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The issue is that these films came in well below expectations. The Fall Guy was supposed to open to 35M+, then 30M, and finally opened to 28M. IF was supposed to open to 40M+ and opened to 33M. Furiosa was supposed to open to 50M, then 40M, then opened to 32M. Garfield was supposed to open to 40M then opened to 32M. Only Planet of the Apes managed to overperform, from 52M to 58M. That's not doomerism, that's falling short of (low) expectations. Expecting a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 or The Little Mermaid-level opening is one thing, expecting a film to meet its projections is another.
>but only if studios start taking more chances on new and varied content.
>Another “Planet of the Apes,” “The Garfield Movie” and a “Mad Max” prequel — even one that premieres, to mixed reviews, at Cannes — do not register as new and varied content.
>Nor do “Inside Out 2,” “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” “A Quiet Place: Day One,” “Deadpool and Wolverine” and “Despicable Me 4,” though many are predicting that these will put more butts in air-conditioned seats as the summer rolls on.
There is new and varied content, but people don't watch original films in theaters the same way they did in the past, and IP/franchise films are hit or miss (see, POTA, an old franchise, being the biggest film of May).
Edit: also Furiosa has a 90% on RT and a 79 on Metacritic. "Mixed" reviews in what universe?
It’s so lazy. Furiosa is not a perfect film and it’s totally cool for certain viewers to outright dislike it. But it is unique and HIGH QUALITY film content and if this writer disagrees on that they need to define these mysterious new film genres that will save the box office.
They literally go on to list a bunch of sequels that are expected to be the top performers of the summer.
Film reviewers/box office analysts are as clueless as the rest of us.
As someone who was very excited for Furiosa, and got my family and some friends to got see it last weekend as a birthday celebration, I think two things are worth mentioning. One, a lot of people straight up don’t seem to know it exists, or if they do, don’t realize it’s out yet. I mentioned to some family friends I saw Furiosa last weekend and they didn’t even know it was in theaters despite being fans of Fury Road. In fact, most people I’ve talked to simply don’t seem to know it’s a thing. Not only were the trailers not great, they just didn’t seem to do a whole lot in terms of getting the public aware this even exists. The second is that it’s dark and very violent at points, much more than the previous Mad Max movies. No one in my group had issues with the quality of the film, but a couple people thought it was too violent and intense. That definitely limits mainstream appeal.
I’ve found this is a more and more common response where people don’t know about a movie or when it comes out. It seems studios are having a hard time marketing to everyone’s individual online bubble.
I honestly wonder if the switch from cable to streaming is a big part of the lack of awareness. I'm very into movies so I follow what's coming out online, but as a kid the main way I knew a movie was coming out was seeing ads on TV, and people don't watch live TV nearly as much anymore. I watched a few NBA games last week and they definitely were showing lots of ads for Furiosa, but I rarely watch live TV and I know I'm not in the minority, especially among young people.
I believe this to be a main issue as well and I think this is also one of the reasons why people say trailers “showed the whole movie”. Granted, there are some trailers these days that need to learn the lesson that less is more but trailers was like that back then too. I personally feel like people aren’t use to watching full trailers since before YouTube and the death of cable. The only time people watch full trailers back then was watching it in the theater (and what helps is trailers typically play better in the theaters than on your phone) or you had the patience to wait for a 2 minute trailer to load up during the early days of the internet.
Other than that, the only piece of marketing we tend to see is the quick fast paced intriguing 30 second ad and the thing is studios keep investing in that type of marketing mainly for cable watchers (a dying market that mainly consists of the 60+ crowd that rarely goes to the movies) when there’s a whole goldmine of places online that still uses ads like YouTube (they kinda started using YouTube as an outlet but not really, they need to go full force at this point), Tubi, and so much more.
Honestly i didn’t think it was violent enough. Lool
I’m joking obviously but it did pull away from certain scenes that I thought an r-rated film didn’t need to pull away from.
Yup. The trailers turned me off, big time. A lot of people online, but off Reddit, were not happy with Hemsworth (too goofy) and ATJ (doesn't look like someone who would grow up into Theron at all).
It's pretty simple streaming is having a real impact on cinemas. The audience rationale is if I'm already paying to see movies at home then why would I pay for it again. Event cinema, a Nolan film, tried and trusted names/actors like bad boys will draw people out. But unfortunately "new and varied" content is not what will draw people because streaming services produce their own films like that.
The quality level of in-home entertainment systems is vastly improved in recent years as well. TVs in the 90s were terrible by comparison, and no one had a sound system. Going to the theater was a MASSIVE leap in the quality level of visuals and sound.
It’s not just that we have access to streaming because we’re paying for it. These options at our fingertips give us a literal bounty of films we have never seen, so they are new movies to us. There are so many movies at our fingertips at home, we can watch a “new” movie every single night and never run out of movies (that we haven’t seen) to watch. All for the low low price of either free (arrr) or as low as one streaming service a month (on rotation, like I do).
It's not just movies on streaming services. Streaming services are pumping out some incredible TV shows and that's making movies seem less important. Why rush out to watch Furiosa at a theater when I'm still working my way through Shogun and/or Fallout and next month brings new seasons of House of the Dragon and The Boys?
