Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny buries the weekend box office, which is somehow disappointing
Dial Of Destiny opened to "only" $60 million, while The Flash falls further than ever
Aux News Jones
One of the reasons the WGA is currently on strike is that the streaming model for movies and TV shows is completely broken, but surely something about the theatrical model is broken as well if a new Indiana Jones movie opens at the top of the box office, $50 million ahead of anything else, and is still considered a disappointment. And yet, that’s what has happened to Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, which made $60 million, seems to have reasonably positive buzz, and yet Hollywood is like “blegh, what a bomb.”
It’s sort of hard to argue with that when you look at number two on the domestic charts, which is Across The Spider-Verse. It only made $11.5 million, but after five weeks, it has a total of $339 million. That’s pretty respectable. After that is Pixar’s Elemental, another disappointment, which made $11.3 million in its third week and has a total of $88 million. Wrapping up the top five are No Hard Feelings and Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, with the latter hitting $136 million, which seems pretty good (so it’s probably another stupid Hollywood disappointment).
Newcomer Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken leads off the bottom five, making only $5.2 million, followed by The Little Mermaid, The Flash (it still hasn’t crossed $100 million, which does truly seem disappointing), Asteroid City, and (somehow) Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3, which has been in the top 10 for nine weeks now.
The full top 10, courtesy of Box Office Mojo, is below.
- Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny
- Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
- Elemental
- No Hard Feelings
- Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts
- Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken
- The Little Mermaid
- The Flash
- Asteroid City
- Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 3
226 Comments
It’s disappointing because each of the films cited cost at least $200m and at least half as much again to market, and it looks like none of them will match that in grosses. But you decided not to mention that, for some reason.
Movie economics used to be that you made ten movies, and some of them would inevitably flop, but the rest would make enough to pay for everything. Then someone had the bright idea to only make the ones that make money, which works great until it doesn’t.
This is funny, but it’s also almost exactly what Zaslav actually says out loud. “Why don’t we make more of the stuff that makes money, and stop making the stuff that doesn’t make money?”
CEO of company’s natural believe they are the smartest people that can’t fail so it’s impossible for them to understand that with artistic products, be they movies, video games or written works, that the vast majority of what hits and what doesn’t comes down to luck. They truly believe they can just “make hits” as if every other CEO who came before them didn’t try to do just that.
When you start consolidating shit under a few companies, the money men get more and more control. Since the only thing a money man can do to influence a film/TV show/game/*insert media here* is decide how far to turn on the tap that controls money, welp, in order to put a bigger stamp on the project……except that tends to make things worse, because the more money they’ve got tied up in a project, the more conservative they are with creative decisions. It doesn’t because freeing – it becomes a millstone-shaped albatross.
Bingo!!
Translation: “Make more shitty House Hunters and Chip and Joanna TV”.David Zaslav has the imagination of a fucking potato. He has no taste, he has no appreciation of actual art or story. Even the CEO needs to have this. He is probably doing a great job at boosting revenue in the short run, but the degree to which he is homogenizing and ruining his various networks will have long term consequences. When you start cutting for profits, eventually you hit bone.
The other aspect of this is the loss of the home video market. Go check out Matt Damon’s “Hot Ones” episode. He lays it out so absurdly clearly. The loss of that income stream was massive.
The thing about that is, it doesn’t have to be a loss. Lots of people want their physical media back, especially now that streaming services are jettisoning whole series and movies.
As a physical media acolyte, I desperately want that to be true, but I don’t think it is. The vast majority of the public doesn’t care if something isn’t available on streaming, because there’s just SO MUCH ELSE to watch.
A few million die-hard aficianados does not even come close to replacing or mimicking the old home video market, which consisted of hundreds of millions of people renting and buying all kinds of movies and TV shows on VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray every single day. It’s not even remotely arguable.
Not even remotely true. Not the a lot part. There is not enough demand for any of this, let’s do this like we used to stuff people pleas for on the internet.
I would not be surprised at all if 10 years from now, the model is subscribe to Netflix for like $2/month, but then each title you watch is like $1 or TV series is like $3 or something like that. In other words, pay for each movie a la carte rather than the all-you-can watch model. It is not sustainable.
Part of that was how the movie industry use to work, and sort of still does. Theater chains would be required to run all of a studio’s product, even the cheaply made stuff that would likely bomb. You as a theater owner was unable to really cherry-pick. Additionally it was actually even worse further back when studios were more vertically integrated in the process.
I think that model is going to come back, honestly. Companies like Blumhouse already show that its still a perfectly reasonable business model.
It was probably a decade ago, but I remember Adam Savage saying that you could make a movie for $10mil or $100mil, but studios wouldn’t sign off an anything in between.I know that Michael Eisner catches a lot of shit (most of it deserved), but everybody forgets that his “singles and doubles” strategy saved Disney from a hostile takeover. Make a ton of cheap/modest movies staring TV stars or has-beens, and only one or two tentpoles in a year. The former can make a huge return off of a moderate box office take, and the latter have staying power because Disney. 1987 didn’t have an animated film, but “Ernest Goes to Camp,” “Adventures in Babysitting,” “Three Men and a Baby,” and “Good Morning, Vietnam” all made ~10x their production cost in theatres, nevermind the home video market.It’s why Blumhouse makes an assload of money on each film these days; dirt cheap to make, and if you throw enough movies out there then at least one will make it big.
Another Huge factor has to be the decline in DVD sales. You could have a ‘flop’ like “Dredd” that would hit the home video market then gather so many sales that there’s even now still talk of a sequel. The days of DVD sales granting ‘back end profits’ have gone away.Now we get a movie flop that gets streamed within a month of theatrical release, onto services many of us already have, to watch on nicer and nicer home theater systems, without paying the outrageous prices to justify how theaters depend on concessions because the studios cuts is just too great.Me? I still buy a select few DVDs – but I love BTS and Director’s Commentaries. I’m a dinosaur.
It is absurd that a dozen movies are made for $250million or more every year. They can’t all be runaway blockbusters. How do these executives keep their jobs when more than half tentpole movies lose scores of millions of dollars?
The plan used to be that the successes more than made up for the losses.Then the whole cinema-going paradigm changed and now thoses losses are mounting and the successes are fewer and much further apart.
This honestly feels a bit like a “pre-COVID blockbuster summer”.
Not just the cinema-going paradigm.It’s the fact that most of what is being produced is shite. Indiana Jones included now.
It depends on what their other revenue streams are. Disney has historically used movies to sell toys and park tickets. The goal is probably to sell Lego sets as much as it is to actually make people see the movie. There’s been reporting on Little Mermaid that the profit point was actually relatively low because of the ancillary revenues streams.
That might be true but no for-profit company is OK just making some profit. They’re all forecasting what they expect to make from every revenue stream and measuring performance based on that. And it would be hard to believe that Disney is OK with a potential nine-figure loss at the theaters from Indiana Jones, even if it does ultimately recoup that money from merchandising or parks.
Yes, of course, more money is good money to a for-profit. But some of the internal forecasting does reflect the ancillary revenue streams for the film and some of these disappointments are still making money.Deadline, for example, reported that Little Mermaid’s break even box office is $560 million theatrical because that number takes into account the budget minus expected residuals and then would have added into it $100 million in DVD/Digital purchases, $100 million in pay and free TV (as well as whatever Disney pays itself for Disney+), and an additional $80 million in international tv sales. This projection does not include toy and park sales. Are they likely looking at their formulas? Sure. But there’s a reason why Disney is not acting like the house is on fire as fast as news sites are. You can even look at Ant Man 3 that wasn’t the money maker they would have liked, but performed well for an Ant Man movie and did great on PVOD and continues to chart in streaming.
