As I remarked after seeing last year's list of the most profitable films, we may increasingly see the biggest profit-makers prove to not be the bigger-budgeted and higher-grossing "tentpoles," but the lower-cost films aimed at a narrower market that proves just big enough to, between the limited budget and the gross, produce a bigger margin than its higher-profile rivals.
Where this summer and this year are concerned I think the stand-out that way is It Ends With Us. Not even a top ten hit of the year, it is still the case that on its budget of $25 million it has grossed $325 million so far in theaters, before beginning what is almost certain to be a lucrative post-theatrical career.
What might the profit margin look like?
For comparison purposes let us consider Where the Crawdads Sing--also a bestselling book aimed at a not dissimilar audience, which was also similarly budgeted. That movie made $140 million gross and $80 million net in theaters, then netted almost twice as much from the post-theatrical revenue streams (as smaller films often do). Counting in the final costs (prints and ads, residuals and participations, etc.) the final bill came to about five times the production budget--$123 million. The result was that in the end the "studio net" was $75 million.
With It Ends with Us taking in well over twice that much on a similar production budget, much more money will be coming in--but more likely going out as some of the non-production expenses take a bigger bite out of the gross. (Higher grosses mean more "participations and residuals," in particular.) Still, as one can expect the movie to bring the studio $150 million+ in revenue from ticket sales, and make as much if not more post-theatrically, it seems a safe bet that in spite of the non-production costs the profit will break the $100 million barrier, while $150 million or more would not be out of the question. Last year that would have got the movie onto Deadline's "Most Valuable Blockbusters" list, and it may well suffice to do that for the movie this year--while failing that it is virtually guaranteed a spot on the accompanying list for smaller films with high returns.
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Tuesday, September 17, 2024
How Will the News Media Cover the Last Weeks of the Presidential Campaign of 2024?
Last year the Columbia Journalism Review published an article discussing a quantitative examination of the last two months of the coverage of the mid-term election of 2022 by the New York Times and Washington Post. That study's authors found that their front-page stories, at least, almost entirely disregarded questions of policy--what the candidates promise, and what they might do in office--in favor of the palace intrigue and campaign horse-race crapola that the addicts to "show business for ugly people" who staff the media think the general public love as much as they do.
I cannot see how any intelligent person can regard this as anything but an execrable performance on their part.
Will they do any better in 2024?
As it happens, this campaign season has offered much, much more fodder for palace intrigue and horse-race crapola than most, and in spite of the self-important proclamations of the editorial boards about "how much is at stake," they absolutely lived down to my lowest expectations as they made the most of the opportunities it gave them to be on their absolute worst behavior. I see no reason to expect that they will suddenly start acting like the "professionals" they pretend to be where this election is concerned--though of course whatever happens they will congratulate themselves on having did a wonderful job, because that is what they always do.
I cannot see how any intelligent person can regard this as anything but an execrable performance on their part.
Will they do any better in 2024?
As it happens, this campaign season has offered much, much more fodder for palace intrigue and horse-race crapola than most, and in spite of the self-important proclamations of the editorial boards about "how much is at stake," they absolutely lived down to my lowest expectations as they made the most of the opportunities it gave them to be on their absolute worst behavior. I see no reason to expect that they will suddenly start acting like the "professionals" they pretend to be where this election is concerned--though of course whatever happens they will congratulate themselves on having did a wonderful job, because that is what they always do.
Declining Movie Ticket Sales and the Decline of the Middle Class
In the decade after the onset of the Great Recession North American movie ticket sales dropped from 4-5 a year per capita to 3-4 a year--and then after the pandemic dropped to more like 2 a year (certainly to go by the evidence of 2022, and 2023, and 2024 so far).
There can seem any number of reasons for that--like the staleness of the product that studio executives dementedly foist on the public, or the competition from a small screen both more convenient and offering more varied and frequently more intelligent fare, but one factor we should not overlook is that a public that has seen itself financially very pressed in recent years (never has the pretense of generalized "middle classness" looked more threadbare) simply has less time and disposable income for entertainments such as a night out. After all, going out for a movie is rarely just about the price of a ticket (or several of them), while we are seeing drops in the consumption of everything from meals out to live concerts.
