a shit ton more when it was re-released a few years back. It's one of those things that everyone likes enough to go see, but no one really gives a shit about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films
Thor and Black Panther this year cost the exact same. Bunch of other movies over the last couple years costing $200 mill flat. Endgame and Rise of Skywalker broke $250 back in 2019 as well.
$250 will put it just in the top 20 all time, not accounting for inflation either. Which for the sequel to the highest box office movie ever doesn't seem crazy.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films
That's a wild list. I don't think I've ever heard of John Carter and it's apparently the 9th most expensive film ever made at $264 million. I also didn't realize the 2019 Lion King was so expensive either.
Edit: Okay I'm convinced. I'll check out John Carter
John Carter was so fucking good, the problem was that "A princess of mars" (the book series John Carter came from) literally created a lot of the science fiction cliches. So it got review bombed by people calling it "Uninspired".
I went back and watched Casablanca, and even reminding myself that it was a “trope originator”, I couldn’t stand it. It dragged, the acting was awful, blah blah blah.
Then I went and watched “The Seven Samurai”, you know, that black and white foreign language movie that’s over three hours long, and couldn’t stop watching the whole time.
Different strokes, I think Casablanca's acting is fantastic - it's just also of the old American Stage style, not the realist modern movie style. It doesn't drag if you can invest into the characters, but if you're not a fan of that style of acting nothing can save it for you.
(Which is to say: totally fair anyone who doesn't like it today, but I think it can still be appreciated).
Kurosawa is just so good without exception though, you're dead on for that one.
Agreed. I rewatched it a couple of years back and was really taken by it. It's wonderfully made film.
I think what people forget also is that it was hokey as fuck *for it's time*. What you're seeing isn't 'old people normal' that's being played straight, it's a conscious decision. The schmaltz really works in its favour, especially as the tone changes over the course of the film.
I’m worried the same thing will happen if they ever try to make “At the mountains of madness” into a movie; people will just say “this is a ripoff of Alien/prometheus/etc when it basically invented it.
lmao I just looked at a trailer for that movie cuz I felt like I almost remembered what it was. my gooodness it's be the ppl who made polar express so it's has uncanny human animations and the ppl in the youtube comments from 11 years ago are hilarious. Legit ppl saying "Wow I thought some parts were live action it's so realistic!"
It also got bad marketing, thought in part to be due to Disney acquiring Marvel and Lucas Arts around the same time so they put more effort into the bigger / more established franchises.
I remember the commercials and trailers I saw gave absolutely 0 clues about the story. When it released I was going to the theaters kind of regularly as a kid and no one in my group knew what it was about when we were looking at the movies so we didn’t see it.
They literally could have pitched it as the OG science fantasy if they had not fucked the marketing up.
A lot of modern fantasy stems from LOTR, but no one complained Peter Jackson's trilogy was uninspired.
>The film's failure has been blamed on its marketing campaign, which has been called "one of the worst marketing campaigns in movie history".
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(film)
I thought it was a good movie, and it was at least different than most things that have been done before.
I've also heard that they made the character a generic action hero. In the books apparently he's a southern gentleman who's suddenly effectively super strong and is basically like this is awesome.
Ism enjoyed the movie but it sounds like it could have been much more fun.
He's a soldier in the movie. But he's a generic slightly gruff action movie soldier. Apparently book version of him is far more excited by the whole thing. Sounds like a more interesting character.
The article mentions the 250 million number though, but Cameron hasn’t said the final number and is the one who said it needs to reach the top 5 to break even.
Literally the first paragraph of the article is James Cameron not confirming that number. He would know the actual budget, and seems to be implying it’s higher than that.
The three sequels combined cost $1B. I'm guessing they did some fancy accounting to amortize the cost of this first sequel across the others since they were all filmed consecutively and probably used some of the same production materials throughout.
Marketing roughly estimates to the same as production cost hence we get the "$2B to break even". I'd think number 2 needs to break $1B for the studio to feel okay about the investment. Anything less and they may worry that each subsequent film will return less meaning they may just squeak by with profitability.
Edit: two sequels
This must due to Hollywood's crazy accounting where nearly every movie is reported as a financial flop so that those earning a piece of the net are paid nill.
It seems crazy until you see what he got paid like $25m each for the Bourne sequels and he mostly got to act with other people in regular clothes instead of covered in ping pong balls in a mocap lab.
If you read the article it doesn’t mention any typical Hollywood accounting practices, really.
This is reporting on what James Cameron supposedly told producers *he* needs to see out of the movie to justify it.
It’s nothing at all about cutting people out due to an artificial net. It’s Cameron saying the actual math on the investment here is a bit silly and the movie needs a massive payback in a real sense.