The overall point I am making is what you’re describing is not how for-profit, especially publicly-traded for-profit, companies operate – they are not satisfied with simply making a profit or breaking even. And they would have forecasted revenue from all of their segments to begin with so they’re not going to see merchandising or parks revenue as an unexpected boon either.Of course they won’t publicly panic over it as they have shareholders to consider, but I guarantee Disney isn’t happy with how Indiana Jones is doing or Ant-Man 3 doing significantly worse than Ant-Man 2 (or any other third installment in the MCU franchise). And it’s not even like there’s no examples of Disney or other studios taking action after underperforming films that still make money. Disney paused Star Wars movies after Episode IX despite all of them clearing $1B. Sony rebooted Spider-Man with the MCU after TASM2 despite both TASM movies making $700m+. Disney recently announced they’d be slowing down MCU releases and there’s been rumors that Jeff Loveness (writer of Ant-Man 3) is no longer going to be writing The Kang Dynasty.
I agree with you that Disney is probably a lot more worried than they’re publicly letting on, but I think they paused the SW films after Solo, not RoS. It is telling that they haven’t greenlit anything since Solo came out, and their biggest idea since is another Rey trilogy.
Looks like you’re right, it was announced after Solo disappointed at box office.
Because Rey sells toys, costumes and merch well.If anything, their takeaway seems to be to focus on the kids – This is evident in Young Jedi Adventures targeting toddlers and a Rey trilogy that plays to pre-teen girls who really like the Rey movies.
Crazy to think that Disney has to learn to focus on kids, but here we are.
I mean, in fairness, kids don’t have a lot of spending money so when you can get adults to do the buying, you don’t really need to think about kids as much. It’s only when adults are less interested or stuck in the past with your IP that the children become the future.
But what I’m saying is that it IS how Disney functioned pre-Covid. It has been how they functioned since the parks opened. The only reason that they are in such a weak position right now is that Covid closed the parks for such a long chunk of time. To be clear, I also said break-even box office – the point where the ancillaries would equal profit because the box office covered the cost.Disney paused Star Wars and is now actively working on a trilogy involving the same character that was central to Episode IX – Not surprisingly because Rey toys/costumes/merch sell well with young girls.You are also comparing pre-Covid to post-Covid box office which only highlights that theaters are in the most trouble of anyone. The box office is still down 25% to pre-Covid numbers. That’s a concern for all studios, but I have doubts it actually means any major creative pivot is coming from anyone. I think if anything, they are weighing how to release things, not how to create them (for better or worse).It’s easy to say the MCU is dying or struggling or what have you, but in 2022, Disney had 4 of the top 10 movies, 3 of which were MCU releases including Love and Thunder which creatively was a mess. Right now, they have 3 of the top 10 (Guardians at 2, Little Mermaid at 5, and Ant Man at 6) with plenty of releases still to come. The current #1 movie (Super Mario) is still below where Lion King finished in 2019 despite inflation (I’m not counting Endgame which was #1 in 2019 since I would consider that an anomaly).
I’m a little confused by your points. Yes, Disney has always had a strategy to find synergies between all of their different offerings but what are examples of them supporting movie franchises that are performing mediorically? They were kings of the US box office pre-COVID from 2016-19, often making $1B more than their closest competitor in that stretch.I also don’t agree with your explanation for why they’re in a weak position now. Disney reported their Parks, Experiences, and Products segment had total revenue of $28.7B and operating income of $7.9B in their 2022 fiscal year. Their 2019 fiscal year results (pre-COVID) was $26.2B revenue and $6.7B operating income. In other words, they’re doing better there than they were pre-COVID.The reason they are in a weaker position is because their Media and Entertainment Distribution segment has faltered, in part due to the investment Disney has made in streaming services like D+, in part due to revenue from traditional networks faltering a bit, and in part due to their studio business not doing as well. They can’t produce the financial results investors expect with only Parks.
They are not doing better than they were pre-Covid because 1) they have to make up lost revenue from the long closure (of parks and theaters) and 2) it doesn’t look like you adjusted those pre-Covid numbers for inflation. So if those 2019 numbers were adjusted for inflations. $26.2 billion in 2019 is comparable to $31.73 billion in 2023. $28.7 billion in 2023 dollars adjusted back to 2019 would only be $23.7 billion. So no, they are not doing better. By comparison, the total Disney box office in 2019 (which includes Endgame) was $11 billion ($13.3 billion adjusted for inflation). So box office take has been less than half of what the parks take in before subtracting out production costs. Movies feed the parks. The parks is where they make up their losses and always has been since they’ve existed.The box office is down 25% despite higher priced tickets nationally. The number of tickets being sold is lower. Most of the movies being released right now were conceived and budgeted pre-Covid like Elemental back when making a billion a movie was reasonable.. Indiana Jones is a huge disappointment, but if we look just at the 3 day – not the 5 day holiday weekend – It made $60 million domestically. By comparison, Elemental is #2 with $12 million. The only other new release made $5 million. Disney has 4 of the top 10 movies including one movie who has been in the top 10 for 9 weeks. Disney right now has about 97 million tickets sold year and 22% of the box office to date with 7 movies in release (including only movies released under the Disney banner – not the subsidiary studios). They are number 2 for market share behind Universal which has about 102 million tickets sold to date with 5 more movies in release. Sony is 3rd currently, but with 10 more movies in release. (Data all from The Numbers) So again – my point is – that the box office sucks and week over week it highlights that comparing it to 2019 or before is an impossible feat. Yeah, there was a great period of time where Disney was making $1 billion a movie. That was pre-Covid. No studio is managing that now. So studios need to not only make better movies (cos let’s face it – crappy, mediocre movies have always managed to make money), they need to take a hard look at the box office and the release model.
They are not doing better than they were pre-Covid because 1) they have to make up lost revenue from the long closure (of parks and theaters) and 2) it doesn’t look like you adjusted those pre-Covid numbers for inflation.1) No they don’t. They have a strong balance sheet and shareholders are going to focus on the future, not dwell on the past.2) Fair that I didn’t adjust for inflation. But you also seem to have applied inflation as of the current date to financials from mid-2022 (which is when Disney’s 2022 fiscal year applies) and seemingly aren’t accounting for the facts that a) increase in price to a tangible good typically leads to decrease in demand and b) the same inflationary rates apply to other Disney segments.Fact is Parks is not the segment which has the drastic decrase in profit. Most consider parks to be a plus for Disney.The box office is down 25% despite higher priced tickets nationally. The number of tickets being sold is lower. Most of the movies being released right now were conceived and budgeted pre-Covid like Elemental back when making a billion a movie was reasonable..Yes total box office is down and some movies made with budgets approved pre-Covid will look bad. But I feel like my original point has been lost which is just that I don’t think Disney is happy with losing money on movies with pure theatrical revenue just because its a massive company with multiple segments that can recoup those lost dollars. Nothing you have said convinces me otherwise.
yeah disney is so big these guys may as well work for different companies. i’m sure the toy guys are happy that the movies are selling toys, but the movie guys aren’t.maybe the guys at the absolute highest level are able to reconcile it on and overall level, but yeah, if i’m in the movie division i’m sweating!
If the movie division is sweating without reckoning with the fact that the 2016 – 2019 box office is gone then they are really in trouble. The next pivot isn’t just “make good movies.” The next pivot needs to look at what to do when ticket sales are failing every studio. Maybe it’s PVOD, maybe it’s fewer releases with more PVOD mixed in. But if I’m the movie division guy, a good chunk of the numbers are in my favor relative to the rest of the box office – Disney is #2 for market share domestically with significant releases still to come out this year. The studio ahead of them is ahead of them by just 1% with 5 more movies already in release.
Do you think financials exist in a vacuum and those losses just don’t matter now? They surely do. They ate away at what was banked and rainy day funds at all businesses. Have you ever worked for a business where you think the previous years financials don’t matter? You’re acting like inflation doesn’t impact the spending power of those profits – it does.I don’t think they’re happy losing money, but whether you want to accept it or not, Disney has seen movies since at least Michael Eisner’s tenure as the means to feeding the parks, the tv channels and the merch sales. Parks have been their largest chunk of revenue for years. If theatrical loss was being made up elsewhere, they would not care. And I’m talking about Iger and the C-Suite here. I’m not talking about the heads of individual divisions or individual filmmakers. I’m talking about what the corporation prioritizes.