Of course, don't expect to hear the entertainment press make too much of that, the more in as pseudo-intellectuals who keep calling themselves "economists" at every opportunity are telling the public that it's doing JUST FINE!
There can seem any number of reasons for that--like the staleness of the product that studio executives dementedly foist on the public, or the competition from a small screen both more convenient and offering more varied and frequently more intelligent fare, but one factor we should not overlook is that a public that has seen itself financially very pressed in recent years (never has the pretense of generalized "middle classness" looked more threadbare) simply has less time and disposable income for entertainments such as a night out. After all, going out for a movie is rarely just about the price of a ticket (or several of them), while we are seeing drops in the consumption of everything from meals out to live concerts.
Of course, don't expect to hear the entertainment press make too much of that, the more in as pseudo-intellectuals who keep calling themselves "economists" at every opportunity are telling the public that it's doing JUST FINE!
Of the Word "Upset"
It seems common to define the word "upset," when used in the sense of a person's emotional state, as a synonym for "unhappy," "disappointed" or "worried." These are three quite different terms, the result is that the word comes across as vague and mild, and as is often the case with words that seem a bit vague and mild, used to soften an account of the state of the person being described--a person who may be miserable rather than unhappy, outraged rather than disappointed, or frightened rather than worried, described as merely "upset."
Perhaps unsurprisingly given all that the use of the word "upset" to describe a person's emotional state seems to me less than respectful of the person being described in a great many cases. It always makes me think of a parent speaking of a child, with a child's presumably limited mental faculties and understanding of the world in mind--the "adult in the room" telling others that they have an "upset" child with which they must deal. Few adults, I think, would care to be thought of in such terms--especially in any matter of great importance.
As a result Rebecca Solnit, while making an important statement in a recent piece in the Guardian, seemed to me to have made an unfortunate choice in writing its title: "The Mainstream Press is Failing America--and People are Understandably Upset."
For many of them, upset doesn't even begin to describe it--as we find when we read the item for ourselves.
Perhaps unsurprisingly given all that the use of the word "upset" to describe a person's emotional state seems to me less than respectful of the person being described in a great many cases. It always makes me think of a parent speaking of a child, with a child's presumably limited mental faculties and understanding of the world in mind--the "adult in the room" telling others that they have an "upset" child with which they must deal. Few adults, I think, would care to be thought of in such terms--especially in any matter of great importance.
As a result Rebecca Solnit, while making an important statement in a recent piece in the Guardian, seemed to me to have made an unfortunate choice in writing its title: "The Mainstream Press is Failing America--and People are Understandably Upset."
For many of them, upset doesn't even begin to describe it--as we find when we read the item for ourselves.
Monday, September 9, 2024
Boxoffice Pro Has Put Out its Estimate for Joker's Opening
Boxoffice Pro has put out its estimate for Joker's opening weekend gross.
Their forecast currently stands at $115-$145 million--which means that not only before but even after inflation Joker 2 could make considerably more than that earlier movie's $96 million (that figure equal to $117 million in July 2024 terms).
I am not shocked by this forecast, but did not count on it either--as I remembered what it took to make the first Joker a hit. There was what some saw as the bait and switch involved in making a movie about Arthur Fleck appear as if it were the Joker's origin story. There was the atmosphere of moral panic cultivated around the film, which made many prominent film critics disgrace themselves with calls for censorship. All of this helped make the movie's release an event of a kind very hard to repeat, while it seemed to me far from clear whether five years later a sequel to the rather idiosyncratic movie, without that kind of atmosphere surrounding it—whether, with less and less pretense that Fleck is the Joker, with the critics having done a one-eighty and trivialized the movie that made them briefly show their totalitarian true colors and no moral panic in evidence this time, a Joker movie would still be of interest to a wide audience. (Indeed, especially hearing about the sequel's musical aspect I thought of how Martin Scorsese followed up his triumph with Taxi Driver with his flop New York, New York, and how history might unhappily repeat itself.)
