Spectre: A Box Office Prediction

Originally Posted on November 5, 2015.

The release of Spectre is finally upon us in the U.S..

Thus far critics have (predictably) been more ambivalent about the latest Bond film than its predecessor. To go by my decidedly unscientific sampling of the published reviews, praise for the action sequences seems universal, while the visual style more generally has been remarked. However, the film has (unsurprisingly given the Sony leaks from last year) been criticized for its plotting, which to go by the more caustic, has been loose and illogical even by Bondian standards. The movie's length and "crowdedness" seem to be taking their toll, with the backstory especially falling flat. And as a whole, the novelty of the reboot seems to be fading.

None of this prevented Spectre from enjoying a sensational first week at the British box office, during which it earned a record $67 million. Of course, more screens and IMAX did their part as Deadline's Nancy Tartaglione notes--and so, one might imagine, did inflation--but all the same, given how big Skyfall was, topping its debut on just about any terms bodes very well for it. Spectre also seems to have done the same in the Netherlands, and across Scandinavia.

Still, other markets are tougher, not least that of the United States, where nothing like a record weekend is expected. Indeed, Spectre is expected to pull in some $65-75 million in its first three days, healthy for a movie of this kind, but a far cry from the $200 million openings enjoyed by Jurassic World and Avengers earlier this year, or even the $90 million that Skyfall scored three years ago. And there is little reason to think the movie will have exceptional legs at the American box office.

That still leaves a North American gross of $250 million plausible, and anything under $200 million unlikely/. Admittedly that makes the drop from last time's $304 million take too large to overlook. Still, it is easy to see any diminution of the movie's American earnings being offset by the higher revenue already coming in from elsewhere, and also likely to come in the weeks ahead--like China, where Spectre's significantly bettering the $59 million take Skyfall enjoyed in that country is easily pictured. Consequently, when the last receipts have been counted, I expect that even if the new movie misses the billion-dollar mark, it will not be by much.

The Last Daniel Craig Bond Film?

Originally Posted on October 22, 2015.

As is well known, Daniel Craig sounded aghast at the thought of doing another Bond film in a recent interview, and much of the press made a lot of the fact, as they always do when an actor deviates from the achingly bland routine of film promotion.

The reality is that while nothing is so important for an actor's career as having a franchise (so much so that anyone getting one should count themselves very, very lucky), actually having that franchise, and playing the same role again and again and again, makes them restless. This is all the more the case when it is a franchise of big-budget ($250 million!) with a great deal of location work, and long, post-production publicity tours. And of course, it's one thing to endure the grueling routine (with which few non-Bond films compare) at twenty-seven, another to do it at forty-seven.

In fact, there's a long tradition of Bonds getting fed up with just this aspect of the series, going back at least to Sean Connery in You Only Live Twice.

There is, too, the problem of lengthy association with the franchise. One can do only so many movies--and then what? In contrast with a good many other roles, the role is not identified with the actor, but the actor with the role, and especially if they stick with it for too long, what comes afterward is apt to be an anti-climax. (Take, for example, Roger Moore's long career of William Shatner-like self-parody in movies like Spice World. Indeed, even Sean Connery had a hard time moving past it, even if he did ultimately succeed.)

And again, Craig's age matters. By the time the next Bond film comes out, he could be fifty--and while in this post-Expendables age being a fiftysomething action hero is less implausible than it used to be (Vin Diesel's still playing Dom Toretto is actually much more bizarre given the youth orientation of the Fast and Furious series), the audience has a very fixed idea of Bond as eternally thirtysomething which makes it more of a problem. And it can understandably seem better not to overstay one's welcome (and spare oneself the kind of brutal press Moore was getting by the time of A View to a Kill).

Still, even the spontaneous remarks of the publicity tour are often as "unscripted" as a reality show. Craig might have been blowing off some genuine steam--but it could also have been a trial balloon, one which achieved the predictable effect, eliciting both expressions of stupid shock, and speculation about who might succeed Craig in the role.

Shea Serrano, at least, managed to be interesting as he went about the old game, making a case for Groot getting the job--which actually would be something worth writing about.

Too Many Spies?

Originally posted on September 29, 2015.

This past year has been surprisingly crowded with adventures featuring '60's-style spies. Most obviously there has been this spring's hit Kingsman, and then this summer's Spy, Mission: Impossible 5 and The Man From U.N.C.L.E..

One might add, too, that the Fast and Furious franchise has moved into 007 territory--as Roman Pearce quipped pungently in the sixth film (and stayed there in its hit seventh film)--and that the SHIELD organization of the Avengers franchise also was born out of Marvel's jumping on the "spymania" bandwagon back in the '60s.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E. apart, all of these films were considerable hits, and that movie's comparative failure at the box office can easily be thought a matter of the original franchise's obscurity, and the tough sell of its atompunk approach, rather than the market's having been over-saturated.