Do you think financials exist in a vacuum and those losses just don’t matter now? They surely do. They ate away at what was banked and rainy day funds at all businesses. Have you ever worked for a business where you think the previous years financials don’t matter?Why exactly do you think they matter to Disney specifically? Disney still has a healthy balance sheet and were back to being profitable after one year of losses. Their rainy day fund is still intact. And their stock price has gone up and down primarily based on the performance of D+, hence why they actually hit all-time highs during the middle of the pandemic. And shareholders making decisions now are going to do so based on future growth.And to be clear, I’m not saying prior year financials have no value. Every company uses them for comparitive analysis and trend reporting. But I don’t think any financial leader dwells on the prior year once it’s over, thinking they have to make up losses, especially not losses due to something entirely out of their control like a pandemic. Every financial leader I have worked with in my 15+ years implementing financial software for Fortune 500 companies has been forward-looking.I don’t think they’re happy losing money, but whether you want to accept it or not, Disney has seen movies since at least Michael Eisner’s tenure as the means to feeding the parks, the tv channels and the merch sales. Parks have been their largest chunk of revenue for years. If theatrical loss was being made up elsewhere, they would not care.I have never disagreed with you that their strategy is to make money through all of their different segments. But I do disagree on the last piece. I work for a very large company with many different regions and segments and we often are in a position where our overall financials are good, or even great, but one segment is doing better than the other. It’s not all hunky-dory for the folks in the underperforming segment. And yes, our CEO and CFO have to answer questions about those underperforming segments because we report our financials at that level and analysts are quick to jump on any sign of weakness. And the same is true for Disney as well – see Iger commenting on the state of the MCU after Ant-Man 3 came out or him talking about the disappointment of Solo leading to them shelving Star Wars movies for a while:https://deadline.com/2023/03/disney-star-wars-marvel-ceo-bob-iger-1235283774/If your point is that the sky wouldn’t be falling for Disney as a whole because they made less from studios – I agree with that and was never trying to make that point that it would be. But this idea that they wouldn’t care about their studios business failing to hit forecasts is not in line with what I’ve seen out of any large corporation I’ve worked for or provided consulting services to.
Shelving Star Wars to then go on and greenlight a Rey trilogy because it sells more merch in Disney Parks to young children who don’t care about Han Solo. And they shelved them for SO LONG that we’ve had how many tv shows in that time and already they’ve announced a new trilogy? The box office sucks across the board. Disney is still dominating in the current box office – #2 for market share with 5 fewer releases than the #1 spot holder and the difference is only 1 percentage point. So again it all comes back to the same thing – Is it the movies or is it the death knell of the box office? And again, at the end of the day, if Disney can make up film revenue in the parks, that will most likely be their strategy (as it always has been) because the answer to shareholders is “No one is making more money for the same amount of output than we are. The box office is dying but x, y, and z properties bump up park revenue to compensate.”Their most profitable asset is the parks and experiences (which included the cruises and such). There is no way of looking at the financials and seeing otherwise.
Shelving Star Wars to then go on and greenlight a Rey trilogy because it sells more merch in Disney Parks to young children who don’t care about Han Solo. And they shelved them for SO LONG that we’ve had how many tv shows in that time and already they’ve announced a new trilogy?Uh…they haven’t announced a Rey trilogy? They announced one new movie featuring Rey and two separate movies that have nothing to do with her. One is from Filoni and will serve as a wrap up to his continuity and the other is a movie that takes place way before the Skywalker saga by James Mangold.Of course, Disney has announced several other Star Wars projects like a trilogy from the GoT producers, a trilogy from Rian, a Rogue Squadron movie from Patty Jenkins, a Taiki Waititi movie. None of those have come to fruition so who knows if any of the other ones they just announced will or not. Will believe it when they start filming something. Earliest they’ll have anything out is mid-2026 so yea, quite a big gap for movies.Their most profitable asset is the parks and experiences (which included the cruises and such). There is no way of looking at the financials and seeing otherwise.A nonsensical response as I never said anything remotely disputing this. I’ve literally just been saying that they can’t achieve the profitability they used to have nor the growth without their other segments contributing as much, if not more, as they used to. No real point in continuing this convo anymore.
I’ll concede I thought it was a trilogy, but fine one movie. So during the time that Star Wars was “shelved” in March 2023, they announced three new movies in pre-production and this all happened while the Mandalorian was still airing and as they were starting their for your consideration for Andor. That’s a hell of a shelved property.
It only seems nonsensical because you’re ignoring the paragraph in between – Disney since Eisner has always been fine with making up production losses at the parks. If the IP gets more people into the parks and sells more meet and greets and character breakfasts and merch, they don’t especially care about the theatrical loss because the parks are and have been their cash cow. Everything they do is in support of making the parks as strong as possible.
The thing is.. they haven’t been doing well overall. The streamer Disney+ alone had massive losses. Toys are languishing on budget store shelves, etc. Only real bright spot financially atm is the parks, which are seeing decent post-covid numbers.
Yea – Disney, like many other companies, overvalued having their own streaming service with all of their content and spent carelessly on content. There were reports that each season of The Mighty Ducks and Big Shot (shows about kids playing sports) cost $50m. How does that make any sense? Does anyone believe those shows are going to move the needle on subscriptions in any way?But they’re working on reducing costs (laying people off) and likely will make more pragmatic decisions in future. Wouldn’t be surprised if stock gets a boost once all the impacts of their layoffs / write-offs take effect.
There’s context missing. Disney had big subscription losses due to losing rights to cricket in India, which was the main driver of Disney streaming subscriptions there. They were outbid by a joint Paramount/Viacom venture. They did end up getting the linear TV rights though, for $3.02 billion. In all other regions Disney subscriptions increased and they still are forecasting that they will hit their goal of 230-260 million subscribers by 2024.
Spaceballs sums it up perfectly.
I bet you can still find one of those flamethrowers on like Etsy or something.
What ancillary streams? there are no DVD’s, the toys are already being marked down because they don’t sell, and it is scheduled to stream on Disney + so it doesn’t make money thee either. There have already been several articles estimating that the Little Mermaid will lose an estimated 100 mil or so. All because those racist Africans and Asians like their Danish mermaids to look like, well, Danes. Or at least that’s what they said in many op-eds around the world. Little mermaid actually didn’t do that badly domestically. But the international bo office is where Disney has made bank with the live action flicks and NO ONE went to see it overseas.
Deadline has reported Little Mermaid box office break even is $560 million in reporting that was done directly to refute the claims of $100 million loss. The $100 million loss was only looking at Box Office + Cost. As the Deadline article points out, break even for Little Mermaid is $560 million where net profit would be $70 million on the film ($560 million – production costs and residuals) because of $100 million in DVD/Digital Rentals (and yes, DVDs still get sold and digital rentals are very much a thing), $100 million in domestic free and pay TV, the money Disney pays itself to put it on Disney+, and $80 million in foreign tv sales.This is just one example because the numbers were readily available, but it holds true for other disappointing films as well. This has been how Disney was doing business for years. The billion dollar box office for every movie was fairly new phenomena for them.
In Disney’s case, the box office is only half the equations. A lot of their current work is just keeping brand recognition alive so that decade old Disney attractions remain popular.
While that is true, and the parks/experiences group does bring in a lot of money, it’s not enough to sustain the company as a whole. Plus they are losing ground there too with Universal having a better roadmap ahead.
I also feel like the audience is getting a little worn out. It used to be that you had the summer, and the Nov/Dec holiday season, and those were where you put the big A-ticket blockbuster things, and fall and spring were for your smaller releases. Now we’re getting at least one Big Epic Adventure every month plus the usual summer crowd. Nothing has time to breathe.
The chasm between the theater experience and the common living room has also drastically shrunk. It’s not worth venturing out for a movie I’m not super confident in when I can stream it later in a mostly comparable environment.