This forecast seems to settle the matter to that extent, evidence apparently existing that a sizable audience does want to continue following the Saga of Arthur Fleck. The question now is which way the interest will go in the next month--whether we will see it collapse, hold steady or even surge, and then after that, just how audiences will respond to the movie when they do see it. Even after its big opening the first Joker made three-and-a-half times its first three-day gross ($335 million). It is not wholly out of the question that this movie could do the same--and supplement its domestic take with a robust foreign gross. (The first Joker more than doubled its domestic gross internationally.) The result is that the movie might not just plausibly match the billion-dollar take of the original, but do so in real, inflation-adjusted terms--a feat requiring $1.3 billion at the box office at late 2024 prices.
Their forecast currently stands at $115-$145 million--which means that not only before but even after inflation Joker 2 could make considerably more than that earlier movie's $96 million (that figure equal to $117 million in July 2024 terms).
I am not shocked by this forecast, but did not count on it either--as I remembered what it took to make the first Joker a hit. There was what some saw as the bait and switch involved in making a movie about Arthur Fleck appear as if it were the Joker's origin story. There was the atmosphere of moral panic cultivated around the film, which made many prominent film critics disgrace themselves with calls for censorship. All of this helped make the movie's release an event of a kind very hard to repeat, while it seemed to me far from clear whether five years later a sequel to the rather idiosyncratic movie, without that kind of atmosphere surrounding it—whether, with less and less pretense that Fleck is the Joker, with the critics having done a one-eighty and trivialized the movie that made them briefly show their totalitarian true colors and no moral panic in evidence this time, a Joker movie would still be of interest to a wide audience. (Indeed, especially hearing about the sequel's musical aspect I thought of how Martin Scorsese followed up his triumph with Taxi Driver with his flop New York, New York, and how history might unhappily repeat itself.)
This forecast seems to settle the matter to that extent, evidence apparently existing that a sizable audience does want to continue following the Saga of Arthur Fleck. The question now is which way the interest will go in the next month--whether we will see it collapse, hold steady or even surge, and then after that, just how audiences will respond to the movie when they do see it. Even after its big opening the first Joker made three-and-a-half times its first three-day gross ($335 million). It is not wholly out of the question that this movie could do the same--and supplement its domestic take with a robust foreign gross. (The first Joker more than doubled its domestic gross internationally.) The result is that the movie might not just plausibly match the billion-dollar take of the original, but do so in real, inflation-adjusted terms--a feat requiring $1.3 billion at the box office at late 2024 prices.
Does it Change Anything if Arthur Fleck isn't the Real Joker?
Considering the possibility, or even likelihood, that we are not supposed to take Arthur Fleck as the "real" Joker, it seems natural to ask what that means for the 2019 film--especially if we take it as a Joker origin story, and find it wanting that way, as I admittedly did. Indeed, I saw in the gap between Fleck and what we would expect of the Joker a failure of imagination on the part of the film's makers in their making Fleck such a pathetic figure; in their apparent inability to imagine that a marginalized, ill-treated working-class man might nonetheless be a figure of intelligence and force, rather than just a "clown" who because of his own inherent personal limitations and nothing else failed to make something of his life the way the stupid and repugnant patrician Thomas Wayne makes out the discontented working class to be.
Thinking of Fleck as other than the Joker we knew renders that criticism moot (if Fleck isn't the Joker anyway then it doesn't matter if he doesn't convince us as the Joker)--but it still seems to me plausible that the makers of the movie, reflecting the prejudices of our time, could not imagine anyone living the way Fleck did as anything but a "born loser," in line with the prevailing tendency to dismiss those who have not "got on" as undeserving of success, and by the same token, as equally undeserving of interest or sympathy from anyone else, all as challenge to this attitude is rarer than before. After all, in the early twentieth century the idea that the American Dream as epitomized by Horatio Alger is a cruel lie was one of the great themes of literature, producing figures from Jay Gatsby to Clyde Griffiths to Willy Loman. What compares with that today?
Apparently not Joker's Arthur Fleck.
