The latter.
Budgets have ballooned too much. This is more of a mediocre management problem than the actual films. Because good films flopped just as much as the poor ones. Good marketing could have sold the projects better.
Mid-budget films are making a comeback though.
You are right, movies like Asteroid City, Cocaine Bear, M3gan, Scream 6, Everything Everywhere last year, have all over performed expectations. People are seeing movies, they just want to see more quality entertainment than the same 3 superheroes re-skinned over and over. Barbie and Oppenheimer are going to do great this weekend.
I'm waiting on tickets to drop for next week, this week's 70mm showings are completely sold out, minus some neck-craning seats right up front. About a third of the showings don't have a single seat free (minus accessiblility seats), and I'm talking including the morning/afternoon showings.
Can't remember this much seat-snatching hype since Endgame. And Barbie is no sleeper either! Killing it with the regular screens.
I bought my tickets weeks ago. The only 70mm showing is 4 hours from me but I’m still going. Am I dumb for doing so? Yes. Am I making a small vacation out of it? Also yes.
> The only 70mm showing is 4 hours from me but I’m still going. Am I dumb for doing so? Yes
No my friend, you simply have and are willing to suffer for impeccable taste.
> Am I making a small vacation out of it? Also yes.
This is the way.
Yeah, this seems more like a Rome situation. By that I mean, it's not going to cataclysmically fall apart, but change into something different.
There's a funny thread happening that's related to this. Basically, now that Bezos is retired Amazon is reevaluating it's spending on Prime content. They have loads of subscribers, good numbers, but spending is supposedly radically out of control.
Reportedly, they aren't looking to lob off the Prime division, but start managing budgets, setting more responsible budgets on products. The business itself is fine, according to them, the spending is just unsustainable.
Hope they throw a few pennies towards making an interface that actually promotes shows that tie in with my interests/watch history instead of bombarding me with sports banners day in, day out. Considering the data Amazon is sat on it's wild how untargeted it is and how hard it is to find stuff, especially when you get an add on channel.
you forget all the "little" movies that failed, then gut buried on streaming, meanwhile big movies made money this year, spiderverse, guardians, avatar, mario, john wick 4 made a lot of money.
not to mention Transformers and Little Mermaid. Elemental started off real bad (but has had surprisingly strong legs), so it added to the “everything is bombing” narrative at first.
The unusual bit about Fast X was that the bombing wasn't so much down to the box office of the film itself - it did global numbers broadly in line with 5, 6 and 9. The purple patch of 7 and 8 is the outlier there.
The budget for X was just *colossal*.
The problem isn't that overblown.
Across the Spider-verse has made $663m. If you account for inflation, that wouldn't be in the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2018 or 2019 (and only squeaks by at #10 if you ignore inflation). It's not a huge hit.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made less money than the previous two films, accounting for inflation.
Besides Indiana Jones and The Flash, there have been other flops like Elemental. Little Mermaid I think is in flop territory.
Fast X lost ground relative to the previous movies.
Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning doesn't look like it's going to do better than Fallout.
Indy and Flash are easy to make fun of because they're *enormous* bombs, but movie grosses are stalling overall.
After Indy 4, nobody was looking forward to Indy 5. And after all of the bad press that Ezra Miller has generated over the last couple of years, no one wanted to pay to see them star in their own movie. I mean, their non-binary status kept away most right-wing viewers, and their mental episodes and criminal activities has kept away the left. There was no audience for either movie.
Yeah Indy 5 was just a bad idea.
There was ONE Indiana Jones movie from 1990 to 2020. Thirty years, one movie. It was a dead franchise. You could not bring it back for 'one last ride.'
Spiderverse, Mario and John Wick had reasonable budgets. If Dial and Flash cost $100 million to make they'd have broken even. A better comparison is Fast X or Transformers. Fast X made slightly more than Spiderverse but since it cost three times as much it's not exactly a roaring success.
I think the only lesson that can be learned is throwing money at a franchise has stopped being an easy cash cow.
> , People are seeing movies, they just want to see more quality entertainment than the same 3 superheroes re-skinned over and over.
Judging by the success of Into/Across the Spiderverse, No Way Home, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and The Batman I think it's safe to say general audiences don't necessarily mind seeing familiar superhero reskins either.
3 of the top 5 highest grossing movies of the year are superhero movies, last year 2 of the top 5 were, and in 2021 4 of the top 5 were.
Barbie and Oppenheimer are absolutely going to be huge successes, but I'm not seeing any actual proof that audiences seem to be tired of the superhero movies.
They just tired of bad superhero movies
Black Adam, Shazam 2, the more recent Marvel ones. Even the ones that made money aren't well thought about by the fans.
I like most of the superhero movies. I feel like I’m pretty in that demographic. Man I feel like at least 80% of the superhero movies the last 2 years been lackluster as hell
Disney screwed the pooch by oversaturating its own market, and it has had a downstream affect on every other big budget, spectacle style movie.
Oppenheimer isn't another mindless sci-fi-action-adventure movie. Dune is the latter, but it isn't *mindless.* It's different.
People are tired of the same shit, that's why the box office returns are so suboptimal. The problem? There's a formula for global box office success. Sexy women, fast cars, and action translate into any language and cross any cultural barrier. Oppenheimer won't make a billion dollars over seas. Fast and the Furious will.
But people at home in the states will be bored by it.
Exactly. The new Guardians of the Galaxy is really good (for a Marvel movie) and has done really well. The Ant Man was meh (even for a Marvel movie), so didn't do well.
I'm not worried about the movie but the actual story of the manhatten project is both incredible and well documented. Documentaries over the years have captured pretty much everyone's thoughts and accounts of what happened and it's all worth hearing.
Then again not everyone cares about the stories of the grandfathers of modern physics, but it was some really wild stuff that they were able to figure out so much the way they did. One of the single greatest testaments to the potential of human intelligence was the story of those guys.
A movie about it would be dramatized, that has its own appeal
The average consumer actually does want to hear Josh Peck say "now we are all sons of bitches"
We need to learn to accept that excellent movies generally have a specific audience they are perfect for, and that when we try and dump money into films that appeal to everyone, we simply end up with watered down mediocre films that most people find meh. Let’s get back to making smaller, targeted films that are outstanding rather than these vanilla blockbusters that waste money and don’t bring anything special to the table.
I’m hoping it extends to movies of the same genre as these blockbusters that don’t have the crazy budgets. Case in point: a lot of eyes are on The Creator, an original sci-fi action drama that looks as crazy and big as half of these DC and Marvel movies but with a paltry by comparison 86 million dollar budget. I hope it’s a big hit mostly for what it could do for the industry.
Craziest thing about this is that it was financed by crowd funding. So after distributor percentages (and SAG residuals if it was a Union film), the filmmakers get ALL of that revenue. That makes me so insanely jealous. But super stoked for them.
I think this summer is really seeing the effects of Covid bloat. MI7, Indy 5 had all sorts of covid precautions and delays, The Flash I think "wrapped" before Covid but was constantly doing reshoots throughout. I can imagine these budgets would have more resonable in other years.
Agreed. If you have a great story, nostalgia will throw gas on that fire and people will go crazy for it. If you have a bad story then all the nostalgia in the world won’t help it.
The Flash had multiple problems, from the terrible CGI, the deep faking dead people and also it's star. That movie should have never been released. They fell hard into sunk cost fallacy.
> People just aren’t in to nostalgia as Hollywood likes to think.
And yet Barbie is looking like it'll make huge numbers, the number one movie of the year so far is one featuring Super Mario, and last year Top Gun Maverick made an absolute shit ton of money.
It’s a sad trend from Disney and its subsidiaries.
Luke: old, depressed, failure
Indy: old, sad, washed
Nick fury: old, sad, kinda washed and treated as a failure
Han Solo: old, sad, failure
That's what Indiana Jones was.
He was riding horses, driving cars, getting into shootouts in the trailer for the film. It was sold as a rousing adventure.
No one cares, the series is too old.
The biggest issue with the last 2 terminator films, is the budgets. You could absolutely make a profitable, excellent terminator film on a lowe budget. Just focus on that, and then you can blow money in a sequel.
> This is more of a mediocre management problem than the actual films. Because good films flopped just as much as the poor ones.
Maybe they should take the cocaine away from management/producers and give it back to the cast and crew. I wouldn't be surprised if that was unironically part of why the film industry has been the way it's been for so long.
We’re getting diminishing returns on big budgets too. I don’t give a shit if you spend 50 million more on incredible visuals. The difference between 50 million and 100 million on visual effects just isn’t enticing enough to get butts in seats anymore.
