Hollywood's Abysmal 2024 in Numbers by 6ixStringJack

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah. The Moana 2 thing is unfortunate.

I hear that may have ripples impacting movie animators in the future too.

It was nothing more than an entire season of a made for Disney+ TV show, created by low-level TV animation employees, and then edited down haphazardly into a barely coherent story.

And it almost made a Billion.

Do you get what I keep telling you now, Second?

Your average person is an idiot. As long as you don't inject their lowbrow idiot entertainment with preaching and agenda bullshit, they'll keep paying to see crap made for idiots.

Hollywood will be fine.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

The average attendee at the movies is a child watching a cartoon:

Top 2024 Movies at the Worldwide Box Office

1 Inside Out 2 $1,698,472,914

3 Despicable Me 4 $969,158,413

4 Moana 2 $820,990,553

8 Kung Fu Panda 4 $547,699,816

https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/worldwide/all-movies/cu
mulative/released-in-2024

And then the audience of immature adults (children except in age and income):

2 Deadpool & Wolverine $1,338,071,348

5 Dune: Part Two $707,560,777

7 Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire $568,721,707

10 Venom: The Last Dance $475,329,179

followed by the audience that is Chinese or likes Broadway musical revivals:

6 Wicked $585,583,658

9 YOLO $479,597,304

That's who goes to movie theaters. Where are the adults who are actually mature? They aren't buying tickets to Hollywood's best selling movies except when their child is with them.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 27, 2024 5:40 PM

The "mature" adults are the old folks paying to see the matinees for the 10 or 15 other movies that are in theaters at any given time that nobody talks about.

I think most adults 30 and above without kids probably don't go to the theaters much, for all the reasons we've discussed before, and the ones with kids don't go to the movies for anything other than taking their kids to see a movie. Kids (under 30) have a much higher tolerance for other people's bullshit and are more willing to spin the wheel and see a movie and hope somebody doesn't fuck up their good time.

I'm sure Hollywood noticed what you did. Expect them to keep churning out a bunch of kid movies until that doesn't work anymore.

As for the movies themselves... Like Spider-Man: No Way Home, D&W was a flukey gimmick they won't be able to replicate. Whatever their plans for Dune are, one part of their plan should be acknowledging that anything after the original book isn't likely to do well in theaters and if they blow the budget on a 3rd Dune movie they're going to regret it. Venom did fine, just like I thought it would, but that's dead now too. SONY needs to refrain from making any more comic book movies that don't star Spider-Man front and center. Comic books will not be making a comeback anytime soon, and any studio trying to push more than 1 next year is going to pay the price for it.

I would also advise STRONGLY against the urge to think that Musicals are the next way to go after the success of Wicked, because that one is going to hilariously backfire if they try it.

Please, Hollywood. Give us Cats 2.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 27, 2024 8:15 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Please, Hollywood. Give us Cats 2.

Why not stop all movie production except for Avatar 3, 4, 5? One bonus would be releasing all those hundreds of thousands of people that worked in Hollywood from their boom-or-bust industry so that they could work in something steadier such as engineering, which seems to be a favorite career that Trumptards want more Americans to work at. And shutting down Hollywood would not cause much economic activity to be lost:

In 2023, the total box office revenue in the United States and Canada was around $8.91 billion, which is up from $7.37 billion in 2022. However, it's still $2 billion short of the yearly movie ticket sales reached before the pandemic.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+much+money+did+movies+make+in+2023

I was looking for an industry that has an equivalent impact to Hollywood ($8.91 billion) and I found one in this report: The Economic and Fiscal Impacts of the Distilling Industry in Kentucky Prepared for the Kentucky Distillers’ Association on page 75, which lists "Annual Economic Impact of the Distilling Industry in Kentucky" $8,997,494,178

https://kybourbon.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/02/Economic-and-Fiscal-I
mpacts-FINAL-2-6-24.pdf

Movies are moonshine. Why not have Hollywood actually make moonshine rather than movies?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, December 27, 2024 8:51 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Please, Hollywood. Give us Cats 2.
Why not stop all movie production except for Avatar 3, 4, 5? One bonus would be releasing all those hundreds of thousands of people that worked in Hollywood from their boom-or-bust industry so that they could work in something steadier such as engineering, which seems to be a favorite career that Trumptards want more Americans to work at. And shutting down Hollywood would not cause much economic activity to be lost:

No thanks.

We wouldn't want any of your leftwing nutjobs from California designing anything that anyone needs to rely on.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 12:36 PM

6ixString has a point as back in the day they would make a movie for 75Million to 90 Mil and that spending was considered an expensive Block Buster

Now they easily spend 200 Million to 250 Million on crap

if they Japanese and SKoreans can keep budgets low and still have amazing Fx then why can't Hollyweid...its seems tinsel town is done for now

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 1:49 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

No thanks.

We wouldn't want any of your leftwing nutjobs from California designing anything that anyone needs to rely on.

Hollywood should go out of business. It doesn't even know how to end a movie memorably:

The Ending of Gladiator II Will Not Be Remembered, in This Life or the Next

By Bilge Ebiri | Dec 28, 2024 11:00 AM

None of us could remember how the new movie ended, which was particularly hilarious because we’d all just seen the damn thing; this was a few days after it had screened for critics. We were trying to remember it because the finale of the original Gladiator had been so memorable and moving: “He was a soldier of Rome. Honor him.” That line still sends chills up my spine, 24 years later—and yes, I know that’s not the actual ending, because there’s also that wonderful scene with Djimon Hounsou burying the little figurines in the Colosseum: “Now we are free. I will see you again—but not yet. Not yet!” So, Gladiator has two great endings, while the new one’s got zero.

More at https://slate.com/culture/2024/12/gladiator-2-movie-ending-2024-paul-m
escal.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 2:28 PM

I was too busy getting a handy during Gladiator to remember how it ended. It was good though, huh?

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 4:10 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I was too busy getting a handy during Gladiator to remember how it ended.

Mentally disordered people like yourself in the audience are another reason why movie theaters do less and less business.

Lauren Boebert Caught Fondling Date’s Genitals During Family-Friendly Musical: Video
The ultraconservative congresswoman from Colorado, who has railed against drag queens reading to children, accusing them of “sexualizing” kids, was caught seemingly engaged in sexual behavior in a public theater.
https://www.advocate.com/politics/lauren-boebert

U.S. congresswoman expelled from theater
https://www.marca.com/en/latest-news/2023/09/19/6509fe4fca4741332f8b45
7a.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 5:46 PM

Iron Man 3 (2013) vs. Gladiator II (2024) vs. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024)

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons-extended/Iron-Ma
n-3/Gladiator-II-(2024)/Sonic-the-Hedgehog-3-(2024)#tab=day_by_day_comparison

international markets are expected to be somewhat strong for Sonic

some drama film called Firefighters took number 1 spot in SKorea
and a Chinese concert film is expected to do well
In Spain Mufasa The Lion King Musical and Mona / Vaiana 2 took the number 1 and 2 spot
Mufasa The Lion King, Moana 2 and Wicked took the number 1, 2 and 3 spot in New Zealand

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 6:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I was too busy getting a handy during Gladiator to remember how it ended.
Mentally disordered people like yourself in the audience are another reason why movie theaters do less and less business.

I accept that.

40 year old me would have loved an opportunity to kick 20 year old me's ass.

Meanwhile, watch any teen/college comedy from that era and that's what we were all supposed to be doing back then.

