Justice League - restarting the thread 1 1

[Bosco685]

Justice League comes in slightly higher than estimated ($15.4M to 16.5M). Better it come in on the high-side of the range.

[Bosco685]

FORBES.COM: 'Justice League' Zooms Past $565 Million Worldwide

Quote

The general narrative thus far for Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s Justice League movie is a slightly complicated one. In a vacuum, a $94 million debut weekend, a $197m 17-day domestic total and a $567m global cume in just under three weeks would be relatively impressive. And those overseas numbers are halfway decent. But Justice League was treated not as a trilogy capper like WB's The Matrix Revolutions or a franchise starter like Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, but rather a grand culmination of a five-year plan and the bedrock of an entire franchise if not an entire studio.

 

Justice League earned $16.58 million in its third weekend of domestic release, a drop of 60% that brought its 17-day total to $197.336m thus far. For comparison, that's a healthier drop than Lionsgate's Hunger Games sequels and WB's later Harry Potter sequels, and (oddly enough) right in line with the last two Summit/Lionsgate Twilight Saga sequels (-60%) and WB's Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (-59%). The Fantastic Beasts comparison is the one that WB wants, as if it continues on this path then it might just flirt with $250m domestic.

 

That would be something of a moral victory, as would a global total that gets anywhere near $700 million. But that's becoming increasingly unlikely, even as the film continues to nearly double its domestic totals outside of North America. The Zack Snyder/Joss Whedon superhero sequel crossed $500m worldwide on Tuesday and now sits with $567m global. To wit, it has $370m overseas (just about what Captain America: The First Avenger and Batman Begins made in total), including $98m in China, just past Wonder Woman and Batman v Superman.

 

So, yeah, it will cross $600 million global before the end and it may end up closer to $650m than $625m. But the numbers are just too small even with (thus far) halfway decent legs.

It's sounding like WB is going to eat $50M minimum, unless they change something up.

[jsilverjanet]

If I wasn’t planning on seeing blade runner on Tuesday I’d go back and watch it again

[drotto]

13 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

FORBES.COM: 'Justice League' Zooms Past $565 Million Worldwide

It's sounding like WB is going to eat $50M minimum, unless they change something up.

All comes back to controlling the budget.  If this was a $150 million movie people would be dancing for joy. A massive problem with JL has turned out to be the ballooning budget.  It was a failure of management to keep costs down, and partially the director who tends to be overambitious, and is poor at self editing.  The studios (all of them) need to establish somewhat stronger guidelines, and say the movie needs to be about 2 hours long and needs to hit a $200 million budget. Then you avoid what appears to have been a piece of the problem with both BvS and JL.  A director creating a 3 1/2 hr plus movie then going ahead and shooting a 3 1/2 hour movie. Knowing that a lot of that is going to be very expensive footage that has no hope of being used.  That is tons of wasted money, and then leads to big problems in the editing room.  How do you cram 3 1/2 hours of story into a now mandated 2 hours while maintaining a cohesive story, without plot holes, and satisfying multi character arcs? That is a very hard job to accomplish. It shows a management failure at multiple levels, and sets a film up for failure.

 

IF everyone was on the same page from the start, so many issues could have been avoided.  

[Bosco685]

13 minutes ago, drotto said:

All comes back to controlling the budget.  If this was a $150 million movie people would be dancing for joy. A massive problem with JL has turned out to be the ballooning budget.  It was a failure of management to keep costs down, and partially the director who tends to be overambitious, and is poor at self editing.  The studios (all of them) need to establish somewhat stronger guidelines, and say the movie needs to be about 2 hours long and needs to hit a $200 million budget. Then you avoid what appears to have been a piece of the problem with both BvS and JL.  A director creating a 3 1/2 hr plus movie then going ahead and shooting a 3 1/2 hour movie. Knowing that a lot of that is going to be very expensive footage that has no hope of being used.  That is tons of wasted money, and then leads to big problems in the editing room.  How do you cram 3 1/2 hours of story into a now mandated 2 hours while maintaining a cohesive story, without plot holes, and satisfying multi character arcs? That is a very hard job to accomplish. It shows a management failure at multiple levels, and sets a film up for failure.

 

IF everyone was on the same page from the start, so many issues could have been avoided.  

The budget would be 'a' problem. Executive meddling would be a chief problem. What do you think the root cause was of additional costs to perform two months of reshoots?

[Bosco685]

International Box Office is probably what is going to move this forward enough to break even, or come close to it.

[drotto]

19 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

The budget would be 'a' problem. Executive meddling would be a chief problem. What do you think the root cause was of additional costs to perform two months of reshoots?