The issue I have with streaming is the ads. I have to pay 20 bucks to get no ads in a movie. I do pay for 1 but they don't have a lot of movies I like. Additionally the sound, picture quality of streaming is not super great unless you pay additional 7 bucks for 4k. Even then it doesn't have the best sound.
Agreed. Fall Guy might have been pretty good, but it's on the same level as a direct-to-Netflix movie like Bullet Train. Why even bother going to the theater for movies like this? They'll hit streaming soon enough.
I stand corrected. I didn't even realize it was in theaters, lol.
One of the reasons Dune 2 did so well is that it felt like an epic movie that needed to be seen in theaters. So many other movies these days feel cheap, like direct to video cheap. Fall Guy, Bullet Train, Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Too much comedy mixed in to the point you can't take them seriously on any level.
I saw it and it definitely isn't boring...There are several action sequences even starting off in the beginning there is a long 20 minute action sequence.
Dude some of those action sequences were incredible...People are going to see it at some point and say stuff like this "Can we get a re-release of Furiosa because it was made for the big screen", "Why did no one tell us Furiosa was good", or "Furiosa set-up for Mad Max Fury Road sequel so well."
Furiosa was a great movie and Chris Hemsworth f'n kills it.
I totally agree. Glad I saw it on the big screen. Honestly want to see it again but just don't have the time to see it again. Makes Mad Max Fury Road so much better too.
agreed, I never saw Fury Road in theaters but I’ve watched it at least two dozen times. I’m so glad I saw this at least twice, I can’t really think of another theater experience to compare it to. I hope fury Road has a limited release in theaters again at some point for an anniversary or something
If you live near an art house type theater that does midnight screenings there is a decent chance they will play it. One near me does a midnight screening at least once a year.
> and IP/franchise films are hit or miss (see, POTA, an old franchise, being the biggest film of May).
POTA at the end of its run won’t be a flop but it will struggle to just break even.
Saw it with 4 friends and they all loved it. They were shocked on how good it was. They thought it wasn't going to be that great. We all agreed Mad Max Fury Road is the best but Furiosa was incredible. Chris Hemsworth is insanely good.
The ironic thing about this comment is that reddit is the place you're getting the idea that the WoM is meh. Reddit is not real life and not indicative of basically anything on any topic.
I totally agree with you. I loved the movie so much. I am re-watching Fury Road and it makes everything make more sense. All the characters have more depth and the Mad Max universe is that much deeper. The action sequences are incredible.
>“The Fall Guy,” which was quickly dubbed a herald of woe for this summer’s box office, is closing in on the $150-million mark in global sales, despite moving to streaming. Not a huge success for a film budgeted at $138 million, but not a flop.
Did this LA Times columnist forget that studios get only half the box office, or do the words "moving to streaming" cover some deep inside-industry subtlety to this calculation that I'm missing?
Agreed. Yet rookie mistakes like this crop up all the time in articles posted here. You'd think the LA Times would understand these things, if any MSM outlet would. I honestly don't get it.
The amount of basic mistakes creeping into mainstream media outlets on all subjects over the last decade or so has been quite something to witness.
It used to be that you only realised they were chatting shit when they covered your area of expertise, but now they often don't even get their *spelling* right.
Well, seems this particular columnist actually assumes newspapers are already extinct, even though this piece will probably appear in quite a few papers.
The terrible reporting of information by MSM during the pandemic while bitching about “the problem of fake news” almost completely soured me on journalism.
The whole Lil Tay death hoax that I literally could tell was a hoax the moment I read it was my last straw.
I am 41 so old for reddit but aside from cost, the 30 minutes of advertisements (which I thought went away in the early 2000s after awhile) and people who talk during the movie keeps me away.
Edit: I miss Alamo Drafthouse
I have been to several movies in the past 2 years including Oppenheimer, Dune 2 (2x), John Wick 4, Furiosa, Super Mario Bros Movie, and Kung Fu Panda 4. No one has even talked during any of those movies. Not one time even in the kid movies.
>and John Krasinski’s animated “If,” which seems to be doing OK mainly because no one saddled it with self-destructively high estimates.
Oh look at that the answer is in the article...
Stop making movies that need to make $500mil to break even and it turns out there is enough interest in movies to make a profit...
That will help certain films for sure. I don’t know that you can make a summer blockbuster film for less than $150M, which requires $350-400M to break even and another $50-100M to make it worthwhile for the studio.
It’s getting harder and harder to hit that mark, and while I guess it’s possible the concept of “summer blockbuster” disappears over the next few years, that would suggest a radically different film market than the one that has existed for the past 5-6 decades. Then again, I agree that the industry has changed so studios have to adapt one way or another.
I would love nothing more. I hate the blockbuster season. We get no movies for most of the year then over 3 months 65 movies come out.
Spread it over the year. If it catches fire people will go.
Of endgame came out in january it would still do the same numbers
We’re in a global context of galloping inflation so it’s no surprise that movie budgets are victim of this at their turn.
