Box Office Thread

Welll... I'm no prophet, far from it in fact, but as soon as I saw the first trailer for Got G. I knew then that the DC films weren't going to get any of my cinema-going money that year. As I don't go to watch many films at the cinema, that's quite a statement coming from me.

Okay...but would you have thought that Justice League would struggle to beat a comic book team which is so obscure that even comic book fans haven't heard of it named Big Hero 6? (That would be the ultimate humiliation, that team is really from the very bottom of the barrel of Marvel properties. Or at least, it used to).

Yup.

It was more of the same kind of dull, boring, (to me anyway) crap that Christopher Nolan did with his way, way, way, way over-praised Batman trilogy. I watched the whole first movie and bits of the second and third and I was bored. Something I never was with even the so-called worst Batman film, the one that Arnie and Clooney still get excoriated over with decades later.

Whereas Guardians just sang to me as soon as I saw the first trailer.

Oh, don't get me wrong, the DCEU looked terrible and I never doubted that it would fail. But considering how dedicated the fanboys are, I wouldn't have expected it to fail that badly.

Are you sure you're not a prohet◊?

Even this thread is just Marvel gloating/DC bashing.

This is truly a wonderful time.

I know you don't see it that way, but this actually might be a good thing in the long run. As we say in German "Besser ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende." (Better a horrible end than a horror which never ends). If WB regroups, does some soul searching and tries again, but this time with a better mind-set, we might actually get truly great movies.

I do see it that way. Although since Wonder Woman will still end up the most successful superhero movie in the US that year, they didn't do everything wrong.

Still, I figure it belongs to a thread about WB, or the DCCU, or Justice League. And that you can talk about a box-office failure without saying "AHA THOR PWNED JL LOL".

Comparing Box office result of different movies is exactly what this topic is about. And sadly Justice League might be the biggest box office bomb since Cutthroat Island (a movie I btw happen to like).

Eh, hyperbole alert. It's going to score about $600m. It's disappointing, but it's not an absurd bomb.

In the last five years, Disney released John Carter from Mars and The Lone Ranger, which scored less than $300m each despite also very much being AAA movies, and having budgets north of $250m.

edited 5th Dec '17 2:17:12 PM by Julep

On another topic, if The Last Jedi does even decently, the top 3 domestic-grossing movies of the year will have female leads. And Fate of the Furious, which is quite diverse, is second at the global box office.

In case anyone needed evidence that there's a strong desire from audiences for something other than endless white male leads.

edited 5th Dec '17 2:25:27 PM by Galadriel

Isn't Thor 3 close to grossing more than Wonder Woman?

Internationally, maybe. In the US, it's not close.

Rogue One and TFA topped the Box-O for the previous two years, so it will be the third year in a row a movie with a female protagonist leads.

edited 5th Dec '17 2:29:21 PM by Julep

No, Wonder Woman made over $400 mil domestic, Thor Ragnarok is still below $300 mil.

True...though they went cheap on the marketing for this one.

Thing with Justice League is, though, that the Production Budget REALLY got out of hand. I am actually not sure of the 300 million which are rumored is correct. It could be a case of clever Hollywood accounting. And for an IP like this, well, it shouldn't have happened.

I don't really call myself a fanboy of either D.C. Comics OR Marvel. I don't read either of their comics all that much though I'm familiar with a lot of the characters due to cultural osmosis. I think my favourite out of all the three Marvel movies I've seen recently is Deadpool (it's the only one I own on any format), and that isn't even part of the MCU. (Though it may well be if the rumoured deal that Disney is doing with Fox goes ahead.)

On the Justice League thing, and it not being a massive disappointment to Warner Bros? I beg to differ. It cost over three hundred million to make - according to best estimates(&), accounting for all the reshoots and so on, and at least 150 million to market, given what WB usually spends on such things - and you can bet on them pushing the boat out a bit more than usual because this was, after all, their Avengers!movie. The one that the others were leading up to.

For it to break even it needs to make, therefore, 450 million domestically - remember most of the international box office money doesn't make it back to WB, it goes elsewhere, and that's the same of all films in the modern era.

(&) What's worrying is that there is no figure in the film's box office mojo page for the production budget. WB are keeping that very close to their chests and I think one can only draw one conclusion for doing so.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dcfilm1117.htm

The only source on wikipedia's page on the film is from the Collider website - no official WB financials will disclose the real number until next year's very uncomfortable shareholders meeting.

Remember, the studio only gets part of the domestic box office, too.

I've only went to two movies where there was a lot of audience clapping, cheering and general carrying on. One was "Braveheart" at the late, lamented "Odeon Cinema" at Renfield Street in Glasgow, the other was "Gladiator".

Yup, but the studios do get a higher take of the box office revenue in the United States than they do overseas. I'm not sure what the exact percentage is but I think it's a lot.

Many recent movies don’t currently have their budgets reported on Box Office Mojo.

Or they realized how troubled the production was and decided to cut their costs because they knew that a movie that had to change directors in the middle of filming would not be their greatest triumph ever.

We didn't get flooded by ads in France at least. WB pur more money for Suicide Squad, and Marvel for Homecoming this year, there wasn't even a contest.

Campaign was all over every form of wavelength over here in the UK. It was getting desperately so in the last couple of days before release because WB knew that Rotten Tomatoes was going to kick the film in the teeth and they had to do some damage control because of that. I think it worked, the audience wasn't all that bad in the first week or so.

Now? I am not so sure.

Yeah I can't speak to international audiences but Justice League absolutely went all out with the marketing here. They clearly spent a lot on promotion. Contrary to the belief, I don't think WB expected the movie to do this badly, even with the behind the scenes drama. Like Batman v. Superman, they probably thought this was gonna have a pretty strong opening if for no other reason than the popularity of the characters involved.

I'll also agree that at this point the gloating and MCU cheerleading is unnecessary in this thread. It's pretty much kicking a guy while he's down at this point.

edited 7th Dec '17 1:26:42 PM by comicwriter

I haven't done any cheerleading for the MCU or DCEU in this thread. Like I said, the only three Marvel comicbook-based movies I've seen at the cinema in the past few years didn't involve the bigger name groups, and one of those wasn't even produced by Marvel's cinema people.

Full disclosure: I've seen:

Guardians of the Galaxy,

Deadpool,

and Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 in that order.

So it's reasonable for me to say that the rest of the MCU would be as well not even existing as far as I pay any attention to it. I haven't sat and watched ANY of the other movies all the way through to this day.

And DC lost me really as a committed cinema-goer way before it got involved in trying to do what Marvel had done.

I'm all about the numbers. And they say that WB and DC need to take a long hard look at themselves and decide whether or not they want to continue doing what they have been doing.

I think calling a movie that will lose 50-100 million dollars for the studios as "disappointing" is the biggest understatement in this whole thread.

So early estimates are that Star Wars: The Last Jedi will bring in $220 million (domestic) from its first weekend alone. On the one hand, that's a phenomenal haul, and the second largest opening weekend of all time. On the other hand, it's about $27 million less than what The Force Awakens got from its opening weekend, so while The Last Jedi will undoubtedly be a major hit, we shouldn't expect a repeat of TFA's $900 million +.