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Wed Dec 16
25 posts in the last 24 hours
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I expect Moon to get a wider (if not, say, Transformers wide) release during fall or the post-holiday winter doldrums. Any money if makes would be gravy and that's generally the time when studios role out any Oscar bait / whatever they have lying around in order to make a little prestige/money between blockbuster seasons.
@CodenameV: I will go for District 9. As much as I love Star Trek Universe, it needs to take a break. I don't want to see the rehash of old stuff and start develop something new already.
District 9 was nothing new, but at least it felt fresh.
@FlannaMaynard: isn't that shit crazy? i started reading articles on this one a few weeks ago when the foreign numbers swelled past 500 million. The current total, 675 foreign is the third hightest behind TITANIC and RETURN OF THE KING. Of course, those number don't factor in inflation....
You do realize that's not how movie profit works, right? The late Don Simpson who never made a movie for any reason but money said you have to make 3x your budget before a film really achieves profitability. I won't even get into how profit-sharing cuts into that. Because of the deals Bruce Willis and Michael Bay had, Armageddon, which cost $140 and made over $500M worldwide didn't make money until it hit video.
I'm not really sure how you can really put Moon on this listing. It was never released widely - in fact, it's not even playing anywhere nearby here until the end of October. I'd struggle to give it the definition of a summer movie. The rest on the list are all "blockbusters".
District 9 deserves to make even more money than that. An ambitious, thoughtful, and intelligent movie doesn't come along every summer, and I'm overjoyed to see that it's paid off for both Peter Jackson and Neil Blomkamp. It just reassures me to know that once in a while you can be creative and still be successful.
@Allen_Richards:
I was just thinking the same thing... why would you leave out the foreign box office take? Transformers 2 made over 800 million world wide. Yes the film was crap, but in all fairness, give the devil his due.
@Cash907Censored: Terminator 4's domestic take only accounted for 1/3 of its total boxoffice, about 370 million. Not the 830 million Transformers banked, but nothing to be ashamed of. If you want to move away from Sci-fi, 500 Days of Summer cost 7.5 million and has banked over 30 million. Not bad for an indie-flick.
@CParis: The equation gets even more complicated when you start breaking down exactly how much of the boxoffice take from week to week goes back to cover the studio's production costs vs. the distributors' take, which I think was mentioned teh last time we started talking boxoffice numbers. Since so many of these numbers aren't disclosed, it would be almost impossible for Greame to do something more in depth.
@Allen_Richards:
Agree! But then it sort of defeats the purpose of the article when everyone makes the assumption that Movie X with a low budget had better ROI than Movie Y with a big budget, so that proves why more "small" films should be made.
Everyone will just be crying again next year when YARM or 'Splodyfest gets the greenlight.
@CParis: And that's the problem with the concept of "roi", which is really only used when attracting financial backers. A great current example of how complicated this can be is INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, a 70 million budget versus totals of 114 million domestic and 231 world wide. In order to calculate a proper return on investment, you have to decide how you want to approach the question. Wiensten Co. only funded $35 million of the project and receives the U.S. boxoffice coin. Another company funded the other 35 and gets the foreign loot.
hell, we could all night and break these numbers, but since we aren't the accountants we'll never know exactly where the money goes and a true ROI.
This summer was a bust for me. I wanted to see District 9, but never went. I wanted to see Moon, but never went. I had high hopes for Terminator, but read the reviews beforehand, so never went to see it. The only sci-fi movie I saw all summer long was Star Trek, which I thought was ok but severely overrated. My best movie experience overall was Up.
Only about half of those movies were actually good (Star Trek XI, Moon, District 9), which is pretty awesome since we're talking about summer movies. Though I don't know if I'd count Star Trek XI as a summer movie since it came out in early May.
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District 9 was nothing new, but at least it felt fresh.
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Star Trek XI: 7. I think Abrams is overrated and the plot itself sucked, good acting, though.
Transformers II: 6. Why are all the humans taking up all the Awesome-Robot time? Gimme some Prime!
Ice Age 3: 6 1/2. Buck was danged funny.
G.I. Joe: 8. Okay acting, Rugged Dennis Quaid, shirtless ninja fight. My standards were so low, it actually surpassed them.
09/27/09
*shudder*
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A movie that's a four to me is any movie with Jessica Alba.
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I was just thinking the same thing... why would you leave out the foreign box office take? Transformers 2 made over 800 million world wide. Yes the film was crap, but in all fairness, give the devil his due.
09/27/09
@CParis: The equation gets even more complicated when you start breaking down exactly how much of the boxoffice take from week to week goes back to cover the studio's production costs vs. the distributors' take, which I think was mentioned teh last time we started talking boxoffice numbers. Since so many of these numbers aren't disclosed, it would be almost impossible for Greame to do something more in depth.
09/27/09
Agree! But then it sort of defeats the purpose of the article when everyone makes the assumption that Movie X with a low budget had better ROI than Movie Y with a big budget, so that proves why more "small" films should be made.
Everyone will just be crying again next year when YARM or 'Splodyfest gets the greenlight.
09/27/09
hell, we could all night and break these numbers, but since we aren't the accountants we'll never know exactly where the money goes and a true ROI.
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Now we know who to blame for G.I. Joe II-IX !!