I have only been to 5 movies since the pandemic. I use to go almost every weekend before the pandemic so yes I think that is the main reason movies don't do as well now.
Spoilers The Marvels grade and discussion
- Thread starter The Nth Doctor
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I've actually gone more often lately. But then, I've never been someone who goes all the time. Only when there's a film I'm really excited to see and don't want to wait for. Lately there've been more of those than there had been for many years prior. (And it would've been even more often if I lived somewhere closer to a larger theater, since the only reason I didn't see EEAAO or Landscape with Invisible Hand in theaters is because no theater here was playing them.)
Cut back here too. Last movie I saw was Indiana Jones, and the one before that was Ghostbusters Afterlife, and I probably won't go back until Ghostbusters Frozen Empire.
The only movie I've seen in the theater post-pandemic was The Flash (because Supergirl). It's likely I won't see another till Superman: Legacy.
I've seen four films in theaters this year, and am hoping to catch at least two more before New Year's Eve (Aquaman 2 and the new Godzilla movie, the latter depending whether it'll play in any theater near me). If I make it to six, then, yeah, that would be more than in other years, even pre-pendamic. But I've also missed movies I planned on seeing in a theater because of bad scheduling, and my preference of seeing them in the original language rather than the German dub.
Dr Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Thor Love and Thunder, Guardians of Galaxy vol 3 and The Marvels are the only movies I've seen in the theater since the pandemic ended.
My mom and I still go out to the movies a lot, we go most of the big blockbusters. So far this year we've seen:
Antman and the Wasp: Qutumania
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
D&D: Honor Among Theives
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
GOTG Vol. 3
The Little Mermaid
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
The Marvels
and I'm hoping to go see Wish later this week.
I'll pretty much see anything Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, or Disney Animation Studios in theaters, and then whatever else looks interesting. There is a lot of stuff I wait for streaming for too, I usually just go the big blockbusters that you really need a big screen and a top notch sound system for the full impact. Honestly, if we had a bigger TV and a good surround sound system, I'd probably more content to wait to watch more of it at home.
Antman and the Wasp: Qutumania
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
D&D: Honor Among Theives
The Super Mario Bros. Movie
GOTG Vol. 3
The Little Mermaid
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning
The Marvels
and I'm hoping to go see Wish later this week.
I'll pretty much see anything Star Trek, Star Wars, Marvel, DC, or Disney Animation Studios in theaters, and then whatever else looks interesting. There is a lot of stuff I wait for streaming for too, I usually just go the big blockbusters that you really need a big screen and a top notch sound system for the full impact. Honestly, if we had a bigger TV and a good surround sound system, I'd probably more content to wait to watch more of it at home.
I don't think it's a Disney problem, lots of movies from different studios have all bombed.
Pretty much the same: if the film interests me, I will go, but if it looks like it will be dumped to streaming soon, or end up in the Walmart $5 bin in a few weeks (if I am interested enough to pay even five bucks for it), then I will not waste my time going to the theatre.. To that end, the astounding failure of The Marvels is a quality issue if one listens to those who who watched the film, and if it was the "victim" of the pandemic's impact, a number of films released in the past few years--which were major successes--would not be. Its about quality, and apparently, The Marvels is lacking in that department to a great degree.
There are also a few tentpole films which didn't fully bomb, but certainly didn't perform as well as expected. Mission: Impossible 7, Fast X, The Little Mermaid had all decent enough box office, though they didn't break even in their theatrical window.
That is also due to budget. WB and Disney, especially, have to relearn to budget their movies with more restraint, which also means figuring out what movie you want to do before you start shooting. The Flash, Quanumania, The Marvels all had to reshoot a lot because they changed the movies.
Just as an example, that ending scene of The Flash had to be shot three different times with different actors, and expensive actors at that. Michael Keaton, Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill will cost money, and to shoot that scene several times before saying "screw it" and doing one last shoot with an also very expensive George Clooney? Things like this really drive up the budget, so when the movie bombed, it bombed that much harder.
Though quite a few of these movies this year had their budgets bloated by COVID restrictions, as well. I think M:I 7 had to add about 50 million dollars to their budget because of the restrictions.
And the movie would have been a far better and more satisfying experience with either of the first two endings, so they spent that Clooney money just to make the film worse.
But people paid money to make that assessment. It’s the movies that will follow that will feel even more box office pain.
The studios need to rethink theatre releases.
Back in the 80s we still had low budget movies going to the theatre. That really needs to happen again. All movies can’t be big budget.
Bring back the low budget comedy and horror movies.
How a movie can be one of the top ten highest earners of the year and not break even theatrically is beyond me.
Not to mention Cruise screaming at everybody.
Multiple films pulled it off this year.
I think a lot of this honestly stems from Disney's position at the apex of the studio ecosystem. Market leaders don't typically take the same sort of risks that small fry do - they're not trying to build market share, they're just trying to maintain it. This can be seen across all Disney franchises in recent years, where very paint-by-numbers projects which hewed to the traditional format for each of the sub-studios was broadly rejected by consumers.
Basically, Disney isn't making bad movies, but the vast majority of its output tries to play it "safe" in an effort to bring back people to the box office. But I think the whole Barbenheimer phenomena showcases that audiences want something new and fresh instead.
There's a reason the term 'Hollywood accounting" exists. Studios know how to best protect and cover themselves using subsidiaries or one-off production companies for a specific movie project, distributing funds through it. Some of the studios also earn TV networks so buying commercial time on that network is paying themselves and sometimes they do it at a 'premium' over the actual going rate.
Yeah, as funny as that cameo was, it really made no sense in the terms of the movie's story, or for the wider DCEU.
Bob Iger thinks he knows why The Marvels failed at the box office.
Speaking during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023, he did not blame the actors' strike and lack of publicity for the film's performance. Nor did he blame the weird hatred of the film driven by sexism coming from a small and vocal cadre of Marvel fans upset over a film helmed by three women.
He did blame the sheer volume of content being created for making it more difficult to maintain quality and said, "The Marvels was shot during Covid, and there wasn't enough supervision on set" from executives.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29...albook-summit-elon-musk-bob-iger-david-zaslav
Speaking during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023, he did not blame the actors' strike and lack of publicity for the film's performance. Nor did he blame the weird hatred of the film driven by sexism coming from a small and vocal cadre of Marvel fans upset over a film helmed by three women.
He did blame the sheer volume of content being created for making it more difficult to maintain quality and said, "The Marvels was shot during Covid, and there wasn't enough supervision on set" from executives.
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/29...albook-summit-elon-musk-bob-iger-david-zaslav
Is it not dawning on anyone that no matter how well it was made it was maybe a movie that not that many people wanted to see to begin with?
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