Total disconnect between the management and the person they hired to make the movie.  Management panics after BvS and massively second guesses themselves.  The "executive" cut back in February worries them even more. So they attempt massive changes in something that is 80% done, but since they have lost confidence in the director, instead of sitting him down working with him to make changes and possibly delaying the films release, they clean house as much as they can.  They hire Whedon thinking he made Avengers awesome, so he can salvage this movie (I mean salvage from the managements point of view).  But they hire a director who's style is almost diametrically opposed to Snyder, which in the end creates more problems.  Then they set an almost impossible time schedule that does not leave enough time to do rewrites, filming, editing, and CGI that is polished enough for a movie of this caliber.

 

All this blows up an already bloated budget that was partially Snyder's fault because in typical Snyder fashion he is attempting to do too much with the story, approved an overly ambitious --script, and shot lots of footage that had no chance of making it into the final cut.  I believe Snyder had the best of intentions, and was doing what he thought was best. This makes it very hard and expensive to put the movie together, as was seen in BvS. So he is partially responsible, but I believe the majority of the blame lies with management.  They were the ones that hired him to start, set the budget, approved the --script, approved any additional funds, and then when things seemed to be going south just compounded the problems.

 

My personal theory on what happened behind the scenes.  This is all me, but seems like a reasonable course of events based on what has leaked out.

Edited December 3, 2017 by drotto

[Bosco685]

5 minutes ago, drotto said:

My personal theory on what happened behind the scenes.  This is all me, but seems like a reasonable course of events based on what has leaked out.

Agreed on your summary. Though it pretty much was a restatement of everything that came out between the Wrap article and the Superhero Talk Site.

Again, a shame. If the current cut in the theater is considered fun and entertaining by quite a few, I wonder what the original cut would have been like.

[Bosco685]

They shorted the Kevin Smith review of all the changed and deleted scenes to just that section.

 

[Gatsby77]

In on of his pieces last week Forbes' Scott Mendelson noted the irony that the whole DC connected universe came directly out of Man of Steel's "disappointing" box office performance of $291 million domestic / $668 million worldwide.

(Particularly coming just a year after The Dark Knight Rises' $448 million domestic / $1.08 billion worldwide.)

So Man of Steel 2 was scrapped in favor of BvS as DC decided to go all-in on Batman and lay the groundwork for a DCEU Justice League.

Now there's a chance that Justice League may not even hit Man of Steel's $668 million worldwide.

Further, even if it hits $250 million domestic / $700 million worldwide, it will be far less (as in, negatively) profitable for Warner Bros than Man of Steel.

Remember, the domestic/international split matters too -- $300 million domestic / $700 million total is far better than $225 domestic / $750 million total.

Edited December 8, 2017 by Gatsby77

[Bosco685]

' In one of his pieces last week Forbes' Scott Mendelson noted the irony that the whole DC connected universe came directly out of Man of Steel's "disappointing" box office performance of $291 million domestic / $668 million worldwide. '

It did 3x production budget. I wouldn't call that 'disappointing'.

 

Edited December 3, 2017 by Bosco685

[Gatsby77]

47 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

' In one of his pieces last week Forbes' Scott Mendelson noted the irony that the whole DC connected universe came directly out of Man of Steel's "disappointing" box office performance of $291 million domestic / $668 million worldwide. '

It did 3x production budget. I wouldn't call that 'disappointing'.

 

You're not wrong, but the fact remains that Warner Bros. opted to scrap MoS 2 in favor of BvS specifically because of its lackluster box office take.

And, to quote Mr. Mendelson:

"If you recall, Warner Bros. began on this path, with Man of Steel 2 becoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, after Man of Steel "only" made $668 million worldwide. And now Justice League will indeed struggle to match that global total while not coming anywhere close to the first Superman movie's $291m domestic cume."

"...And yeah, as shocking as it is in hindsight, we have a situation where the studio threw Batman into the Man of Steel sequel and turned it into a backdoor Justice League pilot only to now have a Justice League that will probably make less than Man of Steel.

The only thing more ironic than Wonder Woman outgrossing Justice League would be Man of Steel outgrossing Justice League, since that film's "meh" reception is what got this crazy ball rolling in the first place. Well, that and the skewed notion of the DC Films brand being saved, not by Batman and Superman, but by Wonder Woman and Aquaman." 

Edited December 3, 2017 by Gatsby77

[drotto]

1 hour ago, Gatsby77 said:

In one of his pieces last week Forbes' Scott Mendelson noted the irony that the whole DC connected universe came directly out of Man of Steel's "disappointing" box office performance of $291 million domestic / $668 million worldwide.

