Box Office Thread

Yeah, this is not going to bomb. It's going to make a decent profit.

But at rate it's going, you shouldn't expect a sequel anytime soon.

When dc comics make a film. God tosses a coin on whether it will under or over perform.

Since we seem to be going hit > flop > hit

Which translated to joker > BOP that means WW 84 is going to break the bank man

Truthfully, the DCEU movie budgets got out of hand but the box office was at least somewhat stable. Justice League made over 600 million, it was the bloated budget that harmed it more than not having an audience (it was dubbed the most successful bomb ever made).

BOP may not quite be a flop in relative terms, but it does have the lowest opener by a significant margin.

I wouldn't be too sure of that. A film can generally be expected to make ~3-3.5x its opening weekend take by the end of its lifespan. Sometimes more or less depending on if Word of Mouth is really good or really bad. Since Birds of Prey made back nearly its entire production budget on opening weekend, it's looking at an expected final take of around 3x budget. This is good, since marketing usually pushes the actual cost of production up to 2x budget.

Shazam got a sequel on the slate with a final take of 3.7x budget. It made $365m off a $100m budget. So I think Birds of Prey could still get a sequel with a $239-262.1m final take. It's not going to make Disney cash, but it wasn't made on a Disney budget either, so the expectations are different.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 10th 2020 at 9:57:24 AM

Little update on Star Wars: after about 9 weeks of theatrical run, TROS has grossed just over a billion worldwide. That's half of TFA's gross and about on par with Rogue One.

Poor, poor fanboys. The movies they want to bomb never do.

Nice Sonic made 3 million on Thursday which could indicate a weekend box office of 50 million in the states since how to train your Dragon 3 and detective piakhcu which earned a simalir amount with a Thursday of 3 million.

This film maybe the darkhorse victory of the year

That's not always true. Ghostbusters (2016) and that new Charlie's Angels didn't do so well at the box office. That's when they're brawling with Sony, which is pretty low-hanging fruit.

But they keep picking fights with Disney and Warner Bros., expecting companies that regularly print money to fail just to appease their nerd-rage.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 14th 2020 at 11:38:27 AM

Being fair Ghostbusters (2016) and that new Charlie's Angels Weren't particularly good.....

TROS wasn't either, so that's a moot point.

Let’s not forget Terminator Dark Fate.

Star Wars is a cultural event. Charlie’s Angels exhausted the last of its mainstream goodwill years ago and was advertised terribly. Terminator likewise exhausted the last of its goodwill because nothing they do will ever top Terminator 2: Judgment Day and they really oughta stop trying.

Also good on Sonic.

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 14th 2020 at 1:39:37 PM

Do you think Disney'll see TROS as a success or a failure? What standard are they using for Star Wars?

They’re apparently backing off film in favor of television. If anything it proved to them that Star Wars makes money, but it makes more money with a consistent plan.

In short do what Marvel does

No one was really asking for a new charlies Angel film. My cousin saw it and she said she wasn't sure why they even needed to make it (She thought it was okay though but she prefers the first two)

It’s one thing to say it, but as DC has proven, another to do it. And I say that as a fan of both Aquaman and Shazam.

Edited by Beatman1 on Feb 14th 2020 at 1:51:42 PM

Now that Disney has their streaming service, they're trying to go full-steam ahead on making licensed exclusive shows for it. It's going to be very interesting to see what becomes of Marvel and Star Wars in the Disney+.

On the one hand, shows generally trade scope of events for characterization. Due to working with a lower budget for a longer production, shows have much more time to build setting and develop character than film, but can't reach the same heights of spectacle and action that film can.

General rule of thumb is that shows are suited to portraying the lives of a group of characters, fleshing out what's considered their "normal" while spicing it up here and there with an event or two. Film, meanwhile, is about one thing, one huge earthshattering thing, that happened to these people one time and changed their lives forever.

But Disney's throwing huge stacks of cash at their shows, so they might wind up having their cake and eating it; taking the length of time needed to show a day-to-day journey and fleshing out characters, while still having the big-budget spectacles for the huge events.

If The Mandalorian is to be any indication, Disney's transitioning towards exactly that sort of miniseries middle-ground approach right now. It will be interesting to see whether it pans out.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Feb 14th 2020 at 11:51:47 AM

So Birds of Prey made 152M after two weeks. First week was 90-ish million I think? At this rate it should manage to be just barely profitable. Domestically, it's funny to notice the huge spike on Valentine's day weekend.

Edited by Lyendith on Feb 21st 2020 at 1:52:30 PM

Obviously this means they should make a Joker & Harley film.

That'll certainly slaughter the Valentine records.

Just dropping in with the usual reminder that box office takings that are equal to the budget for a movie do not mean that the movie has broken even. Far from it. The American box office takings only send back fifty per cent or less of the money spent by the studio on the film back to the studio. International takings are a lot less than that. To break even, therefore, a film has to make double (plus a bit more) its budget back domestically, plus get a truckload more money from the international box office, or it is not going to do so.

And that ignores the marketing and advertising budget that is also added onto the studio's total spend on the film.

The DC film with the overly-word salady original title referred to above may not strictly speaking be a flop just yet, but it is perilously close to being so. I'd contrast that film's lack of success with the Sonic film, and showing how reacting positively to fan reaction to a trailer instead of negatively, and making the necessary changes helps rather than hinders the box office numbers, but that is low-hanging fruit. Paramount is happier with what happened to their film in terms of fan reaction and dollar spend than Warner Bros is with its let's just say.

On the Rise of Skywalker thing, making a billion dollars is nowhere near what Disney wanted from the film. They wanted a similar cume to what TFA made, and there's no way in hell that that is going to happen. It's not a flop, far from it, but it is not in any way shape or form a crashing success either.

Officially, what typically happens is the first week the studio gets 90% of the money made for the movie and the theater gets 10%, week two it becomes 70/30, by week 4 it's 20/80. There may be a special contract depending on the movie (Disney has been known to throw its weight around for their big releases), but the average take for the studio is 50%. That also means good word of mouth has to be REALLY good for it to make a difference in the box office, as having a second or third week spike is more beneficial for the theater than it is for the studio.

Foreign box office would have to be about 50-75% of the gross total for a studio to really pay attention to it, as the added costs of exporting the film (typically with a third party distributor for each country and their negotiations with the local theaters) their take may only be 25% of it.

Sonic expected to stay on top with $26.6 million, while The Call of the Wild (2020) is tracking with $23.6 million.

Ooooh, that's bad. Call of the Wild was more expensive than Birds of Prey

150 million or so from what I've heard. This is going to be one hell of a bomb.

How much of that budget went to using CG for the dog? How much could you have saved by just getting an actual dog to be on set?