Tag: bombs

This has been another year of huge box office bombs, but another year where the success stories show that it’s not just as simple as “Post Covid” resistance to returning to the theatres. Overall ticket sales are way down and while the past two years were lower due to lockdowns this year really doesn’t have that excuse. It’s been a year where even horror has seen numbers decline, animation has been all over the place with two big hits and two utter disasters and dramas have on the whole simply failed to find an audience with viewers likely waiting to see them on streaming. It’s also been a poor year comparatively for superhero movies with only one really living up to expectations.

This isn’t every film that was released in cinemas this year, far from it but it is all the ones I decided to keep track of. I’m not gong to cover movies that went straight to streaming here at all. The the numbers I’ve listed are my estimations on profit, not the total box office. This is a harder number to lock down and there will no doubt be some debate. My model takes into account the studio gets a higher cut of the opening week and less later and takes into account the minimum cost of P&A instead of still applying the 50% of production cost rule on lower budget films.

Anyway, I’ve split this up into sections based on how successful the movie was. From the biggest disasters to the greatest successes. Let’s dig in.

The Bombs

These are the movies that will cost the studio big time (Losing $50m or more) and will derail a number of careers. They may lead to a number of studios rethinking their strategies, though whether they learn the right lessons or not is another question entirely.

So let’s start with “Death on the Nile“, the second in the Poirot series directed by Kenneth Branagh, who also staring as the Belgian master detective. This is a classic case of over estimating the demand for such a movie and spending too much ($90m) on the budget. This is a movie that has been done better for cheaper several times before now. No surprise it ended at a loss. I expect this will end Branagh’s series or perhaps lead to a direct to streaming approach in the future.

For Warner Brothers, the bomb I think everyone could have predicted was “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore“. Subject to a boycott from people that are angry with J.K. Rowling for saying only women can get pregnant and a far larger one from Johnny Depp’s army of fans that refused to watch the film after Warner dropped him from the role of Grindelwald, only for him to win his court case and come out looking like the abused and not the abuser. As much as people may like to argue morality on both these topics the truth is Depp is VERY popular and that was the biggest issue here. However, it doesn’t help the previous film wasn’t that well received. This lost the studio around $62m, however the IP is far from dead, so much so they are already looking into ways to reboot the main, more popular series.

The next biggest bomb of the year is sadly also my pick for best movie of the year. “The Northman“. Over time I hope it will join such classics as “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” in being bombs on release but becoming timeless classics and long term earners after. At this stage it is hard to say what the impact on Eggers career will be but losing around $85m can do a lot of damage to a career. It’s worth noting this was easily his most expensive film and if he goes back to making things a bit cheaper I have no doubt he can win studios around again. Mostly his movies have more of a highbrow audience anyway and he won’t have lost any of that. What he has failed to do though is really connect with the larger popcorn crowd. It’s a shame and a sign that we won’t be seeing the likes of Northman again any time soon, but at least we got it once!

The next clanger is another one literally everyone saw coming. “The 355“. After failures of movies like Terminator Dark Fate, Charlies Angels and Birds of Prey it should have been pretty clear that action movies that are not just female lead but lack strong male characters (A male character there just to be the comedy relief isn’t a strong male character), absolutely do not resonate with fans of action movies. It’s odd when you consider this would never happen the other way around (As male lead action films go out of there way to provide multiple strong female characters these days). This is a recipe to lose money. Charlies Angels and Harley Quinn didn’t even have big budgets and still bombed so the 355’s $75m budget was pretty much box office suicide.

The movie ended up losing about $100m, more money than it cost to actually make the film, meaning had they taken the “Batgirl” route, turned it into a tax write off and buried it in the desert with all those copies of E.T. The Video Game, it would have turned out far better for the studio! This is a good one to point to when someone says they don’t understand the logic in writing off Batgirl. Of course we don’t know if Batgirl would have performed this badly and female lead action movies can do well providing they don’t neglect the male characters along the way, but it does explain why it can be better to write movies off sometimes.

Joining the 355 in losing about $100m and being better off for the studio as a tax write off is the all star period murder mystery “Amsterdam“. Costing $80m to produce Fox/Disney (It was probably greenlit under Fox) must have been hoping the cast would be enough to get bums in seats but apparently not. It’s worth noting none of these stars have been immune to underperforming movies in the past, not even the very talented former Batman, Christian Bale.

Margot Robbie especially has been plagued with a string of bombs and if her upcoming Barbie movie doesn’t draw, she could find herself relegated to TV movies and horror films. Fortunately for her, that movie will probably do well, but then Fox no doubt thought the same about Amsterdam. Maybe murder mysteries are just not in vogue these days, but losing more than your production budget is a sign of there being more wrong than failing to find the popcorn crowd.

