CHUD NUMBERS: Box Office Discussion Thread - Page 314

 

Nope.  We've had terrible shooting incidents for as long as film has existed (and long before that).  If people aren't going, it's because they are simply not interested in the film (or how it was marketed).  On-screen violence has nothing to do with it.

 

 

Calm down, buddy!  Conan could very well get canned (I doubt it, probably just get a lower budget), but Terminator 5 will happen regardless.  The question is whether or not they will go out of their way to get Arnold for it.

 

As for Finke, the comeback might be seen as a joke, but so is she.

 

 

 

Exactly.  The former is quite likely (and if not that, then Battle Angel) and QT has already expressed a desire to work with him before.

 

 

Unless the brakes are immediately pumped on Conan (which is possible), it's gonna happen.  It's due to shoot this fall.  Terminator 5 will happen regardless, Arnold or not.  There's no way Megan Ellison is going to pop for those rights and not do anything with them.

 

 

I think people have convinced themselves it will tank simply because they want it to bomb so badly.  It could disappoint, at least in the eyes of the studio, but I severely doubt it will be a huge bomb.

 

 

This.  In Verbinski I trust.

 

 

Now this I can agree with everyone on.  Pirates 5 will undoubtedly make less domestically than Pirates 4.  Problem is it will still probably make enough worldwide to easily guarantee a sixth film.

 

 

John Dies At The End is already on VOD, so have at it!  Elysium comes out in March, I believe, and Gravity hits screens this fall.

 

And now to rain on your parade.  Inherent Vice merely SHOOTS this year (if all goes well).  It will be a 2014 release.

 

 

 

Eh, not really. Let's wait to see the actual performance before calling something racist now. Did you see The Brave? Depp doesn't strike me as the type going out of his way to insult native americans. 

 

 

Rango was a big hit?  If it was made for half its budget, maybe.

 

 

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=rango.htm

An animated Western version of Chinatown aimed at adults made over $100m domestically. Yeah, I'm calling that a hit.

It also won Verbinski an Oscar. That's a win, no matter how you slice it.

So, I didn't mean to shit talk Elysium. Now granted, thus far it sounds very District 9ish, but even if that ends up being the case, I am kinda juiced for it and quite optimistic about what it will end up being. That and Gravity both sound deeply intriguing. Earlier, I had mentally confused it with Oblivion, which, eww.

Point still stands though. I think I'm more excited for more of The Hobbit than most of these things. Not the case last year.

I think the LONE RANGER will be okay. Worst case it's another PRINCE OF PERSIA, the best case is it could surprise us all an be a real hit. As people say Verbinski has real talent.

 

I also don't think it's really a Western - at least in the eyes of the movie-going public - so I don't think we have to worry about that curse. If we're bracketting it into film genres it's more sensible to put it as a pulp adventure along the lines of PIRATES, ZORRO, PRINCE OF PERSIA etc than a western like DJANGO, TRUE GRIT, 3:10 TO YUMA etc. And I think the public will see that.

THE LONE RANGER is sitting in that precarious place where world of mouth will carry it or not. If it's good it'll do well, if it is mediocre or worse it'll underperform. Very few properties are critic proof and THE LONE RANGER is nowhere near that status, but it has stars and a decent director so if it turns out to be a fun time at the theater, people will go. 

 

Good point on that.  I should say I don't think he's going out of his way to insult Native Americans, but that his Tonto is still looks pretty damn insulting.  Probably because Depp don't care.

Lone Ranger has a couple things going for it.  I think most everyone has a vague idea of the property--good guy cowboy wears a mask and has a sidekick--but there hasn't been a definitive version in so long that the character has no baggage.  More pre-Banderas Zorro than pre-Keaton/Bale Batman or pre-Routh Superman.  Also, I think the general public inherently senses that Johnny Depp does "one for them" (Pirates, AiW) then "one for him" (Dark Shadows, Sweeny Todd, his Hunter Thompson films).  This feels like "one for them," and those tend to be the blockbusters.  And I realize he's been largely hidden in the advertising so far, but Armie Hammer looks like a movie star--he feels like he's a People cover away from blowing up into the next big thing, and this will probably be his biggest/last chance for that.

Question: Do the Kids Today still identify the William Tell Overture as the Lone Ranger Theme?

 

I feel that the character has largely fallen off the pop-culture map.

 

I suspect most kids today would answer that: Do I identify the what with who?

That has been my experience with the Kids Today in my orbit.

