No real surprises for me this weekend as F9 and Black Widow quickly wind down. A Quiet Place still hanging in the top 10. With the budget to box office ratio I believe this is still the most successful movie of the year.

I think Snake Eyes will bomb this weekend while Old from M Night could be the sleeper hit.

Seeing the previews of Jungle Cruise don't leave me wanting more.

The new Suicide Squad actually looks very good to me. It seems to have the elements to attract comic and action fans. It will be interesting to see what it does compared to Black Widow.

Been watching clips on the Aretha Franklin film Respect. I have no idea how accurate it will be but Jennifer Hudson's performance pieces are incredible.

Didn't mention Pig, which probably won't make a lot of money, but may well get Nicholas Cage nominated for many awards this year. It has great reviews, but is heavy drama.

I can't see it. Every time I watch one of those films now, I can't find anything to eat for weeks.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by mykdude:
I think Snake Eyes will bomb this weekend while Old from M Night could be the sleeper hit./QUOTE]

I could be wrong, but having seen the trailers for both, I'll go opposite.

Snake Eyes, despite little name recognition for me, has a certain Bruce Lee vibe to it. The action scenes seem acceptable and the star looks cool. The audience seems to be coming out for action movies, so I think it might do pretty good business, though not necessarily breaking any records.

"Old" on the other hand seems to have put everything into the trailer, with the exception of whatever dumb twist ending it has. I mean the entire picture is there, so its not a spoiler, and it's boring. Young people growing old and dying on a beach they can't leave. Wonder what that's all about? No, I really don't care.

I decided many films back that M. Night was a one hit wonder. Maybe 3 hits for those who liked Signs and Unbreakable, which I didn't, and he's been overrated ever since. "Old" looks like it should be a 30 minute Twilight Zone episode. I know horror fans want something now, but they may wait for something that isn't called "psychological thriller".

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

I could be wrong, but having seen the trailers for both, I'll go opposite.

Ha! We will see. Could just be me, the 80's based GI Joe never appealed to me much. It was all down hill after Kung Fu grip!

Watched the preview for Pig, it certainly looks dramatic but I'm not entirely sure what I was looking at. At first I was thinking John Wick with pork. Not something I would see in a theater but my interest is peaked.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:
Watched the preview for Pig, it certainly looks dramatic but I'm not entirely sure what I was looking at. At first I was thinking John Wick with pork. Not something I would see in a theater but my interest is peaked.

No, no, don't go in thinking its an actioner because its Cage, you will be terribly disappointed. It's an indy film, all drama. The kind of movie that wins rave reviews and acting awards, but not much by way of a mass audience. You might like it, but not if you are expecting John Wick.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:

I could be wrong, but having seen the trailers for both, I'll go opposite.

Ha! We will see. Could just be me, the 80's based GI Joe never appealed to me much. It was all down hill after Kung Fu grip!

Domestically this weekend "Old" is in 1st with 16.5M and a C+ 52% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. "Snake Eyes" is in 2nd with 13.3M and a 42% rating.

Since "Snake Eyes" wants to be part of the GI Joe franchise and probably had a good sized budget, I think it lost more. Although I also think it may be a film more people will catch up on later when they don't have to pay as much.

On the other hand "Old", with a more modest budget and higher take, also has the lowest opening box office of any M. Night movie ever and once the full story gets out, as it has, I don't see business picking up much. Can't discuss without spoilers, so I won't, but I loathe his movies and this one is no exception.

So I concede mykdude, you win in the faceoff of duds.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
So I concede mykdude, you win in the faceoff of duds.

First off I want to thank all of the little people who got me here. I want to thank my mother for having me....

Yeah, I got to looking at budgets and thought that no matter what Snake Eyes is going to lose. I think there was a $70M difference. As a movie series GI Joe has no identity. I have wondered if it wouldn't do better if it took the more patriotic old school approach that centered around the 12 inch characters.

Old will hobble along but at current pace should actually make money. Which puts it in the "hit" category for me. Of course Widow, Jam and F9 topped out the high five.

I think the next benchmark movie will be Suicide Squad on Aug 6th. Jungle Cruise is currently being bundled with Applebee's commercials which reeks of desperation. I guess Disney didn't get that it was a joke when we said to turn other rides into movies after the success of Pirates.

"Snake Eyes" made only 13 M at the U.S. box office this past weekend. Has a budget of 88 M.

"Space Jam" has made 51 M in the U.S. so far.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
Black Widow weekend take:

80M domestic, 78M international, 60MDisney+, total 218M.

That settles that.

And they're really not going to do another one with ScarJo?

Now it really does not look like she would do it, even if they said Please.

It's being reported that Scarlett Johansson is suing Disney for releasing "Black Widow' on streaming and in theatres at the same time. She claims Disney guaranteed a solely theatrical release and her contract was tied to the box office. She therefore lost a lot of money with no cut in the streaming income.

Jungle Cruise will also follow this hybrid opening, but Disney is saying that remaining films will go back to being theatre only. Of course that's assuming that COVID restrictions don't return, which is something already starting to happen in NYC.