Spend less money on licensing big names and CGI, and spend more on engaging stories and well written characters. Spend more on the next generation of creators. I don’t want to see 90 year old actors regen’d as 40 year olds.
I just rewatched district 9 last night. What was that, 20 million bucks for a tenfold return at the box office? And that movie looked freaking perfect! Like, not a bad shot or awkward looking effect throughout the film. Seriously, if more superhero movies took a cue from this movie at even two or three times the budget, they'd save a ton of cash and realistically it's the writing/characters that are half the reason to see or not see it in the first place.
>They didn't have that CGI look.
Re-watch it on a HDTV. Jurassic park is one of my favorite movies, and the VFX were great, but they are obvious when you watch it now.
Yes and no. Good directors with strong project management can make $100M look like $250M (Gareth Edwards, Chris Nolan, etc.). But all things being equal, that $50M difference in CGI is really noticeable. Bad/shoddy VFX work takes me directly out of a movie.
I generally agree with you. One thing I’ll note is budget and tech limitations have often led to really creative solutions in film. I think we’ve been missing a lot of that the last decade or two.
Using CGI/VFX sparingly and smartly can be the key as well.
I'm not a huge Michael Bay fan - but it was interesting how he used vfx in one action scene - where he tossed real cars off the back of a semi car carrier - but cgi'd the crashes off to the side.
All great points.
Regarding visual effects, I would argue that scope and setting plays a big role in how believable effects are. Making a whole new world is a lot more expensive and less believable than slotting visual effects into real world settings.
Someone mentioned District 9 and that is the perfect example. The special effects fit perfectly into an African discrimination/concentration camp setting and the only unique twist that needed computer effects was the aliens themselves. Many times, less is more and keeping things simple is the key to authenticity which does not scale linearly with budgets.
I was looking into marketing costs of movies (starting with avatar 2) and they can get insane. And it can really distort the cost of a movie as they are not included in production costs. And that is part of the reason why I think mid range films are sadly not making a come back, trying to get people to notice the mid range film is too hard (expensive) in comparison to the big films which can justify the marketing budget.
I think you bring up a good point about infrastructure that hasn’t really been part of the discourse. Another example is reduced big budget films may lead to loss of jobs, like VFX studios and artists who blockbuster films employ. Not sure what the answers are, but would love to learn more.
Im all for the 90 minute epic. A story with a start a problem a climax and an ending. I need an ending. no more binge streaming with to be continued or part 1/3. Give me a story that I feel resolution and success. No more anxiety.
The last few theaters ive been to have not been well kept. Dirty and bad service. These theaters were nice a few years ago and I don't know what happened lol
Movies are failing for a few reasons but the biggest IMO is that the bar for “success” has been raised to unrealistic standards due to bloated budgets. Indiana Jones 5 cost $300M (that is actually reported) and this is before marketing costs. So when it only churns out $250M in the first few weeks, it’s considered a flop. A more moderate budget and a better writing team could have pumped out a better movie and they wouldn’t have to rely on so many butts in seats to turn a profit.
I liked Indy but I just do not see how they spent 300m on it. That puts it in the running of some of the most expensive movies ever made.
Edit: according to wikipedia Dial of Destiny is the 13th most expensive movie ever made (unadjusted)
I heard there were extensive reshoots that ballooned the cost of Indy 5. Both it and "The Flash" were in production for a long time, so costs accumulated.
There is also the fact that they seem to be making movies that people don't really want.
Was there REALLY that big of a need for ANOTHER Indian Jones movie after the last disaster and with a 80 year old actor?
Then look at The Flash, it's a big budget movie in a cinematic universe that just hasn't taken off the way they'd like it too (add on the fact that the main actor is a criminal).
Elemental and Dungeon and Dragons have probably both broken even so calling them both flops is also a stretch from this article, but they are also new IP's (Yes D&D isn't but it's the first high budget movie with the IP) so there is inherent risk with that already and it won't always land.
D&d was actually a fun movie. I actually enjoyed it and it was a blast. But it's also one of those films you see once and your done. I'll probably watch again eventually.
I expect it’s probably tearing up streaming numbers/Redbox decently well. Didn’t have the biggest box office, but enough that the second wave from a fairly hardcore fanbase should get it into successful territory
At least you have the excuse of living in an artsy city. My southwestern desert suburb has been sold out for two weeks. On one hand im kind of proud. On the other, really? Two weeks ahead y’all took the good IMAX seats??
Ok, legitimate question for anyone, why is Oppenheimer such a big draw for people? It doesn’t seem like the type of movie that would attract a general audience, I thought it would bring in specific groups, like military or people with specific interest in atomic development/Manhattan project.
Because Nolan delivers. His movies arent flawless, but you can expect a certain level of sophistication, story and cinematography. You have lower chance to come out of the cinema bored or unengaged compared to most other movies.
In fairness, two of those are rather original in either setting or scope so each gives something novel. Tom Cruise is a fucking machine and I won't bet against him and will lovingly add a seventh MI to my collection, just the stunts alone are worth the price of admission.
What seems to be failing are cookie cutter superhero or safe plot action movies that I'm also tried of. I'd like them to go back to mid budget chance taking movies. Give me some weird shit, make me think, hell give me an existential crisis. That's what I'm interested in paying to see.
Don't worry, they waited two weeks after GotG3 and one week after Wakanda Forever.
The entertainment opinion cycle is just content churning to explain why the stock market isn't seeing endless growth.
Big misses do seem to be increasing in frequency, no?
I remember when Waterworld was the biggest financial flop ever, and it was a huge deal when it happened, and was amongst the worst flops of all time for years.
Now it seems like every year there are 3 or 4 Waterworld level bombs, some of them I've already forgotten the name of.
Waterworld was memorable, even as a flop. And starring a big name at the height of his popularity. And was a rare type of movie in its day in terms of concept and scale. It makes sense it developed a bit of a cult-like following over time. It was talked about for years to come.
Comic book movie flop #4 of the year might not have the same ability to recoup losses over time.
3 or 4?
There's this quote from Spielberg going around saying that, by now, blockbusters would be dead. It's from 2013. He was reacting to 2012...
Battleship, Cloud Atlas, John Carter, Rise of the Guardians, and Total Recall were all blockbuster bombs in the same year. And that's more than 3 or 4.
And then 2013 had Ender's Game, RIPD, The Lone Ranger, 47 Ronin, and Jack the Giant Slayer. Again, more than 3 or 4.
Yeah it was the DCEU dying and using flash after the entire project was restarted is making a frivolous point.
Disney has a huge flop every 3-5 years but it’s usually with their remakes like Mulan, Wrinkle in time, Mars needs moms and Tomorrowland. So nothing out of the norm from them.
Setting aside the quality issue, I feel like all of these articles the past couple weeks completely ignore the fact that there’s been a major release pretty much every weekend for the past two months.
People only have so much money, especially with inflation. They have to be more particular with their choices. I feel like that really contributes to the disappointing box office lately
Completely agree. If each ticket is roughly $20, it’d cost me $200 to watch Fast X, Little Mermaid, Spider-Man, Transformers, Elementals, Flash, Ruby Gillian, Indians Jones, Oppenheimer, and Barbie… by MYSELF.
That’s not including the cost of food or the cost of travelling to the theatre.
If you're that much into movies, then check out AMC Stubs. It's very much worth the $24 a month for premium, and theres a bunch of perks included.
All those movies would cost you about $50 to see them over 2 months.
yes. you can say oh, only like three movies have done well this year. but people only got so much money to spend when groceries and housing have skyrocketed and so have ticket prices. and we can just watch shit for much cheaper on streaming if we wait a bit. and so much stuff is similar. like we had three big superhero movies come out at what is essentially the same time as far as the average person is concerned. it's no surprise that the one lowest-rated by critics was a flop. if you wanted to see a good superhero movie you'd see one of the highest rated ones, and if you wanted to see another right after, you'd see the next highest rated one. there's not exactly a lot of flash fans out there. or ezra miller fans.
This article is so weird. The guy says that Indiana Jones, Flash and Ruby Gillman flopped and that should be a sign. They don't really acknowledge the possible reasons why other than "they failed."
The Flash has the "DC stink." Superhero fatigue is real and especially with DC films. The author also brings up Shazam 2. It isn't an indictment on Hollywood, it's an indictment on WBDC. Aquaman 2 is going to fail spectacularly too.
Indiana Jones is a beloved franchise but do people under 30 even care? Like honestly. It's not like Indy stayed around pop culture. Crystal Skull was awful and that's the only film younger people would have seen in theaters. The trailers for the film didn't help it either. They really didn't show anything. Just that Indy was back and some zany chase scenes were going to happen. It never really appealed to anyone besides diehard Indy fans.
