Balzac's "La Maison Nucingen"--literally "The House of Nucingen," though perhaps more fittingly translated as "The Firm of Nucingen"--consists of a long dialogue among a group of men about time over a meal in a restaurant overheard by another diner. In that dialogue one of the party tells the others how it was that that major figure of Balzac's "Human Comedy," Eugène de Rastignac, made his fortune, bridging the gap between the condition we find him in in Le Père Goriot (Father Goriot), and the position we find him in in later works like Illusions Perdues (Lost Illusions), where he is an established figure in Parisian society and eventually one of the most prominent men in all of France.
Not what I expected given the craftsmanship Balzac showed in prior works, it is also the case that the dialogue is rather maundering, to the point of Balzac himself making excuses for it--the storyteller's dining companions actually getting impatient and themselves accusing him of maundering, and he dismissing their objections repeatedly. (As the man telling the story remarks of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa, "the most wooden-headed playwright would give you the whole . . . in a single act," Richardson's literary accomplishment the production of "fourteen volumes of her" from the material.)
I did not find the answer particularly satisfying, the novella trying my patience in a way Balzac rarely does. Still, the story's events are too important for someone really interested in this corner of Balzac's saga to skip over, and the interest of the tale does pick up as it moves along, because we move from more marginal figures and events to those at the heart of the story, and because of Balzac's memorable portrait of the financial world where the action happens, the chicaneries and treacheries of which never lost their relevance given, to use the phrase of another Victorian novelist who told tales of the financial world, "the way we live now."
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Friday, November 3, 2023
The Marvels: Boxoffice Pro's Last Long-Range Forecast for the Movie
There is just one week left to go until the theatrical debut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s latest--The Marvels--and Boxoffice Pro has put out the last "Long-Range Forecast" that will include the film
(its projection next week to be found in its coverage of the weekend).
For the third week in a row Boxoffice Pro's projection reports erosion from its prior projection--from week to week slight (2 percent in the second projection, 9 percent in the third, 2 percent more this week), but it adds up, the more in as the initial numbers were underwhelming (indeed, along the lines not of what had been predicted for The Flash, but how that movie actually did).* Thus where the expectation in the October 12 report was of the movie having a $50-$75 million debut, on the way to a $121-$189 million total, as of yesterday Boxoffice Pro projected a mere $45-$62 million opening, and a final domestic gross in the $109-$156 million range.
If the pattern seen in the prior three weeks continues there might well be a little further erosion of the projection between now and next week--while as the precedent of The Flash shows, even an already much-reduced opening weekend projection might yet prove overoptimistic (Boxoffice Pro having still predicted $60-$80 million just before the movie pulled in a mere $55 million, with this proving more than half all it was going to get).
For my part I am still thinking of $250 million as representing the likely floor for the film's global gross--though the $500 million I had discussed as the upper end of the range back in October, if not necessarily out of the question, looks less and less plausible now.
* The initial projection for The Flash one month before release had the movie enjoying a $115-$140 million gross on opening weekend, on the way to a final domestic take of $280-$375 million. That number, received as underwhelming in the wake of the extreme hyping of the film, actually turned out to be wildly overoptimistic as The Flash's entire run amounted to $108 million in ticket sales, less than the low estimate of what it was supposed to make in just the opening weekend, and less than a third of what had been thought plausible for it.
For the third week in a row Boxoffice Pro's projection reports erosion from its prior projection--from week to week slight (2 percent in the second projection, 9 percent in the third, 2 percent more this week), but it adds up, the more in as the initial numbers were underwhelming (indeed, along the lines not of what had been predicted for The Flash, but how that movie actually did).* Thus where the expectation in the October 12 report was of the movie having a $50-$75 million debut, on the way to a $121-$189 million total, as of yesterday Boxoffice Pro projected a mere $45-$62 million opening, and a final domestic gross in the $109-$156 million range.
If the pattern seen in the prior three weeks continues there might well be a little further erosion of the projection between now and next week--while as the precedent of The Flash shows, even an already much-reduced opening weekend projection might yet prove overoptimistic (Boxoffice Pro having still predicted $60-$80 million just before the movie pulled in a mere $55 million, with this proving more than half all it was going to get).
For my part I am still thinking of $250 million as representing the likely floor for the film's global gross--though the $500 million I had discussed as the upper end of the range back in October, if not necessarily out of the question, looks less and less plausible now.
* The initial projection for The Flash one month before release had the movie enjoying a $115-$140 million gross on opening weekend, on the way to a final domestic take of $280-$375 million. That number, received as underwhelming in the wake of the extreme hyping of the film, actually turned out to be wildly overoptimistic as The Flash's entire run amounted to $108 million in ticket sales, less than the low estimate of what it was supposed to make in just the opening weekend, and less than a third of what had been thought plausible for it.
Are Things Looking Up for the Hunger Games Prequel?
Boxoffice Pro's initial projection for Hunger Games prequel, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, was none too impressive--a $35-$45 million opening weekend on the way to a final take in the $90-$142 million range, a very, very far cry from the spectacular grosses of the four films of the original saga (after adjustment for inflation, $850 million+). Still, where, for example, Captain Marvel 2's projection has eroded from week to week, there has been a slight improvement in that of the prequel film's, of 5 percent last week, and 1 percent more this week, which has raised the projection to a debut in the $38-$50 million range, and a total run in the $97-$157 million range.
The film, of course, has two more weeks to go, and one can picture the improvement continuing--but even were that to happen, the movie's likely gross rising by another 10 percent or so (to, say, $110-$175 million in the domestic market), it would still be a far cry from the successes of the first four films, and, given the likely investment in the production, very dependent on a strong overseas response to break even.
The film, of course, has two more weeks to go, and one can picture the improvement continuing--but even were that to happen, the movie's likely gross rising by another 10 percent or so (to, say, $110-$175 million in the domestic market), it would still be a far cry from the successes of the first four films, and, given the likely investment in the production, very dependent on a strong overseas response to break even.
Fandango's Poll and Aquaman 2
Fandango's recent poll found that the film movie audiences seem to be looking forward to most is Captain Marvel 2.
Aquaman 2 came right after it.