Oh yeah Destiny cost nearly 300 million… just to make. Not even counting the marketing costs, merchandise investments, and etc. It may need to make maybe 700-800 million internationally to actually turn a profit overall. Its NOT off to a great start. Granted movies are easily the worst vehicle ever for investing.
Until recent years, they were making more than enough for it to be worthwhile. You can afford a $250 million bomb or two per year if the other eight films released in that budget range include a few billion dollar films (or films that have a really lucrative “long tail” of streaming and merchandise, like major family films).
It’s still not clear that that math is actually wrong. It does seem to be harder to get a billion dollar film, but Avatar 2 did it, the Mario film did it, Top Gun 2 did it, and both Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Black Panther 2 made it near the upper end of that even if they didn’t cross $1 billion in box office.
There’s no guarantee that if you keep the film cheap and make it for $100-150 million, that it’s a shoe-in to earn $300-400 million. And your upside is a lot lower than if you spent some extra money and potentially had a shot at a billion dollar film, like some of the MCU films back in the 2010s.
Yes, it is. But that was the brilliant plan that Ben and Matt’s pal, Sean Bailey devised 10 years ago. For a couple of years he looked brilliant, but then they pushed out Lassiter destroying the Pixar brand, watched as Kevin Feige burned down Marvel, and Kathleen Kennedy destroyed the LucasFilm brand with the help of JJ Abrams. Now these IP’s are shot, they don’t seem to know how to make any other films, and Sony and Universal are kicking their butts all over the multiplexes. Because, both Sony and Universal make balanced slates of pics, they didn’t follow Netflix off a cliff with streaming, and they actually sell product rather than writing it down. Iger, Bailey, Feige, they’re all empty suits who got lucky for five years and are now sowing the “rewards” for their cluelessness. But don’t worry. They all have multi-million dollar houses and will receive golden parachutes as they escape the burning building. It’s the regular workers at Warner’s and Disney that will pay the price.
You have to look at the worldwide box office to see why they make these types of movies. MCU, DCU, sequals almost always double their cost in revenue when you take that into consideration and that’s why they still get made. Dial of Destiny made 130 million worldwide so no one will call that a loss. Also…this is somewhat of a 5 day weekend.
The box office itself is dying. Indy was number one with a bullet relative to how weak everything else was. If Disney is reckoning with anything, it’s not its own IP which continue to make more money than most other offerings. It’s that people aren’t going to the movies.
Clearly the solution here is to create even bigger, more expensive movies and release them fifteen-to-twenty at a time. Audiences will be so bewildered by the sheer number of releases that they’ll have no choice but to watch them all, multiple times over.
Or you diversify where you are releasing movies to meet your audience where they are. Ruby Gillman would probably be having a much better weekend if it had been a PVOD release.
Every time I see the name “Ruby Gillman,” I momentarily see “Rudy Giuliani.”That can’t be helping.
In fairness, I’d watch a movie about how Rudy Giuliani is really a teenage kraken so maybe it was a missed opportunity…
That would be more believable than him as a human man.
Giuliani is clearly transforming into something very squamous .
Rudy squirts ink from his head so he probably is at least in the octopi species
Ahhh those teen years. What happened, Rudy?
Does he get to wrestle Bela Lugosi? (And/or the other way around?)
“My name’s Ruby Gillman. I thought I was just an ordinary teenager. But that all changed when SOROS-BACKED COMMUNISTS STOLE THE ELECTION!”
How does Sidney “Kraken” Powell fit into this?
Hahahahahaa! He had his moment with Borat!
Well, I wanted to check that movie out, but not now I don’t know if I can.
Thanks Green!
I don’t know why that isn’t an option for Disney+ now as it was during COVID. Everyone with a Disney+ subscription just waits for the movies to make it to the platform, but a decent chunk of them will pay for advance access.
I genuinely think the underperformance of Elemental might lead for them to consider some options. I think they could clean up on 2-day rentals and honestly if it was a great movie kids would be asking to rent it over and over again. I also think they can uncouple it from a D+ subscription or give a D+ discount and just make it available to everyone. People like doing stuff from home and a $20 or $30 rental is still cheaper than taking both parents and 2 kids to the movies in my neck of the woods.
The real solution is to make movie attendance mandatory. You want your precious “social services”? Well, you better have your ticket stub to ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Next Generation’ on you, or you don’t get squat!
This would fit in perfectly with Florida’s new work criteria…if the governor hadn’t declared a culture war against one of the states biggest revenue sources.But, hey. Gotta do something to lose his own state primary to an orange felon by less than 30 points.
Would watch PotC:TNG in a heartbeat, but only if it had the look and the feel of those whacky cheap made-for-tv sequels.
‘Pirates of the Caribbean: The Next Generation’ Oh, please – everyone knows Hollywood is terrified of passing the torch.
They’d only greenlight a new Pirates film if they could get Johhny Depp and/or Orlando Bloom to come back to mug for the camera between actor-replacement-CGI action sequences, while the cast of bland and generic teenage “heroes” bumble around doing nothing of value or sense.After all, the only reason to have a “Next Generation” is so you can have them fawn in awe over the “Legacy” of the old one! Right?
So you mean everything, everywhere all at once?
While we’re at it, I’ve got this great idea for making movies stand out from steaming and home viewing!We’ll market movie-going as a premiere, prestige, high-class, luxury social event! We’ll rent out the biggest theatres, and hold special exclusive viewings in advance of the official release date, and sell limited number tickets at a premium, and make it a big, grand spectacle that people will envy!
We’ll take the show on the road! A “Road-Show”, if you will!/s
Good god, Wikipedia says the Indy 5 budget was $295 million. That’s insane. Has to make like 700 million internationally to break even (unless it was heavily tipped toward domestic then maybe 600M, which it isn’t so far)
‘”Good god, Wikipedia says the Indy 5 budget was $295 million. That’s insane.”’Hmm, kind of makes you wonder if at least part of that cost was solely the advertisement budget for running ads during the televised Superbowl Ad space alone…
The marketing costs are not included in the official budget.
Your forget the marketing budget, at least $100 millions. And it has no chance whatsoever of making $600 millions.
According to Deadline it actually cost £329 Million to make.https://www.reddit.com/r/boxoffice/comments/14oqsrv/deadline_reports_that_a_source_claims_indiana/
Yup, I’ve seen reports in the trades saying it’s budget was actually closer to $330 mil. Mind boggling. At those budgets, plus marketing, you basically need a billion dollar world wide gross to be successful. It’s simply not feasible for this IP at this time to reach those heights globally. I haven’t seen it, so I’m not really sure how the budget ever got that high. Location shooting perhaps, but most of the stuff in the commercials has CGI backdrops. I mean, John Wick 4 used a ton of real locations worldwide, including shutting down the rotary around the Arc de Triomphe for nights on end and using 50 real stunt drivers to create that scene. That couldn’t have been cheap, but it came in at $100 mil budget. It seem like we’re at a point that CGI has eclipsed practical shooting as far as cost in most situations.
I also read about its budget later in the day after making my OP comment. Indy 5 apparently had to do a bunch of expensive reshoots because of pandemic disruptions
That’s not what I’m reading. Development was delayed by the pandemic but photography started in June 2021 and finished in February 2022. Now, that is a long production, but the only pandemic related delay I can find is that they intended to shoot in India, but because Covid was rebounding there, the moved to Morocco instead. Don’t get me wrong, that’s costly but the biggest delay seems to have come from Ford getting hurt, which they were forced to shoot around, and Mangold expanding the “de-aged” Ford scenes to almost 25 minutes from the original 5-6 minutes. Apparently the de-aging tech they used, made in-house by ILM, was stupendously expensive in post. From the stories I’m reading, it appears more to just be a production that got out of control and no producer or execs stepped up to reign it in. Possibly in no small part because they expected this IP would result in a billion dollar movie either way, which was a massive miscalculation of how much audience there was for another Indiana Jones film.
It was literally meant to be shot before the pandemic and then Harrison Ford I believe separated his shoulder and that caused several months of shut downs, then Covid happened…The filming was started and stopped several times before 2021.