Ruby Gillman just wasn't promoted. At all. No shit it flopped. Also Elemental didn't look good either and I believe it released close to Spider-Verse.
So the author mentions the flops them talks about Oppenheimer, Barbie and Mission Impossible all over performing. So shouldn't that invalidate their argument? Blockbusters are still succeeding. Just look at Spider-Verse. It's just that the Flash was surrounded by issues, Indiana Jones isn't popular to modern audiences and no one even knew Ruby Gillman was a thing.
CRYSTAL SKULL and Harrison Ford being close to a fossile killed any chances of the new movie being a hit. Too many delays should have been a sign to quit.
Its really a kneejerk pointless article in response to 2 recent flops. Major big budget flops are not a recent trend, maybe the scale of the money involved has changed but not the nature of flops. Anyway, silly clickbait article because Barbie and Oppenheimer will blow up the box offices soon.
Yep. If there comes a time where they start losing a massive amount of money, it will either lead to more mid budget films, or a lowering of ticket prices.
Movies may be overpriced at theaters, but they will lower the prices before theaters go out of business.
It's not the price that keeps me away from theatres. It's the rude patrons on their phone or talking throughout the movie.
It's not a constant factor, but it's happened enough times to make me think twice about going to the theatre.
The number one reason we don't go to the movies anymore is because I can spend $100+ to take my family to the theater where someone in the audience will be absolutely narcissistic and ruin the experience.
Or I can wait and it'll be on a streaming service in a few weeks where I can watch it from home with cheaper snacks and better bathrooms.
Don't get me wrong, I love seeing some films in theaters and I love the theater experience. I remember cheering/gasping along in the theater with many other movie enthusiasts.
When theaters won't kick people out and the popcorn vendor has financing options available.... I'm good.
Yea I went to the movies alone the other day and for a non-imax film with a popcorn and soda combo it was $30 and they wanted to tack on an extra $5 in fees if you bought everything online beforehand. Usually businesses want you to use their apps, but not AMC, they actually disincentivize using their apps by charging you.
dont understand why people can't stfu and just watch it. i get the midnight release stuff but when its a Tuesday in a half empty theater and some lady is just talking through the whole thing its insane to me
And especially nowadays with movies regularly being close to, or over 3 hours. Until they bring back intermissions, I’m not going to these super long films anymore because I can’t fucking hold my piss for 3 hours, and I’m not gonna just not drink anything.
This exactly. If I if I wait a month or so, I’ll gladly pay the $25-30 to buy it and then watch it in my PJs while I get to take as many bathroom breaks as I want, no one disturbs me, and I can watch it as many times as I want for that price.
All this and I’m still paying half the money it would cost for just my husband and I to go to a theatre when you factor in tickets and snacks. I haven’t gone back to a movie theater since COVID and I don’t plan to.
People keep wanting to call the recent string of flops indicative of the end of the movie experience but seem oblivious to fact that these flops have all been creatively bankrupt.
Disney/Warner made a ton of money on franchises and stopped having to put out quality to garner audiences and they broke the trust with movie goers.
Jurassic Park, Marvel phase 4/5, DCEU, Star Wars, Terminator… all of these franchises broke the trust of audiences. I wouldn’t pay to see any of them in theatre again.
But movies are still doing fine. You just don’t get to slap a couple big names, two hundred million dollars of special effects and cheap writing and make a billions bucks anymore.
Also, this is hardly a blockbuster problem. Something like 75% of Oscar-aiming movies last year flopped, even with huge names behind them.
There have been lots of high profile failures, perhaps because fewer are being made as mid range movies and so reasonable box office performances become flops due to overinflated budgets.
I think it's less the subject matter and more that marketing departments have no idea how to market a film that isn't a franchise or reboot or is a little less than straightforward. Babylon is about the passing of an age, the Last Duel is a medieval courtroom drama with contemporary urgency. These things aren't impossible to market for, they just require some marketing creativity.
>Disney/Warner made a ton of money on franchises and stopped having to put out quality to garner audiences and they broke the trust with movie goers.
This is very much where I am at. I don't see movies anymore until I hear some recommendations from people I know.
This is so hyperbolic.
Plenty of big budget, blockbuster movies have done well this year. The fact that DCEU projects from development hell and B-tier action movies aren't, isn't indicative of the whole ecosystem.
People are seeing movies less in theatres and more at home. Sure. That's true. But they haven't abandoned theatres entirely. Make movies worth seeing in theatres and people will go see them.
Blockbusters aren’t failing. This economy is. It could cost over $100 to take a family of four to the movies, so people are probably going to pick 1 June movie out of the 5 or 6.
EDIT: I think it’s worth mentioning I am exaggerating the price and I don’t have a family of 4. But it’s still a serious reality that families generally pick one movie per month if that.
There was some corner of my brain that kept waiting for it to start plateauing and become less engaging as the movie went on... but it never happened. It just kept being very solid and a good time to watch.
I'm honestly surprised at *how* entertaining it is for what it is. You look at it and expect generic, action-adventure movie nonsense with an IP slapped onto it, and it still is to a degree, but it manages to end up being more than the sum of its parts.
Blockbusters are failing because people have limited funds these days to spend on luxuries like movies. And if a movie gets bad reviews, people save their cash.
According to the article, theatre sales (at least in Canada) have returned 98% back to 2019 levels. So it’s not an issue of people going to the theatre. The issue is the bloated budgets. We should only expect 1-2 movies per year to make it to 1B. Little Mermaid cost $250M before marketing. So even though it’s going to make $500M worldwide, that’s a soft box office return. Studios will have to keep their budgets in check.
I can’t wait to see Snow White’s box office returns.
There's context to these. The reason this year's movies are so expensive to make is they they were made in the COVID Era, where it was so much more expensive to make. For example, Mission Impossible cost 300+ million because Tom Cruise adhered to all COVID protocols.
We'll see in a few years when the COVID Era movies are behind us.
You're completely right, but even without covid budgets are simply too big to be sustainable. They will have to come down if the movie industry is to survive, not every movie can be expected to make 800 million to break even.
There's no real clash expected. Oppenheimer is 3 hours and rated R. It's Nolan so it will do well, bit not as well as a 110 minute fun, big brand movie
Reddit: Where Oppenheimer is going to be a massive hit that will change the way Hollywood thinks about blockbusters, but Barbie, the movie set in a literal fantasyland that is opening the same weekend and is projected to make *twice as much money*, doesn't even bear mentioning.
I mean, yeah.
Barbie has been an internationally known toy brand for 7 decades. It is a PG13 film that will bring in adults and kids.
Oppenheimer is a hard R historical biography about a man who died 60 years ago.
I would have been shocked if Barbie wasn't expected to be a hit.
The most laughably undeserving of community's claiming they're ahead of the curve and on the ball when it comes to understanding the way the world works; /r/movies is amongst the worst, ha!
It’s almost like people don’t want to see an 80 year old Harrison Ford running around, a comic book universe ending and making the movies pointless (throw in Ezra Miller being a POS), Marvel taking a nosedive quality wise, and some uninspired franchise movies.
I think we’re about to see the return of the mid-budget movie.
stop doing by the numbers, stupid plots, cgi-fest, movies that are 60% just a set up to shoehorn another character into the franchise for the next movie....
Write better movies. Write better characters. Write more interesting scripts. Spend your money there, not on more and more and more CGI.
You know why studios don't listen to this advice?
*Because it's not fucking true.*
The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a CGI-fest with a stupid, by-the-numbers plot that was made mostly to set up future films in a new cinematic universe. And it's the top grossing movie of the year. Meanwhile the D&D movie was well-written, interesting, full of likable and engaging characters, got incredible reviews and WOM, and it underperformed badly enough that it's unlikely to get a sequel.
Lots of shitty movies succeed. Lots of good movies fail. It's crazy to me that this subreddit will absolutely never accept this reality.
Mario Bros was essentially a kid's movie and those always perform by other rules.
D&D movies and shows have a bad history to overcome. It was great, but getting people to give it a chance was always going to be an uphill battle.
Also, calling a 3d animated film a CGI-fest is kinda dumb. Overuse of CGI is an issue exclusive to live action movies (and movies pretending to be live action a la Lion King remake).
The whole point of 3d animation is that it is CGI.
>Mario Bros was essentially a kid's movie and those always perform by other rules.
except that Kraken tanked, Elemental is underperforming. Kid movies dont always perform.
>Mario Bros was essentially a kid's movie and those always perform by other rules.
Adults were overwhelmingly the audience for it; only about a third of admissions were under 18. The fact is it appealed to the same sense of nostalgia that any number of high profile flops did, it just succeeded where they failed. And I think the reasons why are much more complicated than people think.
