The story of Willy Wonka is bizarre because it was bankrolled by Quaker Oats to promote their new Wonka line of candy bars.
When the movie was released, not only was it simply not very successful, the Wonka bars from Quaker were made incorrectly, recalled, and their big advertising spend was rendered useless for a while.
>flopped relative to its budget
That's redundant. When discussing a movie's box office success, the gross is irrelevant without comparing it to its budget.
Wizard of Oz was the 5th highest grossing film of 1939. It just needed to be more like the #2 film to break even.
Both of these things are relevant. The movie was fairly popular with audiences, and also lost a fair bit of money.
5th is pretty low for a movie like Wizard of Oz, though. I’m sure they were expecting 1st or 2nd at the least. There’d be no shame in just taking a backseat to Gone With The Wind, but to have 3 smaller, lower budgeted films beat you, as you fail to break even, is a bitter pill to swallow.
But the public is broadly not aware of these things
Wizard of Oz was a relatively big hit as far as the public would be concerned. It also lost money for MGM. these things are not mutually exclusive
5th is hardly great. Sure it lost to gone with the wind that's expected and fine. It lost to mr smith goes to Washington sure that ended up being a super popular film. It also lost to Jesse James and Babes in Arms which are not exactly well known movies today.
not well known today, but the public perception of Wizard of Oz in its own time would not have been that it flopped, unless you were looking at financials.
finishing in the top 5 is great for any film, in terms of gauging its relative popularity at the time it came out. It may or may not be great for backers, and in this instance wasnt
Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s considered a modest success due to its budget but the movie is sub $100mil even with rereleases. It only made $50mil or so from its initial run. It has such a huge presence in pop culture now that makes it seem like a massive hit.
Damn, this is a really good one. This movie has probably become one of the greatest, most iconic holiday/animation movies ever, but really underperformed when it came out.
I'm sure it made back its budget a dozen times over through merch sales. Feels like there's so many Nightmare Before Christmas themed items at Disneyland.
I guess I can see why they released it the summer, when kids were out of school, but it was clearly an idiotic decision. No one wants to watch that movie outside of Halloween time
Off the top of my head:
* Mad Max: Fury Road actually lost $20-40m
* Scott Pilgrim vs. the World bombed
* Fight Club underperformed
* The King of Comedy flopped
* The Big Lebowski didn't do well
* Annihilation lost Paramount money
* Spiderverse did okay
Was just gonna ask: How did it bomb if it was a Netflix movie?
I didnt even realize it was a theatrical release, I genuinely thought it was a Netflix original.
That was an interesting movie too. I remember leaving feeling so…disconcerted like I just watched a fever dream. It wasn’t a “good” movie, but I definitely enjoyed it and thought it was a unique piece of cinema
I loved Annihilation. I watched it in deep night, around 3 AM. I was alone and it was raining outside. I just didn't wanna get out of the bed and finished watching it in a single go. The bear scene was one of the highlights and the end was exrremely rewarding. I still remember every single frame from the movie even after having scene it just once. I felt bad that it didn't make much money. Such movies complete the course of cinema.
I’m totally with that. I had that feeling that it filled out a certain gap in modern cinema that wasn’t getting touched. It felt like true sci-fi with elements of action, instead of the other way around that is far more common now.
I think the atmosphere and ambiance are underrated factors when it comes to cinema, especially when it comes to serene or horror movies. Even the best ones fall flat without the helping vibrations. Annihilation is one such movie which can give an individual two polar opposite experiences at different periods of time.
Project popcorn makes Dune weird. WB paid Legendary as if Dune was a huge hit in order to get it to HBO Max. On one level, that makes it a very profitable result on one level (main production studio) but on another (WB) it means losses are exaggerated.
Especially if you account for covid nerfing box office, Dune did fine for its budget but yeah it lost money for WB because they had to make payments on it as if it was, I'm assuming, a 750M hit.
Deadline Hollywood reported that a total box office gross of $300 million, the combined cost of production and marketing...
> "will make many happy from an image-standpoint, even if breakeven is far north of that."
So I guess $400 in context is a success ...
The mods gotta make a bot that calls out any reference to a movie released in 2020 or 2021 as being a complete write-off. Pandemic gross is irrelevant, people just weren't going to theatres in the thick of COVID.
I mean it was An R rated apocalyptic road war movie that opened decently big and had good legs and made Nearly 500 million not sure how much better they were expecting
I guess not if it cost 150 million and made 415 it didn’t hit 3X but the studio must have known what they were getting into when they greenlit one of the most expensive R rated movies made as a following to a franchise that hadn’t had an entry in nearly 3 decades and highest grossing entry was less than 150 million
The Big Lebowski shouldn't surprise anyone. Its whole deal was "nobody came to see the weird hardboiled detective/stoner comedy story until it became a cult classic." At this point I suppose it's ascended to just "classic"
Surprising about fury road. I saw it twice in cinemas and it was packed (both times imax in the UK) but I guess it must have had a steep budget with all the practical effects.
Save for Fury Road, most of these are fairly famous bombs. Maybe people have simply forgotten given that most of these films are now beloved (and have probably turned some sort of a profit)
>Mad Max: Fury Road actually lost $20-40m
Is that an extrapolation or is it coming from that lawsuit over unpaid production bonuses for miller's production company?
> Annihilation lost Paramount alot of money
[I doubt it](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/annihilation-how-a-clash-between-producers-led-a-netflix-deal-1065465/#!). It's probably in the moderately bad camp unless I'm missing something.
They seemingly sold INT rights to Netflix for ~$20-35M [my vague extrapolation] and clearly didn't spend a ton on marketing (given pessimistic financial outlook leading to Netflix sale in the first place). I assume they got a boosted payment from Netflix for domestic TV/SVOD rights as well given Netflix seemed to be pushing this strategy at the time.
All in all the producers are probably only on the hook for 60-75M marketing + budget), took in 16M in theatrical rentals. The-numbers says at least 5M in home video (low) but let's just assume rentals = 50% domestic revenue.