Right now Captain Marvel 2's prospects are none too bright. The implication is that Aquaman 2 will do worse--this sequel to the DCEU's biggest hit (its sole billion-dollar hit) ending up on a level with its poorest performer by far, The Flash.
If so it would be another blow to the increasingly battered DCEU, and the increasingly shaky superhero genre of which it has been so large a part this past decade—and box office-watchers should keep the possibility in mind as the tracking-based estimates for the movie start going public in the coming weeks.
Aquaman 2 came right after it.
Right now Captain Marvel 2's prospects are none too bright. The implication is that Aquaman 2 will do worse--this sequel to the DCEU's biggest hit (its sole billion-dollar hit) ending up on a level with its poorest performer by far, The Flash.
If so it would be another blow to the increasingly battered DCEU, and the increasingly shaky superhero genre of which it has been so large a part this past decade—and box office-watchers should keep the possibility in mind as the tracking-based estimates for the movie start going public in the coming weeks.
Captain Marvel 2 and the Fandango Poll on the Season's Most Anticipated Movies
A Fandango poll recently found that among moviegoers the most anticipated movie of the November-December period is Captain Marvel 2--The Marvels.
This can seem like good news for a movie whose prospects have been a cause of such pessimism--and one might not wonder if the movie is not likely to do better than the projections of The Flash-like numbers circulating in the media. Yet one can take the news in another way--namely that the weak numbers for The Marvels are as good as it is likely to get for any movie this season, there being commensurately less interest in Hollywood's other offerings over those months. A view all too consistent with the way franchise films have consistently underperformed this year, it also seems consistent with suspicions that the next two months do not contain the kind of box office-saving surprise blockbuster that a Super Mario Bros. Movie or a Barbie or even an Oppenheimer was--that what we see is what we will get, with the result Hollywood closing out a disappointing and worrying 2023 on a low note.
This can seem like good news for a movie whose prospects have been a cause of such pessimism--and one might not wonder if the movie is not likely to do better than the projections of The Flash-like numbers circulating in the media. Yet one can take the news in another way--namely that the weak numbers for The Marvels are as good as it is likely to get for any movie this season, there being commensurately less interest in Hollywood's other offerings over those months. A view all too consistent with the way franchise films have consistently underperformed this year, it also seems consistent with suspicions that the next two months do not contain the kind of box office-saving surprise blockbuster that a Super Mario Bros. Movie or a Barbie or even an Oppenheimer was--that what we see is what we will get, with the result Hollywood closing out a disappointing and worrying 2023 on a low note.
How Will Disney's Wish Do at the Box Office? Some Thoughts
NOTE: This post was completed on the basis of the information available in late October. While it has dated slightly I have decided to go ahead and post it.
Animated films have done well at the box office these past couple of years--with the latest Despicable Me franchise movie (Minions: The Rise of Gru) the biggest success of 2022 after only Top Gun 2 and Avatar 2; the follow-up to the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. (Beyond the Spider-Verse) not only nearly doubling the original's gross but also outgrossing every live-action superhero movie at the box office thus far this year; and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, for all the critical sneers, to the first half of this year what Barbie has been to the second, one of the rare billion-dollar plus hits carrying the box office.
Alas, that traditional king of animation Disney has had little share in this success, with 2022 seeing Lightyear and Strange World among their year's biggest flops (Strange World losing $200 million by itself to win the dubious honor of biggest flop, according to Deadline). This year's Elemental did better--though if it is looking to be profitable in the end it is a long way from the kind of success that Disney took so much for granted for so long.
One can thus picture Disney looking to its next big animated feature, Wish, for relief, especially given the higher than usual stakes--the movie intended as a 100 year anniversary film and homage to its near century-old tradition of big animated movies.
So just how well is it likely to do?
Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast including Wish has the movie making $45-$65 million on its opening weekend of domestic play and perhaps quadrupling that over the longer run to $185-$289 million (given the legs such a movie could have over the holidays). The low end of the range can seem worrisome, especially if the unspectacular domestic gross is matched by a Little Mermaid-like international response. However, should the movie have the benefit of a merely healthy international response even with just a mid-range performance Wish, if not all that might be hoped for from a 100th anniversary event, or even a run-of-the-mill Disney release, could be a moneymaker in the end--while it would do still better than that should it perform at the high end of the range and get an Elemental-like international response. Were the near $300 million gross that now seems within the range of the possible was doubled or better internationally (as was the case with Elemental) Disney would be within range of a billion dollars. Of course, even if it crosses that line some will compare it unfavorably to other films that had made still more than that--like Frozen 2's $1.45 billion back in 2019 (which works out to more like $1.75 billion today after adjustment for inflation). Still, especially in today's market it is very hard to deny that a billion dollar hit is a hit, and the folks at Disney could sure use one about now.
Animated films have done well at the box office these past couple of years--with the latest Despicable Me franchise movie (Minions: The Rise of Gru) the biggest success of 2022 after only Top Gun 2 and Avatar 2; the follow-up to the animated Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. (Beyond the Spider-Verse) not only nearly doubling the original's gross but also outgrossing every live-action superhero movie at the box office thus far this year; and The Super Mario Bros. Movie, for all the critical sneers, to the first half of this year what Barbie has been to the second, one of the rare billion-dollar plus hits carrying the box office.
Alas, that traditional king of animation Disney has had little share in this success, with 2022 seeing Lightyear and Strange World among their year's biggest flops (Strange World losing $200 million by itself to win the dubious honor of biggest flop, according to Deadline). This year's Elemental did better--though if it is looking to be profitable in the end it is a long way from the kind of success that Disney took so much for granted for so long.
One can thus picture Disney looking to its next big animated feature, Wish, for relief, especially given the higher than usual stakes--the movie intended as a 100 year anniversary film and homage to its near century-old tradition of big animated movies.
So just how well is it likely to do?
Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast including Wish has the movie making $45-$65 million on its opening weekend of domestic play and perhaps quadrupling that over the longer run to $185-$289 million (given the legs such a movie could have over the holidays). The low end of the range can seem worrisome, especially if the unspectacular domestic gross is matched by a Little Mermaid-like international response. However, should the movie have the benefit of a merely healthy international response even with just a mid-range performance Wish, if not all that might be hoped for from a 100th anniversary event, or even a run-of-the-mill Disney release, could be a moneymaker in the end--while it would do still better than that should it perform at the high end of the range and get an Elemental-like international response. Were the near $300 million gross that now seems within the range of the possible was doubled or better internationally (as was the case with Elemental) Disney would be within range of a billion dollars. Of course, even if it crosses that line some will compare it unfavorably to other films that had made still more than that--like Frozen 2's $1.45 billion back in 2019 (which works out to more like $1.75 billion today after adjustment for inflation). Still, especially in today's market it is very hard to deny that a billion dollar hit is a hit, and the folks at Disney could sure use one about now.
Tuesday, October 31, 2023
Will Barbie Win Best Picture at this Year's Oscars?
It may seem premature to ask the question of this piece's title. After all, the year still has two months to go--with those last two months tending to be particularly rich in the sorts of critical darlings that usually take home little statuettes, the actual quality of which we can only speculate about as yet.
However, there is a politics to the Academy Awards that, just as it makes clear that some of those upcoming films will have their claims and their backers (Bradley Cooper's Maestro, Ava Duvernay's Origin, Blitz Bazawule's The Color Purple, and conventionally films like Ridley Scott's Napoleon, George Clooney's The Boys in the Boat and Michael Mann's Ferrari), allows us to slight such matters as actual "quality." And considering just a few of the more obvious aspects of that politics makes it easy to picture things working out this way.
There is, especially in this era of sinking public interest in the Oscars (such that probably the only thing anyone remembers from any recent ceremony is the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air slapping Cheap Pete live before a global audience), a desire to appeal to a more general audience reflected in their paying more attention to widely seen movies.
This year, none has been more widely seen, or likely to be more widely seen, than Barbie, still the #1 hit of the year.
Moreover, unlike other widely watched movies that get nominated for Best Picture even though everyone knows they are not going to win in their category (did anyone seriously expect Top Gun 2 or Avatar 2 to take home the prize last year?), Barbie seems to have been a genuine, not-graded-on-a-curve-as-just-pretty-good-by-blockbuster standards, unqualified critical darling, helmed by a critics' darling of a director with a very loud cheering section of her own who has already been nominated for a Best Director and two Best Screenplay Oscars and not got any of them. This will add to the film's advantages as a box office success enjoying the benefit of critical opinion and the backing of a formidable lobby insistent that it is her "turn" after the disappointments of 2018 and 2020 (and in light of the foregoing, what better time than this for it?).
And of course, there is the more conventionally political aspect of the film. Much as we hear about Hollywood's supposed liberalism, the fact remains that its liberalism has generally been confined to culture war/status politics issues, and much less in evidence on anything else, with the Academy no exception. Thus Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, with its themes of the politics of Big Science, war, the nuclear age and McCarthyism a movie that a genuinely left observer could find compelling if treated the right way (indeed, David Walsh, who seems to have never had a good word for Nolan for two decades, gave this film a strongly positive review), is the kind of thing that these days would make the Academy squeamish indeed. By contrast a movie about the gender politics of plastic toys is more their speed.
That said, not everyone will be happy with the choice. Some will be very unhappy indeed--and very vocal about their unhappiness, in those ways that led to the kind of intriguing of which Andrea Riseborough's Oscar nomination became a target last year, against which a giant major studio production like Barbie will be absolutely proof, but to which other films might be vulnerable. Still, for the time being Barbie is the movie that, whether or not one thinks it most deserving, seems to me most likely to take Best Picture next year, with very little chance of that changing in the months between now and the ceremony.
However, there is a politics to the Academy Awards that, just as it makes clear that some of those upcoming films will have their claims and their backers (Bradley Cooper's Maestro, Ava Duvernay's Origin, Blitz Bazawule's The Color Purple, and conventionally films like Ridley Scott's Napoleon, George Clooney's The Boys in the Boat and Michael Mann's Ferrari), allows us to slight such matters as actual "quality." And considering just a few of the more obvious aspects of that politics makes it easy to picture things working out this way.
There is, especially in this era of sinking public interest in the Oscars (such that probably the only thing anyone remembers from any recent ceremony is the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air slapping Cheap Pete live before a global audience), a desire to appeal to a more general audience reflected in their paying more attention to widely seen movies.
This year, none has been more widely seen, or likely to be more widely seen, than Barbie, still the #1 hit of the year.
Moreover, unlike other widely watched movies that get nominated for Best Picture even though everyone knows they are not going to win in their category (did anyone seriously expect Top Gun 2 or Avatar 2 to take home the prize last year?), Barbie seems to have been a genuine, not-graded-on-a-curve-as-just-pretty-good-by-blockbuster standards, unqualified critical darling, helmed by a critics' darling of a director with a very loud cheering section of her own who has already been nominated for a Best Director and two Best Screenplay Oscars and not got any of them. This will add to the film's advantages as a box office success enjoying the benefit of critical opinion and the backing of a formidable lobby insistent that it is her "turn" after the disappointments of 2018 and 2020 (and in light of the foregoing, what better time than this for it?).
And of course, there is the more conventionally political aspect of the film. Much as we hear about Hollywood's supposed liberalism, the fact remains that its liberalism has generally been confined to culture war/status politics issues, and much less in evidence on anything else, with the Academy no exception. Thus Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, with its themes of the politics of Big Science, war, the nuclear age and McCarthyism a movie that a genuinely left observer could find compelling if treated the right way (indeed, David Walsh, who seems to have never had a good word for Nolan for two decades, gave this film a strongly positive review), is the kind of thing that these days would make the Academy squeamish indeed. By contrast a movie about the gender politics of plastic toys is more their speed.
That said, not everyone will be happy with the choice. Some will be very unhappy indeed--and very vocal about their unhappiness, in those ways that led to the kind of intriguing of which Andrea Riseborough's Oscar nomination became a target last year, against which a giant major studio production like Barbie will be absolutely proof, but to which other films might be vulnerable. Still, for the time being Barbie is the movie that, whether or not one thinks it most deserving, seems to me most likely to take Best Picture next year, with very little chance of that changing in the months between now and the ceremony.
Can Napoleon Be Another Oppenheimer?
