John E Clark Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 (edited) For me the 'reasoning' for 3x is thus... an investor wants payback. And at 2x, well there are other things that an investor can do with their money that has a better 'guarantee' of pay back at 2x than a 'film'. So, at 3x, the 'gambler' investor may be more inclined to ante up, and so, the film gets made. I think this sort of the reasoning for Vulture Capitalist who invest in small businesses, and expect 10x on their investment. The reason for the 10x is that they may invest in 10 projects, and 9 fail... because small companies may not make it to the big time... but that one gusher pays for the other failed investments... (well the investments aren't 'up in smoke'... except for that dot.com boomtobust a few years back... but the residual sell of usually doesn't match up dollar for dollar on the original investment...). Successful VCs have better pay backs than 10:1... but that's the idea... In the film business, getting 3x means that there could be 1-2 flops, but investors may still make money... a string flops pulls the plug on the studio... and the name gets bought out by a firm which has no idea how to make a movie, but buys it anyway... as part of their diversification program... for example Engulf and Devour... a corporate shark that has long since vacated the Hollywood waters... Edited October 13, 2015 by John E Clark Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Black Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 Flops coming in 2016: Tarzan. This is going to bomb like a rock unless someone does something really special with it. Ben Hur. More chance than Tarzan I guess but it's going to need to be exceptional. Maybe: Petes Dragon : Disney, so it's in with a good chance but probably their least likely for success. Narnia - The Silver Chair : Narnia has a built in audience but I expect this to be a matter of diminishing returns. Could easily work out if they can keep the budget down, but can they do that? Assasians Creed: Computer Games do not have a great track record and I'm betting on Warcraft to do way better than this but lets see, it could be a bit more compelling than it appears on paper. Obviously with all these things it depends on how much they spend on making them. Freya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 Re Pan: "The film is a special-effects extravaganza, with virtually no real sets." Hmmmmm, maybe people that actually go to places like Africa and shoot with real animals in real locations have a real chance in the market place. :rolleyes: R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 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 Yes, that's all very true. But a 150 million budget and the 3X multiple is a huge hurdle to overcome. Plus there are also costs involved at every step of the roll-out after theatrical. A DVD run is very expensive, there's duplication, marketing (again), plus the retailers take a big bite out of the sale price 35-50%. I think The Goonies is in the black though, it was made in the 80s and is still showing up as a top seller on the DVD sales charts. :) R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Keith Walters Posted October 14, 2015 Premium Member Share Posted October 14, 2015 Like a lot of films I suspect Tomorrowland suffered from the “Too Many Cooks” syndrome. Most of the movie was done is a lighthearted tongue-in-cheek fashion, but then we suddenly have these homicidal androids blasting unsuspecting people to pieces for no logical reason, which suddenly darkened the whole mood of the film. It’s like some ignorant executive-who-feels-he-must-be-seen-to-have-an-input decided that the film was too “juvenile” and they needed to throw in some extreme violence to make it more relevant to adult audiences.To me the effect was more like the way Bollywood producers will follow an extremely gory shoot-em-up scene with a bubbleheaded song and dance number.... I really liked John Carter, particularly because, rather than getting some hack writer to "modernize" they story, they made some effort to make it look like something that might have actually been made at the time the books were written, but using modern film making technologies. The most excruciating aspect of this project was that it was originally going to be called “John Carter of Mars” like the original book, but some un-named executive at Disney decided they should remove the “of Mars” part, apparently because Mars Needs Moms turned out to be such a stinker…. The Marvel people seem to keep turning out moneymakers at no great expense, at least the ones where the original Marvel comics people are involved (Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers etc). The ones where they lost control of the franchises (Spider-Man, Fantastic Four etc) have never done anywhere as well. On the other hand, their main comics competitors, DC comics, have had only moderate success with their characters, (Superman, Green Lantern etc). Batman has been the only real success story, but the movie character doesn’t really bear much resemblance to the original DC comics character. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John E Clark Posted October 15, 2015 Share Posted October 15, 2015 Flops coming in 2016: Tarzan. This is going to bomb like a rock unless someone does something really special with it. Ben Hur. More chance than Tarzan I guess but it's going to need to be exceptional. Perhaps they can digitally drop Bo into "Tarzan"... "Ben Hur"... bet they won't have a stunt where everyone swore that the guy died... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 25, 2015 Share Posted October 25, 2015 Well the carnage continues, yeeeesh. I think we all knew Steve Jobs would not be of interest beyond the "intellectual" crowds that showed up in the big cities for the limited release. As for the rest of the bombs, one has to wonder how long Hollywood can keep this up and still pay for the guard at the studio gate?https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/post/131887354526/box-office-massacre-last-witch-hunter R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Jay Young Posted October 26, 2015 Premium Member Share Posted October 26, 2015 Bridge of Spies, and The Last Witch Hunter are on my list of films to see very soon - as is the new del Toro film Crimson Peak. I have yet to see Tomorrowland, as it's off the cinema, (maybe at the dollar movies) but I'd love to see it no matter how terrible. With all these terrible films coming out, what does the audience actually WANT to see? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Miguel Angel Posted October 26, 2015 Premium Member Share Posted October 26, 2015 Steve Jobs has not been released in a lot of countries yet and some of the dates are even for 2016! so I think it might have a chance to get good results. . With all these terrible films coming out, what does the audience actually WANT to see? Netflix shows and movies with interesting scripts? :D Have a good day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted October 26, 2015 Share Posted October 26, 2015 what does the audience actually WANT to see? Literally the billion dollar question. R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 11, 2015 Share Posted November 11, 2015 Quite interesting. Funny thing is, the studios will still bank on the teams behind these films, over and over again. https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/post/133000659476/new-movie-flops-so-badly-its-pulled-from-cinemas R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Keith Walters Posted November 12, 2015 Premium Member Share Posted November 12, 2015 Ah well, this is the "Democratization of FIlm" that so many Red and DVX User Fanboys fought and died for :-) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted November 12, 2015 Premium Member Share Posted November 12, 2015 With all these terrible films coming out, what does the audience actually WANT to see? This is the problem... filmmakers shouldn't care what audiences want to see. They should create a unique and interesting piece of art that will find a home of it's own. Just look at the last two P.T. Anderson films; 'The Master' and 'Inherent Vice' neither one did well at the box office, but holy poop were they interesting stories. Made in America, decent sized budgets, top cast, 65mm origination on 'The Master' I mean, all the elements were there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Freya Black Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 Quite interesting. Funny thing is, the studios will still bank on the teams behind these films, over and over again. https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/post/133000659476/new-movie-flops-so-badly-its-pulled-from-cinemas R, Well the teams behind the films have very good track records. Danny Boyle has made a lot of successful and respected movies and is supposed to have done a good job on the Steve Jobs movie. It's had great reviews but I just don't think that a movie about the ex CEO of apple computers is something with that much mass market appeal. The Jem and the Holograms movie on the other hand is widely said to be crap but then to be fair it was only given a $5 million budget. Again Jason Blum is someone who has a good track record and has had a lot of success with movies of this kind of budget but that is in the horror genre. The problem with this movie is that somewhere along the line they decided to do away with all the superhero weird colourful sci-fi stuff and transform the movie into a story of an ordinary struggling pop singer or something. Basically they made a not very interesting Disney TV movie out of it that was largely unrelated to the original property. Then they decided to take it wide. I actually think the bad decisions are at the studios themselves (perhaps that's what you meant?) but then Universal are having a fantastic year over all apparently. Dinosaurs. Freya Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted November 12, 2015 Share Posted November 12, 2015 but then Universal are having a fantastic year over all apparently. Dinosaurs. Freya I guess that's how the studios have stayed afloat for about 100 years now. You make 10 movies, you know three will crash, burn, and bomb. Four will break even, and three will be home runs. And hopefully the home runs cover the costs on the ones that bombed. For me as an independent producer, I always find it amusing that the people who tell me, sorry your project has no commercial value, are the very same people that green-light massive box office flops. R, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Keith Walters Posted November 12, 2015 Premium Member Share Posted November 12, 2015 Well it's the same old story; some imbecile in a business suit gets paid $50 million over four years to lose a company $5 billion dollars, and then finally gets given an obscene golden handshake just to get rid of him. Meanwhile the guy selling hot dogs on the sidewalk outside makes about $20,000 profit a year. So who's the more efficient businessman? Somehow in the public's perception the plus and minus signs get confused or erased. It's a bit like the Irish union Rep joke: "Well I've got good news and bad news. "The bad news is, we have to take a pay cut. "The GOOD news is, I managed to get it backdated...." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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