Whatever they do with ScarJo, it will effect many other actors and film makers who are being cut out of streaming profits by all the studios.

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
It's being reported that Scarlett Johansson is suing Disney for releasing "Black Widow' on streaming and in theatres at the same time. She claims Disney guaranteed a solely theatrical release and her contract was tied to the box office. She therefore lost a lot of money with no cut in the streaming income.

Oh that wacky mouse!! Not that the film was very good but you gotta laugh at the image they shove into the face of children while operating professionally.

quote:

Originally posted by mykdude:

quote:

Originally posted by Raven:
It's being reported that Scarlett Johansson is suing Disney for releasing "Black Widow' on streaming and in theatres at the same time. She claims Disney guaranteed a solely theatrical release and her contract was tied to the box office. She therefore lost a lot of money with no cut in the streaming income.

Oh that wacky mouse!! Not that the film was very good but you gotta laugh at the image they shove into the face of children while operating professionally.

Yeah Disney has slapped back at Johansson hard too, which is surprising considering she's an A-lister and has a long term history working with the studio. I would have thought they would make some settlement with her before they started trading nasty words, but you can see why they did it because of all the content on Disney+.

Warner Brothers did make settlements to certain people, paying off a few of its DC stars and film makers, including Wonder Woman Gadot, to keep the peace when they started streaming theatrical releases on the same day. Johansson is claiming she lost 50M between audiences that stayed home and decreased her take and the ones who paid on Disney+, but she had no cut of their separate payments for the movie.

Jungle Cruise is coming out with the same type of release. Could Johnson and Blunt claim the same thing if their contracts are based on box office? Sure they could and probably others whose work was added to Disney+ later on. This is billions of dollars for Disney. You bet they will fight it if they can.

The new "Suicide Squad" grossed a mere 26.5 M this weekend, well below expectations.

Disney's "Jungle Cruise" has made only 65 M domestically.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
The new "Suicide Squad" grossed a mere 26.5 M this weekend, well below expectations.

I don't think that's a good figure to go by, although accurate. COVID fear is back in the US and the brief celebratory period seems over. People are staying home again. Suicide Squad streamed, so they can watch it from home and that revenue is not in the box office. Plus its R-rated, which keeps away the tweeners and the family night out. The movie got pretty good reviews, but I think the problem is more that the high expectations were wrong.

I wonder if the new COVID fear is going to result in the upcoming blockbusters being delayed until 2022 ?

I am specifically thinking of the new Bond film coming in October, Ghostbusters coming this fall, and Top Gun.

The last Bond film made 800 M worldwide in 2015. I know that the producers don't want to run the risk of making any less money than that amount. Too much is riding on it.

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
I wonder if the new COVID fear is going to result in the upcoming blockbusters being delayed until 2022 ?

I am specifically thinking of the new Bond film coming in October, Ghostbusters coming this fall, and Top Gun.

The last Bond film made 800 M worldwide in 2015. I know that the producers don't want to run the risk of making any less money than that amount. Too much is riding on it.

I have to imagine the movie studios releasing movies in the new environment have enough data, not just box office, to decide whether a film is successful or not. No movie is going to break any box office records anytime soon, nor are any blockbusters going to make back their budgets solely from big screen revenue. They've got to be using all kinds of analysis across the various release outlets that Joe Public is either not aware of yet or it's too new to embrace.

At this point, relying on box office return won't only be the death of movie theaters but the death of Hollywood blockbusters as we know it.

Just announced that Sony is moving the release of VENOM 2 from Sept to mid-October due to COVID.

Will more studios follow with delaying releases ?

quote:

Originally posted by Tommy C:
Just announced that Sony is moving the release of VENOM 2 from Sept to mid-October due to COVID.

Will more studios follow with delaying releases ?

That's stupid. Do they have a window that says something will change in 4 - 6 weeks time? If it's good or bad in September, it will still be good or bad in October.

All this constantly wavering news is just making people crazier than they already are.

And they completely pulled the release of "Clifford the Big Red Dog" for Sept.

Apparently the studios are getting nervous as there are reports that people in Europe are not going to the theaters due to "vaccine passports"

They suspect that folks here in the U.S. will not be attending movie theaters in Aug and Sept.

According the Box Office Mojo, "Suicide Squad" crashed and burned in its 2nd week, making only 7.6 million

It has made about 43 M domestically and 118 M total worldwide, but the budget was 185 M.

In terms of domestic revenue, it is only the 14th highest grossing film of 2021.

Tommy C, I believe in some thread here we talked about A-list actors who make bomb after bomb and continue to be paid a fortune by studios to do it.

For Netflix's new movie "Don't Look Up" scheduled to be released before year's end Jennifer Lawrence was paid $25M and Leonardo DiCaprio got 30M to headline a cast where even cameos are played by Academy Award winners.

Lawrence has had dud films for years and years. DiCaprio isn't much better with prestige films not making much at the box office.

I hope Netflix takes a bath on this one for giving them so much stupid money. I wouldn't watch it on principle.