Gatsby77

Why would anyone be surprised that Shang-Chi action figures aren't selling well? The movie's not out yet. Kids haven't seen it, don't know who the characters are and have no reason to buy the toys.

Not crazy at all - The interwebs are speculating the woman in the car near the end of the trailer is Miles’ mom.

I thought both the TMNT and The Crow only first "appeared" on the back cover of books. Those books being: Gobbledeygook # 1; and Deadworld # 10. But they're technically both ads (ditto with the Action # 1 ad mentioned above). Sort of how I don't count Malibu Sun # 15 or whatever as the first appearance of Spawn - it's basically an ad for the forthcoming book, a la Previews.

He’s not wrong, tho. My MBA’s from a public school and once upon a time I got fired from my accounting job at a private equity fund but this is interesting on several levels: 1) It provides a benchmark for a total Disney+ Premium of ~2.0x (first weekend to total). Disney self-reported $60 million first weekend gross & $125 million total (now, near end-of-run). 2) Given that Disney nets at least 85% of Disney+ Premium grosses, $125 mill. there is indeed equivalent to $175+ million theatrical (assuming an overall 60% domestic take, which is likely given how front-loaded this was). 3) (From the early pages of this thread, years ago) - ScarJo’s contract stipulated a $5 million bonus once the film crossed $500 million worldwide theatrical. 4) The contract was silent as to streaming revenue, in part, because it was negotiated at a time when Disney+ didn’t exist (source: NPR earlier today - believe it was 1-A). Therefore her case is solid, in that the film arguably will gross $500+ million, but she won’t qualify for her bonus due to cannibalism from streaming. 5) Arbitration is the right move for Disney because it’s cheaper to pay her $20-$50 million in settlement and keep those terms secret than to have to negotiate streaming gross points and profit sharing with every movie star in perpetuity. All of this aside, Black Widow remains the highest studio grosser of the pandemic era (Fast 9 is second, A Quiet Place 2 is third).

Is it Wong who says "Strange - Don't cast that spell?"

My first copy of ASM 300 - bought from a friend back in the mid-90s - was trimmed as well. I feel like it was common for that book to have a raggedy right edge, leading lots of folks to trim it.

+ 1. $40 million opening weekend tops.

But...The Suicide Squad was like... Good.

Solid trailer. But Ikaris looks and seemingly has the same powers as Homelander from The Boys. Not sure this has general moviegoer appeal. Overall nothing seems original or jaw-dropping enough relative to other recent superhero projects - although the quick shot of the Celestial came close.

To me, Avatar was just aggressively mediocre. Fun to watch once but instantly forgettable - “Dances with Smurfs” with great animation. But the great tragedy of the film is it made James Cameron decide to spend the next 20 years of his life doing nothing but Avatar. One of the best action directors - and screenwriters - of the last 40 years and we’ve been robbed of at least 3-4 other first rate action thrillers from him in the meantime - the likes of T2, The Abyss, True Lies - even Titanic. I’d much rather see Cameron’s take on say… King Conan or Predator - even Mission Impossible - than even a single additional Avatar film.

Agree 100%. And introducing the idea of mutants in no way negates the importance of the Eternals as a team moving forward. I think Black Knight speculators will be disappointed, because I think we’ll see only Dane Whitman in this film. If the early bootleg -script is accurate - we’ll get only a mid- / post-credit sequence where he gets his sword / assumes the mantle. But - maybe I’m wrong, and we’ll actually see him when the next trailer drops tomorrow.

Except...that the initial MovieWeb article cited above adds the interest figures in addition to the original production costs - and therefore comes in well above $300 mill. Reading the below paragraph, the UK analysts state original production costs of 199.5 million pounds (~$274 million) - with interest charges the production cost is now $226 million pounds (or $311 million at today's exchange rate, not the $314 million stated). "Breaking this down, No Time to Die was last costed at 214 million pounds according to Companies House in the UK, with the amount having increased from 199.5 million pounds due to interest charges. Now, a year later, that has risen to around 226 million pounds, or $314 million, and once marketing costs have been added into the astronomically priced mix, that comes to around $464 million at the lower end, making that the rough figure No Time to Die will need to make in order to be profitable."

Fair. But if SPECTRE cost $245M back in 2015, $301M makes sense to me in 2019. *Particularly* because Daniel Craig's salary (and/or back-end) presumably went up, and they had to pay for Rami Malek as well. To think that they were able to put this together at roughly the same cost as the 2015 film is just naive. And that's prior to additional editing/re-shoots, etc. And why wouldn't you include the additional interest expense in the final cost? It's part of the cost to get the film to the screen. Just like Superman Returns is quoted at having cost $263M - $270M, because it includes $40M+ in development costs for several other abandoned Superman projects, going back to Kevin Smith's Superman Lives project. Same deal here. It may not be fair, but when the final cost estimates for the film are authoritatively reported, they'll include the $14M+ in interest expense due to the delays.

