Box Office Thread

Regardless, my point in the initial post was that Fast and Furious is not a franchise that's built on realism.

Back on the topic of box office news:

In a situation that's becoming increasingly common for big Hollywood action movies, F8 has made more in China than in the US. It now appears to be China's third-highest-grossing movie of all time (second-highest is F7, first is last year's The Mermaid).

edited 16th May '17 4:45:33 AM by Galadriel

Nope. F8 is actually number 2 and F7 is number 4 behind Mermaid, F8 and Monster Hunt.

Oh. Box Office Mojo has $526 for The Mermaid, $390 for F7, $387 for F8, and $381 for Monster Hunt.

edited 17th May '17 5:15:24 AM by Galadriel

So is Power Rangers a flop seeing how it only made $3 million in China on opening weekend? I know It hasn't been released in Japan yet, but so far it has only made $138 million worldwide on a budget of $100 million.

Probably needs 175-200 million to break even, so it might be-but you usually need to see the 3rd week of a domestic release to make an accurate prediction-way too early for that.

here is China's own listing of biggest films.

I can't read that so I'll take your word for it.

I can't read it either, but Wikipedia's " List of Highest-grossing films in China" cites it so I assume it's the official figures.

Box Office watchers help me out here: Lots of people say 2016 was one of the worst years for movies in terms of gross, but was it? Sure there were a lot of bombs but also a lot of mega-hits (Jungle Book, Civil War, Doctor Strange, Zootopia, Moana, Fantastic Beasts, Deadpool, Finding Dory, Rogue One, La La Land) surprise hits (Secret Life Of Pets, Lights Out, Arrival, Don't Breathe, Sausage Party, Sing, much of the films listed in mega-hits did better than excpected too) and poorly recieved films that nontheless did very well (BVS, Suicide Squad, Warcraft)

So?

It was for more or less everyone but Disney....remove the Disney movies out of the list and you'll see that there weren't that many successes. Thought the studio which really took a hit (again) was Sony.

Sony still did better than Paramount last year.

The issue too is people are saying film budget to box office ratio was rather disappointing. The sheer number of 100+ million budget movies was staggering. Of the top ten earners, Deadpool was the only one less than 150 million (around 60 million). You had major releases every two weeks starting in March and going continuously through August, whereas before there is around one a month, so you had movies eating into each others profit. Also, in the past the rule was roughly doubling your budget domestically, whereas now they are recognizing the power of the foreign box office doing about 66% of your total business.

Overall box-office 2016 was still quite good, having only a non-existent 0.4 % drop from previous year in the domestic market.

That's just tickets sold. Box office revenue went up 2.2% compared to 2015 (although I don't know if that accounts for inflation).

If you take out Disney you still had Secret Life, Sing, Fantastic Beasts, Bv S, and Suicide Squad grossing above 200 million domestically.

I think the problem is with budgets. Even if a film grosses like 150 million domestically, a great number, it can STILL be considered a flop (Star Trek Beyond, X-Men Apocalypse, Jason Bourne)

Also there's streaming. Less people see movies in cinemas, more and more see them at home, via Amazon, Netflix, etc.

Adjusting for inflation gross was still about the same as 2015, and a lot higher than 2013 and 2014. And in fact last year had 13 films gross over 200 million domestically, while 2015 had only 8 (Cinderella and Spectre make it 10 but they just barely passed that mark) I really don't understand why websites like Wired and Boston Globe declared this "the year movies died". Even if there were bombs it's difficult to say it comes close to "worst year for movies". 2015 had a lot of big bombs too (Pixels, Tommorowland, Goosebumps, Good Dinosaur, Fantastic Four, Jupiter Ascending...)

edited 19th May '17 4:53:05 PM by WhatArtThee

Goosebumps didn't bomb.

My mistake. Replace that with Paper Towns (Grossed only half of expectations)

Bv S and SS had high grosses, but also high production costs. Due to reshoots and expensive marketing campaign the actual win for the studio was way smaller than for a lot of cheaper movies....the big earner last year was Deadpool, btw.

Secret Life of Pets, Deadpool and Rogue One were the three biggest moneymakers in that order according to deadline, all making over 300 millon of profit, Secret Life making close to 400 million.

Yeah, as said above the problem is that films are getting too expensive. The big winners last years were once with cheaper budgets, like Lights Out which grossed 150 million on a 5 million budget, or Don't Breathe which grossed 160 million on a 10 million budget.

As film budgets keep getting higher and higher it's getting harder and harder to "break even". I think studios should realize this and start producing films on smaller budgets.

The problem is that when a movie like Deadpool becomes a hit, studios don't think "we should make a somewhat risky off-the-wall film on a smaller budget". They think "we should make a movie like Deadpool".

As for Disney's monopoly it's kinda inevitable. They have the Disney Animated Canon (Blockbusters) live-action remakes (Blockbusters), Pixar (Blockbusters) Marvel (Blockbusters) and Star Wars (Blockbusters). They're like the Google of Cinema.

edited 20th May '17 8:02:24 AM by WhatArtThee

Universal beat Disney in 2015 & has a decent chance of doing so again this year.

Unlikely. Universal has Despicable Me 3 (big moneymaker) and Mummy (potential bomb) left with big releases, whereas Disney has Last Jedi, two Pixar films and Thor: Ragnarok.

The thing is Disney is just in terms of releases a pretty small studio. Universal releases way more movies every year, as is Warner bros. Consequently if they have a bomb, it doesn't necessarily matter that much as long as the other movies do well. That Disney manages to play at the top is very impressive and honestly the result of decades of building a brand. Or, in short, Disney went for quality over quantity, and it now pays off because the Disney logo is meaning something to the audience.