(Particularly coming just a year after The Dark Knight Rises' $448 million domestic / $1.08 billion worldwide.)

So Man of Steel 2 was scrapped in favor of BvS as DC decided to go all-in on Batman and lay the groundwork for a DCEU Justice League.

Now there's a chance that Justice League may not even hit Man of Steel's $668 million worldwide.

Further, even if it hits $250 million domestic / $700 million worldwide, it will be far less (as in, negatively) profitable for Warner Bros than Man of Steel.

Remember, the domestic/international split matters too -- $300 million domestic / $700 million total is far better than $225 domestic / $750 million total.

Where the box office comes from matters.  I am having problems finding the exact numbers right now, but I remember reading that Hollywood keeps like 54% of the domestic box office, but it only keeps on average 35% of the international box office.  This is where the more lopsided divides between international vs. domestic becomes problematic.  Thus WW probably made WB just as much money as Guardians made Disney despite GoTG having a higher take.

Edited December 3, 2017 by drotto

[Bosco685]

2 minutes ago, drotto said:

Where the box office comes from matters.  I am having problems finding the exact numbers right now, but I remember reading that Hollywood keeps like 54% of the domestic box office, but it only keeps on average 35% of the international box office.  This is where the more lopsided divides between international vs. domestic becomes problematic.  Thus WW probably made WB just as much money as Guardians made Disney despite GoTG having a higher take.

Domestic = 50% on average (depending on the movie, some will be higher like 65% on Star Wars Last Jedi)

International = 40%

China = 25%

[drotto]

1 minute ago, Bosco685 said:

Domestic = 50% on average (depending on the movie, some will be higher like 65% on Star Wars Last Jedi)

International = 40%

China = 25%

Thanks!!  My point is valid.  Two movies making the same total box office will be better for the studio if the divide favors domestic over international.

[Bosco685]

6 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

You're not wrong, but the fact remains that Warner Bros. opted to scrap MoS 2 in favor of BvS specifically because of its lackluster box office take.

And, to quote Mr. Mendelson:

"If you recall, Warner Bros. began on this path, with Man of Steel 2 becoming Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, after Man of Steel "only" made $668 million worldwide. And now Justice League will indeed struggle to match that global total while not coming anywhere close to the first Superman movie's $291m domestic cume."

"...And yeah, as shocking as it is in hindsight, we have a situation where the studio threw Batman into the Man of Steel sequel and turned it into a backdoor Justice League pilot only to now have a Justice League that will probably make less than Man of Steel.

The only thing more ironic than Wonder Woman outgrossing Justice League would be Man of Steel outgrossing Justice League, since that film's "meh" reception is what got this crazy ball rolling in the first place. Well, that and the skewed notion of the DC Films brand being saved, not by Batman and Superman, but by Wonder Woman and Aquaman." 

I wonder if he is confused. DC never announced a MoS 2. WB asked what he wanted to do next, and they announced BvS as the next step.

Warner Bros. announces Batman/Superman movie for 2015 (2013 article - same year as Man of Steel release)

 

[Bosco685]

2 minutes ago, drotto said:

Thanks!!  My point is valid.  Two movies making the same total box office will be better for the studio if the divide favors domestic over international.

Why do you think it was a big deal to WB Wonder Woman did over $400M domestic? That's a huge sum to also have the larger revenue share.

[drotto]

2 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Why do you think it was a big deal to WB Wonder Woman did over $400M domestic? That's a huge sum to also have the larger revenue share.

It is also why some of these recent movie like Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean may not be quite the success they may seem on the surface. I know the foreign BO has become way more important in the last few years, but chasing over seas success or counting on over seas success to offset a domestic failure is not a viable long term strategy.

[Bosco685]

Just now, drotto said:

It is also why some of these recent movie like Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean may not be quite the success they may seem on the surface. I know the foreign BO has become way more important in the last few years, but chasing over seas success or counting on over seas success to offset a domestic failure is not a viable long term strategy.

Agreed! Although, what the studio sees is where growth is taking place. The bulk of that is at the international box office. So it's difficult to walk away from that chunk of the market.

[drotto]

6 minutes ago, Bosco685 said:

Agreed! Although, what the studio sees is where growth is taking place. The bulk of that is at the international box office. So it's difficult to walk away from that chunk of the market.

Plus much of the increase in domestic numbers (although small) is mainly from the increase in ticket prices, increased 3D showings, and IMAX, which have to this point offset an actual decrease in attendance. So the numbers for domestic are tentative because increasing revenue steam can only go so far to offset paying customers.