I blame Stiffler's Mom for all of society's problems.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, December 28, 2024 7:54 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Meanwhile, watch any teen/college comedy from that era and that's what we were all supposed to be doing back then.

I blame Stiffler's Mom for all of society's problems.

Your kind never understand “Ninety percent of everything is crap”, an adage known as Sturgeon's law, which was coined by American science fiction author and critic Theodore Sturgeon.

Origin
Sturgeon first published the phrase in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction. He used it to defend science fiction from critics who derided it for its low quality.

Explanation
Sturgeon observed that most work in other fields was also low-quality, so science fiction was no different. He believed that it was pointless to single out science fiction, and that the same could be said about anything, including Hollywood movies.

A moral to draw from Sturgeon's law is that when criticizing a field, genre, or art form, you should focus on the good stuff, or leave it alone.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett championed Sturgeon's law as one of his seven tools for critical thinking and reviewing cinema. Ninety percent of all Hollywood movies are crap and should be avoided.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Sturgeon%27s+law

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 3:11 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Meanwhile, watch any teen/college comedy from that era and that's what we were all supposed to be doing back then.

I blame Stiffler's Mom for all of society's problems.
Your kind never understand “Ninety percent of everything is crap”, an adage known as Sturgeon's law, which was coined by American science fiction author and critic Theodore Sturgeon.

Origin
Sturgeon first published the phrase in the March 1958 issue of Venture Science Fiction. He used it to defend science fiction from critics who derided it for its low quality.

Explanation
Sturgeon observed that most work in other fields was also low-quality, so science fiction was no different. He believed that it was pointless to single out science fiction, and that the same could be said about anything, including Hollywood movies.

A moral to draw from Sturgeon's law is that when criticizing a field, genre, or art form, you should focus on the good stuff, or leave it alone.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett championed Sturgeon's law as one of his seven tools for critical thinking and reviewing cinema. Ninety percent of all Hollywood movies are crap and should be avoided.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Sturgeon%27s+law

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

My "kind"? WTF are you even on about now dude?

I've never argued that most of Hollywood movies weren't crap. I've also said a few dozen times they were crap before your woke cultists got their grubby little paws into everything too.

You don't even know what you're arguing about half the time. You just get off on being mad at somebody.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 6:44 AM

Great night for NosferatuFilm. Should hit nearly $7.8m on Saturday. Could be a dark horse for multiple categories at the TheAcademy
https://x.com/empirecitybo/status/1873215466577248627
Oscars. Heading for $125m+ domestic or better if that happens

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 7:29 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

My "kind"? WTF are you even on about now dude?

I've never argued that most of Hollywood movies weren't crap. I've also said a few dozen times they were crap before your woke cultists got their grubby little paws into everything too.

You don't even know what you're arguing about half the time. You just get off on being mad at somebody.

6ix, what I mean by "your kind" is that your kind see the whole world as a conspiracy, a plot, by some elite or by dark forces in government or by illegal aliens or by bankers, to offend them, to take advantage of them, to oppress them, to murder them. For your kind, the world is a Hollywood movie you alternatively hate, fear, and are bored by. You hate Hollywood. You hate the movie and a majority of the audience sitting with you. You want your money back. You want somebody like Trump to take over and give you the kind of movie you like. And you want the ticket price to be free. Fundamentally, "your kind" 6ix have a wacko misunderstanding of the entire world around you and never will get a decent idea about what to do with yourselves before you die of stupidity and over-indulgence. Everything you write, 6ix, convinces me your kind are a bunch of snotty-nose lost children wandering around in the dark movie theater, crying for Daddy Trump to save them from the boogieman in this horror show they got lost at.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 7:46 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

1) There is another Bob Dylan biopic. The lead actor spent 5 years learning how to be a convincing Dylan impersonator, learning the piano, guitar, and harmonica but since the studio spent $70,000,000 it won't make a profit because who wants more Bob Dylan?

https://www.google.com/search?q=bob+dylan+biopics

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons-extended/Complet
e-Unknown-A-(2024)/Im-Not-There/Rolling-Thunder-Revue-A-Bob-Dylan-Story-by-Martin-Scorsese-(2019)#tab=day_by_day_comparison

2) Here is another biopic about a different singer. In the style of Planet of the Apes, the very real and still alive singer is impersonated by a chimp. That's a highly creative change from the usual human actor impersonating the still alive Bob Dylan, for one example. I'm pretty sure being highly creative will not mean being highly profitable.

Plot: Better Man tells the life story of pop singer Robbie Williams, but with Williams portrayed as a CGI-animated chimpanzee because, as he puts it, he always felt "less evolved than other people."

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Better-Man-(2024)#tab=summary

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Man_(film)

If Hollywood stopped making all movies except for Avatar 3, 4, and 5 the world would be a better place.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 9:59 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Great night for NosferatuFilm. Should hit nearly $7.8m on Saturday. Could be a dark horse for multiple categories at the TheAcademy
https://x.com/empirecitybo/status/1873215466577248627
Oscars. Heading for $125m+ domestic or better if that happens

I didn't watch it, but I did see that Critical Drinker made a video recommending this movie.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 10:01 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

My "kind"? WTF are you even on about now dude?

I've never argued that most of Hollywood movies weren't crap. I've also said a few dozen times they were crap before your woke cultists got their grubby little paws into everything too.

You don't even know what you're arguing about half the time. You just get off on being mad at somebody.
6ix, what I mean by "your kind" is that your kind see the whole world as a conspiracy, a plot, by some elite or by dark forces in government or by illegal aliens or by bankers, to offend them, to take advantage of them, to oppress them, to murder them. For your kind, the world is a Hollywood movie you alternatively hate, fear, and are bored by. You hate Hollywood. You hate the movie and a majority of the audience sitting with you. You want your money back. You want somebody like Trump to take over and give you the kind of movie you like. And you want the ticket price to be free. Fundamentally, "your kind" 6ix have a wacko misunderstanding of the entire world around you and never will get a decent idea about what to do with yourselves before you die of stupidity and over-indulgence. Everything you write, 6ix, convinces me your kind are a bunch of snotty-nose lost children wandering around in the dark movie theater, crying for Daddy Trump to save them from the boogieman in this horror show they got lost at.

You're such a creep dude.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 4:12 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You're such a creep dude.

You haven't stopped smoking, have you? Don't have a career, do you? I am around you goddamn worthless Trumptards all the time. (Half of Texas is Trumptard) You guys are the most fucked up people I have known. If your kind could rationally and dispassionately compare yourselves with mentally stable, productive human beings, you would knows this. But you can't know this, for it would destroy you. I have seen the end of enough Trumptards to be certain the self-destruction is enviable once you get a clear look at yourselves for long enough. Now for something happier!

Buy a ticket! Hollywood needs your charitable donation to a good cause: making them rich.

The evil pirates are undercutting Hollywood’s theater ticket sales.
The latest example would be a movie for children that opened December 20th:

Sonic.the.Hedgehog.3.2024.1080p.TELESYNC.x264.COLLECTiVE

Bittorrent Link: 2D5210F939CF07155F5672C6239A7111D0830BE0

https://x1337x.cc/torrent/6298722/Sonic-the-Hedgehog-3-2024-1080p-TELE
SYNC-x264-COLLECTiVE/

Metacritic rating: 59
https://www.metacritic.com/movie/sonic-the-hedgehog-3/

Tomatometer rating: 88%
Popcornmeter rating: 96%
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sonic_the_hedgehog_3

Grosses
Domestic (65%)
$137,552,146
International (35%)
$74,000,000
Worldwide
$211,552,146
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl886211329/

Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” . . . cost $122 million to produce. Buy a ticket so Hollywood can profit.
https://variety.com/2024/film/box-office/holidays-box-office-mufasa-so
nic-3-100-million-1236261080/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, December 29, 2024 4:57 PM

Yup. Creep.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 30, 2024 8:06 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yup. Creep.