Still, one wonders if this has not been a factor--and what it will bode for the biggest of this year's spy movies, the new Bond film Spectre, when it hits theaters.

My expectation is that this won't make much difference. Just as the public has soaked up the superheroes for nearly two decades, the signs all suggest that a couple of months hence they will be ready to see yet another film derived from a '60s-era spy franchise--the good will the Bond brand picked up with Skyfall, which does not seem to have suffered after the revelations regarding the hacking of Sony, likely to survive this too.

Rather it seems more worthwhile to consider wonder whether the film will match Skyfall's record earnings back in 2012--greater than any prior Bond film, even after inflation.

What do you think? Any predictions?

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: Trailer and Story

Originally Posted on August 6, 2013.

Seeing the trailer for Ben Stiller's upcoming The Secret Life of Walter Mitty set me thinking about the original short story again (you can read it here), and the ways in which that film diverges from it.

Such a divergence was perhaps inevitable, the original tale not lending itself well to a two-hour movie. A mere two thousand words in length, it is essentially a slice-of-life vignette about a hapless and "henpecked" older man who drives into town with his wife to run a few errands and is constantly distracted from his tasks by his tendency to daydream, much to the inconvenience and irritation of everyone around him.

This is sufficient material for a sitcom episode, not a feature film.

Quantity aside, a day in the life of this particular couple is not exactly the stuff of high-concept comedy--and indeed, decades before the term "high-concept" was in use, the film made the protagonist younger, made him single, transferred the overbearing behavior of the wife to other characters (mother, boss). They also tossed in a real-life adventure to provide a plot that leads to a happy ending when the man who only daydreamed himself a hero actually becomes one.

The trailer for the upcoming version, of course, is rather thin on detail (the absence of dialogue has been repeatedly noted in the entertainment press), and so even as trailers go it offers little basis for judging the film. Still, it follows the previous film in many of these respects, down to Mitty's job in publishing (big shock, that)--while hinting at some significant differences, which set it that much further apart from the original.

One is the way in which the film will handle the daydream sequences. In Thurber's story, Daydream Mitty, in stark contrast with Real Mitty, was in command of every situation that presented itself and always recognized for it, everyone about him a fawning admirer of his exceptional courage and skill--and manly self-assertion--as they cringed before the same challenges. Those situations were typically martial (Navy "hydroplane" captain, bomber pilot) or at least involved weapons and violence (Mitty as gunman, Mitty before a firing squad).1 In the trailer for the new film we do see Daydream Mitty in archetypally heroic situations (he seems to be an Arctic explorer at one point, an astronaut in another), but the emphasis on war, weaponry and violence has been left out. Indeed, the old-fashioned machismo--both Mitty's anxiety about his real-life lack of it, and his conspicuous display of it in his daydreams--seem unlikely to be a part of the big-screen version. (If anything, to go by Mitty's longing look at Cheryl, I expect the accent will be on Mitty as Sensitive Man rather than merely timid.)

More significant still is the likelihood that we will see Mitty less put upon (especially by overbearing women, another concept Hollywood has become less comfortable with treating in a critical fashion), while the extent to which he has contributed to his unhappy situation seems likely to be played up. Indeed, it all looks rather "Walter Mitty, Self-Help Book Hero," and I expect that how one feels about that will depend in large part on how one feels about self-help culture.

Love it or hate it, though, there is no denying that that culture tends to play up individual autonomy, and play down the practical and other constraints on one's freedom of choice; that it tends toward a simplistic, complacent solipsism. As I saw it, Thurber's story was about the distance between the man Mitty would have liked to be (the kind of man he has been told he should be), and the kind of man he actually was, or even could be--and the ways in which the external world he had to deal with kept reminding him of the fact, making him retreat inside his own head (as arguably, we all do to varying degrees). A "Self-Help"-themed version of the story seems prone to deny the importance, or even existence, of the external world altogether, a fundamentally different way of approaching the same subject than Thurber offered, and a rather more conventional one contrary to the spirit of Thurber's work.

But all this will likely stand Stiller's film in good stead at Oscar time.

1. Only the scene where "Dr." Mitty performs surgery on a high-profile patient is an exception to that pattern.

Star Wars: Another Marvel Movie Machine

Originally Posted on July 19, 2015.

Star Wars: Episode VII: The Force Awakens is due out this December.

In comparison with both the original trilogy, and the prequels, the current plan has the films coming out more rapidly--another movie every two years rather than every three.

