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2016 Has Been A Tough Year For Studio Movies

X-Men: A

Domestic: $146,057,836

Foreign: $364,087,642

Total: $510,145,478


Domestically:
X-Men (2000): $157,299,717
X-Men First Class: $146,408,305

Apocalypse has definitely under performed. I don't understand how it could do so bad in the US.


Alice 2 and TMNT 2 are even worse.
 
For me I try to avoid movies that lack diversity. If I cannot see someone similar to me on the screen then I don't want to know anymore. And quite a few of my circle have come to the same decision. I will leave Hollywood to continue to pander to the white male market.
 
The list of low performing 2016 movies continues to expand.


Zoolander 2

Divergent: Allegiant

The Huntsman

The Boss

X-Men Apocalypse

Alice Through The Looking Glass

TMNT Out Of The Shadows

Independence Day

Warcraft

BFG

Tarzan

Ghostbusters
---------------

Star Trek Beyond, Jason Bourne and Suicide Squad are next to debut in theaters. I'm praying for the best.

The highest grossing films remain:

1. Captain America Civil War
2. Zootopia
3. The Jungle Book
4. Batman v Superman
5. Deadpool
----------------
6. Finding Dory
7. The Mermaid
8. X-Men Apocalypse
9. Kung Fu Panda 3
10. Warcraft


Disney is on top of the world right now.
 
This is the first I've ever heard of The Mermaid. Ok, I just checked out the trailer and it looks good.
For anyone else unaware of it here are a couple trailers:
One serious
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One silly
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These two trailers almost make it look like two totally different movies.
 
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Greg Cox said:
It's not so much that they swap the fates as they swap the names. The plot is usually pretty much the same: There's The Girl Who Gets Vampirized and Staked and The Girl Who Almost Gets Vampirized but Survives.

Sometimes that first girl is named Lucy and the second girl is Mina; sometimes it's the other way around. But, at the risk of bringing the thread to a crashing halt again, the confusion seems to have begun with 1927 stage version, which is still the one that is mostly commonly performed by community theater groups. And both the original Lugosi movie and the remake with Langella were based on the play, not the novel.

In the Hammer version, oddly enough, Mina is the Girl Who Survives, but it's Lucy (the Girl Who Gets Vampirized) that is Jonathan Harker's fiancee. Go figure.
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And, of course, the Langella version also changes the parentage of both girls. Mina Murray becomes Mina Van Helsing and Lucy Westenra becomes Lucy Seward, presumably to up the personal stakes.
 
"Ghostbusters" is performing lowly? It's not even considered a flop right now. And it's barely been in the theaters. Although "The Secret of Pets" was the number one movie this weekend, "Ghostbusters" earned a very close second. Very close. Or is the number two spot, no matter how close, considered a flop? Shall I regard 2006's "Casino Royale" in the same manner, considering that it never topped "Happy Feet" at the box office?
 
LJones41 said:
"Ghostbusters" is performing lowly? It's not even considered a flop right now. And it's barely been in the theaters. Although "The Secret of Pets" was the number one movie this weekend, "Ghostbusters" earned a very close second. Very close. Or is the number two spot, no matter how close, considered a flop? Shall I regard 2006's "Casino Royale" in the same manner, considering that it never topped "Happy Feet" at the box office?
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I think the cost of making the movie factors into its performance. Ghostbusters needs $300 million to break even at the box office. But that seems to make all the money from other sources profit.
 
LJones41 said:
"Ghostbusters" is performing lowly? It's not even considered a flop right now. And it's barely been in the theaters.
Click to expand...
The theater life of a movie is short these days, and first-weekend earnings are reliable predictors of overall performance. Also, theaters claim a bigger share of the earning with each passing weekend, making the initial take doubly important to the studios. Ergo, if you think a $45m opening weekend for a $144m-budgeted movie not playing in China isn't problematic, you quite simply don't know what you're talking about.