Thinking of Fleck as other than the Joker we knew renders that criticism moot (if Fleck isn't the Joker anyway then it doesn't matter if he doesn't convince us as the Joker)--but it still seems to me plausible that the makers of the movie, reflecting the prejudices of our time, could not imagine anyone living the way Fleck did as anything but a "born loser," in line with the prevailing tendency to dismiss those who have not "got on" as undeserving of success, and by the same token, as equally undeserving of interest or sympathy from anyone else, all as challenge to this attitude is rarer than before. After all, in the early twentieth century the idea that the American Dream as epitomized by Horatio Alger is a cruel lie was one of the great themes of literature, producing figures from Jay Gatsby to Clyde Griffiths to Willy Loman. What compares with that today?
Apparently not Joker's Arthur Fleck.
Why Do "We" Care About How Much Movies Cost?
Apparently the budget of Joker 2 has been the subject of some critical comment--specifically because it was (reportedly) much larger than the budget for the first film.
Apparently Todd Phillips has had something to say in reply, remarking that reading the items in the press "[i]t seems like they're on the side of the multinational corporations," and indeed "sound like studio executives."
The reason for that, of course is that the entertainment press does significantly represent the views of the corporations, and the studio executives, just as the business press and the press generally represents the views of corporations, executives and the rest--as, of course, social commentators going back at least to Upton Sinclair have explained to the public over and over again. And negatively remarking a big budget has been part of their repertoire for pushing an agenda--specifically attacking a movie and its makers as "out of control" in that way we saw so much of when the studio bosses were out to crush the New Hollywood.
Of course, the desire to see New Hollywood crushed extended far beyond studio bosses looking to regain control of the industry to include those on the right ideologically hostile to the movies Hollywood had started making (and has rarely dared to make since).
Is there something like that afoot in the case of Phillips and Joker 2? Given how uncomfortable the first Joker made the elite stratum from which those who write for the upmarket review pages derive (not least because of those aspects of it that were what we think of as "New Hollywood") it does not seem wholly inconceivable that there would be. If this is a matter of what is actually in the second Joker movie, rather than just a residue of the critical hostility to the first film, then the movie may well have more bite than I suspected.
Apparently Todd Phillips has had something to say in reply, remarking that reading the items in the press "[i]t seems like they're on the side of the multinational corporations," and indeed "sound like studio executives."
The reason for that, of course is that the entertainment press does significantly represent the views of the corporations, and the studio executives, just as the business press and the press generally represents the views of corporations, executives and the rest--as, of course, social commentators going back at least to Upton Sinclair have explained to the public over and over again. And negatively remarking a big budget has been part of their repertoire for pushing an agenda--specifically attacking a movie and its makers as "out of control" in that way we saw so much of when the studio bosses were out to crush the New Hollywood.
Of course, the desire to see New Hollywood crushed extended far beyond studio bosses looking to regain control of the industry to include those on the right ideologically hostile to the movies Hollywood had started making (and has rarely dared to make since).
Is there something like that afoot in the case of Phillips and Joker 2? Given how uncomfortable the first Joker made the elite stratum from which those who write for the upmarket review pages derive (not least because of those aspects of it that were what we think of as "New Hollywood") it does not seem wholly inconceivable that there would be. If this is a matter of what is actually in the second Joker movie, rather than just a residue of the critical hostility to the first film, then the movie may well have more bite than I suspected.
The Possibility That Arthur Fleck is Not the Real Joker: Some Thoughts
While Todd Phillips has dropped hints that Arthur Fleck's "Joker" may not be the real Joker since 2019, the hints have grown more numerous and stronger in the run-up to the release of the sequel. Indeed, as Kaitlyn Booth recently remarked over at Bleeding Cool News that Joker increasingly seems to have been "one of those times when an original story has some recognizable IP painted over it to make it more appealing to the general public."
In other words, Mr. Phillips and company pulled a bait and switch on the public, making them think that a movie titled Joker about a homicidal lunatic clown in Gotham City with a grudge against the Wayne family was a Joker origin story until, after the movie became a cultural phenomenon, no longer requiring the ruse--and even finding the ruse an inconvenience, because the gap between the sales pitch and the actual movie was getting awkwardly large as people looked at Fleck and said "This man's no criminal mastermind," and the follow-up seemed likely to mean even more dissonance for anyone really looking for the Joker--they backed away from the earlier marketing in a manner they hope will allow fans to ignore or forgive the earlier deception.