As a biographical film about a historical personage Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer seemed an unpromising commercial prospect to me even before I learned how unconventionally structured it was (that at least at a glance it was a "weirdo art film"). As a result I did not think it likely to match the relatively high projections for its gross some had suggested ($164-$194 million in Boxoffice Pro's final long-range forecast a week before release), and even after the strong opening weekend beat prior expectations for that ($82 million vs. the $52-$72 million projected) wondered if the film would not collapse in its second weekend as audience reactions came to matter more than the cacophonous claquing. However, the movie actually displayed extraordinarily legs at the box office, quadrupling its already high weekend gross to beat the high end of Boxoffice Pro's prediction by 67 percent (taking in $324 million at last count), while taking in nearly twice as much internationally, making of the movie a near-billion dollar hit.
The result is that when looking at Ridley Scott's Napoleon my first reaction was to dismiss it the way I dismissed Oppenheimer--as the kind of biographical-historical period piece for which American audiences in particular have had little appetite for a long time, but then am given pause by how Oppenheimer actually did.
As I said before, I cannot altogether account for Oppenheimer's success with general audiences, who not only came out in those extraordinary numbers on the opening weekend, but kept on coming in the weeks afterward in that way suggestive of a really positive reaction. Still, I can think of at least two advantages that Oppenheimer had that Napoleon does not.
1. Napoleon director Ridley Scott is an established, respected, director with many a hit behind him--notably including one of the biggest commercial successes for the historical drama genre since its collapse in the '60s, Gladiator. Still, he does not have the kind of vocal and effective cheering section that Nolan does--which probably helped to bring audiences out for the unlikely Oppenheimer, and whose lack will not be helpful to the risky Napoleon.
2. Whatever one makes of their handling, Oppenheimer's themes were quite plausibly presented as having contemporary relevance. I do not think that relevance was as fully acknowledged by the media as it ought to have been (it still seems to be pretending nuclear war is irrelevant to our situation in 2023, for example, and does not seem to have given much thought to the portions of the film dealing with McCarthyism), but it seemed common to draw analogies between the development of the nuclear bomb and artificial intelligence in a moment in which the mass media, stupid, irresponsible and reactionary as ever, were working very, very hard to drive the public into hysterics over artificial intelligence research. Accordingly, important as the subject matter of Napoleon's life was, and relevant as it could be made to seem to audiences today (revolution, the descent of democracy into dictatorship, a world war, etc.), I do not see any sign of the press or anyone else doing anything likely to similarly work on the film's behalf.
The result is that it is easy to see Napoleon confirming rather than defying the view that the American public is not up for period pieces like this one--with the tracking information Boxoffice Pro has made available doing little to contradict that reading at the moment. The publication's first long-range forecast for the film anticipates a $16-$21 million opening weekend and a $46-$74 million longer run--which especially in the absence of the film absolutely exploding in the international markets, leaves it a very long way from recouping the doubtless considerable outlay for a lavish production such as one would expect of a Ridley Scott period film, or simply from looking at the commercials. Still, I will be watching how things go for the movie in the coming weeks.
The result is that when looking at Ridley Scott's Napoleon my first reaction was to dismiss it the way I dismissed Oppenheimer--as the kind of biographical-historical period piece for which American audiences in particular have had little appetite for a long time, but then am given pause by how Oppenheimer actually did.
As I said before, I cannot altogether account for Oppenheimer's success with general audiences, who not only came out in those extraordinary numbers on the opening weekend, but kept on coming in the weeks afterward in that way suggestive of a really positive reaction. Still, I can think of at least two advantages that Oppenheimer had that Napoleon does not.
1. Napoleon director Ridley Scott is an established, respected, director with many a hit behind him--notably including one of the biggest commercial successes for the historical drama genre since its collapse in the '60s, Gladiator. Still, he does not have the kind of vocal and effective cheering section that Nolan does--which probably helped to bring audiences out for the unlikely Oppenheimer, and whose lack will not be helpful to the risky Napoleon.
2. Whatever one makes of their handling, Oppenheimer's themes were quite plausibly presented as having contemporary relevance. I do not think that relevance was as fully acknowledged by the media as it ought to have been (it still seems to be pretending nuclear war is irrelevant to our situation in 2023, for example, and does not seem to have given much thought to the portions of the film dealing with McCarthyism), but it seemed common to draw analogies between the development of the nuclear bomb and artificial intelligence in a moment in which the mass media, stupid, irresponsible and reactionary as ever, were working very, very hard to drive the public into hysterics over artificial intelligence research. Accordingly, important as the subject matter of Napoleon's life was, and relevant as it could be made to seem to audiences today (revolution, the descent of democracy into dictatorship, a world war, etc.), I do not see any sign of the press or anyone else doing anything likely to similarly work on the film's behalf.
The result is that it is easy to see Napoleon confirming rather than defying the view that the American public is not up for period pieces like this one--with the tracking information Boxoffice Pro has made available doing little to contradict that reading at the moment. The publication's first long-range forecast for the film anticipates a $16-$21 million opening weekend and a $46-$74 million longer run--which especially in the absence of the film absolutely exploding in the international markets, leaves it a very long way from recouping the doubtless considerable outlay for a lavish production such as one would expect of a Ridley Scott period film, or simply from looking at the commercials. Still, I will be watching how things go for the movie in the coming weeks.
The Opening Weekend Gross of Five Nights at Freddy's: A Few Thoughts
Just as was the case with the upcoming Hunger Games prequel Five Nights at Freddy's was not on my radar until very recently, and I had even less idea as to what to make of it than I did Hunger Games--this being an original film rather than part of a franchise, and the box office dynamics of horror films less familiar to me than those of big action movies, while even by horror film standards Freddy's was atypical. (In contrast with the blood-soaked horror films that usually make a splash, this one kept it PG-13 in what was seen as a risky move.)
Still, the trajectory of the commercial expectations surrounding the film has been more than usually interesting. Just four weeks before Freddy's opened Boxoffice Pro projected an opening weekend of $33-$42 million and the film's finishing in the $60-$90 million range. All things considered this was respectable, but then each of their three subsequent forecasts had the movie edging upward--by 25 percent the immediately following week, 13 percent the week after that, and an amazing 43 percent more after that, on the way up to their right before the opening weekend giving the likely range as $65-$85 million--the kind of numbers conventionally associated not with even successful horror films, but blockbusters.
