The industry needs to realize they can't double dip. How can you expect a person to pay for 2-3 streaming services per month AND go to the movies so often?
Right?! Especially with streaming prices becoming so expensive. It used to be $8 now it's almost $20. If they dropped the streaming prices where it's actually affordable. Disney's attempt to have people watch their streaming show to get prior knowledge on the movies might have actually worked. But then they will also have to stop spending hundreds of millions on those shows.
@@OfficialROZWBRAZELthe upper management need to take pay cuts, but that would only happen by government order. Hollywood is doomed to fail and repeat this cycle unless the project is an exception where the art gets prioritized ie Barbie or Oppenheimer vs Sound of Freedom
@Jermaine2099 I was wondering if he would hit this point or if anyone else thought about it. We are forced to pay for numerous streaming platforms from the big studios, and we know that the movies will be released ON those streaming platforms if we just wait a bit. WHY would we want to pay to go see all these movies, when they will he available on another platform we ALREADY pay for? Idk how they fix it, but that system is broken.
Good point. I pay for disney + and I have not seen any disney films in cinemas because I can watch them later, and unlike in cinemas I can watch them SUBBED (i am latin american and EVERY animated film gets released dubbed only. I LOATHE dubs). so streaming is actually better for me. And one month of d+ costs HALF WHAT A SINGLE MOVIE TICKET
I think it's just bad movie fatigue in general. The Success of John Wick, Spider-verse, Barbie and Oppenheimer show that people still wanna see good and decent movies no matter the genre. Unfortunately Hollywood executives will probably never learn
I don't necessarily believe that "good movies" equal box office smash. Mission Impossible was well received critically, had fantastic audience scores, but lo and behold, flop. Same case with Dungeons and Dragons. On the flip side, Mario was poorly received critically, and is currently the highest grossing film of the year. While "bad movies" may be a factor in SOME cases, it isn't the end all be all. Box office success isn't a complete meritocracy.
@@henrywayne5724 Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning didn't do as well domestically, but it was rather successful internationally. Maybe it was sequel fatigue that led to it not being as successful? I know I lost interest in superhero movies because there was such a high volume of them and I wasn't really interested in bothering with sequels; I think the last one I watched was the Black Panther movie in 2018.
I do not understand why Haunted Mansion wasn't released in October? There is a lack of halloween films for children and there are only so many times that millenial parents can put on Hocus Pocus or Great Pumpkin. Blocking their own bags at this point...
I really liked the HM movie, found it to be quite a fun and extremely beloved way of adapting the ride, there's a lot to like if you're a ride fan. But for the life of me I didn't understand why it wasn't an October release. Like I fully expect the fnaf movie to probably be the standout in October, but thats meant to be a full on horror movie. Hm, despite its scary bits, is way more suited for families to see, so why did Disney release it so early i don't get it????
@@teamchaos5101 Yeah, Haunted Mansion was theatrically released just in time for it to be released on Disney + in October. It baffles me that they think that's the best strategy but that was for sure what they were thinking.
Even in October, it would've bombed. 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' (which seemed like a spooky film) could've opened in October 2016 when it was released in September 2016 and STILL bomb. I don't even have hopes for what Guillermo del Toro would've done for 'The Haunted Mansion', but it probably would've been better than what we got last month.
What I saw is that the majority of royalties actors get are tied to it's performance in the first 3 months. So they let it bomb in July, then if it picks back up in October on streaming they barely have to pay anything
Its called "Hollywood accounting".... they literally cook the books on their spending so they can cheat out of paying royalties... Pedo-wood gets negative sympathy from me.... every one of these actors and producers are aware of it and CHOOSE to stay silent... allowing more people to be victimized because they are ONLY IN IT FOR THEMSELVES... Entire industry is in a morality deprived echo chamber.
The fact that Oppenheimer and Barbie combined budget costed less than Indiana Jones 5 is absolutely bonkers. What the hell were the execs at Disney thinking??
@@TonksMoriarty they think people wanted to watch Barbie because of Barbie and not the fact that it was given to a very talented director who put a lot of love and care into the project
If I wasn't such a fan of many of their brands (DC, Looney Tunes, Harry Potter, etc) and didn't have stuff I cared about on Max, I would never buy another product from Warner Bros again.
not to be an a24 fangirl (because some people definitely cross the line and act like that studio can do no wrong) but a24 is the perfect example of a smaller company prioritizing good storytelling and original ideas and utilizing their budgets down to the last penny. Of course not all of their films are successes (critically or commercially) but they seem to be pretty strategic with their marketing and release schedules and many of their most successful films did well because of word of mouth. They’re not concerned with making the most money, just making great films and uplifting smaller writers and directors. They’ve actually been given the green light to continue working through the strikes because they immediately accepted the strikers’ demands! If a smaller studio can pay their workers fairly then there’s no excuse for Disney and co.
@@natatatmThat was intentional. When Disney bought Pixar they also moved John Lassiter (longtime head of Pixar and co-founder) over to be the head boss at Disney Animation.
Regarding the movie ticket price, going out to see a movie was usually seen as the "cheap" alternative to either a first date or a casual night out with a significant other or friends. Now the price is relative to going out at a decent restaurant so, at least for myself and my wife, why not just wait to be able to rent it on Prime for 2 bucks in a week or two and go check out that new restaurant?
I think many, myself included, don’t even see anything new to spend $2 on, it’s not worth my time when I know 95% of what’s coming out is ‘meh’ at best. And as for the restaurant, I’ll skip that now as well and keep the money in savings. At least there it’s earning me 3%. I know many that have gone back to reading. In fact, I’m back in a book club for the first time in 2 decades.
And we already are spending some of that money on streaming! My wife and I used to go out to the movies a few times a year. After the pandemic? Once a year, maybe if we really want to? But even then it’s such a hassle and way too expensive. Not to mention the IP that really has excited me lately has been streaming series! Other than DND, I can’t remember enjoying my time in a theatre recently. We loved Ted Lasso, Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Arcane, etc. but the movies are all meh and the price to go out is insane.
And it's even more expensive if you are trying to take a family. 4 tickets at $10-$12 a pop is $40-$48 just to get in. (And most families can't make the cheap matiness because of work and school.) That doesn't include concessions (and everyone saying "just don't buy them", that is how theaters themselves make their money so if nobody buys concessions, there are no theaters; plus, one of the only things that differentiates watching at home and watching in a theater ARE the theater snacks, which is why theaters have spent the last few years upgrading their snack choices and food quality). So add another $20-$30 AT LEAST for concessions - that is $60 for the outing. You know what else costs $60-$70? A video game that the kids can play for hours and hours. (Not to mention all the ones they can play for free). Theaters are in a very tough spot in terms of competition for people's money and time these days.
No more high budget movies sir Bob iger more like Bob Floper Hollywood sucks Fire all of these ended up career actors celebrities animators ceos bosses creators directors I wanted them to be fired immediately #firerachelzagler Get Rachel Zagler Fired for hating prince
The movies that didn’t flop show that people are still willing to come out and pay to watch movies HOWEVER there’s a fatigue of reboots, sequels and super hero movies. People want original movies. With the case of Barbie and Oppenheimer, people will come out for directors they like as well as actors but that alone won’t carry it. The creativity needs to come back !
Yeah! My dad and I sat through Oppenheimer and we were NOT bored at all. Of course we made the smart move and not get any drinks or food, because that meant eventual bathroom break and missing stuff in the movie. It was a fantastic film!
Even with superhero movies. Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man showed that there's a huge public who still enjoys good stories, and are willing to pay for it
Right, it's interesting that the original-ish movies of Barbie and Oppenheimer succeeded, but the nth movie in a boring series can't. It's just too much crap
I’m still kinda sad that DND bombed because it’s such a well made, well written, charming, and fun movie, even for someone that’s never played DND. It sucks it was a victim of poor timing (not only with the other March films but also being released the week before Mario, I don’t need to say why that was a bad idea) and being so expensive to make. It sucks that such a great movie is gonna be known as a flop, it deserved better.
Just starting, but it’s really evidence that people just aren’t willing to dish out money for mediocre stories just because of big name celebrities and brands, and that word of mouth is carrying a WHOLE LOT more weight now for these studios to break even.
Barbieheimer is a happy surprise. What started out as a meme made 2 very unconventional blockbusters, Barbie and Oppenheimer, become huge critical and box office successes. Though having very popular award-winning directors also played a huge part in it.
The way you talked about the Flash’s production hell was relatable because I remembered when this was announced I was 14. I’m now 23 and the entire film landscape has shifted 😂
That's really a big part of why movies bomb... They just suck. Funnel 300 mil into a movie but when writers are bad not even 1 billion is going to save you.
I suspect it's not that writers are bad per se, but just as with Videogames the upper echelons interfere and water down any good ideas to the point where they just disappear.
I saw an interview with Matt Damon not long ago where he was asked about the death of the small budget comedy, and his response was that the death of the DVD was the death of small budgets. That because movie studios won’t be making money on after theater sales anymore (because streaming doesn’t pay like DVDs did) so studios want to make big bugs in theaters. But I think your right, that’s really just giving them another hurdle they have to clear when the budgets are so MASSIVE. Maybe this will bring back in the era of small budget movies, which I would love because I’ve missed a good romcom!
And also the fact that dvd budgets are given so little time to make like interesting UI’s. All the ones we get now are generic bars and not stuff that you saw back in the day.
I think it's also worth noting that people don't bother going to see movies in the cinema any more because unlike in the past when you would have to wait about a year before they released it on VHS/DVD, they now release it on streaming immediately after it has been in theatres for a month
For anyone that got tired of waiting for an explanation of WHY a movie that exceeds its budget wouldn't necessarily break even - it's mainly because of marketing. Marketing costs have become astronomical in the past decade. As studios increasingly rely on overseas revenue, marketing costs obviously increase. Also, revenue sharing is a factor. Some entities involved in the production (sometimes the actors) will negotiate for a percent of the earnings. So a movie that is reported to "not break even" is actually just not breaking even FOR THE THE STUDIO.
Marketing for blockbusters used to be absolutely insane. Let's take Transformers for example, holy shit you had commercials for cars, fast food, of course toys, you name it. You saw it all the time to "go watch this awesome movie". But now, the only marketing you really see is the trailers, and the occasional movie theater tie-in promotional item, like a popcorn bucket or something.
It's so insane that the original "Saw" movie was made with only a million dollars, 18 days of filming and was only supposed to be a small indie film. However, it spawned 10 films and has earned hundreds of millions of dollars! You don't need to spend hundreds of millions for a good movie, you just need an original/great idea.
Yess. And bring back practical effects. CGI seems so... idk, cheesy sometimes at this point? Its hard to explain. But i wanna see an anamotronic shark bite something in half again. Im not sure where studios got the idea that CGI was the only way, but its sorta boring and all the same now.
@MrSqurk that's why A24 exists. Back on the day it was Lionsgate who did that kind of small indie movies like Saw, Cabin Fever or Artisan Entertainment with Blair Witch project.
@@juicyfruits8071 You should watch the Saw series if you haven't yet bc a lot of it are practical effects and most of the "traps" are real and would legitimately work if in the wrong hands 😂 I so applaud the creators of Saw & excellent cast!
I feel like Barbenheimer is the first big genuine blockbuster event I’ve seen in a while. I live in Alabama and the theaters were packed like crazy. People were posted all on local social media in their pink after watching them.
The other problem with the marketing for the D&D movie was that a month or so before the release, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro *seriously* angered the D&D user base by attempting to implement some extremely restrictive modifications to their open gaming license. People were boycotting the company, canceling their D&D Beyond subscriptions, and a lot of the promotional content for the movie was derailed by complaints about the OGL changes. There absolutely would have been mass boycotts of the movie if the issue hadn't been resolved by the time of release. So a lot of the pre-release hype and marketing was really hamstrung by that.
I like the cast of D&D movie but the trailers I saw were not all that great. I will make sure to see it on a streaming service then, it sounds like it was a well received movie by the comments I've read.
When it comes to shazam, I'm with you. I love the first one so much. Saw three times in the theaters, just to hear the audience gasp and cheer when the family was revealed for the first time. But the problem is that the movie was the product of a time when Warner Brothers reach was exceeding their grasp. If they would have slowed down to think, they would have realized that if the whole point of the characters secret identity is that it's a kid who gets the powers of an adult superhero, then the whole idea works better as a TV show where the kids can stay young for a few seasons instead of one movie. And an audience would have the years to grow up with them before struggling with the challenges of getting older in a later season. And all of that is before I even get to talking about the insertion of literally a skittles commercial in the middle of the action...
Barbie and Oppenheimer budgets were both under 200 mill [each] And they built all their sets and had all the extras, they were callbacks to old Hollywood as well as original stories by directors who were able to tell their own story and vision and audiences responded in turn
@@k.c5052 yeah , i am just putting the real numbers out there incase if someone didn't knew can get the idea 😊, "under 200" felt like 180 or 170 to me that's why , my mistake i wrote my comment like that 🙂
They have to be inflating numbers for these budgets. They're not spending it on writers. They're cutting corners on paying VFX artists. They're literally pinching pennies wherever they can, and yet still they're more expensive to make than ever? On what? I've seen theories that the studios won't even negotiate with the strikers because then they'd actually have to reveal where all their money goes and it's going to he a disaster. Honestly, I believe it because there's no other explanation so far.
Does the money go into an offshore account for the executive and producers? I mean, the money is going somewhere. It's definitely not going to the workers or to charities.
A lot of budget is wasted on Actors. All Disney's past live action films have tried to market through a terrible casting of A-list Celebs. Like Will smith as genie and Beyoncé in lion king or The Rock on Moana. 50% of cash goes to popular celebs to get a fanbase to watch. The money isn't spent on making art itself.
@@niclaswa5408 no, they mean the the original meaning of “blockbuster” was a literal large-scale bomb and now it also refers to a very successful/popular movie
When I first looked at the Oscar nominations this year I thought, "Dang, there are like 5 movies that were nominated for pretty much every category" Then I looked at the other movies that released this year and thought, "Yeah, those are really the only movies that seemed Oscar worthy"
Going to the Barbie movie truly felt like a Blockbuster event! It was amazing to see groups of people in the street, the mall, and the theater wearing pink and we all knew that we were going to see the same film. It was awesome! A movie hasn’t felt this fun or important since Endgame imo
Yeah, people and studios forget the social aspect of going to the movies. I used to go alone to the movies to watch indie or less popular stuff, but when a big movie came out, it was an event. Maybe not to the extent of Barbie, but it had to be "worth it". The last great movie experiences i had were, The Conjuring and Jojo Rabbit, those movies were such a collective experience it was amazing. The Harry Potter premieres were always fun too. (i can't talk about superhero movies, because i gave up on them a long time ago) And other movies like T2. Trainspotting or Mother! have this effect of wanting to keep talking about them for hours after watching them. The current movies are very underwhelming, unless you are a super fan and you catch easter eggs or obscure references, there's not much to talk about. And with remakes, it just feels awkward, like you are watching something knowing how is it supposed to be and is just disappointing.
I totally agree! I feel like "Barbenheimer" and Endgame were the closests we've had in recent years to the blockbusters of the days of yor FSPN talked about with Jaws and Star was. real event movies and I loved it! (I just think studios think that people can do a barbenheimer every weekend - which has proven to not be true.)
The only movie I saw this year in the cinema was Barbie. Because my group of friends wanted to go together dressed in pink and all so I was like sure, why not? Would've loved to see Oppenheimer too but I live in Japan and it's not coming out here for obvious reasons lol. I wasn't too hyped for Barbie to be fair but because we had a nice night out and overall I found the movie to be quite entertaining I did enjoy my time and it did feel a bit like an event, it was nice. I feel like Hollywood just forget about the social aspect of going to the cinemas which I think that nowadays is the most important aspect, because at least for me I will spend in going to the cinema only if it's kind of a big eventful thing like Barbie or maybe End Game too or for Horror movies. Cause I wanna get the full horror experience and I want to hear everyone else screaming in the theatre too lol.
Barbie was and is a movement! A moment! I can’t explain the excitement I had in the months leading up to it, the products and marketing, getting me & my baby’s Barbie looks together for the theater, finally seeing it and then afterwards letting it all sink in. I was a little Barbie girl, my daughter is a barbie lover, and this whole experience has made my heart so happy. I’ve been wanting to go back and see it alone before it leaves theaters since I had my daughter with me the first time. Truly a magical experience
The "movies are just too damn expensive" explanation is just really relevant. It’s ridiculous to have so many movies that need to make 700M-1B just to break even.
I've always known cinema-going experience is expensive. Decided to calculate how much it is here in Australia. So you've got say two adults going to the cinemas, that's $52.30AUD (including the $3.30 booking fee) so if you want just tickets alone converting to USD it'd be $33.87. But then you think "actually feeling kind of peckish. Let's get a large popcorn and two drinks, that's $31.10AUD which converts to $20.14. So combining the two tickets, a popcorn and a drink it'd be $83.40AUD, or $54.02USD. I could buy some clothes, or hell even a streaming service with that much.
@@mikubrot It seems to be a tendency in a lot of the entertainment industry right now to burn money like gasoline on enormous spectacle productions. Maybe because raw capital is the only thing big production and publishing companies have going for them. Yeah, they hold tons of IPs. But an Intellectual Property's star can fade, and the idea, plot elements, genre, themes, aren't encompassed in the copyright. Warner Brother's can stop me from getting together with my friends and filming a movie about an ensemble cast of thieves breaking the casinos. All they can do is make sure that there version is bigger, with more famous names, higher production value, and more distribution.
The marketing for Barbie was so smart and clever, like I would like to take a master class from the marketing team. The interviews are so fun, advertisements were so rememorable, and they utilized social media so well. The "this barbie" trend on social media was genius
what would have skyrocketed it further was releasing dolls from the movie alongside. the film isn't for kids, but trust me, adults like me would spend our wages on it. edit: i should've stated i meant repros of the silk stone dolls, i.e. the first dolls made (Barbie, ken, Midge, and christie were the original friend group)
One thing I’ve noticed. Home systems are so much better than they were 10 yrs ago. When I was growing up you went to go see things on the big screen because the screen was bigger, and the sound was much better. Now, people have 75” 4k displays with THX certified sound setups. There’s no real need to see things day one. Wait a couple months and it’s on 4k Blu-ray or vudu.
