With Napoleon and Wish coming out these are naturally the focus of the commentary of box office-watchers--but let us also not forget the major releases of prior weeks, like Captain Marvel 2. Thus far underperforming very, very badly (with a mere $65 million taken in its first ten days it was running about one-fourth behind The Flash and tending to slip) one may wonder if the holiday weekend will not provide the film some relief.*
As it happens, Boxoffice Pro projects the movie collecting another $12 million over the week, likely helped by the holiday weekend.
Of course, past projections for the film have proven overoptimistic (as with last weekend's)--and so could this one. Yet the fact remains that the film does not have much way to fall, while the competition this weekend (given what we are hearing about the expectations for Napoleon and Wish, and holdovers like the Hunger Games prequel and Trolls 3) does not seem overwhelming. Rather the problem is that the film could do a good deal better than that and still have a very long way to go before rising above the "flop" status the press has accorded it.
* At the same point in its run The Flash, which had opened bigger and had a better first-to-second weekend hold had $88 million grossed domestically (one-third more than Captain Marvel 2).
Thursday, November 23, 2023
Wish Hits Theaters: What Can We Expect?
This Thanksgiving weekend sees two big new movies hitting theaters. One is Ridley Scott's Napoleon. The other is Disney's Wish.
An "event" film marking the 100th anniversary of the Disney studio and its tradition of animated filmmaking, one might ordinarily expect the film to be a massive hit--but the picture we got a month ago was more ambiguous. And the range has slipped. Where even a week ago Boxoffice Pro suggested a range of $40-$60 million for the 3-day weekend, and $57-$87 million for the 5-day, now their range has $44 million as good as it gets for the 3-day period ($35-44 million), $66 million as good as it gets for the 5-day ($49-$66 million). The floor has not dropped much, but the ceiling has, with all that implies for the prospects of a near-$300 million gross that Boxoffice Pro has raised, and continued to entertain in its longer-range estimates down to last week. Good holds might partially compensate for this, but these are of course no sure thing--the more in as the critics have not been kind to this one. (Their score on Rotten Tomatoes is just 51 percent.)
Still, it is now the audience's turn to judge the movie for itself, and we will see what they decide in the weeks ahead.
An "event" film marking the 100th anniversary of the Disney studio and its tradition of animated filmmaking, one might ordinarily expect the film to be a massive hit--but the picture we got a month ago was more ambiguous. And the range has slipped. Where even a week ago Boxoffice Pro suggested a range of $40-$60 million for the 3-day weekend, and $57-$87 million for the 5-day, now their range has $44 million as good as it gets for the 3-day period ($35-44 million), $66 million as good as it gets for the 5-day ($49-$66 million). The floor has not dropped much, but the ceiling has, with all that implies for the prospects of a near-$300 million gross that Boxoffice Pro has raised, and continued to entertain in its longer-range estimates down to last week. Good holds might partially compensate for this, but these are of course no sure thing--the more in as the critics have not been kind to this one. (Their score on Rotten Tomatoes is just 51 percent.)
Still, it is now the audience's turn to judge the movie for itself, and we will see what they decide in the weeks ahead.
"Can Napoleon Be Another Oppenheimer?": A Follow-Up
As I remarked in a post last month seeing the ads for Napoleon I found myself thinking of Oppenheimer--both films being biographical epics about major historical figures, a genre not known to do too well at the American box office. Oppenheimer surprised everyone on that score--and I wondered whether Napoleon might not do the same.
I saw two reasons to doubt it right away--namely that whereas Napoleon helmer Ridley Scott is a respected, veteran, director, he has no cheering section out there ready to praise to the skies anything he does the way Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan does, which probably did a lot to help sell the movie; while if the story of Napoleon and the events of his time have undeniable meaning for the world today, there seemed little playing up of any such "relevance" in the media next to the way they compared the advent of the nuclear age to the unhinged hyping of text-spitting chatbots when talking about Nolan's film.
As it happened, the Boxoffice Pro projections for the movie, in spite of fluctuations over the past month, remain pretty much where they were four weeks ago (with a 3-day opening in the vicinity of $16-$21 merely risen to one of $17-$23 million, and even the high end of the range projected for the film's overall run still in the $70-$80 million range). Meanwhile critics are not exactly gushing about the movie, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score a mere 68 percent. By contrast the projection for Oppenheimer, reflecting the tracking data, surged some 30 percent in the month before release, from $40-$55 million to $52-$72 million in the opening weekend alone--a feat the more impressive because it came out the same weekend as the even more performing #1 hit of the year, Barbie--while critical enthusiasm was such as to produce a 93 percent score (with some of that praise won in surprising places, I might add).