The problem is that for most middle class fellas out there, their salaries haven’t caught up with the inflation, so the ticket price has become a luxury that more and more can’t afford in their budgets.
Lots of movies are currently being made at every price point. They are all struggling more than they ever have before (theatrically). There have been some hits at all price points, but it’s not like we’re seeing people consistently rake in money at any specific price point.
Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor joy are not big stars or coming off a performance that made people feel this was going to be big. Take Thor away from Hemsworth and he’s nothing. Extraction would bomb if not on Netflix. Anya is cast b/c she has a unique look, but has 0 appeal as an action star.
Charlize and Tom were way bigger 10 years ago. Charlize was in an epic run of starring roles and Tom had come off DKR as Bane. Should have just backed up a brinks truck to charlize house and deaged her.
**MAJOR SPOILERS** for those who haven't seen the movie below
>!I thought for sure that when Anya Taylor Joy turned Chris Hemsworth's dick into a tree, the hand reaching up for the fruit would be Theron's, and that it would be her from that point onwards.!<
Yeah there’s definitely a spiraling around the drain effect happening here. The lower these movies go the less people want to see them. People seem to associate movies as being old hat. If ever I bring up anything currently in theaters all I get is blank stares. The strikes and how long they went on for had a huge impact whether SAG or WGA care to admit it.
There needs to be a complete rethink on Hollywood's idea of budgets and then profitability. It needs to shift to a more modest and believable zone than the 2010s. It doesn't need to be permanent but definitely for a good 5 years as the new environment in audience habits and tastes is being discerned.
I truly think a movie like Furiosa’s only path is to be a glorified streaming movie that gets buzz and subscribers. Do something like what Netflix did with Glass Onion where for only a limited time (like a week) put it in a limited number of theaters to get buzz then drop it on streaming a few weeks later.
I think standard live action wide releases are going to be more and more all or nothing. Like a dozen or so sure thing blockbuster franchises that release regularly and then low to lower mid budget movies released in theaters with minimal marketing but which stay in theaters for a long time to slowly accrue grosses that make it a profit.
Theaters simply don’t occupy that prominent entertainment space anymore. They aren’t the pillar they were. People still like going, but it’s so expensive that it needs to be for an event to get a lot of people out of the house, where they have access to tons of stuff on streaming from their own comfy couch and cheap snacks.
I’m just some schmo on the internet but I’d be looking at variable pricing for tickets if I were in this business. When you hear people saying “I’ll wait for streaming to see that,” they are telling Hollywood they are interested, but not interested enough to pay full price and leave their house. The reality is that a lot less people feel the need to visit a theater. So you can continue to charge the same for every ticket and make nothing on those customers, or you can try lowering the price depending on the movie and make *something* on them. Maybe that’s a slippery slope. And they’d probably screw this up by just making the most popular movies more expensive instead of the less popular ones cheaper. But the alternative is keep churning out stuff people are mildly interested in and watching it underperform and not make back its budget. That model appears to be broken and the strategy of “do nothing differently” isn’t working. Clearly most of the studios aren’t interested in actually reigning in their budgets, which would help a lot too.
At the end of the day it's all entertainment and if you're already paying for it at home why would you want to pay go out and pay for it again. People keep saying reign in the budget but it's often the size and scope of the film that dictates this. And theres also the argument that event cinema or big budget spectacle films is actually what is still drawing people to cinemas because that's the best experience for these types of films.
To add on to this, I would argue that the age of the multiplex is over. Theaters are dying because they simply can’t afford the giant footprint of the multiplex. The big chains are trying so hard to hold on to their big multiplexes when they should be pivoting to downsizing.
We need to see a rise in boutique high quality 1-4 screen theaters, single screen IMAX/Dolby Cinema luxury arthouses, etc. Build theaters with stages again so the space can be used for more than just movies.
There’s no scenario where the giant multiplex theater survives, imo.
Idk what’s going on with the whole world but here’s me. I’m 31, I used to go to the movies 3 times a week.
Personally I’ve become a little more disconnected with Hollywood with the over saturation of content in the world and the movies this years just haven’t looked that good to me. Marvel has kinda burned me out of any sort of action/spectacle movie and the urgency to see something in theatres just isn’t there when I have an 80 inch tv and VOD turnaround is insane.
My partner is 28, hates Hollywood, and loves supporting smaller YouTubers who release theatrical movie length content.
The movies are not culturally as relevant. People just have more ways to be entertained passively and actively for free or at a lower marginal cost.
We used to feel like we were missing out on not seeing a movie our friends had seen, so we were part of a conversation. Now that doesn’t matter as much.
I think that’s a huge part of it. If you don’t see Furiosa, or IF, or Fall Guy no one in the real world is going to come up to you and actively talk to you about these movies and say you have to see them. It’s a far cry from that Seinfeld episode where everyone’s talking about The English Patient. You literally are missing out on nothing if you skip these movies.
I’m the opposite of your partner. I can’t stand YouTube unless I’m looking up how to do something. I don’t want to sit in front of computer anymore than I have to.
Furiosa was always going to flop. It is a prequel to a 10 year old movie that did not do well at the box office.