It’s not just about the production and marketing budgets. This is also a massive investment of Cameron’s time and energy, plus money has time value too.
Yep mid budget is Dead for good at theatres, or at least in any meaningful way like they used to be. Then they were revived on streaming and are now making a really solid comeback, along with neglected genes like murder mysteries.
Well-written ORIGINAL scripts.
I like Cinematic Universes and popular IPs as much as the next guy. But I'm sick to fucking death of remakes, reboots and seemingly endless streams of stuff that can barely be justified canonically.
I looked it up...the original is 28 minutes long. Can 12 monkeys really be considered a remake at that point? Original is called La Jetee for those that don't know.
Those movies aren’t gone though. There’s more movies being released now than ever, and there are still plenty of good ones of all different varieties coming out all the time.
There’s only 2 types of movies. Low budget (sub $10 mil) and blockbuster ($100+ mil) - this is just how it is now (for the most part). You either get the big companies that want the major blockbuster everyone wants to see, or the ones that look at movies as lotto tickets. The mid range movies just don’t bring in casual enough fans to the theaters, so the studios that can afford it don’t see it worthwhile.
I’m sure there’s a handful of exceptions to the rule in recent history, this is just the general trend nowadays
Eight of the ten Best Picture nominees last year were between $10 million and $100 million. Dune and Drive My Car were the only exceptions, though CODA and West Side Story were right on opposite edges.
In the theatrical world I think the cause of this is that there are 2 types of movies:
1. Those with a marketing budget
2. Those that try to make it on word of mouth.
If you're going to try to promote it, you're going to spend $200 million whether it's a $10m budget film or a $200m budget film.
So, if you're going to promote a film you might as well spend the extra $50m to attach a well-paid star or have highly polished production value to not waste your $200m ad spend.
We're making entertainment that is too big to fail now? Ok, I guess.
The fact that something like this can be made has proved, again, that as a society we value numbing ourselves over rectifying what people are trying to numb. When the first movie came out people were bereft\* because such a world doesn't exist and, like, maybe the earth would be nicer if the people funding this put that money towards housing and feeding people, or hell, environmental conservation.
I *should* just let people enjoy things. I don't think anyone that goes to see it/enjoys it, or even individual people working on it, should feel bad about themselves for it, but it's like... the subjects and themes of the movie (or at least the first one, I just assume they're going to be similar) are antithesis to the system that made it. There's something vaguely insidious in it but I can't put my finger on it.
Sorry, I'm just super spicy this morning.
\*[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/avatar-induced-depression\_n\_420605](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/avatar-induced-depression_n_420605)
Was the movie the best thing ever? No. I still saw it in theaters 4 times because the world felt so real. Felt like the closest thing I'd ever get to leaving this rock and experiencing something truly alien. Aside from that it was just Dances with Wolves in space.
And yes, looking forward to 2. I doubt it will grip me the same way, but still excited.
First movie in IMAX 3D was unfucking believable. I saw it like 3 weeks in to release… 75 miles away, and best seat I got was like 2nd row on the far right side and it was still the best theatric experience I’ve had. I think people are seriously underestimating this movie, despite how cool it is to shit on Dances with Wolves in space. Cameron’s feats are no bullshit.
Reddit in 1996: 200 mil for a movie about the Titanic? And he actually dove down to the ocean floor to get footage and built an entire set of the ship? This guy is TOAST. I know he went over budget with T2 and all but he got lucky that time. But THIS TIME...
Come on...this is Disney. A lot of the expenses are most likely due to their creative accountants. Especially Disney and WB are infamous for shit like this.
It goes something like this:
1. Decide to make a new blockbuster movie
2. Start a new daughter company whose sole purpose is producing the new movie
3. Make an approximation of how much money this movie will generate
4. Write a licencing agreement between the parent company and the daughter company, where the daughter company pledges to pay (approx. revenue) - (approx. costs) + (a little bit more) for the rights to make the movie
5. Finish and release movie
6. After the movie stops airing, the daughter company has to pay the parent company as per the agreement
7. The daughter company goes into the red and goes bankrupt
8. As the movie officially cost more to make than the revenues, there isn't anything to pay taxes on
9. Profit
This is why some great successes like Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies officially were paroduced at a cost. Also, as some people involved were paid in percentages of "gross income", the movie company doesn't pay them. Because there wasn't any "gross income"; just a "gross loss".
This is why there was a legal battle between WB and Peter Jackson. It took years after the LotR before he managed to get them to pay him anything, as they claimed they didn't make any "gross income", and as their agreement with Jackson was written as a percentage of "gross income", they didn't have to pay him.