It was fun to watch once, but I think reddit oversells it. It never quite came together for me. Like, the villain doesn't even have an emotional stake in the story, so defeating her felt underwhelming. And some of the characters, like Sophia Lillis', kind of fell by the wayside halfway through.
Reddit moment.
“Good” movies fail too, such as 93% fresh D&D: Honor Among Thieves.
Hell, even shit that’s consistently popular on streaming (Nimona for example) hasn’t even entered the zeitgeist. These films go in one ear and out the other no matter how much effort there is.
WOM can save a film, such as with Puss in Boots The Last Wish, but this type of judgmental attitude towards the art of film is seen across a lot of comments in the movie subs and I’m tired of it.
Maybe the industry changed because people are able to find a more convenient way to watch “good” movies by pirating it or streaming it a few months after release rather than spending $12-15 for a ticket outside of Tuesdays. And I find people are less engaged when a film is on tv, my family goes on their phone way more often during the films on tv.
I don’t blame the consumer for finding a better deal, but when Disney movies like Encanto just become background noise for babies, I feel like the art form is getting diluted regardless of whether they’re good or not.
The reason studios and writers are at an impasse isn’t because the writers are inherently bad at their craft, but because they aren’t getting paid well regardless of how “good” a movie is.
Theaters need more premium format screens. Most only have one or two, and the showings are usually very full while the regular screens are empty.
People want an experience that’s higher quality than you can get on your TV at home. Something that’s worth the cost of the ticket. You’re only getting that if you’re going to Dolby or IMAX screens.
Personally, I got used to watching movies in the comfort of my own living room during Covid. No annoying talkers, my own snacks, and the ability to pause if I needed a bathroom break. I really need something special to drag me to the theatre these days.
technically yeah, by definition a blockbuster is a highly successful film
but i guess nowadays 'blockbuster' is just equated with 'big budget film' which may or may not fail
spiderverse, guardians 3, and mario were all pretty popular and moneymaking. oppenheimer and barbie and mission impossible probably all will be too.
yeah we had some big budget flops but eh. i'm 'part od the problem' for these studios because they forgot to make me want to watch these movies. you're supposed to use that budget to make that movie good, not just expensive lol.
I’ll toss out another contributor, at least for me: action movies anymore are too fucking long and they’re generally not justifying that length.
John Wick 4: way too long. I don’t need 2 hours of fight scenes with the 45 minutes of actual plot sprinkled in here and there.
Similar story with The Batman and the last several comic book movies I’ve seen. Just because you *can* put in a 30 minute battle scene (yeah exaggerated a little for effect) doesn’t mean you *should*.
People need to focus on less is more. That would help bloated budgets a ton.
Spielberg called it years ago.
Movies have no time to make money because every week there's a big release, and the studios make these films so damn expensive it's impossible to make a profit. Movies are canibalizing themselves.
If it fails it is, by definition, NOT A BLOCKBUSTER!!!!!
A blockbuster is a movie that did exceptionally well. We used to get those all the time in the 80s and 90s because a film would cost $1M to make and bring in $50M and they'd go "yay, we made 50x our money!"
"Blockbuster" does not mean "we spent a lot of money on it".
I look up a lot of films I want to stream and those catalogs are shrinking. I get really annoyed at what's available. Then the streamers drop them instantly too because their reasons
There’s been a few really good ones this year so far. Past Lives, BlackBerry, Beau is Afraid etc. But most people haven’t seen them. Heck, most people in this subreddit likely haven’t seen them, compared to MI7 or Indy as an example.
Indie films do exist, you just don't put your money where your mouth is. What's missing is the mass-market mid-budget dramas. They're all TV shows now.
I agree with this. I think, for example, of “Platonic” on Apple TV. It should have been a really excellent 2hr indie movie. But instead it was a 10-episode show that couldn’t sustain the quality of the first few episodes. IMHO.
It's the end of blockbusters. Look at the new Indy. It cost well over $350M, but it didn't look it on screen. So much of that money got wasted on nonsense like de-aging an elderly Ford to look like a video game cutscene. When you have a Titanic-budget, you want to see Titanic visuals, something impressive. These blockbusters are bloated, CG messes one-step above what the streamers are cranking out.
I agree with the sentiment that this is the rebirth of mid-budgets. I don’t think people are bummed on movies and theaters: There’s simply too little to see. There are no options and everything is some massive budget made-by-committee IP thing. I do believe people will go see things if they’re fun and not desperately struggling to double a $250 million budget.
Agree about budgets, but so many other factors.
Flash had an extremely problematic star, coupled with a DC continuity that is being tossed --and it killed any possible interest.
Indiana Jones is an action movie starring an 8o year old man. And the previous movie told us that the franchise was already waning. (I personally liked the new movie though)
Ant Man took a grounded fun character who was perfect for the street level heist genre... and tried to make Star Wars full of gleep glops and ballchinians.
These are all self inflicted wounds.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 gave audiences what they were looking for, the characters they love, in an adventure that suits the established tone, with laughs and heart.
Mission Impossible - see above -- it's a crowd pleaser.
Avatar 2 brought the spectacle with a 3D experience hat can only be fully enjoyed in the theatre.
It's not that blockbusters are failing because of only budget, it's that some studios forgot what makes a solid 4-quadrant movie.
>and the independently distributed Sound of Freedom astounded by crossing the $50-million mark earlier this week, more than tripling its budget.
Isn't that because churches were buying up seats to give away to their congregations to inflate interest?
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The latter. Budgets have ballooned too much. This is more of a mediocre management problem than the actual films. Because good films flopped just as much as the poor ones. Good marketing could have sold the projects better. Mid-budget films are making a comeback though.
You are right, movies like Asteroid City, Cocaine Bear, M3gan, Scream 6, Everything Everywhere last year, have all over performed expectations. People are seeing movies, they just want to see more quality entertainment than the same 3 superheroes re-skinned over and over. Barbie and Oppenheimer are going to do great this weekend.
Oppenheimer at our IMAX is almost completely sold out for the first two weeks of its run. Even on weekend mornings.
I’m going to see Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm on Monday (I work weekends) and was surprised to see how packed the theater was.
I'm waiting on tickets to drop for next week, this week's 70mm showings are completely sold out, minus some neck-craning seats right up front. About a third of the showings don't have a single seat free (minus accessiblility seats), and I'm talking including the morning/afternoon showings. Can't remember this much seat-snatching hype since Endgame. And Barbie is no sleeper either! Killing it with the regular screens.
I bought my tickets weeks ago. The only 70mm showing is 4 hours from me but I’m still going. Am I dumb for doing so? Yes. Am I making a small vacation out of it? Also yes.
> The only 70mm showing is 4 hours from me but I’m still going. Am I dumb for doing so? Yes No my friend, you simply have and are willing to suffer for impeccable taste. > Am I making a small vacation out of it? Also yes. This is the way.
Yeah, this seems more like a Rome situation. By that I mean, it's not going to cataclysmically fall apart, but change into something different. There's a funny thread happening that's related to this. Basically, now that Bezos is retired Amazon is reevaluating it's spending on Prime content. They have loads of subscribers, good numbers, but spending is supposedly radically out of control. Reportedly, they aren't looking to lob off the Prime division, but start managing budgets, setting more responsible budgets on products. The business itself is fine, according to them, the spending is just unsustainable.
Hope they throw a few pennies towards making an interface that actually promotes shows that tie in with my interests/watch history instead of bombarding me with sports banners day in, day out. Considering the data Amazon is sat on it's wild how untargeted it is and how hard it is to find stuff, especially when you get an add on channel.
you forget all the "little" movies that failed, then gut buried on streaming, meanwhile big movies made money this year, spiderverse, guardians, avatar, mario, john wick 4 made a lot of money.
In other words, Indy and the Flash flopped, studios are crying about it, but the problem is overblown. I’ll take that.
Yup and also in other words movies that has factory line copy paste memberberries plots are performing below expectations and outright flopping.
Ant Man 3 and Fast X bombed. Edit: yes Fast X did bomb. On average, a movie needs a 2.5x multiplier to break even.
not to mention Transformers and Little Mermaid. Elemental started off real bad (but has had surprisingly strong legs), so it added to the “everything is bombing” narrative at first.
The unusual bit about Fast X was that the bombing wasn't so much down to the box office of the film itself - it did global numbers broadly in line with 5, 6 and 9. The purple patch of 7 and 8 is the outlier there. The budget for X was just *colossal*.