One hit movie can change all that around. Kids today didn't know about Captain Kirk and Spock either until J J Abram's blockbuster. 

 

They really need to get off our lawns.

I know plenty of kis and twenty-something's who have never seen Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Indy is a much more prominent figure in pop culture than Lone Ranger. This movie is going to need a lot more than nostalgia to make bank.

This weekend looks like one big nothing. HANSEL AND GRETEL looks terrible (and reportedly terrible is an understatement) and PARKER looks like a throwaway Statham actioner. How are they tracking?

Hansel and Gretel use breadcrumbs.

Box office is pretty dead until A Good Day to Die Hard opens (the first Die Hard not to open sometime during summer). Live Free or Die Hard opened to 33 M so I assume this'll open around there.

What the hell is Movie 43?  I mean, I know what it is, but I still don't think I understand?

A Kentucky Fried Fuck You to cinemagoers.

That bad, huh? I was hoping there would at least some decent laughs in it.

Parker will do Statham numbers which is like 7to 12 million, and it'll leave the rest of us scratching our heads as to why Statham is still an active leading man.

 

7-12 million is better than Schwarzenegger numbers, at this point.

I have a weird feeling Hansel and Gretel will do okay.  It looks like the right kind of horrible.  Abraham Lincoln:Vampire Hunter numbers maybe?

 

Yeah but when Schwarzenegger was at Statham's point in his career, he just released True Lies. Statham will be hoping to have Last Stand Schwarzenegger numbers when he's 65 and not DTV numbers.

 

Fuck you with your smarts and common sense!

Which is what the marketing has been doing so far as none of the trailers/posters are selling it on nostalgia for babyboomers. It's being sold as a Pirates of the Caribbean Western which is probably the smart way of doing it.

Another 89% drop for TEXAS CHAINSAW 3D, which has been a fun film to follow. It needs to somehow manage another $800k in order to match FRIDAY THE 13TH 09's ridiculously terrible 1.6x OW-to-domestic-gross multiplier.

SKYFALL is now the 8th Top Grossing film worldwide.

Also Pi crossed £100m US and will probably finish $550m worldwide, which is pretty good. The Hobbit should hit $300m in the states eventually but 1 billion worldwide's probably not happening unless it blows up in China or something.

Read somewhere that DC is watching the MAN OF STEEL grosses closely, as to whether to proceed with JUSTICE LEAGUE.

 

So whats the magic number they're looking for here. $800-900 Million worldwide? 1 Billion seems like a stretch to me.

They'd be doing well to get anywhere near $800m worldwide given that the last Superman did less than half of that.

 

Must be frustrating to be in charge of the DC movies. They can see an Avengers-sized pot o' gold somewhere at the end of the Justice League rainbow but they just don't know how to get to it. The timing's all wrong - Nolanbats is over, Green Lantern's a punchline, Superman's a big question mark.

I think MAN OF STEEL will be lucky to hit the $700 Million mark.

 

As for the Marvel "Phase 2" films, the usual $450-$550 Million worldwide for the sequels?

I bet the new Iron Man hits 700 at least. That ones the victory lap.

Yeah, there is no way that it and the other Marvel sequels don't benefit from THE AVENGERS.  If IRON MAN 3 is as good as it should be with Shane Black's involvement, it should play like gangbusters. 

 

I just wish Joe Johnston was directing CAPTAIN AMERICA 2.  He nailed the first one.

Iron Man 3 is going to get a boost from the Super Bowl advertisement too.

Edited by MrSaxon - 1/30/13 at 12:01pm

I agree and i disagree with you. I think a realistic number for MAN OF STEEL performing well is 250m domestic and 600-650 worldwide. But 450-550m worldwide for the 'Phase 2' sequels, "Iron Man 3" & "Thor TDW" are both going to top that easily, and i know you're certainly not lumping "Avengers 2" in that category which would be absolutely insane thinking on your part.

I think "Iron Man 3" has a shot a reaching 1 billion worldwide. It's the biggest solo franchise for Marvel Studios coming off the outrageous success of "The Avengers", if the film is as good as it looks it's going to be the biggest hit yet in the 'Iron Man' series.

I think that IRON MAN 3 has a shot at hitting THE AVENGERS numbers if the word is decent on it.  Yes, I'll go there.

That's quite a high stake you're placing there, Judas. I think Iron Man 3 will do well but I don't think it'll capture the zeitgeist in the same way that The Avengers did.

