2015 Big Budget Flops

[Guest]

Geez, the carnage is piling up this year. 150 million plus P&A for Pan? What a disaster.

 

One again proves that in Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

 

http://www.imdb.com/news/ni59097626/

 

R,

 

[Robin R Probyn]

seems every Pan movie is doomed.. there have been a few other big fails too I believe.. even Robin Williams couldn't do it..

[David Mullen ASC]

Sometimes I think they overestimate the size of the audience for these beloved childhood classics -- at least with Harry Potter, you had the popularity of the books to indicate the enthusiasm of the potential audience for a movie version. On the other hand, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" was a hit so what do I know.

[Guest]

Bottom line is no matter what the content.....a 150 million dollar hurdle is a 150 million dollar hurdle, end of story.

 

R,

[Robin R Probyn]

Even a Disney ride can make billions .. if you have J.Depp .. playing Keith Richards.. if he were ever a pirate ..

[Tyler Purcell]

It's funny they put "Tomorrowland" with the flops. It's already made money world-wide, so that's not TOO muc of a flop considering it hasn't hit VOD yet.

[Guest]

Well, the US studios collect far less from foreign ticket sales than they do domestically as the money passes through a lot more hands. Plus everyone forgets the staggering P&A costs that get tacked onto the budget. And of course the exhibitors take a good chunk that gross.

 

This is why the 3X rule is usually applied, so a break even point for Pan would be, 450 million gross. So at 15 million only 435 million to go. Hmmmmm, I sure hope they like the Peter Pan story in China.

 

R,

[Tyler Purcell]

Got ya, so 3x is generally the consensus for world wide.

[Freya Black]

Sometimes I think they overestimate the size of the audience for these beloved childhood classics -- at least with Harry Potter, you had the popularity of the books to indicate the enthusiasm of the potential audience for a movie version. On the other hand, Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" was a hit so what do I know.

 

Yeah but Alice in Wonderland has a huge following and is very cool whereas Peter Pan is... well.. and there's Wendy... and the Michael Jackson thing... and it's all a bit too much Swallows and Amazons or something.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

Well, the US studios collect far less from foreign ticket sales than they do domestically as the money passes through a lot more hands. Plus everyone forgets the staggering P&A costs that get tacked onto the budget. And of course the exhibitors take a good chunk that gross.

 

This is why the 3X rule is usually applied, so a break even point for Pan would be, 450 million gross. So at 15 million only 435 million to go. Hmmmmm, I sure hope they like the Peter Pan story in China.

 

R,

 

 

I heard that in China the studios get a tiny percentage of the take but I guess the volume helps a bit.

 

Freya

[Freya Black]

The thing I find strange about a lot of these projects is that they never seem like they would have had much hope from the get go and they always want to spend absolutely ballistic amounts in making them too. John Carter from Mars seemed like a strange choice to start with but then they pumped vast quantities of money into it for example. The Fantastic Four thing seems cursed and the best version so far is still the Roger Corman version. I think that could have had a good chance back in the 80's. There is something oddly commercial about it in a sort of strange Teenage Ninja Turtle sort of fashion. I think it possibly could have made a lot of money but they chose not to release it. Tomorrowland might have been something but it was never that clear why anyone would want to see it and I'm still not sure what it is supposed to be about after all this time. The Lone Ranger was a really strange idea but at least it had Johnny Depp in it I guess. I assume the whole idea behind that one was that Mr Depp would create a compelling character that would draw the crowds in.

 

I mean there seems to be an understanding when people make westerns these days that they aren't going to pump huge amounts of money into making them and even then they seem to go too far some times but there does seem to be the understanding that they are something that has at best a niche audience and are generally a bit archaic at this point.

 

Pixels was another weird one. Why did a movie that revolves around 80's video games have to cost so much money. This could surely have been made more cheaply but again it's not obvious to me why this might be a huge hit. It just seems a bit like ghostbusters but without the more interesting aspects.

 

Freya

[Robin R Probyn]

Basically no one has any idea.. look at all the massive box office films from way back.. you read about them and see it took years to get them made.. studio heads said they would be crap.. actors turned them down.. thats why they run with hits for ever till the well runs dry.. the budgets are so big they don't want to gamble.. although I read somewhere some study showing actually to make 10 $15m films instead of one.. the studio,s had much more chance of making money off a few hits.. lets hope that thinking comes around.. the endless spin off comic book stuff is getting really dull.. thank god for TV.. :)

[Jay Young]

I thought John Carter was fantastic. It could have been better, sure, but so could a lot of things.