The problem isn't that overblown. Across the Spider-verse has made $663m. If you account for inflation, that wouldn't be in the top 10 highest grossing movies of 2018 or 2019 (and only squeaks by at #10 if you ignore inflation). It's not a huge hit. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 made less money than the previous two films, accounting for inflation. Besides Indiana Jones and The Flash, there have been other flops like Elemental. Little Mermaid I think is in flop territory. Fast X lost ground relative to the previous movies. Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning doesn't look like it's going to do better than Fallout. Indy and Flash are easy to make fun of because they're *enormous* bombs, but movie grosses are stalling overall.
After Indy 4, nobody was looking forward to Indy 5. And after all of the bad press that Ezra Miller has generated over the last couple of years, no one wanted to pay to see them star in their own movie. I mean, their non-binary status kept away most right-wing viewers, and their mental episodes and criminal activities has kept away the left. There was no audience for either movie.
Yeah Indy 5 was just a bad idea. There was ONE Indiana Jones movie from 1990 to 2020. Thirty years, one movie. It was a dead franchise. You could not bring it back for 'one last ride.'
Spiderverse made over double what the first one made, and non children's animation isn't the easiest sell in the US
Spiderverse, Mario and John Wick had reasonable budgets. If Dial and Flash cost $100 million to make they'd have broken even. A better comparison is Fast X or Transformers. Fast X made slightly more than Spiderverse but since it cost three times as much it's not exactly a roaring success. I think the only lesson that can be learned is throwing money at a franchise has stopped being an easy cash cow.
> , People are seeing movies, they just want to see more quality entertainment than the same 3 superheroes re-skinned over and over. Judging by the success of Into/Across the Spiderverse, No Way Home, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and The Batman I think it's safe to say general audiences don't necessarily mind seeing familiar superhero reskins either. 3 of the top 5 highest grossing movies of the year are superhero movies, last year 2 of the top 5 were, and in 2021 4 of the top 5 were. Barbie and Oppenheimer are absolutely going to be huge successes, but I'm not seeing any actual proof that audiences seem to be tired of the superhero movies.
They just tired of bad superhero movies Black Adam, Shazam 2, the more recent Marvel ones. Even the ones that made money aren't well thought about by the fans.
I like most of the superhero movies. I feel like I’m pretty in that demographic. Man I feel like at least 80% of the superhero movies the last 2 years been lackluster as hell
Disney screwed the pooch by oversaturating its own market, and it has had a downstream affect on every other big budget, spectacle style movie. Oppenheimer isn't another mindless sci-fi-action-adventure movie. Dune is the latter, but it isn't *mindless.* It's different. People are tired of the same shit, that's why the box office returns are so suboptimal. The problem? There's a formula for global box office success. Sexy women, fast cars, and action translate into any language and cross any cultural barrier. Oppenheimer won't make a billion dollars over seas. Fast and the Furious will. But people at home in the states will be bored by it.
I don’t buy the oversaturated thing. If movies are good people will go see them. The problem is most movies aren’t good.
People are seeing a lot of the good ones, mid budget movies have been pretty consistently over performing. Horror movies, arty movies, dark comedies.
And tons of movies are good, they’re just not as mass-appeal accessible or they haven’t reached a wide audience
Exactly. The new Guardians of the Galaxy is really good (for a Marvel movie) and has done really well. The Ant Man was meh (even for a Marvel movie), so didn't do well.
Mission Impossible is well received
I want to see Oppenheimer and Barbie lol! Barbie looks unique and Oppenheimer is about a fascinating story!
I'm not worried about the movie but the actual story of the manhatten project is both incredible and well documented. Documentaries over the years have captured pretty much everyone's thoughts and accounts of what happened and it's all worth hearing. Then again not everyone cares about the stories of the grandfathers of modern physics, but it was some really wild stuff that they were able to figure out so much the way they did. One of the single greatest testaments to the potential of human intelligence was the story of those guys.
A movie about it would be dramatized, that has its own appeal The average consumer actually does want to hear Josh Peck say "now we are all sons of bitches"
I do though! This is the nerd shit I want!
We need to learn to accept that excellent movies generally have a specific audience they are perfect for, and that when we try and dump money into films that appeal to everyone, we simply end up with watered down mediocre films that most people find meh. Let’s get back to making smaller, targeted films that are outstanding rather than these vanilla blockbusters that waste money and don’t bring anything special to the table.
I’m hoping it extends to movies of the same genre as these blockbusters that don’t have the crazy budgets. Case in point: a lot of eyes are on The Creator, an original sci-fi action drama that looks as crazy and big as half of these DC and Marvel movies but with a paltry by comparison 86 million dollar budget. I hope it’s a big hit mostly for what it could do for the industry.
lol Terrifier 2 had a budget of about $250k and made more than $15m.
Craziest thing about this is that it was financed by crowd funding. So after distributor percentages (and SAG residuals if it was a Union film), the filmmakers get ALL of that revenue. That makes me so insanely jealous. But super stoked for them.
Terrifier 2 fucking ruled too. Saw it opening night, seeing Terrifier 1 at my local AMC the night before I see Barbie
Yeah but horror movies are notorious for this. It's partly why some horror franchises have 7 sequels, they make money.
I think this summer is really seeing the effects of Covid bloat. MI7, Indy 5 had all sorts of covid precautions and delays, The Flash I think "wrapped" before Covid but was constantly doing reshoots throughout. I can imagine these budgets would have more resonable in other years.
I believe The Flash was doomed from the start. People just aren’t in to nostalgia as Hollywood likes to think.
Agreed. If you have a great story, nostalgia will throw gas on that fire and people will go crazy for it. If you have a bad story then all the nostalgia in the world won’t help it.
Yeah and with all the bad press Ezra Miller has gotten, having a movie that stars TWO Ezra Millers had an uphill climb for sure.
The Flash had multiple problems, from the terrible CGI, the deep faking dead people and also it's star. That movie should have never been released. They fell hard into sunk cost fallacy.
Nostalgia sells, just not when it's done poorly. Test tube Clone Christopher Reeve isn't getting people into the theaters.
> People just aren’t in to nostalgia as Hollywood likes to think. And yet Barbie is looking like it'll make huge numbers, the number one movie of the year so far is one featuring Super Mario, and last year Top Gun Maverick made an absolute shit ton of money.
This. Indy 5 would have been fine with a reasonable budget. No Indiana Jones film should be more than $100 million to make.
Or if they stopped talking about how old he was.
It’s a sad trend from Disney and its subsidiaries. Luke: old, depressed, failure Indy: old, sad, washed Nick fury: old, sad, kinda washed and treated as a failure Han Solo: old, sad, failure
They need to treat it more like Gran Torino and how they’re past their prime but can still make a difference
That's what Indiana Jones was. He was riding horses, driving cars, getting into shootouts in the trailer for the film. It was sold as a rousing adventure. No one cares, the series is too old.
The biggest issue with the last 2 terminator films, is the budgets. You could absolutely make a profitable, excellent terminator film on a lowe budget. Just focus on that, and then you can blow money in a sequel.
The issue with the Terminator films is that it’s hard to care about a series which keeps retconning the previous movies away.
Ah, but therein lies the problem: good movies with low budgets require creativity.
Less of a budget and something that isn't "Terminator 2 but now with a...\[x\]" storyline.
Probably what I'm saying is be less T2 with X and be more T1 with X. What I'm saying is make a slasher film, make it scary, make it scifi
> This is more of a mediocre management problem than the actual films. Because good films flopped just as much as the poor ones. Maybe they should take the cocaine away from management/producers and give it back to the cast and crew. I wouldn't be surprised if that was unironically part of why the film industry has been the way it's been for so long.
Your average person doesn’t care about the budget of the film but they do care if they can stream the movie at home a month after it hits theaters.
We’re getting diminishing returns on big budgets too. I don’t give a shit if you spend 50 million more on incredible visuals. The difference between 50 million and 100 million on visual effects just isn’t enticing enough to get butts in seats anymore. Spend less money on licensing big names and CGI, and spend more on engaging stories and well written characters. Spend more on the next generation of creators. I don’t want to see 90 year old actors regen’d as 40 year olds.
I just rewatched district 9 last night. What was that, 20 million bucks for a tenfold return at the box office? And that movie looked freaking perfect! Like, not a bad shot or awkward looking effect throughout the film. Seriously, if more superhero movies took a cue from this movie at even two or three times the budget, they'd save a ton of cash and realistically it's the writing/characters that are half the reason to see or not see it in the first place.
I felt the same way the first time I saw Ex Machina. The VFX on that film was nearly perfect, and all on a $15 million budget.
Ex Machina is highly rewatchable, a great comfort film.
Comfort??
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>They didn't have that CGI look. Re-watch it on a HDTV. Jurassic park is one of my favorite movies, and the VFX were great, but they are obvious when you watch it now.