Shove it up you ass, you prematurely retired-from-life retard. Was doing nothing with life except bitching your Plan B?

Director Denis Villeneuve (Dune 1, 2 and 3) was asked:

So if you weren't a filmmaker, what was Plan B?

Denis: There was a precise moment when I was in crisis when I was young, and I said to myself, "What is my Plan B? I have no Plan B! What if after I make two feature films they kick me out? What if I'm a bad filmmaker? What do I do?" And I thought, "A baker to make bread." That made sense. People need bread. You make bread. They buy bread. It's a very simple mathematical equation. Everybody is happy. When I was young, I had a friend who was a baker. His wife was absolutely beautiful. I thought, "That's a life I can do."

6ix, do something useful with life. Bake bread. The world will be better if all Hollywood directors activate their Plan B, except James Cameron who must first finish Avatar 3, 4 & 5.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/denis-villeneuve-isn-t-at-peace-
and-he-s-ok-with-that/ar-AA1wvXTP

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 30, 2024 11:56 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Why Hollywood should make few movies, with a special exception for Avatar 3, 4 and 5.
(Avatar Producer/Director James Cameron moved his residency and his production to New Zealand, which makes Avatar technically New Zealand cinema, not Hollywood. )

The Year’s Best Performances in Bad Movies

Not even Angelina Jolie, Willem Dafoe, and Denzel Washington could save these movies.

. . . Then there are the actors who got the memos that the rest of the movie’s cast didn’t get. In Gladiator II, Denzel Washington clearly got the message that a film like this needs more scenery chewing. The rest of the film is pitched at such a serious level that it sinks the entire venture. Ridley Scott, how the hell do you expect me to look at CGI rhinos and sharks with a straight face?

I can say the same for Nosferatu, Robert Eggers’ remake of F. W. Murnau’s classic Dracula rip-off from 1922. Willem Dafoe obviously got the memo to Peter Cushing up the proceedings. He’s great! The rest of the movie is so self-serious that it earned my derisive laughter. The vampire has a mustache that’s bigger than the one that adorned Eddie Murphy’s Aunt Bunny, and he looks like Soda Popinski from Mike Tyson’s Punch-Out (or Dr. Robotnik from Sonic the Hedgehog for you younger folks).

More at https://slate.com/culture/2024/12/maria-callas-movie-angelina-jolie-no
sferatu-gladiator-denzel.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 30, 2024 4:08 PM

It's a shame that Soda Popinski didn't have the longevity of Dr. Robotnick. One is not really much older than the other.

It's also a shame that Vodka Drunkenski was forced by Nintendo of America to legally change his name to Soda Popinski in 1987.

Hopefully he stopped drinking pop too, or he's probably got diabetes in 2024.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 30, 2024 4:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yup. Creep.
Shove it up you ass, you prematurely retired-from-life retard. Was doing nothing with life except bitching your Plan B?

I'm keeping plenty busy. Since money isn't what I prize above everything else like you do, it allows me to spend time on what interests me instead of slaving away to make somebody else rich.

Maybe you should try it. You're obviously miserable and whatever it is that you're doing right now isn't working for you.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, December 30, 2024 6:08 PM

Paramount's Sonic the Hedgehog 3 grossed $37.01M this weekend (from 3,769 locations). Total domestic gross stands at $136.56M.

https://x.com/BORReport/status/1873841147971592295

Iron Man 3 (2013) vs. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (2024) vs. Nosferatu (2024)

https://www.the-numbers.com/movies/custom-comparisons-extended/Iron-Ma
n-3/Sonic-the-Hedgehog-3-(2024)/Nosferatu-(2024)#tab=day_by_day_comparison

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 9:53 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Wicked (Number 3 in the USA for ticket sales) opened Nov 22 but by Dec 31 it was streaming. If you want to see the movie for free, it is available for downloading:

Bittorrent Link: b4a040a78ef4a4a6acd756b954ded53aaffc3421

https://psa.wf/movie/wicked-2024/

Somehow Hollywood convinced approximately 42 million North Americans to pay $424,530,395 for an inferior experience at the theater when they could have a better time watching the same movie at home for free.

https://www.the-numbers.com/movie/Wicked-(2024)#tab=summary
https://www.the-numbers.com/box-office-records/domestic/all-movies/cum
ulative/released-in-2024

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 1:47 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Somehow Hollywood convinced approximately 42 million North Americans to pay $424,530,395 for an inferior experience at the theater when they could have a better time watching the same movie at home for free.

That is not hard to do, even with a mid movie like Wicked.

Most people aren't you.

Your sham pandemic didn't keep people away after the major studios came out and said the movie theater was dead in 2021. You think a couple of bad movies are going to do it?

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 3:21 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That is not hard to do, even with a mid movie like Wicked.

Most people aren't you.

Your sham pandemic didn't keep people away after the major studios came out and said the movie theater was dead in 2021. You think a couple of bad movies are going to do it?

Snacks at the theater keep getting more expensive compared snacks eaten at home. Aside from the gastronomical experience of dining while watching movies, the audiovisual experience at movie theaters have not gotten better in decades. But TV sets have gotten better. Eventually, the improvements in TVs will plateau when 8K becomes common and all new movies are streaming within days of opening at theaters. Until that point is reached, movie theater ticket sales will continue decreasing.

After that point, the decision to see a movie at the theater versus at home will probably be made based on the price of popcorn and drinks at each location and the relative tastiness of snacks at home compared to the theater. Whosoever sells the best melted cheese on their nachos and the most greasy butter flavor on popcorn wins!

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 4:39 PM

Disney’s MOANA 2 sailed past $400M domestic yesterday and now nearly $900M world wide.
https://x.com/ERCboxoffice/status/1874141876506550280

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

And as for those who engage in "Hollywood Accounting", it's time for them to give that up and find another way to scam their money, because continuing to do it with movies is going to get them caught real quick under our current conditions.

Let's just say that we're never going to see another moving starring Brie Larson make over a Billion dollars at the box office again.

Inside Out 2 was difficult to predict

My fault on a wrong predictions.. I though Horror would do ok for Hollywood, it is an easy genre to produce, low budget and somewhat easy to market but they released nothing September October November which is a time period when horror does well in Norther Hemisphere populations
to win at horror you need a little word of mouth the jump scare hype or well written movie that is recommended by friends, The Sixth Sense, they did their best to sabotage Five Nights at Freddy's but it was successful and horrors can do good any time of year, World War Z was actually a summer film and so was Jaws and The Conjuring, A Quiet Place was a spring time movie.

So failures, I'm counting Fall Guy, Joker2 ass rape, Furiosa A Mad Max Saga, Red One, Kraven the Hunter...maybe not Hollywood technically also a Japan product same with Madame Web but they do have other grand video game brands to burn through and Japan still owns Spider-Man, Twisters flopped, Transformers One, Fly Me To the Moon, Argylle, Megalopolis, Borderlands...Apple has also joined the Hollywood flop business
a website Deadline usually examines yearly studio budgets and does a series on profitable movies

6ixStringJack
You're predictions on movies are often good
I believe you add costs of distribution and marketing, you don't believe in profits from Toys, DVDs, T-Shirts, Streaming Downloads
You were tough on 'Beatlejuice Beatlejuice' and now count it as a flop but you first expected it to do well

Should I include 'Beatlejuice Beatlejuice' in the Flop List?