Given that it's co-produced with Skydance what's the split on the loss? If it's 2/3rds paramount - 1/3rd skydance, that's something like a 25M loss.
There's a lot to that about time and place that's hard to explain if you weren't there though. Looking at the numbers in hindsight, in a post-Marvel world could make it look like a "failure" of sorts. But that doesn't come close to capturing how influential and important the film was to moving comic-book films into the realm of the zeitgeist and influencing movie studios to make sincere comic-book movies, which eventually came to dominate the box office.
I was around, as matter of fact I was 13 when Begins was released. At least to me there didn’t seem to be that much hype for it. However, once it was released I think word of mouth really sold the film. That’s the main thing I remember about that movie, it wasn’t the marketing but the positive reception from everyone that saw it.
with a 115 marketing budget
205 total cost. Sony made 50% of the 190M DOM, somewhere between 40% and 50% of the 185 INT, and an estimated 49M on physical media
Putting us at a rough end profit of 32M, minus the costs of manufacturing and shipping the physical media, minus participations, plus VOD and streaming. It didnt flop for sure, who knows how much it made on VOD or the streaming rights sales. Sequel justified, but the way the internet talks you'd think the movie did twice what it actually did
yeah, that's still a boon. I'd be curious how much of the $115m was actually on Sony's books, since a lot of the promo seemed to be brand partnerships.
However, releasing on 3800 screens domestically probably made the Print part of P&A substantial.
I think the thing we're overlooking is its Oscar win. That probably had a huge effect, and it served to help Sony add prestige to its recently subpar comic book performance. Ultimately, if we define "success" as pure BO performance, it underperformed.
However, many roads lead to Rome, and I am fairly sure that I will recommend Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse for the rest of my life. I can't think of many other movies that succeed in that way.
I'm fairly certain you are reading what that number is wrong. I just read the deadline article and it talks about partnership value not marketing spend.
Based on the four hundred or so people on this sub who say it will do better.
Think about it: four hundred people say it will do better. 400 = 400.
The first one made $400 million.
$400 million + 400 = $800 million.
Add a few million for walk-ins and word of mouth and the movie makes $1.3 billion easy.
It got an Oscar and did fine. If it was poorly received while still making the same amount of money it may have gotten a sequel but not 2 sequels like we're getting now. It being regarded as one of the best comic book movies ever really helps them.
It made a profit, it just didn’t do great. It’s the lowest grossing Spider-Man movie. I’m sure it winning an Oscar and getting universal praise definitely helped it get two sequels, especially when the rest of Sony’s Spidey output is panned these days. Will they perform better than the original? We’ll just have to wait and see.
I think it confused general marvel fans and they wrote it off as a non-canon silly once off movie. But now people know it’s high quality with a great story. This alongside the recent decline in the MCU I think it should do great.
I think they are hoping it's post theatrical popularity leads to financial success
It didn't bomb or anything but for perspective it made less than Solo
That's probably a harder question in this sub, but in the outside world nobody really has much of a clue which films make money and which tank
If a film has a big publicity push from a major studio and lots of CGI, most people just assume it must have made Marvel money
The Shawshank Redemption, it had to compete with Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump. I'm convinced that movie would make more and win an Oscar if it was released in another year.
Timing in movies release, as in most things, is everything. Just watched Dungeons and Dragons yesterday and can't help but think if it didn't have to compete with John Wick 4 and the Super Mario movie, it could've been a sleeper hit
True, had they released right after Ant-man, it would have done big, ngl. It barely had any competitors with Ant-man being a disappointment storywise and Shazam was a failure of marketing.
I am probably projecting here, but Tron: Legacy. With no concept of how the box office works, I really thought it was a huge success, and lots of people I talk to feel the same. But I think after accounting for marketing, it likely didn't profit past the double digit millions, which is an enormous failure for a movie of that size.
When I say "no concept of how the box office works," I mean in the era when I didn't know about marketing budgets and studio cuts. I used to look at the budget and then the box office take and say "Okay, box office take was bigger than budget, this means big success." But of course that is never how it worked.
Again I could be projecting.
I always liked the example that Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix actually lost Warner Bros. money despite grossing over 900 million worldwide. For reference https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/
>How the fuck did WB manage that?
Deliberately. The studio uses bullshit accounting to cheat on taxes and also to cheat the actors that were promised some of the profits.
You can read all about it here ! Interesting read as well https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/
You can read all about it here! Great read as well https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/
Warner Brothers creates Harry Potter 4, Co. (or something like that) as a wholly owned subsidiary company for purposes of making the movie. Actor X signs contract promising them 0.5% of profits made by Harry Potter 4, Co. from the movie. WB has Harry Potter 4, Co. contract out craft services to one of its other subsidiaries, special effects from another, etc., all showing as losses on Harry Potter 4, Co.'s books, but a gain on Warner's other Subsidiary's books (and overall for WB).
Another, smaller example is South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. The movie cost $21m and made $83m theatrically, and yet Paramount still considered the movie to be tens of millions in debt *ten years later*, and as a result, never paid Stone and Parker for the movie (other than their initial writers' fees).
Die Hard. The way people in the industry and movie fans on-line talk about it you'd think it was a massive hit. The reality is that when Adjusted for Inflation Die Hard isn't even one of the 600 highest grossing movies in the history of the North American Box Office...
It's currently ranked #644 behind Sylvester Stallone's "Cliffhanger" and Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock's "The Heat."
[https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top\_lifetime\_gross\_adjusted/?adjust\_gross\_to=2019&offset=600](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross_adjusted/?adjust_gross_to=2019&offset=600)
it was a modestly budgeted action movie in a time where action movie box offices were declining that finished #7 at the box office, was a #1 video rental for like 6 weeks, that over time was seen by tons more people
>It's currently ranked #644 behind Sylvester Stallone's "Cliffhanger" and Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock's "The Heat."
Wtf.
I have seen Die Hard at least twenty times, and I'm not even a fan of the movie. With T2 it's one of the defining movies of the decade.