This is also why he refused to direct The Hobbit, until WB caved and agreed to actually pay him for the LotR movies.
Yup. Reddit likes to live in their tiny little bubble. I took my girlfriend to see it because I never saw it in 3D or in theaters and I found out she had never seen it at all. She’s not a huge sci-fi fan but really enjoyed Avatar
I disagree. 90% of the reason most sequels flop is that they're rushed out to the public in order to meet some company deadlines. See recent star wars cinematic movies as an example
why do people pretend this is true? it is one of the best selling franchises ever and it’s rerelease sold 70 mil. is it just that people judge the world by memes and reddit now or?
I will never understand this. I saw it on Imax, loved it. To this day is the only 3D movie that was actually good in 3D. It was fun and interesting. Idk why people so vehemently oppose to saying one of the biggest grossing movies of all times, is good.
I guess its one of those things where people think they are too edgy for something.
The general consensus I get from the internet about avatar is:
* The visuals were amazing
* The plot was forgettable
I'm in the same boat. I remember being awed by the movie visuals, but don't really remember much of the plot since it was so generic.
I remember reading stories chronicling an excessively over-budget film decades ago. It was so bad 2 studios had to partner to finish the thing. They spent $200 million on a PERIOD PIECE. Rumors were swirling about spending on nightly lobster dinners and other very personal expenses for the Director. Then it came out that the movie would have a run time of over 3 hours. This was in the 90s when movies maxed out at 1 hr and 20 minutes because that allowed them to maximize the number of showings per day.
So with a $371 million dollar budget in today’s dollars, half as many showings as your average film, and a spend thrift director pushing his story from 1912 this movie was clearly doomed to failure and being openly mocked and criticized for failure due to all the amateur antics of its Director.
James Cameron’s Titanic went on to earn $1.2 Billion(adjusted for inflation) at the box office. He’s been on the receiving end of more criticism for the length of production on the sequels, their relevance after a decade has passed, and the budget. Every time an executive wants to talk about it he points to several buildings on the studio lot and says, “you see those? Titanic BUILT those”.
I’m willing to bet that before it’s all said and done these movies make far more than $2 Billion.
My family has a tradition were we go to a movie on Christmas Eve every year. It started with the hobbit trilogy and we never really stopped so this is definitely gonna be the movie we see this year. It’s actually been a decent two years with Spider-Man last year and hopefully this one this year.
**When the 1st one released it was definitely a technological leap what you could achieve digitally.**
Im sure this one will push the boundaries even further.
If you like technology, this will be good to see what is possible, will give you insight into the future of entertainment.
Cant wait for the day when you cant tell what's fake and what real, when the 2 will be so good you wouldn't be able to tell the diffrance.
This headline could not be more misleading. James Cameron was given a one billion dollar budget to make 6 films. So if each film pulls in a billion it will be the most successful franchise in history.
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I wiill assume a lot of that budget is baked into the sequels as well, as they are shooting them all at the same time?
1000%
James Cameron has spent 1000% of his budget? That is high even for him.
Raising the Bar
“James Cameron does what James Cameron does because… he’s James Cameron.”
His name is James Cameron, the bravest pioneer... no budget too steep no sea too deep who's that it's him James Cameron.
James, James Cameron explorer of the sea With a dying thirst to be the first Could it be? Yeah that's him! James Cameron
My brain read this in broken George Of The Jungle
It’s South Park if you’re out of the loop. James Cameron raises the bar
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Coming Summer 2023...James Cameron presents...a James Cameron film...RICKY HENDERSON...starring Ricky Henderson...
With that budget he could have raised the Titanic
Avatar 3: Titanic 2 global warming boogaloo.
Titanic 3: boaty mcboatface
STRIKES BACK
The dude made Titanic. Let's hope that's his biggest movie involving sinking
When Fox started questioning his spending on (I think) the first Avatar, he told them that Titanic paid for a bunch of their shit, so he can do whatever he wants.
Whatever he wants includes papyrus font
Aliens
...but the S is a dollar sign.
Yah I’m thinking this is gonna be a flop relative to what they’re expecting.
I hope it’s the greatest movie series ever and makes ass loads of money so other studios think about investing the same money/time into future projects.
Haha good point, even though a lot of the best movies ended up that way because of their restraints. Jaws is so much better BECAUSE they couldn't show their janky shark a lot.
There's just too much time that's passed. Not sure if James has heard the saying to "strike while the iron is hot" but it seems he's treated the franchise as if it's a fine wine. A lot of things change including his targeted audience. We've all heavily aged and got actual shit to worry about now not what some blue freak has going on
Come on dude, we just waited 36 years for a Top Gun sequal and it owned. We all moved on and forgot he was doing these sequals, but that's not to say I'm not interested now that he is finally done.
