Not long ago I offered some
comment on Deadline's report on the most unprofitable films of 2022, as calculated not simply on the basis of production budget vs. box office, but more comprehensive information on expenditure and revenue.
It seems to me that there is also something to be said about the most profitable films, on which it also reported, presenting two lists of them--one comprised of the most profitable "
blockbusters" (high-budget, high-profile, high-grossing movies) and of
films overall (with the latter, going by relative profitability, more inclusive of smaller films that brought in more money in relation to their cost, even when the mass of profit was much less than that brought in by the blockbusters).
Where the blockbusters were concerned I was completely unsurprised to see Avatar 2 at the top, followed by Top Gun 2. Colossal as the investment in Avatar 2 was, so was its gross--while in the wake of
James Cameron's remarks foregrounding the issue of what the film had to make in order to "break even" the entertainment press happened to note, and report, that the movie
entered the territory of profitability somewhere around the $1.5 billion mark (!), after which the movie kept on making money until it hit $2.3 billion (a lot less than the original
Avatar, especially in real terms, but all the same, so much that any question of disappointment is completely unreasonable). Meanwhile Top Gun 2
went far, far above and beyond expectations in such a way that its inclusion here was no less predictable. I was unsurprised to see
Minions: The Rise of Gru in the #3 spot given how well it did--a comparative bright spot in what, Top Gun 2's success apart,
was not exactly an impressive summer commercially.
By contrast I was more surprised to see Dr. Strange 2 and Black Panther 2 on the list, given that, while one expects Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) superhero movies here, and they were indeed major moneymakers by the usual standard (bringing in a combined $1.8 billion in ticket sales), there were perceptions that their grosses were not all that had been hoped for (
which I argued for myself). Still, if they could have done better at the box office they were still solid earners from the standpoint of the bigger picture, at least--and reminders that if the MCU, like so many other huge franchises (James Bond, Star Wars), has passed its peak it remains a long way from being so unviable as to be given up (even if, in the wake of the disappointment of
Ant-Man 3, that day may not be so far off as it seemed even a little while ago).
Meanwhile the more inclusive, relative profit-minded list of most profitable films was predictably dominated by horror films (the reboot of Scream,
Black Phone,
M3GAN--the latter counted as "2022" mainly because the Deadline people wanted it to be, I suppose), for if horror movies are no match for the
superhero epics at the box office they still offer enough return on a low budget to be worth putting out theatrically. The two exceptions to the pattern were
Where the Crawdads Sing and
Everything Everywhere All at Once--the
one benefiting from the colossal bestsellerdom of the book it adapted and the built-in audience it brought, while the other was one of those arthouse-type movies that end up reaching a broader audience (helped, I think, by its blockbuster-ish elements--the movie being a martial arts battle across the multiverse).
In short, as much as the blockbusters even the smaller hits have been just as predictable as the big. Indeed, as other hits, and
misses, of the year indicate, the range of material that stands a chance of successful theatrical release is ever narrower, and deviation from that narrowness ever less forgiven by the Market.
No comments:
Post a Comment