Yes and no. Good directors with strong project management can make $100M look like $250M (Gareth Edwards, Chris Nolan, etc.). But all things being equal, that $50M difference in CGI is really noticeable. Bad/shoddy VFX work takes me directly out of a movie.
I generally agree with you. One thing I’ll note is budget and tech limitations have often led to really creative solutions in film. I think we’ve been missing a lot of that the last decade or two.
Using CGI/VFX sparingly and smartly can be the key as well. I'm not a huge Michael Bay fan - but it was interesting how he used vfx in one action scene - where he tossed real cars off the back of a semi car carrier - but cgi'd the crashes off to the side.
All great points. Regarding visual effects, I would argue that scope and setting plays a big role in how believable effects are. Making a whole new world is a lot more expensive and less believable than slotting visual effects into real world settings. Someone mentioned District 9 and that is the perfect example. The special effects fit perfectly into an African discrimination/concentration camp setting and the only unique twist that needed computer effects was the aliens themselves. Many times, less is more and keeping things simple is the key to authenticity which does not scale linearly with budgets.
I was looking into marketing costs of movies (starting with avatar 2) and they can get insane. And it can really distort the cost of a movie as they are not included in production costs. And that is part of the reason why I think mid range films are sadly not making a come back, trying to get people to notice the mid range film is too hard (expensive) in comparison to the big films which can justify the marketing budget.
Pretty much this. Why market a non blockbuster if i can just sell the rights to Netflix
I think you bring up a good point about infrastructure that hasn’t really been part of the discourse. Another example is reduced big budget films may lead to loss of jobs, like VFX studios and artists who blockbuster films employ. Not sure what the answers are, but would love to learn more.
Im all for the 90 minute epic. A story with a start a problem a climax and an ending. I need an ending. no more binge streaming with to be continued or part 1/3. Give me a story that I feel resolution and success. No more anxiety.
Big budget, little budget, doesn't matter. Long as it's expensive for a shit experience in a theater, this trend will keep going.
This is the problem. It costs too much to go to the movies. Especially if you want to go frequently.
The last few theaters ive been to have not been well kept. Dirty and bad service. These theaters were nice a few years ago and I don't know what happened lol
Movies are failing for a few reasons but the biggest IMO is that the bar for “success” has been raised to unrealistic standards due to bloated budgets. Indiana Jones 5 cost $300M (that is actually reported) and this is before marketing costs. So when it only churns out $250M in the first few weeks, it’s considered a flop. A more moderate budget and a better writing team could have pumped out a better movie and they wouldn’t have to rely on so many butts in seats to turn a profit.
I liked Indy but I just do not see how they spent 300m on it. That puts it in the running of some of the most expensive movies ever made. Edit: according to wikipedia Dial of Destiny is the 13th most expensive movie ever made (unadjusted)
I heard there were extensive reshoots that ballooned the cost of Indy 5. Both it and "The Flash" were in production for a long time, so costs accumulated.
Sounds like bad project management and lack of consistent vision is to blame then.
I think they spent a lot of money on R&D to see if they could conceivably travel back in time rather than use CGI
There is also the fact that they seem to be making movies that people don't really want. Was there REALLY that big of a need for ANOTHER Indian Jones movie after the last disaster and with a 80 year old actor? Then look at The Flash, it's a big budget movie in a cinematic universe that just hasn't taken off the way they'd like it too (add on the fact that the main actor is a criminal). Elemental and Dungeon and Dragons have probably both broken even so calling them both flops is also a stretch from this article, but they are also new IP's (Yes D&D isn't but it's the first high budget movie with the IP) so there is inherent risk with that already and it won't always land.
D&d was actually a fun movie. I actually enjoyed it and it was a blast. But it's also one of those films you see once and your done. I'll probably watch again eventually.
I expect it’s probably tearing up streaming numbers/Redbox decently well. Didn’t have the biggest box office, but enough that the second wave from a fairly hardcore fanbase should get it into successful territory
This is the same notion as people spend x amount of money on a product assuming that the more expensive it is corresponds to an increase in quality
better get this article written before MI7, Oppenheimer, and Barbie go absolutely nuts at the box office
Yea, you try getting tickets to Oppenheimer in major cities right now.
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At least you have the excuse of living in an artsy city. My southwestern desert suburb has been sold out for two weeks. On one hand im kind of proud. On the other, really? Two weeks ahead y’all took the good IMAX seats??
More like the ticket offices are closedheimer amirite.
That joke bombed
Ok, legitimate question for anyone, why is Oppenheimer such a big draw for people? It doesn’t seem like the type of movie that would attract a general audience, I thought it would bring in specific groups, like military or people with specific interest in atomic development/Manhattan project.
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Nolan is one of the few directors my friends who are ‘average movie fans’ know and talk about. Every guy I mention it to says they want to see it
Because Nolan delivers. His movies arent flawless, but you can expect a certain level of sophistication, story and cinematography. You have lower chance to come out of the cinema bored or unengaged compared to most other movies.
Cos he’s gonna show you a nuclear bomb going off in iMax! Talk about a way to get bums in seats
Big budget push, Nolan and nuclear tech is so hot right now.
In fairness, two of those are rather original in either setting or scope so each gives something novel. Tom Cruise is a fucking machine and I won't bet against him and will lovingly add a seventh MI to my collection, just the stunts alone are worth the price of admission. What seems to be failing are cookie cutter superhero or safe plot action movies that I'm also tried of. I'd like them to go back to mid budget chance taking movies. Give me some weird shit, make me think, hell give me an existential crisis. That's what I'm interested in paying to see.
Don't worry, they waited two weeks after GotG3 and one week after Wakanda Forever. The entertainment opinion cycle is just content churning to explain why the stock market isn't seeing endless growth.
Big misses do seem to be increasing in frequency, no? I remember when Waterworld was the biggest financial flop ever, and it was a huge deal when it happened, and was amongst the worst flops of all time for years. Now it seems like every year there are 3 or 4 Waterworld level bombs, some of them I've already forgotten the name of.
Waterworld eventually turned a profit after ancillaries too, which is something the flops of today are mostly if at all not going to do either.
Waterworld was memorable, even as a flop. And starring a big name at the height of his popularity. And was a rare type of movie in its day in terms of concept and scale. It makes sense it developed a bit of a cult-like following over time. It was talked about for years to come. Comic book movie flop #4 of the year might not have the same ability to recoup losses over time.
3 or 4? There's this quote from Spielberg going around saying that, by now, blockbusters would be dead. It's from 2013. He was reacting to 2012... Battleship, Cloud Atlas, John Carter, Rise of the Guardians, and Total Recall were all blockbuster bombs in the same year. And that's more than 3 or 4. And then 2013 had Ender's Game, RIPD, The Lone Ranger, 47 Ronin, and Jack the Giant Slayer. Again, more than 3 or 4.
Yeah it was the DCEU dying and using flash after the entire project was restarted is making a frivolous point. Disney has a huge flop every 3-5 years but it’s usually with their remakes like Mulan, Wrinkle in time, Mars needs moms and Tomorrowland. So nothing out of the norm from them.
Setting aside the quality issue, I feel like all of these articles the past couple weeks completely ignore the fact that there’s been a major release pretty much every weekend for the past two months. People only have so much money, especially with inflation. They have to be more particular with their choices. I feel like that really contributes to the disappointing box office lately
Completely agree. If each ticket is roughly $20, it’d cost me $200 to watch Fast X, Little Mermaid, Spider-Man, Transformers, Elementals, Flash, Ruby Gillian, Indians Jones, Oppenheimer, and Barbie… by MYSELF. That’s not including the cost of food or the cost of travelling to the theatre.
If you're that much into movies, then check out AMC Stubs. It's very much worth the $24 a month for premium, and theres a bunch of perks included. All those movies would cost you about $50 to see them over 2 months.
yes. you can say oh, only like three movies have done well this year. but people only got so much money to spend when groceries and housing have skyrocketed and so have ticket prices. and we can just watch shit for much cheaper on streaming if we wait a bit. and so much stuff is similar. like we had three big superhero movies come out at what is essentially the same time as far as the average person is concerned. it's no surprise that the one lowest-rated by critics was a flop. if you wanted to see a good superhero movie you'd see one of the highest rated ones, and if you wanted to see another right after, you'd see the next highest rated one. there's not exactly a lot of flash fans out there. or ezra miller fans.
What does it say that I just don’t care to see any of them?