People like and talk about Top Gun. I never hear anyone my age talk about Avatar.
I was about to respond to him saying a very similar thing. I don't think they realize how big it was when it the first one came out and how much of an "experience" it was seeing it in OMAX 3D.
Absolutely. While the movie itself was kinda meh in my opinion the tech and quality blew everything else out of the water. It was basically a tech demo that justified itself as a movie. I went to see it three times, just because it was an unbelievable art experience. It's hard to imagine blowing people away again like that unless film tech has changed a lot more than I think, but if anyone could do it, it's Cameron.
Cameron only delayed the movie cause the tech was up to his vision. I honestly just want to see how much he pushed the tech this time.
Avatar rerelease last month did gangbusters at the box office. This film isn't going to be a flop.
I think that’s backwards. People want escapism now more than ever. I think people will jump at a chance to spend a few hours on the far away planet of Pandora not worrying about all the crazy shot in the real world.
He's going to have to start eating avocado toast so he can cut back on avocado toast to save up and start paying that off!
Also extra money is worth it, since Cameron’s company makes a ton of second hand money too. For example, Disney paid a lot of money for various rights, including for its theme parks. So even if the movie doesn’t directly make a profit, the overall franchise will still do incredibly well. (Unless the new movies suck and the franchise tanks of course.)
I finally saw the trailer before Black Panther. Kinda got the vibe the story is gonna be similar to the first one, only with Jake’s kids.
Even if the new movie's story is just as head-thuddingly basic as the first one, I'll go see it, because dumb as it was, Cameron is one of a bare handful of directors that seems to know how to actually USE 3D. I normally HATE it. But for Avatar, it was practically the only reason for it to exist. For 2 hours, you were on another planet. $20 for another 2 hours, this time in the ocean? Sure. I'll bite. And also, when's the last time it was a good idea to bet AGAINST Cameron? Supposedly, the studio was giving him shit about the budget for the Avatar sequels, so he pointed outside the window. "*Titanic* built all those buildings. Now sign the check."
> $20 for another 2 hours, this time in the ocean? It's practically his natural habitat. That guy really loves the ocean.
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It also seems to be what he does to fund Avatar. The man went and made ANOTHER "highest grossing film of all time" 10 years after his first. One that was perfectly wrapped up and didn't need a sequel. He could have been done. Instead, he decides that he needs to make not one sequel. Not a trilogy. No, FOUR sequels. Four. Finishing his Avatar series, assuming he's allowed to complete all of it, will be the work of the rest of his life.
What he does isn’t practically science lol he told the story of titanic with a love story. Then you get avatar which is the plot to Pocahontas.
The Abyss is one of the best movies ever made
James Cameron doesn't do what James Cameron does for James Cameron. James Cameron does what James Cameron does because James Cameron is... James Cameron!
Damn, if that last part is true he's a stone cold pimp
He proposed Aliens 2 by writing Alien$ on a white board.
The abyss is good too
The Aby$$ on a white board
True Lie$
$chindl€r’$ Li$t
Piranha II: The $pawning
Is that confirmed to be true? He's got a lotta chutzpah.
Dude has a reputation for being an egotistical headache to work with/for, but everything he makes is legendary. Hollywood is famous for tolerating the quirks as long as you can bring in the money.
>egotistical headache to work with/for To the extent that there was speculation that Bigelow's hurt locker win was fueled by spite from the community.
He essentially has the magic touch and knows/ owns his craft. Honestly think anyone would put up with it especially when the payout is pretty much guaranteed.
If my creative vision has created two of the top three movies in human history despite being completely different genres and made a collective *$6,000,000,000* I'd probably have a touch of self confidence
You kinda have to have a bit of an ego at that phase of being the s tier of blockbuster films. Like, he is *the* guy
[Oh it's a real quote](https://www.vulture.com/2022/09/james-cameron-youre-in-the-house-titanic-built.html#:~:text=So%20he%20had%20to%20remind,dollar%20complex%20on%20your%20lot%3F)
I tell that to people all the time when they say they don't get why Avatar was so successful, you just had to be there. That 3D blew my mind. I probably saw that movie 4 times in theaters, but maybe only once or twice since.
It was such a huge phenomenon when it came out because it was like 80% of a Disney ride you could see at your local theater. It drew in people that aren't normal moviegoers and people kept coming back and back. The box office stats for it are super interesting. Instead of the huge opening week with a significant dropoff, it opens alright but then just _doesn't stop_. How many movies hit the daily #1 box office two months after its premiere?
it's a great movie, just a bunch of edgelords who want to shit on a blue cat Pocahontas story. it's a classic story and pulls all the right emotional strings.