LJones41 said:
Shall I regard 2006's "Casino Royale" in the same manner, considering that it never topped "Happy Feet" at the box office?
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$150m budget, $600m international take, and in a time when the home video market was much more lucrative than it is today, before dvd sales fell off due to streaming services and Peak TV. In other words: a big hit.
 
I suppose GHOSTBUSTERS could also take the WRATH OF KHAN route if necessary: make the sequel leaner and cheaper than the very expensive first movie.

GHOSTBUSTERS 2: THE WRATH OF SLIMER maybe? :)
 
Have they still talking about a sequel after the final numbers came in?
 
I have to disagree with earlier posters assertions that the sequels /reboots /high budget films of this year are nothing new.

I respect the other posters going back to the dawn of film and modern plays for their arguments, but I don't really think those comparisons are relevant. There is virtually nothing similar between entertainment consumption then and now, nor could you really compare the budgets of films from then to now - even adjusted for inflation, the biggest budget movie in 1927 would have only cost $26 Mil in 2016.

I think in discussions like this you have to stay modern - and in that case, this is a year with more sequel and reboots than ever before, and a year with more blockbuster budgets than ever before. The first summer blockbuster came out in MARCH this year with BvS. Den of Geek had a write up about it, as did several other sites, but unfortunately I don't have the link. Remember the hoopla when Spider-Man started the summer movie season in May back in 2002?

There are 37 major sequels coming out this year - that is a record number, and more than double the number that came out in 2006 according to Vox.

Not only are their a record number of sequels, but according to the same write up by Vox they are the lowest rated by critics ever - prior to this year sequels dropped an average of 8 points on metacritic from the original. 2016's average drop is 27 points.

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/1/12070048/resurgence-independence-day-bad-movie-sequel

So we have a record number of sequels and reboots, which are of a record low quality, the death of mid budget films

http://flavorwire.com/492985/how-th...ma-left-a-generation-of-iconic-filmmakers-mia

during a year with an extended summer movie season, where theatres are charging record high movie ticket prices and eliminating standard 2D tickets for more expensive 3D and Imax shows

http://variety.com/2016/film/news/movie-ticket-prices-1201816485/

Meanwhile, at home we all have 50" 1080p TV'S with surround sound and Netflix.

Lack of originality, lack of quality in the sequels /reboots, lack of mid -budget films that don't need to make a billion dollars to be profitable, lack of access to regular 2D films (personally I've not seen 4 movies this year because my local theatres only had one 2D showing a day, in the middle of the afternoon, and they are always sold out), record high ticket prices, and the availability of home theatres seem to be killing the box office this year.
 
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LJones41 said:
"Ghostbusters" is performing lowly? It's not even considered a flop right now. And it's barely been in the theaters. Although "The Secret of Pets" was the number one movie this weekend, "Ghostbusters" earned a very close second. Very close. Or is the number two spot, no matter how close, considered a flop? Shall I regard 2006's "Casino Royale" in the same manner, considering that it never topped "Happy Feet" at the box office?
Click to expand...

Most analysis I've seen has taken a wait and see approach. It opened in the middle of tracking, but not as high as desired for a film with this director, cast, and budget, but not as low as would inspire fear.

China refusing to screen it can't be good though. Have to see if it can make up that loss elsewhere.

Personally I haven't much interest in seeing it, despite Ghostbusters being my thing ever as a child and them naming a character after an obscure Dune (my favourite book) reference. I'm not a fan of Feig or McCarthy, and the trailers were awful. I'm glad others are enjoying it though.
 
RAMA said:
There are actually some good mid-budget scifi films that come out. Killzone and Approaching the Unknown.

Others

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3190158/

This is Chinese:
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Most films should be mid budget. Gives the teams the ability to show fantastical situations but not over indulge in them. Some restrictions are good. Makes people more creative.

There are some exceptions to that statement, but I believe it to generally be the case. It also let's the studios make five movies for the cost of one, allowing the people to take more risks instead of copying the same story beat by beat by beat (or , lacking any story, the same CGI explosions over and over and over again).
 
Not as many in this genre though.