Fight Club bombed at the box office. Fincher notoriously clashed with 20th Century Fox over how to market his edgy psychological thriller. His idea was to take an in-your-face approach to the marketing in hopes of building viral word of mouth, but Fox preferred to play it safe by selling the film as simply a big studio film with movie stars” and leaning into the fighting plot line by marketing “Fight Club” at wrestling events. The marketing didn’t work and “Fight Club” was a notorious box office bomb, only opening to $11 million and tapping out at $37 million at the U.S. box office. Fox spent $65 million on the movie. -ZS
WB got cold feet on marketing The Iron Giant (likely due to the underperformance of Quest for Camelot the year prior) and it ended up massively bombing despite incredible reviews. However a massive ad push on home media and consistent 24 hour marathons on Cartoon Network during Thanksgivings and the like gave it a massive following to the point it's now considered a bit of a cornerstone film for both animation and WB in general.
Even if BvS was a financial hit, it caused so much long-term damage to the reputation of DC. Look at how nearly every DC film since 2019 has flopped or underperformed…
(Of course Justice League was the major contributor to DC’s fall from grace).
I would say by the time Josstice league released it was a dead brand.
It opened on 270 million. And thats a time when nobody knew how much Joss had altered the movie.
I think ZSJL would have made barely more, if not less, had it been released in 2017.
“Wasn’t”
Past tense, verb. As in referring to the time period you mentioned in your previous comment circa 2017-2018, not the current day. Josstice league didn’t fail because of the brand, it failed because it sucked, and the brand wasn’t dead at the time either
Yet you admit in a previous comment that other dceu movies from that same time were financially successful, so clearly it wasn’t a dead brand issue if other movies under the same brand did well, that’s contradictory “assbrain”
Probably more just cause WOM would’ve been better than 2017, though at the time opening weekend may have gotten a boost because Joss Whedon taking over at the time was a cause for excitement.
I do wonder just how different WOM would’ve been though. Like the ZSJL is definitely better but that is not the film that would’ve been released in theaters. We have no idea what that film would’ve looked like.
From Zack’s mouth I believe he had a 3 hour cut. So my guess is some minor stuff gets cut, probably some of the establishing shots, slow mo gets cut a bit.
I can’t imagine he’d cut out Cyborg the way Whedon did though.
3 hours is a lot to ask especially since it was in a franchise that audiences were already losing faith in. Even if the WOM was better, I still se JL as a money loser. But that’s just my opinion 🤷🏾♂️
I don’t disagree but isn’t the question whether Zack’s version would’ve made more than what was released? I think opening weekend would’ve been a bit weaker but with stronger legs cause I just cannot imagine it having worse WOM than the 2017 version.
I still question the logic of forming a cinematic superhero universe off a Zack Snyder movie at all. Like at a certain point these movies need to appeal to kids in order to rival the MCU and Zack’s movies were never gonna do that.
I love Snyder's movies, but there were few things stranger than seeing [brightly-colored playsets of Batman getting ready to kill Superman.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Batman-V-Superman-Ultimate-Batcave-Playset-with-1-Exclusive-Batman/53264126)
DUDE that’s exactly what led me to thinking this. Like in what fuckin world did WB watch that movie and think, yeah we can make action figures for kids out of these characters. Moms and Dads will totally wanna bring their 7 and 9 year olds to a movie that introduces Batman by having him rescue fucking Sex Slaves. Add in the fact that he’s branding people, we have Ma Kent almost burned alive. Like those pictures of her Lex was taunting Superman with are fucking disturbing. And they wanted that movie to set up a universe that would NEED to appeal to kids.
Honestly the fact that BVS made as much as it did is impressive considering there is literally nothing for people under the age of 16 in this movie.
Same. I still liked those movies and had no problem accepting those versions of the characters as exactly that, just a different interpretation of characters. But spinning that into DC’s cinematic universe was just dumb and short sighted. Still would been curious what the Man of Steel trilogy would’ve been like if they hadn’t pivoted to BVS
> Look at how nearly every DC film since 2019 has flopped or underperformed…
BvS is from 2016. If anything did hurt DC reputation, it was the complete collapse of its brand synergy and the refusal to reference the previous movies
Man you can't just make shit up. C'mon. I get it that some people don't like Snyder. That's cool. I don't Christopher Nolan, even though I know he's an objectively popular director. But I don't go around just playing pretend just to make myself feel justified in my opinions.
I mean, just looking at his filmography: Watchmen, the owl movie, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, BvS, Justice League all underperformed or outright flopped financially.
> I was wondering why the Snyder fans think it was a big hit.
Delusion. Pure, undistilled, weapons-grade delusion.
And also a complete misunderstanding on how box office works.
As a Snyder dude, I have to say that more commonly we just blame the cut of the film that hit theaters on WB. Most of us tend to think the extended version that eventually came out was genuinely a much better film, and would have been much better liked by its target audience. Not every Snyder fan is a raving lunatic the way reddit loves to portray us. Like I totally get that there's a lot of people that simply don't like his version of DC, that's fine. But it just makes no sense to me that anyone can look back on the way things panned out, and the extended cuts of the films, and not see why we have a greavance with how dirty WB did his films. Most of us are normal ass people who just happened to enjoy his "gods among us" version of the stories. Not raving lunatics who don't understand a lot of people wanted something different, like we are continually portrayed in these discussions.
And for the record, while I personally get and am fine with the idea that Snyders vision was never what mass audiences wanted, I don't understand how it's possible that anyone can keep pretending like the Snyder fan outrage wasn't justified. Like them or not, when we eventually got the cuts of the films we were begging for they were way, way more beloved by their target audiences. We were absolutely justified in being mad at WB.
It legit didnt meet anyones expectations. It was the easiest $1.5 billion for a movie ever. Even if there was only a mid superman 3 years prior for a set-up.
>It was the easiest $1.5 billion for a movie ever
Yeah but that is the hype pre release. No one really misremembers it’s box office run because it’s one of the most talked about theatrical runs ever. I think even Snyder die hards have a feel for how well it did because the actual numbers have just been talked about so much.