It was also supposed to come out before 2023, there was the injury to Harrison Ford that shut down filming for several months, then there was this little global pandemic that caused multiple shutdowns and made them have to do reshoots.
Keep in mind the movie was budgeted pre-Covid and I think as a result highlights the disconnect between pre-Covid and post-Covid box office. Indy was budgeted at a time when even poorly reviewed, mediocre Disney flicks were regularly making a billion dollars. That simply isn’t the world we’re living in anymore. If this was released in 2017, I think it probably would have easily made $700 million to be honest.
I’ll probably go see it on $5 Tuesday. I’m not expecting a lot, though. I like Harrison Ford, and I like Indiana Jones….but it is the 5th movie. I’m not expecting anything new and we all know the 4th one sucked. That’s why this movie won’t be a huge success. It’s kind of a nostalgia piece for seniors.
I feel like I would remember if there was a 4th one…
I remember something about Dan Aykroyd’s vodka but I think it was a fever dream
Did it make your rear end hurt?
No more then usual
this would have been the funniest joke at a 2010 freshman stand-up comedy mixer
That’s when I go. I’m surprised how few people take advantage of that; there’s usually no more than 10 people in the theater with me, and sometimes I’m the only one. I guess it has to do with being a weekday.
It’s like people have to work or something.
The main thing for me is it’s not Spielberg at the helm. Like part of the thing with Indiana Jones is the movies are made by a guy who Really Knows how to make action movies. James Mangold has made some good action flicks but I don’t put him in the same league yet.
He’s not in the same league, and that’s the main issue with Dial of Destiny. Indiana Jones set-pieces have always been a string of clever and inventive visual gags that stick in your mind, long afterward. The action set-pieces in Dial are just a bunch of generic running around and explosions, happening in a series of mid-shots. It’s a huge missing part of the Indy DNA and a much bigger problem, than anything that the usual suspects are whining about on YouTube. PWB is more than fine, and it’s not “woke” (in any sense that I can see) but it really misses Spielberg.
I mean, who else IS in Spielberg’s league, though?
He’s too busy making blue alien water movies for the next 25 years
Yeah, Cameron might be there. Of course, Spielberg also puts out 10 movies in the time it takes Cameron to make one, so I’m a little hesitant to put them on the same level, even if I do love Cameron’s work (give or take Avatar)
Cameron WAS there. Until 1995-96, when he lost all the talent he had.
Not sure if you’re trolling or not, but I don’t think anyone who’s serious can really look at Titanic and not say it’s the work of an insanely skilled filmmaker. Avatar, too, though to a lesser extent. Avatar’s problems begin and end with the script.
I’m not trolling. You will find plenty of serious people who can’t stand Titanic. Even a lot of the critics who gave it great ratings have since walked them back a bit. The last hour of the film would have been a great action movie. The first hour and fifteen minutes is a bunch of hackneyed garbage, much like everything Cameron has done since. I can see why people were seduced into thinking Titanic was good, because the good part (the boat sinking) was what they walked out of the theatre with. But if you’re saying that Avatar was a good movie, my god, I can’t help you.
I don’t find Avatar particularly good, though the first time you see it in a theater is a phenomenal experience. It’s realized visually incredibly well, but it’s maybe the best example of dressing up a bland, dull story with incredible images in movie history. It holds no re-watch value for me, though, and I tapped out 30 mins into the new one, with no intention to ever go back to it.Titanic is a flat out good film. Yes, the first half of it is pretty trite, but it’s well-done, and it is emotionally impactful. It’s good storytelling, even if it’s not terribly original, and it’s got strong performances from everyone involved. Take a decent first half and combine it with the back half, which even you admit is pretty great, and you end up with a really good movie.
I also don’t know how far from trite or hackneyed you’ll really get to connect with audiences as broad as Spielberg or Cameron do. They both tell fairly classic, relatable stories with familiar beats. That’s the trick to making the biggest impact- universal relatability. Spielberg does it better on just about every level than Cameron, especially when he’s at the top of his game, but Cameron taps into that same vein.
Honestly, I feel like Cameron used to know how to do trite characters without damaging the film. It’s a really tricky gift, and I can’t put my finger on why it works in, say, Aliens (with the entire platoon), or The Abyss with pretty much the entire crew, when none of it works in Titanic. I find the first half of Titanic unbearable to sit through. Sure, the good actors are doing their best, but the screenplay is absolutely dreadful (some of the lines can literally make one cringe) and they don’t have a lot to work with. Lucky you if you found it emotionally impactful; I was just waiting for the iceberg to end them all. I wonder: were you young when you saw it? I was in college when it came out, and I find that people who were, say, 15 or younger tend to give it a lot more leeway, even now…same as we all have rosy memories of the art of our youth.
I was 14 when Titanic came out, so yeah, you might have something there.
Let’s be fair here. Spielberg made the last Indy movie and that was an awful movie. There was really no other place to go than up from there, no matter who was directing this next one.
Guardians of the Galaxy is still in the Top 10, and yet we just had at least one article today talking about how that was a disappointment. Some of these movies just suck, but there also is still something to be said for that state of the box office in general.
Those MCU is dying pieces have to be written whether they are relevant or not
I recall a site claiming it died after Infinity War came out because of the cliffhanger ending and that no one would go see the second part out of spite.
They came out after Norton Hulk. After Thor 2. After Dr Strange. After Ant-Man.The MCU is unkillable. It may never hit Endgame heights again, but it will always be a safe investment
You say that now, but just wait until they cast Ted McGinley as Longneck.
Dr Strange was one of the best Marvel movies.
But superhero fatigue!
Aww, everyone now is saying, Dial of Disappointment. It’s really not that bad. It’s better than Crystal Skull imo. It has some cool action scenes and good music by JW. The ending is super silly but aw well. The very end is touching and made me tear up. I kinda wish though we could see the whole movie that leads up to the prologue in 1944. That ending of that movie we never get to see was more exciting.
Guardians still being in the top ten is a testamate to the fact that maybe movies do need a bit of space before home release. I’m sure it disappears after next Friday when you can rent it at home
One thing I remember in 2021 and part of ‘22 as theaters started to open up again was because studios were still not sure about rolling out releases, what did come out usually had more time to build an audience and you saw more movies with legs. So far this year it’s felt more like the typical “you’ve got two weeks and then who knows”, but who knows.
Yep. Even movies that were not bad just disappeared because the next big thing just stomped them. I remember when I was a kid seeing one or two movies dominate the summer. Batman in 89 comes to mind. So does Independence Day. I suspect part of it was that there were just less new releases
i think it’s also a testament to how low box office numbers are this summer.
We’d be near per-Covid numbers if not for some pretty big disappointments, like Flash and this film, and if the usually reliable kids movies weren’t underperforming. Mario being the obvious outlier as far as kids movies but surveys show it was really carried by nostalgic adults. I think streaming is probably hitting the movies aimed at children the most. Taking younger kids to a movie is a bit of a pain in the ass, and not cheap. I can see parents just waiting till these movies hit streaming.
i also think mario is probably stealing box office dollars at home, too. kids watch things over and over and i bet once that hit VOD a lot of families went ‘well we can watch mario and order pizza or go to the movies’ and the kids chose mario.
Not really. Several movies stay in the top 10 even with the ability to just watch it at home. There just isn’t that much people want to see. So, the ones people do want to see, take longer to fully die.
Are we sure that “Teenage Kraken” is even a real movie? I haven’t seen a single ad for it and my local theater isn’t playing it.
It plays ads a lot on FX, FXX, Disney XD, Comedy Central and Logo.
Probably just not hitting you as the target demo. My young son is very aware of it. Lots of ads popping into the shows and feeds he watches
My 9yo saw the trailer before Elemental and is now obsessed with seeing it.
There were trailers in front of both Little Mermaid and Mario….so yeah. Lotta eyes on that one.
I saw my first reference to it on a Hulu commercial this weekend. I thought maybe it was some kind of parody.
