Box Office Thread

I am really hoping Hollywood FINALLY realizes this "This movie has to make a billion or its a flop!" trend needs to die in a dumpster fire. We need smaller budget films again.

Streaming really killed a lot of the smaller movies in theaters, really. Between the ease of it, alongside going to them being expensive and it potentially including a lot of annoyances. Only the big events would bring people in, and even those are failing due to overcrowding the market.

“If everyone’s a blockbuster… no one will be.”

They aint gonna bust blocks thats for sure

As far as genres go, horror was the big "winner" of COVID and the post-COVID movie industry.

Which is not to say they're the big moneymakers. But it's probably the fastest growing genre and produces a lot of moderate successes from comparitively tiny budgets.

As a result, we're seeing a lot of young screen queen actresses garner more praise than in past decades, because the genre is more mainstream and thus, more respected by mainstream critics and audiences.

Edited by ArthurEld on May 2nd 2024 at 9:53:26 AM

horror get's helped but their movies being usually of smaller budgets and having a pretty dedicated hardcore audience, even if it's not as big as more mainstream genres like romance or action, it's a lot more intense which makes them more willing to bother to pay for them on theaters instead of waiting for streaming.

In response to this, here are a few notes I'd like to make

• Haunted Mansion (5th on this list) bombed harder than Amsterdam (2nd on 2022's list). Makes me wonder what the top 10 would have been like.
• It's a shame that Indiana Jones 5 is here, given that Dr. Jones is one of the most iconic characters to originate on the big screen. Then again, so was Han Solo, but his movie performed better than Indy 5 overall.
• The Marvels and The Flash are the epitomes of Murphy's Law, because everything that could go wrong for both movies, did go wrong.

Well, I think Flash went even more wrong with their lead becoming a fugitive for a bit. Worst thing for Marvels is the writers strike.

You wanna see something funny.

This was the expected Dune vs marvels showdown. Kinda wild people were expecting 800 million for the marvels and dune 2 bombing.....

I doubt we see Carol Danvers or Brie Larson as her again...

That would be a real shame. I expect execs will take all the wrong lessons from it as well.

In terms of real life drama, The Flash suffered more. In terms of box office performance, The Marvels suffered more (smaller opening weekend, bigger second weekend drop, lower domestic and worldwide box office intake, worse multiplier, Flash WW BO was more than it's production budget which cannot be said for The Marvels), and not just with respect to The Flash, but overall too.

Edited by Paperfly on May 3rd 2024 at 1:21:53 PM

I still find it funny that Aquaman 2 ended up having better legs (fins?) despite the one being seen as "a candidate for worst BO". Also didn't Black Adam recursively ended up being "less terrible" too?

Black Adam looked bad relative to Johnson’s hype of it, then later looked better as subsequent films opened worse.

Didn't Rock try pulling a Cody Rhodes on DC?

Kinda. The Rock became a member of TKO's board of directors (WWE & UFC's parent company after they merged) as a result of Vince McMahon beimg forced out in disgrace (long story) and he used his newly acquired clout to get former WWE Attitude Era writer and personal friend Brian Gerwitz back. The Rock then tried to hijack the Wrestlemania XL Main Event of Cody Rhodes (challenger & 2-consecutive time Royal Rumble winner so he's guaranteed to main event Wrestlemania per the Rumble's rules for the past 20+ years) vs Roman Reigns (Undisputed WWE champ for almost 4 years, the top heel of WWE and The Rock's real-life cousin) by replacing Cody w/ himself so it temporarily became Rock vs Roman. The heat from the fans was supernova and it threatened to kill WWE's goodwill until they pivoted it back to Cody vs Roman but this time The Rock tried to help his cousin win but fortunately Cody won and became champ despite all odds. The Rock still did all the heavy lifting on the heels' side of the feud though. It'd be what if Avengers Infinity War & Endgame still had Thanos as the Big Bad but he was offscreen 90% of the time and Ebony Maw doing all the narrative heavy lifting.

And all of this still has to be taken w/ a grain of salt considering Pro Wrestling's history of kayfabe and attempting to fool the dirtsheets.

Before all of that and w/ all of that in mind, The Rock tried to hijack the DCEU in roughly the same way: be executive producer of Black Adam, have his own production studio work on the movie & through there use his creative control in his DC movie to influence the movie franchise in his favor. Then there was his blowup w/ Vin Diesel & some of the other male actors in Fast & Furious 8, the reasons of w/c besides clashing egos is still unknown. Then there was GI Joe Retaliation where he (playing secondary Joe Roadblock) displaced Channing Tatum's Duke (who's historically 1 of the leaders in the Joes' chain of command) as main character.

And along w/ all of the above, The Rock also owns roughly half of the United Football League via the USFL merger w/ XFL (w/c Rock bought from Vince) so he's ludicrously rich across various businesses.

Edited by KRider on May 3rd 2024 at 9:04:06 AM

I find it kinda fascinating that Marvel Studios went from releasing the biggest movie of all to releading the biggest bomb of all time in less than five years.

Guess oversaturation does that to you. What really doesnt help is Disney’s insistency on homogenzing the brand, only to end up making it all feel Marvel products be samey to a consumer. Thats why 97 is such an insane breath of fresh air for folks

Find it weird fans point to the consumer and say, “No, theyre the ones being wrong here” over not spending money to see every Marvel movie or watch every hour of Marvel show. No wonder comics move units by the few thousands if that is the expectancy of engagement from the average joe

The Marvels had myriad overlapping problems. It's not as simple as just superhero fatigue or whatever.

It also didn't help that the Marvels featured two characters who came from the Disney Plus series. Introducing Ms Marvel and Monica probably scared off a few people who didn't watch the Disney Plus shows and they were probably afraid that they wouldn't understand the characters because of that. However, from what I'm told (I haven't seen the Marvels yet), the movie does a good job of introducing Ms. Marvel and Monica without making it seem like you have to watch the Disney Plus shows to understand these characters.

YMMV summarizes it well. Continuity Lockout came from audiences, not the movie itself. And I could hardly say “its the audiences fault” otherwise because the marketing didnt emphasize this aspect.

At least with all those chud internet reviewers, even they say Kamala is a highlight.

Question: Is there any box office bomb from the last year that managed a 'Acclaimed Flop' status? Because I'm seeing many people actually believing that every box office bomb is the equivalent of a bad movie.

Blue Beetle (2023) was considered a flop and yet, many people enjoyed the movie. Also, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Edited by Rabbitearsblog on May 3rd 2024 at 2:33:20 AM

On a more positive note, Deadline has named Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse their third most profitable film of 2023 at $328 million in profits. Source: https://deadline.com/2024/05/spider-man-across-the-spider-verse-movie-profits-1235902863/

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on May 3rd 2024 at 9:50:27 AM

Looking purely at box office, just remember that such acclaimed films as Killers of the Flower Moon weren't hits, and insulting propaganda like Sound of Freedom were.

That's why the box office isn't a natural predictor of success: look at TMNT managing to make profit with its merchandise despite lukewarm ticket sales, while Wish was another animated film aiming at a similar demographic with similar low BO. Except Wish had toy sales that showed that it didn't have the same sticking power in kids' imaginations despite a huge marketing budget, whereas TMNT had the quality to actually make its target audience care about its world and characters.

Edited by IniuriaTalis on May 3rd 2024 at 7:05:41 AM

Yeah, most of the most memorable movies are the ones that didn't reach $1 Billion. What's more important is that the movie has a great story and characters that will stay with the audience for years, no matter what they made at the box office.