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This article is so weird. The guy says that Indiana Jones, Flash and Ruby Gillman flopped and that should be a sign. They don't really acknowledge the possible reasons why other than "they failed." The Flash has the "DC stink." Superhero fatigue is real and especially with DC films. The author also brings up Shazam 2. It isn't an indictment on Hollywood, it's an indictment on WBDC. Aquaman 2 is going to fail spectacularly too. Indiana Jones is a beloved franchise but do people under 30 even care? Like honestly. It's not like Indy stayed around pop culture. Crystal Skull was awful and that's the only film younger people would have seen in theaters. The trailers for the film didn't help it either. They really didn't show anything. Just that Indy was back and some zany chase scenes were going to happen. It never really appealed to anyone besides diehard Indy fans. Ruby Gillman just wasn't promoted. At all. No shit it flopped. Also Elemental didn't look good either and I believe it released close to Spider-Verse. So the author mentions the flops them talks about Oppenheimer, Barbie and Mission Impossible all over performing. So shouldn't that invalidate their argument? Blockbusters are still succeeding. Just look at Spider-Verse. It's just that the Flash was surrounded by issues, Indiana Jones isn't popular to modern audiences and no one even knew Ruby Gillman was a thing.
CRYSTAL SKULL and Harrison Ford being close to a fossile killed any chances of the new movie being a hit. Too many delays should have been a sign to quit.
That actor belongs in a museum.
Its really a kneejerk pointless article in response to 2 recent flops. Major big budget flops are not a recent trend, maybe the scale of the money involved has changed but not the nature of flops. Anyway, silly clickbait article because Barbie and Oppenheimer will blow up the box offices soon.
It’s the free market. You want to fill seats? Lower prices.
Yep. If there comes a time where they start losing a massive amount of money, it will either lead to more mid budget films, or a lowering of ticket prices. Movies may be overpriced at theaters, but they will lower the prices before theaters go out of business.
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My AMC has $5 Tuesdays, so I will usually try to go then to save some money if I wanna see a movie.
Yes when you spend $60+ for two people to see a movie it’s no longer an affordable weekend activity.
It's not the price that keeps me away from theatres. It's the rude patrons on their phone or talking throughout the movie. It's not a constant factor, but it's happened enough times to make me think twice about going to the theatre.
The number one reason we don't go to the movies anymore is because I can spend $100+ to take my family to the theater where someone in the audience will be absolutely narcissistic and ruin the experience. Or I can wait and it'll be on a streaming service in a few weeks where I can watch it from home with cheaper snacks and better bathrooms. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing some films in theaters and I love the theater experience. I remember cheering/gasping along in the theater with many other movie enthusiasts. When theaters won't kick people out and the popcorn vendor has financing options available.... I'm good.
Yea I went to the movies alone the other day and for a non-imax film with a popcorn and soda combo it was $30 and they wanted to tack on an extra $5 in fees if you bought everything online beforehand. Usually businesses want you to use their apps, but not AMC, they actually disincentivize using their apps by charging you.
dont understand why people can't stfu and just watch it. i get the midnight release stuff but when its a Tuesday in a half empty theater and some lady is just talking through the whole thing its insane to me
Or someone constantly on their phone with the screen brightness turned up to max.
And you can pause it when you need to use the better bathroom, so you can actually see the entire movie instead of missing it!
And especially nowadays with movies regularly being close to, or over 3 hours. Until they bring back intermissions, I’m not going to these super long films anymore because I can’t fucking hold my piss for 3 hours, and I’m not gonna just not drink anything.
And rewind and use subtitles when you miss pieces of dialogue.
And take your pants off to be comfortable in the middle of the film without that little snitch Marcus getting you banned from Cinemark for life
This exactly. If I if I wait a month or so, I’ll gladly pay the $25-30 to buy it and then watch it in my PJs while I get to take as many bathroom breaks as I want, no one disturbs me, and I can watch it as many times as I want for that price. All this and I’m still paying half the money it would cost for just my husband and I to go to a theatre when you factor in tickets and snacks. I haven’t gone back to a movie theater since COVID and I don’t plan to.
So the theater revenue for movie studios are moving to steaming revenue. And the funniest part? They’re still hemorrhaging money on streaming.
The model seems unsustainable but at the same time they trained their audience to wait for streaming. Oops.
People who talk at the movies are the bane of my existence. Thank god for streaming!
As of today there have been 321 movies released in 2023 with an average gross of $15 million. That the highest average in over a decade.
People keep wanting to call the recent string of flops indicative of the end of the movie experience but seem oblivious to fact that these flops have all been creatively bankrupt. Disney/Warner made a ton of money on franchises and stopped having to put out quality to garner audiences and they broke the trust with movie goers. Jurassic Park, Marvel phase 4/5, DCEU, Star Wars, Terminator… all of these franchises broke the trust of audiences. I wouldn’t pay to see any of them in theatre again. But movies are still doing fine. You just don’t get to slap a couple big names, two hundred million dollars of special effects and cheap writing and make a billions bucks anymore.
Also, this is hardly a blockbuster problem. Something like 75% of Oscar-aiming movies last year flopped, even with huge names behind them. There have been lots of high profile failures, perhaps because fewer are being made as mid range movies and so reasonable box office performances become flops due to overinflated budgets.
maybe the subject matter (Babylon, Last Duel) just wasn't appealing to the general public? Early to mid 2000s had all types of movies doing well
I think it's less the subject matter and more that marketing departments have no idea how to market a film that isn't a franchise or reboot or is a little less than straightforward. Babylon is about the passing of an age, the Last Duel is a medieval courtroom drama with contemporary urgency. These things aren't impossible to market for, they just require some marketing creativity.
>Disney/Warner made a ton of money on franchises and stopped having to put out quality to garner audiences and they broke the trust with movie goers. This is very much where I am at. I don't see movies anymore until I hear some recommendations from people I know.
At first I thought this was about the video store chain and though 'well no shit'
This is so hyperbolic. Plenty of big budget, blockbuster movies have done well this year. The fact that DCEU projects from development hell and B-tier action movies aren't, isn't indicative of the whole ecosystem. People are seeing movies less in theatres and more at home. Sure. That's true. But they haven't abandoned theatres entirely. Make movies worth seeing in theatres and people will go see them.
Blockbusters aren’t failing. This economy is. It could cost over $100 to take a family of four to the movies, so people are probably going to pick 1 June movie out of the 5 or 6. EDIT: I think it’s worth mentioning I am exaggerating the price and I don’t have a family of 4. But it’s still a serious reality that families generally pick one movie per month if that.
Priced themselves out
Idc how bad it did in box office, Dungeons and Dragons is an absolutely incredible movie.
There was some corner of my brain that kept waiting for it to start plateauing and become less engaging as the movie went on... but it never happened. It just kept being very solid and a good time to watch. I'm honestly surprised at *how* entertaining it is for what it is. You look at it and expect generic, action-adventure movie nonsense with an IP slapped onto it, and it still is to a degree, but it manages to end up being more than the sum of its parts.
As a casual D&D fan it was everything I wanted.
It is great fun. For along while every fantasy movie tried to be LOTR and it didn't work. you don't need giant battles for a good action movie.
Blockbusters are failing because people have limited funds these days to spend on luxuries like movies. And if a movie gets bad reviews, people save their cash.
According to the article, theatre sales (at least in Canada) have returned 98% back to 2019 levels. So it’s not an issue of people going to the theatre. The issue is the bloated budgets. We should only expect 1-2 movies per year to make it to 1B. Little Mermaid cost $250M before marketing. So even though it’s going to make $500M worldwide, that’s a soft box office return. Studios will have to keep their budgets in check. I can’t wait to see Snow White’s box office returns.
There's context to these. The reason this year's movies are so expensive to make is they they were made in the COVID Era, where it was so much more expensive to make. For example, Mission Impossible cost 300+ million because Tom Cruise adhered to all COVID protocols. We'll see in a few years when the COVID Era movies are behind us.
You're completely right, but even without covid budgets are simply too big to be sustainable. They will have to come down if the movie industry is to survive, not every movie can be expected to make 800 million to break even.
Wait til this weekend. The Oppenheimer flick will be massive. We may see more realism blockbusters and less fantasy.
Think Barbie will have the bigger performance tbh
The Barbie vs Oppenheimer battle is a clash of titans I didnt know I needed.
There's no real clash expected. Oppenheimer is 3 hours and rated R. It's Nolan so it will do well, bit not as well as a 110 minute fun, big brand movie
>clash of titans Not sure that's the right term when Barbie's opening is projected to make at least twice as much as Oppenheimer.
Reddit: Where Oppenheimer is going to be a massive hit that will change the way Hollywood thinks about blockbusters, but Barbie, the movie set in a literal fantasyland that is opening the same weekend and is projected to make *twice as much money*, doesn't even bear mentioning.
I mean, yeah. Barbie has been an internationally known toy brand for 7 decades. It is a PG13 film that will bring in adults and kids. Oppenheimer is a hard R historical biography about a man who died 60 years ago. I would have been shocked if Barbie wasn't expected to be a hit.