And it stood the test of time! People still watch it, love it and new writers and directors still take inspiration from it and learn from it. Sure money will help you make your film look better ect but, there's plenty of movies out there made with low budgets that are sooo good, better than any big blockbusters
I think its the big budgets are prob a contributing factor to why these blockbusters are so crap. David Lynch has even said how a a small budget constraint helped him to be more creative with film making and be more thoughtful. I employ this thinking everytime I am working on an art project. Sure if you have an endless budget, you could theoretically do whatever, but limitations help you to think outside the box. Halloween is a great example of quality without the necessity of a large budget.
Not to discredit John Carpenter, he's one of the greats, but $100k back then would be way, way more today. Similar situation to Sam Raimi and the first Evil Dead film. Nonetheless, extremely impressive stuff and I tend to agree that, for most talented directors, only exceptions are probably Nolan, Fincher, etc., a smaller budget can lead to better results.
Done by people who knew how to make movies, and studios who knew how to run business... instead of 10 white collar guys ( who got the job by nepotism ) e-mailing each other scripts and asking for changes , playing with the editing...
The tough thing about Dungeons & Dragons is that this is the one on this list that actually has a pretty reasonable budget: $150 million with pandemic protocols for a fantasy adventure film where you have to make a bunch of costumes, props, sets, and add in CGI dragons (they're in the title!) is not some crazy inflated number. Adjusted for inflation, that's what The Fellowship of the Ring cost to make-- and that was with tax incentives from filming in New Zealand, a cast without any big names, and the savings that come from filming multiple movies at the same time! The release date is what killed D&D. If they'd put it out, say, now, it would probably have turned a tidy profit.
Especially when you consider that Honor Among Thieves would have been able to ride the wave of Baldur’s Gate 3’s runaway success & widespread acclaim to increase interest in the film.
You're right, DnD released now with BG3 would have been great. Also would have distanced it from the OGL fiasco in January (not sure how deep you are in DnD fandom, but that got A LOT of hardcore DnD nerds angry enough to boycott the movie.)
@@mathsalot8099 yeah I remember being really super hesitatant to see the movie myself, my parents talked me into seeing it with them and I'm glad that I did!
A big part of the problem with the MCU is partly because it feels like work now, you can't watch a random movie without having done homework by watching another random thing that by all means really shouldn't have anything to do with that particular movie, and it's exhausting, especially with the price of movie tickets and now streaming services to keep up with it all
Omg thanks I wil always be a Marvel fan but at some point I just gave up... like I couldn't go into every movie and didn't have streaming for some time and now that I have Disney+ I'm overwhelmed and have to make a gameplan bc I have no idea what's going on. I watched a few new series like Ms Marvel and She hulk and didn't hate them but I don't know where to go from there. I also like GOTG but I seriously consider not watching the rest of the Avengers bc it's a huge investment to watch every movie and sequel and what not. There are recaps of course on TH-cam but it's just a lot and I'm not THAT into it🙈
That's exactly my issue. I only got into the MCU right after Endgame and even then it was a lot to watch but I was able to get back up to speed but now it's basically impossible. It feels daunting even if you've been kinda keeping up, they just keep churning stuff out
Every time that I hear about the current state of the MCU, I a) chuckle because I hate current Disney for various reasons and b) unfortunately feel vindicated that I more or less stopped after _Endgame_ since pretty much only like...two MCU movies since then have seemed worth a damn. Probably more TV shows have been at least worth watching, but even ignoring reason a), I barely watch TV and that still can feel like homework depending on certain things. I can understand why they did it, especially given COVID, but introducing Kang in a TV show first feels like a massive misstep (even before the allegations that turned up with his actor--whoops). Honestly? The saddest thing about theu current MCU to me is that despite it becoming a bit of trainwreck, it's still not nearly as much of a flaming disaster as the DCEU has unfortunately been for the past 10+ years, so it doesn't have as much pressure on it to improve as it otherwise might. As much as the MCU is floundering and screwing up its own plans as of late, the DCEU somehow *still* doesn't seem to have a plan over decade later which is just baffling. (To end this without seemingly I'm just using it to bash DCEU, at this point I think I'd only watch an MCU movie again if it was _Guardians of the Galaxy 3_ or, largely for a friend, _Shang-Chi_ since just can't care, especially when we've been given no real reason to care about any newer characters for the most part anyway--misusing multiverses only makes that more the case.)
I still go and watch them because its a thing me and 17yr old have done since he was little. But i actually liked quantimania more than most of the others. Wish the ending was different, tho.
Because of this video I have learned who David F. Sandberg is and now I am sad that Shazam 2 did badly because I hate it when bad things happen to people who seem genuinely nice and good. Also, I am like him and I cannot imagine the stress of making a huge movie and then dealing with it doing badly, my god I would probably just curl up under the bed and never come out bc of the stress and emotions of it. I hope that dude is able to move on and keep making the things he loves to make.
Thankfully people don’t care about the directors unless they make something amazing or outrageous, so there’s really no need to be shy in public if it’s a mediocre movie
Hearing "this movie made tons of money but it's a failure because the budget was so high" over and over again reminded me strongly of the video game industry in the 2010s. We kept hearing about games selling huge numbers of copies, but they were also selling "below expectations" because it wasn't enough. Some studios have learned to budget appropriately for games that will likely have a niche market. Some *cough* Square Enix *cough* have sold off the IPs they couldn't figure out and are doubling down on making blockbusters with the IPs they understand. I guess we'll see what happens with movies.
The thing with DIsney in particular is that they always bet big, even when it wouldn't benefit them. When you look at the production and marketing budget for THE LONE RANGER back in 2013, it would've had to have made $800 million worldwide just to break even. For a Western! THAT'S INSANE.
correction: square enix is _relying solely on yoshi p and his projects to keep them afloat._ seriously, if not for ffxiv, and yoshi's desire to keep the rest of the company off of his baby, square would be in WAY worse trouble. they haven't released a good and/or well recieved game aside from final fantasy(which are all handled by yoshi now) in years.
This is a problem brought by the Avengers, Jurassic World or Avatar not being treated as an anomaly, but a new status quo. People were expecting all sorts of movies to reach a billion bucks, and thus they were surprised when it didn't because a movie breaking 1b it's actually something very rare.
The past few years have given me real franchise fatigue. I have been to see two movies in the cinema this year: Puss in Boots 2, all the way back in January, and Barbie. I'm not a Marvel fan, or a DC fan, I'm too young to have watched the original Indiana Jones movies at the peak of their popularity, I watched one Disney remake (Beauty and the Beast) and decided not to watch the others, etc. I think at least PART of the reason Barbie is such a hit (other than the fact that it's just an awesome movie) is that you can just watch it. You don't need to do a bunch of homework first. I'm tired of every film having a backstory-story that I need to familiarise myself with before I even hit play.
this!!! because so many films are connected to properties it feels like you HAVE to see the previous ones, where even as an avid barbie fan who understood more of its references i still enjoyed it as its own narrative
Puss in Boots 2 succeeded as did it cause you didnt need to remember or even watch the original, let alone all the other shrek movies to hop in on the storyline
@@iwakeupandboomimarat It's sooooo tiring, and it's also more risky than studios realise, I think. Like I was interested in Marvel phase 4, until I watched 1 TV show (Loki) and 1 movie (so forgettable I literally can't tell you WHICH ONE) and thought 'nah, I'm good'. For movies like Barbie, or even Puss 2, which worked well as a stand alone, references to source material or wider franchises should be easter eggs, not integral to understanding the story's plot. If you're asking for the level of mental commitment demanded by, say, Marvel, you NEED a good enough product to back it up.
i was born in 2001 and i grew up watching indy movies bc my mom was a huge fan but even i knew the new one was gonna be trash - but pls watch the originals theyre amazing
I believed you missed one important fact with regards to why budgets are exploding: reshoots! It is incredibly sad to see that studios don’t trust the writers/directors/producers anymore to write a cohesive story and let them fulfill their vision without reshooting 75% of the movie. Those reshoots are what is blowing up the budgets not the special effects or writers costs and it is only going to get mediocre with the introduction of AI and stale writing that has no original idea.
Reshoots has ALWAYS been a part of movie making, at least since the blockbuster era started.. As soon as you went above an independent movie level budget Reshoots will usualy happen after the studio sees the first cut.. The reason it's gotten a bad rap the ladt decade is because news articles only tend to mention Reshoots when a movie test badly even though they happen regardless of how the movie is testing... Thst said.. Studios trying to save a movie with Reshoots is definetly a more recent problem.
Reshoots aren't a new thing, but this thing where reshoots DOUBLE or TRIPLE the budget of the film are very new, and a sign of two issues that are common in the industry today. Reactionary Filmmaking and Lack of Clear Vision. Lack of Clear Vision is studios having a license, having a date on a calendar, knowing who they want on the film, but not knowing what the film should actually be, sometimes the movie STARTS SHOOTING when questions that should have been answered in pre-production are still up in the air. Or, the film gets completed and someone high enough up in the studio to approve the budget changes their mind about what the film should be and starts demanding changes. Maybe after test audiences, maybe after something else going on in the industry, and that brings me to... Reactionary Filmmaking is the trend chasing that has gotten so bad at Warner Brothers as of late, but other studios aren't immune. The Star Wars sequel franchise, regardless of which films you thought were good or bad, suffered from films not necessarily building on what came before, but reacting to the reaction to those films. Part of that is that there was no trilogy outline or bible to run off of, but I cannot help but look at Rise of the Skywalker as anything BUT a film responding to the Last Jedi backlash. It spends more time settling grievances and retconning things from the prior movie than it does setting up its own inciting incident. Flash's budget went OUT OF CONTROL because it was Greenlit before Justice League was even in theaters, then, when Justice League wasn't the guaranteed money maker the studio hoped for, the DCEU shifted to this damage control mindset. By the time Flash was even REALLY filming, it was being set up as this way to 'fix' the DCEU, and then al lthe stuff with Ezra, and just so much behind the scene shit was happening and what the movie was even meant to BE was this constantly moving target. I wouldn't be shocked to find out that enough footage exists for The Flash that you could stitch together 3 or more VERY different movies, all because it was this crazy moving target where every tiny fluctuation in the environment lead to huge changes to the movie. Wonder Woman 84 REEKS of having been at LEAST two very different films stitched together. Part of this is CoVID shutdown, and too many movies having these ridiculously long production timelines as a result, giving executives way too much time to think and change their mind about stuff. Ultimately, it all boils down to a lack of confidence in any of these creatives to CREATE. It's not about creating a work of narrative art, but in creating a product to fill a studio schedule, with brand synergies and the like.
Reshoots aren't blowing the budgets. The number one reason for so many movie flops is social justice messaging. Audiences don't want to be preached at or told they are wrong for embracing their own personal beliefs. Disney has become so anti-family, they deserve to fail. Reshoots? C'mon. Most movies have them.
@@aradraugfea6755they’re basically filming a new movie at this point. They don’t have a script they actually like before they start filming, so they film a bad script, decide it is bad and then film a new movie.
Film The Producers. Make a rotten failure and clean up from investors. I'd like to see receipts for these production costs. Chief Financial Officer of Disney quit. Hopeful deniability?
Its worth noting Mission 7 got a tidy $71 million covid insurance payout, which given the theatres take half of the box office, shaves off $142 million from the films break even point.
i think its really significant that nearly every major franchise had a big blockbuster this year, and many didn't do well, meanwhile, barbie and oppenheimer (two pretty original film concepts) did very well. it just shows how general audiences are getting tired of transformers, fast and furious, marvel, mission impossible, etc. and would rather go see something fresh and new. Of course you have franchise outliers like across the spider-verse (that was great, as expected) but overall the market is over-saturated with film franchises that everyone is frankly tired of.
i mean, mission impossible failed partially bevause of Oppenheimer: it was in Imax cinemas for like four days before Nolan got every single one of them. Before the first week it already lost a very profitable chunk of the theatres
I literally couldn't see Mission Impossible the week Barbie and Oppenheimer opened at my local cinema cause they both took all the screens so the movie couldn't be shown 💀
@DamnableReverend Mattel and Hasbro have already taken that message and are greenlighting a slew of toy-based films, from GI Joe being shoehorned into the recent Transformers, to things like Nerf and Micro Machines.
I work as a manager at a movie theater. Flash bombed so bad we were shocked. I think it's safe to say that superhero movies are on a decline. I think Spiderverse and Guardians 3 were the only superhero movies that didn't flop horribly this year.
Nah, that's just a DC pattern tbh, we don't expect much from them tbh- considering ezra's crimes too. The flash could've did good if it was treated better, it had YEARS to be better but we knew what to expect. This movie was announced on the second episode of the flash tv...when how I met your mother was still on, and to add the frosting on the cake....we had (some and at the time) promising directors that kept exiting left on the movie. Hope had been lost tbh lol
“We were shocked a movie with a publicly canceled actor did poorly. Super hero movies are definitely on the decline heres 2 examples of the opposite of that.”
Well, there was the whole protest since the lead is acting like an ass, and he's honestly just not a good Flash. That awful movie (by itself) failing isn't enough to draw a conclusion about the entire genre.
The reason M:I 7 underperformed is heavily linked to the date of premiere. Cruise has not moved around the slot and went to cinemas a WEEK before Oppenheimer and Barbie. That bad drop in week 2 strongly correlates with Barbenheimer. Also, M:I 7 lost its IMAX screens to Oppenheimer as well. The date of premiere axed this movie. Should have been in autumn or emptier spot.
@@henrywayne5724 Cruise thought nobody was going to watch Oppenheimer cuz it's a 3hr R rated dialogue based movie so he wanted IMAX to give more screen time to M:I
honestly the whole time around barbenheimer was so full??? when i was trying to book tickets for barbie i saw so many big movies being played at my local cinema (with like 20 normal screens and 2-3 imax ones) at the same time
My friends skipped MI 7 because they only had time for one movie in their schedule, and we all wanted to see Oppenheimer together. Loved MI 7 but that was a quiet movie hall
Godzilla Minus One made on a budget of $15 Million (or less says the director) shattered the box office and put Hollywood to shame. Now that people have seen Minus One, many are asking where is the money going when they pump out these 200 million overbudget, cheap FX movies. This film has truly opened peoples eyes and for good reason.
I can’t say Ant Man 3 was the first MCU movie with no reason to exist when Ant Man 2 also exists. An entire movie made for a minute and a half Endgame teaser.
Also Puss in Boots 2 did good at the box office, mostly because it was just a really great movie: a kids movie that never talked down to its audience with a smart script, interesting themes and stellar animation. Just another movie to add to your top 6 that didn't flop, but yeah your overall point 110% still stands EDIT: I just remembered it came out in late December of 2022! However I think it does still (maybe?) count as a box office hit for 2023 since that's when most people went to see it
It made less than $500 million worldwide. Most Illumination movies made more than that. Across the Spiderverse made more than that, and it was the second lowest-grossing Spiderman movie ever, only behind Into the Spiderverse. Not to mention most 2010s Pixar films.
“Barbenheimer” proved audiences can and will see two tent pole movies at the same time. Is this normal? No, but it proves that if you put put movies that people want to see, and have good marketing - the audience will be there. The problem with movies nowadays are too many to list - but the biggest factors are they’re too expensive - and studios are too reliant on franchises, while forgetting how to keep them relevant.
The biggest problem with movies is studios think you don’t need a good story, only a popular property. Or they think you only need a property that was popular 20, 30, 40 years ago. Without doing anything interesting or new with them. Or, hell, properties that were never popular, but it’s fine because it’s a superhero, right?
I think a majority of these “failures” is that they are churning out massive amounts of the same IP (too much for one person to follow even as a diehard fan) while having these MASSIVELY inflated budgets. These budgets are regularly in the hundreds of millions with marketing that is even bigger. This means that unless you are a left field hit out of nowhere… you can’t break even. You have to be the top movie of the year to be a commercial success. These budgets are absolutely out of control and they aren’t even spending the money on quality. They are shotgunning movies/TV out all with hyper inflated budgets. Like DND should be on here because it wasn’t a corporate success… but fuck I loved that movie, it was so fun. The reason it’s a failure? The budget was way too high for what it was. This means unless you have a proven IP/backing in some way you aren’t getting funding because each entry is so goddamn expensive. So we aren’t going to see movies take a leap and make something new and exciting. Which means people go out to see less movies… less break even… less “unproven” get made and rinse/repeat.
This is so depressing. My husband and I LOVED going to the movies, we’d go at least once a month before having a kid and since movies are getting more expensive, and babysitters are expensive it’s just prohibitively expensive to go see a movie NOW. As much as I’d love to go to the theaters it’s actually just easier to stream something. That is IF something is actually available and hasn’t been removed from a service in the three days since we ask each other “what should we watch this weekend?” And movie night, which has happened 3 times THIS MONTH
YEAH!! He would’ve gotten fucking prison time for that shit! And they would’ve rewritten EVERYTHING in that film because of it. But I guess someone at the top said they HAD to have him. Utterly stupid on their part. A lesson on what not to do. I swear when Hollywood finally collapses from capitalism dying, we’re gonna be celebrating.
@@shcdemolisherHollywood's unlikely to collapse, as it didn't when similar viewer fatigue happened in the past. More likely, the cycle will repeat: they'll learn their lesson for a decade or two before they go back to being greedy again.
I mean they have to release the movie, it was already shot before he got exposed. It was ready. What are they going to do not release it? No they delayed it for as long as they could and then went for it. He did suffer consequences because hes no longer casted or working on anything. Like what more do you want. His career is over.
as a movie theatre employee i feel horrible for the prices i have to charge and i regularly see people spending over 150 just for a family outing and often times are upset before they can even see the movie
When i Was a younger, we used to go to the movies on a whim if we were bored since it was a cheap way to pass the time. I feel sorry for people who actually want to watch movies on a big screen but have to budget for it like it's some major expense.
@@Sakash52 its especially sad since even a half full room is rare so it seems like if the theatrs were to lower prices they could have more guests to compensate for it.
I bought a frozen coke recently, which is mostly all water with a tiny bit of syrup for $9.00. I promised myself I'd never buy another fucking thing from Regal Cinemas. I'm all for charging profitable prices, but that's a "fuck you" to your customers and I'm not going to play ball anymore.
The biggest problem I have with most "blockbusters" is GIVE ME SOMETHING NEW!!! All these franchises make me sick because it almost always is the same thing over and over again. The DnD movie was great, I watched it twice on the same weekend because it was something fresh and fun. It felt like the filmmakers took their own home game and made it into a movie.
Don't care so much about new. Just give me something good. If they are spending all this money why can't they get a good story that holds my interest for 90 minutes rather than something where you are left scratching your head as characters make decisions that run contrary to what they did just a few minutes earlier.