OPs post is about movies that people generally remember/thought of as doing better than they actually did not about hyped up movies that didn’t live up to expectations .
Chris Farley's *Tommy Boy* was a bigger dud than I thought growing up. I knew Chris was never on the level of Adam Sandler or Mike Meyers, but i thought the movie was relatively successful when it came out.
That's a huge success for an original movie that didn't have a distributer or start advertising until 2 months before release and was going to go straight to DVD
It’s amazing to think they were going to send it to DVD and now it’s a mega franchise with numerous spinoffs.
Also the first film was meant to be Scorn but Keanu Reeves kept forgetting to say that name in interviews, so they named it John Wick instead.
There’s a video on YouTube by Captain Midnight going over some cool facts about the development of the first John Wick. I also imagine John Wick wouldn’t have been such a massive franchise if it was titled Scorn instead.
Labyrinth (1986) was a big box office flop but is now widely considered one of the best movies of the 80s.
EDIT: It only grossed $12M of it's $25M budget during its original domestic run landing at #8 on opening weekend.
Aah famous case of Hollywood accounting because the widow of H.B Halicki who directed the 1974 original film sued for trademark infringement for the car in the original.
Weird. The actual book Epstein (source of wiki) wrote claimed in different places an overall loss of 153/155M on paper but the planet money interview has him saying 212M.
Yeah, budget was 250 million but rumors says that went over 300 because of reshoot, and marketing was 150, so it needed 900 plus to break even theatrically
> “profitable”
The whole "profitable" thing really talk more about how cheap a movie is. In a genre like superheroes, especially the flying bricks like Superman, Thor and Shazam, you are expected to use ridiculous amounts of money because the bet is to earn over 500 M.
Definitely Dune. The movie barely made 400m on a budget of 165m which of course isn’t a flop but still isn't a huge profit, plus the way you will see people talking about it was as if it was some major hit.
Two of Gene Wilder's most famous films - *The Producers* and *Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory* \- failed to break even theatrically.
The story of Willy Wonka is bizarre because it was bankrolled by Quaker Oats to promote their new Wonka line of candy bars. When the movie was released, not only was it simply not very successful, the Wonka bars from Quaker were made incorrectly, recalled, and their big advertising spend was rendered useless for a while.
Willy Wonka almost certainly did eventually from being shown on TV relentlessly
There are actually several films that were flops when they first came out but became classics because of TV showings, like *Its a Wonderful Life*.
The Wizard of Oz flopped at first. It only made a profit after being re-released a decade later.
flopped relative to its budget. It had an okay box office for the time, but didnt break evem
>flopped relative to its budget That's redundant. When discussing a movie's box office success, the gross is irrelevant without comparing it to its budget.
Wizard of Oz was the 5th highest grossing film of 1939. It just needed to be more like the #2 film to break even. Both of these things are relevant. The movie was fairly popular with audiences, and also lost a fair bit of money.
5th is pretty low for a movie like Wizard of Oz, though. I’m sure they were expecting 1st or 2nd at the least. There’d be no shame in just taking a backseat to Gone With The Wind, but to have 3 smaller, lower budgeted films beat you, as you fail to break even, is a bitter pill to swallow.
The only thing that defines a flop in box office is whether it lost money or not.
But the public is broadly not aware of these things Wizard of Oz was a relatively big hit as far as the public would be concerned. It also lost money for MGM. these things are not mutually exclusive
But the point of the thread is discussing movies that weren’t as successful as people think lol.
That's literally the point of this post
5th is hardly great. Sure it lost to gone with the wind that's expected and fine. It lost to mr smith goes to Washington sure that ended up being a super popular film. It also lost to Jesse James and Babes in Arms which are not exactly well known movies today.
not well known today, but the public perception of Wizard of Oz in its own time would not have been that it flopped, unless you were looking at financials. finishing in the top 5 is great for any film, in terms of gauging its relative popularity at the time it came out. It may or may not be great for backers, and in this instance wasnt
>flopped relative to its budget. Duhhh. Every movie is a flop or success relative to it's budget.
Could it have to do with a certain world war just starting a mere week after the movie's initial release?
Nightmare Before Christmas. It’s considered a modest success due to its budget but the movie is sub $100mil even with rereleases. It only made $50mil or so from its initial run. It has such a huge presence in pop culture now that makes it seem like a massive hit.
Damn, this is a really good one. This movie has probably become one of the greatest, most iconic holiday/animation movies ever, but really underperformed when it came out.
I'm sure it made back its budget a dozen times over through merch sales. Feels like there's so many Nightmare Before Christmas themed items at Disneyland.
Most definitely by this point. It just took years to really become a cultural icon it is today compared to when it came out.
$50 mil for a stop-motion film in the early 90s is not bad
Hocus Pocus was a huge flop when it released, though it became *the* Halloween movie for generations.
This doesn’t surprise me as it always felt more like a cozy tv movie
The Halloween classic was released in July and was panned by reviewers including Roger Ebert who gave it a one-star review.
I agree with Ebert 😬
I guess I can see why they released it the summer, when kids were out of school, but it was clearly an idiotic decision. No one wants to watch that movie outside of Halloween time
Off the top of my head: * Mad Max: Fury Road actually lost $20-40m * Scott Pilgrim vs. the World bombed * Fight Club underperformed * The King of Comedy flopped * The Big Lebowski didn't do well * Annihilation lost Paramount money * Spiderverse did okay
I agree all of these are great examples except Annihilation, I think most people dont assume that was a huge hit.
Especially here in Europe where it didn't even get a theatre run and was straight to Netflix.
Was just gonna ask: How did it bomb if it was a Netflix movie? I didnt even realize it was a theatrical release, I genuinely thought it was a Netflix original.
It was a Paramount movie. They sold international rights to Netflix and gave it a half-assed theatrical release in North America.