In the event the movie had a $78 million opening--closer to the high end of the range than the low, a figure which put its debut well ahead of the latest Fast and Furious, Transformers, DCEU, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible films this past summer (all of which opened in the $54-$67 million range). That debut, moreover, would seem consistent with even a front-loaded run having the film cross the $150 million mark domestically, while it is supplementing its domestic gross with significant international revenues (equaling about two-thirds the North American take), suggesting a global gross well north of $200 million for the $20 million movie.
An undeniable commercial success, it seems worth remarking Freddy's as affirming two developments seen this year. One is the way that while the familiar franchises flop movies that look less promising by the usual standard are not just finding audiences but overperforming significantly--so that one can identify Freddy's with the same pattern of success as Barbie, Oppenheimer, Taylor Swift's concert film The Era's Tour (the #2 movie at the box office this weekend, after two weeks at #1), and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
The other is that, just like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Freddy's, if no Mario for name recognition, is based on a popular video game series--and so (likewise, in spite of critical sneers) delivered another big box office success for that long-mocked category of film, the video game-to-feature film adaptation.
In a pop cultural moment in which people are reading LitRPG novels, and producers look for less exploited types of material to back, these two films could be just the beginning of a whole wave of hit films of the kind.
Still, the trajectory of the commercial expectations surrounding the film has been more than usually interesting. Just four weeks before Freddy's opened Boxoffice Pro projected an opening weekend of $33-$42 million and the film's finishing in the $60-$90 million range. All things considered this was respectable, but then each of their three subsequent forecasts had the movie edging upward--by 25 percent the immediately following week, 13 percent the week after that, and an amazing 43 percent more after that, on the way up to their right before the opening weekend giving the likely range as $65-$85 million--the kind of numbers conventionally associated not with even successful horror films, but blockbusters.
In the event the movie had a $78 million opening--closer to the high end of the range than the low, a figure which put its debut well ahead of the latest Fast and Furious, Transformers, DCEU, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible films this past summer (all of which opened in the $54-$67 million range). That debut, moreover, would seem consistent with even a front-loaded run having the film cross the $150 million mark domestically, while it is supplementing its domestic gross with significant international revenues (equaling about two-thirds the North American take), suggesting a global gross well north of $200 million for the $20 million movie.
An undeniable commercial success, it seems worth remarking Freddy's as affirming two developments seen this year. One is the way that while the familiar franchises flop movies that look less promising by the usual standard are not just finding audiences but overperforming significantly--so that one can identify Freddy's with the same pattern of success as Barbie, Oppenheimer, Taylor Swift's concert film The Era's Tour (the #2 movie at the box office this weekend, after two weeks at #1), and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
The other is that, just like The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Freddy's, if no Mario for name recognition, is based on a popular video game series--and so (likewise, in spite of critical sneers) delivered another big box office success for that long-mocked category of film, the video game-to-feature film adaptation.
In a pop cultural moment in which people are reading LitRPG novels, and producers look for less exploited types of material to back, these two films could be just the beginning of a whole wave of hit films of the kind.
Monday, October 30, 2023
James Bond at the Beginning--and Possible End--of the Age of the Action Movie
It is thus a rather inauspicious time to think about "making more Bond movies"--one reason why the producers are apparently taking their time, though I think another way of thinking about the issue would be to say Bond 26 is stuck in development hell, and people will realize it as the years continue to go by without any new film. Already we have hints that the next Bond film might not arrive until 2027 or 2028--and I think there is a good chance that in 2028 people will still wonder if there is ever going to be a new movie. After all, the idea is not just to create something new, but something that will be appealing to the public, and that in a way that will once more enable a routine output of colossal hits--in a moment in which the era of the kind of film the Bond movies pioneered has passed.
Fundamental reinvention that would give the series sustained, blockbuster-level success a second time is probably too much to ask of any franchise in even the best of times--and these show every evidence of being far from that.
Can Joker 2 be a Hit?
Todd Phillips' Joker was the kind of unconventional movie that somehow gets made every now and then--and once in a while proves a surprise blockbuster, 2019's equivalent of Oppenheimer or Barbie. Still, there has been a good deal of argument over why the relatively small, dark, unconventional film became a billion-dollar hit--whether it was a matter of its genuine cinematic merits, or rather the way that the coprophages and claqueurs of the entertainment press generated around it the biggest moral panic over a major feature film in many years in which they disgraced themselves with their advertisement of their own stupidity, and disgraced themselves yet again with their not always thinly veiled calls for censorship.
This in itself raises questions about how the sequel (Joker: Folie à Deux) coming a whole five years after that arguably unrepeatable moment could be expected to do--with this all the more the case in as there is a shift of genre, from gritty urban drama with a socially critical edge, to offbeat musical love story. What gave the film, for all its imperfections, a real charge in its best moments, could easily fall by the wayside here--all as the shift has me in mind of how Martin Scorsese, of whose work Joker was derivative to a fault, followed up his huge success with Taxi Driver with his big-budget musical flop, New York, New York.* But then again this franchise might just pull off the rare feat of surprising us all a second time.
* Peter Biskind recounts the tale in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
This in itself raises questions about how the sequel (Joker: Folie à Deux) coming a whole five years after that arguably unrepeatable moment could be expected to do--with this all the more the case in as there is a shift of genre, from gritty urban drama with a socially critical edge, to offbeat musical love story. What gave the film, for all its imperfections, a real charge in its best moments, could easily fall by the wayside here--all as the shift has me in mind of how Martin Scorsese, of whose work Joker was derivative to a fault, followed up his huge success with Taxi Driver with his big-budget musical flop, New York, New York.* But then again this franchise might just pull off the rare feat of surprising us all a second time.
* Peter Biskind recounts the tale in Easy Riders, Raging Bulls.
How Will the Film Business Do in 2024?
Last year the recovery of the box office over the course of 2022 in spite of the comparative fewness of the really big releases (the colossal success of the Spider-Man, Top Gun and Avatar sequels, the $400 million+ grosses of Dr. Strange 2 and Black Panther 2, etc.) convinced me that all the year was lacking was the usual slate of such releases. As 2023 was thoroughly packed with likely-looking blockbusters I predicted that the year would see box office grosses return to the pre-pandemic norm.