Of course, with the film only coming out now it has some room to surprise us--but that room is dwindling fast, domestically at least. (The international markets, traditionally more receptive to historical films like this one, may be another matter.)
I saw two reasons to doubt it right away--namely that whereas Napoleon helmer Ridley Scott is a respected, veteran, director, he has no cheering section out there ready to praise to the skies anything he does the way Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan does, which probably did a lot to help sell the movie; while if the story of Napoleon and the events of his time have undeniable meaning for the world today, there seemed little playing up of any such "relevance" in the media next to the way they compared the advent of the nuclear age to the unhinged hyping of text-spitting chatbots when talking about Nolan's film.
As it happened, the Boxoffice Pro projections for the movie, in spite of fluctuations over the past month, remain pretty much where they were four weeks ago (with a 3-day opening in the vicinity of $16-$21 merely risen to one of $17-$23 million, and even the high end of the range projected for the film's overall run still in the $70-$80 million range). Meanwhile critics are not exactly gushing about the movie, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score a mere 68 percent. By contrast the projection for Oppenheimer, reflecting the tracking data, surged some 30 percent in the month before release, from $40-$55 million to $52-$72 million in the opening weekend alone--a feat the more impressive because it came out the same weekend as the even more performing #1 hit of the year, Barbie--while critical enthusiasm was such as to produce a 93 percent score (with some of that praise won in surprising places, I might add).
Of course, with the film only coming out now it has some room to surprise us--but that room is dwindling fast, domestically at least. (The international markets, traditionally more receptive to historical films like this one, may be another matter.)
Sunday, November 19, 2023
Captain Marvel 2's Second Weekend in North American Release: How Did it Go?
Back in May I speculated that The Marvels, based on the emergent pattern of Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels each making 20 to 50 percent less in real terms than the preceding film in their series (and the particularly close parallel with Black Panther 2), would gross some $600-$700 million global. After a summer of shocking franchise flops that could not simply be blamed on anything but audience disinterest (given how well other movies like Barbie were doing in the same season), and the poor impression that the film's pre-release publicity seemed to be making on the public, this seemed like it could be optimistic--and in early October the tracking data confirmed it. On the basis of that added information I revised my estimate for the global gross down to $250-$500 million--and then after another month of signs pointing to an even weaker performance than had seemed likely in early October, ended up wondering if even $250 million would not be overoptimistic, with this possibility hardly seeming less plausible after the actual opening weekend (which saw it take in just $47 million in North America).
Of course, I did suggest that hit movies, even when they were big movies like this one, may have been growing less front-loaded than before, and that good holds might partially compensate for the film's weak opening (as they did for the last MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and even more for that flop-turned-hit Elemental). Alas, the expectations for the second weekend were a far cry from that (Boxoffice Pro projecting a hard 65 percent drop, versus the 48 percent decline Guardians had) while the reality seems to have been worse--a fall of 78 percent, leaving the film with just $10 million grossed this weekend and $65 million in total.
By contrast even The Flash had not just opened bigger, but had a better first-to-second weekend hold ($55 million versus Captain Marvel 2's $47 million on the opening weekend, and a 73 percent), leaving it one-third ahead at the same point in its run (with just under $88 million after ten days, as against Captain Marvel 2's $65 million).
The Flash, of course, failed even to double its opening weekend gross, on the way to barely breaking past the $100 million mark domestically ($108 million). Captain Marvel 2, opening weaker and fading faster, would seem set to do worse, and thus fall short of the $100 million mark--and maybe even below the low end of the much-reduced domestic range I suggested earlier ($85-$125 million, versus the $100 million I thought was as low as it could go back in early October).
Of course, we do have a holiday weekend coming up--and again, the competition over the weeks ahead does not exactly look fierce. (The Hunger Games sequel opened this weekend to even less than Captain Marvel 2 had last week, just $44 million, near the bottom of the range predicted for it.) Still, even if I think it safest to watch how the film does next weekend before writing it off as a failure, it is undeniable that its chances of overcoming the weak opener, probably always slight to begin with, just keep on getting slighter.