Yes! I just can’t watch another remake or reboot of a previously successful movie or franchise. In the best case it’s forgetful in comparison to the original. In the worst case it ruins the nostalgia. I just want some ORIGINAL, NEW IDEAS! Just tell some stories, please
To an extent, I agree. As much as I hate most sequels, Top Gun: Maverick gave us something new. I want more movies like that or 'Knives Out' or 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'.
It feels like studios are ONLY releasing blockbusters into theaters & the only ones making smaller budget movies go straight to streaming and have no marketing.
As Matt Damon said once in an interview: the most money you are making from the movies is at the cinema. A few decades ago they made more money on dvds. This is why studios do not risk with calm, deep movies anymore like dead poet society, they want shiny cgi effects and battles to catch people's attention. Its not about the message of the movie anymore, it is about the money and how to make it more appealing to the eye so people go to the cinema to watch it on the big screen. That is so sad 😢
It's sad we don't get slow burner dramas and comedies anymore but I suppose you're more likely to find those genres in TV shows on streaming. There's more pressure now for movies to be a spectacle to make it feel big enough to be worthy of the big screen viewing experience, I guess.
The problem with that argument is they dont make good action movies anymore either. Like that series of action movies Matt Damon himself starred in. They dont make good thrillers anymore either. Something like Enemy of the state. I guarantee if you make a good original thriller with a big name attached like Will Smith was 20 years ago, people would pay to see it. Hell, I'd go see it and I havent been inside a cinema in 15 years.
I think the studios with all their arrogance will instead blame the 'dying' cinema industry as the reason why their movies flopped and will aggressively push for more streaming releases in the coming years.
Considering the fact that Disney+ has yet to generate even a cent of profit, I have my doubts. People are willing to subscribe to one maybe two streaming service, when every studio has it's own streaming, then they are just cannibalizing each other.
@@artur6912Is Disney making profits anywhere? They are *billions* in debt for all those acquisitions they made buying up Fox etc and they are nowhere near close to paying it off. They're losing money by pissing people off in pretty much every way imaginable; nobody wants to give Disney money for anything anymore. Their stocks have been continually dropping for some time now. Even their actors are pissing people off like it's part of their PR training "Alright, now go out there and be as insufferable as possible! Don't forget to highlight how much we've changed the things people love because modernization! You got this! Now go out there and kick the hornets nest!"
Nah, studios are now realizing that streaming also isn't the moneymaker they thought it was. Look at them removing hella content from their services to cut costs so they can FEIGN a semblance of profitability or growth to their shareholders. Apple is giving its original movies theatrical runs because they realize that's how you ACTUALLY make money. Cinema isn't going anywhere. The studios just need to get their budgets under control.
I appreciate the fact you actually gave real criticism. And not blame “Woke Hollywood” Capitalism eventually destroys art. And we shouldn’t be surprised.
@@katherinealvarez9216because people are desperate hurting for money, and recognize it’s an issue. However, it’s easier to give in to propaganda that blames minorities for all the issues we face rather than take a second to look the wealthy producing all the propaganda and hoarding all the money. That would require self reflection and critical thinking.
Please allow me to clarify 'blockbuster': Yes, blockbusters are summer movies, when many people have more free time and vacations are spent, however the determining factor was performance. If the movie tanked, despite WHEN it was released, needless to say, it didn't bust blocks. Today, the term is used by filmmakers, in ADVANCE, to hype the movie, ultimately making it a projection about the projection. Sales tactics.
They say the CGI was odd looking because of the speed force, but there’s a scene where the two Barry’s stand next to each other, not moving much, no physical interaction, torso and up, one of the oldest effects in cinema history and there was still janky CGI face briefly.
I wholeheartedly agree. I want good stories again. Blockbusters are great from time to time, but they’re not always stellar when it comes to story and content.
Irony..........don't think you realize that. All blockbusters are cash grab. It has nothing to do with budget but intent. Don't let the video OP misguide you. This apply to all things. Is it expensive to expanse the military complex - Yes. Is it worth it? No. Is it expensive to apply universal healthcare - Yes. It is it worth it? Yes. Budgets need to match quality. What wasn't talk about in the video is money spent without quality met. A blockbuster is called a blockbuster because it is a expensive movie with matching quality that is worthy of something you can spent on. Today's expensive movie are things that you would consider a waste of money.
Low budget would be more accurate. When high budget is over three hundred million dollars, mid is still inflated. VFX artists deserve a good paycheck, but they also shouldn't be over used. Honestly it's not even that they need to tighten the purse strings, they need to reel in their directors, stop letting them waste the resources.
@@dutchmilk the real problem is letting the directors waste that big budget. If you give the military a hyper inflated budget, they'll spend it on toys and hoarding toilet paper. If you give it to healthcare, you will prevent disabilities and manage those with disabilities - so thens of thousands of people, who would otherwise be on welfare, can participate in the workforce, making back the money spent on it AND dramatically boosting the economy. True story, the military buys up and hoards, often just throw away, mundane items to justify larger checks. Needing money for hygiene products is a more excusable request than designing planes that will never get off the ground. In the Air Force, one of my dad's superiors managed to get himself caught with a huge room full of random crap, mostly toilet paper- when he casually admitted he was doing it to get the base more funding. You gotta be a genius to get dishonorably discharged for what the whole military is doing.
I'm neither American nor older than 35 and I really like Indiana Jones. My problem with the new films is not that you can’t really modernize the concept, it's that they're trying to modernize it and fail. I dont wanna see Indy jump out of a plane with the camera closely zipping around trying to convince me that it's really Ford doing it. If you want my nostalgia, gimme a wide shot with an inflating boat falling out of a plane. Make it look like you did the effect for real, don't try to convince me it's actually real. If you want to make a movie for someone who likes old-school films, make it look old-school. Give it a look thats consistent with the series.
I think they should stop trying to modernize it by bringing it into the future. Indiana Jones is supposed to be an explorer, an adventurer. Changing the setting to anything later than the 1940s doesnt work. Spielberg and Lucas understood that, which is why the 2nd movie was set before the first one. Of course Ford is too old for that now, so just get a new actor, or make a new movie that is basically Indiana Jones but give him a different name. Who cares? I want to see adventure.
@@TheSuperappelflap I heard someone say that if they replaced Ford sooner, it would have been as relevant as James Bond but because they didn't it became pretty ingrained in people's heads to the point where they're against it.
@@damonlam9145 they dont have to get another actor to play indiana jones, for all i care they get chris pratt and call him dora the explorer, i just want to watch cool movies about an adventurer exploring pyramids in the south american jungle and digging up magic egyptian artifacts. the last time anyone did something like that was the mummy movie with brendan fraser and people remember that very fondly.
The thing is we're talking about Indiana Jones continuing to be old-school but all the movies used all of the state of the art technology available at the time the movies were being made. They just shouldn't have such huge time gaps between them (19 years between Indy 3 and 4 and 15 between 4 and 5).
I think one problem with "dead reckoning part 1" was, "why watch a film, for a lot of money, with no real end, because the title says clearly there will be a part 2."
I think it’s important to recognize that our interests have changed over time, but they are still making franchises from 25 years ago. I saw someone say that the industry needs to recognize that Barbie didn’t do well because it was a franchise character, but because it was a well made movie created by women for women. That’s what we cared about.
I’m sad that Dungeons and Dragons didn’t do well. I thought it was a surprisingly cute movie with heart, which is unusual for a lot of big budget movies. Honestly, I think a lower budget sequel could be a huge success.
It was sweet! Ngl I really wish they'd started with a smaller scale adventure with a smaller budget that allowed sequels to grow progressively bigger and allow us to get more invested in the characters over time but I still really liked it
With the success of the BG3 video game though this month, it should be pretty obvious to them that the DnD IP can be really profitable. I imagine there'd be a massive uptick in its streaming numbers at least for the near future, so its not over for them yet.
I miss the Hollywood rom coms & romantic drama/tragedies. The ones that we do get are streaming exclusives (I’m looking at you “The Kissing Booth”, “He’s all that”, etc.) & they’re not any good. Looks like the A-listers have given up on this genre.
I think also timing for release dates is important because I thought it was very strange for Disney to release the Haunted Mansion remake in the middle of the summer. I know that if they released on Halloween weekend it would have to compete with some horror movies but most families with young kids won’t want to watch those. It would have been a good “spooky” alternative for families with kids.
Part of the reason they're so expensive is because soooo many people work on them. Paying an army gets expensive fast regardless of how much you pay them. Ask... well, the army. It's not just the budget bloating.
@SoulDevoured individuals also like to shoot off ammo into the sky. The military budget is hardcore bloated bro, just look at how high it is by comparison to every other national service...
@@ARealFoxxoBean yeah of course. That's why I said it wasn't JUST budget bloating. I work for a state agency. Despite not paying employees shit and relying heavily on volunteers wages is still the highest expense in the whole agency. By alot. And that's with them TRYING to waste money on dumb shit. Like $1000+ on a single uniform.
Whoever put that much money into The Little Mermaid (not counting money for effects) and thought it was a big hit, they clearly never heard of the word “doubt.” They also should learn the phrase “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” because they seem to not learn that phrase when it comes to people (including myself) getting real friggin’ tired of these unnecessary remakes.
As much as people can poke fun at Disney and other corporations for box office failures, I genuinely hope that the disaster that is 2023 manages to make executives realize, once and for all, that they can't rely on franchise films anymore, and need to come up with new ideas. At least, that's what I hope.
No, that's the meaning. It's a block buster, it busted out, made far more money than projected. Come to think of it, when was the last blockbuster? Like he said in the video, they're lucky to break even lately.
Phew, its' a good thing The Marvels was universally beloved and broke box office records, single handedly making up for all the losses Disney had made that year. And who'd have thought it would be the first Marvel movie to sweep the Oscars.
I think a big part of the problem for the MCU is that Disney is making too many TV series and that's diluting the movies and making them less attractive to go and see.
@@artingevondyan1613 I don't think Spiderman was an exception though... It just happened to work cause Spiderman is one of the favorites I think, and you had 3 of them in one movie. Nostalgia works.
Love that you called out how good "Turning Red" was. I had never heard of it, had no idea what it was, but my wife put it on one night on Disney+ and I was shocked how great a film it ended up being! It's kind of a shame what's happened to Pixar the last few years because there is clearly still some great talent and ideas bubbling over there.
Watch Elemental and Onward, they´re really good as well. Pixar makes good movies, but nobody watches them anymore. I think it´s a marketing thing. I haven´t seen Lucas but everyone who has tells me it´s good as well. Edit: Soul is pretty good as well.
@@lopezcarmencecilia as someone that has watched Luca, please go watch it, it's a really fun time! and i bet the newer pixar movies are mediocre at best; i haven't seen them but i bet they're pretty good too!
It’s not that people didn’t like Elemental, most people who saw it loved it, which is why it made a comeback at the box office. The problem is streaming hurt the movie. The Pixar President even admitted that Disney+ has trained Pixar audiences to wait until their movie’s premiere on Disney+ at no extra cost. Well that means a lot of people aren’t going to watch your movie during the theatrical run.
Years like this make me even more appreciative of movies like Talk To Me, which had a budget under $5 million and has already made back 10x that sum. People like original movies with good characters Last year proved the same with EEAAO
Personally, here's a major reason why I didn't go to the movies much this year, I didn't know what was out because I don't get movie ads for some reason. I would have seen Ruby Gillman if I knew it was out, same for puss in boots, and shazam, and guardians 3, and maybe some others. I watch youtube and hulu, all I ever get are temu and tiktok ads. The only reason I even knew about Oppenheimer was because of the memes, I didn't see a single "it's the number one movie in America" ad, or even a single trailer for it. Sure, there are many I wouldn't have watched regardless because they didn't appeal to me, but it's really hard to convince me to go to the movies when I don't even know what's playing.
My brain just can’t comprehend how so much money is spent on a movie. Sure, the cast, the production team, the set, the effects, but 250 million for one movie? And how do you spend 100 million on marketing?? Just think of how much good we could do in the world with this money instead of spending it on films no one asked for. And I’m aware that I don’t know the first thing about the industry, but it still baffles me 😅
@@Xeno7373but what does that MEAN?! I hear that a lot and it’s not a criticism of you relaying that thought, but how could covid cost that much? Production delays, sick pay, supplies (masks, Covid tests, etc) can only cost so much and I feel that most of these movies would’ve been mostly unaffected by Covid at this point since the industry disregarded the pandemic years ago. I work in healthcare alongside Covid and just cannot fathom how that can inflate the budget by so many MILLIONS
There needs to be less focus on visual spectacle and special effects because eventually audience just become numb to it. Instead more comedies, romances, dramas, and thrillers. Movies do not need to be this expensive to be good.
For Haunted Mansion in particular, I didnt even know they were making it until I was in theaters seeing Barbie. And then when they said "coming out July 27th" I was like "dude... Thats in 4 days." So Idk if I'm just under the largest rock ever or if it feels like that one was set up to fail like Treasure Planet all those years ago
The same thing happened to me and I go to the movies fairly frequently. It was a wtf moment. Saw it and enjoyed it, but I couldn't help but think 'why did they release this in August' as I was walking in. Would've been perfect for spooky season since Halloween is becoming a huge commercial industry these days
@anaerobic Hell, I thought some inexperienced projectionist somehow managed to accidentally slap a 20-year-old preview reel into the queue. ("Damn, I could swear I remember Eddie Murphy having a more prominent role in this...")
@@anaerobic That's exactly what I thought! Haunted Mansion and the latest Insidious movie could've been released in October or even September and it would've been perfect timing for both! It was such a bad decision on both Disney's and Blumhouse's part.
It is the change in marketing attitudes since the pandemic started. I personally stopped watching any talk shows and instead listen to podcasts, watch TH-cam Enthusiasts and read the Telegraph. That is it. Many more are on tiktok all day. No TV. Do not ask me what were adds before or in this video, I have no idea.
or just COVID issues. Mission Impossible 7 had that massive budget to begin with cause Paramount wanted to fire the entire crew during the COVID delays until Cruise intervened and paid for their salaries instead. all in all, COVID has changed the industry, for better or worse.
Covid issues, huge star line-up, excessive Visual effects (digital and practical), studio interference, short turnaround or development hell etc. cost a lot of money ...
All of these longer retrospectives and reviews and critiques are helping with my attention span being restored. I know it takes a lot to make these so I appreciate it.
With all the blockbusters flopping, I just want to mention how monumental (in my opinion/observations) the movie roster this year has been for the animation community. A good lineup of animated movies, not just from hollywood, have shaken the whole community from what I've seen. SpiderMan Across the Spiderverse, Super Mario Bros, Nimona, and Mutant Mayhem have been groundbreaking in terms of story telling and animation. Goes to show how valuable animators, artists, and writers are in the industry.
Also very notable to say is that NONE of them is a Disney movie. Literally not even one of them. And I think that is VERY positive not only because a) Disney sucks nowadays but also because b) pretty much until very recently, animation was widely associated (at least in my experience) as a synonym, with Disney and them basically being 'kids movies' (again at least in my experience), so it's great to see them get the appreciation they deserve this year (and also very notably last year with Puss in Boots 2: The Last Wish)
The issue with that is that studios assume animated projects can be churned out cheaply and that those that work on animated media deserve to be paid less because it's "not as expensive" as live action. With the strikes going on, studios are looking for quick and cheap content to sling out of the door next year to keep their executive bonuses coming in for hitting their release quotas. We are going to see an endless wave of new mid-budget Boss Baby-alikes where studios push for dirt cheap, no-name cast franchises that require very little work to make seasons and seasons of tie-in shows once models and assets are created, all designed for children to watch over and over and over to get obsessed with so they buy the tie-in merchandise. Hell, studios are outright telling people that they only want to produce "second-screen entertainment" at the moment, AKA they want media that is uninteresting & doesn't draw the focus of the viewer away from their phone or whatever else they're doing. They want to produce BACKGROUND NOISE that people will "watch" over and over, rather than producing more expensive engaging and gripping media that becomes a short-lived phenomenon before fading into obscurity & failing to get a release in China without pandering to the Chinese market.
In my opinion it only shows how bad the situations is in the movie industry. All this movies you mention are IMHO ok but far from great despite a lot of people saying they are. It seems we are dried out to have something great.
@@Whiteythereaper yeah it really sucks how the movie industry takes it's animators and writers for granted. i jsut wanted to highlight these movies in particular to showcase how valuable the animators and writers in particular were for these projects. I hope that the workers get fairer pay and that the industry gets better about paying in general. i'm an artist myself and I hate seeing all the abuse.
@@TheGraemi i respect your opinion however I have to disagree. the amount of effort and love put into all of these movies is monumental and the impact they've had on several communities as well story telling in general is something that's hard to ignore. Nimona and ATSV in particular are considered masterpieces by the majority of the movie reviewing community as well as the stories being told reaching out to queer audiences. it sucks that the artists and animators apart of these movies didn't get paid what they were worth in their part for these projects. a lot of love and care went into them, and because of that I'd like to say that we aren't dried out of great stories, we just aren't acknowledging the greatness of what is already there.
That franchise fatigue is real. I'm exhausted by the prospect of these never ending 10 part film franchises that make it so that none of their stories actually matter because you know the sequel will just undo it all. and all the money being pumped into even the few stand alones also makes me reluctant to see them as well because you're just going in under this unbearable weight of it being a 'spectacle' so you have to be impressed by it. tbh all i really want is little mid budget movies back.
You actually missed one other factor related to D&D Honor Among Thieves. A significant part of the most dedicated D&D fans at the time were boycotting Hasbro. They made some universally hated decisions related to the series just before the movie came out. So, the people who they could have otherwise been absolutely sure would come see it, likely more than once, instead refused to watch it at all. It may not have been the biggest factor, but it certainly didn't help.
Didn't the real Wizards of the Coast not also go bankrupt & some narcissist genius kept a fake company running to ripoff money from us interwebz gullible victims? 🤔
Bro really just said "Most fans of Indiana Jones are over the age of 35 and within this group, I'd be willing to bet the majority of them are 40 years old or older."
@@reservationatdorsias3215it’s crazy to me that more people don’t realize this. They obviously would make better decisions if the money would run out. The powers that be are eating the loss to continue to propagandize the masses.
@@Sharpe1502honestly? im not complaining. imo the strike can keep going until the execs pull thier heads out of their asses and A24 and Neon produce great art
Those films are already being made. They are either being overshadowed by these blockbusters or being dumped on streaming platforms without any marketing. Two things need to happen. People need to show up and support those indie films they would like to see more of and studios should market those films better.