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 5:59 PM

Megalopolis and Joker 2

Half in the Bag 2024 Stragglers

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 6:46 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
6ixStringJack
You're predictions on movies are often good
I believe you add costs of distribution and marketing,

I don't add any distribution and marketing costs, simply because that is only made available to us on a very rare occasion, and only when the movie does exceedingly well. (See: When they bumped up the originally stated production budget for Barbie by $45 Million from only $100 Million and at the same time announced that they spent $150 Million on marketing, which was $5 Million more than the Production Budget. They only announced both of these things after it was clear that Barbie was going to be a smash hit and it made them look like geniuses for doing what they did.

The Rule of Thumb for years was that a movie had to gross 2 times the Production Budget to break even. This included the nebulous marketing budgets, distribution and the theater cuts on ticket prices.

Early last year I saw people using RoT2.5x and even RoT3.0x, and I called bullshit on that. There was no proof that we'd changed from RoT2.0. But we were in the middle of a recession the media still refuses to admit is a recession and the price of everything went up.

If you recall, and there's my post history here to prove it, I wrote a lot about this in the first half of 2023, and even initially based my tables off of the RoT2.0 model. It was only after lefty sites like Deadline were confirming the RoT2.5 model that I went along with it and edited my tables to reflect both models. And I said at the time I was sufficiently satisfied that RoT2.5x was now a legitimate model and I would have abandoned the 2.0 model going forward if I made lists for 2024 and beyond.

So, of course, it's not an exact science. Some big budget movies probably have to make RoT3.0 to actually break even, but without the exact figures we'll never know that. On the flip side, a studio like A24 or Focus Features isn't spending shit on marketing, so they really don't need 2.5x to break even and are probably fine even if they end up just a little shy of 2.0x, depending on what deal they have with the theaters and what the take is. (Again, numbers we're never going to be privy to).

Quote:
you don't believe in profits from Toys, DVDs, T-Shirts, Streaming Downloads

Interesting question.

It's not that I don't believe in these profits. I just don't believe anything they say about them now, simply because there is no transparency on them. Outside of DVD sales, we have no reliable numbers to verify or disprove any merchandising or streaming claims. Let's take that list 1 by 1.

1. Toys - Simply put, nobody is buying them anymore. And I'm not at all convinced that fixing the woke bullshit is really going to help with that. Sure... DEI departments making sure that Hasbro was making an equal amount of no-name minority character from Eternals as they did Spider-Man was a horrible, horrible mistake, but outside of 45 year old men that never grew up who are these toys even made for? If it's not a video game or something that ties to a video game system, the kids aren't playing with them.

You can watch hundreds of videos on YouTube with people going up and down the Ollie's aisles showing mountains of unsold Marvel and Star Wars merch all the time. They had marked down Shang Chi action figures to only 10% of their original sales price and they were still rotting on Ollie's shelves years after the movie came out. There are STILL unsold toys from the first Disney Star Wars movie, which is 9 years old now.

2. DVDs - This is the one thing we actually have numbers for, and that Bruce tracks for us.

But this isn't 2004 anymore. Nobody is buying BluRay or DVD in 2024. If you look back 20 years, there were tens of millions spent on this stuff after box office. Now you see numbers like $2 and $3 Million. So if a movie was just shy of breaking even, this is something to consider looking at, but a movie like Argylle wasn't going to sell $100 Million worth of anything after the fact to make up for the $104 Million that was lost on the Production Budget alone.

3. T-Shirts - This one goes with the toys, probably. I don't think we'll ever actually see any numbers on this, and the studios probably don't even count merch like this on a movie-by-movie basis anyhow. I'm assuming they probably add up all their profits/losses vs the costs associated with selling the merch for all their products in a single year, as one single figure. Even if a failing movie were to somehow make a profit on shirts and hoodies, I don't see how they'd ever be able to present any evidence showing this was a fact.

4. Streaming downloads - This is the most interesting part of your question, because it's something I've never really discussed before. Whenever I've referred to streaming, I was talking about companies saying they didn't care what the movies make in the box office because they just wanted more Product for their streaming service. This is NOT Disney. This is companies like Apple and Amazon that keep making movies for $200-$250 Million like Napoleon and Killers of the Flower Moon, and then they pretend they're happy when it only makes $60 Million worldwide.

I think it would be AWESOME if Bruce gave actual numbers for individual purchases of single movies with a digital download. These numbers SHOULD be counted, for sure.

I just don't want to hear any company talking about adding more shit to stream to their platforms being a good thing after losing $200 Million+ in the Box Office. That's pure bullshit when all you ever hear every quarter is that these streaming services are losing Hundreds of Millions every year. How are people who already paid for your platform making you any more money for these if they're just essentially streaming them for free with the membership they were already paying you for?

I can see the reasoning behind this if you wanted to ensure you had the streaming service with the most interesting content that would keep people coming back for more, but we've been in a recession for 4 years and people aren't paying for all this shit anymore. The "Streaming Wars" will eventually end, probably with even more buyouts and mergers. Dumping a billion a year into yours is going to end up being a huge mistake if you're not the winner. Good luck. You'll need it.

Quote:
You were tough on 'Beatlejuice Beatlejuice' and now count it as a flop but you first expected it to do well

Really? I don't remember being especially hard on B2. I was rooting for it, and hoping that it would have gotten that late-in-the-run Halloween bump that never materialized. My biggest disappointment with this one was that it didn't make enough to beat the 3 Chinese movies.

Quote:

Should I include 'Beatlejuice Beatlejuice' in the Flop List?

Nah. Beetlejuice x2 might look bad on paper to the casual eye just because it only placed 13th on the Worldwide Top 100, but it made plenty of money to be profitable because of the "low" Production Budget of "only" $100 Million.

With the RoT2.5x, it only needed $250 Million to break even, and it made $450 Million. That was quite a payday for everyone involved, even though it placed lower than the top 3 Chinese movies and fell more than $25 Million short of getting a spot in the Top 10.

If anything, Bx2 should be a model for 90% of the movies Hollywood makes going forward, outside of one or two ultra-mega-blockbusters per year and all the indie stuff sprinkled throughout. I've said all year that they needed to shave their budgets drastically, starting first with the actor's salaries. In fact, my EXACT number I used was no more than $100 Million on your "average" flick, with only one or two movies per year ever costing more than that.

Disney keeps putting out movies that regularly cost over $200 Million as a baseline, and after reshoots it ends up being $300 Million or more. That's why they have to make nearly $1 Billion just to break even.

They could have put out 6 or 7 movies with lesser price tags than Mufasa 2, for instance. I'm pretty confident they would have made quite a bit more money doing that than they will off of M2.

The best thing Disney did in 2024 was limit their releases to only 4 movies, with only one of those being a Comic Book movie, with arguably the two most popular on-screen comic book characters of all time.

The second best thing that Disney did in 2024 was wait until Christmas Break to release Mufasa 2, otherwise that movie would have been completely dead in the water. It cost $200 Million to make (allegedly), so it needs $500 Million to break even. I don't see this happening. Those daily numbers are going to drop off a cliff once kids are back to school and Grandma isn't taking them to the show anymore.