The name really doesn’t help. They should have gone with just “Teenage Kraken”. Whenever I see talk about “Ruby Gillman,” it sounds like biopic about a 1960s septuagenarian civil rights activist.
Funny you mention that. I thought to myself “there were tons of ads,” but now that I think about it, it was two months ago.
I was surprised to find out the movie JUST released, because it has been a while since I’ve seen anything on it.
I haven’t either, but old guy w no kids here.
It’s kind of crazy to me that someone can write about box office results every week and seemingly have no idea how movie financials work. The amount a movie grosses in theaters on its own doesn’t matter at all – these movies are disappointments because studios are spending absurd amounts of money to make them.
If this movie had only cost $150m to make, this wouldn’t even be a disappointing opener. It wouldn’t have been a wild success, but probably would have coasted to profitability eventually. It seems a decent chunk was spent on the de-aging process. They should have just hired Alden Ehrenreich to do the flashback scene.
You mean the guy who neither looks nor sounds like Ford did at any point in Ford’s life?If you’re just going to pick actors who played younger versions of characters Ford portrayed, you might as well pick Sean Patrick Flanery!(And then at that point, you can bring in Norman Reedus as co-star, and just make a stealth Boondock Saints sequel/prequel/crossover.)
Hollywood is definitely out of touch when literally everyone thinks all this de-aging and digital resurrection stuff is creepy and terrible and yet they just keep on doing it. Like how do you not know how awful and off-putting it is? Clearly heads are so far up rear ends.
Plus the corporate world is obsessed with setting goal numbers and decide things are failures even if they still turned a profit because they didn’t make enough money. Plus Hollywood accounting is crooked as hell. Despite what they say publicly studios are the last to lose money. It’s in their best interest to publicly say something didn’t profit because then they can screw over the people who get a cut of the profits.
Well, if you’re a publicly-traded company, you kind of have to set goals and track against them. People buy or sell your stock based on what you tell them you think you’ll do in the future (I know that’s overly simplified) and if you miss on projected revenue or profit, it can be a big issue come earnings time.
I feel that in an age where the bottom line is what the stockholders think, a public perception of failure overcomes any actual, quantifiable success.
“Nilus, your production company spent $15,000 on a single plate of sandwiches for the crew on Day 5 of the shoot?!”“Oh, I assure you, Nilus Craft Services’ sandwiches are worth every penny.”
It isn’t just the money spent . Who wants to spend money going to see the fifth movie in a 40 to 50 year old franchise? Or pieces of metal ‘transform’ for how many decades now? Or an ocean princess, or one in Egypt, change color to placate a small group in the ‘woke’ crowd. How much box has been lost to that? Lots of middle America passed on Toy Story 4 when they heard because it might be a childrens’ version of Brokeback Mountain. How about letting movies reflect America JUST A BIT They might sell again. When has Hollywood tried a real story with a real plot with a black couple [or white—that would be new] without killing everyone with machine guns? What they are putting on—long cartoons—isn’t selling.
They’re not disappointments. Theatrical money is just bonus money these days. Streaming services take in billions each month; Each. They just point out lower box office numbers so they can argue that they need to pay workers less.
Most of this is not true. Disney and other companies didn’t create streaming to replace their existing revenue streams, they created it to be additive and help them grow their share prices. And majority of newer streaming services are losing lots of money right now because of the investment required to stand them up. Disney is down almost 50% from their peak share price and the biggest factor in the decrease has been D+.I do agree workers get the short shaft no matter what.
That is not true at all. D+, for instance, broke $2 bil in revenue last quarter and is still operating at a loss. It’s actually quite expensive to stream, especially worldwide where there’s all types of licensing and carrier fees. It’s doubly hard to be profitable when your original content has stunningly high budgets where each series is the same as putting out a movie but with no box office receipts to offset it.
I agree. The article going “it made 60 million and that’s a lot of money. Hollywood? More like hollyWEIRD, am I right” is undercut by the movie in question costing an eye popping 300 million.
I legitimately didn’t even know it was out. I’ve seen zero advertising for it otherwise I probably would have seen it.
The advertisement for this movie was huge.
They all somehow missed me then. Like I knew they were making it but that was about it. I never saw ads for it on TikTok or Facebook which are the media outlets I mostly use.
The problem isn’t even the insane production budgets, but the somehow even more insane P&A costs, which means studios are spending hundreds of millions on advertising alone. It’s just become a whole industrial complex, where these costs spiralled completely out of control and the financials for any studio movie that didn’t have the ability to make $600 million just didn’t make any sense.
insane p&a costs that DON’T result in awareness. you’re basically just annoying a fanbase that would know about it anyway
yeah i wonder where all that money goes bc it feels like i see very few ads for movies these days
There’s no tellin’ where the money went…
Same place the money for political donations goes: overpaid consultancies.
Very anecdotal, but I knew someone at Annapurna who was talking about how they had an in-house trailer editor who was great and was salaried at under 6 figures, but they always went with an outside trailer company who were consistently worse and charged about $2 million, all because the head of the department had come from that company – it’s like lobbying firms in Washington.As far as quality, the Indy campaign specifically was dreadful. It felt like they were marketing a direct-to-video Disney sequel from the early 2000s.
it’s also just harder and harder to get eyeballs. everything is so specialized and targeted. and if you’re paying for no-ads youtube and adblock, don’t live in an area with busses or subway ads, don’t watch network tv…where does the ad even go anymore?
The current run of movies being released were largely conceived pre-Covid especially things like Indiana Jones and Elemental and the superhero movies. The box office was a different world then. The budgets and the p&a all made sense when movies were regularly making a billion dollars (even crappy movies). The box office is way down in terms of tickets sold and has been even for well-reviewed movies. Indiana Jones – mediocre though it is – may have pulled much different numbers in pre-Covid world.
Hopefully it will have a good drop-off rate in its second weekend, which would probably let it eventually get to $600-700 million worldwide in box office. That’s not exactly a monster hit, but it will make money on the back end and serve as important franchise maintenance for Disney (IE justify Indiana Jones stuff at the parks and Indiana Jones merchandise, which is their biggest source of revenue). It is quite a drop-off compared to Crystal Skull, which made $100 million in its opening weekend in 2008 ($140 million in 2003 money).
There is no chance it will reach $600 millions with such an opening and not extraordinary word of mouth. Zero. It will probably nit reach even $500 m.
i would be very surprised if it hits 500.
The audience score is pretty decent. I could see it having a good second weekend in terms of drop-off, and if it does then I think it will at least limp to $500 million worldwide.
The CinemaScore is a B+ (same as Flash), which is basically a death knell. Opening weekend audiences are usually overly generous to big tentpole IPs. Being in the B’s is not good and suggests word of mouth isn’t going to give the film legs. Globally, it doesn’t help that Indiana Jones isn’t nearly as popular a franchise as stuff like the Marvel, Fast, and Transformer movies either. There are reports that the budget ballooned as high as $330 million. There’s no way Disney even breaks even on this movie.
anything less than an A is a bad cinemascore for a movie like this.
I dunno if word of mouth is gonna save this one. Crystal Skull did a lot of damage to people’s faith in sequels to this franchise and reviews being “well it’s not as bad as that…” aren’t exactly going to put butts in the seats.
i kind of doubt it, post-COVID it seems like if anything movies are even more front-loaded than before. i’m guessing most people who were interested in seeing it in a theater already have
I think you’re right about a slower drop-off for Dial of Destiny. Based on the audience at my showing on Sunday, the movie will appeal to an older audience than a superhero movie. Those movies tend to stick around longer.
BTW: I’m watching Elemental vs. The Flash over the next month. There’s a chance that Elemental will play tortoise to The Flash’s hare.
It’s a big travel and party weekend. On the west coast it’s the first weekend that feels like summer. I don’t think it’s necessarily a complete failure if everyone who is going to see it didn’t show up in the first two days. This seems like a movie that will linger steadily because it’s a “what do you want to see? might as well…” kind of film. Or maybe not, but it seems ridiculous it all hinges on two days especially when that’s a big outdoor holiday.