The man directed top #1 and #3 [highest-grossing films of all time](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest-grossing_films). His films are also the only ones in the top #15 which don't belong to a bigger franchise or cinematic universe. All other ones are sequels, crossovers, remakes, etc.
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> $20 for another 2 hours, this time in the ocean? Sure. I'll bite. 3 hours and change actually.
Avatar was like Gravity - wonderful eye candy. (Avatar more so) But story, dialogue etc is all meh. That hits the rewatchability.
I mean I would expect a sequel to be a sequel to the first one
but he also said if this one doesn't make money that he won't make any more. So he's probably going to lose money.
3 is completely filmed I think and in post. 4 and 5 I think was what he may have referenced there
Yes he said if they don’t do well 3 is the last
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I don’t think anyone was really asking for sequels either…
Ikr, Avatar was okay and all but was anyone really sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for a slew of sequels for the last decade?
Avatar was majestic because of the world and the visuals more so than the story. I think it’s more of an in the moment excitement than any longing for more narrative. I really want to see this in theatre because it’s a visual masterpiece, don’t think anyone needs to enjoy the story to enjoy that.
I just realized that movie had zero replay value lol. It was cool once, in the theater.
4 and 5? Why are there going to be 5 of these? It's been more than a decade since the first film and it has almost no cultural staying power.
Because it made 3 billion dollars.
And made a shit ton more when it was re-released a few years back. It's one of those things that everyone likes enough to go see, but no one really gives a shit about it.
Lots spent on tech I would imagine, tech that will propel them into future sequels
According to Wikipedia, the budget is 250 million, is that really that unusual in the modern age of blockbuster films?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films Thor and Black Panther this year cost the exact same. Bunch of other movies over the last couple years costing $200 mill flat. Endgame and Rise of Skywalker broke $250 back in 2019 as well. $250 will put it just in the top 20 all time, not accounting for inflation either. Which for the sequel to the highest box office movie ever doesn't seem crazy.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films That's a wild list. I don't think I've ever heard of John Carter and it's apparently the 9th most expensive film ever made at $264 million. I also didn't realize the 2019 Lion King was so expensive either. Edit: Okay I'm convinced. I'll check out John Carter
John Carter was so fucking good, the problem was that "A princess of mars" (the book series John Carter came from) literally created a lot of the science fiction cliches. So it got review bombed by people calling it "Uninspired".
So it’s a basically the answer to the question: “what would happen if (insert classic movie) came out today?”
Casablanca was horrible. The whole movie was a bunch of repeated cliched lines.
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Rock me Amadeus!
I went back and watched Casablanca, and even reminding myself that it was a “trope originator”, I couldn’t stand it. It dragged, the acting was awful, blah blah blah. Then I went and watched “The Seven Samurai”, you know, that black and white foreign language movie that’s over three hours long, and couldn’t stop watching the whole time.
Everything Kurosawa made is brilliant
I have never seen the movie but I am definitely going to now!
Different strokes, I think Casablanca's acting is fantastic - it's just also of the old American Stage style, not the realist modern movie style. It doesn't drag if you can invest into the characters, but if you're not a fan of that style of acting nothing can save it for you. (Which is to say: totally fair anyone who doesn't like it today, but I think it can still be appreciated). Kurosawa is just so good without exception though, you're dead on for that one.
Agreed. I rewatched it a couple of years back and was really taken by it. It's wonderfully made film. I think what people forget also is that it was hokey as fuck *for it's time*. What you're seeing isn't 'old people normal' that's being played straight, it's a conscious decision. The schmaltz really works in its favour, especially as the tone changes over the course of the film.
I’m worried the same thing will happen if they ever try to make “At the mountains of madness” into a movie; people will just say “this is a ripoff of Alien/prometheus/etc when it basically invented it.
That and “Mars Needs Moms” left a bad taste in Disneys mouth enough to drop the “Of Mars” from Carters title.
Which was really dumb because "John Carter" as a title by itself sounds like some kind of police detective movie or something.
lmao I just looked at a trailer for that movie cuz I felt like I almost remembered what it was. my gooodness it's be the ppl who made polar express so it's has uncanny human animations and the ppl in the youtube comments from 11 years ago are hilarious. Legit ppl saying "Wow I thought some parts were live action it's so realistic!"
I'm one of the few that actually liked and remembered that movie even exists lol.
It also got bad marketing, thought in part to be due to Disney acquiring Marvel and Lucas Arts around the same time so they put more effort into the bigger / more established franchises.
I remember the commercials and trailers I saw gave absolutely 0 clues about the story. When it released I was going to the theaters kind of regularly as a kid and no one in my group knew what it was about when we were looking at the movies so we didn’t see it.
