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X-MEN: DARK PHOENIX directed by Simon Kinberg (11/2/18)
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1,323 posts in this topic

51 minutes ago, Jaydogrules said:

Maybe, just maybe, with Shazam, *ahem*,  "underperforming", and Hellboy and Dark Phoenix outright flopping, we are at last witnessing the dreaded "superhero fatigue" wall.

Sure, some will say, "but Endgame". "But Captain Marvel". 

Yes those did beyond great.  But those were the last must see chapters in an 11 year story arc.

Let's see what the next solo MCU movie does.  How about that totally irrelevant and unnecessary Black Widow movie Feige is insisting on making as a parting gift/severance package to the overpaid and miscast ScarJo?  How's that going to do?

There's a solo Spidey flick on deck next.  Guess that will be the one that gives us a further preview of mainstream superhero box office life- post Endgame (though we are basically 0 for 3 so far).

-J.

I don't think those movies you mentioned, or at least their low ratings are the product of fatigue, or even related to it. 

A good movie is a good movie, and a bad movie is a bad movie. Make a good superhero film, and people will pay to see it. 

Besides, people have been throwing the whole "super hero fatigue" thing around for years now, and there's just no real significant signs of it (though that doesn't mean it doesn't exist for some). People can't wait to see what Disney does with X-Men.

Doesn't sound like fatigue to me.

Edited by Darkowl
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33 minutes ago, Jaydogrules said:

No it wasn't. Not even close. It lost *at least* $50MM theatrically.  

And with P&A, Dark Phoenix has an all in of probably about $350MM.  This will be a financial bloodbath. 

-J.

Sigh...

Again (for the umpteenth time).

Nobody cares if a film is profitable "theatrically."

All that matters is if the film is *ultimately* profitable.

Which means a good rule of thumb of a total theatrical multiplier of 3x the budget. Could be as low as 2.5x the budget depending on how much was spent on marketing and the domestic/international spit.

And -- as I've noted as nauseum, but your (BS) insistence on "theatrical" profitability, literally half of the MCU films lost money. Including Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor and a host of others.

And they didn't.

Period.

Shazam will post a profit for Warner Brothers.

Ditto -- so will Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse for Sony.

This film, however, will likely not ever recoup the funds spent on it. Huge difference.

 

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2 minutes ago, Gatsby77 said:

Sigh...

Again (for the umpteenth time).

Nobody cares if a film is profitable "theatrically."

All that matters is if the film is *ultimately* profitable.

Which means a good rule of thumb of a total theatrical multiplier of 3x the budget. Could be as low as 2.5x the budget depending on how much was spent on marketing and the domestic/international spit.

And -- as I've noted as nauseum, but your (BS) insistence on "theatrical" profitability, literally half of the MCU films lost money. Including Iron Man, Captain America: The First Avenger, Thor and a host of others.

And they didn't.

Period.

Shazam will post a profit for Warner Brothers.

Ditto -- so will Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse for Sony.

This film, however, will likely not ever recoup the funds spent on it. Huge difference.

 

"Nobody cares if a movie is profitable theatrically"?

Lol Okay.  Sure.

And your 2.5× multiplier doesn't apply to at least large "tentpole" movies.  In reality (and as you have mentioned yourself in the past), P&A usually at least doubles a film's production budget.  And with China accounting for greater and greater percentages of a movie's revenue, a film usually needs to do 4x-4.5× to break even theatrically (it "might" be as low as 3.5× if the film has a larger than average percentage of domestic business).  

As to your contention that Shazam and Spider-verse "will" make money on the ancillary market after flaming out theatrically?  Maybe, but probably not.  For as we saw on Deadline's last batch of top money maker reports, even with a "modest" all in of about $230MM, Venom "only" profited about $250MM, and that was *with* ancilliaries and an $855MM box office. Similar to Aquaman, with its $350MM all in, "only" profited $265MM *with* ancilliaries and a $1.1B box office.

So maybe, oh box office guru, you can walk us through how two movies (Shazam and Spider-verse) neither of which made even $380MM worldwide (such a pathetic result) both with $200MM all in budgets, are anything other than financial failures, even with a best case scenario for "ancilliaries".

-J.

 

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2 hours ago, Jaydogrules said:

 

Maybe, just maybe, with Shazam, *ahem*,  "underperforming", and Hellboy and Dark Phoenix outright flopping, we are at last witnessing the dreaded "superhero fatigue" wall.

Sure, some will say, "but Endgame". "But Captain Marvel". 

Yes those did beyond great.  But those were the last must see chapters in an 11 year story arc.