Of course, this has not been the case. Yes, people went to the theaters--but where the big franchise films had led the recovery through late 2021 and 2022, in 2023 the franchise films just kept flopping, to the point of reversing the trend toward recovery. Indeed, between the beginning of May and the middle of July the box office in 2023, adjusted for inflation, was running behind the box office in 2022, when there were far fewer films out--with only Barbie and Oppenheimer's overperforming spectacularly in late summer enabling any recovery to continue, and even then only slightly, 2023 still looking nearly certain to fall significantly short of the pre-pandemic years box office gross-wise (with just $7.4 billion collected as of this writing, as against the over $9 billion had collected by this point in 2019, or the $11 billion it equals in today's dollars, working out to its being a third down, and little reason evident so far to expect this to change).
In short, the recovery has stalled, while a more fine-grained picture is suggestive of an even more dire situation than that in the degree to which the box office is being carried by a few hits; and those few, ever-more critical hits become harder to predict as very expensive films that seemed like winners (the more expensive for pandemic-related delays and higher interest rates on the money borrowed to make them) keep failing.
The result is that I find myself less optimistic about what 2024 has in store--precisely because it offers pretty much the same kind of release slate that had seemed promising in 2023, packed with the once likely-looking blockbusters that, because they are big, action-oriented franchise films cashing in on very run-down old brand names and run-down old themes, no longer seem so likely as they did just a few years ago. Scheduled for this year are three more Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (Deadpool 3, Captain America 4, The Thunderbolts), and a good deal more Marvel besides (Kraven the Hunter, a third Venom movie, a Spider-Man spin-off in Madame Web), as well as more Ghostbusters, Mad Max and Alien, more Planet of the Apes, more Godzilla and Kong, more Bad Boys, more Transformers, more Karate Kid--and even, decades after the originals, sequels to Beetlejuice and Twister and Gladiator. We have, too, a live-action prequel to the live-action adaptation of The Lion King, as well as more Inside Out and Despicable Me and Kung Fu Panda. We have a John Wick spin-off, a Mean Girls remake, an A Quiet Place prequel. We have . . .
I think this suffices to make the point. If this year is anything like the last, these movies will, on the whole, perform much less well than their backers hoped, with one big film after another flopping outright as audiences decline to pay for movies they never asked for. (Again, Gladiator 2? Seriously?) Meanwhile the compounding of the disruptions of the pandemic by the disruption of the writers' and actors' strikes (the last, still ongoing) will mean the gap between revenue and outlay is that much higher, all as the "China market" can less and less be looked to for salvation in the event of failure at home. For all that there may be a Barbie or an Oppenheimer in there that will provide relief to the studios' finances, but, even allowing that such successes are by their nature difficult to foresee, nothing here looks to me likely. (The best I can come up with is Joker 2, though even that one looks like it can misfire horribly--becoming New York, New York to the first Joker's Taxi Driver.)
The result is that 2024 is shaping up to be another bad year for an already horribly battered Hollywood. To some extent it was not wholly avoidable. Even were Hollywood's executives to have fully rethought this year how they invest their studios' money the release slate would not have changed--it typically being two years or more between the "green-lighting" of a movie and its hitting theaters, with things tending to run more slowly in the wake of the pandemic and its associated confusions, so that 2024 necessarily reflects the premises and choices of 2022, 2021 and even earlier. Still, if the remarks of Robert Iger and David Zaslav are anything to go by, I would not be overly bullish on the prospect of Hollywood changing its practice anytime soon.
Of course, this has not been the case. Yes, people went to the theaters--but where the big franchise films had led the recovery through late 2021 and 2022, in 2023 the franchise films just kept flopping, to the point of reversing the trend toward recovery. Indeed, between the beginning of May and the middle of July the box office in 2023, adjusted for inflation, was running behind the box office in 2022, when there were far fewer films out--with only Barbie and Oppenheimer's overperforming spectacularly in late summer enabling any recovery to continue, and even then only slightly, 2023 still looking nearly certain to fall significantly short of the pre-pandemic years box office gross-wise (with just $7.4 billion collected as of this writing, as against the over $9 billion had collected by this point in 2019, or the $11 billion it equals in today's dollars, working out to its being a third down, and little reason evident so far to expect this to change).
In short, the recovery has stalled, while a more fine-grained picture is suggestive of an even more dire situation than that in the degree to which the box office is being carried by a few hits; and those few, ever-more critical hits become harder to predict as very expensive films that seemed like winners (the more expensive for pandemic-related delays and higher interest rates on the money borrowed to make them) keep failing.
The result is that I find myself less optimistic about what 2024 has in store--precisely because it offers pretty much the same kind of release slate that had seemed promising in 2023, packed with the once likely-looking blockbusters that, because they are big, action-oriented franchise films cashing in on very run-down old brand names and run-down old themes, no longer seem so likely as they did just a few years ago. Scheduled for this year are three more Marvel Cinematic Universe movies (Deadpool 3, Captain America 4, The Thunderbolts), and a good deal more Marvel besides (Kraven the Hunter, a third Venom movie, a Spider-Man spin-off in Madame Web), as well as more Ghostbusters, Mad Max and Alien, more Planet of the Apes, more Godzilla and Kong, more Bad Boys, more Transformers, more Karate Kid--and even, decades after the originals, sequels to Beetlejuice and Twister and Gladiator. We have, too, a live-action prequel to the live-action adaptation of The Lion King, as well as more Inside Out and Despicable Me and Kung Fu Panda. We have a John Wick spin-off, a Mean Girls remake, an A Quiet Place prequel. We have . . .
I think this suffices to make the point. If this year is anything like the last, these movies will, on the whole, perform much less well than their backers hoped, with one big film after another flopping outright as audiences decline to pay for movies they never asked for. (Again, Gladiator 2? Seriously?) Meanwhile the compounding of the disruptions of the pandemic by the disruption of the writers' and actors' strikes (the last, still ongoing) will mean the gap between revenue and outlay is that much higher, all as the "China market" can less and less be looked to for salvation in the event of failure at home. For all that there may be a Barbie or an Oppenheimer in there that will provide relief to the studios' finances, but, even allowing that such successes are by their nature difficult to foresee, nothing here looks to me likely. (The best I can come up with is Joker 2, though even that one looks like it can misfire horribly--becoming New York, New York to the first Joker's Taxi Driver.)