It might have a pretty good drop-off on the second weekend, which would be a good sign. The problem is that in less than two weeks, “Mission Impossible 7″ comes out and will swiftly drop-kick this movie down the list – MI7 will become the summer “well, it’s in theater” film blockbuster for the rest of July.
Yes it’s a flop and the buzz is negative. A movie that costs $300 millions not including at least $100 m marketing needs at the minimum $800 millions in the boxoffice to just break even and they don’t make these movies to break even. It will make around $500 millions if it’s lucky. They will also earn a little from DVDs, streaming, sales to TV channels around the world, (but not merchandising, the toys won’t sell) but at then end they will have lost money on what was supposed to bring massive profits. It’s a huge failure.
I haven’t had a desire to go to a theater in over a year or more.The last time I actually stepped foot in one was when Spider-man No Way Home came out. I took a few steps in and then turned around and left.Between my personal library and streaming, I don’t need to go.
do you go other places or is it just the theatre that gives you the willies?
I go to other places, it’s just that a) I have a large library of movies and tv shows because I continuously buy physical media, and I have a home theater set up, and b) the hassle of going to theater isn’t worth it anymore.One thing that’s changed since COVID, is that theaters I normally go to, no longer have showtimes before noon, which is another deterrent for me since I like to go as early as possible to avoid crowds.
Absolutely with you. I don’t trust the streaming services not to fuck us all in the long run, so I’ve pretty much bought up everything I would ever want to watch on DVD and blu-ray. Going forward it’s hard though; they’ve already stopped physical release of some stuff I’d like to have.
so you never really liked it all that muchi think you probably represent a larger group than people expect. i love going to the movies and couldn’t wait to get back, but i’m sure there’s a non-insignificant group who took the 2 years off and stayed away.
yeah i really haven’t been much either, and pre- COVID i went to see movies fairly regularly. i think my attention span has gone down, i much prefer watching an hour of a movie at home and then taking a break and finishing later.
The last movie I went to see was GOTG3 in a discount theater although it just came out. At first it was just my mom, niece and I and then this creepy looking 60+ year old with a child molester vibe came in and sat down a row away from us even though the theater was empty which probably was just due to them being the best seats. Then he proceeded to loudly slurp his soda and chew his popcorn with his mouth open for at least the first twenty minutes at which point I had to move because I have whatever sensitivity that is that is puts me into a fight or flight response. Besides having that parcularity I just think it’s totally rude to eat like that around other people.If it was a normal theater with an average crowd I would have had nowhere to go so that’s probably the last time in my life I’ll be setting foot in a movie theater again especially with my home setup. It’s just not a pleasurable experience for me at all whether it’s someone’s head in my way, someone kicking my chair, people talking, the sound being annoyingly loud and inconsistent, people being on their phones or chewing as loud as a camel chews it’s cud a theater is just a long list of negatives for me and people like me which are probably in the minority but that’s my experience. Plus I have a shoulder and arm injury that’s aggravated by any theater seat I’ve ever sat in.The only real positive to me which isn’t a positive at all and more like being held hostage is that I get to see a movie as soon as possible. I don’t really get off on the whole communal experience directors like Scorsese push because I don’t need my feelings validated by a crowd which is basically just mob mentality. Even 3D movies suck for me because I wear glasses and don’t like the ones they give you for putting over the top. That said I’ve never been to an IMAX theater so that may be worth it but I imagine it’s just hard to see the whole frame at one of those which is another problem I have with just normal theaters.Not to be all negative without offering a solution as I just realized a lot of my issues would be solved if theaters offered bluetooth connections for bring your own noise canceling headphones or just a headphone jack on the seats. Then I’d probably be happy since I wouldn’t be in a constant super anxious state because of all the mastication.
Once upon a time, they could make bank on home media and by selling the rights to other outlets, like HBO, other cable channels and, eventually, netflix.
Now, however, they want their content mostly on their own streaming platforms, which mean they just keep losing money for completely dumb and avoidable reasons.
Exactly. Not only have they lost those revenue streams they now have the cost of developing and maintaining a streaming platform. Netflix wasn’t built in a day.
Heh. Yup.
They still count home media as a significant chunk of revenue – Disney does have to pay themselves for D+, but beyond that they do still sell DVDs, do traditional rentals through Redbox, and track PVOD sales from rentals on Amazon/iTunes etc. It usually accounts for about $100 million total on their tentpoles based on some recent reporting from Deadline on Little Mermaid. They also have domestic and international TV sales.
The home video market is a wisp of what it was 15-20 years ago.
It may be, but it still brings in about $100 million for most tentpoles in PVOD rentals from Amazon, iTunes and YouTube.
It definitely sounds like the “theaters are open again” honeymoon is over. As much as I want to see Indy as soon as possible, I just don’t see any scenario in which I go to a theater for that. There is nothing special about theaters. Nothing at all. And for the inconvenience of booking tickets, traveling, parking, hoping other people don’t ruin the experience for you, etc… you will also pay through the nose.In order for theaters to survive as a concept, they need to become something else… something far more than just a movie.
because we’d watch this:
make it a double feature with Clint Eastwood arguing with an empty chair
Hasn’t that been the last few things he’s been in?
The studios all make plenty of profit. They could release 10 250 million dollar movies *each* and still make billions of profits through their streaming services. Theatrical revenue is icing on the cake. The secret is that claiming no movie makes a profit is just another in a long line of “Hollywood accounting” techniques that they’ve used for 100 years to hide profit and pay less to workers and government.
Frankly, if gigantic budget movies didn’t make money, they’d stop making them. Studios aren’t a charity and they aren’t giving the public art for our sake at their own loss.
Oh! Pity the poor moguls.
Won’t someone think of the millionaires?!
I think people just don’t want to go to theaters it can get quite expensive. Also the movies come out pretty quickly in streaming.
The studios are going to have to stop releasing movies so fast on streaming. People will not like it, but many, many people do not go to the theater thinking it will be out on streaming in a month. Streaming is actually killing them. They need new content for their streaming platforms but that kills box office. Many streamers are losing money. Disney especially is losing insane money.
Came streaming too quickly?
I think you can get a pill for that.
“Dial of Destiny wins box office because someone had to.”
i know things have changed and perceptions have been updated, but 130 worldwide opening is terrible, straight up, for something this expensive and important. remember less than a decade ago when people were scalping star wars tickets?
130 million is far from terrible worldwide….People have this stupid notion that everything needs to make a billion dollars or its a flop….
Why is this so surprising? At my screening of Indiana Jones on Saturday (night) of the long weekend my Dad pointed out that it was almost a sold out crowd purely of seniors.
I don’t think Phoebe Waller Bridge counts so I’d say there was zero youthful eye candy at all. I’ll say it again the entire film is all haymakers and winks at the camera during action sequences. It’s geared toward an older generation. Was it expected that a tonne of kids would jump on this…. none of those ingredients are here? Studio execs are snoozing if they assume every film with CGI is gonna get that family money.
Thing is I think Indiana Jones did exactly what it was trying to do beautifully and I wouldn’t correlate these numbers with the quality of the film if you’re the right audience for it.
To see a sold out crowd of people with white hair on a Saturday night as oppose to a Sunday matinee to see their hero of yesteryear was cute as fuck. I hope some of them were drinking.
I mean, theaters are dying as it is, but the last “good” Indiana Jones movie came out in 1989. The idea that it had tons of fans below the age of 40, let alone 30 was probably way off from the jump.