This. It's no cinematic masterpiece, but goddamn, was I entertained. To be fair, I've been a D&D nerd for a long time (Neverwinter Nights got me hooked), so that might have played into my enjoyment of the movie, but I thought it was genuinely good fun outside of the references - which I would have been mad about had they not been there, it's a D&D movie, for Helm's sake!
@@Moshmaschine I think all that really matters in the end is that people enjoy a film. You can have the Citizen Kane killer but if people don't enjoy it, does it really matter? Movies are made to entertain and intrigue, that's always been their main purpose. Sure, you can angle outside of that purpose into other ways of reaching an audience (no hate to any creative who does that, incredible films aren't always made to be entertaining) but entertainment always reaches the largest audience because who doesn't want to be entertained?
The odd thing about MI: Dead Reckoning was that it dropped off my local theater after just two weeks. I barely caught it before it left. I really liked it, too. Such a shame
I strongly believe that the failures of most of these movies (and so many others) are because of two things: 1) the neverending sequels, spin-offs and reboots of every goddamn movie that shows a minimum of success, and 2) higher-ups playing it safe, in order to make sure they cash in on their investments... It makes a movie that is 'meh' - fine, but forgettable. Most of us have seen hundreds of movies by now and we get turned off by the same old, same old. In order for a movie to be great, it needs to have some level of originality. Some uniqueness. Some boldness. And passion. As a viewer, you can really feel it if there isn't a lot passion in the movie from the main creators behind it.
Yeah. I feel like Indiana Jones would have been remembered more fondly had it been left to the original trilogy. Enough sequels and reboots that no one wanted
It's pretty funny (or dramatic, depending on how we see it) to see the number of directors kicked out of the Flash project due to "creative differences", when you see the awful result of the project that was greenlighted by the producers
I actually would considered 2023 a great year for movies, at least for me, because most audiences now, who probably have been hit by inflation, are going for movies that actually have evidence of being good whether by the cast, the reviews, or the dedicated fans. Spider-verse, Barbie, and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem were all great in different ways but mostly because you could tell the people behind them were truly passionate making it, whether it was how spiderverse took 3 years just to animate a character right, how mutant mayhem actually researched how teenagers actually are, or how barbie caused a literal shortage of pink paint just to get barbie land right.
Exactly! I absolutely agree that’s it’s not a " people don’t want to see movies in theaters anymore" problem, it’s a mainly that people just want more movies that aren’t trash kind of problem! Like it’s kinda laughable at how easy it is to find the main problem 😂
Hell yeah! I even just saw Mutant Mayhem today! And I really hope it does even better from here, because rn it's almost made back twice its budget and based on this video's statistics, it desperately has to climb higher (I want that sequel and tie-in show!!)
The first Avengers movie was fun and everyone loved the idea of the MCU. Now look at the state of superhero movies overall. Now apply that though to the Barbie movie; everyone loves it, it has refreshing directing and a great original story and it made a lot of money. Mattel then announces their line up of similar movies based on other toys; the list looks like Disney's MCU announcements, there is no way every single one of those movies will have good directing or writing. Movies don't have a passion issue, it is a corporation problem, companies know we like nostalgia and just watching content to watch it, so they are going to keep shelling out unoriginal ideas. All the movies you listed are ideas someone else came up with decades ago and people that had nothing to do with the writing of the original story (or creation of the toy) come in to make money off of it by basically writing a fan fiction and calling it an original idea. Nothing wrong with fanfics, it is hard to accept writing as original when the person writing it didn't even create the characters. In 10-15 years we'll all be tired of video game and toy franchise movies just as we are exhausted of superhero movies/remakes/ and sequels.
Same, I loved scream vi, really liked barbie and m3gan, I am excited to watch the five nights at Freddy's, the new hunger games and will watch the boogyman, for me this year has been very cool with movies
Blockbuster movies getting too expensive, while still sucking, has the same fundamental reason why AAA video game developement has become too expensive while also sucking. It's the result of these creative industries increasingly being only seen as capital investment opportunities where projects are mostly conceptualized by their potential for Return on Investment, not by the projects actual merits. That's why movie studios and video game publishers keep throwing bigger and bigger sums of money at projects, they think the resulting profits directly scale with the original developement/production invement.
They should be looking at Spiderverse in reality. That movie didn’t blow the doors off the box office with like $1B, but it made a massive profit due to excellent critic and audience reviews, plus a smaller budget. The ~$700M or so it made at the box office on just a $100M budget delivered some of the biggest profits for any movie this year save for Barbie and Mario, coincidentally, BOTH movies made for under $150M
@@MrRapmaster19 That's the problem. Studios don't care about making a "big profit". They want ALL of them to be Barbie levels of profits. They're greedy. We used to have something called a mid-budget film. They weren't B movies, and they _were_ profitable, but not like, hugely so. Studios now won't bother investing in any script unless it's a huge name, 150m+ budget title they think will make them ALL the money. It's ridiculous.
I do agree with most of what you said, but I do feel that the Pixar problem is that, during the initial stages of the post-pandemic life, they choose to put their Pixar movies on Disney+ really soon, so as an audience member who has already paid the monthly fee to Disney, I'd usually wait for the week or two instead of spending another 30+ USD on the tickets. That being said, I saw "Elemental" and I was a fan of it (more than something like Lightyear), but it's that Disney's streaming strategy trained the audience to not go to the theaters for certain properties (Pixar movies, for example).
@@abedwatad283Based on the latest figures posted on BoxOffice Mojo, Spiderverse has earned over $200M more than Elemental in the worldwide box office. Elemental may have been a sleeper, earning a little over $459M so far but with a $200M budget (Spiderverse reportedly cost $100M), Disney-Pixar is not even breaking even at this point. Perhaps, Disney-Pixar is just somewhat glad that Elemental miraculously exceeded $450M considering the low opening weekend figures but it's still a flop.
The Pixar movies were dropped on D+ for free on day of release, that's why Encanto bombed, same for Turning Red, Luca & Soul having weak performance. Meanwhile the live action stuff had big premium price tags, because the Disney management see all of the animated films as Children's films, and price-gated the "adult" films because they assumed that the animated ones would be played on repeat and children would beg for the merchandise and grow obsessed like they did with Frozen, so they would make their money back on the toys and merch.
It was partly a play to address that "need for new content" streaming services have at a time when theatrical releases weren't going that great, anyway, trying to lure more people to Disney+ by releasing the new Pixar movie quickly. Can't say if it worked, but I can see the reasoning.
Personally I still think it'd be funny if the MCU kept introducing Kangs only to kill them in the project they appear; but I don't think Disney would do that, it's too Rick and Morty
It would be interesting to go around killing kangs for a while only to suddenly throw out a curveball and have a kang that survives and it's an actual menace But of course, this is modern disney we're talking about, and they're allergic to good idead
You can see something similar happening in streaming, where film studios are throwing money at shows hoping for a hit, but if they don't attract viewers quickly they get cancelled. The film equivalent of this is to fund franchises with sequel potential, but then cancel / postpone or even reboot if the first film doesn't do well. Millennials refer to this as FOMO. Robert Schiller (referring to stock market bubbles) called is Irrational Exuberance. Hollywood film production has become gambling.
I was thinking about this earlier this year when I realised there were a few movies I kinda wanted to see but I was also too broke to go and see all of them. I feel like maybe part of the problem is that the people in charge of the film industry are all so obnoxiously wealthy that they just don't understand the concept of not being able to afford things.
I took one child to see the Little Mermaid and it was $45 for 2 tickets, 1 popcorn, 1 drink, and a pretzel. It's definitely more of a luxury event now.
I love the demonetization thing when the video is not suitable for all advertisers and at the same time YT lets cryptoscams, scammy mobile games and other bad ads play.
This video is something that sings true to me- having too many "blockbusters" has stopped making any one movie special. Instead of having one movie that can cause someone to go watch a movie they would normally never watch, these days we would just pick a movie we would feel like watching, what we are most comfortable with.
Well. A lot of that has to do with the death of the B movie. Or the death of the physical medium. See, it used to be that only a handful of movies got hundreds of millions to play with. Most movies back in the day ranged from Kevin Smith's Clerks which cost about $25,000, to movies like Robocop that cost I think around a couple million. So you could spend relatively little money on a project, and if it found an audience, the studio could make bank. Or if it turned into a flop, that was acceptable considering how little was spent on it.
I would probably go to see more movies if the movies they were making were good. Most of them just aren't worth what it costs to go anymore. In the last 5 years I've gone to see The Batman and Top Gun 2. That's all I can remember. I liked both of those.
This year whenever I watch movies in cinema, it was like I rented the whole cinema. I remember when I watched Equalizer 3 to support Denzel, We were like 5 or 8 people watching there. I watched Dead Reckoning because it helped when Tom said this movie is needed to be seen in theaters. Well it didnt disappoint but people are still adjusting with the COVID past. With the 5 movies released in March 2023, I only watched John Wick 4. It was the most promising
It’s a pretty bad omen when 6 directors leave the project and other directors also turn down the offer to work on it as well. Creativity is a part of the directors’ job and not allowing them to follow their vision and push them into a box isn’t productive
It blows my mind that WB allowed Ezra Miller to go to the premiere after everything that happened. Despite all the issues they had with production, it was Ezra's behavior so close to the movie release that mainly sabotaged the box office numbers, in my opinion. I feel like a lot of people didn't go watch it to intentionally sabotage the movie, BUT I also feel like a lot of people (myself included) just couldn't stand to look at Ezra the same way, which created a general feeling of disinterest for the movie. Also, in the trailer it seemed to me that they got the plot of The Flashpoint Paradox and just put a lot of other stuff on top to make it bigger, and I think it would be far more interesting and appealing if they had just straight-up made a live-action of TFP.
Honestly I found Ezra Miller's performance as Barry Allen insufferable even before Miller decided to become a one person crime spree. That character isn't really Barry Allen anyway so I don't know what they were thinking. Ever since Barry Allen became the primary Flash again people have been writing him like he's Wally West which ironically shows who the better Flash is. You're right that the story is obviously based on _The Flashpoint Paradox_ which was itself based on _Flashpoint._ They had *two* sources to choose from and still managed to screw it up. Honestly DC's animated movies are virtually all superior to their live-action films. For animation they stick relatively close to the comic storylines and it works because people already knows those stories work. When it comes to live-action they seem to insist on making changes for the sake of making changes.
@@BiggieTrismegistus I didn't watch Ezra as Barry so I can't really comment on that, but I like his acting and for me, his behavior impacted a lot of my interest in this movie. So maybe it was Ezra in general that sabotaged the movie lmao I feel like they are always trying to make it bigger now and DC keeps trying to compete with Marvel when they should just do their own thing. The source material was already a great story, and I agree that the animated movies are far superior, and that should be an indicator for them of what people, fans especially, like.
I know nothing about the Flash and yes, aside from Justice league being a complete tonal mess because they shoved Whedon into Snyder's shit for some godforsaken reason, Flash just came over as annoying as shit. Like sure, the absolute crime spree Ezra went on made me go "yeah, I have no interest in that person", my interest had gone from like, 1% to zero. Having been announced that the DCEU would be rebooted and nothing would matter anyways wasn't a big help, either.@@BiggieTrismegistus
Bigger budget for Disney = Pay all the producers more money The Creator already proved this when they made their $75million movie look better than a Disney $300million movie. When they have bigger budgets, they just waste and spend more. A toothpick is still a toothpick whether you spend 2cents or $100 on it.
The industry needs to realize they can't double dip. How can you expect a person to pay for 2-3 streaming services per month AND go to the movies so often?
Right?! Especially with streaming prices becoming so expensive. It used to be $8 now it's almost $20. If they dropped the streaming prices where it's actually affordable. Disney's attempt to have people watch their streaming show to get prior knowledge on the movies might have actually worked. But then they will also have to stop spending hundreds of millions on those shows.
Politics of endless growth and so on.
@@OfficialROZWBRAZELthe upper management need to take pay cuts, but that would only happen by government order. Hollywood is doomed to fail and repeat this cycle unless the project is an exception where the art gets prioritized ie Barbie or Oppenheimer vs Sound of Freedom
@Jermaine2099 I was wondering if he would hit this point or if anyone else thought about it. We are forced to pay for numerous streaming platforms from the big studios, and we know that the movies will be released ON those streaming platforms if we just wait a bit. WHY would we want to pay to go see all these movies, when they will he available on another platform we ALREADY pay for? Idk how they fix it, but that system is broken.
Good point. I pay for disney + and I have not seen any disney films in cinemas because I can watch them later, and unlike in cinemas I can watch them SUBBED (i am latin american and EVERY animated film gets released dubbed only. I LOATHE dubs). so streaming is actually better for me. And one month of d+ costs HALF WHAT A SINGLE MOVIE TICKET
I think it's just bad movie fatigue in general. The Success of John Wick, Spider-verse, Barbie and Oppenheimer show that people still wanna see good and decent movies no matter the genre. Unfortunately Hollywood executives will probably never learn
I don't necessarily believe that "good movies" equal box office smash. Mission Impossible was well received critically, had fantastic audience scores, but lo and behold, flop. Same case with Dungeons and Dragons. On the flip side, Mario was poorly received critically, and is currently the highest grossing film of the year. While "bad movies" may be a factor in SOME cases, it isn't the end all be all. Box office success isn't a complete meritocracy.
@@henrywayne5724 Completely agree. The mario movie is mid as can be, yet is the second highest grossing movie of this year
“Barbie did so good let’s make more Hasbro movies!”
They are missing the point of its success.
@@henrywayne5724yeah definitely. People are simply more picky after the pandemic
@@henrywayne5724 Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning didn't do as well domestically, but it was rather successful internationally. Maybe it was sequel fatigue that led to it not being as successful? I know I lost interest in superhero movies because there was such a high volume of them and I wasn't really interested in bothering with sequels; I think the last one I watched was the Black Panther movie in 2018.
I do not understand why Haunted Mansion wasn't released in October? There is a lack of halloween films for children and there are only so many times that millenial parents can put on Hocus Pocus or Great Pumpkin. Blocking their own bags at this point...
I really liked the HM movie, found it to be quite a fun and extremely beloved way of adapting the ride, there's a lot to like if you're a ride fan.
But for the life of me I didn't understand why it wasn't an October release.
Like I fully expect the fnaf movie to probably be the standout in October, but thats meant to be a full on horror movie. Hm, despite its scary bits, is way more suited for families to see, so why did Disney release it so early i don't get it????
The answer is streaming
@@teamchaos5101 Yeah, Haunted Mansion was theatrically released just in time for it to be released on Disney + in October. It baffles me that they think that's the best strategy but that was for sure what they were thinking.
Even in October, it would've bombed. 'Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children' (which seemed like a spooky film) could've opened in October 2016 when it was released in September 2016 and STILL bomb. I don't even have hopes for what Guillermo del Toro would've done for 'The Haunted Mansion', but it probably would've been better than what we got last month.
What I saw is that the majority of royalties actors get are tied to it's performance in the first 3 months. So they let it bomb in July, then if it picks back up in October on streaming they barely have to pay anything
If your movie made $600,000,000 to $700,000,000, and it was still a box office failure, then your movie cost too damn much to make.
yeah, sounds like money laudering to me
@@xChikyxthere are better methods than this.
Its called "Hollywood accounting".... they literally cook the books on their spending so they can cheat out of paying royalties...
Pedo-wood gets negative sympathy from me.... every one of these actors and producers are aware of it and CHOOSE to stay silent... allowing more people to be victimized because they are ONLY IN IT FOR THEMSELVES...
Entire industry is in a morality deprived echo chamber.
The fact that Oppenheimer and Barbie combined budget costed less than Indiana Jones 5 is absolutely bonkers. What the hell were the execs at Disney thinking??
It was probably Harrison Ford's salary
@@e.ogigia I mean if I was 80 yrs old and asked to do a role I did 50 years ago, I would charge a bomb as well :p
And ofc we're getting a fucking Mattel Cinematic Universe. Ffs.
Kathleen Kennedy. What else?
@@TonksMoriarty they think people wanted to watch Barbie because of Barbie and not the fact that it was given to a very talented director who put a lot of love and care into the project
I want someone to protect me the same way the executives at Warner Brothers protected Ezra Miller from facing any consequences for their many crimes
If I wasn't such a fan of many of their brands (DC, Looney Tunes, Harry Potter, etc) and didn't have stuff I cared about on Max, I would never buy another product from Warner Bros again.
Wouldn't that be nice
They're disgusting for that. Fortunately, I think the rest of us have, so now he's box office poison along with being a toxic human being.
Lool what? Ezra Miller is still going to court for their crimes.
You know a bunch of Execs don’t actually change that right?
@@YourBlackLocalDoesn't mean that the execs can't fire Miller
not to be an a24 fangirl (because some people definitely cross the line and act like that studio can do no wrong) but a24 is the perfect example of a smaller company prioritizing good storytelling and original ideas and utilizing their budgets down to the last penny. Of course not all of their films are successes (critically or commercially) but they seem to be pretty strategic with their marketing and release schedules and many of their most successful films did well because of word of mouth. They’re not concerned with making the most money, just making great films and uplifting smaller writers and directors. They’ve actually been given the green light to continue working through the strikes because they immediately accepted the strikers’ demands! If a smaller studio can pay their workers fairly then there’s no excuse for Disney and co.
A24 has been doing well lately. It's in the same role Pixar filled not too long ago, the "prodigal son" of the film industry.
@@johnhoney5089 A24 also has diverse projects
@@johnhoney5089really hoping it doesn't end up the way Pixar has, being bought by Disney had made its work steadily more indistinguishable from theirs
@@natatatmThat was intentional. When Disney bought Pixar they also moved John Lassiter (longtime head of Pixar and co-founder) over to be the head boss at Disney Animation.
They also made EEAAO, which is one of those films that feels like a classic despite it only being out for a year
Regarding the movie ticket price, going out to see a movie was usually seen as the "cheap" alternative to either a first date or a casual night out with a significant other or friends. Now the price is relative to going out at a decent restaurant so, at least for myself and my wife, why not just wait to be able to rent it on Prime for 2 bucks in a week or two and go check out that new restaurant?
I think many, myself included, don’t even see anything new to spend $2 on, it’s not worth my time when I know 95% of what’s coming out is ‘meh’ at best. And as for the restaurant, I’ll skip that now as well and keep the money in savings. At least there it’s earning me 3%.
I know many that have gone back to reading. In fact, I’m back in a book club for the first time in 2 decades.
And we already are spending some of that money on streaming! My wife and I used to go out to the movies a few times a year. After the pandemic? Once a year, maybe if we really want to? But even then it’s such a hassle and way too expensive.