--------------------------------------------------

"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 8:12 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

They could have put out 6 or 7 movies with lesser price tags than Mufasa 2, for instance. I'm pretty confident they would have made quite a bit more money doing that than they will off of M2.

The best thing Disney did in 2024 was limit their releases to only 4 movies, with only one of those being a Comic Book movie, with arguably the two most popular on-screen comic book characters of all time.

Disney movies are advertisements for their theme parks and Disney+. Disney knows what it is doing even if you are confused about their strategy, thinking that movie theater ticket sales are more important than parks sales.

Disney is turning record parks profits — even before its big expansions
Published Fri, Nov 15 2024
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/11/15/disney-parks-profit-expansions.html

Box Office Performance for Walt Disney Movies in 2024
https://www.the-numbers.com/market/2024/distributor/Walt-Disney

Box Office Performance for Walt Disney Movies in 2019
https://www.the-numbers.com/market/2019/distributor/Walt-Disney

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, December 31, 2024 8:13 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

1) You can’t do this at most theaters but you can at home: Sing-along with the movie

Wicked.2024.SING-ALONG.VERSION.720p.10bit.WEBRip.6CH.x265.HEVC-PSA

Bittorrent Link: fb0e99ec20e7c68ef008fbe9d6c18e3e0778cfff

https://psa.wf/movie/wicked-2024/

2) Wanna know all the details that are NOT available at theaters about how Wicked was made? Then download:

Wicked 2024 EXTRA BONUS FEATURES 1080p MA WEB-DL DDP2 0 H 264-FLUX

Bittorrent Link: 8632a374b959470f740881d63351539e393b2575

https://mypiratebay.cfd/description.html?id=77712722

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 1, 2025 1:56 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Twenty times more expensive than a movie ticket to Wicked, yet worth it since a movie can’t compete with a well-done live show:

‘Wicked’ Has Highest-Grossing Week in Broadway History

By Caitlin Huston | Dec 31, 2024

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/wicked-highes
t-grossing-week-in-broadway-history-1236097340/

Wicked brought in a staggering $5 million last week, marking the highest weekly gross in history for any Broadway show.

That total, which was accumulated across nine shows last week, rather than the typical eight, is also a record for the show, which has been running on Broadway since 2003. The musical brought in $2 million more than the prior week and had an average ticket price of $290.61.

Wicked is typically one of the top box office contenders, but it has seen a particular resurgence in recent weeks amid the popularity of the film. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is also typically one of the highest grossing for many shows in the industry.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 1, 2025 3:11 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

They could have put out 6 or 7 movies with lesser price tags than Mufasa 2, for instance. I'm pretty confident they would have made quite a bit more money doing that than they will off of M2.

The best thing Disney did in 2024 was limit their releases to only 4 movies, with only one of those being a Comic Book movie, with arguably the two most popular on-screen comic book characters of all time.
Disney movies are advertisements for their theme parks and Disney+. Disney knows what it is doing even if you are confused about their strategy, thinking that movie theater ticket sales are more important than parks sales.

You mean an advertisement for things like this?

What Went Wrong with Disney’s Star Wars Hotel?

https://www.disneytouristblog.com/what-went-wrong-star-wars-galactic-s
tarcruiser-disney-world/

They lost almost as much money on this as they did on Indy 5 last year. And that's with the lowball accounting. The actual cost of the Battlecruiser hotel was much closer to $1 Billion to construct than $300 Million.

You keep repeating this bullshit, but they're losing money on their parks just like they're losing money everywhere else. Not to mention Disney merchandising is on life support. The company name, which is now over 100 years old, has been dragged through the mud for the last 8 years. You can't keep losing money on every front, year after year, without a reckoning. That reckoning is now.

Why do you think they settled immediately with Trump over idiot George's comments?

They lost Ready Creek, which sees taxes eating away at their Florida business like a cancer now. Bob Iger just sold $41 Million in shares last month. Why would Bob Iger sell $41 Million of his own shares in the company if he thought it had a bright future? Is he broke and in desperate need for the money? Not likely.

Battered and Bruised, ‘Woke’ Disney Wants Out of Politics

https://insidethemagic.net/2024/12/disney-wants-to-get-out-of-politics
-rl1mmb/

Quote:
Fans were disappointed, but not necessarily surprised, when Disney announced last week that it cut a transgender athlete storyline from the Pixar show Win or Lose. After all, for those who voted for Donald Trump, transgender athletes in sports were one of their most important issues.

Disney’s decision followed its settlement with Trump over a defamation suit he brought against ABC News and George Stephanopoulos. Despite most legal experts and First Amendment scholars believing that Disney had a winning case, the company agreed to donate $15 million toward Trump’s presidential library and pay his legal fees.

Trump sued ABC and Stephanopoulos after he claimed on his show that Trump had allegedly raped E. Jean Carroll. Trump denied that he had ever raped her, despite paying millions in a defamation lawsuit brought by Carroll.

Trump wisely brought this lawsuit in South Florida, unlike a $475 million suit he brought against CNN that a judge threw out. Disney assumed it would be difficult to find a jury there to rule in their favor and wisely settled the lawsuit rather than let it go to the Supreme Court.

What? You couldn't fly in a hand-picked jury from Manhattan Island?

Awwwwwwwwwwww..... Shame.

Quote:
Taken in isolation, neither of these events would suggest a shift in the company’s policy; however, taken together, along with other moves from the company, it shows that The Walt Disney Company has made an internal decision to move away from any controversial political issue.

However, gaining the trust of right-leaning Americans may be difficult for a company that has been labeled as “woke.” During its first with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis over the state’s Parental Rights in Education Act, known by its critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, DeSantis labeled the company “woke” and claimed that Disney was “grooming” children.

Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek said nothing about the Florida law until he was pressured by cast members at the Walt Disney World Resort and Disney employees in California. When he finally spoke out, he angered people on both sides of the debate.

When Iger returned as the company’s CEO, he too tried to fight the lawsuit against DeSantis, only to realize that it was bad for business in Florida. Disney and DeSantis ultimately settled their lawsuits against each other only after DeSantis lost his bid for the Republican nomination for President.

Disney learned a valuable lesson from its settlement with DeSantis, which has brought about a construction boom in Central Florida: settling is good for business.

However, for many conservatives, those labels stuck to Disney, and it has been difficult to shake them off, even if the company has chosen to move away from a political agenda.

Michael Binder, a University of North Florida political science professor who studied the Disney-DeSantis dispute, told the Los Angeles Times:

When you assign a private entity to a political team, then very quickly people will begin to view things in that light. DeSantis was using Disney as a political foil to make a case for his run for the presidency. That was not something that we had seen before: Governors and elected officials outwardly attacking private companies, particularly a Republican going after a company.

Disney’s clumsy dip into politics under former CEO Bob Chapek was terrible for business, especially at the box office, as Disney saw “woke” films like Lightyear (2022), Strange World (2022), and The Marvels (2023) crash at the box office. Iger has consciously removed political references from films this year, and Disney is having a great year with three films making more than $1 billion.

However, some critics will point to the fact that Disney made its jump into minor LGBTQ stories in terrible movies. It wasn’t necessarily the storyline that ruined the movie at the box office, but the films were just bad.

Last year, Bob Iger told CNBC that Disney should “do good in the world” but was an “entertainment first” company. It appears now that Disney has foregone doing good in the world in place of a money-making company.

Charles Elson, a former director at the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware, told the LA Times:

Disney provides a product: entertainment. It shouldn’t be about politics. When you get into politics, you are making a statement. And when you get out, that also becomes a statement.