So many that has paid his dues who is also last of the great Actors because todays actors/actresses for a fact can not act, doesn’t do as you want and your disappointed lol Disney is the problem they will do what’s called a pump and dump all their copyright and trademarks are going up in the 85 yr smokathon and there is nothing they can do about it, so if your following gme still because you think before you react unlikemost folks you understand what’s really happening it’s a paradigm shift of mass purportions and if folks are smart they will pull their stocks out of all Disney products and related stores and goods Disney owns and pocket it at the right time, hell China owns Fortune 500 for years now, helmans mayo and other big names when you wake up and realize who ownsdisney and Hollywood you might put the cellphone down and really take a look at what’s going on around you and see that we are all nothing but a piece of meat on the assembly line, where you go from here justifies your outcome and character, what’s funny is most of you have zero clue as to wtf I’m talking about. And for me that is a plus😁
Disney is going to cancel Mangold’s Star Wars film any day now. If you can’t move Indiana Jones, come on.
Simple logic is apparently difficult for the author. The movie reportedly cost $300-350 million to make. I say reportedly because no one can obviously confirm definitively. Even if we presume less, the cost plus marketing is significant.The movie is opening to less than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which benefitted from being the fourth movie in a highly successful series. Considering that ticket prices are significantly up since that time, it indicates that there is a significant lack of enthusiasm or interest in the movie.Blah blah blah… covid… blah blah blah… cinema experience changed… blah blah usual stuffAlmost all of those movies have already cratered (Flash, etc.) are winding down (GotG3, etc.) or aren’t meant to be tent poles (Asteroid City, etc.). Even if we give Indiana Jones the benefit of the doubt and don’t make assumptions based on this first week, it would be a pretty safe bet next weekend if the movie sees a significant audience drop considering everything else listed above.I think there’s a certain amount of “defending” of Disney and this movie over some of the vitriol directed as Pheobe, Kathleen and the general deconstruction of Indiana Jones after the initial 20 or so minutes. I don’t have a horse in the race and don’t care about the success or failure of this movie. But I agree with other posters that the costs of these movies have gotten out of hand considering what the market looks like and the kind of bank they need to make to turn a profit.Studios need to change their philosophies about the movie making experience. Going for the big payday is going to crater some studios (WB is on the brink for example).
Someone doesn’t know how money works. Sam, if you do not consider losing money a disappointment, I have some land I want to sell you.
While, sure, the movie is part of the blame it’s hard to assess based on the weird state of in-theater movie watching. Couple that with the fact that while it’s been a while since the last Indy movie, the last one was far removed from the “classic” ones, was poorly received, and people aren’t expecting much of yet another sequel.
Wonder if people are TIRED of the “saga” part 4,5,6 movies and want something FRESH.
I’ve got no problem with sequels and I understand they tried to transition into Shia LeBeouf taking over but there can’t be a huge audience clamouring for an 80-year-old leading an action adventure movie. The original movie was almost 40 years ago and nobody is going to be as believable as an adventurer four decades later. If you can’t succeed in having someone else take over, sometimes you just need to let an IP die.
This. Ford is 80 years old and he just IS Indiana Jones. It is not James Bond. Having someone else in the role is just not an Indiana Jones movie and never will be. Might as well just try it with a brand new name. Studios now are just too frightened of new IP’s too. But the way you get money making IP’s is to take chances. No one knew what Indiana jones was in 1980 when it came out.
Also, NO ONE is clamoring to see Shia LaBeouf take over anything. I’d pay money for him to shut up forever.
You’re an entertainment writer, and you couldn’t bother to at least see why those people call this a failure? The film is making less money than Crystal Skull, and every Indiana Jones film, adjusted for inflation, made around a billion dollars. This film will be LUCKY to make half that. And this film is also far more expensive than any of those, too, both in marketing, and in production.That’s a failure, and your click-bait, empty-headed arguments to the contrary won’t change that.
Indiana Jones And The Creator Of Cash
I saw the Indiana Jones movie this weekend and really enjoyed it. I saw the original in theaters 10 times so this one was iffy for me to go see. But I was surprisingly pleased with the whole movie. I did think it was about 15 minutes too long but the last 3 movies I’ve seen this year felt the same: too long. I’d love to watch them like in the old days where they’re edited for television and only run 2 hours. Anyway, thumbs up for me.
It was so bad. I saw it for free and still feel like I wasted money.
A lot of folks on here really don’t understand movie economics. Of course it turns out that neither do the suits at Disney. First off, this film cost over 300 million to make, has at least another 100 mil in advertising (although that is probably a lie that Disney is trying to sell) and the “Box Office” is the gross box office, which studios only receive around 50%. And since these films are sent out so wide that they are almost totally front loaded, it is pretty easy to see why there is so much concern. It currently looks like Indy 5 will be lucky to get to 400 million, of which Disney gets half or 200 million, and the cost of the film and advertising is at least 400 million on the conservative side. (Probably more like 500 million in reality.) 200 minus 400 is – um, yeah, minus 200 mil. As for all the nonsense about ancillaryires. Well, Indy 4 didn’t sell any toys last time and this film is skewing even older. And then there is the fact that Disney followed Netflix over the cliff, and doesn’t sell their content to anyone else these days, well, um, no they don’t have any ancillaries. Yes, Disney will “buy the rights” to Indy 5, making the film itself look a little better on paper, but since Disney + is bleeding money (will most likely lose at least 4 billion in 2023) so the overall Disney balance sheet is dreadful. That is why Disney just laid off 7,000 workers, is continuing to lay off workers, and also looking to sell ESPN, which is another money pit.
How come you didn’t mention that it cost north of $400 million to make, distribute, and advertise? I’d say a paltry $50 million is a huge failure.
Nothing like presenting empty nostalgia in a cynical and empty money grab knowing there’s a swath of the population willing to lap it up.
Cool story. So what your saying is either you didn’t see it or it wasn’t written like an issue of Highlights for Children MCU films so alot of things likely went over your head….
Sound of freedom presold 1 million tickets. For its July 3th premier but isn’t even in the list. Bias reporting
A July 3rd or 4th opening would apply to next week’s results, not the prior weekend. Presales still just get added to the first week total.
I think there are a couple of things at play, theatres are trying to make up for covid shut downs with increased prices, movies are more expensive to make because of covid protocols, and the streaming window is too short.Expectations of opening box office has to be readjusted, outside of a handful of movies, we aren’t getting the massive 100+ million opening weekends anymore. Movies need to find ways to scale back budgets, one way I see is to stop putting out release dates before movies have even started production. Marvel specifically needs to invest in better preproduction.
The last movie I went to see was GOTG3 in a discount theater although it just came out. At first it was just my mom, niece and I and then this creepy looking 60+ year old with a child molester vibe came in and sat down a row away from us even though the theater was empty which probably was just due to them being the best seats. Then he proceeded to loudly slurp his soda and chew his popcorn with his mouth open for at least the first twenty minutes at which point I had to move because I have whatever sensitivity that is that is puts me into a fight or flight response. Besides having that parcularity I just think it’s totally rude to eat like that around other people.If it was a normal theater with an average crowd I would have had nowhere to go so that’s probably the last time in my life I’ll be setting foot in a movie theater again especially with my home setup. It’s just not a pleasurable experience for me at all whether it’s someone’s head in my way, someone kicking my chair, people talking, the sound being annoyingly loud and inconsistent, people being on their phones or chewing as loud as a camel chews it’s cud a theater is just a long list of negatives for me and people like me which are probably in the minority but that’s my experience. Plus I have a shoulder and arm injury that’s aggravated by any theater seat I’ve ever sat in.The only real positive to me which isn’t a positive at all and more like being held hostage is that I get to see a movie as soon as possible. I don’t really get off on the whole communal experience directors like Scorsese push because I don’t need my feelings validated by a crowd which is basically just mob mentality. Even 3D movies suck for me because I wear glasses and don’t like the ones they give you for putting over the top. That said I’ve never been to an IMAX theater so that may be worth it but I imagine it’s just hard to see the whole frame at one of those which is another problem I have with just normal theaters.Not to be all negative without offering a solution as I just realized a lot of my issues would be solved if theaters offered bluetooth connections for bring your own noise canceling headphones or just a headphone jack on the seats. Then I’d probably be happy since I wouldn’t be in a constant super anxious state because of all the mastication.
Indiana Jones was objectively bad though, even if it’s top earner at box offices.