Not to mention the IP that really has excited me lately has been streaming series! Other than DND, I can’t remember enjoying my time in a theatre recently. We loved Ted Lasso, Wheel of Time, Rings of Power, Arcane, etc. but the movies are all meh and the price to go out is insane.
And it's even more expensive if you are trying to take a family. 4 tickets at $10-$12 a pop is $40-$48 just to get in. (And most families can't make the cheap matiness because of work and school.) That doesn't include concessions (and everyone saying "just don't buy them", that is how theaters themselves make their money so if nobody buys concessions, there are no theaters; plus, one of the only things that differentiates watching at home and watching in a theater ARE the theater snacks, which is why theaters have spent the last few years upgrading their snack choices and food quality). So add another $20-$30 AT LEAST for concessions - that is $60 for the outing. You know what else costs $60-$70? A video game that the kids can play for hours and hours. (Not to mention all the ones they can play for free). Theaters are in a very tough spot in terms of competition for people's money and time these days.
No more high budget movies sir Bob iger more like Bob Floper
Hollywood sucks
Fire all of these ended up career actors celebrities animators ceos bosses creators directors
I wanted them to be fired immediately
#firerachelzagler
Get Rachel Zagler Fired for hating prince
It will only reinforce their "rent only" and owning nothing push, even video games are going in on it.
The movies that didn’t flop show that people are still willing to come out and pay to watch movies HOWEVER there’s a fatigue of reboots, sequels and super hero movies. People want original movies. With the case of Barbie and Oppenheimer, people will come out for directors they like as well as actors but that alone won’t carry it. The creativity needs to come back !
Yeah! My dad and I sat through Oppenheimer and we were NOT bored at all. Of course we made the smart move and not get any drinks or food, because that meant eventual bathroom break and missing stuff in the movie. It was a fantastic film!
Seconded, I can’t with the lukewarm reboots/sequels/prequels anymore 😭
I think it has more to do with the lesser quality that these projects are coming out with.
Even with superhero movies. Guardians of the Galaxy and Spider-Man showed that there's a huge public who still enjoys good stories, and are willing to pay for it
Right, it's interesting that the original-ish movies of Barbie and Oppenheimer succeeded, but the nth movie in a boring series can't. It's just too much crap
I’m still kinda sad that DND bombed because it’s such a well made, well written, charming, and fun movie, even for someone that’s never played DND. It sucks it was a victim of poor timing (not only with the other March films but also being released the week before Mario, I don’t need to say why that was a bad idea) and being so expensive to make. It sucks that such a great movie is gonna be known as a flop, it deserved better.
No yeah, DND was actually such a cute and fun movie!
Agree
Wait it flopped? I thought it had done well, shit.
Same! I enjoyed it a lot.
@@RoseKoneko it just barely made its budget back, but it sadly didn’t break even.
Just starting, but it’s really evidence that people just aren’t willing to dish out money for mediocre stories just because of big name celebrities and brands, and that word of mouth is carrying a WHOLE LOT more weight now for these studios to break even.
World war z. Only thing that made it successful was Brad Pitt.
Barbieheimer is a happy surprise. What started out as a meme made 2 very unconventional blockbusters, Barbie and Oppenheimer, become huge critical and box office successes. Though having very popular award-winning directors also played a huge part in it.
Big celebrities? There are no big celebrities anymore.
@@KaleighCeeThe movie industry is way older. Give it some time
@@mesicek7There will always be big celebrities
The way you talked about the Flash’s production hell was relatable because I remembered when this was announced I was 14. I’m now 23 and the entire film landscape has shifted 😂
If I had a dollar for every original idea that Disney has had in the last five years, then I would have 25 cents.
😂😂😂 This comment needs to blow up!
I dont get it, pls explain
That's really a big part of why movies bomb... They just suck. Funnel 300 mil into a movie but when writers are bad not even 1 billion is going to save you.
What was the quarter of an original idea they had?
I suspect it's not that writers are bad per se, but just as with Videogames the upper echelons interfere and water down any good ideas to the point where they just disappear.
I saw an interview with Matt Damon not long ago where he was asked about the death of the small budget comedy, and his response was that the death of the DVD was the death of small budgets. That because movie studios won’t be making money on after theater sales anymore (because streaming doesn’t pay like DVDs did) so studios want to make big bugs in theaters. But I think your right, that’s really just giving them another hurdle they have to clear when the budgets are so MASSIVE. Maybe this will bring back in the era of small budget movies, which I would love because I’ve missed a good romcom!
And also the fact that dvd budgets are given so little time to make like interesting UI’s. All the ones we get now are generic bars and not stuff that you saw back in the day.
That is interesting. I was wondering whatever happened to comedies and romcoms.
I think it's also worth noting that people don't bother going to see movies in the cinema any more because unlike in the past when you would have to wait about a year before they released it on VHS/DVD, they now release it on streaming immediately after it has been in theatres for a month
Yup it definitely affects my calculus. If they want to preserve the prestige they need to extend the theatrical window not shorten it.
@@RogueWarbird118TFPFor make the recent movie be put into ppv jail for 6 months on streaming services or even longer.
Even with the price hikes, I'm way more of a theater-goer, so the worst part is when interesting movies go to the streaming services instead
Yeah... it is way too fast!
yup, they should at least wait for 3 months or more, even if the movie flops
For anyone that got tired of waiting for an explanation of WHY a movie that exceeds its budget wouldn't necessarily break even - it's mainly because of marketing. Marketing costs have become astronomical in the past decade. As studios increasingly rely on overseas revenue, marketing costs obviously increase. Also, revenue sharing is a factor. Some entities involved in the production (sometimes the actors) will negotiate for a percent of the earnings. So a movie that is reported to "not break even" is actually just not breaking even FOR THE THE STUDIO.
Marketing for blockbusters used to be absolutely insane. Let's take Transformers for example, holy shit you had commercials for cars, fast food, of course toys, you name it. You saw it all the time to "go watch this awesome movie". But now, the only marketing you really see is the trailers, and the occasional movie theater tie-in promotional item, like a popcorn bucket or something.
Also they share profits with theaters
It's so insane that the original "Saw" movie was made with only a million dollars, 18 days of filming and was only supposed to be a small indie film. However, it spawned 10 films and has earned hundreds of millions of dollars! You don't need to spend hundreds of millions for a good movie, you just need an original/great idea.
fr i just want hollywood to support original ideas for once instead of just remakes and reboots and sequels its so frustrating to see
Yess. And bring back practical effects. CGI seems so... idk, cheesy sometimes at this point? Its hard to explain. But i wanna see an anamotronic shark bite something in half again. Im not sure where studios got the idea that CGI was the only way, but its sorta boring and all the same now.
You would think that the studios would take more “risks” on small movie like Saw.
@MrSqurk that's why A24 exists. Back on the day it was Lionsgate who did that kind of small indie movies like Saw, Cabin Fever or Artisan Entertainment with Blair Witch project.
@@juicyfruits8071 You should watch the Saw series if you haven't yet bc a lot of it are practical effects and most of the "traps" are real and would legitimately work if in the wrong hands 😂 I so applaud the creators of Saw & excellent cast!
I feel like Barbenheimer is the first big genuine blockbuster event I’ve seen in a while. I live in Alabama and the theaters were packed like crazy. People were posted all on local social media in their pink after watching them.
The other problem with the marketing for the D&D movie was that a month or so before the release, Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro *seriously* angered the D&D user base by attempting to implement some extremely restrictive modifications to their open gaming license. People were boycotting the company, canceling their D&D Beyond subscriptions, and a lot of the promotional content for the movie was derailed by complaints about the OGL changes. There absolutely would have been mass boycotts of the movie if the issue hadn't been resolved by the time of release. So a lot of the pre-release hype and marketing was really hamstrung by that.
Yeah the OGL kneecapped D&D's likeability right before the movie launched
We don't talk about Bruno lol
came here to say this....
I like the cast of D&D movie but the trailers I saw were not all that great. I will make sure to see it on a streaming service then, it sounds like it was a well received movie by the comments I've read.
This was the reason I didn’t go coz I was still annoyed by them but I’ll probably watch it when it goes to streaming
When it comes to shazam, I'm with you. I love the first one so much. Saw three times in the theaters, just to hear the audience gasp and cheer when the family was revealed for the first time. But the problem is that the movie was the product of a time when Warner Brothers reach was exceeding their grasp. If they would have slowed down to think, they would have realized that if the whole point of the characters secret identity is that it's a kid who gets the powers of an adult superhero, then the whole idea works better as a TV show where the kids can stay young for a few seasons instead of one movie. And an audience would have the years to grow up with them before struggling with the challenges of getting older in a later season. And all of that is before I even get to talking about the insertion of literally a skittles commercial in the middle of the action...
Barbie and Oppenheimer budgets were both under 200 mill [each]
And they built all their sets and had all the extras, they were callbacks to old Hollywood as well as original stories by directors who were able to tell their own story and vision and audiences responded in turn
Oppenheimer budget is 100Mil
And Barbie budget is 145Mil not 200Mil
@@Hmmmm..ok3they said both under 200 so they’re not wrong
@@k.c5052 yeah , i am just putting the real numbers out there incase if someone didn't knew can get the idea 😊, "under 200" felt like 180 or 170 to me that's why , my mistake i wrote my comment like that 🙂
And those movies still look better then what I have watched
There was a ton of cgi on both, don't parrot fluff pieces, watch the credit roll for once.
They have to be inflating numbers for these budgets. They're not spending it on writers. They're cutting corners on paying VFX artists. They're literally pinching pennies wherever they can, and yet still they're more expensive to make than ever? On what?
I've seen theories that the studios won't even negotiate with the strikers because then they'd actually have to reveal where all their money goes and it's going to he a disaster. Honestly, I believe it because there's no other explanation so far.
They're definitely not giving that money to the workers, so yeah, I'm curious where the money goes too.
Yeah like secret invasion that thing cost $212 million
It goes into reshoots because the studios have no clear plan on what they're gonna do before shooting
Does the money go into an offshore account for the executive and producers? I mean, the money is going somewhere. It's definitely not going to the workers or to charities.
A lot of budget is wasted on Actors. All Disney's past live action films have tried to market through a terrible casting of A-list Celebs. Like Will smith as genie and Beyoncé in lion king or The Rock on Moana. 50% of cash goes to popular celebs to get a fanbase to watch. The money isn't spent on making art itself.
They used to call them blockbusters AFTER they became blockbusters. Just as saturation can kill something, overusing a word can dilute its meaning.
Also, the term 'blockbuster' originally referred to a literal huge bomb, capable of levelling an entire block.
@@sambeckett2428By that logic, should a movie that “bombed” be a good thing?
@@niclaswa5408 no, they mean the the original meaning of “blockbuster” was a literal large-scale bomb and now it also refers to a very successful/popular movie
@@sofia2222 But when a movie “bombs”, it’s considered a bad thing.
When I first looked at the Oscar nominations this year I thought, "Dang, there are like 5 movies that were nominated for pretty much every category"
Then I looked at the other movies that released this year and thought, "Yeah, those are really the only movies that seemed Oscar worthy"
Going to the Barbie movie truly felt like a Blockbuster event! It was amazing to see groups of people in the street, the mall, and the theater wearing pink and we all knew that we were going to see the same film. It was awesome! A movie hasn’t felt this fun or important since Endgame imo
Yeah, people and studios forget the social aspect of going to the movies. I used to go alone to the movies to watch indie or less popular stuff, but when a big movie came out, it was an event. Maybe not to the extent of Barbie, but it had to be "worth it". The last great movie experiences i had were, The Conjuring and Jojo Rabbit, those movies were such a collective experience it was amazing. The Harry Potter premieres were always fun too. (i can't talk about superhero movies, because i gave up on them a long time ago) And other movies like T2. Trainspotting or Mother! have this effect of wanting to keep talking about them for hours after watching them.
The current movies are very underwhelming, unless you are a super fan and you catch easter eggs or obscure references, there's not much to talk about. And with remakes, it just feels awkward, like you are watching something knowing how is it supposed to be and is just disappointing.
I totally agree! I feel like "Barbenheimer" and Endgame were the closests we've had in recent years to the blockbusters of the days of yor FSPN talked about with Jaws and Star was. real event movies and I loved it! (I just think studios think that people can do a barbenheimer every weekend - which has proven to not be true.)
I never got Barbies when I was a kid, I never wanted one, why? I HATE the color PINK, especially Pepto-Bismol Pink, Childhood trauma is real.
The only movie I saw this year in the cinema was Barbie. Because my group of friends wanted to go together dressed in pink and all so I was like sure, why not? Would've loved to see Oppenheimer too but I live in Japan and it's not coming out here for obvious reasons lol. I wasn't too hyped for Barbie to be fair but because we had a nice night out and overall I found the movie to be quite entertaining I did enjoy my time and it did feel a bit like an event, it was nice. I feel like Hollywood just forget about the social aspect of going to the cinemas which I think that nowadays is the most important aspect, because at least for me I will spend in going to the cinema only if it's kind of a big eventful thing like Barbie or maybe End Game too or for Horror movies. Cause I wanna get the full horror experience and I want to hear everyone else screaming in the theatre too lol.
Barbie was and is a movement! A moment! I can’t explain the excitement I had in the months leading up to it, the products and marketing, getting me & my baby’s Barbie looks together for the theater, finally seeing it and then afterwards letting it all sink in. I was a little Barbie girl, my daughter is a barbie lover, and this whole experience has made my heart so happy. I’ve been wanting to go back and see it alone before it leaves theaters since I had my daughter with me the first time. Truly a magical experience
The "movies are just too damn expensive" explanation is just really relevant.
It’s ridiculous to have so many movies that need to make 700M-1B just to break even.
it's simply unsustainable
I've always known cinema-going experience is expensive. Decided to calculate how much it is here in Australia. So you've got say two adults going to the cinemas, that's $52.30AUD (including the $3.30 booking fee) so if you want just tickets alone converting to USD it'd be $33.87. But then you think "actually feeling kind of peckish. Let's get a large popcorn and two drinks, that's $31.10AUD which converts to $20.14. So combining the two tickets, a popcorn and a drink it'd be $83.40AUD, or $54.02USD. I could buy some clothes, or hell even a streaming service with that much.
@@mikubrot It seems to be a tendency in a lot of the entertainment industry right now to burn money like gasoline on enormous spectacle productions. Maybe because raw capital is the only thing big production and publishing companies have going for them. Yeah, they hold tons of IPs. But an Intellectual Property's star can fade, and the idea, plot elements, genre, themes, aren't encompassed in the copyright.
Warner Brother's can stop me from getting together with my friends and filming a movie about an ensemble cast of thieves breaking the casinos.
All they can do is make sure that there version is bigger, with more famous names, higher production value, and more distribution.
And they make their workers and customers eat the cost of their expensive decisions
They spend millions on production yet the effects look terrible 🤣
The marketing for Barbie was so smart and clever, like I would like to take a master class from the marketing team. The interviews are so fun, advertisements were so rememorable, and they utilized social media so well. The "this barbie" trend on social media was genius
what would have skyrocketed it further was releasing dolls from the movie alongside. the film isn't for kids, but trust me, adults like me would spend our wages on it.
edit: i should've stated i meant repros of the silk stone dolls, i.e. the first dolls made (Barbie, ken, Midge, and christie were the original friend group)
@@janaekelisi think they did, at least the margot robbie doll
Was it? That first trailer was garbage.
Naaahh, you're just easily influenced
@@janaekelisThey did.
One thing I’ve noticed. Home systems are so much better than they were 10 yrs ago.
When I was growing up you went to go see things on the big screen because the screen was bigger, and the sound was much better. Now, people have 75” 4k displays with THX certified sound setups. There’s no real need to see things day one. Wait a couple months and it’s on 4k Blu-ray or vudu.
Especially when theaters literally blast your ears because they think louder = better
Sometimes it is. But yeah, they can overdo things.
The fact that John Carpenter’s Halloween got made for $100,000 is insane when you compare it to today’s budgets, even with inflation.
And it stood the test of time! People still watch it, love it and new writers and directors still take inspiration from it and learn from it. Sure money will help you make your film look better ect but, there's plenty of movies out there made with low budgets that are sooo good, better than any big blockbusters
I think its the big budgets are prob a contributing factor to why these blockbusters are so crap. David Lynch has even said how a a small budget constraint helped him to be more creative with film making and be more thoughtful. I employ this thinking everytime I am working on an art project. Sure if you have an endless budget, you could theoretically do whatever, but limitations help you to think outside the box. Halloween is a great example of quality without the necessity of a large budget.
Not to discredit John Carpenter, he's one of the greats, but $100k back then would be way, way more today. Similar situation to Sam Raimi and the first Evil Dead film. Nonetheless, extremely impressive stuff and I tend to agree that, for most talented directors, only exceptions are probably Nolan, Fincher, etc., a smaller budget can lead to better results.
Done by people who knew how to make movies, and studios who knew how to run business... instead of 10 white collar guys ( who got the job by nepotism ) e-mailing each other scripts and asking for changes , playing with the editing...
Buuuut it was low budget then…..and even more amazing films get made on this kinda budget, not sure what you’re blathering about.
The tough thing about Dungeons & Dragons is that this is the one on this list that actually has a pretty reasonable budget: $150 million with pandemic protocols for a fantasy adventure film where you have to make a bunch of costumes, props, sets, and add in CGI dragons (they're in the title!) is not some crazy inflated number. Adjusted for inflation, that's what The Fellowship of the Ring cost to make-- and that was with tax incentives from filming in New Zealand, a cast without any big names, and the savings that come from filming multiple movies at the same time! The release date is what killed D&D. If they'd put it out, say, now, it would probably have turned a tidy profit.
Especially when you consider that Honor Among Thieves would have been able to ride the wave of Baldur’s Gate 3’s runaway success & widespread acclaim to increase interest in the film.
@@NN010 agreed, the DnD movie was such a fun adventure film! If they did that it couldve made big money!
You're right, DnD released now with BG3 would have been great. Also would have distanced it from the OGL fiasco in January (not sure how deep you are in DnD fandom, but that got A LOT of hardcore DnD nerds angry enough to boycott the movie.)
@@mathsalot8099 yeah I remember being really super hesitatant to see the movie myself, my parents talked me into seeing it with them and I'm glad that I did!
The d&d movie was super fun. I had a great time.