Ultimately, Disney knew it was a bad idea to fight with the government’s head that regulates all of your businesses. Iger also knew that ABC’s fight with Trump would have ended up in the Supreme Court, where he would have lost, jeopardizing the First Amendment rights of other news organizations.

Unlike other CEOs, Iger has still not made the trip to Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and apologize, but that day may come, too. In its most recent annual report, Disney wrote:

Our businesses create entertainment, travel and consumer products whose success depends substantially on consumer tastes and preferences that change in often unpredictable ways. Consumers’ perceptions of our position on matters of public interest, including our efforts to achieve certain of our environmental and social goals, often differ widely and present risks to our reputation and brand.

Disney has clearly decided to move away from its political agenda, but with Snow White (2025) and an African-American Captain America (2025) coming early next year, it may be hard for Disney to escape politics and the “woke” label. But for now, Disney wants to get back to business, raise its stock price, and leave the politics to other companies.

The world you thought you were living in no longer exists.

You'd better get used to it.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, January 1, 2025 3:18 PM

Oh, and I would like to remind everyone that when I would claim that a Disney movie was going to fail, such as Lightyear, you insulted me and said it wasn't made for me. Then nobody went out to see it, proving that it wasn't made for anybody.

We've seen this exact same cycle play out on repeat in the Movie board for 3 years now out of you.

And now that there is no arguing anymore that Disney movies injected with woke Lefty agenda are automatic failures in the box office, you moved the goalposts out of the stadium and started going around telling everyone Disney doesn't care about its movies or if they lose billions a year in the theaters because of theme parks (that are also failing).

If these woke trash movies are "advertising", like you claim they are, it's the worst fucking ad campaign in the history of the company.

Don't expect to see any more of those types of "ads" out of Disney going forward.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, January 2, 2025 1:39 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh, and I would like to remind everyone that when I would claim that a Disney movie was going to fail, such as Lightyear, you insulted me and said it wasn't made for me. Then nobody went out to see it, proving that it wasn't made for anybody.

You are unaware that most movies are failures. By predicting failure, you will be a success most of the time.

Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey
Faber & Faber 352pp £16.99

Book Review at https://literaryreview.co.uk/there-was-no-sorcerer | Dec 2024

Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Tim+Robey

There are three rules for avoiding a cinematic flop. Rule one: don’t pick a title that is boring, misleading or hard to pronounce. The title wasn’t the only thing that was bad about the misfiring romantic drama Gigli (2003), starring Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, but the fact that cinemagoers weren’t sure if they should be asking for ‘two tickets to Giggly’ didn’t help. Synecdoche, New York (2008) and The Hudsucker Proxy (1994) had more people reaching for their dictionaries than their wallets. But what about a title that has nothing whatsoever to do with the story?

This brings us to Rule two: never give a director carte blanche. After William Friedkin won Oscars for The French Connection (1971) and broke box office records with The Exorcist (1973), Paramount pretty much let him off the leash, even down to the choice of the title for his next film, which he dubbed Sorcerer (1977). Nice one, thought fans. Something along the lines of The Exorcist, perhaps, mixing diabolical forces with titillating gore? Well, no. The film turned out to be a remake of the classic French thriller The Wages of Fear (1953). There was no sorcerer.

Friedkin happened to have been listening to the Miles Davis album Sorcerer a lot at the time. He just liked the word. He later recalled, ‘I thought anything I did at that point would work.’ In the event, half his crew came down with amoebic dysentery, gangrene or malaria during the excruciating shoot in the wilds of the Dominican Republic. He lost his line producer after the man’s wife informed him that she would divorce him unless he quit. It was bad luck that, later that year, Star Wars came out and sucked up all the oxygen left in the market.

Rule three: avoid water and cats. What’s wrong with water? It’s unpredictable, which can send costs spiralling. Witness Waterworld (1995), in which Kevin Costner plays a man with gills, or the pirate hokum Cutthroat Island from the same year, or Speed 2: Cruise Control (1997), which also flouts rule one: its title is boring. Actually, it’s worse than boring. It’s baffling. ‘Speed’ speaks for itself. But ‘Cruise Control’? That’s a safety feature. They might as well have called it ‘Speed 2: Automatic Pilot’.

And what’s wrong with cats? This is more mysterious, but feline failings crop up repeatedly in Box Office Poison, Tim Robey’s exhilarating whistlestop tour of some of the biggest financial disasters in Hollywood history. They go back to Queen Kelly (1929), the pervy mega-turkey that tanked Gloria Swanson’s career. There was a scene in which her co-star Seena Owen grew tired of being naked and was handed a cat to cover her breasts. The cat began to scratch her. White mittens had to be placed over its claws.

One of the joys of this book is the excuse it offers to rewatch, or catch for the first time, some of these stinkers. My ten-year-old son and I relished a double bill of Speed 2 (surprisingly slow) and the oddly diverting Catwoman (2004), a superhero fiasco in which Halle Berry is drowned by bad guys, then randomly revived and given feline powers and penchants by a magic cat. There’s a scene, which cannot be unseen, in which someone hands Berry a ball of catnip and she rubs it all over her face in ecstasy.

Yet the mother of these movie monsters is Cats (2019), an adaptation of the hit musical, which has no redeeming features. Who would have thought that anything could ever happen that would make you feel sorry for Andrew Lloyd Webber? Yet one’s heart can’t help but go out to the old luvvie, whose kitsch masterpiece was put through the wringer of Hollywood half-wittedness. The ordeal was so dire that he bought himself a Havanese puppy named Mojito as an emotional-support dog. When he explained in an email to an airline that they should make an exception to their no-dogs policy and let him travel with Mojito because of ‘what Hollywood did to my musical Cats’, he received the sympathetic reply ‘No doctor’s report required.’

These three rules, note, are not taken from Box Office Poison. They are built out of the material it provides. In fact, my main criticism of this generally enjoyable book is that, despite the experience the author has accrued in a quarter-century of reviewing films for the Daily Telegraph, he offers little in the way of an overarching thesis. Some of his twenty-six picks sound terrible: Nothing But Trouble (1991) and Supernova (2000), for example. Yet others are presented as undervalued masterpieces. Robey has time for Sorcerer, for instance, which he describes as ‘peak Friedman’. And he reveres Charlie Kaufmann’s lugubrious Synecdoche, New York: ‘I stumbled out of it sobbing on a first watch and could barely compose myself for hours.’

This all makes for some welcome variation in tone. Yet if even brilliant films can torpedo a studio, we are steered towards agreeing with the cunningly Socratic, albeit somewhat disappointing, observation of the screenwriter William Goldman, which is probably the most-quoted line ever about the movie business: ‘Nobody knows anything.’

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, January 2, 2025 5:32 PM

Focus’ Nosferatu grossed $4.96M on New Year’s Day Wednesday (from 2,992 locations). Total domestic gross is $53.08M.

https://x.com/BORReport/status/1874885585078567288

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, January 2, 2025 9:17 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh, and I would like to remind everyone that when I would claim that a Disney movie was going to fail, such as Lightyear, you insulted me and said it wasn't made for me. Then nobody went out to see it, proving that it wasn't made for anybody.
You are unaware that most movies are failures. By predicting failure, you will be a success most of the time.

This is simply not true. Not even in a bad year. There are plenty of low to mid budget movies coming out in any given year to make this statement the polar opposite of the truth.