And in the off-years, it seems, there will be non-trilogy Star Wars films. Rogue One is expected out next year, and two more untitled projects--one about Han Solo (due out 2018), another about Boba Fett (date unannounced, but somehow I don't think they're leaving it to the 2020s).

Assuming all the projects materialize, this could mean a half dozen live-action Star Wars films in the next four and a half years or so.

It seemed that what happened with Marvel Studios--the transformation of its intellectual property into a growing number of inter-linked franchises making up mega-franchises like the Avengers--is happening also with the Star Wars franchise (with the declaration of the Expanded Universe non-canonical "Legends" helping to clear the path for this course of action).

Audiences have been happy to go along with the massive output of Marvel movies so far, the popularity of movies about Big Name Marvel superheroes (and superheroes in general) enduring without break far, far longer than I ever imagined it would. It is fifteen years this month since X-Men came out in 2000--which means that there are now adults who literally have no memory of a time when X-Men movies with Patrick Stewart, Hugh Jackman and company weren't a semi-annual event, an idea that seems to me more bizarre than anything I've actually seen in an X-Men movie. And the executives clearly expect it to go strong for a few years more, longer in fact than any previous action movie trend of the last half century (James Bond-style spies, disaster movies, loose cannon cops, shark movies, space movies, Rambo-style commandos).

However, will there be an audience for so much not just of space opera (toward which viewers have been so much more fickle), but specifically this one franchise?

Despite having been proven wrong about moviegoers' appetite for superhero movies I have to admit I'm doubtful about this.

What do you think?

Remembering Suicide Kings

Originally Posted on August 6, 2013.

I remember laughing when I first saw the commercial for Suicide Kings.

Not because it was funny, but because it already seemed so cliché--the snotty overprivileged kids, the less than half-baked kidnapping scheme which sees them quickly get in over their heads, even the casting of Christopher Walken. (The same, too, went for the pseudo-mature sensibility implicit in the title's metaphorical poker reference.)

When the movie hit cable a year later I saw it in the same spirit as most people see the likes of Sharknado, and it was exactly what I expected. The script's particular combination of humor and brutality, of quirkiness and snarkiness (Denis Leary's character going on and on and on about his fifteen hundred dollar boots, Walken's losing a finger), the conventional attempts to be unconventional (evident in the nonlinearity of the script), all lived down to my expectations.

Looking back on my response to that commercial, that seems to have been the moment when I knew that my sense of the whole indie phenomenon (especially the Tarantino rip-off/neo-noir side of it) had crystallized.

Alas, the indie films made since then have tended to reinforce that impression rather than change it.

Up From Development Hell: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Originally Posted on August 5, 2013.

I can't remember a time when Hollywood was not buzzing about a big-screen remake of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. At the peaks of their respective careers, Jim Carrey and then Steve Carrell were attached to the project. However, Ben Stiller has finally realized the project, completing a film due out by Christmas.

I recently checked out the trailer, not really expecting that it would be faithful to the original James Thurber story, or the 1947 film starring the legendary Danny Kaye--but was still surprised by how far it diverged from both. Instead of a wacky comedy about a hapless daydreamer, the movie looks like a romantic drama with prestige picture written all over it, and clearly intended to be a contender in this year's Oscar race.

Indeed, comparisons with Forrest Gump are fast becoming a cliché of the publicity--which will doubtless lead to comparisons with Simple Jack.

The buzz for the film thus far is positive, but I can't help feeling I'd rather have seen something more in the spirit of Thurber's story--wildly unrealistic as that seems to be.

On Ben Affleck as Batman

Originally Posted on August 24, 2013.

Ben Affleck has just been signed to appear as Batman in the sequel to this summer's Superman movie, Man of Steel.

I am not sure that anything disqualifies Affleck from the role, strictly speaking, but the news, and the reaction to it, does say a lot about his journey in Hollywood.

The entertainment press--and those who hang on its every word--has a tendency to go overboard in exalting a star, and then equally overboard in heaping opprobrium upon them, usually after some trivial misstep that serves as excuse more than cause. Think, for instance, of the grossly exaggerated reaction to Tom Cruise's couch-jumping, or the sheer vehemence of the reaction against Megan Fox after her unkind remarks about Michael Bay's directorial style.

The equally exaggerated blowback against Ben Affleck over Gigli--a film that, bad as it is, is merely par for the course where indie crime films are concerned--was perhaps even more severe. Indeed, unlike Cruise and Fox, he had to conduct much of his recovery from behind the camera, as the director of a string of critically acclaimed films that culminated in last year's Best Picture winner, Argo.