John Carter, like Jupiter Rising at least HAD a decent story - what the screenwriters did to the stories is another thing entirely.

I haven't been able to see Tomorrowland, and missed it in cinema here.

 

I haven't seen PAN, but I would likely rather just watch HOOK. It always seems to me, again such as in the case of Prince Caspian that the screenwriters make a script that has some dialogue in it,

they shoot the picture, then turn all the footage over to the digital effects house where the producers then send barrels full of $100 bills with a little note asking for as much over the top digital effects

as possible because American audience will only go to the cinema for explosions and no one cares about story. Personally I wasn't impressed with The Martian, but it seems everyone else was. I'm glad they were able to use a GoPro camera to achieve the effect they wanted to but it doesn't seem all that amazing to me. Interstellar is still a far better film.

 

Perhaps that's not entirely true. Did PAN have an interesting story? Were there explosions?

 

Why do they keep remaking the Fantastic 4?

Why do they keep splitting books into three films?

Why did the Scorch Trials suck? Well other than they decided to completely re-write most of the plot.

 

Speaking of Box Office hits - you know what I thought was fantastic.... Mr. Shamalan's The Visit. Didn't see too many visual digital effects in that.

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

This is why the 3X rule is usually applied

 

This makes no sense.

 

If someone's claiming a movie had a budget of x, then it needs to take x to break even.

 

If we're claiming the break even point is 3x, then the effective budget was also 3x.

 

Hollywood accounting forever!

 

P

[Mark Dunn]

 

This makes no sense.

 

If someone's claiming a movie had a budget of x, then it needs to take x to break even.

 

If we're claiming the break even point is 3x, then the effective budget was also 3x.

 

Hollywood accounting forever!

 

P

No, the multiple allows for the exhibitor's and distributor's take.

The studio only gets 1/3 of the gross.

Years ago that figure used to be more like 1/5-1/6 IIRC.

[Mark Dunn]

 

 

One again proves that in Hollywood, nobody knows anything.

 

 

Well, they do know that as long as they can afford to bet $150M 10 or 20 times they're bound to throw a couple of sixes.

[Tyler Purcell]

I thought John Carter was fantastic.

I agree and after watching, I had absolutely no idea why it did so poorly. It looked good, the story was engrossing and rich with characters and details. The filmmakers tried to do as much in-camera as they could, which always gets a gold star in my book. So when you see how much of a flop it was, its really sad.

 

However, 'Tomorrowland' had some HUGE problems and I can tell that people walked out disappointed, at least I was.

 

I can't wait for the tentpole movies to be no more. I think that day is coming because the studio's are loosing a lot of money on them and actually making money on more regular films like animation.

 

What bothers me is, most of these tentpole movies are for kids and teen's right? But the animation films of the last few years have been absolutely awesome. I think kids are kinda over animation yet again, it's not "cool" enough for them, so maybe they stay away? All I know is in terms of characters, story and even cinematography, some of the most recent animation films have blown me away.

[Gregory Irwin]

Like I've said before: I want every movie to make money so we can all keep making movies. And believe me. The studios have this all figured out. They don't blindly gamble with their money. Just like with the Vegas casinos, the House always wins over time.

 

G

[Mark Kenfield]

I also tend to doubt most of the 'quoted' production budgets you hear. It's Hollywood accounting afterall...

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

No, the multiple allows for the exhibitor's and distributor's take.

 

Well, that's not what the movie really took, then, is it.

 

This may be a point of principle, but you can't seriously contend that "the movie cost X amount but we have to take 3X to be in profit" is a sane statement no matter how you approach it. If the take needs to be 3X, you just aren't including some costs. Like the cost of having people distribute it.

 

P

[Freya Black]

I thought John Carter was fantastic. It could have been better, sure, but so could a lot of things.

John Carter, like Jupiter Rising at least HAD a decent story - what the screenwriters did to the stories is another thing entirely.

I haven't been able to see Tomorrowland, and missed it in cinema here.

