Amph The 2023 Box Office Blood Barbie

Box office Pro website saying Across the Spider-Verse could land back in #1 this weekend due to limping Flash, No Hard Feelings looking lame and limited appeal of wide release Wes Anderson Asteroid City

 

Spider-Man
Spider-Man
Benefiting from a soft box office in order to claim the top spot yet again
Doesn’t fit
The meter
Doesn’t rhyme
That’s the joke
Look out
There goes the Spider-Man.

 

Two thoughts:

1. It is my understanding that content providers hate a la carte models, because people don't actually watch that much content. They much prefer bundling (whether of channels, movies, shows, etc) because it allows them to justify large price tags even if those things aren't being used by the consumer. This allows for cost-shifting to maximize profits. This would be one big-strike against your "pay per episode model." Alternatively, think about how many people watched Book of Boba Fett compared to how many would have done so if they had to pay for every single increasingly terrible episode at a time. I don't think this would ever become the primary mode for sales, rather than the supplemental option it is at present.

2. Theaters also have a say in what films they show. I don't think anyone would agree to keep a whole theater occupied with playing the same film for 6 months unless it was doing truly incredible business. Otherwise, the 15 seats you are filling for stragglers to this exclusive Marvel product would just count as -135 seats you could have filled by playing the newly released Fast & the Furious 17 in that theater instead.

 

The problem is the price tag is not hefty enough. It might be if all they were supporting was the back library of the studio. But covering the costs of new content, particularly if theater box office becomes a smaller and smaller chunk of revenue, could make the price of streaming a real problem. Netflix has struggled with this for years, and only increased the pain as they tried to fend off the new competition.

And yes, the ala carte has been around, but usually as little more then a niche market. If the services built to support streaming, with the multi platform functionality were to take up the model, I suspect it could be lucrative. And no doubt, they could offer "free content" to generate interest and motivate further purchases.

Lumping the content together, not having to argue over transactions or having to cover costs on the increase of micro-transactions might all be cost reductions enough to justify the current model vs. ala carte. I just wonder if it will stay that way in the face of the need to increase revenue.

But that is where digital projection, which is almost completely standard industry wide now, makes all the difference.

i worked at a theater in 1997 when Titanic came out. We kept that film into June of 98. It stopped being a major box office pull by February, but it had a decent, steady audience until the summer film season was in full swing. Now, back then, it really was locking up a theater. The standard projector set up has 3 platters (fancy ones may have 4)...you have the "play from" platter, the "play to" platter, and the third platter can hold another film. As such, best practice was to run 2 films on any one screen during a given week. Moving prints around could be done, but you did not want to do it every day.

Now...Digital projection means discs or downloads. Hard drives. No heavy prints, no 2 films max on a screen. A theater could run 5 or 6 different films on a screen in a day if they wanted to.

Right now, the best practice is still to run the latest films as many times as possible in a day, so people can find the right time to get there to see it.

But maybe a 18 screen multiplex could set aside one small screen at the end of the hall to show films from the summer all fall or into Christmas.

The catch, of course, is that the Studios will be pushing the release to their streaming service, and don't want people going out to the theaters anymore.

The Theater owners need to find something, because if things continue to fall apart, the studios will shun them in a second if they think it will benefit their streaming platforms.

 

The Flash looks headed to be one of the biggest commercial flops of all time.

Shazam 2 made $133 million on a $125 million budget, so pretty bad, but Flash may end up making less than $250 million on a $300 million budget.

 

Can’t believe St Ezra the Pure has failed WBD like this. Or perhaps it is we foolish and corrupt mere mortals who have failed St Ezra the Unimpeachable.

 

To use a DC Comics book analogy, this very much feels like the two ferries scene in Dark Knight. Their whole plot turned on assuming people were cynical and awful enough to let a supervillain win. Instead, like the prisoners, we steadfastly refused to flip that switch. Nothing blew up at the box office this weekend.

Congratulations to all.

 

D&DHat made $208 million on a $150 million budget. Also respectably terrible, but not Flash bad.
Transformers sequel is at $283 million so far on a $195 million budget. Pretty bad. Not Flash bad.

 

The joke is about WBD quadrupling down on this obvious flop even when the crime spree was ongoing. I don’t really give a **** why people didn’t want to go see it, it just seemed fairly obvious that they wouldn’t.

 

It's time to reboot the entire DCverse to make it darker and more brooding, but also more melancholy and bleak and also tinged with sadness and regret, and budgeted at about $400 million per movie.

 

This would be the studio that shelved multiple finished films not too long ago? They bet big on this movie specifically and they lost bad. It’s extremely funny, and considering what a massive bunch of tools their C-suite is, somewhat cathartic.

 

D&D and Transformers, those are both Hasbro toy movies. I had to look it up - that $283 is world wide. Transformers has fallen off. Which is all the more confusing because it was never that good to start.

 

Yah they clearly could have tried the whole tax rebate bit, but it depends how much they could have gotten back. Or they still wanted it on the release slate to try to make like 500 or 800 million on a good day (maybe they genuinely thought this would make a billion). Or Zav really truly thought it was the greatest superhero movie ever made. People at WB in pre release press saying it so good nobody will remember Miller. To that, uhm, ok?

Anyway Barbie will probably make up for it. It's fantastic!

 

Can it lean more heavily into the philosophy of Ayn Rand? I wanna see that.

 

Barbie and Oppenheimer together will save the 2023 box office with an assist from Tom Cruise.

 

BAOTWAAFTCCU

 

Now, see, that wouldn’t work because Tom Cruise can only carry franchises, his cinematic universes are cursed.

 

Ah Cruise had a rare cinematic failure to launch a universe because he was tethered to Alex Kurtzman.

Anyway, random post on Reddit, but Across the Spider-Verse is able to keep its budget way down compared to Pixar and apparently The new Ninja Turtles also cost 200 million freaking dollars, because Spider-Verse is so stylized. If you think about it, a shot in some Pixar movie probably has all those hair fibers and background details rendering in various details. While in Spider-Verse its so stylized that there's multiple shots with no background detail, instead just a paint splash or text blurb. Looks great and cost efficient!

 

A cartoon that looks like a cartoon. What a concept!

 

I think the final nail in Flash was the wide spread knowledge that Warner was torpedoing the continuity and starting over.

Pretty sure they put a huge dent in Aquaman 2's box office potential too.

That is the problem with these big universes...if people don't see a point or a payoff, they stop caring.

The Flash was not a character big enough to carry a major summer release. Certainly not with the current actor. This film should've been an August or September release, with half the budget.

Instead, they tried to go "it's big enough by itself". I don't know if any Superhero can pull off that massive of a stand alone return...even Batman.

Franchise fatigue is real, and investment from one film to another is real.

James Gunn could really use a couple years of breathing room to let the stench recede. But Warner cannot afford that kind of lull.

 

I think the DC brand is damaged by bad films, but I don't think casual audiences are familiar with the DCEU situation. That's stuff for losers who need to touch grass, like us.

 

Granted. But the fanbases drive the hype.

If the fans are disenfranchised, what hope is there for the general public to turn out for what the fans reject?