Interestingly, Hollywood did not deign even to nominate him for Best Director--rather unusual for films that take that most prestigious of Oscars--but the win for the movie still reflected his return to Hollywood's good graces. And his casting as Batman is an even more powerful expression of that than an extra little statue.

Still, there is a real risk for Affleck's career here. While his previous big-screen appearance as Daredevil was initially well-received, and went on to become a $100 million hit at a time when that meant more than it does today, the subsequent hostility to Affleck (and the commercial failure of the spin-off, Elektra, and the torrent of better superhero films that followed) lowered its standing in many eyes, so that now it actually appears on many a "worst-ever superhero movies" list. That opprobrium, in turn, has attached to Affleck, and the idea of his turning up in another superhero movie. (Indeed, "Did they see Daredevil?" was the first reader comment to appear at the page on Hero Complex reporting the decision.)

At the same time, for all their flaws (and those flaws were grave indeed in the last installment), the positive feeling toward Christopher Nolan's Batman films has made fans of that franchise that much more skeptical about any replacement for Christian Bale. In fact, there has already been something of a backlash among comic book fans displeased with the decision (a petition for his removal already gathering 10,000 signatures at the time of this writing.)

Additionally, "Man of Steel 2" may not be the sure thing that it looks. While Man of Steel has certainly been a big earner this past summer (its take at the global box office now stands at some $650 million), it is not entirely clear that audiences are hungry for more of the same. (Among much else the dark, relatively humorless approach of the film widely attributed to Nolan's participation has already attracted wide criticism. Ironic, that.)

Naturally, Forbes' writer Scott Mendelson has already raised the question of a sequel's falling into what he calls the "Tomb Raider trap," namely that

if your first film makes a lot of money due to front-loaded interest despite being a film that no one ends up liking, then you still run the risk of losing. Even if you make a better film than the original, people will still remember that they didn’t like the previous entry and they won’t be so eager to sample the next chapter.1

Ben Affleck's turn as Batman, whether it proves good or bad, is unlikely to decide Man of Steel 2's fortunes. However, if the movie succeeds, and Affleck is well-liked in the role, it may lead to his playing Batman again--in a third Man of Steel movie, in a Batman reboot, in other D.C. franchises, perhaps even to include the Justice League films long talked about but never realized. But if that movie tanks, it will be a significant blow to his still ongoing rehabilitation as a headliner for blockbusters of this type.

1. The Tomb Raider trap is so named because of the underperformance of what many felt to be the superior Tomb Raider sequel, after the lucrative but not particularly well-liked first film. Mendelson also names the Narnia and Robert Langdon franchises as victims of that trap.

Street Performing in Cyberspace

Originally Posted on February 11, 2013.

Several years ago I came across the blog of an aspiring screenwriter who'd purchased an option on a classic science fiction novel (the genre connoisseurs here will have heard of the author, if not the book), to the end of turning the story into a screenplay which he hoped would become a feature film. The blog was a diary of sorts about the course of the project, which he also hoped would provide some useful publicity. The idea intrigued me, and soon enough I found myself following the site and leaving the occasional comment. We even exchanged an e-mail every now and then.

As it turned out, the legalities regarding the rights to the novel were more complex than he'd anticipated, and made his continuation in the project a poor business proposition. At any rate, the blog hadn't brought the publicity for which he hoped. After several months of regular posts he checked his stats and found that he'd got only eight hits all day--just about all of them from people apparently interested in anything and everything but his project. That is to say, there was very little traffic of any kind, and even less of the repeat traffic that would have indicated the emergence of a following among those who happened to drop by.

Where Internet content is concerned, the ratio of supply of all kinds to demand is staggering (there may literally be more web sites now than there are people on the planet) and the competition for readers, watchers, listeners intense beyond the power of words to describe. Meanwhile, attention spans appear to keep on shrinking, especially among the most wired of us, who are, after all, the principal audience. The result is that a site without, for instance, the attraction of a brand name, a celebrity association, or some gimmick a lot stronger than the one described above--like a simple DIY blog, operated by a single individual with a day job and other priorities, striving to attract a readership with nothing but their own thoughts and their own words--is almost certain to be crushed in the stampede, and its anguished cries as it lays dying almost unheard in the maddening cacophony of billions of pages screaming for a listener's attention. And no amount of adherence to the "how-to" advice so widely available (like most advice of the type, the presentation of banality in shiny, authoritative-looking packaging) will do much to shift the odds in its favor. That we so often imagine otherwise is just another example of our stupid but overpowering tendency to focus on the one-in-a-million success story, while totally forgetting the nine hundred and ninety thousand, nine hundred and ninety-nine failures--and perhaps worse, to take for granted that the successes represent the triumph of world-beating excellence rather than mere noise.