The result is that 2024 is shaping up to be another bad year for an already horribly battered Hollywood. To some extent it was not wholly avoidable. Even were Hollywood's executives to have fully rethought this year how they invest their studios' money the release slate would not have changed--it typically being two years or more between the "green-lighting" of a movie and its hitting theaters, with things tending to run more slowly in the wake of the pandemic and its associated confusions, so that 2024 necessarily reflects the premises and choices of 2022, 2021 and even earlier. Still, if the remarks of Robert Iger and David Zaslav are anything to go by, I would not be overly bullish on the prospect of Hollywood changing its practice anytime soon.
Friday, October 27, 2023
Considering the Pew Research Center Report on Americans' Interest in Sports: The Economic Divide
The Pew Research Center put out a report last week that discussed its finding that "Most Americans Don't Closely Follow Professional or College Sports."
I was not very surprised by the "big finding" highlighted by the item's title, or the observations that sports fans tend to be more often male than female, and older than younger. I was more surprised by the finding regarding sports and affluence--that people with higher incomes are more likely to follow sports than people with lower incomes--though perhaps I should not have been. After all, age and maleness both correlate with higher incomes.
Still, I think there is more to it than that.
Consider who is more likely to be into sports. Is it likely to be those who just watch them on TV, or those who attend events in person--which means paying the price of a ticket? Those who just watch sports, or those who play a sport--as with the golfer or tennis player? And who is more likely to be into college sports specifically? Those who have never bveen to college, or those who are alumni of colleges, especially big-name colleges with major athletic programs who have found it worthwhile to retain links to their alma maters? It seems to me that the person who goes to events in person, who plays sports, who has the college connection, is more likely to be a sports fan--and the disposable income and time required to go to games or play sports in adulthood, the kind of background and income that tends to go with having attended a well-known college, correlates with more rather than less affluence.
Thus does it go with the sociality to which all this points. People go to sporting events together, with the experience about enjoying something with others as much as the intrinsic entertainment value of watching the sport itself. People are probably more likely to follow sports if other people they know and interact with (or want to) also follow sports--whether for personal reasons, or business, which is one reason why they stick close to their alma maters (and vice-versa).
All this makes it worth remembering that much as pop culture flogs the image of the rich isolated by their wealth, leaving them worse off than less affluent people who "at least have each other," the reality is that social isolation is probably more a problem of the poor than the rich, making this factor more rather than less significant. Indeed, it may even be that people being habituated to solitary entertainment, especially the kind where people are supposed to be absorbed in the entertainment (like video games, like film and TV intended to be "intense" experiences as is today more the case in the past) may leave them less able to enjoy the kind of entertainment one takes in the attitude of "someone who smokes and watches" as Bertolt Brecht once put it--such as sporting events happen to be--and which seems more likely to be characteristic of the kid who played video games than the kid whose father took them to such events growing up, in which that issue of affluence factors yet again (given whose parents had the chance to take them to games growing up, and send them to that college with the famous team).
The result is that here, as in so much else of life, class matters--and the conventional wisdom (per usual these days) gets the reality all wrong.
I was not very surprised by the "big finding" highlighted by the item's title, or the observations that sports fans tend to be more often male than female, and older than younger. I was more surprised by the finding regarding sports and affluence--that people with higher incomes are more likely to follow sports than people with lower incomes--though perhaps I should not have been. After all, age and maleness both correlate with higher incomes.
Still, I think there is more to it than that.
Consider who is more likely to be into sports. Is it likely to be those who just watch them on TV, or those who attend events in person--which means paying the price of a ticket? Those who just watch sports, or those who play a sport--as with the golfer or tennis player? And who is more likely to be into college sports specifically? Those who have never bveen to college, or those who are alumni of colleges, especially big-name colleges with major athletic programs who have found it worthwhile to retain links to their alma maters? It seems to me that the person who goes to events in person, who plays sports, who has the college connection, is more likely to be a sports fan--and the disposable income and time required to go to games or play sports in adulthood, the kind of background and income that tends to go with having attended a well-known college, correlates with more rather than less affluence.
Thus does it go with the sociality to which all this points. People go to sporting events together, with the experience about enjoying something with others as much as the intrinsic entertainment value of watching the sport itself. People are probably more likely to follow sports if other people they know and interact with (or want to) also follow sports--whether for personal reasons, or business, which is one reason why they stick close to their alma maters (and vice-versa).
All this makes it worth remembering that much as pop culture flogs the image of the rich isolated by their wealth, leaving them worse off than less affluent people who "at least have each other," the reality is that social isolation is probably more a problem of the poor than the rich, making this factor more rather than less significant. Indeed, it may even be that people being habituated to solitary entertainment, especially the kind where people are supposed to be absorbed in the entertainment (like video games, like film and TV intended to be "intense" experiences as is today more the case in the past) may leave them less able to enjoy the kind of entertainment one takes in the attitude of "someone who smokes and watches" as Bertolt Brecht once put it--such as sporting events happen to be--and which seems more likely to be characteristic of the kid who played video games than the kid whose father took them to such events growing up, in which that issue of affluence factors yet again (given whose parents had the chance to take them to games growing up, and send them to that college with the famous team).
The result is that here, as in so much else of life, class matters--and the conventional wisdom (per usual these days) gets the reality all wrong.
Mission: Impossible 8's Delay and What it Means for the Franchise
It was reported this week that Mission: Impossible 8 has been bumped a whole year, from the summer of 2024 to the summer of 2025 due to the interruption of production by the recent strikes.