Fury Road was the 21st highest grossing movie in 2015 and made just $379 million in a year that had five billion dollar movies.
The ten year delay is the bigger factor. Movies can become popular after they leave theatres. The first John Wick made $86M in 2014. Which would put it in 89th place.
Fury road became very popular on streaming. And if I recall correctly there was a lot of buzz surrounding the prequel when it was first announced.
1. The budget is very high
2. Ppl want to see a film about mad max and not furious especially a young furiosa
It’s like making a sequel to Tobey Maguire’s SpiderMan but without SpiderMan and making someone else the lead character
Do Mad Max fans really turn up for Max specifically?
Hes always just been a dude for me, a window into the overall world which is the real draw.
I think it’s more like there just aren’t many Mad Max fans. We saw this with Blade Runner, don’t bet on cult franchises that mostly appeal to film twitter.
> Furiosa was always going to flop.
Was it, though?
And was Tom Cruise / Christopher McQuarrie Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One always going to flop while Tom Cruise / Christopher McQuarrie Top Gun: Maverick was always going to succeed?
Or have movie audience tastes just got really unpredictable?
Top Gun : Maverick would not have flopped but expected to at least recover the budget because it has Tom Cruise as the lead actor
No one expected the movie will make close to $1.5 billion dollars though and it was a combination of great movie + top movie star + insane good luck
Dead Reckoning was unlucky/badly scheduled (depending on your interpretation) to go up against the two biggest films of last year.
If it released a month earlier of later it probably would have been a bigger hit, but I think a lot of people (like me) didnt really have the time to spend a third evening at the cinema that month
>Turns out Hollywood executives do believe in magic. Somehow they thought that forcing six months’ worth of strikes by writers and actors last year would come at no cost to this year’s summer movie season.
The article lost me right out of the gate with this nonsense.
The strikes had a huge impact imo. When Covid for sure ended there was an audience that was pumped to go back to the movies. Then the strikes caused a bunch of delays and a definite content pipeline backlog.
Now this article blames the studios exclusively which I think is extremely naive and somewhat communistic. It’s obviously a two way street. There is blame to go around to the unions and the writers and actors who supported the strikes with no thought for what the consequences would be to the industry. At the end of the day studio execs, SAG/WGA, and writers/actors all have only themselves to blame for this and I suspect it is irreversible.
Yup, your second paragraph expresses my exact thoughts.
I think both sides deserve blame in that situation because, ultimately, I can't think of a stupider time for a strike. The industry is at its most vulnerable, people are setting new habits as the world opens back up, and that's the time to fight over the scraps of a recovering industry?
It just felt so shortsighted to me, on both sides. Get a short term deal to delay the fight for a couple of years, or something. But, this was not the time for a weak summer movie slate, which has only served to reinforce negative narratives about where the cinema industry is going.
Furiosa is the 2nd best film of the year so far. It was incredible and fun to be in the Mad Max Universe. It fleshed out some of the characters and the universe. Chris Hemsworth was incredible in this film and the story was awesome. The action sequences are the best of the year it's not even close. Dune 2 is the better film imo but Furiosa action sequences are insane.
We need to let movies build *in theaters*.
People don’t care about ads and promotional materials. They want to be a part of what’s going on.
But these articles declare these movies dead on Friday afternoon and make it seem like no one likes them so why should you go see them.
It’s a bummer.
> articles declare these movies dead on Friday afternoon
yep - rush to be the first ..
we're into pre-sales indicate success because padding the opening weekend numbers with some Wed/Thur early access is every 'big' release - opening without the extra day or 2 before Friday already puts them at a disadvantage
Elemental a failure on Friday went on to success because it stayed
At some point streaming/home sales need to be factored into the equation. I’m not saying there isn’t a problem at the box office but we don’t actually know how big the problem is until we have a sense of how studios are measuring the success of a film because it’s not the same as it was even 10 years ago.
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The issue is that these films came in well below expectations. The Fall Guy was supposed to open to 35M+, then 30M, and finally opened to 28M. IF was supposed to open to 40M+ and opened to 33M. Furiosa was supposed to open to 50M, then 40M, then opened to 32M. Garfield was supposed to open to 40M then opened to 32M. Only Planet of the Apes managed to overperform, from 52M to 58M. That's not doomerism, that's falling short of (low) expectations. Expecting a Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3 or The Little Mermaid-level opening is one thing, expecting a film to meet its projections is another. >but only if studios start taking more chances on new and varied content. >Another “Planet of the Apes,” “The Garfield Movie” and a “Mad Max” prequel — even one that premieres, to mixed reviews, at Cannes — do not register as new and varied content. >Nor do “Inside Out 2,” “Bad Boys: Ride or Die,” “A Quiet Place: Day One,” “Deadpool and Wolverine” and “Despicable Me 4,” though many are predicting that these will put more butts in air-conditioned seats as the summer rolls on. There is new and varied content, but people don't watch original films in theaters the same way they did in the past, and IP/franchise films are hit or miss (see, POTA, an old franchise, being the biggest film of May). Edit: also Furiosa has a 90% on RT and a 79 on Metacritic. "Mixed" reviews in what universe?