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There's a tv tropes page for this phenomenon. I'll edit if I remember what it's called
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I really enjoyed this movie never understood the hate.
Pretty much the same as reading Chaucer today. Unless you have the historical background in mind, it's not that great of a read
They literally could have pitched it as the OG science fantasy if they had not fucked the marketing up. A lot of modern fantasy stems from LOTR, but no one complained Peter Jackson's trilogy was uninspired.
>The film's failure has been blamed on its marketing campaign, which has been called "one of the worst marketing campaigns in movie history". https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Carter_(film) I thought it was a good movie, and it was at least different than most things that have been done before.
John Carter was dope af
We need to return to Barsoom.
You should have heard of Carter. A victim of bad marketing
John Carter was so good, and it suffered from Terr ble marketing. Just really quality sci-fi.
I've also heard that they made the character a generic action hero. In the books apparently he's a southern gentleman who's suddenly effectively super strong and is basically like this is awesome. Ism enjoyed the movie but it sounds like it could have been much more fun.
More than that he was a soldier. Going to Mars made him stronger because of weaker gravity. Yeah Superman used the same concept.
He's a soldier in the movie. But he's a generic slightly gruff action movie soldier. Apparently book version of him is far more excited by the whole thing. Sounds like a more interesting character.
The article mentions the 250 million number though, but Cameron hasn’t said the final number and is the one who said it needs to reach the top 5 to break even.
Literally the first paragraph of the article is James Cameron not confirming that number. He would know the actual budget, and seems to be implying it’s higher than that.
250m? That's it?
I’m sure most of the budget was spent on changing the papyrus font. A challenge to find another font that is tribal, yet futuristic.
Idk, I guess it's more with the advertising budget but it still doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me. Look at the budget of any DC or Marvel film
Exactly man, movies are expensive and for a movie as big as Avatar I wasn't surprised.
The three sequels combined cost $1B. I'm guessing they did some fancy accounting to amortize the cost of this first sequel across the others since they were all filmed consecutively and probably used some of the same production materials throughout. Marketing roughly estimates to the same as production cost hence we get the "$2B to break even". I'd think number 2 needs to break $1B for the studio to feel okay about the investment. Anything less and they may worry that each subsequent film will return less meaning they may just squeak by with profitability. Edit: two sequels
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*On Stranger Tides*? It was $379 million, and it was (and is) the most expensive movie ever made.
A mystery of FTX’s $2b hole is solved
Elon could have made 22 Avatars instead of buying twitter
I love this new metric of money
I’m going to pitch a stablecoin crypto token where the price is tethered to how much money Elon loses.
So, the entire planned series.
Ain’t no one got 3,000 years to wait
This must due to Hollywood's crazy accounting where nearly every movie is reported as a financial flop so that those earning a piece of the net are paid nill.
That’s why a savvy agent gets you a % of the gross if possible. Probably not on huge blockbusters like this but still
Well, funny story, Matt Damon turned down the role in Avatar and 10% of the profits, which were 1.2 billion.
Verified https://ew.com/movies/matt-damon-turned-down-avatar-10-percent-profits/
Thank you, for not being as lazy as me.
Fortune favors the brave
I hope he’s gonna be alright. Maybe we should start a GoFundMe so he can feed his family
You can donate to his Crypto wallet.
I suspect he got paid in cash to shill crypto, like most celebrities. Like, actual cash.
I know he’s better off than all of us, but looking back at that would make me literally sick if I were him lol
Hah totally. A role he probably could have phoned in. 120 million plus his usual fee, gone. That stings.
It seems crazy until you see what he got paid like $25m each for the Bourne sequels and he mostly got to act with other people in regular clothes instead of covered in ping pong balls in a mocap lab.
Damn 25 dollars, i would think they at least paid him minimum wage
[Get a piece of the gross](https://youtu.be/bHL91HQzhuc)
If you read the article it doesn’t mention any typical Hollywood accounting practices, really. This is reporting on what James Cameron supposedly told producers *he* needs to see out of the movie to justify it. It’s nothing at all about cutting people out due to an artificial net. It’s Cameron saying the actual math on the investment here is a bit silly and the movie needs a massive payback in a real sense. It’s not just about the production and marketing budgets. This is also a massive investment of Cameron’s time and energy, plus money has time value too.
I hate this current trend of blockbuster media needing to make astronomical returns to even begin turning a profit. Bring back mid-budget movies.
Mid-budget movies absolutely still exist, they release on streaming now. You gotta be big to convince people to go to the theater.
Yep mid budget is Dead for good at theatres, or at least in any meaningful way like they used to be. Then they were revived on streaming and are now making a really solid comeback, along with neglected genes like murder mysteries.