Iron Man 3 would have to basically double IM2's total, right?  Yeah, that's not gonna happen.  Avengers or no Avengers.

I think that people are really, really wanting a sequel to THE AVENGERS yesterday, and IRON MAN 3 is going to be the closest thing that they're going to get for a long time.  If the movie is at least 'good', it's gonna do huge numbers.  It won't beat THE AVENGERS, but I betcha it comes within spitting distance of it and comes in at the #4 all time position.

By the same token, though, IM2 was lousy and I think people felt it--part of the reason it did well was that it came in a particularly crappy early summer season. If there'd been no Avengers last year I don't think people would be particularly excited for this one. Not that it would bomb, of course, but I think Avengers really revved up interest in the character.

 

I remain convinced that Thor 2 is going to be the surprising hit. Between the Avengers buzz and the fact that this looks way cooler and more epic, I think people are pretty jazzed. The one I'm not 100% sure will benefit is Captain America 2, which is a shame. Cap really needs to be in the foreground of Avengers 2, and I feel like his role was undermined in the first movie because his movie was the one that kind of sputtered and Marvel was leery of selling to foreign markets, etc. Having another so-so entry under his belt can't help that.

As a movie Captain America was better than Thor but I think people like the Thor character better than Captain America which is why the sequel might gross more than Cap. It's the problem Man of Steel will be facing, today audiences like to cheer the "complicated" bad boy hero ie. Iron Man, Batman and not the "bland" perfect hero.

 

But neither Thor or Captain America sequels will even come close to Iron Man 3 for the simple reason of Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark. He's one of the big reasons for that gigantic gross of Avengers and why Iron Man 2, even as a lesser movie, grossed just as much as the first film. 

 

Man of Steel still has potential for a big worldwide gross. The last Superman movie grossed under 200 M overseas but that was in 2006. Batman Begins grossed even less than that in 2005 but then Dark Knight exploded with over 450 M overseas. Man of Steel has the potential to be The Dark Knight of Superman.

 

Didn't the success of Captain America disprove that? And without taking the 'darker' tone apparently favored by Man of Steel?

 

They're certainly going to market it as such. I think the problem might be that Superman is no one's favorite hero anymore. I guess if Man of Steel is great, they could potentially change that.

 

I think that's gonna be tough though. More of a liability than Snyder or Cavill is that the character no longer holds the cultural cachet or relevance he used to. I think it's more than popular trends too. For starters, he's in many ways the most stripped down of superheroes. He's super, and he's a man, sort of. His power is he has every power. That's effective when you're introducing the concept of superheroes, but I think we all more or less get their deal at this point. The components of his character are kind of passe too. His costume is somehow old fashioned in a way his contemporaries' costumes aren't, the Daily Planet is a print newspaper, for hell's sake, and frankly, we're more likely to gravitate towards a smart, self possessed, antiheroic Lex Luthor at this point. 

 

Plus, his big weakness isn't a humanizing character flaw, it's a magic rock that makes him tired.

 

I think for this to really work, it has to be a fairly radical reinterpretation of the character and what he can be about. Far more so than Batman required. The ads don't suggest that so much as the old stuff with a modern aesthetic. And of course, it also has to be very good. I don't think it will bomb, but I'd be surprised if it hit 300. As I've seen articulated here, I kind of hope it makes 230 or so and Warners just has no idea what to do next.

Man of Steel may have the potential to be The Dark Knight of Superman, but that doesn't mean that it should.

 

Why must they keep making Superman movies so hapless, morose, and boring lately?

 

I know the original post is about box office potential, but if they go for The Dark Knight flavor with Superman, I don't see it making Dark Knight money.
 

Man Of Steel is the first Superman movie I'm willing to see at the cinema (I was too young when the Christopher Reeve movies appeared in the theater) so they must doing something right. I like the redesign of his costume and I'm also looking forward to an exploration of the character himself, and why he does what he does. It also appears to feature action scenes that don't simply involve Superman lifting larger things as the movie progresses. Unless the reviews are terrible, it more than likely has my money.

It has mine too, but I don't count. I've seen Mama and The Last Stand. I'm sure it will make 150 or so simply by being a big superhero-shaped summer movie-thing, but does that character resonate in the general public anymore? More than, say, Thor?

MrSaxon, I get a...Starman vibe from this...Super...Man film!  He is an alien hunted by the military, on the run with his gal pal, and he performs...Super Heroics, whilist trying to convince the world he is a hero.  I hope it is not a...Dour film.  I...Loved the first...2 Superman films!