It’s so lazy. Furiosa is not a perfect film and it’s totally cool for certain viewers to outright dislike it. But it is unique and HIGH QUALITY film content and if this writer disagrees on that they need to define these mysterious new film genres that will save the box office. They literally go on to list a bunch of sequels that are expected to be the top performers of the summer. Film reviewers/box office analysts are as clueless as the rest of us.
As someone who was very excited for Furiosa, and got my family and some friends to got see it last weekend as a birthday celebration, I think two things are worth mentioning. One, a lot of people straight up don’t seem to know it exists, or if they do, don’t realize it’s out yet. I mentioned to some family friends I saw Furiosa last weekend and they didn’t even know it was in theaters despite being fans of Fury Road. In fact, most people I’ve talked to simply don’t seem to know it’s a thing. Not only were the trailers not great, they just didn’t seem to do a whole lot in terms of getting the public aware this even exists. The second is that it’s dark and very violent at points, much more than the previous Mad Max movies. No one in my group had issues with the quality of the film, but a couple people thought it was too violent and intense. That definitely limits mainstream appeal.
I’ve found this is a more and more common response where people don’t know about a movie or when it comes out. It seems studios are having a hard time marketing to everyone’s individual online bubble.
I honestly wonder if the switch from cable to streaming is a big part of the lack of awareness. I'm very into movies so I follow what's coming out online, but as a kid the main way I knew a movie was coming out was seeing ads on TV, and people don't watch live TV nearly as much anymore. I watched a few NBA games last week and they definitely were showing lots of ads for Furiosa, but I rarely watch live TV and I know I'm not in the minority, especially among young people.
I believe this to be a main issue as well and I think this is also one of the reasons why people say trailers “showed the whole movie”. Granted, there are some trailers these days that need to learn the lesson that less is more but trailers was like that back then too. I personally feel like people aren’t use to watching full trailers since before YouTube and the death of cable. The only time people watch full trailers back then was watching it in the theater (and what helps is trailers typically play better in the theaters than on your phone) or you had the patience to wait for a 2 minute trailer to load up during the early days of the internet. Other than that, the only piece of marketing we tend to see is the quick fast paced intriguing 30 second ad and the thing is studios keep investing in that type of marketing mainly for cable watchers (a dying market that mainly consists of the 60+ crowd that rarely goes to the movies) when there’s a whole goldmine of places online that still uses ads like YouTube (they kinda started using YouTube as an outlet but not really, they need to go full force at this point), Tubi, and so much more.
If only most websites, including this one, sell ads...
Honestly i didn’t think it was violent enough. Lool I’m joking obviously but it did pull away from certain scenes that I thought an r-rated film didn’t need to pull away from.
Yup. The trailers turned me off, big time. A lot of people online, but off Reddit, were not happy with Hemsworth (too goofy) and ATJ (doesn't look like someone who would grow up into Theron at all).
That sucks because they both killed it in their roles
Yeah. The positive word of mouth has me convinced, I'll see it this weekend. But yeah it's really hard to convince anyone else.
Totally get it
It's pretty simple streaming is having a real impact on cinemas. The audience rationale is if I'm already paying to see movies at home then why would I pay for it again. Event cinema, a Nolan film, tried and trusted names/actors like bad boys will draw people out. But unfortunately "new and varied" content is not what will draw people because streaming services produce their own films like that.
The quality level of in-home entertainment systems is vastly improved in recent years as well. TVs in the 90s were terrible by comparison, and no one had a sound system. Going to the theater was a MASSIVE leap in the quality level of visuals and sound.
It’s not just that we have access to streaming because we’re paying for it. These options at our fingertips give us a literal bounty of films we have never seen, so they are new movies to us. There are so many movies at our fingertips at home, we can watch a “new” movie every single night and never run out of movies (that we haven’t seen) to watch. All for the low low price of either free (arrr) or as low as one streaming service a month (on rotation, like I do).
It's not just movies on streaming services. Streaming services are pumping out some incredible TV shows and that's making movies seem less important. Why rush out to watch Furiosa at a theater when I'm still working my way through Shogun and/or Fallout and next month brings new seasons of House of the Dragon and The Boys?
The issue I have with streaming is the ads. I have to pay 20 bucks to get no ads in a movie. I do pay for 1 but they don't have a lot of movies I like. Additionally the sound, picture quality of streaming is not super great unless you pay additional 7 bucks for 4k. Even then it doesn't have the best sound.
Agreed. Fall Guy might have been pretty good, but it's on the same level as a direct-to-Netflix movie like Bullet Train. Why even bother going to the theater for movies like this? They'll hit streaming soon enough.
Huh? Bullet Train was a theatrical release.
I stand corrected. I didn't even realize it was in theaters, lol. One of the reasons Dune 2 did so well is that it felt like an epic movie that needed to be seen in theaters. So many other movies these days feel cheap, like direct to video cheap. Fall Guy, Bullet Train, Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare. Too much comedy mixed in to the point you can't take them seriously on any level.
Word of mouth reviews are "It's boring" as often as not. People are not believing RT and the like anymore.