So what was the biggest disasters of the year? Well that’s a double whammy and both are animated Disney movies. It’s interesting to note the studio that made it’s name on it’s animation now appears to be being destroyed by it. The two films in question are the ill advised Toy Story spin off “Lightyear” and the more recent movie “Strange World“, crashing Disney’s bank balance by $162m and $161m respectively . Between them they cost the studio over $300m, effectively wiping out everything they gained from their most successful movie of the year, “Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness”.

I think we need to jump right in and address the elephant in the room here. Both these animated kids features are incredibly woke. It is pretty clear that many parents don’t really want to take their children to see something they see as woke propaganda and it’s worth remembering that perception is everything. It would be one thing to have those elements in the story but when the marketing heavily focuses on it and executives at Disney are outright admitting their agendas it can’t really be denied or covered up. Even Lightyear, jumping on the back of the hugely successful Toy Story franchise failed to really utilise that link since they recast Buzz Lightyear and went out of their way to tell us it wasn’t directly related.

The Flops

The Flops are the movies that lost money, but were within a debatable range where heads probably won’t roll over it and the studio will likely shrug and move on. These movies likely won’t get sequels though and it certainly suggest mistakes were made. Narrowly making it into this category is “The Woman King“, losing a mere $13m. Likely enough that half the internet will call it a huge success and the other half a huge disaster. The truth is it’s more sort of “Meh”. As a historical film a sequel was probably never on the cards anyway.

A film that unsurprisingly failed to resonate with it’s franchise fan base is “Clerks 3“. Since Kevin Smith went from criticising Hollywood and being the voice of the fans to a full 180 and started criticising the fans and being the voice of Hollywood it’s not a shock that most of his audience for his own projects had totally dried up. At this stage he needs to either totally reform his public perception or reinvent himself creatively and find a new audience. He certainly didn’t do himself any favours with his lies and bait and switch approach to the Masters of the Universe series and with a second season of that due next year his movie career could well be over after that. Clerks 3 lost around $19m and that is on a low budget so those loses will have quite a sting to them.

In the category of “Why?” is the remake of Stephen King’s “Firestarter” that simply failed to heat up audiences with a loss of around $20m. That’s low enough it’ll probably make up the difference later and it probably won’t stop them doing more Stephen King remakes. However, I doubt we’ll see a sequel to this one. Honestly the first movie wasn’t that great anyway but one thing it does have in common with this is that the Soundtrack was better than the film. The original was of course provided by Tangerine Dream, while the remake was done by John Carpenter. Perhaps as a nod to the fact that Carpenter was originally going to direct the first film and if he had perhaps we really would have had a classic.

The biggest Horror film failure this year though, at least financially goes to the movie “Men” losing somewhere between $20m and $50m. It’s hard to be precise as there is no official listing for budget with a good $10m variation in estimates and it’s impossible to know the precise P&A value. Not a huge surprise, given the movie comes across as confusing and potentially woke. I’m not sure it is the latter but I think confusing is more than fair.

Landing as both the least successful superhero movie of the year and arguably it’s best is The Rock’s “Black Adam“, losing around $32m (Though it’s still in a few theatres so may squeeze that down a little). Dwayne Johnson can take some solace of the fact that his movie was well liked by those that did bother to go see it, but clearly a spin off from Shazam isn’t quite the career vehicle Dwayne may have thought it was. The final scene of the movie teases a stand off with Henry Cavill’s Superman and sadly that will be the final appearance of either in those roles. Both have gracefully taken their final bows via Instagram posts with very respectful comments to their fan bases and without burning bridges with the studios.

Michael Bay will no doubt be very disappointed his pretty decent action movie “Ambulance” flopped to the tune of losing around $34m. While it wasn’t going to bother my top ten list this year, it was a fun popcorn flick and pretty decent for a Michael Bay movie. However, I think the film’s name failed to sell the action and the truth is Bay isn’t the draw he used to be. I dare say we haven’t seen the last of Bay though. His next movie sees a return to robot movies, but this time not transforming ones.

The Also Ran’s

Some movies only just scrapped into the black and while it won’t make or break any career, it leaves some potential to become cult classics or at least earn a substantial amount on streaming and Blu-ray sales. First up is “Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent“. In theory it lost about $40m in theatres, however this was a movie simultaneously released directly to streaming (A rarity for this year), so it can’t really be judged like most releases. The movie has been well received so I think it will likely make up for that shortfall.