For all the talk of the Internet as an equalizer, it remains a place where the big battalions win. And for all the talk of connectivity, cyberspace is just another place where one can feel lonely in a crowd.

Remakes, Remakes, Remakes--and Nevermakes?

Originally Posted on June 4, 2010.

According to io9, the 1986 film Short Circuit may be getting the remake treatment, just one of a long list of genre films, classic and not-so-classic, slated for such handling, ranging from Forbidden Planet to Dune, from Barbarella to Total Recall, from Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure to Plan 9 From Outer Space.

I toyed for a while with the idea of providing a full list here, but the task quickly came to seem too staggering and depressing to be worth the time. Many of these films were just fine the first time, and even many of the ones that weren't hardly justify a do-over. And still others just couldn't be done in today's Hollywood (as with 1968's Barbarella, though I have to admit Robert Rodriguez is as promising a choice as exists among Hollywood's Big Names for this project-which is more than I can say for the choice of Peter Berg to direct the Dune remake).

Still, in case you're interested, here is a link to the list you get when you put the word "remake" in the search box at the io9 site-an act which turns up no fewer than 450 hits.

Sigh.

One might wonder why Hollywood keeps at it when much of the audience responds to the first word about most remakes, reboots, spin-offs and all the rest with groans that prove only too justified after the films hit theaters (after which the executives often groan when they see the lousy receipts).

It's no mystery, and off the top of my head I can think of three reasons.

First and foremost, one successful attempt "inspires" massive imitation until the disappointments pile so high as to block that path-as now seems to have happened with the epic fantasy genre that derived so much steam from J.K. Rowling and Peter Jackson at the start of the decade. (By disappointment I of course mean commercial disappointment, and the truth is that budgets have got so out of control in the unbelievably wasteful assembly lines of Hollywood that a film can still be judged such after pulling in three, four or five hundred million dollars globally.)

Right now the success of J.J. Abrams's Star Trek reboot threw a lot of fuel on that fire, which will likely help keep it burning through the many flops that surely lie ahead.

The second is that remakes, reboots and the rest are inherently "high concept," high concept meaning, essentially, that the marketing is simple, that an audience can be excited with a very, very brief explanation.

Transformers-the Movie is a perfect example, not because I am picking on it (I'm not), but because those three words are enough to give you the gist of it, and clearly were enough (along with the great-looking effects and action in the commercial) to get a large number of people to buy tickets.

The third is control. As the late Thomas Disch pointed out in his brutally honest take on science fiction’s past and prospects, The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of:

Writers tend to consider distinction and originality as virtues, but they are anathema to publishers, who value those writers most who can be depended on to turn out . . . product that will move through the channels of circulation at a dependable, steady rate.

Disch was talking about publishing, not film, but what he said about it carries over to that part of the media business as well (which is all one anyway these days, thanks to the wonders of semi-monopolization and synergy).

When the game's turned around so that companies already own all the ideas they need (assignable to some established, or at least well-connected, scribe), as opposed to having brand new ideas brought in by aspiring filmmakers, they get more control over the process. Besides, when they already own all the ideas they can use, they don't have to deal with all the people trying to break in, usually regarded as anathema by such types.

I expect things will get worse rather than better in this regard for the foreseeable future, across the media spectrum.

Mission: Impossible 7--Making Predictions About its Box Office Gross

In considering the commercial prospects of Mission: Impossible 7 (aka Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning) an obvious place to start is what the preceding films in the series made at the box office. Listed below are the box office numbers compiled from various sources (Box Office Mojo, The Numbers, etc.), with the current dollar figures presented along with the inflation-adjusted numbers in parentheses (with prices adjusted for May 2023 values using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Consumer Price Index).

Mission: Impossible (1996)--Worldwide--$458 Million ($889 Million); Domestic--$181 Million ($351 Million)

Mission: Impossible II (2000)--Worldwide--$546 Million ($934 Million); Domestic--$215 Million ($368 Million)

Mission: Impossible III (2006)--Worldwide--$398 Million ($597 Million); Domestic--$134 Million ($201 Million)

Mission: Impossible--Ghost Protocol (2011)--Worldwide--$695 Million ($938 Million); Domestic--$209 Million ($282 Million)

Mission: Impossible--Rogue Nation (2015)--Worldwide--$683 Million ($867 Million); Domestic--$195 Million ($248 Million)

Mission: Impossible--Fallout (2018)--Worldwide--$792 Million ($958 Million); Domestic--$220 Million ($267 Million)

If one goes by these figures then in May 2023 terms the six films averaged $864 million at the box office--or, if one excludes the outlier of the low-performing Mission: Impossible III--$917 million.* The last film, unusually for a sixth installment, did better than any of the others, pulling in $958 million.