 

Whether John Carter is good or not, was not really what I was talking about. There are plenty of great films that make very little money. It definitely helps a lot if the movie is good because once it is out there if it gets bad word of mouth it can affect sales. Having said that there are movies that are really bad and have bad word of mouth and people feel they have to see them anyway. I remember people saying this about the "Transformers" movies.

 

What I was more talking about was the fact that it was obvious these movies were not going to do well from the get go.

 

This was what i meant when I talked about Westerns. There are people who still want to make Westerns because there is a great tradition in the genre and it is a genre where people do more serious work in these days too but it's obviously not a really commercial genre in the way it may have once been because times have changed. Children don't play "Cowboys and Indians" these days and there are obvious political issues with the whole subject. There seems to be an understanding about all this however. Westerns are made on smaller budgets than superhero movies because there is an understanding they will not do the same kind of business but that there might be an audience for them.

 

Whether a movie is good or not is more of a different thing. In fact it's possible that someone could take something that doesn't seem like it could work that well and make a movie so fantastically good and compelling that people really want to see it.

[Freya Black]

 

Well, that's not what the movie really took, then, is it.

 

This may be a point of principle, but you can't seriously contend that "the movie cost X amount but we have to take 3X to be in profit" is a sane statement no matter how you approach it. If the take needs to be 3X, you just aren't including some costs. Like the cost of having people distribute it.

 

P

 

 

I kind of agree with you that the 3x thing doesn't really make sense and I think it's just a rule of thumb to get an idea about how thins are doing.

 

However I do think you can say that the movie cost x to make but that making a profit might be a different thing.

Lets say you are making biscuit containers. They cost 50p each to make but you don't make a profit unless you sell a certain amount of them. Lets say 50%. Everything is fine but then suddenly people realise that sugar is really poisonous and they stop eating biscuits and the biscuit barrels don't sell hardly at all. You may have made a nice profit selling them in previous years but now biscuits are out!

 

The 2x or 3x thing is a bit of an odd rule of thumb because while a thing might cost x to make, surely how much you spend marketing it is a different thing. I think this might be related to Hollywood accounting however. For example Universal might have a policy that for a certain budget of film there needs to be a certain advertising spend on NBC TV channels (NBC/Sci-Fi/Bravo/Chiller/USA Network/E! etc). If there is such a thing, then I kind of agree with you that it kind of becomes a fixed cost associated with making the movie. However I guess they still have the option that if the movie turns out to be really stinky then they can bury it and not spend so much on the marketing after all. However I suspect that in such a situation the NBC bits of the marketing budget might remain in place.

 

Freya

[Phil Rhodes]

 

 

while a thing might cost x to make, surely how much you spend marketing it is a different thing

 

What you choose to include or exclude should be included on both sides of the equation.

 

Otherwise, the tenet of the entire conversation is insane; we're saying "Well, the movie cost X to make not including distribution costs, but we've only made 2.5X including distribution costs."

 

I mean, OK, that follows in extremis, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense to admit that modern Hollywood moviemaking actually costs about three times what they claim it does, as an end-to-end business.

 

P

[Mark Dunn]

 

 

I mean, OK, that follows in extremis, but it makes a hell of a lot more sense to admit that modern Hollywood moviemaking actually costs about three times what they claim it does, as an end-to-end business.

 

P

Consider the difference between turnover and profit, and also agent's commission.

Say it costs me £10 to create a photograph which I sell through my agent, who takes 50%.

I need sales of £20 to break even, but that doesn't mean the photograph cost £20. It still cost £10. The distribution, if you like to call it that, through my agent isn't a cost to me in accounting terms. It's just that I only see half the "gross".

Edited October 13, 2015 by Mark Dunn

[Gregory Irwin]

I've always known it to be 2.5x to 3x the budget to break even. I remember being taught that way back in film school. The marketing, merchandizing, distribution and exhibition costs totally makes sense to that conclusion. But that doesn't mean first box office run either. Between so many new exhibition outlets whether it's the cinema, cable TV, airlines or downloads, it's now pretty hard for a picture not to make money over time. The U.S. military is even a huge exhibition market for feature films as well as TV shows that are exclusive for troops whether they are in country or abroad.

 

G