This is, of course, bad news for the franchise. The interruption and delay, after all, will doubtless raise the doubtless already colossal expenditure on the movie higher still, while making still more unwise the gamble on the movie--not just shooting it before 7 was even out, but making of the two movies a "two-part event." Hollywood has not been unknown to win, and even win big, with such strokes--as with Avengers 3 and 4. However, that was a matter of an unprecedentedly popular franchise at the absolute peak of its success playing this game. The same cannot be said of Mission: Impossible, which is far past its turn-of-the-century peak, with the last film a massive underperformer (instead of the near-billion-dollar hit many expected it failed to break $600 million), and indeed a series low in real terms (worse than 2006's Mission: Impossible III, when the coprophages of the entertainment media went from unhingedly idolizing Tom Cruise to the extreme opposite because he jumped on a couch). The result is that the audience's more usual, annoyed, reaction to getting "one film for the price of two" was already more likely to come into play--such as was seen with the last two Hunger Games films, and the last film taking in $100 million less than its predecessor. In the case of Mission: Impossible 8 this is likely to be exacerbated by an extra year's delay, which especially in these times seems more likely to make audiences lose interest, or even forget, than make them hunger for more.
Mission: Impossible 8 merely matching what Mission: Impossible 7 grossed at the box office would probably have been disappointing enough given its prior budgeting. With its likely increased cost, and the likelihood of the movie making even less than Mission: Impossible 7 did, the gap between outlay and revenue would be worse--a perhaps $300 million+ film grossing less than $500 million at the global box office, translating to another hole in the books that its studio does not need, all as worse still is not out of the question with so many franchises seeing not just erosion, but Flash-like collapse as Hollywood's royalty, endlessly flattered by their courtiers and claqueurs in the entertainment press and elsewhere, keep feeding the public sequels for which it never asked--and for which it refuses to pay.
This is, of course, bad news for the franchise. The interruption and delay, after all, will doubtless raise the doubtless already colossal expenditure on the movie higher still, while making still more unwise the gamble on the movie--not just shooting it before 7 was even out, but making of the two movies a "two-part event." Hollywood has not been unknown to win, and even win big, with such strokes--as with Avengers 3 and 4. However, that was a matter of an unprecedentedly popular franchise at the absolute peak of its success playing this game. The same cannot be said of Mission: Impossible, which is far past its turn-of-the-century peak, with the last film a massive underperformer (instead of the near-billion-dollar hit many expected it failed to break $600 million), and indeed a series low in real terms (worse than 2006's Mission: Impossible III, when the coprophages of the entertainment media went from unhingedly idolizing Tom Cruise to the extreme opposite because he jumped on a couch). The result is that the audience's more usual, annoyed, reaction to getting "one film for the price of two" was already more likely to come into play--such as was seen with the last two Hunger Games films, and the last film taking in $100 million less than its predecessor. In the case of Mission: Impossible 8 this is likely to be exacerbated by an extra year's delay, which especially in these times seems more likely to make audiences lose interest, or even forget, than make them hunger for more.
Mission: Impossible 8 merely matching what Mission: Impossible 7 grossed at the box office would probably have been disappointing enough given its prior budgeting. With its likely increased cost, and the likelihood of the movie making even less than Mission: Impossible 7 did, the gap between outlay and revenue would be worse--a perhaps $300 million+ film grossing less than $500 million at the global box office, translating to another hole in the books that its studio does not need, all as worse still is not out of the question with so many franchises seeing not just erosion, but Flash-like collapse as Hollywood's royalty, endlessly flattered by their courtiers and claqueurs in the entertainment press and elsewhere, keep feeding the public sequels for which it never asked--and for which it refuses to pay.
Considering the Pew Research Center Report on Americans' Interest in Sports: The Generational Divide
Not long ago I had occasion to think about how athletes seemed to have a higher profile in the media world just a couple of decades back, so that even people who did not follow their sport often knew something about them.
There seemed no great mystery there. Pop culture was a smaller territory then than now, and perhaps especially important the offerings of television more limited, so that sports had less competition for eyeballs, and was that much bigger a part of the culture generally, so that even the inattentive noticed.
There was also a significant amount of "sports entertainment" that got attention from people who did not ordinarily care to follow sports, because of its gimmicks or other attractions--like the old American Gladiators show, or the WWE (especially in the turn-of-the-century "Attitude Era"), providing plenty of visibility to a good many athletes, while there were still such things as fitness celebrity-packed workout shows on ESPN in the morning. And there was the way in which all this was leveraged, with the WWE, for example, pursuing tie-ins and cross-overs, getting their stars guest spots wherever they could, so that watching Star Trek: Voyager on UPN you saw Seven of Nine fighting The Rock for some reason--and very unusually for that character, losing, because there is no way they are going to put The Rock out there just to get beat up.
Sometimes this led to a second career, with The Rock, and John Cena, certainly, becoming as close to film stars as anyone gets to be in the twenty-first century. But all of that would seem to have fallen by the wayside (Gina Carano perhaps the last such success story, though alas her career is in a period of downturn). Effect as well as cause of those changes in media, it all probably plays its part in the generation gap existing between older enthusiasts and the less interested young the Pew Research Center would seem to have reconfirmed this month.
There seemed no great mystery there. Pop culture was a smaller territory then than now, and perhaps especially important the offerings of television more limited, so that sports had less competition for eyeballs, and was that much bigger a part of the culture generally, so that even the inattentive noticed.
There was also a significant amount of "sports entertainment" that got attention from people who did not ordinarily care to follow sports, because of its gimmicks or other attractions--like the old American Gladiators show, or the WWE (especially in the turn-of-the-century "Attitude Era"), providing plenty of visibility to a good many athletes, while there were still such things as fitness celebrity-packed workout shows on ESPN in the morning. And there was the way in which all this was leveraged, with the WWE, for example, pursuing tie-ins and cross-overs, getting their stars guest spots wherever they could, so that watching Star Trek: Voyager on UPN you saw Seven of Nine fighting The Rock for some reason--and very unusually for that character, losing, because there is no way they are going to put The Rock out there just to get beat up.
Sometimes this led to a second career, with The Rock, and John Cena, certainly, becoming as close to film stars as anyone gets to be in the twenty-first century. But all of that would seem to have fallen by the wayside (Gina Carano perhaps the last such success story, though alas her career is in a period of downturn). Effect as well as cause of those changes in media, it all probably plays its part in the generation gap existing between older enthusiasts and the less interested young the Pew Research Center would seem to have reconfirmed this month.
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