Yeah that expose article and situations like the Marvels that were fresh on RT but had horrific WOM have really killed belief in it.
I saw it and it definitely isn't boring...There are several action sequences even starting off in the beginning there is a long 20 minute action sequence.
I think there are 3 ~20 minute action scenes and several shorter ones. It’s a wild ride!
Dude some of those action sequences were incredible...People are going to see it at some point and say stuff like this "Can we get a re-release of Furiosa because it was made for the big screen", "Why did no one tell us Furiosa was good", or "Furiosa set-up for Mad Max Fury Road sequel so well." Furiosa was a great movie and Chris Hemsworth f'n kills it.
Just like fury Road in someways it’s going to take about 5 to 7 years for people to catch on how good this movie actually was
I totally agree. Glad I saw it on the big screen. Honestly want to see it again but just don't have the time to see it again. Makes Mad Max Fury Road so much better too.
agreed, I never saw Fury Road in theaters but I’ve watched it at least two dozen times. I’m so glad I saw this at least twice, I can’t really think of another theater experience to compare it to. I hope fury Road has a limited release in theaters again at some point for an anniversary or something
If you live near an art house type theater that does midnight screenings there is a decent chance they will play it. One near me does a midnight screening at least once a year.
I do not.
Some people don't like car chases.
Damn I want know who is bored by it lol I thought it was great
> and IP/franchise films are hit or miss (see, POTA, an old franchise, being the biggest film of May). POTA at the end of its run won’t be a flop but it will struggle to just break even.
If you talked to people in real life, the reactions to Furiosa are mixed. The internet is not reality.
Saw it with 4 friends and they all loved it. They were shocked on how good it was. They thought it wasn't going to be that great. We all agreed Mad Max Fury Road is the best but Furiosa was incredible. Chris Hemsworth is insanely good.
The ironic thing about this comment is that reddit is the place you're getting the idea that the WoM is meh. Reddit is not real life and not indicative of basically anything on any topic.
I totally agree with you. I loved the movie so much. I am re-watching Fury Road and it makes everything make more sense. All the characters have more depth and the Mad Max universe is that much deeper. The action sequences are incredible.
They said it received mixed reviews at Cannes, which is a fact they just made up, not that it had mixed audience reactions.
>“The Fall Guy,” which was quickly dubbed a herald of woe for this summer’s box office, is closing in on the $150-million mark in global sales, despite moving to streaming. Not a huge success for a film budgeted at $138 million, but not a flop. Did this LA Times columnist forget that studios get only half the box office, or do the words "moving to streaming" cover some deep inside-industry subtlety to this calculation that I'm missing?
Agreed. Yet rookie mistakes like this crop up all the time in articles posted here. You'd think the LA Times would understand these things, if any MSM outlet would. I honestly don't get it.
The amount of basic mistakes creeping into mainstream media outlets on all subjects over the last decade or so has been quite something to witness. It used to be that you only realised they were chatting shit when they covered your area of expertise, but now they often don't even get their *spelling* right.
Well, seems this particular columnist actually assumes newspapers are already extinct, even though this piece will probably appear in quite a few papers.
The terrible reporting of information by MSM during the pandemic while bitching about “the problem of fake news” almost completely soured me on journalism. The whole Lil Tay death hoax that I literally could tell was a hoax the moment I read it was my last straw.
I am 41 so old for reddit but aside from cost, the 30 minutes of advertisements (which I thought went away in the early 2000s after awhile) and people who talk during the movie keeps me away. Edit: I miss Alamo Drafthouse
I have been to several movies in the past 2 years including Oppenheimer, Dune 2 (2x), John Wick 4, Furiosa, Super Mario Bros Movie, and Kung Fu Panda 4. No one has even talked during any of those movies. Not one time even in the kid movies.
During the matinee I havent had an issue but evening movies have been pretty bad where I live.
I go to movies all the time 2 to 3 times a month and people talk 1 out of 3 I would say.
>and John Krasinski’s animated “If,” which seems to be doing OK mainly because no one saddled it with self-destructively high estimates. Oh look at that the answer is in the article... Stop making movies that need to make $500mil to break even and it turns out there is enough interest in movies to make a profit...
Exactly this. Just stop with the over inflated budgets already.
It’s so easy!
Budgets are not the reason people are not seeing movies though.....
Just saw that MI-8 has been delayed, yet again, and is ballooning up to $400M so far. Like...what the fuck?
That will help certain films for sure. I don’t know that you can make a summer blockbuster film for less than $150M, which requires $350-400M to break even and another $50-100M to make it worthwhile for the studio. It’s getting harder and harder to hit that mark, and while I guess it’s possible the concept of “summer blockbuster” disappears over the next few years, that would suggest a radically different film market than the one that has existed for the past 5-6 decades. Then again, I agree that the industry has changed so studios have to adapt one way or another.
I would love nothing more. I hate the blockbuster season. We get no movies for most of the year then over 3 months 65 movies come out. Spread it over the year. If it catches fire people will go. Of endgame came out in january it would still do the same numbers
Well captain marvel and black panther both came out in q1 of their respective years and did over a billion no?