A big part of the problem with the MCU is partly because it feels like work now, you can't watch a random movie without having done homework by watching another random thing that by all means really shouldn't have anything to do with that particular movie, and it's exhausting, especially with the price of movie tickets and now streaming services to keep up with it all
Omg thanks I wil always be a Marvel fan but at some point I just gave up... like I couldn't go into every movie and didn't have streaming for some time and now that I have Disney+ I'm overwhelmed and have to make a gameplan bc I have no idea what's going on. I watched a few new series like Ms Marvel and She hulk and didn't hate them but I don't know where to go from there. I also like GOTG but I seriously consider not watching the rest of the Avengers bc it's a huge investment to watch every movie and sequel and what not. There are recaps of course on TH-cam but it's just a lot and I'm not THAT into it🙈
That's exactly my issue. I only got into the MCU right after Endgame and even then it was a lot to watch but I was able to get back up to speed but now it's basically impossible. It feels daunting even if you've been kinda keeping up, they just keep churning stuff out
Every time that I hear about the current state of the MCU, I a) chuckle because I hate current Disney for various reasons and b) unfortunately feel vindicated that I more or less stopped after _Endgame_ since pretty much only like...two MCU movies since then have seemed worth a damn. Probably more TV shows have been at least worth watching, but even ignoring reason a), I barely watch TV and that still can feel like homework depending on certain things. I can understand why they did it, especially given COVID, but introducing Kang in a TV show first feels like a massive misstep (even before the allegations that turned up with his actor--whoops).
Honestly? The saddest thing about theu current MCU to me is that despite it becoming a bit of trainwreck, it's still not nearly as much of a flaming disaster as the DCEU has unfortunately been for the past 10+ years, so it doesn't have as much pressure on it to improve as it otherwise might. As much as the MCU is floundering and screwing up its own plans as of late, the DCEU somehow *still* doesn't seem to have a plan over decade later which is just baffling. (To end this without seemingly I'm just using it to bash DCEU, at this point I think I'd only watch an MCU movie again if it was _Guardians of the Galaxy 3_ or, largely for a friend, _Shang-Chi_ since just can't care, especially when we've been given no real reason to care about any newer characters for the most part anyway--misusing multiverses only makes that more the case.)
End game should've been just that anything past that is pure greed expecting us to swallow B grade characters with mostly B grade actors is laughable
I still go and watch them because its a thing me and 17yr old have done since he was little. But i actually liked quantimania more than most of the others. Wish the ending was different, tho.
Because of this video I have learned who David F. Sandberg is and now I am sad that Shazam 2 did badly because I hate it when bad things happen to people who seem genuinely nice and good. Also, I am like him and I cannot imagine the stress of making a huge movie and then dealing with it doing badly, my god I would probably just curl up under the bed and never come out bc of the stress and emotions of it. I hope that dude is able to move on and keep making the things he loves to make.
Thankfully people don’t care about the directors unless they make something amazing or outrageous, so there’s really no need to be shy in public if it’s a mediocre movie
Hearing "this movie made tons of money but it's a failure because the budget was so high" over and over again reminded me strongly of the video game industry in the 2010s. We kept hearing about games selling huge numbers of copies, but they were also selling "below expectations" because it wasn't enough.
Some studios have learned to budget appropriately for games that will likely have a niche market. Some *cough* Square Enix *cough* have sold off the IPs they couldn't figure out and are doubling down on making blockbusters with the IPs they understand. I guess we'll see what happens with movies.
The thing with DIsney in particular is that they always bet big, even when it wouldn't benefit them.
When you look at the production and marketing budget for THE LONE RANGER back in 2013, it would've had to have made $800 million worldwide just to break even.
For a Western! THAT'S INSANE.
correction: square enix is _relying solely on yoshi p and his projects to keep them afloat._
seriously, if not for ffxiv, and yoshi's desire to keep the rest of the company off of his baby, square would be in WAY worse trouble. they haven't released a good and/or well recieved game aside from final fantasy(which are all handled by yoshi now) in years.
@@malum9478 I thought Yoshi P did 14 and only one of the last three (15, 7R, 16)? I do agree that their solid games are mainly FF.
This is a problem brought by the Avengers, Jurassic World or Avatar not being treated as an anomaly, but a new status quo. People were expecting all sorts of movies to reach a billion bucks, and thus they were surprised when it didn't because a movie breaking 1b it's actually something very rare.
and they-and correct me if I'm wrong -pay their workers like shit
The past few years have given me real franchise fatigue. I have been to see two movies in the cinema this year: Puss in Boots 2, all the way back in January, and Barbie. I'm not a Marvel fan, or a DC fan, I'm too young to have watched the original Indiana Jones movies at the peak of their popularity, I watched one Disney remake (Beauty and the Beast) and decided not to watch the others, etc. I think at least PART of the reason Barbie is such a hit (other than the fact that it's just an awesome movie) is that you can just watch it. You don't need to do a bunch of homework first. I'm tired of every film having a backstory-story that I need to familiarise myself with before I even hit play.
this!!! because so many films are connected to properties it feels like you HAVE to see the previous ones, where even as an avid barbie fan who understood more of its references i still enjoyed it as its own narrative
Puss in Boots 2 succeeded as did it cause you didnt need to remember or even watch the original, let alone all the other shrek movies to hop in on the storyline
@@cacarlin70, Agreed, I hadn't seen Shrek 4 when I watched it, and I still haven't seen Puss in Boots 1. It stood alone excellently well.
@@iwakeupandboomimarat It's sooooo tiring, and it's also more risky than studios realise, I think. Like I was interested in Marvel phase 4, until I watched 1 TV show (Loki) and 1 movie (so forgettable I literally can't tell you WHICH ONE) and thought 'nah, I'm good'. For movies like Barbie, or even Puss 2, which worked well as a stand alone, references to source material or wider franchises should be easter eggs, not integral to understanding the story's plot. If you're asking for the level of mental commitment demanded by, say, Marvel, you NEED a good enough product to back it up.
i was born in 2001 and i grew up watching indy movies bc my mom was a huge fan but even i knew the new one was gonna be trash - but pls watch the originals theyre amazing
I believed you missed one important fact with regards to why budgets are exploding: reshoots! It is incredibly sad to see that studios don’t trust the writers/directors/producers anymore to write a cohesive story and let them fulfill their vision without reshooting 75% of the movie. Those reshoots are what is blowing up the budgets not the special effects or writers costs and it is only going to get mediocre with the introduction of AI and stale writing that has no original idea.
Reshoots has ALWAYS been a part of movie making, at least since the blockbuster era started.. As soon as you went above an independent movie level budget Reshoots will usualy happen after the studio sees the first cut.. The reason it's gotten a bad rap the ladt decade is because news articles only tend to mention Reshoots when a movie test badly even though they happen regardless of how the movie is testing... Thst said.. Studios trying to save a movie with Reshoots is definetly a more recent problem.
Reshoots aren't a new thing, but this thing where reshoots DOUBLE or TRIPLE the budget of the film are very new, and a sign of two issues that are common in the industry today. Reactionary Filmmaking and Lack of Clear Vision.
Lack of Clear Vision is studios having a license, having a date on a calendar, knowing who they want on the film, but not knowing what the film should actually be, sometimes the movie STARTS SHOOTING when questions that should have been answered in pre-production are still up in the air. Or, the film gets completed and someone high enough up in the studio to approve the budget changes their mind about what the film should be and starts demanding changes. Maybe after test audiences, maybe after something else going on in the industry, and that brings me to...
Reactionary Filmmaking is the trend chasing that has gotten so bad at Warner Brothers as of late, but other studios aren't immune. The Star Wars sequel franchise, regardless of which films you thought were good or bad, suffered from films not necessarily building on what came before, but reacting to the reaction to those films. Part of that is that there was no trilogy outline or bible to run off of, but I cannot help but look at Rise of the Skywalker as anything BUT a film responding to the Last Jedi backlash. It spends more time settling grievances and retconning things from the prior movie than it does setting up its own inciting incident. Flash's budget went OUT OF CONTROL because it was Greenlit before Justice League was even in theaters, then, when Justice League wasn't the guaranteed money maker the studio hoped for, the DCEU shifted to this damage control mindset. By the time Flash was even REALLY filming, it was being set up as this way to 'fix' the DCEU, and then al lthe stuff with Ezra, and just so much behind the scene shit was happening and what the movie was even meant to BE was this constantly moving target. I wouldn't be shocked to find out that enough footage exists for The Flash that you could stitch together 3 or more VERY different movies, all because it was this crazy moving target where every tiny fluctuation in the environment lead to huge changes to the movie. Wonder Woman 84 REEKS of having been at LEAST two very different films stitched together. Part of this is CoVID shutdown, and too many movies having these ridiculously long production timelines as a result, giving executives way too much time to think and change their mind about stuff.
Ultimately, it all boils down to a lack of confidence in any of these creatives to CREATE. It's not about creating a work of narrative art, but in creating a product to fill a studio schedule, with brand synergies and the like.
Reshoots aren't blowing the budgets. The number one reason for so many movie flops is social justice messaging. Audiences don't want to be preached at or told they are wrong for embracing their own personal beliefs. Disney has become so anti-family, they deserve to fail.
Reshoots? C'mon. Most movies have them.
@@aradraugfea6755they’re basically filming a new movie at this point.
They don’t have a script they actually like before they start filming, so they film a bad script, decide it is bad and then film a new movie.
Film The Producers. Make a rotten failure and clean up from investors. I'd like to see receipts for these production costs. Chief Financial Officer of Disney quit. Hopeful deniability?
Its worth noting Mission 7 got a tidy $71 million covid insurance payout, which given the theatres take half of the box office, shaves off $142 million from the films break even point.
i think its really significant that nearly every major franchise had a big blockbuster this year, and many didn't do well, meanwhile, barbie and oppenheimer (two pretty original film concepts) did very well. it just shows how general audiences are getting tired of transformers, fast and furious, marvel, mission impossible, etc. and would rather go see something fresh and new. Of course you have franchise outliers like across the spider-verse (that was great, as expected) but overall the market is over-saturated with film franchises that everyone is frankly tired of.
i mean, mission impossible failed partially bevause of Oppenheimer: it was in Imax cinemas for like four days before Nolan got every single one of them. Before the first week it already lost a very profitable chunk of the theatres
I certainly agree, but I feel like they'll probably take the wrong message from this: "Hey guys we need more toy biopics!!!"
I literally couldn't see Mission Impossible the week Barbie and Oppenheimer opened at my local cinema cause they both took all the screens so the movie couldn't be shown 💀
@@DamnableReverendthere is a big trend for advert films right now. The Nike one, the tetris one, cheetos etc
@DamnableReverend Mattel and Hasbro have already taken that message and are greenlighting a slew of toy-based films, from GI Joe being shoehorned into the recent Transformers, to things like Nerf and Micro Machines.
I work as a manager at a movie theater. Flash bombed so bad we were shocked. I think it's safe to say that superhero movies are on a decline. I think Spiderverse and Guardians 3 were the only superhero movies that didn't flop horribly this year.
Nah, that's just a DC pattern tbh, we don't expect much from them tbh- considering ezra's crimes too. The flash could've did good if it was treated better, it had YEARS to be better but we knew what to expect. This movie was announced on the second episode of the flash tv...when how I met your mother was still on, and to add the frosting on the cake....we had (some and at the time) promising directors that kept exiting left on the movie. Hope had been lost tbh lol
@@KirasfoxYou’re right
“We were shocked a movie with a publicly canceled actor did poorly. Super hero movies are definitely on the decline heres 2 examples of the opposite of that.”
Well, there was the whole protest since the lead is acting like an ass, and he's honestly just not a good Flash. That awful movie (by itself) failing isn't enough to draw a conclusion about the entire genre.
Of course the flash bombed ezra Miller was starring in the film he's horrible as the flash
The reason M:I 7 underperformed is heavily linked to the date of premiere. Cruise has not moved around the slot and went to cinemas a WEEK before Oppenheimer and Barbie. That bad drop in week 2 strongly correlates with Barbenheimer. Also, M:I 7 lost its IMAX screens to Oppenheimer as well. The date of premiere axed this movie. Should have been in autumn or emptier spot.
Yep, Paramount and Tom Cruise vastly underestimated Barbenheimer. Doesn't help matters with how Covid inflated their budget.
@@henrywayne5724 Cruise thought nobody was going to watch Oppenheimer cuz it's a 3hr R rated dialogue based movie so he wanted IMAX to give more screen time to M:I
honestly the whole time around barbenheimer was so full??? when i was trying to book tickets for barbie i saw so many big movies being played at my local cinema (with like 20 normal screens and 2-3 imax ones) at the same time
My friends skipped MI 7 because they only had time for one movie in their schedule, and we all wanted to see Oppenheimer together. Loved MI 7 but that was a quiet movie hall
Didn’t The Sound of Freedom beat Mission Impossible 7 at the box office?
Godzilla Minus One made on a budget of $15 Million (or less says the director) shattered the box office and put Hollywood to shame. Now that people have seen Minus One, many are asking where is the money going when they pump out these 200 million overbudget, cheap FX movies. This film has truly opened peoples eyes and for good reason.
Er, no. Minus One stars a film Icon who always made money. It's not an example of anything.
I can’t say Ant Man 3 was the first MCU movie with no reason to exist when Ant Man 2 also exists. An entire movie made for a minute and a half Endgame teaser.
You forgot Captain Marvel, a movie that was only made so Disney could keep the trademark on the name of the main character.
Avengers 2
@derrick73I wouldn't say it failed
Also Puss in Boots 2 did good at the box office, mostly because it was just a really great movie: a kids movie that never talked down to its audience with a smart script, interesting themes and stellar animation. Just another movie to add to your top 6 that didn't flop, but yeah your overall point 110% still stands
EDIT: I just remembered it came out in late December of 2022! However I think it does still (maybe?) count as a box office hit for 2023 since that's when most people went to see it
It does because I don’t think it left theaters until like February. Maybe even March?
It didn't premier in UK until February so yeah, it can easily be counted as 2023 movie.
My daughter & I went to see it on NYE and it was great
It made less than $500 million worldwide.
Most Illumination movies made more than that.
Across the Spiderverse made more than that, and it was the second lowest-grossing Spiderman movie ever, only behind Into the Spiderverse.
Not to mention most 2010s Pixar films.
@@z0neofdanger498in roblox of course
“Barbenheimer” proved audiences can and will see two tent pole movies at the same time. Is this normal? No, but it proves that if you put put movies that people want to see, and have good marketing - the audience will be there.
The problem with movies nowadays are too many to list - but the biggest factors are they’re too expensive - and studios are too reliant on franchises, while forgetting how to keep them relevant.
Barbenheimer is the exception that proves the rule. Two long-standing brands (Barbie and Nolan) without much audience overlap.
The biggest problem with movies is studios think you don’t need a good story, only a popular property. Or they think you only need a property that was popular 20, 30, 40 years ago. Without doing anything interesting or new with them. Or, hell, properties that were never popular, but it’s fine because it’s a superhero, right?
I think a majority of these “failures” is that they are churning out massive amounts of the same IP (too much for one person to follow even as a diehard fan) while having these MASSIVELY inflated budgets. These budgets are regularly in the hundreds of millions with marketing that is even bigger. This means that unless you are a left field hit out of nowhere… you can’t break even. You have to be the top movie of the year to be a commercial success.
These budgets are absolutely out of control and they aren’t even spending the money on quality. They are shotgunning movies/TV out all with hyper inflated budgets.
Like DND should be on here because it wasn’t a corporate success… but fuck I loved that movie, it was so fun. The reason it’s a failure? The budget was way too high for what it was.
This means unless you have a proven IP/backing in some way you aren’t getting funding because each entry is so goddamn expensive. So we aren’t going to see movies take a leap and make something new and exciting. Which means people go out to see less movies… less break even… less “unproven” get made and rinse/repeat.
I don't know anyone that's seen both
2 completely different target demographics.
This is so depressing. My husband and I LOVED going to the movies, we’d go at least once a month before having a kid and since movies are getting more expensive, and babysitters are expensive it’s just prohibitively expensive to go see a movie NOW. As much as I’d love to go to the theaters it’s actually just easier to stream something. That is IF something is actually available and hasn’t been removed from a service in the three days since we ask each other “what should we watch this weekend?” And movie night, which has happened 3 times THIS MONTH
The fact that Ezra Miller didn't face any consequences is absolutely CRAZY (in a bad way)
YEAH!! He would’ve gotten fucking prison time for that shit! And they would’ve rewritten EVERYTHING in that film because of it. But I guess someone at the top said they HAD to have him. Utterly stupid on their part. A lesson on what not to do. I swear when Hollywood finally collapses from capitalism dying, we’re gonna be celebrating.
@@shcdemolisherHollywood's unlikely to collapse, as it didn't when similar viewer fatigue happened in the past. More likely, the cycle will repeat: they'll learn their lesson for a decade or two before they go back to being greedy again.
yeah, it's gross
I mean they have to release the movie, it was already shot before he got exposed. It was ready. What are they going to do not release it? No they delayed it for as long as they could and then went for it. He did suffer consequences because hes no longer casted or working on anything. Like what more do you want. His career is over.
@@nevaminddd He belongs to jail. He's guilty of assault, gr**ming minors and robbery.
as a movie theatre employee i feel horrible for the prices i have to charge and i regularly see people spending over 150 just for a family outing and often times are upset before they can even see the movie
I know right. I work in a grocery store, and I feel bad how much people have to pay just to eat
@zachrogers7243 why my husband and I will not have kids. Too bad, I wanted a child. But way too expensive.
When i Was a younger, we used to go to the movies on a whim if we were bored since it was a cheap way to pass the time. I feel sorry for people who actually want to watch movies on a big screen but have to budget for it like it's some major expense.
@@Sakash52 its especially sad since even a half full room is rare so it seems like if the theatrs were to lower prices they could have more guests to compensate for it.
I bought a frozen coke recently, which is mostly all water with a tiny bit of syrup for $9.00. I promised myself I'd never buy another fucking thing from Regal Cinemas. I'm all for charging profitable prices, but that's a "fuck you" to your customers and I'm not going to play ball anymore.
The biggest problem I have with most "blockbusters" is GIVE ME SOMETHING NEW!!!
All these franchises make me sick because it almost always is the same thing over and over again. The DnD movie was great, I watched it twice on the same weekend because it was something fresh and fun. It felt like the filmmakers took their own home game and made it into a movie.
Everything everywhere all at once was superb
Don't care so much about new. Just give me something good. If they are spending all this money why can't they get a good story that holds my interest for 90 minutes rather than something where you are left scratching your head as characters make decisions that run contrary to what they did just a few minutes earlier.
Yes! I just can’t watch another remake or reboot of a previously successful movie or franchise. In the best case it’s forgetful in comparison to the original. In the worst case it ruins the nostalgia. I just want some ORIGINAL, NEW IDEAS! Just tell some stories, please
Completely agree dude.