As it happens, Boxoffice Pro, going by its tracking, envisages $250 million as merely the floor--and $320 million as the ceiling.

Meanwhile the films have made, globally, between 2.5 (as the first 1996 film did) and 3.5 times (as Mission Impossible 6 did) their domestic gross.

Should the film's gross to fall at the low end of the range ($250 million domestically), with the global multiplier seen with the first film, we would have a gross in the vicinity of $610 million (about what Mission: Impossible III made). At the same time a gross at the high end of the domestic range ($320 million), combined with the international response received by Mission: Impossible 6 works out to a little under $1.14 billion--the series' first billion-dollar gross in current and 2023 dollars, and the first billion-dollar gross for any live-action Hollywood movie this year.

Splitting the difference one ends up in the vicinity of $900 million ($875 million or so)--again, about what the series has averaged from the start.

What would a more nuanced approach give us, though? If, for example, we went beyond averages and looked at trends?

As it happens, the picture gets more complicated. Just as with the Fast and Furious franchise, the series' domestic peak was quite some time ago, with foreign grosses increasingly important. Where the first two films in today's terms made over $350 million domestically, the four films since have consistently fallen short of the $300 million mark. Indeed, the fourth, fifth and sixth films averaged a mere $265 million--with the last film, Mission: Impossible--Fallout taking in just $267 million in today's terms, down a $100 million from Mission: Impossible II's gross eighteen years earlier.

This is part of why the domestic/foreign split in the gross fell from 40/60 with Mission: Impossible II to 30/70 with the fourth film, 29/71 with the fifth, 28/72 with the sixth. However, it is not the whole story, important to which has been China. Each of the last three Mission: Impossible films took in over $100 million there in current dollars ($101 million in the case of the fourth, $136 million in the case of the fifth, $181 million in the case of the sixth), with in today's terms 2018's Mission: Impossible--Fallout grossing over $200 million in just the Chinese market, accounting for 23 percent of that series-high global take (indeed, almost as much as North America. did), without which growth the movie would have done a lot less well.

Of course, 2023 is not 2018. On the one hand American films are facing a less receptive Chinese market. The downward pressure on U.S. films' grosses there varies considerably from movie to movie, of course, as a comparison of Ant-Man 3 with Guardians of the Galaxy 3 demonstrates. (In real terms Ant-Man 3 made only 27 percent of what Ant-Man 2 made in China--a significant factor in its underperformance--whereas Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has at this point made about 70 percent of what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did. Likewise Fast X, a better analogy for Mission: Impossible given its genre, and its franchise's popularity in the Chinese market, made just 55 percent of what F9 did in real terms--$137 million versus the earlier film's $247 million in May 2023 dollars.)

At the same time, there is that possible boost in the North American market, into which the good will toward Tom Cruise from fans of Top Gun 2. This seems to me plausible enough--but of more domestic than international significance (given that Top Gun 2, predictably, was much more phenomenal a performer in North America than abroad, and certainly China, where it did not come out at all). It may also have something of a boost from weaker than usual summer competition (for Guardians of the Galaxy 3 will have long since faded, The Transformers only ever been a minor rival, and The Flash, and likely, Indiana Jones as well, underperformed badly, leaving people that much more ready to go and see this movie at the movies).

Accordingly, let us split the difference between the floor and ceiling of the Boxoffice Pro range--giving us a $285 million gross domestically. Meanwhile let us consider the average performance of the last three films internationally excluding China--which gives us an average in the $480 million range. And let us assume (perhaps optimistically) that the movie makes 70 percent of what the last Mission: Impossible film did in China--working out to $150 million or so. The result would be almost exactly that average for the series (excluding number three) of a gross in the $910-$920 million range. Were the movie to take in just 50 percent of what its predecessor did in China as the rest of the calculation was unchanged we would end up with--again--$875 million.

So, again, the more plausible calculations have us coming back again and again to the $900 million mark, give or take $25 million, though when making these estimates I am more comfortable with a $50 million margin north and south of that point to cover variations on the essential scenario (a little better abroad and a little less well at home, or vice-versa, etc., etc.). The result is that I am going to guess at a range of $850-$950 million for the film's global gross, not far from what has been seen from its predecessors, though with a stronger domestic contribution and a weaker foreign one to the final take.

* The movie came out in that patch when everybody was supposed to hate Tom Cruise because he jumped on Oprah Winfrey's couch, or something. (Yes, the entertainment world is an extremely stupid place, and it has made the Internet stupider.)