Let's see what the next solo MCU movie does.  How about that totally irrelevant and unnecessary Black Widow movie Feige is insisting on making as a parting gift/severance package to the overpaid and miscast ScarJo?  How's that going to do?

 

Maybe "superhero movies other than the MCU fatigue." The general public knows the difference now. Your three examples of underperforming movies are all outside the MCU. The world community is about as invested in true Marvel movies as they are in Star Wars now. They've captured the public's imagination. And I'm not counting China because right now they'll go see anything with a superhero in it.

The "unnecessary" Black Widow movie will most likely set up future events for Earth based MCU movies/shows. That's not confirmed, but it's what will happen because that's how the MCU operates. None of their movies work in a vacuum. We might even meet Natasha's successor. There will be plenty of reason to see next year's Black Widow other than it being a "thank you for playing here's a parting gift" for Scarlet Johanssen.

And just wait when we start getting visual confirmation of the MCU's next villain Korvac in CM2 or Adam Warloc in GOTG3 or Fantastic Four or we get that first Eternals trailer. Phase Four can't get here fast enough.

Endgame who?

Edited by @therealsilvermane
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Dark Phoenix's Original Ending Was Changed For Being Too Similar To Civil War And Captain Marvel

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As Simon Kinberg points out, the original ending of Dark Phoenix was going to be much more intimate and include only a small handful of characters. It also tore the X-Men apart over an ideological difference -- just like in Civil War with the Avengers.

 

That being said, the miscalculation here is that Civil War was built up over the course of several films with characters we knew and understood. Dark Phoenix is centered around Jean Grey, who was only in one other movie as a supporting character. We need to understand how these new X-Men relate to each other to have an ending as impactful as Civil War.

 

However, I don't think that could have been the reason the film was reshot. Civil War came out in May 2016 and Dark Phoenix didn't start filming until June 2017. Even if he did have a draft of the -script complete when Civil War came out, Simon Kinberg had over a year for rewrites. On the other hand, maybe he didn't rewrite the ending, but it didn't score well with test audiences.

:whatthe:

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1 minute ago, Bosco685 said:

Yeah, but that Civil War element was in the final Dark Phoenix movie, where you had Hank McCoy and Magneto pitted against Professor X and Cyclops with Nightcrawler and Storm in the middle, fighting over whether to save Jean or kill her. The only reason they were all together at the end was because they all got zapped, put in dog collars, and placed on the same train car.

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16 minutes ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Yeah, but that Civil War element was in the final Dark Phoenix movie, where you had Hank McCoy and Magneto pitted against Professor X and Cyclops with Nightcrawler and Storm in the middle, fighting over whether to save Jean or kill her. The only reason they were all together at the end was because they all got zapped, put in dog collars, and placed on the same train car.

It's Captain Marvel. And let's do this in a way we keep the spoilers less spoiled.

Spoiler

If you go back to the Watch32 or CouchTuner or CinemaClub site you watched it from, part of the D'Bari story was how they had arrived in a spaceship and had observed the shuttle situation and X-jet from a distance before invading Earth.

So when Jean Grey grabs Vuk and takes her into space to finally destroy her, the next stop would be destroying the D'Bari ship which we never saw again after the shuttle reveal. Just like when Captain Marvel takes out the Kree capital ship. It would have been such a match, Kinberg most probably saw it immediately and realized general audiences would see it too.

Civil War is him most probably trying to pretend his story was much deeper than it turned out to be.

 

Edited by Bosco685
Kinberg
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Spoiler

If you go back to the Watch32 or CouchTuner or CinemaClub site you watched it from, part of the D'Bari story was how they had arrived in a spaceship and had observed the shuttle situation and X-jet from a distance before invading Earth.

So when Jean Grey grabs Vuk and takes her into space to finally destroy her, the next stop would be destroying the D'Bari ship which we never saw again after the shuttle reveal. Just like when Captain Marvel takes out the Kree capital ship. It would have been such a match, Kingberg most probably saw it immediately and realized general audiences would see it too.

Civil War is him most probably trying to pretend his story was much deeper than it turned out to be.

Spoiler

Well that would have been even worse because it's through destroying Vuk that Jean also kills herself and is freed from the Phoenix Force. Your original Simon Kinberg ending would have been anti-climactic. So she kills Vuk and then destroys a bunch of spaceships. Then what? How would Jean Grey die? It doesn't make any sense and no wonder they changed it. What a mess of a movie. As I said before, I still preferred DP over Last Stand. But without a good filmmaker like Bryan Singer or Matthew Vaughn to steer the ship, this franchise has been lost. What a blessing to the world that Fox News sold out to Disney. 

