Weekend Box Office - GODZILLA Stomps Competition

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mkaroly
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Re: Weekend Box Office - GODZILLA Stomps Competition

#16 Post by mkaroly »

DavidBanner wrote:Looking at the international numbers, ASM2 is quickly slowing down overseas. In China, it dropped 75% from the opening weekend and it's played out in several other countries, including South Korea and the UK where it's been playing for a month already. Deadline is skeptical about whether it can get to the break even point. I think with these numbers it may well get to 665 or 675 before it peters out (pun only slightly intended), but that still means it will need to make up the rest in home video sales. We can only hope that Sony won't play games with the Blu-ray to try to artificially inflate their sales, as Paramount did last year with Star Trek ID. Their smartest option now is to really think about why they got so much bad word of mouth and how they can avoid making this mistake next time.
Stop making them...lol...that's the solution. Find something else to do!

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AndyDursin
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Re: Weekend Box Office - GODZILLA Stomps Competition

#17 Post by AndyDursin »

DavidBanner wrote:Looking at the international numbers, ASM2 is quickly slowing down overseas. In China, it dropped 75% from the opening weekend and it's played out in several other countries, including South Korea and the UK where it's been playing for a month already. Deadline is skeptical about whether it can get to the break even point. I think with these numbers it may well get to 665 or 675 before it peters out (pun only slightly intended), but that still means it will need to make up the rest in home video sales. We can only hope that Sony won't play games with the Blu-ray to try to artificially inflate their sales, as Paramount did last year with Star Trek ID. Their smartest option now is to really think about why they got so much bad word of mouth and how they can avoid making this mistake next time.
It's all true, but it's also worth keeping in perspective - if it hits $700 million worldwide (and most places think it will or come close), it's right next to being the highest grossing film of 2014. The only film to do that this year is CAPTAIN AMERICA 2 and this will end up right under it, likely, with worldwide figured in. Even if it needs home video to turn a profit, even if it underperformed in the U.S., it's not going to stop Sony from making more Spider-Man movies. The potential revenue stream is far greater than what Star Trek does worldwide.

I still contend they ought to be pleased with how well they're doing considering how poorly the film was received -- and, even more importantly, remembering how mediocre the first installment was. They did nothing to improve upon it and yet they are going to end up with $700 mil worldwide? They ought to be thankful the bottom didn't drop out...but it's also true these two movies being so mediocre is probably going to put a cap on how much an ASM3 might make, regardless of how good it could ever be.

DavidBanner

Re: Weekend Box Office - GODZILLA Stomps Competition

#18 Post by DavidBanner »

My instincts say that ASM2 will likely not make it to 700 million, given how fast it's been slowing down worldwide - at least not with the theatrical take. And it will definitely need home video to break even. The amount of profit it can make looks fairly low even with home video added in - they're going to be happy just to break even and make a couple of dollars - this will not be the billion dollar hit Sony really needed it to be.

I agree that 665-670 million is a LOT of money for any movie to make, and ASM2 will certainly be in the top ten of moneymakers for the year. I don't know that it will be even in the top 3, however, as we haven't seen what multiple summer blockbusters will do and there's usually at least one really big hit in the fall. The issue to me is that the studios spend so much money making and marketing these gargantuas that even when they make 700 million dollars, they're STILL in the red. The solution to that, obviously, is not to spend over 200 million dollars making a movie. They could easily make a good movie for half that amount, which is a HUGE amount of money already, and thus ensure that they can get into profit much more easily and not have so many loss leaders.

I also agree that Sony should count themselves lucky that ASM2 didn't simply bomb right away, as it easily could have given the poor reception and the generally perfunctory nature of the Spider Man movies these days. I agree that Sony will continue to inflict these movies, but hopefully they will do so with a better thought toward simple thoughts like, oh, storytelling. And they might even try the unheard-of idea of maybe not spending over 200 million dollars on the next one. As you correctly note, that would set them up to lose a lot more money than they did on After Earth and White House Down.

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AndyDursin
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Re: Weekend Box Office - GODZILLA Stomps Competition

#19 Post by AndyDursin »

My instincts say that ASM2 will likely not make it to 700 million, given how fast it's been slowing down worldwide - at least not with the theatrical take.
My best guess is it's going to end up around or over $700 mil worldwide. It only opened in many overseas markets on the 11th. It should do around $200 mil domestic, which is less than $30 mil away from where it is right now -- that's entirely likely with more kids getting out of school and secondary theater runs. The movie still grossed $16 mil this past weekend, so that's a pretty conservative guess. That would bring it to $665 mil just about. Can it do another $35 mil overseas to hit $700 mil? I don't see that being a huge obstacle, unless the bottom drops out quickly. And while it's possible, it would really have to shut down fast for that to happen.

Either way, it's still diminishing returns and the bottom line is they spent a fortune and did not deliver a superior film than the first one -- which wasn't all that good to begin with.

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