“Morbius” narrowly made it into the black with a profit likely around $1m. Possibly the ill advised re-release may have turned that slight gain into a loss but I’d say overall the movie will be very much in the “Meh” category. Which really defines the movie too. Not bad, not good, not a success, not a failure, it’s the most just there Superhero movie ever made. Apparently “Morbin’ Time” means an abundance of mediocrity. Not much ahead of that is the DC Animated movie “League of Super Pets“. The movie actually looks quite fun but the DC brand was at an all time low so it was only able to generate around $2m in profit.

Not quite over the line into the black but losing so little it is within the margin of error are the movies “Don’t Worry Darling” falling short by about $4m and “Downton Abbey: A New Era” throwing away around $7m. The latter could possibly be written off by having a more mature audience that are likely still wary of covid, but it also may just be that the Downton effect is starting to wear off as we get further away from the peak of the series. Another movie losing by a small margin in “The Menu“, which has garnered positive reactions from both critics and the audience but looks set to fall short by maybe as much as $9m

Below Expectations

These are movies that are comfortably in the black but represent a far lower level of success than would be expected for the genre, franchise or stars involved. Sometimes these movies can actually earn over $100m in profit and still be a disappointment to the studio. It’s all about the context.

“Nope” did reasonably in theatres earning around $25m in profit, but was notably weaker than past Jordan Peele outings. It seems the honeymoon period may be over for the controversial comedian turned director or else he’s just suffering for the mixed reaction to his previous film “Us”. Speaking of Horror, “Halloween Ends” made a solid $36m in profit. However this represents a substantial drop off from the second film in this trilogy and a huge drop from the first (Which did insane numbers), I think Blumhouse may feel a little short changed. The movie was badly received too, so I don’t think they’ll be rushing out to replace Michael Myers with a new killer any time soon. Expect a 5-10 year hiatus and a reboot.

“Thor: Love and Thunder“. Despite earning a $142m in profit, made less than half the profit that Doctor Strange 2 managed and performed far below what Disney must be expecting from it’s MCU movies. “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” managed to outperform that with around $175m in profit (and did especially well in the US), but still far short of where the bar had been set this year. It seems that right now Marvel’s movies are reliant on their proximity to a Spider-Man movie to get anything close to the audiences they garnered in phase 2 and 3. Phase 4 is absolutely a failure by comparison and if they don’t start turning it around the MCU is in real trouble.

“The Batman“, earned a profit of about $234m. On the surface you’d think the studio would be happy with that substantial gain, but this is one of the true A-List superheroes and right now the number two most popular superhero in the world (After Spider-Man). He should be easily doing double that and Warner/DC knows this well. Things are being shaken up over DC these days with James Gunn taking full control of the DC movies and no doubt will be wondering if this version of Batman is worth a continuation or if it is best to leave it as a one off.

Also disappointing financially was Sandra Bullock’s “The Lost City“. Actually a good, fun adventure comedy that showed Sandra still has it, Channing Tatum can actually be good in comedy and Brad Pitt is cameo gold. The movie was comfortably in the black but only making $18.5m in profit for a film with a $74m budget is probably uncomfortably close for the studio. However, the film has been positively received and I have no doubt will do well on streaming. It wouldn’t surprise me if some time next year they announced a sequel. After enjoying this, I’d certainly check out a sequel if there was one.

Meeting Expectations

On occasion a movie achieves exactly what the studio expected, no more, no less. These movies will be treated as a win by the studio, likely will lead to sequels but probably won’t impact other movies at the studio by contrast. The “Scream” reboot for example drew in about $40m in profit. That may actually be a little below what they were hoping for but given they instantly green lit a sequel it’s safe to say the studio were content with that profit margin.

The sequel (and sixth Scream movie) lands next year, but given the reaction from fans was very mixed for this I suspect the sequel will end up disappointing financially by comparison. We will see. At the other end of the scale though is “Violent Night“, only making around $10m at most but likely wasn’t expected to do much more than that. The positive reaction however may lead to a more financially beneficial sequel. I’m not sure it needs one however, the movie was a classic but how many Christmas movies (Aside from Die Hard) had worthwhile sequels?

The action films “Uncharted” and “Bullet Train” managed to find enough of an audience to make substantial games ($85m and $35m respectively). Uncharted of course is based on a video game while Bullet Train was original. Perhaps this shows you just how much the video game market can impact sales these days. Bullet Train was undoubtable the better film, but while it didn’t make as much as uncharted in the theatre I have no doubt it will make more money in the long run through Blu Ray sales and streaming. It definitely has more rewatchability. Still the studio will be happy with what it made up front. Uncharted is almost certain to get a sequel, but I don’t think one was ever on the table for Bullet Train.

“Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness” was both Marvel’s first movie of the year and it’s most successful. The film managed about $350m in profit, but it definitely wasn’t due to the quality. The lure of cameos, the knock on effect of following the hugely successful Spider-Man: No Way Home and the possibilities of the multiverse, all likely helped. Ultimately the movie only achieved an average box office for an MCU movie with a major star and a key story arc. It’s not great for phase three but after the lacklustre output of most MCU movies last year this was probably as good as they could expect.

The Dreamworks animated comedy “The Bad Guys” probably hit just about where the studio expected netting a healthy a profit of around $40m. Animation has been frankly all over the place this year, but it is good to see a fun original story giving a solid performance. It probably has a sequel on the table but they may want to see how the streaming numbers go first.

“Jurassic World Dominion” meanwhile landed itself a huge profit of about $350m, for the third of a trilogy for a major franchise and with the return of characters from the original film this is probably about what they were hoping for. It may even be under their expectations.

Last on this list is “Elvis“. With Tom Hanks as the movie’s true lead Colonel Tom Parker, this extravagant biopic cost $85m to make and as such was expected to turn at least $50m in profit. The end result was around $70m so job done. I’ve not seen this yet, but most that aren’t too hung up on historical accuracy seem to have enjoyed it.

Success Stories

Every year there are a handful of movies that far exceed all reasonable expectations of the studio. These movies not only get hurriedly tagged for sequels (Where appropriate), but also tend to lead to studios revaluating their priorities going forward. These films may be low budget dramas or indie movies hitting far above average for those genres, horror films landing like superhero movies or big budget action movies hitting the coveted $1b mark or beyond. The actual numbers vary wildly but within their own play pen of budget/genre people will be taking notes.

Over the last few years Horror has become an easy genre to make money with and even though several of the films didn’t live up to expectations (Both in quality or receipts) almost all of them made bank. One movie though made a real killing beyond expectations and that is “Smile“. Beaming wide at a huge profit of around $110m and possibly propelled by the ingenious marketing campaign of having the movies stars standing around staring blankly at sporting events with creepy smiles on their faces. The movie also had a great trailer and solid word of mouth.

On were also a couple of lower budget non-horrors that bucked the trend this year. First up the movie “Dog“. Obviously movies about dogs always draw in a bit more than similar ones just about people. We love our doggies, I get it. But I still think the studio were probably surprised a drama with a $15m budget pulled in a solid $20m in profit. Some possibly would label this as even more successful (If they didn’t take into account the minimum cost of P&A), but either way it’s still a big win. I haven’t seen the movie but I hear it is a good one.

The other movie bucking the trend for low budget, non horror success was “Everything Everywhere All At Once“, if you’ve seen my top ten you know I highly rate this film and it was my number 3 movie for most of the year (Only dropping down to 5 this December). The movie managed to draw in a respectable $27m in profit which for a movie that cost only $25m in production is a definite win. It’s also been a rare movie that wins over both the woke and the anti-woke since it gives both parties things they want. Given the message of the movie is about bringing people together and getting over our differences it is almost poetic it has that universal appeal.

There’s been a couple of big success stories on the animation side this year too (Causing further embarrass those huge bombs mentioned earlier), both however are sequels to established franchises. First you had “Sonic the Hedgehog 2” hitting about $140m in profit and then you had “Minions: The Rise of Gru” hitting a staggering $310m in pure profit despite (I hear) not even being that good. Minions it seems is a licence to print money. Sonic meanwhile has built up a good reputation between it’s two movies of both quality and success and showed that sometimes you can make everyone happy.

Easily the big winner of the year though is “Top Gun: Maverick” bringing in a staggering $750m of profit with a global box office exceeding the $1b mark. This has been a clear lesson to the movie industry that respecting the IP, respecting the fans and respecting physical stunts/effects can be a recipe for huge earnings. Whether the industry will actually learn that lesson or not remains to be seen. It is a stubborn beast and it may just end up making more movies about planes instead. Given Paramount has had a lot of financial issues and failings over the previous years I’m sure they at least will take note.

End of Part 2

That’s it for the year in review. I hope the recap of this years winners and losers was interesting. One final note, I haven’t covered “Avatar: The Way of the Water” here, partially because it’s still in full swing at theatres and partially because while my figures would suggest it’s $1b+ box office already has it in profit, Cameron himself is suggesting it needs to make closer to $2b to break even! So I don’t know where to place that one. Anyway, that is it for 2022, I will be posting a look at the movies to coming up in 2023 in the next few days to see if there is anything worth getting excited over. In the meantime, Happy New year!