Guardians of the Galaxy 3's Box Office Gross in its Seventh Weekend

Guardians of the Galaxy 3, showing still better legs than before late in its run, suffered a mere 31 percent week-on-week drop in the last (June 9-June 15) Friday-to-Thursday period, followed by a reasonably robust Memorial Day weekend gross (in the three-day period seeing a mere 27 percent drop from what it did in the prior Friday-to-Sunday, while adding an extra $1 million on Monday). The result is that its domestic box office gross now stands at $346 million.

The holds are impressive--but all the same, they are from a fairly low level. The result is that where I had guessed at a final gross of $330 million after the second weekend the film will end up, all things considered, just a little higher (in the vicinity of $350-$360 million). Meanwhile the film, if opening bigger internationally, continues to fade faster elsewhere. The result is that I still expect that in even the best-case scenario the movie will not get much beyond $850 million, $900 million (which both preceding Guardians of the Galaxy movies blew past), and even the $875 million I suggested as the likely top of the range when offering the $330 million figure, out of reach.

Still, if the movie will end up the lowest grosser of the trilogy domestically, internationally and globally, and by a not insignificant margin, it is a considerable improvement over how the last three Marvel films did--and, admittedly helped by the weakness of the performances we are generally seeing this year (in the wake of how films like The Flash are performing, and Indiana Jones 5 seems likely to perform) I think it has a good shot of making Deadline's list of the top ten most profitable movies of 2023 in another reminder that the Marvel Cinematic Universe, if not at its peak, and facing considerable headwinds (with just Captain Marvel 2 coming out between now and next summer, and everything else after subject to delay), still has some life in it as the industry, press included, grade success on an increasingly generous curve.

The Flash's Opening Weekend Box Office Gross: How Did it Do?

In its first three days in domestic release The Flash has taken in $55 million.

Considering this, remember that Boxoffice Pro's projection just this past week was that it would make $69 million--almost a quarter more than what it actually did make--and that the $69 million figure was way down from its initial projection of $115-$140 million a month ago, which was itself received as a significant disappointment in the wake of some very loud claquing on the film's behalf, given that more than that had been expected.

So basically the movie's gross was less than half of what was projected in a worst-case scenario a month ago that was considered a major letdown.

Consider also what this means. Simply to get up to the $300 million mark the movie would need the legs of a Top Gun 2--which are probably not to be had by any movie this summer given the season's sheer crowdedness. Even with decent legs it might not break $150 million.

The film pulled in a little more abroad, it seems, with the domestic/international gross at the end of the Friday-to-Sunday period expected to be along the lines of 46/54 percent going by Box Office Mojo's data. Still, where even restrained, pre-claquing expectations had projected some $700 million for the film at the global box office (a figure I thought plausible enough) the movie's making so much as $400 million looks a long way off.

The result is that what was touted as the "greatest superhero film ever made" makes Ant-Man 3 look like a hit by comparison. (That one made almost $215 million domestic, and $476 million global.)

All this being the case I would say that I expect The Flash to be prominent in Deadline's list of the year's biggest "box office bombs"--but, alas, know it will have a lot of competition. There is Indiana Jones 5, which seems to be on track to be another Solo--or worse. And, later this year, there is the bad buzz-plagued conclusion to this phase in the DCEU's existence, Aquaman 2 which seems unlikely to benefit from the preceding DCEU film failing so badly. Indeed, this is shaping up to be one exceptional year for megaflops--so much so that by year's end we may, with this coming on top of Hollywood's other troubles, see its commitment to its current way of doing things more sorely tested than at any time since the New Hollywood era.

Indiana Jones 5: Points of Comparison (Top Gun 2, The Last Jedi, Solo, No Time to Die, Wild Wild West, Cowboys & Aliens)

When those who make predictions about how big franchise movies will do at the box office go by more than their "gut" they certainly think in terms of how past films in the franchise did. However, they also draw analogies with films outside their franchises that had critical similarities of other kinds.

The analogy that the claqueurs have preferred to make for Indiana Jones 5 has been Top Gun 2.

I have been skeptical about that analogy from the start--for many reasons. (Top Gun 2, whatever its virtues or assets as a blockbuster, had the benefit of the media cheer-leading for it with one voice, and a summer with very little competition from other big action movies--and this made a difference to its opening, and its extraordinary legs.) But considering Indiana Jones 5 I have found myself thinking of other movies. Notable among these have been:

* The Last Jedi, an installment in the other principal Lucasfilm franchise that likewise, under the direction of a much-admired but unlikely helmer, "subverted expectations" and destroyed the image of its iconic hero by presenting him aged and seemingly broken, with the task of saving the day falling to a younger woman who had looked to him for help (in a situation whose identity politics far from escaped notice).