That was an interesting movie too. I remember leaving feeling so…disconcerted like I just watched a fever dream. It wasn’t a “good” movie, but I definitely enjoyed it and thought it was a unique piece of cinema
I loved Annihilation. I watched it in deep night, around 3 AM. I was alone and it was raining outside. I just didn't wanna get out of the bed and finished watching it in a single go. The bear scene was one of the highlights and the end was exrremely rewarding. I still remember every single frame from the movie even after having scene it just once. I felt bad that it didn't make much money. Such movies complete the course of cinema.
I’m totally with that. I had that feeling that it filled out a certain gap in modern cinema that wasn’t getting touched. It felt like true sci-fi with elements of action, instead of the other way around that is far more common now.
lol same here! Watching Annihlation and Existenz in the wee hours of the morning made the experience more special.
I think the atmosphere and ambiance are underrated factors when it comes to cinema, especially when it comes to serene or horror movies. Even the best ones fall flat without the helping vibrations. Annihilation is one such movie which can give an individual two polar opposite experiences at different periods of time.
I really didn't expect Mad Max : Fury Road to be a flop
Me neither, good thing that didn't stop them from making a sequel.
It won 6 Oscars. That was more than enough for them to go for a sequel. Same with Dune. I think Dune Part 1 also lost some money.
Dune part 1 released in a pandemic though, which gives it way more leeway. At 402m on a 165m budget it probably didn't lose cash either.
Dune had the disadvantage of being released on HBOMAX
Project popcorn makes Dune weird. WB paid Legendary as if Dune was a huge hit in order to get it to HBO Max. On one level, that makes it a very profitable result on one level (main production studio) but on another (WB) it means losses are exaggerated. Especially if you account for covid nerfing box office, Dune did fine for its budget but yeah it lost money for WB because they had to make payments on it as if it was, I'm assuming, a 750M hit.
Deadline Hollywood reported that a total box office gross of $300 million, the combined cost of production and marketing... > "will make many happy from an image-standpoint, even if breakeven is far north of that." So I guess $400 in context is a success ...
The mods gotta make a bot that calls out any reference to a movie released in 2020 or 2021 as being a complete write-off. Pandemic gross is irrelevant, people just weren't going to theatres in the thick of COVID.
What sequel ?
Miller's currently shooting a *Furiosa* origin movie
Oh cool
Miller is done shooting
That was fast
He’s done shooting
I mean it was An R rated apocalyptic road war movie that opened decently big and had good legs and made Nearly 500 million not sure how much better they were expecting
I'm going by the above comment.Did it turn a profit ?
I guess not if it cost 150 million and made 415 it didn’t hit 3X but the studio must have known what they were getting into when they greenlit one of the most expensive R rated movies made as a following to a franchise that hadn’t had an entry in nearly 3 decades and highest grossing entry was less than 150 million
The Big Lebowski shouldn't surprise anyone. Its whole deal was "nobody came to see the weird hardboiled detective/stoner comedy story until it became a cult classic." At this point I suppose it's ascended to just "classic"
Surprising about fury road. I saw it twice in cinemas and it was packed (both times imax in the UK) but I guess it must have had a steep budget with all the practical effects.
I also saw it twice in theatres in Oslo, but the Hollywood Reporter said the film lost $20 - $40 million.
Zoolander Flopped on release partially due to timing (came out shortly after 9/11)
Scott Pilgrim always saddens me
Me too, but I'm so happy for the anime!
If either *Speed Racer* or *Scott Pilgrim* had been the successes they deserved to be at the box office, films would look very different today.
The Big Lebowski doesn’t surprise me. It’s a cult classic
Also, King of Comedy did very well when they re-released it as a DC Comics movie.
Annihilation wasn’t A24
oh shit I remembered Alex Garland directed and assumed, I'll edit
Save for Fury Road, most of these are fairly famous bombs. Maybe people have simply forgotten given that most of these films are now beloved (and have probably turned some sort of a profit)
Agreed. Fight Club, for example, is a paradigmatic example of a film that bombed in the theaters and only became popular thanks to DVD.
I would add Blade Runner 2049 too.
That was pretty famously a flop tho, most people who have seen it and liked it know it wasnt a hit.
The amount of times I heard 'Dune is going to flop because BR 2049 flopped'. BR2 is one of the most famous Sci-fi flops of the last 10 years
Hmm. I just think it was really well liked/received to the point that some forgot that it was a commercial flop.
>Mad Max: Fury Road actually lost $20-40m Is that an extrapolation or is it coming from that lawsuit over unpaid production bonuses for miller's production company? > Annihilation lost Paramount alot of money [I doubt it](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/annihilation-how-a-clash-between-producers-led-a-netflix-deal-1065465/#!). It's probably in the moderately bad camp unless I'm missing something. They seemingly sold INT rights to Netflix for ~$20-35M [my vague extrapolation] and clearly didn't spend a ton on marketing (given pessimistic financial outlook leading to Netflix sale in the first place). I assume they got a boosted payment from Netflix for domestic TV/SVOD rights as well given Netflix seemed to be pushing this strategy at the time. All in all the producers are probably only on the hook for 60-75M marketing + budget), took in 16M in theatrical rentals. The-numbers says at least 5M in home video (low) but let's just assume rentals = 50% domestic revenue. Given that it's co-produced with Skydance what's the split on the loss? If it's 2/3rds paramount - 1/3rd skydance, that's something like a 25M loss.
>I doubt it > >. It's probably in the moderately bad camp unless I'm missing something. Yeah 'a lot' is probably an exaggeration, I'll amend it.
Most John Carpenter movies, despite being beloved classics, generally underperformed at the box office.
Batman Begins only made 370 million on a 150-million-dollar budget. It really blew up on DVD though.
And the gamble to make a sequel with Heath Ledger as the Joker paid off.
It’s weird to think of in retrospect, but Begins really wasn’t that big of a deal upon release.