It is easy enough to picture Hollywood pulling such a maneuver--given that, to the little extent that it shows any alertness or creativity, we are more likely to see it in the smoke and mirrors of its public relations and marketing efforts than in the cinematic art that is the raison d'etre of those efforts, and given too the fact that a movie about "just Arthur Fleck" rather than the Joker would have made nowhere near the stir that Joker did. Still, given that if the movie was far from perfectly faithful to the Batman mythos the makers of the film displayed enough cleverness in utilizing the relevant elements that the character of the Joker plausibly contributed a good deal more than a paint finish--that if the film Todd Phillips made was not truly a Joker story, the Joker was at least an influence, or even creative point of departure, for what he did in the end put before the audience.
In other words, Mr. Phillips and company pulled a bait and switch on the public, making them think that a movie titled Joker about a homicidal lunatic clown in Gotham City with a grudge against the Wayne family was a Joker origin story until, after the movie became a cultural phenomenon, no longer requiring the ruse--and even finding the ruse an inconvenience, because the gap between the sales pitch and the actual movie was getting awkwardly large as people looked at Fleck and said "This man's no criminal mastermind," and the follow-up seemed likely to mean even more dissonance for anyone really looking for the Joker--they backed away from the earlier marketing in a manner they hope will allow fans to ignore or forgive the earlier deception.
It is easy enough to picture Hollywood pulling such a maneuver--given that, to the little extent that it shows any alertness or creativity, we are more likely to see it in the smoke and mirrors of its public relations and marketing efforts than in the cinematic art that is the raison d'etre of those efforts, and given too the fact that a movie about "just Arthur Fleck" rather than the Joker would have made nowhere near the stir that Joker did. Still, given that if the movie was far from perfectly faithful to the Batman mythos the makers of the film displayed enough cleverness in utilizing the relevant elements that the character of the Joker plausibly contributed a good deal more than a paint finish--that if the film Todd Phillips made was not truly a Joker story, the Joker was at least an influence, or even creative point of departure, for what he did in the end put before the audience.
This Summer Kevin Bacon . . . Discovers What Everyone Else Knows
Back when publicizing his horror film MaXXXine (it came out in July) actor Kevin Bacon claimed to have had a special effects makeup artist create a disguise for him so that he could try going about experiencing life as a non-celebrity.
According to Bacon the disguise worked--and very well--in that when he went to a shopping mall "no one" there recognized him.
Apparently he couldn't stand more than a few minutes of this, talking about people "pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, 'I love you,'" while he "had to wait in line to, I don't know, buy a f---ing coffee or whatever." And he concluded "This sucks. I want to go back to being famous."
I have no idea how seriously Bacon intended for us to take his remarks, which can seem like a parody of entitled, clueless privilege. (Is it really the case that complete strangers tell him "I love you" and that he was shocked to not have strangers tell him "I love you?" Did he really have no notion of what it is to stand in line for a cup of coffee?) Still, the relation of the anecdote did seem interesting in that in a society where the conventional injunction is to "Be grateful for what you have" (stiffened with endless regurgitations of propaganda already stale two centuries ago about how the rich have it harder than the poor) Mr. Bacon admitted that, yes, a "regular person" is treated pretty badly by other regular people and it is far, far better to be a celebrity. To, as Upton Sinclair put it in Money Writes!, be "waited upon, flattered, caressed, loved, stared at, cheered, photographed, talked about" the way a celebrity is. And that this is why, in spite of so many celebrities' self-pitying whining about how hard it is to be famous, a "victim of such conditions" as ordinary people endure--living the life of a nobody, treated as a nobody, with all its material deprivations and psychological injuries--"driven to desperation" makes extraordinary efforts in the hope of sudden transport to the world in which the Kevin Bacons live, and is all too often disappointed, staying in the same world they can't bear and dying that much more and that much painfully of the fact every day.
That's reality.