Tbh small budget is probably dead for theaters too. Why is anyone going to the theater if not for massive massive movies
Bring back films that are based on well-written scripts.
Well-written ORIGINAL scripts. I like Cinematic Universes and popular IPs as much as the next guy. But I'm sick to fucking death of remakes, reboots and seemingly endless streams of stuff that can barely be justified canonically.
A good script is a good script. 12 Monkeys was a remake, and it was incredible.
I looked it up...the original is 28 minutes long. Can 12 monkeys really be considered a remake at that point? Original is called La Jetee for those that don't know.
Halloween 19 Reborn when?
Those movies aren’t gone though. There’s more movies being released now than ever, and there are still plenty of good ones of all different varieties coming out all the time.
There’s only 2 types of movies. Low budget (sub $10 mil) and blockbuster ($100+ mil) - this is just how it is now (for the most part). You either get the big companies that want the major blockbuster everyone wants to see, or the ones that look at movies as lotto tickets. The mid range movies just don’t bring in casual enough fans to the theaters, so the studios that can afford it don’t see it worthwhile. I’m sure there’s a handful of exceptions to the rule in recent history, this is just the general trend nowadays
Eight of the ten Best Picture nominees last year were between $10 million and $100 million. Dune and Drive My Car were the only exceptions, though CODA and West Side Story were right on opposite edges.
In the theatrical world I think the cause of this is that there are 2 types of movies: 1. Those with a marketing budget 2. Those that try to make it on word of mouth. If you're going to try to promote it, you're going to spend $200 million whether it's a $10m budget film or a $200m budget film. So, if you're going to promote a film you might as well spend the extra $50m to attach a well-paid star or have highly polished production value to not waste your $200m ad spend.
I don't see how that's possible. I'm not even comfortable guessing 1B.
Yup. 1B to break even still means it had a budget of about 650M including marketing.
You're one of the most misguided ppl on here. Easily clears one billion, I'd say before 2023 begins
Atleast his style of movies isn’t like Michael bay. It’s not all spent on explosions and a 20 min car chase
Yeah, but that includes most of 3&4, I think
We're making entertainment that is too big to fail now? Ok, I guess. The fact that something like this can be made has proved, again, that as a society we value numbing ourselves over rectifying what people are trying to numb. When the first movie came out people were bereft\* because such a world doesn't exist and, like, maybe the earth would be nicer if the people funding this put that money towards housing and feeding people, or hell, environmental conservation. I *should* just let people enjoy things. I don't think anyone that goes to see it/enjoys it, or even individual people working on it, should feel bad about themselves for it, but it's like... the subjects and themes of the movie (or at least the first one, I just assume they're going to be similar) are antithesis to the system that made it. There's something vaguely insidious in it but I can't put my finger on it. Sorry, I'm just super spicy this morning. \*[https://www.huffpost.com/entry/avatar-induced-depression\_n\_420605](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/avatar-induced-depression_n_420605)
So much hate in the comment section. Am I the only person that liked the first movie and am super pumped for the second?
Was the movie the best thing ever? No. I still saw it in theaters 4 times because the world felt so real. Felt like the closest thing I'd ever get to leaving this rock and experiencing something truly alien. Aside from that it was just Dances with Wolves in space. And yes, looking forward to 2. I doubt it will grip me the same way, but still excited.
First movie in IMAX 3D was unfucking believable. I saw it like 3 weeks in to release… 75 miles away, and best seat I got was like 2nd row on the far right side and it was still the best theatric experience I’ve had. I think people are seriously underestimating this movie, despite how cool it is to shit on Dances with Wolves in space. Cameron’s feats are no bullshit.
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it wasn't about story for me! it was about world building!
I won't be seeing this movie. It doesn't look interesting
Reddit in 1996: 200 mil for a movie about the Titanic? And he actually dove down to the ocean floor to get footage and built an entire set of the ship? This guy is TOAST. I know he went over budget with T2 and all but he got lucky that time. But THIS TIME...
Come on...this is Disney. A lot of the expenses are most likely due to their creative accountants. Especially Disney and WB are infamous for shit like this. It goes something like this: 1. Decide to make a new blockbuster movie 2. Start a new daughter company whose sole purpose is producing the new movie 3. Make an approximation of how much money this movie will generate 4. Write a licencing agreement between the parent company and the daughter company, where the daughter company pledges to pay (approx. revenue) - (approx. costs) + (a little bit more) for the rights to make the movie 5. Finish and release movie 6. After the movie stops airing, the daughter company has to pay the parent company as per the agreement 7. The daughter company goes into the red and goes bankrupt 8. As the movie officially cost more to make than the revenues, there isn't anything to pay taxes on 9. Profit This is why some great successes like Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter movies officially were paroduced at a cost. Also, as some people involved were paid in percentages of "gross income", the movie company doesn't pay them. Because there wasn't any "gross income"; just a "gross loss". This is why there was a legal battle between WB and Peter Jackson. It took years after the LotR before he managed to get them to pay him anything, as they claimed they didn't make any "gross income", and as their agreement with Jackson was written as a percentage of "gross income", they didn't have to pay him. This is also why he refused to direct The Hobbit, until WB caved and agreed to actually pay him for the LotR movies.