To an extent, I agree. As much as I hate most sequels, Top Gun: Maverick gave us something new. I want more movies like that or 'Knives Out' or 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'.
It feels like studios are ONLY releasing blockbusters into theaters & the only ones making smaller budget movies go straight to streaming and have no marketing.
As Matt Damon said once in an interview: the most money you are making from the movies is at the cinema. A few decades ago they made more money on dvds. This is why studios do not risk with calm, deep movies anymore like dead poet society, they want shiny cgi effects and battles to catch people's attention. Its not about the message of the movie anymore, it is about the money and how to make it more appealing to the eye so people go to the cinema to watch it on the big screen. That is so sad 😢
It's sad we don't get slow burner dramas and comedies anymore but I suppose you're more likely to find those genres in TV shows on streaming. There's more pressure now for movies to be a spectacle to make it feel big enough to be worthy of the big screen viewing experience, I guess.
The problem with that argument is they dont make good action movies anymore either. Like that series of action movies Matt Damon himself starred in. They dont make good thrillers anymore either. Something like Enemy of the state. I guarantee if you make a good original thriller with a big name attached like Will Smith was 20 years ago, people would pay to see it. Hell, I'd go see it and I havent been inside a cinema in 15 years.
I think the studios with all their arrogance will instead blame the 'dying' cinema industry as the reason why their movies flopped and will aggressively push for more streaming releases in the coming years.
Streaming isn’t making a lot of money. Why would they do this?
Considering the fact that Disney+ has yet to generate even a cent of profit, I have my doubts. People are willing to subscribe to one maybe two streaming service, when every studio has it's own streaming, then they are just cannibalizing each other.
@@artur6912Is Disney making profits anywhere? They are *billions* in debt for all those acquisitions they made buying up Fox etc and they are nowhere near close to paying it off. They're losing money by pissing people off in pretty much every way imaginable; nobody wants to give Disney money for anything anymore. Their stocks have been continually dropping for some time now. Even their actors are pissing people off like it's part of their PR training "Alright, now go out there and be as insufferable as possible! Don't forget to highlight how much we've changed the things people love because modernization! You got this! Now go out there and kick the hornets nest!"
Nah, studios are now realizing that streaming also isn't the moneymaker they thought it was. Look at them removing hella content from their services to cut costs so they can FEIGN a semblance of profitability or growth to their shareholders. Apple is giving its original movies theatrical runs because they realize that's how you ACTUALLY make money. Cinema isn't going anywhere. The studios just need to get their budgets under control.
If you can’t make a 300m budget movie work at the box office, you won’t make that work on streaming
I appreciate the fact you actually gave real criticism. And not blame “Woke Hollywood”
Capitalism eventually destroys art. And we shouldn’t be surprised.
Why is that a thing? How did that happen? Why are so many people willing to believe in something that isn't a thing?
@@katherinealvarez9216because people are desperate hurting for money, and recognize it’s an issue. However, it’s easier to give in to propaganda that blames minorities for all the issues we face rather than take a second to look the wealthy producing all the propaganda and hoarding all the money. That would require self reflection and critical thinking.
@@katherinealvarez9216possibly echo chambers on the internet shouting false narratives for clicks. It’s getting worse by the year.
Thank god I've gotten out of that hivemind from those awful youtubers.
well they are woke you cannot deny that
Please allow me to clarify 'blockbuster':
Yes, blockbusters are summer movies, when many people have more free time and vacations are spent, however the determining factor was performance.
If the movie tanked, despite WHEN it was released, needless to say, it didn't bust blocks.
Today, the term is used by filmmakers, in ADVANCE, to hype the movie, ultimately making it a projection about the projection.
Sales tactics.
They say the CGI was odd looking because of the speed force, but there’s a scene where the two Barry’s stand next to each other, not moving much, no physical interaction, torso and up, one of the oldest effects in cinema history and there was still janky CGI face briefly.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one that noticed that!! I described it like the quality of a video game character face
the fucking babies in the beginning almost had me stop watching the movie. that scene broke me.
I really enjoyed the film despite the horrible CGI, kinda wish I'd gone to see it in the theater
such a tone deaf jumping the shark scene
@@Izomak12 that scene did actually make my mother leave the film when she tried to watch it along because “it was just to strange”
I want mid budget movies to make a return that way when Blockbusters come out they feel special rather than only feeling like a cash grab.
Can someone send this comment to Hollywood executives? I think it could help with their obvious money problems.
I wholeheartedly agree. I want good stories again. Blockbusters are great from time to time, but they’re not always stellar when it comes to story and content.
Irony..........don't think you realize that. All blockbusters are cash grab.
It has nothing to do with budget but intent. Don't let the video OP misguide you. This apply to all things.
Is it expensive to expanse the military complex - Yes. Is it worth it? No.
Is it expensive to apply universal healthcare - Yes. It is it worth it? Yes.
Budgets need to match quality. What wasn't talk about in the video is money spent without quality met. A blockbuster is called a blockbuster because it is a expensive movie with matching quality that is worthy of something you can spent on.
Today's expensive movie are things that you would consider a waste of money.
Low budget would be more accurate. When high budget is over three hundred million dollars, mid is still inflated. VFX artists deserve a good paycheck, but they also shouldn't be over used.
Honestly it's not even that they need to tighten the purse strings, they need to reel in their directors, stop letting them waste the resources.
@@dutchmilk the real problem is letting the directors waste that big budget. If you give the military a hyper inflated budget, they'll spend it on toys and hoarding toilet paper. If you give it to healthcare, you will prevent disabilities and manage those with disabilities - so thens of thousands of people, who would otherwise be on welfare, can participate in the workforce, making back the money spent on it AND dramatically boosting the economy.
True story, the military buys up and hoards, often just throw away, mundane items to justify larger checks. Needing money for hygiene products is a more excusable request than designing planes that will never get off the ground. In the Air Force, one of my dad's superiors managed to get himself caught with a huge room full of random crap, mostly toilet paper- when he casually admitted he was doing it to get the base more funding. You gotta be a genius to get dishonorably discharged for what the whole military is doing.
I'm neither American nor older than 35 and I really like Indiana Jones. My problem with the new films is not that you can’t really modernize the concept, it's that they're trying to modernize it and fail.
I dont wanna see Indy jump out of a plane with the camera closely zipping around trying to convince me that it's really Ford doing it. If you want my nostalgia, gimme a wide shot with an inflating boat falling out of a plane. Make it look like you did the effect for real, don't try to convince me it's actually real. If you want to make a movie for someone who likes old-school films, make it look old-school. Give it a look thats consistent with the series.
I think they should stop trying to modernize it by bringing it into the future. Indiana Jones is supposed to be an explorer, an adventurer. Changing the setting to anything later than the 1940s doesnt work. Spielberg and Lucas understood that, which is why the 2nd movie was set before the first one.
Of course Ford is too old for that now, so just get a new actor, or make a new movie that is basically Indiana Jones but give him a different name. Who cares? I want to see adventure.
@@TheSuperappelflap I heard someone say that if they replaced Ford sooner, it would have been as relevant as James Bond but because they didn't it became pretty ingrained in people's heads to the point where they're against it.
Well said
@@damonlam9145 they dont have to get another actor to play indiana jones, for all i care they get chris pratt and call him dora the explorer, i just want to watch cool movies about an adventurer exploring pyramids in the south american jungle and digging up magic egyptian artifacts. the last time anyone did something like that was the mummy movie with brendan fraser and people remember that very fondly.
The thing is we're talking about Indiana Jones continuing to be old-school but all the movies used all of the state of the art technology available at the time the movies were being made. They just shouldn't have such huge time gaps between them (19 years between Indy 3 and 4 and 15 between 4 and 5).
I think one problem with "dead reckoning part 1" was, "why watch a film, for a lot of money, with no real end, because the title says clearly there will be a part 2."
I think it’s important to recognize that our interests have changed over time, but they are still making franchises from 25 years ago. I saw someone say that the industry needs to recognize that Barbie didn’t do well because it was a franchise character, but because it was a well made movie created by women for women. That’s what we cared about.
Tbh, some of us fans want some of those franchises to come back 🤷🏽♀️.
You’re 💯 right !
I don't think it's "for women" but whatever...
@@adrroqsoliqlet’s not be stupid now
HAS interest changed?
It’s crazy to think that India was able to land a satellite on the moon on the same budget that it took to film Oppenheimer
Now that's something!
thats sad
how is it sad ?? @@dpducks2723
Yes, that is crazy to think.
So what?
How much return on investment did isro give comparable to openhiemer😊
I’m sad that Dungeons and Dragons didn’t do well. I thought it was a surprisingly cute movie with heart, which is unusual for a lot of big budget movies. Honestly, I think a lower budget sequel could be a huge success.
I saw Dnd an I thought it was pretty fun. I wouldn't mind a sequel.
I loved the movie. It was fun to watch and I feel like they really captured the feel of a dnd party
It was sweet! Ngl I really wish they'd started with a smaller scale adventure with a smaller budget that allowed sequels to grow progressively bigger and allow us to get more invested in the characters over time but I still really liked it
Ezra's sweet
With the success of the BG3 video game though this month, it should be pretty obvious to them that the DnD IP can be really profitable. I imagine there'd be a massive uptick in its streaming numbers at least for the near future, so its not over for them yet.
I miss the Hollywood rom coms & romantic drama/tragedies. The ones that we do get are streaming exclusives (I’m looking at you “The Kissing Booth”, “He’s all that”, etc.) & they’re not any good.
Looks like the A-listers have given up on this genre.
Anyone But You did really well (I thought it was meh, but...), so there's definitely a demand for them!
With the hookup culture and the war on relationships, maybe studios think it is not worth to invest in rom coms anymore.
I appreciate the explaining of what "blockbusters" and what it truly means, the executives need to relearn it for their sake.
I think also timing for release dates is important because I thought it was very strange for Disney to release the Haunted Mansion remake in the middle of the summer. I know that if they released on Halloween weekend it would have to compete with some horror movies but most families with young kids won’t want to watch those. It would have been a good “spooky” alternative for families with kids.
How did this rando on the internet had a better strategy than the Disney execs 🤯
That does make a lot of sense, I was wondering why they released it in the summer
The most likely reason being it can be the streaming service in october as thay released ot in the summer
Parents don’t like Disney anymore as they are grooming children now
The fact that they spend such insane amounts of money and still don't spend it on properly paying the people MAKING THE MOVIE POSSIBLE is so gross.
Someone doesn't understand how budgets work. They got the jobs BECAUSE they're willing to make less than others. Grow up.
@@zogwort1522Ok, boomer.
Part of the reason they're so expensive is because soooo many people work on them. Paying an army gets expensive fast regardless of how much you pay them. Ask... well, the army.
It's not just the budget bloating.
@SoulDevoured individuals also like to shoot off ammo into the sky. The military budget is hardcore bloated bro, just look at how high it is by comparison to every other national service...
@@ARealFoxxoBean yeah of course. That's why I said it wasn't JUST budget bloating.
I work for a state agency. Despite not paying employees shit and relying heavily on volunteers wages is still the highest expense in the whole agency. By alot.
And that's with them TRYING to waste money on dumb shit. Like $1000+ on a single uniform.
Whoever put that much money into The Little Mermaid (not counting money for effects) and thought it was a big hit, they clearly never heard of the word “doubt.”
They also should learn the phrase “If it’s not broke, don’t fix it.” because they seem to not learn that phrase when it comes to people (including myself) getting real friggin’ tired of these unnecessary remakes.
AMEN. The 1989 movie was classic why touch it
As much as people can poke fun at Disney and other corporations for box office failures, I genuinely hope that the disaster that is 2023 manages to make executives realize, once and for all, that they can't rely on franchise films anymore, and need to come up with new ideas. At least, that's what I hope.
or remakes
@@flacsmadaHollywood doesn't make remakes anymore.
They double down
It's nice to hope, but Disney just doubles down every time and blames the fans.
Well tbf, Pixar is trying to do different things but theyre struggling rn.
I love how these budgets have gotten so massive and unsustainable that we can say “ONLY three hundred MILLION dollars” like wow. Hot damn. Dear lord.
I used to think "Blockbuster" meant it was a really good movie that also did insanely well
'Really good' is subjective though.
@@Rishi123456789Well, In my mind it was the greatest ever movie to be released.
That's what blockbuster is supposed to mean. the term has just been bastardized to mean "big, overbudget movie they hope will do well" now.
No, that's the meaning. It's a block buster, it busted out, made far more money than projected.
Come to think of it, when was the last blockbuster? Like he said in the video, they're lucky to break even lately.
@@giin97 That is a good point. Which Movies nowadays are blockbusters, if they are all flops.
Phew, its' a good thing The Marvels was universally beloved and broke box office records, single handedly making up for all the losses Disney had made that year. And who'd have thought it would be the first Marvel movie to sweep the Oscars.
I think a big part of the problem for the MCU is that Disney is making too many TV series and that's diluting the movies and making them less attractive to go and see.
Also the writing has been the same bland preachy nonsense since endgame with the exception of spider man
It's both bad TV series and bad movies.
Yeah.
It just came to the point where I had to watch Honest Trailers and Pitch Meetings to keep up
@@artingevondyan1613 I don't think Spiderman was an exception though... It just happened to work cause Spiderman is one of the favorites I think, and you had 3 of them in one movie. Nostalgia works.
@@artingevondyan1613Spiderman was also mostly made by sony and not Disney
Love that you called out how good "Turning Red" was. I had never heard of it, had no idea what it was, but my wife put it on one night on Disney+ and I was shocked how great a film it ended up being! It's kind of a shame what's happened to Pixar the last few years because there is clearly still some great talent and ideas bubbling over there.
Watch Elemental and Onward, they´re really good as well. Pixar makes good movies, but nobody watches them anymore. I think it´s a marketing thing. I haven´t seen Lucas but everyone who has tells me it´s good as well. Edit: Soul is pretty good as well.
@@lopezcarmencecilia as someone that has watched Luca, please go watch it, it's a really fun time! and i bet the newer pixar movies are mediocre at best; i haven't seen them but i bet they're pretty good too!
it had a poor reception for a moment bc people were mad that the mom mentioned periods, albeit a euphemism. she didnt even say the word
It’s not that people didn’t like Elemental, most people who saw it loved it, which is why it made a comeback at the box office. The problem is streaming hurt the movie. The Pixar President even admitted that Disney+ has trained Pixar audiences to wait until their movie’s premiere on Disney+ at no extra cost. Well that means a lot of people aren’t going to watch your movie during the theatrical run.
@@lopezcarmenceciliaLuca made me cry 😭 it was such a breathe of fresh air from Disney.
Years like this make me even more appreciative of movies like Talk To Me, which had a budget under $5 million and has already made back 10x that sum. People like original movies with good characters
Last year proved the same with EEAAO
It’s almost like people want a good story and interesting characters. Hollywood doesn’t understand that concept anymore.
@@xtuffcookiex Greed
True, horror genre has been flourishing for at least a decade... Strangely most of my fave movies over the past few years have been horrors.
Personally, here's a major reason why I didn't go to the movies much this year, I didn't know what was out because I don't get movie ads for some reason. I would have seen Ruby Gillman if I knew it was out, same for puss in boots, and shazam, and guardians 3, and maybe some others. I watch youtube and hulu, all I ever get are temu and tiktok ads. The only reason I even knew about Oppenheimer was because of the memes, I didn't see a single "it's the number one movie in America" ad, or even a single trailer for it. Sure, there are many I wouldn't have watched regardless because they didn't appeal to me, but it's really hard to convince me to go to the movies when I don't even know what's playing.
My brain just can’t comprehend how so much money is spent on a movie. Sure, the cast, the production team, the set, the effects, but 250 million for one movie? And how do you spend 100 million on marketing?? Just think of how much good we could do in the world with this money instead of spending it on films no one asked for. And I’m aware that I don’t know the first thing about the industry, but it still baffles me 😅
My thoughts exactly!!!
There were COVID costs for a lot of movies
@@Xeno7373but what does that MEAN?! I hear that a lot and it’s not a criticism of you relaying that thought, but how could covid cost that much? Production delays, sick pay, supplies (masks, Covid tests, etc) can only cost so much and I feel that most of these movies would’ve been mostly unaffected by Covid at this point since the industry disregarded the pandemic years ago. I work in healthcare alongside Covid and just cannot fathom how that can inflate the budget by so many MILLIONS
There needs to be less focus on visual spectacle and special effects because eventually audience just become numb to it. Instead more comedies, romances, dramas, and thrillers. Movies do not need to be this expensive to be good.
@@leahkreizenbeck7247 COVID protocols ended in 12 may 2023
For Haunted Mansion in particular, I didnt even know they were making it until I was in theaters seeing Barbie. And then when they said "coming out July 27th" I was like "dude... Thats in 4 days."
So Idk if I'm just under the largest rock ever or if it feels like that one was set up to fail like Treasure Planet all those years ago
The same thing happened to me and I go to the movies fairly frequently. It was a wtf moment. Saw it and enjoyed it, but I couldn't help but think 'why did they release this in August' as I was walking in. Would've been perfect for spooky season since Halloween is becoming a huge commercial industry these days
@anaerobic Hell, I thought some inexperienced projectionist somehow managed to accidentally slap a 20-year-old preview reel into the queue. ("Damn, I could swear I remember Eddie Murphy having a more prominent role in this...")
@@anaerobic That's exactly what I thought! Haunted Mansion and the latest Insidious movie could've been released in October or even September and it would've been perfect timing for both! It was such a bad decision on both Disney's and Blumhouse's part.
It is the change in marketing attitudes since the pandemic started. I personally stopped watching any talk shows and instead listen to podcasts, watch TH-cam Enthusiasts and read the Telegraph. That is it. Many more are on tiktok all day. No TV. Do not ask me what were adds before or in this video, I have no idea.
I don't understand why it's not coming out around Halloween?
The overinflated budgets have GOT to be more than tax write-offs and wholesale money laundering at this point, right?
I was also thinking money laundering because what the hell
or just COVID issues. Mission Impossible 7 had that massive budget to begin with cause Paramount wanted to fire the entire crew during the COVID delays until Cruise intervened and paid for their salaries instead. all in all, COVID has changed the industry, for better or worse.
Dude, look at Disney's Secret Invasion budget, no way its not laundering
Covid issues, huge star line-up, excessive Visual effects (digital and practical), studio interference, short turnaround or development hell etc. cost a lot of money ...
Its not money laundering, but it probaly isused as tax write off. Its not money laundering beause its entirely legal.