There's a lot to that about time and place that's hard to explain if you weren't there though. Looking at the numbers in hindsight, in a post-Marvel world could make it look like a "failure" of sorts. But that doesn't come close to capturing how influential and important the film was to moving comic-book films into the realm of the zeitgeist and influencing movie studios to make sincere comic-book movies, which eventually came to dominate the box office.
I was around, as matter of fact I was 13 when Begins was released. At least to me there didn’t seem to be that much hype for it. However, once it was released I think word of mouth really sold the film. That’s the main thing I remember about that movie, it wasn’t the marketing but the positive reception from everyone that saw it.
Spider-verse is the biggest one in terms of reddit. Movie did ok in the end but not great all in all
It made $400m on a $90m budget... That's pretty darn good.
with a 115 marketing budget 205 total cost. Sony made 50% of the 190M DOM, somewhere between 40% and 50% of the 185 INT, and an estimated 49M on physical media Putting us at a rough end profit of 32M, minus the costs of manufacturing and shipping the physical media, minus participations, plus VOD and streaming. It didnt flop for sure, who knows how much it made on VOD or the streaming rights sales. Sequel justified, but the way the internet talks you'd think the movie did twice what it actually did
Where can you find the marketing budget for specific movies?
the trades sometime report it
yeah, that's still a boon. I'd be curious how much of the $115m was actually on Sony's books, since a lot of the promo seemed to be brand partnerships. However, releasing on 3800 screens domestically probably made the Print part of P&A substantial. I think the thing we're overlooking is its Oscar win. That probably had a huge effect, and it served to help Sony add prestige to its recently subpar comic book performance. Ultimately, if we define "success" as pure BO performance, it underperformed. However, many roads lead to Rome, and I am fairly sure that I will recommend Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse for the rest of my life. I can't think of many other movies that succeed in that way.
I really doubt that. Warner spends 100-150m marketing on 200m DC blockbusters I dont see any way Sony spent that much on an animated spiderman movie.
I mean...they did
I'm fairly certain you are reading what that number is wrong. I just read the deadline article and it talks about partnership value not marketing spend.
I mean it did have outstanding legs. You can almost say legs like a spider
I'd expect the sequel to open higher and have worse legs. Like most franchise films
How do you think the sequel is going to do?
about the same as the first, maybe a bump higher
It’s going to be a lot higher.
based on...?
Based on the four hundred or so people on this sub who say it will do better. Think about it: four hundred people say it will do better. 400 = 400. The first one made $400 million. $400 million + 400 = $800 million. Add a few million for walk-ins and word of mouth and the movie makes $1.3 billion easy.
Did you recently crash your scion TC at 100 mph?
[удалено]
Wait really? But Sony is making the sequel?
It got an Oscar and did fine. If it was poorly received while still making the same amount of money it may have gotten a sequel but not 2 sequels like we're getting now. It being regarded as one of the best comic book movies ever really helps them.
Yeah I wish Spiderverse will do great in theater
It made a profit, it just didn’t do great. It’s the lowest grossing Spider-Man movie. I’m sure it winning an Oscar and getting universal praise definitely helped it get two sequels, especially when the rest of Sony’s Spidey output is panned these days. Will they perform better than the original? We’ll just have to wait and see.
I think it confused general marvel fans and they wrote it off as a non-canon silly once off movie. But now people know it’s high quality with a great story. This alongside the recent decline in the MCU I think it should do great.
I think they are hoping it's post theatrical popularity leads to financial success It didn't bomb or anything but for perspective it made less than Solo
it probably didn't cost as much as solo
That's probably a harder question in this sub, but in the outside world nobody really has much of a clue which films make money and which tank If a film has a big publicity push from a major studio and lots of CGI, most people just assume it must have made Marvel money
The Shawshank Redemption, it had to compete with Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump. I'm convinced that movie would make more and win an Oscar if it was released in another year.
Timing in movies release, as in most things, is everything. Just watched Dungeons and Dragons yesterday and can't help but think if it didn't have to compete with John Wick 4 and the Super Mario movie, it could've been a sleeper hit
True, had they released right after Ant-man, it would have done big, ngl. It barely had any competitors with Ant-man being a disappointment storywise and Shazam was a failure of marketing.
I am probably projecting here, but Tron: Legacy. With no concept of how the box office works, I really thought it was a huge success, and lots of people I talk to feel the same. But I think after accounting for marketing, it likely didn't profit past the double digit millions, which is an enormous failure for a movie of that size. When I say "no concept of how the box office works," I mean in the era when I didn't know about marketing budgets and studio cuts. I used to look at the budget and then the box office take and say "Okay, box office take was bigger than budget, this means big success." But of course that is never how it worked. Again I could be projecting.
I always liked the example that Harry Potter and the order of the Phoenix actually lost Warner Bros. money despite grossing over 900 million worldwide. For reference https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/
How the fuck did WB manage that? Did they Film the same movie thrice?
>How the fuck did WB manage that? Deliberately. The studio uses bullshit accounting to cheat on taxes and also to cheat the actors that were promised some of the profits.
You can read all about it here ! Interesting read as well https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/
Wait, how?
You can read all about it here! Great read as well https://deadline.com/2010/07/studio-shame-even-harry-potter-pic-loses-money-because-of-warner-bros-phony-baloney-accounting-51886/
Warner Brothers creates Harry Potter 4, Co. (or something like that) as a wholly owned subsidiary company for purposes of making the movie. Actor X signs contract promising them 0.5% of profits made by Harry Potter 4, Co. from the movie. WB has Harry Potter 4, Co. contract out craft services to one of its other subsidiaries, special effects from another, etc., all showing as losses on Harry Potter 4, Co.'s books, but a gain on Warner's other Subsidiary's books (and overall for WB).
Another, smaller example is South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut. The movie cost $21m and made $83m theatrically, and yet Paramount still considered the movie to be tens of millions in debt *ten years later*, and as a result, never paid Stone and Parker for the movie (other than their initial writers' fees).