If the odds of betting on a Hollywood movie were a straight 50/50 coin-flip, nobody would be making Hollywood movies when it would be more profitable for the producers and investors to just go to the casino and play Blackjack.

You say the dumbest shit.

Now Disney specifically, on the other hand, have a terrible SHORT-TERM track record for losing TONS of money on more than 50% of their previous 5 year catalog compared to the other studios. In a market necessitating a "what have you done for me lately" attitude, it would be very wise for investors to look elsewhere for places to put their money.

Look around you. The culture war from the Left is done for at least a decade and Disney knows this full well. You aren't going to be hearing shit out of them politically for a very long time. They got their head cut off because they were the ones sticking it all the way up to the sky when everybody else was relatively low-key about their DEIification of Hollywood.

And now it's just really unfortunate for Disney that they're in such bad shape financially that they can't just torpedo Snow White and Black Captain America when they know everybody is going to lose tons of money on both of them.

Most people don't understand the movie making process and how long ago those movies were conceived and just how long ago they began filming... and how different the cultural landscape looked when they began filming. Most people don't pay attention to any of this, and a lot of them are going to be confused all over again when Disney puts this shit out in 2025 after a not-bad year out of them in the Box Office.

My opinion is they should write both of those movies off for huge tax breaks and burn the master copies so they never see the light of day. The further brand damage that they're going to do to themselves at a really unfortunate time for Disney isn't worth saving that money. Especially not when you just proved that you still can do as well as Disney did in 2025 after their worst year in history.

And you know that at least Bob Iger is smart enough to know this and that's why he waited until the end of a very up year for Disney to cash out $41 Million in stock options before people start talking about these soon to release flops.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, January 2, 2025 9:48 PM

How about you put your time where your mouth is Second?

I propose that you and I play a little game in 2025. (And everybody else is free to join if they'd like to).

Once a week until the end of the year, you and I give our predictions for every WIDE release in the Box Office that weekend.

Not anything complicated.

Just a simple PASS/FAIL.

Pass would be making 2.5 times the Production budget, rounded up/down to the nearest $1 Million.

Fail would be any movie making less than this.

No arguing back and forth about the merits of the RoT2.5x model or how it impacts one type of movie differently than the other type of movie. We're just going to make our claims on which movies we believe will make 250% of their Production Budget back and which ones don't. Period.

Bruce's Production Budget will always be the "standard". For movies where Bruce doesn't state the PB, we could come up with an agreement for which media outlets such as Vulture or Deadline we look to for these numbers and which order they supersede each other if they aren't in agreement. Some movies we're going to have to put an "*" on and skip because we won't have any reliable budget numbers, or at least we will not have gotten them early enough to bet on. (Focus Features would be the most likely studio to force us to exempt their entries in this way).

We could figure out the nuances of some rules as we go on and see how smoothly this works. One rule I suggest is that we reserve the option to abstain on a vote for any particular movie. I think this makes it a lot more interesting because there are going to be a lot of low-budget movies we wouldn't normally pay any attention to, and being able to abstain from a vote on a case-by-case basis adds another level of strategy. You won't get a point if you were right, but you won't lose a point if you were wrong on that one.

And then I'd say the natural progression of that would be how to handle it if somebody doesn't vote for a particular week in time. No loss of points for this. But it will be treated as if they abstained from voting on every movie. So you could theoretically come out ahead by missing a vote on a particularly tricky week when your opponent was here and made some bad guesses.

I'm sure there are other rules like this we could come up with.

For instance, is every movie worth 1 point to make all the figuring simple, or do we spice things up and give 2 and 3 points to give more weight to mid-level and high-budget movies, based off of numbers we agree split the low from the mid from the high?

We should flesh this out.

Let's see who's better at this.

Are you game?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, January 2, 2025 9:55 PM

Correction...

We would be doing this 51 weeks straight.

We get a bye tomorrow. Hollywood is not releasing a single WIDE release on January 3rd.

January 10th would be our first challenge, and what an interesting challenge it will be, with 3 already released movies expanding WIDE, a Lionsgate sequel to a movie I've never heard of, a movie by a production company I've never heard of, and two more by very small studios that I don't usually spend any time investigating because they usually fly well below my radar.

January 10th release schedule for WIDE releases:

Den of Thieves 2: Pantera (Wide) / Lionsgate
Game Changer (Wide) / Schloka Entertainments
Better Man (Expands Wide) / Paramount Pictures
Hard Truths (Expands Wide) / Bleecker Street
The Last Showgirl (Expands Wide) / Roadside Attractions

We'll vote in 8 days.

Throw me some ideas for rules and what you think of the ones I proposed above.

You too, Jaynez. And JSF if you're reading this as well.

I think we could at least have some fun while we're here.

What do you say?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 7:08 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh, and I would like to remind everyone that when I would claim that a Disney movie was going to fail, such as Lightyear, you insulted me and said it wasn't made for me. Then nobody went out to see it, proving that it wasn't made for anybody.
You are unaware that most movies are failures. By predicting failure, you will be a success most of the time.

This is simply not true. Not even in a bad year. There are plenty of low to mid budget movies coming out in any given year to make this statement the polar opposite of the truth.

If the odds of betting on a Hollywood movie were a straight 50/50 coin-flip, nobody would be making Hollywood movies when it would be more profitable for the producers and investors to just go to the casino and play Blackjack.

You say the dumbest shit.

You are not taking into account that numerous movies that lose a little money are the price paid for the few big winners. Making a movie is much like buying one lottery ticket that could pay $1 billion.

Here is a likely losing lottery ticket: “M3GAN 2.0”

Even before the first “M3GAN” movie hit theaters in 2023, anyone who watched the bonkers trailer knew that the Blumhouse horror movie was destined to be a hit. It was a movie about a killer robot doll that never once took itself too seriously, and it gave one of our best nepo babies, Allison Williams, a well-deserved check. That inescapable fanfare is exactly the reason why we should be wary of “M3GAN 2.0.” A sequel to a massive hit like “M3GAN” always gleams with the color of money, but rarely can sequels to unexpected audience smashes replicate the first movie’s novelty. While it’ll likely be a fun watch, M3GAN’s high-kicking, knife-wielding, sharp-tongued evil will be just as fun on the couch as it would be in a theater, where it’s all too easy to realize that you’re not having as much fun as the first go-round.

Why you should let it fade: Capturing lightning in a bottle twice is a rare achievement in the film industry, but it will never stop a studio from trying. Skip the overzealous audiences and wait for the inevitable streaming release. (Plus, there’s a slew of allegations following one of the film’s supporting actors, Brian Jordan Alvarez that you’ll want to consider too.)

“M3GAN 2.0” is in theaters June 27, 2025.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/three-sequels-worth-watching-in-
2025-and-three-to-avoid-at-all-costs/ss-AA1wSf3u#image=5

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 8:46 AM

So are we going to play a game then?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 1:25 PM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
So are we going to play a game then?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

It is a game which you won’t understand because you have not read the book on the odds of making a flop:

Box Office Poison: Hollywood’s Story in a Century of Flops by Tim Robey
Faber & Faber 352pp £16.99

Book Review at https://literaryreview.co.uk/there-was-no-sorcerer | Dec 2024

Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.is//search.php?req=Tim+Robey

Here is the first flop in the book:

Intolerance (1916)
Director: D. W. Griffith
Budget (approx.): $2.5M+?
Gross: ~$1M

WHITE ELEPHANTS—the god of Hollywood wanted white elephants, and white elephants he got—eight of ’em, plaster mammoths perched on mega-mushroom pedestals, lording it over the colossal court of Belshazzar, the pasteboard Babylon built beside the dusty tin-lizzie trail called Sunset Boulevard.
Kenneth Anger, Hollywood Babylon

It was one of the most ostentatiously vast film sets ever built—walls 300 feet high, enclosing a city within a city, with 3,000 costumed extras wandering about inside. These Babylonians-for-hire, all LA natives pocketing a tidy $2-a-day wage for their troubles, couldn’t have helped ogling the hanging gardens, the giant thrones, the steps leading your eye in every direction. The office of the design department had to be put on stilts just so they could see what they were meant to be doing.

