Amph The 2025 Box Office Blood Galaxy

I don't like to make guesses about a film's box office before the reviews come in, except in the broadest sense. My bet is that Av3 will earn less than 2 unless it's received substantially better than its predecessor. Only then do I see it passing $2 billion, and just possibly beating NZ 2. Also, a lot depends on it not being a casualty of the trade war. I can't see it doing much less than $600 million domestically, with its weak competition. I think it can't do much worse than a terrible film like TROS inflation adjusted. Its brand is still too strong for that.

The new Superman film is going to be WOM dependent largely. It'll have a big audience the 1st weekend, like MOS, but then WOM will determine if surpasses MOS's $400 mill adjusted, with great WOM taking it to $500 mill tops, $400 mill if it's pretty good, and $300 mill or less if it's meh. I get the sense that Superman's popularity is weaker overseas than the other 2 biggest top comic book figures -- Spider-Man & Batman, as well as prime MCU -- so, I think it'll have closer to a 50/50 domestic / overseas split than other comic book properties do.

It looks like Thunderbolts will come just short of catching CA: BNW. Its has fewer theaters in its 5th week, and its weekend box office is projected to be a little lower. I still think they left $50 million on the table domestically by not marketing it as The New Avengers* (*Sort of), so something like that. I don't think the name change stunt helped it much.

MI:8 seems on track to split the difference between MI:6 ($220) and MI:7($170). MI:7 probably would've gotten to $200 mill if it weren't for Barbenheimer, and its early loss of Imax formats.

 

Lilo and Stitch is Disney’s third "Let's make this for streaming, wait that's stupid put it in theatres" movie after Alien Romulus and Moana 2. They should have shunted Snow White to Disney Plus instead

 

Yeah, eventually Disney should have to realize it's not a question of streaming versus movies, but of quantity versus quality.

Have 1-2 movies a year, and make them "event" movies. Have 2-4 quality streaming shows per year and make them "event" shows. Ensure they're top quality and not rushed.

 

Disney probably doesn't care if these MCU films lose some money as long as they don't hurt the brand, like Thunderbolts. They need to expand their Disney+ catalogue for adults. We only get it for 1 month every year to 18 months. There's just so little for adults on there.

They really need to combine D+ with Hulu, and get better at making streaming series that aren't MCU/Star Wars dependent.

If Peacock can make an original "must see" show like Yellowstone, with spinoffs (though it's not a "must see" for me), Disney+ should be able to do the same.

 

Die Hard, POTA, Terminator?

Or how about a truly original idea? Disney seems to be way out in the sticks on originality.

 

Mighty Ducks Vs Cool Runnings

It'll make 3 billion

 

I'm interested to see how Naked Gun does, as box office results have been upside down for a year It'd be sweet if a comedy (and not a romantic one!) makes actual money

Anyway Lilo and Stitch 600 million worldwide after 2 weeks, boy howdy! Watch it be the #1 movie of 2025 ahaha

 

In any case Disney is the first studio to hit $1 billion for the year even if they patched it together from one absolute flop, two Marvel disappointments and one major hit.

 

I think Disney + would be in a much better position if they still had Touchstone around.

I mean, technically, 20th Century Films can play a nearly identical role...except they just seem to be using the label to manage the Alien/Predator/POTA franchises with a couple pet projects tossed in (perhaps legacy greenlights from before the merger, even at this point).

In it's hey day, Touchstone made some solid and classic entertainment that had an adult audience first and foremost in mind.

Now, it just feels like Disney is curating brands:

SW, Marvel, Alien, POTA, Simpsons, Pixar, etc.

HA! Was just looking at the library for Touchstone:

They could totally make a sequel to Three Men and a Baby/Little Lady.

Tom Selleck (mid-transformation into Wilford Brimley), the eternally talentless Ted Danson, and they could get Steve Guttenberg out of the Costco he's working at!

It's all win!

 

I thought constantly mining content libraries for sequel opportunities was supposed to be exactly what's wrong with the industry.

 

The real question is how long does Hulu hang on.

It really does feel like a relic of a streaming strategy long cast aside.

They keep bundling it to keep it afloat, but I don't know many people who have Hulu to have Hulu.

IIRC, a lot of content on Hulu in the US is just served up on D+ internationally. If they could just fold Hulu and bring those titles into the fold, I think the service would be better served.

What they want is for people to pay twice...to get your kid/family stuff on D+ and get your adult stuff on Hulu...but people are looking for the service that covers the most bases in one bill...thus the bundles (heck, even with HBO now).

I suspect there is still some thinking at Disney that they need to keep non-family friendly stuff away from the Mickey Branding...that people are looking for a "safe" streaming service.

The reality is they could provide that with parental controls and still have the vastly larger library all on one service. It's just a question of whether it is profitable to do so.

 

L&S is an unmitigated windfall at 6x its budget worldwide after 10 days of release. It will be well past $700 million before How To Train Your Dragon opens.

 

In the post that you're responding to, I was sort of combining what would get me to subscribe to D+ more often with a vague notion of what might attract other adults to subscribe more often or longer.

I think that you understand the business side of streaming better than I do, so I'm actually curious to hear your take on my critique of D+.

I think D+ has a good base audience - families, especially families with young kids, and the kids do most of watching of it. I think that this is the strong part of their business model. D+ is pretty much the go to place for kids streaming content. They have a ton of kids content, and that's great because kids will watch movies and shows over and over again. That also indoctrinates kids into liking certain properties that they will return to for nostalgia value in the future, like L&S and so many of these Disney remakes.

What seems to be the problem with D+ is that it doesn't have much area for growth, and investors typically like companies that keep growing in size, although that gets into the whole issue of growth stocks (Apple) vs value stocks (Coke). So, maybe Disney is just fine with their share of the audience, they see themselves more as a value stock, and they think it would be too difficult and costly to compete with Netflix and Max for adult content.

At the same time, it seems to me that streaming is a hard way to make money, so maybe their goal should be to bring in a great audience, and since the majority of adults don't have kids maybe they should be attempting to make more programming for adults.

So, that makes me think that maybe they should be making more prestige television. That's what gets me to subscribe to Amazon, Netflix, and Max. But then again, maybe prestige drama isn't really worth the price of making it. The free Hulu on D+ has a lot of reality shows apparently for adults that would never appeal to me, but maybe that's where the real money is, just like slot machines are the real money makers for casinos.

So, I know what would keep me watching D+ more, and it seems to me like it may be a better approach to appealing to the adult market, but maybe they think they can't compete making prestige TV, or maybe they're happy making money from the slot machines, or there's some other rationale that I haven't thought of.