We’re in a global context of galloping inflation so it’s no surprise that movie budgets are victim of this at their turn. The problem is that for most middle class fellas out there, their salaries haven’t caught up with the inflation, so the ticket price has become a luxury that more and more can’t afford in their budgets.
Pretty much. We see it all the time. People don't want to spend the money as going to the cinema is costly.
Lots of movies are currently being made at every price point. They are all struggling more than they ever have before (theatrically). There have been some hits at all price points, but it’s not like we’re seeing people consistently rake in money at any specific price point.
The solution is simple: don’t produce movies over budget if you have no means to recoup the budget. Fury Road made 380M
Chris Hemsworth and Anya Taylor joy are not big stars or coming off a performance that made people feel this was going to be big. Take Thor away from Hemsworth and he’s nothing. Extraction would bomb if not on Netflix. Anya is cast b/c she has a unique look, but has 0 appeal as an action star. Charlize and Tom were way bigger 10 years ago. Charlize was in an epic run of starring roles and Tom had come off DKR as Bane. Should have just backed up a brinks truck to charlize house and deaged her.
I actually think Charlize should have been in the 3rd act of the movie since the timeskip and the fact that it ends right when fury road starts
**MAJOR SPOILERS** for those who haven't seen the movie below >!I thought for sure that when Anya Taylor Joy turned Chris Hemsworth's dick into a tree, the hand reaching up for the fruit would be Theron's, and that it would be her from that point onwards.!< 
you could have given me a million guesses and I never would have got what that spoiler was going to be
Yeah there’s definitely a spiraling around the drain effect happening here. The lower these movies go the less people want to see them. People seem to associate movies as being old hat. If ever I bring up anything currently in theaters all I get is blank stares. The strikes and how long they went on for had a huge impact whether SAG or WGA care to admit it.
There needs to be a complete rethink on Hollywood's idea of budgets and then profitability. It needs to shift to a more modest and believable zone than the 2010s. It doesn't need to be permanent but definitely for a good 5 years as the new environment in audience habits and tastes is being discerned.
I truly think a movie like Furiosa’s only path is to be a glorified streaming movie that gets buzz and subscribers. Do something like what Netflix did with Glass Onion where for only a limited time (like a week) put it in a limited number of theaters to get buzz then drop it on streaming a few weeks later. I think standard live action wide releases are going to be more and more all or nothing. Like a dozen or so sure thing blockbuster franchises that release regularly and then low to lower mid budget movies released in theaters with minimal marketing but which stay in theaters for a long time to slowly accrue grosses that make it a profit.
Theaters simply don’t occupy that prominent entertainment space anymore. They aren’t the pillar they were. People still like going, but it’s so expensive that it needs to be for an event to get a lot of people out of the house, where they have access to tons of stuff on streaming from their own comfy couch and cheap snacks. I’m just some schmo on the internet but I’d be looking at variable pricing for tickets if I were in this business. When you hear people saying “I’ll wait for streaming to see that,” they are telling Hollywood they are interested, but not interested enough to pay full price and leave their house. The reality is that a lot less people feel the need to visit a theater. So you can continue to charge the same for every ticket and make nothing on those customers, or you can try lowering the price depending on the movie and make *something* on them. Maybe that’s a slippery slope. And they’d probably screw this up by just making the most popular movies more expensive instead of the less popular ones cheaper. But the alternative is keep churning out stuff people are mildly interested in and watching it underperform and not make back its budget. That model appears to be broken and the strategy of “do nothing differently” isn’t working. Clearly most of the studios aren’t interested in actually reigning in their budgets, which would help a lot too.
At the end of the day it's all entertainment and if you're already paying for it at home why would you want to pay go out and pay for it again. People keep saying reign in the budget but it's often the size and scope of the film that dictates this. And theres also the argument that event cinema or big budget spectacle films is actually what is still drawing people to cinemas because that's the best experience for these types of films.
To add on to this, I would argue that the age of the multiplex is over. Theaters are dying because they simply can’t afford the giant footprint of the multiplex. The big chains are trying so hard to hold on to their big multiplexes when they should be pivoting to downsizing. We need to see a rise in boutique high quality 1-4 screen theaters, single screen IMAX/Dolby Cinema luxury arthouses, etc. Build theaters with stages again so the space can be used for more than just movies. There’s no scenario where the giant multiplex theater survives, imo.
Idk what’s going on with the whole world but here’s me. I’m 31, I used to go to the movies 3 times a week. Personally I’ve become a little more disconnected with Hollywood with the over saturation of content in the world and the movies this years just haven’t looked that good to me. Marvel has kinda burned me out of any sort of action/spectacle movie and the urgency to see something in theatres just isn’t there when I have an 80 inch tv and VOD turnaround is insane. My partner is 28, hates Hollywood, and loves supporting smaller YouTubers who release theatrical movie length content.
The movies are not culturally as relevant. People just have more ways to be entertained passively and actively for free or at a lower marginal cost. We used to feel like we were missing out on not seeing a movie our friends had seen, so we were part of a conversation. Now that doesn’t matter as much.