D. W. Griffith, then the most celebrated director in America, and already its most controversial, was not messing around. The Birth of a Nation (1915), one of the very earliest feature-length films, had been the Titanic of its day, achieving staggering profitability and cultural impact. It was the first movie ever to be screened for the White House and the Supreme Court.

It also fueled the revival of the Ku Klux Klan. With its hate-mongering agenda barely veiled under a shimmer of antebellum nostalgia, it’s tarred forever with that brush: today, it’s the film taught to illustrate twentieth-century racism, rather than technical craft, as it used to be. This toxic artifact could be easier to forget if it hadn’t been the original blockbuster, revolutionary in business terms, and a foundation stone for the entire industry.

Griffith was not unaffected by the Birth backlash, including attempts by the NAACP* to ban it, which succeeded for two years in Ohio, and newspaper columns (by the likes of Booker T. Washington) urging a public boycott. Far from being chastened, the Kentucky-born director’s response was furious indignation, and he was able to take solace in the popular fervor backing up everything he was trying to say. One viewer was so incensed when Mae Marsh’s Flora flees her attempted rapist in the film (played by white actor Walter Long in blackface) that he took out a handgun and started firing at the screen to try to help her.

Accused of intolerance by his political enemies, Griffith would have none of it—indeed, he considered them the intolerant ones. He went so far as to publish a cartoon pamphlet called “The Rise and Fall of Free Speech in America,” which used the word intolerance repeatedly, depicting examples of censorship through history.1

From this thesis, the film sprang. A fallacy used to circulate that this grandiose follow-up was conceived as an atonement cum apology for Birth. The very opposite was the case. Griffith aimed to outdo his earlier film in spectacle, but was also doubling down on his statement, determined to parade the evil forces he was up against.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 1:27 PM

Nolte: 2024 Domestic Box Office Down 23.5 Percent Compared to Five Years Ago

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2025/01/03/nolte-2024-domestic
-box-office-down-23-5-percent-compared-to-five-years-ago/

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 4:31 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
So are we going to play a game then?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
It is a game which you won’t understand because you have not read the book on the odds of making a flop:

No. See. You don't get to do that.

You're here everyday of the week, 52 weeks a year.

You've got a big mouth about how easy this is.

I'm giving you an opportunity to show everyone how easy it is.

Put up, or shut up.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 7:57 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Nolte: 2024 Domestic Box Office Down 23.5 Percent Compared to Five Years Ago

https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2025/01/03/nolte-2024-domestic
-box-office-down-23-5-percent-compared-to-five-years-ago/

We can't compare it to 2019. It needs to be compared vs. 2020 and beyond.

2024 was a huge misstep and a loss compared to 2023, but there were external reasons for that. Most of this being due to the recession and the fact that they only had half the movies slated than they usually do because of so many projects being cancelled after the dual Writer/Actor strike last year.

2023 wasn't a bad year, considering how much ground it made up after the losses created by the Democrat party several years prior.

Let's see what they can do in 2025. They should have more on their slate at least, although Disney is going to start off with a huge hole to dig itself out of after Snow White and Black Captain America cost them at least half a billion in losses.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Friday, January 3, 2025 8:01 PM

If anybody else like Jaynez and/or JSF wants to play the game we'll do it and we'll just mark down Second as saying every movie is going to fail since that's what he called the other day.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
You are unaware that most movies are failures. By predicting failure, you will be a success most of the time.

Anybody want to see if they can make a better list of predictions for 2025 than Second's blanket "they'll all fail" prediction?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, January 4, 2025 4:55 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
If anybody else like Jaynez and/or JSF wants to play the game we'll do it and we'll just mark down Second as saying every movie is going to fail since that's what he called the other day.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
You are unaware that most movies are failures. By predicting failure, you will be a success most of the time.

Anybody want to see if they can make a better list of predictions for 2025 than Second's blanket "they'll all fail" prediction?

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Back in the 1950s Hollywood feared that the invention of TV would destroy ticket sales at theaters. It did not happen as feared because TV shows were even crappy than most movies are but the destruction is getting closer. My thesis is that TV is now slowly ruining ticket sales because streaming of movies to TV is becoming commonplace.

Is Hollywood Ready for 2,000 New Competitors?
There are no barriers to entry anymore — so everybody wants to build a media empire

By Ted Gioia | Oct 23, 2024

https://www.honest-broker.com/p/is-hollywood-ready-for-2000-new-compet
itors

Why would a chicken fast food chain even consider getting into the TV business?

But Chick-fil-A is doing just that. The company plans to launch a TV streaming platform that, according to one source, will be “avian-themed.”

I have no idea what that means. But I’m pretty sure this poultry company wants to give the bird to the legacy media business.

Chick-fil-A is moving quickly to create new programming. It has already purchased ten episodes of an unnamed series—and is investing $400K in additional scripts.

It sounds totally birdbrained, but this is just one example out of many.

Almost every big food company is pursuing — or at least considering — an entry into the media business.

• Earlier this month, Kroger announced that members of the grocery chain’s loyalty program will now get Disney streaming options as part of their benefits.

• Walmart is already offering Paramount streaming to members of its loyalty program.

• Instacart is now working with the Peacock streaming platform

• Uber is partnering with Disney.

• DoorDash is partnering with HBO/Max.

• GrubHub is partnering with Amazon Prime.

• Etc. etc. etc.

Walmart is the most interesting name on this list.

I’ve made several visits to Walmart’s Arkansas HQ over the years, and have met many members of the management team. They are not rubes.

I know how obsessively focused they are on competing against Amazon Prime. So I fully expect Walmart will become a major player in the streaming marketplace, sooner or later.

“The entire Hollywood ecosystem is as fragile as a movie set.”

I predict that they will start commissioning their own programming—and probably position themselves as a more “family-friendly” streaming option.

By the way, I’m not just talking about TV and films. I’ll bet my Sam’s Club membership card that this retailer will get into music streaming, too.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2024/08/chick-fil-a-cooking-up-new-fam
ily-friendly-video-streaming-service/

https://ir.kroger.com/news/news-details/2024/Disney-Hulu-or-ESPN-Now-I
ncluded-with-Boost-by-Kroger-Plus-Annual-Membership/default.aspx

https://corporate.walmart.com/news/2022/08/15/walmart-delivers-new-ben
efit-for-walmart-members-a-paramount-subscription-at-no-extra-cost

https://www.instacart.com/company/pressreleases/instacart-adds-peacock
-as-first-ever-streaming-partner/

https://www.uber.com/en-GB/blog/uber-one-disney-plus/

https://ir.doordash.com/news/news-details/2024/DoorDash-Partners-with-
Max-to-Introduce-First-Ever-Streaming-Benefit-for-DashPass-Members-in-the-U.S/default.aspx

https://lp.grubhub.com/partner/grubhub-amazon-prime/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, January 4, 2025 11:22 AM