RAMA

wayoung said:
Most films should be mid budget. Gives the teams the ability to show fantastical situations but not over indulge in them. Some restrictions are good. Makes people more creative.

There are some exceptions to that statement, but I believe it to generally be the case. It also let's the studios make five movies for the cost of one, allowing the people to take more risks instead of copying the same story beat by beat by beat (or , lacking any story, the same CGI explosions over and over and over again).
Click to expand...
 
RAMA said:
Not as many in this genre though.

RAMA
Click to expand...

I'm not quite following your line of thought there. Do you mean not as many mid budget sci fi films are good vs other genres? Or not as many mid budget sci fi films should be made, that they do need the $250 mil budgets?
 
wayoung said:
Most films should be mid budget. [...] it also let's the studios make five movies for the cost of one.
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Make, yes, but not market, and without an audience, having produced a movie doesn't get you much, especially given the cratering of dvd/blu sales, meaning there's not even the opportunity for a home media sensation. (In '02, The Bourne Identity did fine at the box office, but was a big hit on dvd and in rentals.)

To properly market a movie to a nationwide audience can cost $100m. Given that most Americans only go to see about four movies a year in theaters, having more movies made doesn't make much business sense if you can't properly sell them. Might as well spend more on fewer flashier, action-packed properies with name recognition that'll play in China.
 
Gaith said:
Make, yes, but not market, and without an audience, having produced a movie doesn't get you much, especially given the cratering of dvd/blu sales, meaning there's not even the opportunity for a home media sensation. (In '02, The Bourne Identity did fine at the box office, but was a big hit on dvd and in rentals.)

To properly market a movie to a nationwide audience can cost $100m. Given that most Americans only go to see about four movies a year in theaters, having more movies made doesn't make much business sense if you can't properly sell them. Might as well spend more on fewer flashier, action-packed properies with name recognition that'll play in China.
Click to expand...

Or maybe people are only going to four movies a year because the $250 million dollar movies have driven ticket prices up (and killed 2D screenings, making the costs of these Big budget films even higher as you need 3D Imax tickets) to record highs and people can't afford to go to more films than that so they pick and choose which ones are worth seeing in cinema and which are being left for Netflix.

A studio might not feel the need to spend $150 mil marketing a movie if the movie itself only cost $50 mil to make. You definitely don't need near as many people to see it to turn a profit, so it would make sense that the marketing costs would also drop proportionally.

Drop the cost of the movie, drop the proportional cost of marketing, the studios risk shrinks considerably, filmmakers have more freedom to make original and unique films, audiences don't get sequel/reboot fatigue, add back in 2D screenings (you can see 6 movies now for the same cost of the previous 4 right there) and suddenly people can afford to see more films.

No way to know unless someone tries. Right now the studios are trying bigger and bigger and bladder and sequels / remakes. And it's not working. Meanwhile some mid budget films from the last decade have really cleaned up. Purely from a sci fi perspective, look at this year's Deadpool and last year's Ex Machine. Deadpool could arguably be called a sequel/reboot, but it was still a mid budget films that crushed expectations. Ex Machina is mostly unique - using some old ideas yes, but not a sequel / reboot, and made a decent profit. Both are great movies that filmmakers had the freedom to try unique with because they weren't beholden to a $250 mil budget.

Instead of chasing the high risk, high return big budget big profit remakes / sequels why not try lower risk / lower profit for awhile?

Collider did a write up about how they hope Deadpool will spawn this line of thinking.

http://collider.com/deadpool-success-mid-budget-action-movie/
 
It's too early to write off Ghostbusters till the second weekend #s come in this next Monday(7/25). If it drops less than 55% it'll end up a modest hit most likely. If it's second weekend drop is 60%+ it'll be a disappointment but not a flop.

Tarzan is actually having staying power. It's WOM is drastically different than it's RT critic score. It's moving from flop, based on it's low OW, to most likely just a categorical disappointment. That $180m budget is tough to recover but still, following it's OW Warners was prepared to take a steep loss. Since then it's overseas numbers have been modestly good and it's staying power US domestic has stabilized.
 
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