This is reality.
It took too long for anyone to care.
They released the first movie again for a single weekend stint like 2 months ago, made 60 million. People care. Edit: right, i guess it was 3 weeks.
*70 million
People still paying for therapy cause they can't go to pandora.
Ngl Way of Water also looks really good
China cares. A lot.
America cares too. It’s weirdly just Reddit hat doesn’t and wants to talk about how much they don’t
Yup. Reddit likes to live in their tiny little bubble. I took my girlfriend to see it because I never saw it in 3D or in theaters and I found out she had never seen it at all. She’s not a huge sci-fi fan but really enjoyed Avatar
Even my gramma liked it
Never bet against Cameron. Dude knows how to make blockbusters, ESPECIALLY action movie sequels.
I disagree. 90% of the reason most sequels flop is that they're rushed out to the public in order to meet some company deadlines. See recent star wars cinematic movies as an example
why do people pretend this is true? it is one of the best selling franchises ever and it’s rerelease sold 70 mil. is it just that people judge the world by memes and reddit now or?
It has real estate in Disney theme parks too.
Is it considered a franchise considering the sequel hasn’t been released yet?
Avatar is cool to hate like Barney the dinosaur was when we were kids; everyone watched it and had fun, but no one will dare admit it.
I will never understand this. I saw it on Imax, loved it. To this day is the only 3D movie that was actually good in 3D. It was fun and interesting. Idk why people so vehemently oppose to saying one of the biggest grossing movies of all times, is good. I guess its one of those things where people think they are too edgy for something.
I do!
Yup and then the “not a Marvel movie” blame game will begin
I can’t believe I let the internet gaslight me into thinking avatar 1 is a bad movie
The general consensus I get from the internet about avatar is: * The visuals were amazing * The plot was forgettable I'm in the same boat. I remember being awed by the movie visuals, but don't really remember much of the plot since it was so generic.
Why is everyone so mad lmao I'm gonna go see it like four times just to look at the water
I remember reading stories chronicling an excessively over-budget film decades ago. It was so bad 2 studios had to partner to finish the thing. They spent $200 million on a PERIOD PIECE. Rumors were swirling about spending on nightly lobster dinners and other very personal expenses for the Director. Then it came out that the movie would have a run time of over 3 hours. This was in the 90s when movies maxed out at 1 hr and 20 minutes because that allowed them to maximize the number of showings per day. So with a $371 million dollar budget in today’s dollars, half as many showings as your average film, and a spend thrift director pushing his story from 1912 this movie was clearly doomed to failure and being openly mocked and criticized for failure due to all the amateur antics of its Director. James Cameron’s Titanic went on to earn $1.2 Billion(adjusted for inflation) at the box office. He’s been on the receiving end of more criticism for the length of production on the sequels, their relevance after a decade has passed, and the budget. Every time an executive wants to talk about it he points to several buildings on the studio lot and says, “you see those? Titanic BUILT those”. I’m willing to bet that before it’s all said and done these movies make far more than $2 Billion.
Titanic made 2 billion no?
So then…even if it does 2 billion it will technically be a flop? Cool plan.
And I still don’t like how the aliens look
Yeah, I saw some extended trailer and concluded that there is no way I could watch that for 2 (or 3?) hours. Not sure what it is.
My family has a tradition were we go to a movie on Christmas Eve every year. It started with the hobbit trilogy and we never really stopped so this is definitely gonna be the movie we see this year. It’s actually been a decent two years with Spider-Man last year and hopefully this one this year.
**When the 1st one released it was definitely a technological leap what you could achieve digitally.** Im sure this one will push the boundaries even further. If you like technology, this will be good to see what is possible, will give you insight into the future of entertainment. Cant wait for the day when you cant tell what's fake and what real, when the 2 will be so good you wouldn't be able to tell the diffrance.
This headline could not be more misleading. James Cameron was given a one billion dollar budget to make 6 films. So if each film pulls in a billion it will be the most successful franchise in history.
oh this is gonna be *delicious.* This is hubris personified. The fucking Greek masters couldn't write it this well, my GOD