 

Edited by @therealsilvermane
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1 minute ago, @therealsilvermane said:
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Well that would have been even worse because it's through destroying Vuk that Jean also kills herself and is freed from the Phoenix Force. Your original Simon Kinberg ending would have been anti-climactic. So she kills Vuk and then destroys a bunch of spaceships. Then what? How would Jean Grey die? It doesn't make any sense and no wonder they changed it. What a mess of a movie. As I said before, I still preferred DP over Last Stand. But without a good filmmaker like Bryan Singer or Matthew Vaughn to steer the ship, this franchise has been lost. What a blessing to the world that Fox News sold out to Disney. 

 

Unfortunately...

Spoiler

As a second-time director, first-time film director (he directed a Twilight Zone episode), he got spooked and made changes that could have been interesting out in space.

I don't think it would have been that tough to have Jean Grey take out the ship(s) - I think there was only one - and then in an act of self-sacrifice before she went full Dark Phoenix she takes herself out. It could have had some emotional impact in that she protected Earth first and then the galaxy through her sacrifice.

Bummer!

 

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1 minute ago, @therealsilvermane said:

If you go back to the Watch32 or CouchTuner or CinemaClub site you watched it from

Unfortunately I gave $50 or so of my not-so-hard-earned money to the theater Thursday night. DP was so bad it might even hurt the movie pirating business...ha ha

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9 minutes ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Unfortunately I gave $50 or so of my not-so-hard-earned money to the theater Thursday night. DP was so bad it might even hurt the movie pirating business...ha ha

My friends and I had a decent time. All enjoyed it, though had some questions about the ending and what happens...

Spoiler

in the sky as they are not all comic book readers. So the Dark Phoenix flame signal at the end wasn't something they could appreciate.

 

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1 hour ago, @therealsilvermane said:

Maybe "superhero movies other than the MCU fatigue." The general public knows the difference now. Your three examples of underperforming movies are all outside the MCU. The world community is about as invested in true Marvel movies as they are in Star Wars now. They've captured the public's imagination. And I'm not counting China because right now they'll go see anything with a superhero in it.

The "unnecessary" Black Widow movie will most likely set up future events for Earth based MCU movies/shows. That's not confirmed, but it's what will happen because that's how the MCU operates. None of their movies work in a vacuum. We might even meet Natasha's successor. There will be plenty of reason to see next year's Black Widow other than it being a "thank you for playing here's a parting gift" for Scarlet Johanssen.

And just wait when we start getting visual confirmation of the MCU's next villain Korvac in CM2 or Adam Warloc in GOTG3 or Fantastic Four or we get that first Eternals trailer. Phase Four can't get here fast enough.

Endgame who?

I am dying to see Korvac as the next villain. 

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4 hours ago, Jaydogrules said:

"Nobody cares if a movie is profitable theatrically"?

Lol Okay.  Sure.

And your 2.5× multiplier doesn't apply to at least large "tentpole" movies.  In reality (and as you have mentioned yourself in the past), P&A usually at least doubles a film's production budget.  And with China accounting for greater and greater percentages of a movie's revenue, a film usually needs to do 4x-4.5× to break even theatrically (it "might" be as low as 3.5× if the film has a larger than average percentage of domestic business).  

As to your contention that Shazam and Spider-verse "will" make money on the ancillary market after flaming out theatrically?  Maybe, but probably not.  For as we saw on Deadline's last batch of top money maker reports, even with a "modest" all in of about $230MM, Venom "only" profited about $250MM, and that was *with* ancilliaries and an $855MM box office. Similar to Aquaman, with its $350MM all in, "only" profited $265MM *with* ancilliaries and a $1.1B box office.

So maybe, oh box office guru, you can walk us through how two movies (Shazam and Spider-verse) neither of which made even $380MM worldwide (such a pathetic result) both with $200MM all in budgets, are anything other than financial failures, even with a best case scenario for "ancilliaries".

-J.

 

I can't imagine studios spending as much on advertising as they do on production for these big budget films. I remember reading Endgame spent more than any previous MCU film @ 225M. I would think around 50% is more realistic, otherwise the majority of all these movies are not profitable theatrically.

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14 minutes ago, chezmtghut said:

I can't imagine studios spending as much on advertising as they do on production for these big budget films. I remember reading Endgame spent more than any previous MCU film @ 225M. I would think around 50% is more realistic, otherwise the majority of all these movies are not profitable theatrically.

It's typically a *minimum* of $100MM on P&A for any wide release tentpole.  

-J.

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