Here's a Variety article (from last October) that breaks down some costs. Note that it was written prior to Amazon's acquisition of MGM for a reported $8.5 billion. https://variety.com/2020/film/news/no-time-to-die-james-bond-mgm-streaming-sale-1234819582/ It notes: $301 million net production budget $66 million already spent on advertising as of just March 2020 $1 million per month in interest charges (since at least March 2020)

Why wouldn't you believe it? Skyfall's production budget (2012) is listed as $200M and SPECTRE's (2015) is listed as $245M. They also had to play cat and mouse with Daniel Craig for ~2 years to even get him to commit to this one, so his salary + back-end is likely massive. Add in debt interest on the production costs, etc. However, as you've pointed out, a non-trivial percentage of the production costs are likely off-set by product placements (Aston Martin, Sony, Omega, etc.). There was even this hilarious piece on concerns from Nokia that the film's been shelved for so long that their then-new phones are now old news - with a rumor that the company requested re-shoots specifically to accommodate newer phones. https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2021/1/27/22252018/james-bond-no-time-to-die-hmd-global-nokia-phones-product-placement

Drotto already covered most of it, but... You *really* need to stop drinking the Kool-Aid. Shang-Chi is a niche / unknown character and - if the release date holds - is coming out when the Delta variant will be worse than it is today. Further, it looks thematically similar to Snake Eyes, which had a better known actor / more popular character and just... bombed. The Marvel brand is no more impervious to reality - and changing theater tastes - than the Star Wars brand (see Solo).

Seriously? Blade Runner 2049 was better than it had any right to be - an actual worthy successor to the first film. And Arrival was a straight-up masterpiece - there's a reason it scored 8 Oscar noms (including Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay) and Amy Adams deserved the Oscar for Best Actress for it. My two favorite films from 2016 were Arrival and Hell or High Water - and it's not even close. Rogue One would be a distant third.

You’re conflating “profitable” with runaway success. Shazam was absolutely profitable. Full stop. Meanwhile, the theatrical landscape’s changed. Calling it right here: Carnage won’t break $500M. Not just because of the pandemic but also because the first film was garbage & many of those who paid to see it the first time now know better.

Thank you! Ignoring your personal attacks, it's exactly these numbers that @Jaydogrulesintentionally ignores and derides as "ancillaries." When he's not, you know, accusing Disney of securities fraud by making up its opening weekend Premiere+ streaming gross for Black Widow. Theatrical profitability isn't a thing when you've got product placement, toys, DVD & streaming revenue, etc.

We went back and forth on this ad nauseum in the Venom thread, where you claimed a film had to make back 4.5x its stated production budget *theatrically* to even break even. That was never true, because (for the umpteenth time), P&A is always assumed to be covered by post-theatrical profits (including DVD sales, streaming, TV, and Cable licensing, toys, etc.) - which you derided as mere *ancillaries* but which often net studios 50-100% of the original theatrical profits. Even moreso, now, since Disney literally made more from Black Widow's first weekend streaming via Premiere+ than it did from its domestic box office. More to the point - It doesn't matter if a film is profitable *theatrically* - what matters is that it comes close to break-even, so the lifetime value of the film can turn a healthy profit. But yeah, ignore all that - because both Shazam and Man of Steel literally were profitable from just their theatrical releases alone. See also Scott Mendelson's break-down of Shazam here.

No. Shazam did $366M on a $100M budget. (a 3.66X ratio). Analysis by Deadline noted it turned the studio a profit of $74 million after all expenses (including P&A), a 28% Return on Investment. And Man of Steel did $668M on a $225M budget. (a 2.97x ratio). Analysis by Deadline noted it turned the studio a profit of $42.75 million after all expenses (including P&A), a 7% Return on Investment. In other words, not only was Shazam profitable, it was literally 4x as profitable (percentage-wise) as Man of Steel. Hence why one has a sequel forthcoming and the other (direct) sequel was cancelled in favor of BvS.

How do you figure? Guardians of the Galaxy was as risky as Eternals & cost $200M with a largely unknown cast, yet knocked it out of the park. And Captain Marvel (who *nobody* in the collecting world cared about) did $1+ bn. I mean, I agree that Shang-Chi won't do well - but not because he's unknown, necessarily. But because film watching has fundamentally changed. If anything, the way forward with superhero films is to niche down - smaller characters, smaller budgets. And with that creativity we can get truly experimental (yet amazing) projects like WandaVision (a series literally *no one* asked for) and Loki. For instance, I'd love to see a tight $60M budget Daredevil film. Or another Punisher film a la the Thomas Jane/John Travolta one, but continuing with Jon Bernthal. Similarly, I'd love to see a $40M Cyborg solo film, even if it went directly to HBO Max. And let's see an 8-episode Deathstroke series on HBO Max, starring Joe Manganiello. Rumor has it he might be the villain in the forthcoming Peacemaker series anyway...

Honestly surprised this hasn’t been pushed back again. The reported $165M production budget seems low given the scale of the story and the depth of the cast involved and Villeneuve has already said the simultaneous streaming on HBO Max - and attendant piracy - will basically make it impossible to be a financial success.

Disagree re. Guardians of the Galaxy. The 1990 reboot was *huge* and made Jim Valentino such a star that he was later invited to join Image. If you were a kid actively collecting comics that year, you were buying/reading Guardians of the Galaxy alongside McFarlane's Spidey, Ghost Rider, & The New Warriors.

Which goes exactly to a large reason why the first Suicide Squad film sucked. And yes - I read the bulk of the '80s Suicide Squad series and the first year or so of the New 52 version. As for "gatekeeping on a comic book message board" it's hard to compete with Bosco, who publishes roughly 20% of the posts in this little corner of the board - and woe be unto anyone with the audacity to disagree with him. God forbid we call out the bad comic book movies (be they Marvel or DC) when they're bad. As comics fans, we deserve far better than what we got with David Ayer's Suicide Squad film. And we finally did - with Gunn's version.