According to Bacon the disguise worked--and very well--in that when he went to a shopping mall "no one" there recognized him.
Apparently he couldn't stand more than a few minutes of this, talking about people "pushing past me, not being nice. Nobody said, 'I love you,'" while he "had to wait in line to, I don't know, buy a f---ing coffee or whatever." And he concluded "This sucks. I want to go back to being famous."
I have no idea how seriously Bacon intended for us to take his remarks, which can seem like a parody of entitled, clueless privilege. (Is it really the case that complete strangers tell him "I love you" and that he was shocked to not have strangers tell him "I love you?" Did he really have no notion of what it is to stand in line for a cup of coffee?) Still, the relation of the anecdote did seem interesting in that in a society where the conventional injunction is to "Be grateful for what you have" (stiffened with endless regurgitations of propaganda already stale two centuries ago about how the rich have it harder than the poor) Mr. Bacon admitted that, yes, a "regular person" is treated pretty badly by other regular people and it is far, far better to be a celebrity. To, as Upton Sinclair put it in Money Writes!, be "waited upon, flattered, caressed, loved, stared at, cheered, photographed, talked about" the way a celebrity is. And that this is why, in spite of so many celebrities' self-pitying whining about how hard it is to be famous, a "victim of such conditions" as ordinary people endure--living the life of a nobody, treated as a nobody, with all its material deprivations and psychological injuries--"driven to desperation" makes extraordinary efforts in the hope of sudden transport to the world in which the Kevin Bacons live, and is all too often disappointed, staying in the same world they can't bear and dying that much more and that much painfully of the fact every day.
That's reality.
The Box Office Run of It Ends With Us: A Few Thoughts
Boxoffice Pro's first projection for It Ends with Us had it opening in the $20-$30 million range. However, they revised their estimate upward considerably over the following weeks, so that it stood at $45-$55 million just before release, expectations to which the film lived up with a $50 million debut. Since then the movie has not had spectacular holds, but at least decent ones, with the result that 31 days into its North American run it has amassed $141 million. Meanwhile the movie is doing well abroad, actually outearning its domestic gross in the international markets (the split 46/54 in their favor), such that it has already broken the $300 million barrier ($309 million collected at last count), which is very good for a $25 million romance put out in high summer, and enough to mean that, while the movie is already out of the running to be one of the year's top ten grossers, it may yet prove one of its top ten profit-makers when Deadline makes up its list of the year's Most Valuable Blockbuster next spring, way ahead of many movies that grossed much more (or failing that, a near-certain spot on the accompanying list of lower-cost moneymakers, of the kind rarely going to non-horror films).
The movie would seem to confirm the trend I saw last year--namely that the profit-makers reflected careful selection of movies that had a limited but still appreciable audience of very interested filmgoers, and low costs (the animated features based on Nickelodeon animated franchises, Taylor Swift's concert film, Five Nights at Freddy's, in a way even the animated Spider-Man film and Oppenheimer), rather than a mindless pouring of money into gargantuan franchise-based productions in the faith that "Make it and they will come" (which, of course, failed so miserably that year). Right now, as the entertainment press fixates on successes like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine they seem determined to stick with that "Make it and they will come" business-as-usual approach--but I say again that things may not go the way they hope, and if only out of the concern for the bottom line demanded by their Wall Street masters the studio bosses would do well to attend to this movie's example.
The movie would seem to confirm the trend I saw last year--namely that the profit-makers reflected careful selection of movies that had a limited but still appreciable audience of very interested filmgoers, and low costs (the animated features based on Nickelodeon animated franchises, Taylor Swift's concert film, Five Nights at Freddy's, in a way even the animated Spider-Man film and Oppenheimer), rather than a mindless pouring of money into gargantuan franchise-based productions in the faith that "Make it and they will come" (which, of course, failed so miserably that year). Right now, as the entertainment press fixates on successes like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine they seem determined to stick with that "Make it and they will come" business-as-usual approach--but I say again that things may not go the way they hope, and if only out of the concern for the bottom line demanded by their Wall Street masters the studio bosses would do well to attend to this movie's example.
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