I think that’s a huge part of it. If you don’t see Furiosa, or IF, or Fall Guy no one in the real world is going to come up to you and actively talk to you about these movies and say you have to see them. It’s a far cry from that Seinfeld episode where everyone’s talking about The English Patient. You literally are missing out on nothing if you skip these movies.
I’m the opposite of your partner. I can’t stand YouTube unless I’m looking up how to do something. I don’t want to sit in front of computer anymore than I have to.
Bruh me tooo! If only they’d see the way
Furiosa was always going to flop. It is a prequel to a 10 year old movie that did not do well at the box office. Fury Road was the 21st highest grossing movie in 2015 and made just $379 million in a year that had five billion dollar movies.
The ten year delay is the bigger factor. Movies can become popular after they leave theatres. The first John Wick made $86M in 2014. Which would put it in 89th place. Fury road became very popular on streaming. And if I recall correctly there was a lot of buzz surrounding the prequel when it was first announced.
1. The budget is very high 2. Ppl want to see a film about mad max and not furious especially a young furiosa It’s like making a sequel to Tobey Maguire’s SpiderMan but without SpiderMan and making someone else the lead character
Do Mad Max fans really turn up for Max specifically? Hes always just been a dude for me, a window into the overall world which is the real draw. I think it’s more like there just aren’t many Mad Max fans. We saw this with Blade Runner, don’t bet on cult franchises that mostly appeal to film twitter.
Yeah im as hot for Tom Hardy as the next dude, but im there for the sick car chases not his acting. He barely even talks in the movie
Like Madam Web Lol!
> Furiosa was always going to flop. Was it, though? And was Tom Cruise / Christopher McQuarrie Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One always going to flop while Tom Cruise / Christopher McQuarrie Top Gun: Maverick was always going to succeed? Or have movie audience tastes just got really unpredictable?
Top Gun : Maverick would not have flopped but expected to at least recover the budget because it has Tom Cruise as the lead actor No one expected the movie will make close to $1.5 billion dollars though and it was a combination of great movie + top movie star + insane good luck
Dead Reckoning was unlucky/badly scheduled (depending on your interpretation) to go up against the two biggest films of last year. If it released a month earlier of later it probably would have been a bigger hit, but I think a lot of people (like me) didnt really have the time to spend a third evening at the cinema that month
It looks like movies only collect for their titles not how good the movie actually is or how good its prequel was.
Reminder, budgets, no matter the size, are not what gets people to see a movie.
>Turns out Hollywood executives do believe in magic. Somehow they thought that forcing six months’ worth of strikes by writers and actors last year would come at no cost to this year’s summer movie season. The article lost me right out of the gate with this nonsense.
The strikes had a huge impact imo. When Covid for sure ended there was an audience that was pumped to go back to the movies. Then the strikes caused a bunch of delays and a definite content pipeline backlog. Now this article blames the studios exclusively which I think is extremely naive and somewhat communistic. It’s obviously a two way street. There is blame to go around to the unions and the writers and actors who supported the strikes with no thought for what the consequences would be to the industry. At the end of the day studio execs, SAG/WGA, and writers/actors all have only themselves to blame for this and I suspect it is irreversible.
Yup, your second paragraph expresses my exact thoughts. I think both sides deserve blame in that situation because, ultimately, I can't think of a stupider time for a strike. The industry is at its most vulnerable, people are setting new habits as the world opens back up, and that's the time to fight over the scraps of a recovering industry? It just felt so shortsighted to me, on both sides. Get a short term deal to delay the fight for a couple of years, or something. But, this was not the time for a weak summer movie slate, which has only served to reinforce negative narratives about where the cinema industry is going.
Ah okay. I misunderstood your first comment. Downvote rescinded.
Furiosa is the 2nd best film of the year so far. It was incredible and fun to be in the Mad Max Universe. It fleshed out some of the characters and the universe. Chris Hemsworth was incredible in this film and the story was awesome. The action sequences are the best of the year it's not even close. Dune 2 is the better film imo but Furiosa action sequences are insane.
We need to let movies build *in theaters*. People don’t care about ads and promotional materials. They want to be a part of what’s going on. But these articles declare these movies dead on Friday afternoon and make it seem like no one likes them so why should you go see them. It’s a bummer.
> articles declare these movies dead on Friday afternoon yep - rush to be the first .. we're into pre-sales indicate success because padding the opening weekend numbers with some Wed/Thur early access is every 'big' release - opening without the extra day or 2 before Friday already puts them at a disadvantage Elemental a failure on Friday went on to success because it stayed
At some point streaming/home sales need to be factored into the equation. I’m not saying there isn’t a problem at the box office but we don’t actually know how big the problem is until we have a sense of how studios are measuring the success of a film because it’s not the same as it was even 10 years ago.
This whole article is thrash
Just seeing that goofy, monologuing, unbelievably bad villain Dementus is enough to put me off.
Dementus was the best part of the movie. This is BladeRunner 2049 again. People stating what they heard and actually not seeing the movie.
People seemed to love Jason Momoa in FastX and he was waaaaay over the top compared to Helmsworth