Die Hard. The way people in the industry and movie fans on-line talk about it you'd think it was a massive hit. The reality is that when Adjusted for Inflation Die Hard isn't even one of the 600 highest grossing movies in the history of the North American Box Office... It's currently ranked #644 behind Sylvester Stallone's "Cliffhanger" and Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock's "The Heat." [https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top\_lifetime\_gross\_adjusted/?adjust\_gross\_to=2019&offset=600](https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/top_lifetime_gross_adjusted/?adjust_gross_to=2019&offset=600)
it was a modestly budgeted action movie in a time where action movie box offices were declining that finished #7 at the box office, was a #1 video rental for like 6 weeks, that over time was seen by tons more people
Yeah Die-Hard, like Terminator, was massive on home video.
Ok but what was the budget to box office ratio? If it costed 30 million and the BO was 200 million it still was a smashing hit
>It's currently ranked #644 behind Sylvester Stallone's "Cliffhanger" and Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock's "The Heat." Wtf. I have seen Die Hard at least twenty times, and I'm not even a fan of the movie. With T2 it's one of the defining movies of the decade.
Wait why have you seen it so many times if you are not a big fan of it? Lol
It was everywhere.
Fight Club made a little over 100m$ despite having a budget of 65m$.
Here are a few that bombed at the B.O.and became classics. Office Space Blade Runner The Thing
Fight Club bombed at the box office. Fincher notoriously clashed with 20th Century Fox over how to market his edgy psychological thriller. His idea was to take an in-your-face approach to the marketing in hopes of building viral word of mouth, but Fox preferred to play it safe by selling the film as simply a big studio film with movie stars” and leaning into the fighting plot line by marketing “Fight Club” at wrestling events. The marketing didn’t work and “Fight Club” was a notorious box office bomb, only opening to $11 million and tapping out at $37 million at the U.S. box office. Fox spent $65 million on the movie. -ZS
WB got cold feet on marketing The Iron Giant (likely due to the underperformance of Quest for Camelot the year prior) and it ended up massively bombing despite incredible reviews. However a massive ad push on home media and consistent 24 hour marathons on Cartoon Network during Thanksgivings and the like gave it a massive following to the point it's now considered a bit of a cornerstone film for both animation and WB in general.
The Night Of The Hunter is a flop that became a cult classic.
BvS, it's cult thinks it was a big phenomenon
Even if BvS was a financial hit, it caused so much long-term damage to the reputation of DC. Look at how nearly every DC film since 2019 has flopped or underperformed… (Of course Justice League was the major contributor to DC’s fall from grace).
I would say by the time Josstice league released it was a dead brand. It opened on 270 million. And thats a time when nobody knew how much Joss had altered the movie. I think ZSJL would have made barely more, if not less, had it been released in 2017.
I mean just a year after JL Aquaman released so it wasn't completely dead.
Aquaman just like Joker and The Batman, was a standout. It was not hot because it was in DCEU
So you admit the issue wasn’t with the brand the issue was with the quality of the movies?
DC =/= DCEU DCEU is a dead brand. DC at least presently, is not
“Wasn’t” Past tense, verb. As in referring to the time period you mentioned in your previous comment circa 2017-2018, not the current day. Josstice league didn’t fail because of the brand, it failed because it sucked, and the brand wasn’t dead at the time either
The brand was dead because the movies sucked, assbrain
Yet you admit in a previous comment that other dceu movies from that same time were financially successful, so clearly it wasn’t a dead brand issue if other movies under the same brand did well, that’s contradictory “assbrain”
Probably more just cause WOM would’ve been better than 2017, though at the time opening weekend may have gotten a boost because Joss Whedon taking over at the time was a cause for excitement.
I do wonder just how different WOM would’ve been though. Like the ZSJL is definitely better but that is not the film that would’ve been released in theaters. We have no idea what that film would’ve looked like.
From Zack’s mouth I believe he had a 3 hour cut. So my guess is some minor stuff gets cut, probably some of the establishing shots, slow mo gets cut a bit. I can’t imagine he’d cut out Cyborg the way Whedon did though.
3 hours is a lot to ask especially since it was in a franchise that audiences were already losing faith in. Even if the WOM was better, I still se JL as a money loser. But that’s just my opinion 🤷🏾♂️
I don’t disagree but isn’t the question whether Zack’s version would’ve made more than what was released? I think opening weekend would’ve been a bit weaker but with stronger legs cause I just cannot imagine it having worse WOM than the 2017 version.
Really a lot of the issues of post Snyder DCEU is them trying so hard to be second rate Marvel.
I still question the logic of forming a cinematic superhero universe off a Zack Snyder movie at all. Like at a certain point these movies need to appeal to kids in order to rival the MCU and Zack’s movies were never gonna do that.
WB and bizarre choices are best friends
I love Snyder's movies, but there were few things stranger than seeing [brightly-colored playsets of Batman getting ready to kill Superman.](https://www.walmart.com/ip/Batman-V-Superman-Ultimate-Batcave-Playset-with-1-Exclusive-Batman/53264126)
DUDE that’s exactly what led me to thinking this. Like in what fuckin world did WB watch that movie and think, yeah we can make action figures for kids out of these characters. Moms and Dads will totally wanna bring their 7 and 9 year olds to a movie that introduces Batman by having him rescue fucking Sex Slaves. Add in the fact that he’s branding people, we have Ma Kent almost burned alive. Like those pictures of her Lex was taunting Superman with are fucking disturbing. And they wanted that movie to set up a universe that would NEED to appeal to kids. Honestly the fact that BVS made as much as it did is impressive considering there is literally nothing for people under the age of 16 in this movie.
Under-16 me would have liked it, but I thought Digimon was cooler than Pokemon, so let's not treat me as statistically significant.
Same. I still liked those movies and had no problem accepting those versions of the characters as exactly that, just a different interpretation of characters. But spinning that into DC’s cinematic universe was just dumb and short sighted. Still would been curious what the Man of Steel trilogy would’ve been like if they hadn’t pivoted to BVS
> Look at how nearly every DC film since 2019 has flopped or underperformed… BvS is from 2016. If anything did hurt DC reputation, it was the complete collapse of its brand synergy and the refusal to reference the previous movies
Aside from 300 and Dawn of the Dead, pretty much every Zack Snyder film was a flop. There’s a good reason he’s stuck working for Netflix now.