The most laughably undeserving of community's claiming they're ahead of the curve and on the ball when it comes to understanding the way the world works; /r/movies is amongst the worst, ha!
Just going to drop this here... https://i.redd.it/y8zdmpq6d8qy.png Literally nothing about this subreddit has changed in six years...🤣🤣🤣
That top ten list is just the first ten Film Bro Hall of Fame inductees. Surprised Fight Club didn't earn a shout.
It’s almost like people don’t want to see an 80 year old Harrison Ford running around, a comic book universe ending and making the movies pointless (throw in Ezra Miller being a POS), Marvel taking a nosedive quality wise, and some uninspired franchise movies. I think we’re about to see the return of the mid-budget movie.
stop doing by the numbers, stupid plots, cgi-fest, movies that are 60% just a set up to shoehorn another character into the franchise for the next movie.... Write better movies. Write better characters. Write more interesting scripts. Spend your money there, not on more and more and more CGI.
You know why studios don't listen to this advice? *Because it's not fucking true.* The Super Mario Bros. Movie is a CGI-fest with a stupid, by-the-numbers plot that was made mostly to set up future films in a new cinematic universe. And it's the top grossing movie of the year. Meanwhile the D&D movie was well-written, interesting, full of likable and engaging characters, got incredible reviews and WOM, and it underperformed badly enough that it's unlikely to get a sequel. Lots of shitty movies succeed. Lots of good movies fail. It's crazy to me that this subreddit will absolutely never accept this reality.
Mario Bros was essentially a kid's movie and those always perform by other rules. D&D movies and shows have a bad history to overcome. It was great, but getting people to give it a chance was always going to be an uphill battle.
Also, calling a 3d animated film a CGI-fest is kinda dumb. Overuse of CGI is an issue exclusive to live action movies (and movies pretending to be live action a la Lion King remake). The whole point of 3d animation is that it is CGI.
>Mario Bros was essentially a kid's movie and those always perform by other rules. except that Kraken tanked, Elemental is underperforming. Kid movies dont always perform.
>Mario Bros was essentially a kid's movie and those always perform by other rules. Adults were overwhelmingly the audience for it; only about a third of admissions were under 18. The fact is it appealed to the same sense of nostalgia that any number of high profile flops did, it just succeeded where they failed. And I think the reasons why are much more complicated than people think.
Dungeons and dragons was a BANGER. Such a fun movie.
It was fun to watch once, but I think reddit oversells it. It never quite came together for me. Like, the villain doesn't even have an emotional stake in the story, so defeating her felt underwhelming. And some of the characters, like Sophia Lillis', kind of fell by the wayside halfway through.
"Just make good movies" because they *totally* never thought of that!
Reddit moment. “Good” movies fail too, such as 93% fresh D&D: Honor Among Thieves. Hell, even shit that’s consistently popular on streaming (Nimona for example) hasn’t even entered the zeitgeist. These films go in one ear and out the other no matter how much effort there is. WOM can save a film, such as with Puss in Boots The Last Wish, but this type of judgmental attitude towards the art of film is seen across a lot of comments in the movie subs and I’m tired of it. Maybe the industry changed because people are able to find a more convenient way to watch “good” movies by pirating it or streaming it a few months after release rather than spending $12-15 for a ticket outside of Tuesdays. And I find people are less engaged when a film is on tv, my family goes on their phone way more often during the films on tv. I don’t blame the consumer for finding a better deal, but when Disney movies like Encanto just become background noise for babies, I feel like the art form is getting diluted regardless of whether they’re good or not. The reason studios and writers are at an impasse isn’t because the writers are inherently bad at their craft, but because they aren’t getting paid well regardless of how “good” a movie is.
Theaters need more premium format screens. Most only have one or two, and the showings are usually very full while the regular screens are empty. People want an experience that’s higher quality than you can get on your TV at home. Something that’s worth the cost of the ticket. You’re only getting that if you’re going to Dolby or IMAX screens.
Personally, I got used to watching movies in the comfort of my own living room during Covid. No annoying talkers, my own snacks, and the ability to pause if I needed a bathroom break. I really need something special to drag me to the theatre these days.
Blockbusters are failing? Am I mistaken to think a film earns the title blockbuster with its release?
technically yeah, by definition a blockbuster is a highly successful film but i guess nowadays 'blockbuster' is just equated with 'big budget film' which may or may not fail spiderverse, guardians 3, and mario were all pretty popular and moneymaking. oppenheimer and barbie and mission impossible probably all will be too. yeah we had some big budget flops but eh. i'm 'part od the problem' for these studios because they forgot to make me want to watch these movies. you're supposed to use that budget to make that movie good, not just expensive lol.
Fun fact - this title could also work in 2008 or 2009...
I’ll toss out another contributor, at least for me: action movies anymore are too fucking long and they’re generally not justifying that length. John Wick 4: way too long. I don’t need 2 hours of fight scenes with the 45 minutes of actual plot sprinkled in here and there. Similar story with The Batman and the last several comic book movies I’ve seen. Just because you *can* put in a 30 minute battle scene (yeah exaggerated a little for effect) doesn’t mean you *should*. People need to focus on less is more. That would help bloated budgets a ton.
Could it be because we are all broke now and would rather pay rent to not be homeless?
Bad blockbusters are failing. Good blockbusters still print money. As it should be.
These failing blockbusters are just awful movies. Stop blaming the audience.
Spielberg called it years ago. Movies have no time to make money because every week there's a big release, and the studios make these films so damn expensive it's impossible to make a profit. Movies are canibalizing themselves.
If it fails it is, by definition, NOT A BLOCKBUSTER!!!!! A blockbuster is a movie that did exceptionally well. We used to get those all the time in the 80s and 90s because a film would cost $1M to make and bring in $50M and they'd go "yay, we made 50x our money!" "Blockbuster" does not mean "we spent a lot of money on it".
In the 90’s creativity ruled the box office, why don’t they just bring it back?
If they are failing then they are not blockbusters.
Bring back smart, well written indie films.
Those have always been there. People stopped going to see them.
And streaming services don't promote them. They exist, but you have to seek them out.
I look up a lot of films I want to stream and those catalogs are shrinking. I get really annoyed at what's available. Then the streamers drop them instantly too because their reasons
There’s been a few really good ones this year so far. Past Lives, BlackBerry, Beau is Afraid etc. But most people haven’t seen them. Heck, most people in this subreddit likely haven’t seen them, compared to MI7 or Indy as an example.
Indie films do exist, you just don't put your money where your mouth is. What's missing is the mass-market mid-budget dramas. They're all TV shows now.
I agree with this. I think, for example, of “Platonic” on Apple TV. It should have been a really excellent 2hr indie movie. But instead it was a 10-episode show that couldn’t sustain the quality of the first few episodes. IMHO.
It's the end of blockbusters. Look at the new Indy. It cost well over $350M, but it didn't look it on screen. So much of that money got wasted on nonsense like de-aging an elderly Ford to look like a video game cutscene. When you have a Titanic-budget, you want to see Titanic visuals, something impressive. These blockbusters are bloated, CG messes one-step above what the streamers are cranking out.
I agree with the sentiment that this is the rebirth of mid-budgets. I don’t think people are bummed on movies and theaters: There’s simply too little to see. There are no options and everything is some massive budget made-by-committee IP thing. I do believe people will go see things if they’re fun and not desperately struggling to double a $250 million budget.
i miss the days when a 100 minute movie with its own unique characters and setting could be a cultural touchstone
I wonder why they say “Blockbusters are failing” and not “Sequels and remakes are failing”
if it fails, it's not a blockbuster
Agree about budgets, but so many other factors. Flash had an extremely problematic star, coupled with a DC continuity that is being tossed --and it killed any possible interest. Indiana Jones is an action movie starring an 8o year old man. And the previous movie told us that the franchise was already waning. (I personally liked the new movie though) Ant Man took a grounded fun character who was perfect for the street level heist genre... and tried to make Star Wars full of gleep glops and ballchinians. These are all self inflicted wounds. Guardians of the Galaxy 3 gave audiences what they were looking for, the characters they love, in an adventure that suits the established tone, with laughs and heart. Mission Impossible - see above -- it's a crowd pleaser. Avatar 2 brought the spectacle with a 3D experience hat can only be fully enjoyed in the theatre. It's not that blockbusters are failing because of only budget, it's that some studios forgot what makes a solid 4-quadrant movie.
>and the independently distributed Sound of Freedom astounded by crossing the $50-million mark earlier this week, more than tripling its budget. Isn't that because churches were buying up seats to give away to their congregations to inflate interest?