* Solo, the next movie produced by the aforementioned franchise, which saw a Harrison Ford character in a very different phase of life (and looking different from) when we last saw him teamed up with another character played by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. It was also released on a key summer holiday weekend (Memorial rather than Independence Day in this case).

* No Time to Die, the last movie from the franchise that, even beyond being "the granddaddy of them all" when it comes to our high concept action-adventure franchise films, did so much to inspire both of the big Lucasfilm franchises specifically (with, indeed, Indiana Steven Spielberg's way of satisfying his unfulfilled impulse to make a Bond film). It also involved Phoebe Waller-Bridge (writing, not acting) as it presented its own hero at the "end of the road."

I now add to these three previously discussed points of comparison a fourth and fifth--Wild Wild West and Cowboys & Aliens, as both of these movies, the latter of which also starred Harrison Ford (and No Time to Die's Daniel Craig too!), were highly publicized mega-budgeted retro sci-fi July releases (with Wild Wild West, like Indiana Jones 5, hitting theaters on Independence Day weekend).

As it happened, the response to all of these movies was . . . not what was hoped for.

* The Last Jedi was deeply divisive, to the point of being a major moment in the country's culture wars over pop culture, with the fact associated with what, compared to the preceding Episode VII, was a significant commercial underperformance.

* Solo, which seemed to many a victim of the backlash that followed in the wake of The Last Jedi, proved a costly flop of historic proportions that caused Disney to cancel its plans for the franchise (which have yet to be properly replaced).

* No Time To Die was an underperformer at the box office (in the U.S., the weakest since Licence to Kill), which confirmed that the series was indeed catering to an aging fan base unreplenished by younger cohorts (with, indeed, the severity of the blow reflected in the slowness with which any plans for the continuation of the Bond franchise have proceeded, at least so far as is publicly known).

And of course, Wild Wild West and Cowboys & Aliens that confirmed the unsalability of "weird Westerns," steampunk and retro-sci-fi generally to the wider audience expected to come out for big summer films.

Given what is known of the films' content, and now expected of it commercially, it seems reasonable to expect Indiana Jones 5 to follow the same track as all these films in the weeks ahead with respect to both commercial performance and popular reception--though supporters of the movie may hope that history will prove kinder to it than the critics and audience of the summer of 2023.

The Box Office Prospects of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: Worse Than Solo?

Boxoffice Pro has again downgraded its projection for the opening weekend gross of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Already reduced from $81-$111 million two weeks ago to $76-$105 million last week, to their estimate of the range between the worst and best case scenarios now stands at $68-$102 million.

In other words, the best that can be hoped for now seems to be about $100 million (a tepid gross indeed for a onetime Star Wars-like king of the blockbusters, or indeed any would-be blockbuster honored with an Independence Day weekend release date)--while an opening of under $70 million is within the realm of possibility.

Boxoffice Pro has likewise downgraded its expectations for the film's gross over its longer run--the ceiling last week, already down from $380 million at $359 million last week, reduced by a rough tenth to $325 million.

Of course, the floor remains unchanged (still the $225 million it was last week)--but I notice Boxoffice Pro's adjustments of that part of the projection tend to lag the others, while the common pattern for blockbusters makes it easy to imagine lower figures. Front-loaded blockbusters often make something like 40 percent of their money on opening weekend (such that Guardians of the Galaxy 3's being on track to triple its opening weekend gross is accounted a case of "good legs").

Should the movie take in $68 million a 40 percent take would give it a mere $170 million at the North American box office. Should the movie suffer an Ant-Man 3-like collapse it will have taken in 50 percent of its money that opening weekend, which would work out to a bit under $140 million. The result is that given these numbers it is far from impossible that the movie will gross under $200 million, or even $150 million--even before we consider the possibility that the opening weekend numbers will continue in their southward direction for another two weeks. (Were we, to, for instance, assume that after the floor fell 16 percent these past two weeks--from $81 to $68 million--it falls by another 16 percent between now and opening day, we could be looking at an opening weekend in the vicinity of $57 million, in which case the film would need better-than-average legs just to get to the $150 million mark.)

Back in April, making my calculations on the basis of the performance of prior Indiana Jones films, with some allowance for the headwinds the movie faces, I felt myself "sticking my neck out" speaking of the possibility of a Solo-like collapse. Now a Solo-like collapse--which a gross of $250 million (what Solo made in inflation-adjusted terms) would constitute--actually seems a relatively favorable outcome for the movie as the signs all point to Indiana Jones 5 performing worse than Solo this summer.