All of these longer retrospectives and reviews and critiques are helping with my attention span being restored. I know it takes a lot to make these so I appreciate it.
With all the blockbusters flopping, I just want to mention how monumental (in my opinion/observations) the movie roster this year has been for the animation community. A good lineup of animated movies, not just from hollywood, have shaken the whole community from what I've seen. SpiderMan Across the Spiderverse, Super Mario Bros, Nimona, and Mutant Mayhem have been groundbreaking in terms of story telling and animation. Goes to show how valuable animators, artists, and writers are in the industry.
Also very notable to say is that NONE of them is a Disney movie. Literally not even one of them. And I think that is VERY positive not only because a) Disney sucks nowadays but also because b) pretty much until very recently, animation was widely associated (at least in my experience) as a synonym, with Disney and them basically being 'kids movies' (again at least in my experience), so it's great to see them get the appreciation they deserve this year (and also very notably last year with Puss in Boots 2: The Last Wish)
The issue with that is that studios assume animated projects can be churned out cheaply and that those that work on animated media deserve to be paid less because it's "not as expensive" as live action. With the strikes going on, studios are looking for quick and cheap content to sling out of the door next year to keep their executive bonuses coming in for hitting their release quotas.
We are going to see an endless wave of new mid-budget Boss Baby-alikes where studios push for dirt cheap, no-name cast franchises that require very little work to make seasons and seasons of tie-in shows once models and assets are created, all designed for children to watch over and over and over to get obsessed with so they buy the tie-in merchandise.
Hell, studios are outright telling people that they only want to produce "second-screen entertainment" at the moment, AKA they want media that is uninteresting & doesn't draw the focus of the viewer away from their phone or whatever else they're doing. They want to produce BACKGROUND NOISE that people will "watch" over and over, rather than producing more expensive engaging and gripping media that becomes a short-lived phenomenon before fading into obscurity & failing to get a release in China without pandering to the Chinese market.
In my opinion it only shows how bad the situations is in the movie industry. All this movies you mention are IMHO ok but far from great despite a lot of people saying they are.
It seems we are dried out to have something great.
@@Whiteythereaper yeah it really sucks how the movie industry takes it's animators and writers for granted. i jsut wanted to highlight these movies in particular to showcase how valuable the animators and writers in particular were for these projects. I hope that the workers get fairer pay and that the industry gets better about paying in general. i'm an artist myself and I hate seeing all the abuse.
@@TheGraemi i respect your opinion however I have to disagree. the amount of effort and love put into all of these movies is monumental and the impact they've had on several communities as well story telling in general is something that's hard to ignore. Nimona and ATSV in particular are considered masterpieces by the majority of the movie reviewing community as well as the stories being told reaching out to queer audiences. it sucks that the artists and animators apart of these movies didn't get paid what they were worth in their part for these projects. a lot of love and care went into them, and because of that I'd like to say that we aren't dried out of great stories, we just aren't acknowledging the greatness of what is already there.
That franchise fatigue is real. I'm exhausted by the prospect of these never ending 10 part film franchises that make it so that none of their stories actually matter because you know the sequel will just undo it all. and all the money being pumped into even the few stand alones also makes me reluctant to see them as well because you're just going in under this unbearable weight of it being a 'spectacle' so you have to be impressed by it. tbh all i really want is little mid budget movies back.
Agreed
Same. The only sequel I’m excited for is Beyond the Spiderverse, and the only sequel that I hope would eventually happen is a Ken movie
Woke ideologies and poor writing, has led to this.
@SuperSpartan3000 I mean if you watch the video it gives you the actual reasons why this happens but go off I guess
You actually missed one other factor related to D&D Honor Among Thieves. A significant part of the most dedicated D&D fans at the time were boycotting Hasbro. They made some universally hated decisions related to the series just before the movie came out. So, the people who they could have otherwise been absolutely sure would come see it, likely more than once, instead refused to watch it at all. It may not have been the biggest factor, but it certainly didn't help.
That's definitely a reason my group and I refused to go. Fuck WTCO
I also had issues with him not acknowledging that
Disney Plus redoing "boring" ECHO series cutting Ezra Miller parody, MMIW, what Skin Walking is and where the missing Native American women went
Didn't the real Wizards of the Coast not also go bankrupt & some narcissist genius kept a fake company running to ripoff money from us interwebz gullible victims? 🤔
I really enjoyed it, no idea about behind the scenes shenanigans.
Bro really just said
"Most fans of Indiana Jones are over the age of 35 and within this group, I'd be willing to bet the majority of them are 40 years old or older."
it’s crazy that these big movie studios have lost so much money but they’re still throwing piles of it as useless projects no one asked for
And what’s crazier is they won’t throw that money at the strike demands! Instead opting for mediocrity and ai !!!
@@littleguy8714 literally, if they don’t step up their game they are going to go bankrupt in a few years
ESG money
It seems like its a money laundering scheme with an agenda to kill anything we can believe in. Seems like
@@reservationatdorsias3215it’s crazy to me that more people don’t realize this. They obviously would make better decisions if the money would run out. The powers that be are eating the loss to continue to propagandize the masses.
Let’s hope this will usher in another era of creative quirky indie films like in the late 90s. I think we could all use it.
If the strike keeps going and A24 and Neon are the only ones making movies, this might end up happening.
@@Sharpe1502honestly? im not complaining. imo the strike can keep going until the execs pull thier heads out of their asses and A24 and Neon produce great art
Those films are already being made. They are either being overshadowed by these blockbusters or being dumped on streaming platforms without any marketing. Two things need to happen. People need to show up and support those indie films they would like to see more of and studios should market those films better.
I absolutely LOVED the D&D movie. It was so much better than I thought it'd be. I've made all my friends stream it, too. I really hope we get a sequel
ya same. saw it with some dnd friends in theatres and we all had a blast!
Me too. It was great.
This video made me want to see it… and made me REALLY want to see the original first D&D movie
This. It's no cinematic masterpiece, but goddamn, was I entertained. To be fair, I've been a D&D nerd for a long time (Neverwinter Nights got me hooked), so that might have played into my enjoyment of the movie, but I thought it was genuinely good fun outside of the references - which I would have been mad about had they not been there, it's a D&D movie, for Helm's sake!
@@Moshmaschine I think all that really matters in the end is that people enjoy a film. You can have the Citizen Kane killer but if people don't enjoy it, does it really matter? Movies are made to entertain and intrigue, that's always been their main purpose. Sure, you can angle outside of that purpose into other ways of reaching an audience (no hate to any creative who does that, incredible films aren't always made to be entertaining) but entertainment always reaches the largest audience because who doesn't want to be entertained?
The odd thing about MI: Dead Reckoning was that it dropped off my local theater after just two weeks. I barely caught it before it left. I really liked it, too. Such a shame
I strongly believe that the failures of most of these movies (and so many others) are because of two things: 1) the neverending sequels, spin-offs and reboots of every goddamn movie that shows a minimum of success, and 2) higher-ups playing it safe, in order to make sure they cash in on their investments... It makes a movie that is 'meh' - fine, but forgettable.
Most of us have seen hundreds of movies by now and we get turned off by the same old, same old. In order for a movie to be great, it needs to have some level of originality. Some uniqueness. Some boldness. And passion. As a viewer, you can really feel it if there isn't a lot passion in the movie from the main creators behind it.
Be..
Yeah. I feel like Indiana Jones would have been remembered more fondly had it been left to the original trilogy. Enough sequels and reboots that no one wanted
It's pretty funny (or dramatic, depending on how we see it) to see the number of directors kicked out of the Flash project due to "creative differences", when you see the awful result of the project that was greenlighted by the producers
I actually would considered 2023 a great year for movies, at least for me, because most audiences now, who probably have been hit by inflation, are going for movies that actually have evidence of being good whether by the cast, the reviews, or the dedicated fans. Spider-verse, Barbie, and TMNT: Mutant Mayhem were all great in different ways but mostly because you could tell the people behind them were truly passionate making it, whether it was how spiderverse took 3 years just to animate a character right, how mutant mayhem actually researched how teenagers actually are, or how barbie caused a literal shortage of pink paint just to get barbie land right.
Exactly! I absolutely agree that’s it’s not a " people don’t want to see movies in theaters anymore" problem, it’s a mainly that people just want more movies that aren’t trash kind of problem! Like it’s kinda laughable at how easy it is to find the main problem 😂
Hell yeah! I even just saw Mutant Mayhem today! And I really hope it does even better from here, because rn it's almost made back twice its budget and based on this video's statistics, it desperately has to climb higher (I want that sequel and tie-in show!!)
The first Avengers movie was fun and everyone loved the idea of the MCU. Now look at the state of superhero movies overall. Now apply that though to the Barbie movie; everyone loves it, it has refreshing directing and a great original story and it made a lot of money. Mattel then announces their line up of similar movies based on other toys; the list looks like Disney's MCU announcements, there is no way every single one of those movies will have good directing or writing. Movies don't have a passion issue, it is a corporation problem, companies know we like nostalgia and just watching content to watch it, so they are going to keep shelling out unoriginal ideas. All the movies you listed are ideas someone else came up with decades ago and people that had nothing to do with the writing of the original story (or creation of the toy) come in to make money off of it by basically writing a fan fiction and calling it an original idea. Nothing wrong with fanfics, it is hard to accept writing as original when the person writing it didn't even create the characters. In 10-15 years we'll all be tired of video game and toy franchise movies just as we are exhausted of superhero movies/remakes/ and sequels.
it's a good year for movie. its a terrible year for Hollywood
Same, I loved scream vi, really liked barbie and m3gan, I am excited to watch the five nights at Freddy's, the new hunger games and will watch the boogyman, for me this year has been very cool with movies
Blockbuster movies getting too expensive, while still sucking, has the same fundamental reason why AAA video game developement has become too expensive while also sucking.
It's the result of these creative industries increasingly being only seen as capital investment opportunities where projects are mostly conceptualized by their potential for Return on Investment, not by the projects actual merits.
That's why movie studios and video game publishers keep throwing bigger and bigger sums of money at projects, they think the resulting profits directly scale with the original developement/production invement.
I feel the lesson the companies will take from this will be "make it cheaper with AI."
They should be looking at Spiderverse in reality. That movie didn’t blow the doors off the box office with like $1B, but it made a massive profit due to excellent critic and audience reviews, plus a smaller budget. The ~$700M or so it made at the box office on just a $100M budget delivered some of the biggest profits for any movie this year save for Barbie and Mario, coincidentally, BOTH movies made for under $150M
@@MrRapmaster19Don't forget Oppenheimer, which cost $100M to make and has so far banked $500M at the box office.
@@MrRapmaster19 That's the problem. Studios don't care about making a "big profit". They want ALL of them to be Barbie levels of profits. They're greedy.
We used to have something called a mid-budget film. They weren't B movies, and they _were_ profitable, but not like, hugely so. Studios now won't bother investing in any script unless it's a huge name, 150m+ budget title they think will make them ALL the money. It's ridiculous.
I think Ezra is more obvious of his feelings
@@evertonporter7887 Oppenheimer is at $770M worldwide
I do agree with most of what you said, but I do feel that the Pixar problem is that, during the initial stages of the post-pandemic life, they choose to put their Pixar movies on Disney+ really soon, so as an audience member who has already paid the monthly fee to Disney, I'd usually wait for the week or two instead of spending another 30+ USD on the tickets. That being said, I saw "Elemental" and I was a fan of it (more than something like Lightyear), but it's that Disney's streaming strategy trained the audience to not go to the theaters for certain properties (Pixar movies, for example).
Elemental made more then spiderverse btw , it didnt flop
@@abedwatad283Based on the latest figures posted on BoxOffice Mojo, Spiderverse has earned over $200M more than Elemental in the worldwide box office. Elemental may have been a sleeper, earning a little over $459M so far but with a $200M budget (Spiderverse reportedly cost $100M), Disney-Pixar is not even breaking even at this point. Perhaps, Disney-Pixar is just somewhat glad that Elemental miraculously exceeded $450M considering the low opening weekend figures but it's still a flop.
The Pixar movies were dropped on D+ for free on day of release, that's why Encanto bombed, same for Turning Red, Luca & Soul having weak performance. Meanwhile the live action stuff had big premium price tags, because the Disney management see all of the animated films as Children's films, and price-gated the "adult" films because they assumed that the animated ones would be played on repeat and children would beg for the merchandise and grow obsessed like they did with Frozen, so they would make their money back on the toys and merch.
@@abedwatad283
No it didn't, 5 minutes of Googling would tell you that Spiderverse made a lot more than Elemental
It was partly a play to address that "need for new content" streaming services have at a time when theatrical releases weren't going that great, anyway, trying to lure more people to Disney+ by releasing the new Pixar movie quickly. Can't say if it worked, but I can see the reasoning.
Personally I still think it'd be funny if the MCU kept introducing Kangs only to kill them in the project they appear; but I don't think Disney would do that, it's too Rick and Morty
We can only wish marvel would do that instead of them keep pushing forgettable villains 😔
It would be interesting to go around killing kangs for a while only to suddenly throw out a curveball and have a kang that survives and it's an actual menace
But of course, this is modern disney we're talking about, and they're allergic to good idead
You can see something similar happening in streaming, where film studios are throwing money at shows hoping for a hit, but if they don't attract viewers quickly they get cancelled.
The film equivalent of this is to fund franchises with sequel potential, but then cancel / postpone or even reboot if the first film doesn't do well.
Millennials refer to this as FOMO.
Robert Schiller (referring to stock market bubbles) called is Irrational Exuberance.
Hollywood film production has become gambling.
I was thinking about this earlier this year when I realised there were a few movies I kinda wanted to see but I was also too broke to go and see all of them. I feel like maybe part of the problem is that the people in charge of the film industry are all so obnoxiously wealthy that they just don't understand the concept of not being able to afford things.
I wish I could RT this
PREACH!! I set aside money for what I wanted to watch. Everything else was a "wait till it's out of theaters". Wick for the money.
Same with me tbh, except it wasn't really money concerns. I was just SOOO busy with University.
It cost me almost $100 to take my kids to see Barbie. Seeing a movie in theatres has become a luxury I can only afford to do a couple of times a year.
I took one child to see the Little Mermaid and it was $45 for 2 tickets, 1 popcorn, 1 drink, and a pretzel. It's definitely more of a luxury event now.
I love the demonetization thing when the video is not suitable for all advertisers and at the same time YT lets cryptoscams, scammy mobile games and other bad ads play.
This video is something that sings true to me- having too many "blockbusters" has stopped making any one movie special. Instead of having one movie that can cause someone to go watch a movie they would normally never watch, these days we would just pick a movie we would feel like watching, what we are most comfortable with.
Well. A lot of that has to do with the death of the B movie. Or the death of the physical medium. See, it used to be that only a handful of movies got hundreds of millions to play with. Most movies back in the day ranged from Kevin Smith's Clerks which cost about $25,000, to movies like Robocop that cost I think around a couple million. So you could spend relatively little money on a project, and if it found an audience, the studio could make bank. Or if it turned into a flop, that was acceptable considering how little was spent on it.
I would probably go to see more movies if the movies they were making were good. Most of them just aren't worth what it costs to go anymore. In the last 5 years I've gone to see The Batman and Top Gun 2. That's all I can remember. I liked both of those.
This year whenever I watch movies in cinema, it was like I rented the whole cinema. I remember when I watched Equalizer 3 to support Denzel, We were like 5 or 8 people watching there.
I watched Dead Reckoning because it helped when Tom said this movie is needed to be seen in theaters. Well it didnt disappoint but people are still adjusting with the COVID past.
With the 5 movies released in March 2023, I only watched John Wick 4. It was the most promising
It’s a pretty bad omen when 6 directors leave the project and other directors also turn down the offer to work on it as well. Creativity is a part of the directors’ job and not allowing them to follow their vision and push them into a box isn’t productive
It blows my mind that WB allowed Ezra Miller to go to the premiere after everything that happened. Despite all the issues they had with production, it was Ezra's behavior so close to the movie release that mainly sabotaged the box office numbers, in my opinion. I feel like a lot of people didn't go watch it to intentionally sabotage the movie, BUT I also feel like a lot of people (myself included) just couldn't stand to look at Ezra the same way, which created a general feeling of disinterest for the movie. Also, in the trailer it seemed to me that they got the plot of The Flashpoint Paradox and just put a lot of other stuff on top to make it bigger, and I think it would be far more interesting and appealing if they had just straight-up made a live-action of TFP.
Honestly I found Ezra Miller's performance as Barry Allen insufferable even before Miller decided to become a one person crime spree. That character isn't really Barry Allen anyway so I don't know what they were thinking. Ever since Barry Allen became the primary Flash again people have been writing him like he's Wally West which ironically shows who the better Flash is.
You're right that the story is obviously based on _The Flashpoint Paradox_ which was itself based on _Flashpoint._ They had *two* sources to choose from and still managed to screw it up. Honestly DC's animated movies are virtually all superior to their live-action films. For animation they stick relatively close to the comic storylines and it works because people already knows those stories work. When it comes to live-action they seem to insist on making changes for the sake of making changes.
@@BiggieTrismegistus I didn't watch Ezra as Barry so I can't really comment on that, but I like his acting and for me, his behavior impacted a lot of my interest in this movie. So maybe it was Ezra in general that sabotaged the movie lmao
I feel like they are always trying to make it bigger now and DC keeps trying to compete with Marvel when they should just do their own thing. The source material was already a great story, and I agree that the animated movies are far superior, and that should be an indicator for them of what people, fans especially, like.
I know nothing about the Flash and yes, aside from Justice league being a complete tonal mess because they shoved Whedon into Snyder's shit for some godforsaken reason, Flash just came over as annoying as shit. Like sure, the absolute crime spree Ezra went on made me go "yeah, I have no interest in that person", my interest had gone from like, 1% to zero. Having been announced that the DCEU would be rebooted and nothing would matter anyways wasn't a big help, either.@@BiggieTrismegistus
I separated Ezra from Barry and enjoyed the movie but it DOES have its issues and I don’t judge movies based on their CGI. Solid 6/10 for me.
@@Jacob-wu3if ya I thought it was the best dc movie in a while which isn't saying much
I hope from this we'll see the rise of simpler, less expensive movies. Less pointless CG, and more time taken between projects.
All of the movies on this list cost as much as they did because of COVID production delays and shut downs, which this video makes no mention of.
Bigger budget for Disney = Pay all the producers more money
The Creator already proved this when they made their $75million movie look better than a Disney $300million movie. When they have bigger budgets, they just waste and spend more. A toothpick is still a toothpick whether you spend 2cents or $100 on it.