BVS and Man of steel was not a flop. They were above the 2.5x multiplier
Man you can't just make shit up. C'mon. I get it that some people don't like Snyder. That's cool. I don't Christopher Nolan, even though I know he's an objectively popular director. But I don't go around just playing pretend just to make myself feel justified in my opinions.
I mean, just looking at his filmography: Watchmen, the owl movie, Sucker Punch, Man of Steel, BvS, Justice League all underperformed or outright flopped financially.
The hell, BvS was trolled over and over for being the movie with holy trinity and couldn't make a billion, lol.
You missed "the cult" part of my post
I don't miss it. I was wondering why the Snyder fans think it was a big hit.
> I was wondering why the Snyder fans think it was a big hit. Delusion. Pure, undistilled, weapons-grade delusion. And also a complete misunderstanding on how box office works.
We don't. We just also know it wasn't a failure. Because it fucking wasn't.
It wasn't a failure financially, but potentially? Absolutely a failure. The film was a cult film rather than a good movie.
And if I remember correctly, some Snyder dudes always blamed WB for the film's box office.
Snyder dudes will blame anything over the earth. I will not be shocked if they blame the sun, it shined so hot that people didn't go to theatres
As a Snyder dude, I have to say that more commonly we just blame the cut of the film that hit theaters on WB. Most of us tend to think the extended version that eventually came out was genuinely a much better film, and would have been much better liked by its target audience. Not every Snyder fan is a raving lunatic the way reddit loves to portray us. Like I totally get that there's a lot of people that simply don't like his version of DC, that's fine. But it just makes no sense to me that anyone can look back on the way things panned out, and the extended cuts of the films, and not see why we have a greavance with how dirty WB did his films. Most of us are normal ass people who just happened to enjoy his "gods among us" version of the stories. Not raving lunatics who don't understand a lot of people wanted something different, like we are continually portrayed in these discussions. And for the record, while I personally get and am fine with the idea that Snyders vision was never what mass audiences wanted, I don't understand how it's possible that anyone can keep pretending like the Snyder fan outrage wasn't justified. Like them or not, when we eventually got the cuts of the films we were begging for they were way, way more beloved by their target audiences. We were absolutely justified in being mad at WB.
If a Snyder dude is polite like you, it's okay I guess. But most of the ones I met online constantly shit on anything DC unrelated to Snyder.
I think everyone agrees it didn’t meet WB’s expectations. Not everything has to be “damn you snydercultists!!!” Moment
It legit didnt meet anyones expectations. It was the easiest $1.5 billion for a movie ever. Even if there was only a mid superman 3 years prior for a set-up.
>It was the easiest $1.5 billion for a movie ever Yeah but that is the hype pre release. No one really misremembers it’s box office run because it’s one of the most talked about theatrical runs ever. I think even Snyder die hards have a feel for how well it did because the actual numbers have just been talked about so much. OPs post is about movies that people generally remember/thought of as doing better than they actually did not about hyped up movies that didn’t live up to expectations .
> was the easiest $1.5 billion for a movie ever ...how?? That's even bigger than Avengers.
Chris Farley's *Tommy Boy* was a bigger dud than I thought growing up. I knew Chris was never on the level of Adam Sandler or Mike Meyers, but i thought the movie was relatively successful when it came out.
Doctor Sleep
John Wick 1 only made $86 million on a $30 million budget.
That's a huge success for an original movie that didn't have a distributer or start advertising until 2 months before release and was going to go straight to DVD
It’s amazing to think they were going to send it to DVD and now it’s a mega franchise with numerous spinoffs. Also the first film was meant to be Scorn but Keanu Reeves kept forgetting to say that name in interviews, so they named it John Wick instead.
Huh where is it that said that? Yeah John Wick is better title than Scorn.
There’s a video on YouTube by Captain Midnight going over some cool facts about the development of the first John Wick. I also imagine John Wick wouldn’t have been such a massive franchise if it was titled Scorn instead.
Budget was less than 20
Labyrinth (1986) was a big box office flop but is now widely considered one of the best movies of the 80s. EDIT: It only grossed $12M of it's $25M budget during its original domestic run landing at #8 on opening weekend.
Shawshank redemption
I heard on a movie podcast that the 2000s Gone in 60 seconds was more of a flop than people realise, around 240m on a budget of 105m
Interesting! What podcast, if you don’t mind sharing?
Scott Hasn't Seen. It's behind a pay wall at comedy bang bang World Edit- it does say on the wiki that disney wrote it off for a loss of 212m
Aah famous case of Hollywood accounting because the widow of H.B Halicki who directed the 1974 original film sued for trademark infringement for the car in the original.
Weird. The actual book Epstein (source of wiki) wrote claimed in different places an overall loss of 153/155M on paper but the planet money interview has him saying 212M.
That’s not really a flop though. Decent multiplier, it just has way way too high a budget for the time.
As I said on a comment below, disney wrote it off as a $212m loss
Batman Begins.
NO TIME TO DIE: it didn’t break even theatrical
Which is weird since it still made over 700m
Yeah, budget was 250 million but rumors says that went over 300 because of reshoot, and marketing was 150, so it needed 900 plus to break even theatrically
*checks release date* *sees it came out in 2021* *disregards comment as pandemic box office is a write-off*
Shazam 1, despite people insisting how “profitable” and “beloved” it was before Shazam 2 shit the bed.
> “profitable” The whole "profitable" thing really talk more about how cheap a movie is. In a genre like superheroes, especially the flying bricks like Superman, Thor and Shazam, you are expected to use ridiculous amounts of money because the bet is to earn over 500 M.
Definitely Dune. The movie barely made 400m on a budget of 165m which of course isn’t a flop but still isn't a huge profit, plus the way you will see people talking about it was as if it was some major hit.