kimik

Yeah! That is awesome news. I wonder if it will top Venom for Sony?

Is that yours? If yes, how awesome and congrats!

You forgot the most important part of this - was there Chinese money backing the production? From what little I know of the film industry and financing of projects (and losing $$$ as an investor in a couple of small ones ), the worldwide release in China + Wan likely means Chinese/other Asian investment backed a large portion of production costs, if not all of it ,seeing as the film was released there. If that is the case, then there may have been a higher % for the studios from China for the simple fact that the Chinese investors needed to be paid back. Just like any other industry, follow the money........ This is why simple models assessing the cost to the studios, return to from box office, and overall profitability are inaccurate. Studios put money in for marketing and a portion of production, but not the whole amount. Even then, some of the marketing costs will be covered for big movies by product placement deals and government grants reduce production costs (10-20% of production costs in exchange for filming/producing in that state/country). They sell a portion/all of the remaining production costs to investors to decrease their risk, just like banks package and dump mortgages/insurance policies onto institutional investors and pension funds as an example. This is how studios can afford to release so many films in a given year - they do not pay for everything.

Venom did well at the box office, but I would like to see the final marketing budget all in. My guess is that they upped the marketing for it substantially after the first weekend - there were ads running here for three weeks longer than Aquaman (those stopped after the second week of release). I have not seen it since the CGI was brutal and word of mouth from friends that saw it was mixed. I am glad you liked it. I am not arguing the $350MM for Aquaman, just the fact that it doesn't include all of the subsidies/grants that are posted online and I have repeatedly mentioned. You can find it with a 10 second Google search if you want to correct your numbers. But, based on your continued use of incomplete numbers to date, I doubt it.

Nice! ASM #101 should continue to run up.

Venom was a runaway hit? Again, Google is your friend. Use it to see how wrong you are re: financing of the film.

Here is the beat but complete Hulk 1-6 run from a collection I snagged in August 2018, fresh back from Sarasota:

No one is teaching them to do that, they are just collecting runs differently now. They want the keys like everyone else, but instead of reading comic runs in single issue format they do it digitally or via collected editions in TPB/HC format. I noticed this trend starting in earnest in the late 00s, and adjusted my collection accordingly as well. A lot of low to mid grade SA or BA common issues are $2 - $5 bin material now if you want to sell them, and it is generally older collectors that go for them. There is a large and growing populations of collectors now that would rather buy a collected edition TPB to read story arcs in one sitting, AND they still buy the keys/#1s to have the most important issues for their collection.

There are plenty of 20 somethings that buy keys from me at the other end of the booth. They focus on keys and 1st apps, not runs, though. I guess they are smarter than our generation of collectors - buy multiples of keys, not common run fillers.

Someone did back in 2013, but I guess it was Aquaman topping Spider-Man.......

Personally, I like Snyder's comic adaptation work since it tends to be visually/stylistically closer to the source (e.g. 300, Watchmen) and a darker/grittier tone. However, as we can see based on box office results, this is not what the broader public wants in their hero films. When even turds like Ant-Man 1 and 2 can do $500MM plus with a 3rd tier character that noone cared about for decades, while JL or BvS with two of the top 5 most recognized comic properties on the planet struggles to top $600MM and $800MM respectively (and with declining results from BvS to JL), that basically tells you that you missed with your approach to the broader comic movie audience. We will disagree again re: Darkseid. The big issue with that for DC/WB is simply this - there was next to no build-up re: Darkseid other than the dream sequence and the rants from Luthor at the end of BvS. Thanos worked because Marvel has been developing him as the big bad villain ever since the first Avengers film. You had the Infinity Stones being gathered for Thanos across multiple movies and knew that would mean bad things on a universal scale. Contrast that to the DC/WB approach with the Mother Boxes. There was no grand plan to have the mother boxes appear in multiple movies with whispers about Darkseid coming to build up suspense. All we got was a CGI Steppenwulf easily grabbing all three. If Darkseid had shown up in JL it would not have meant much, IMHO, since the build up was not there to generate anticipation. DC/WB rushed things with Darkseid instead of slow playing it to build up suspense like you would in a comic story arc. That was a mistake.

I still liked Justice League, but even with the extra footage Snyder would have whiffed from a big box office perspective. That is what I was referring to. The broader movie going audience wants lighter, more humorous movies. By taking a darker/grittier approach, Snyder basically excluded those viewers from wanting to go which hurts the box office results. Even having Whedon add some humor/lighter moments did not help. Look at Aquaman $$$ compared to Justice League (which had the big 3 DC properties in it) to see why Snyder took the wrong approach.

Maybe even more. They had the success and momentum of WW to build off of from earlier in the year, plus Batman and Superman, and Snyder/Whedon basically wasted it.

But......has it turned a profit yet?

I guess that means sell your trash copies now while the market is irrational...........

You're right. The GL costume would look like green glowing vomit, but the profit and rate of return would be higher than if they go big budget just like Venom.......

I passed on two copies of IH 181 that would have been easy 9.8s with a press, with a shot at 9.9, from the same seller. He was asking $800 for the pair raw, and the only issues were pressure indents from handling/storing that made me pass at those astronomical prices . Both had the deepest reds I have ever seen on IH 181s since, and were perfectly centered. They were the two best copies the OO had in his stack of them (he bought a bunch when they were released as a spec play - his BA spec books were all in amazing shape). He sent the books in without pressing and received 9.6 on both, if I recall correctly. I had a chance to buy them again for $2500 CDN apiece after grading in 2003 and passed again.

Not if they go with a lower budget like Venom's to maximize profit...........

Depends on the person doing the math.....

I am aware of one locally that goes back to 1938 that the OO still owns. I can't say anything more about it, but the books are in very nice shape. There was another one in town that a LCS owner appraised for insurance purposes (the Action 1 and Tec 27 were well read GD/GD+ copies) about a decade ago, but I do not know if the owner sold it or is still alive.

I can remember reading GL 54 when it came out and wondering how that got through the editorial process.

My wife buys garbage bags there every so often since they fit our main household garbage can the best.

Congrats! I echo the comment re: seeing pictures would be awesome.

I bought five this morning......... Just kidding. I looked for them when we hit Walmart for work Christmas exchange gifts and was told none of the Canadian stores carry them.

Awesome. They can have Suydam.......and we will get Campbell or Hughes.