Of course, I did suggest that hit movies, even when they were big movies like this one, may have been growing less front-loaded than before, and that good holds might partially compensate for the film's weak opening (as they did for the last MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and even more for that flop-turned-hit Elemental). Alas, the expectations for the second weekend were a far cry from that (Boxoffice Pro projecting a hard 65 percent drop, versus the 48 percent decline Guardians had) while the reality seems to have been worse--a fall of 78 percent, leaving the film with just $10 million grossed this weekend and $65 million in total.
By contrast even The Flash had not just opened bigger, but had a better first-to-second weekend hold ($55 million versus Captain Marvel 2's $47 million on the opening weekend, and a 73 percent), leaving it one-third ahead at the same point in its run (with just under $88 million after ten days, as against Captain Marvel 2's $65 million).
The Flash, of course, failed even to double its opening weekend gross, on the way to barely breaking past the $100 million mark domestically ($108 million). Captain Marvel 2, opening weaker and fading faster, would seem set to do worse, and thus fall short of the $100 million mark--and maybe even below the low end of the much-reduced domestic range I suggested earlier ($85-$125 million, versus the $100 million I thought was as low as it could go back in early October).
Of course, we do have a holiday weekend coming up--and again, the competition over the weeks ahead does not exactly look fierce. (The Hunger Games sequel opened this weekend to even less than Captain Marvel 2 had last week, just $44 million, near the bottom of the range predicted for it.) Still, even if I think it safest to watch how the film does next weekend before writing it off as a failure, it is undeniable that its chances of overcoming the weak opener, probably always slight to begin with, just keep on getting slighter.
"I Don't Wanna Hear About No Superhero Fatigue!"
There are times when the entertainment media seems to represent movies as bigger successes than they are--grading box office performance on a curve.
This does not seem to have been the case with Captain Marvel 2, the press--which had loudly anticipated a flop before the film's release--calling the film a flop after that first weekend in release (and still more, the second).
However, those "analyses" of the film's performance I have encountered seem to be doing so as part of a particular game--emphasizing that yes, this particular superhero movie is a flop, but one should not draw any wider conclusions from that. Chalk this one up as a misfire suggestive of nothing more than slightly better management over at Marvel could easily fix--not superhero fatigue.
Yet consider the undeniable pattern since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s Phase Three wrapped up back in 2019. Of the MCU movies released since only one really went "above and beyond" at the box office--Spider-Man in December 2021. Of course, one could reasonably chalk up the lackluster performance of its three predecessors (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) to the effect of the pandemic and the associated experimentation with streaming (and at the global level, Marvel's shutout from the Chinese market, even if in fairness Marvel should have understood what it was getting into there), but it was also the case that Dr. Strange 2 looked like an underperformer given how well the Spider-Man film it was tied in with had just done, and the fainter than usual competition that season. And everything since has been unambiguously less successful, with the four next MCU sequels (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3), when the grosses are adjusted for inflation, down 20 to 50 percent from the grosses of the preceding films in their series'. Now Captain Marvel 2 seems almost certain to do worse than that. (Going by my estimates its gross could end up 80 percent down from what the first Captain Marvel made.)
And of course, what has been bad for the MCU has been worse for its principal rival, the DC Extended Universe, which saw Black Adam get a weak reception (failing to crack $400 million global), Shazam 2 make the third-stringer performance of the first Shazam look like boffo b.o. by comparison, and The Flash . . . well, it was pretty shocking back in June, though now we are used to such performances.
This seems to me like a pretty consistent pattern of weak performances by such films--the more in as, in contrast with the 2020-2021 period other movies are becoming really vast successes (as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie did, for example).
Considering all that my only objection to talk of superhero fatigue is that it understates the problem when we look at a year in which along with the declining grosses of the superhero films Fast and Furious, Transformers, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible also suffered. Superhero fatigue is really a subset of a wider franchise fatigue and action movie fatigue and blockbuster fatigue, which fatigue for the moment shows no sign of abating--while being a thing Hollywood, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press, can still less afford to admit given how much more deeply threatening it is to the model by which they have made so much money for so long, and for which the increasingly battered studios have absolutely no substitute at hand as they try to keep themselves afloat.
This does not seem to have been the case with Captain Marvel 2, the press--which had loudly anticipated a flop before the film's release--calling the film a flop after that first weekend in release (and still more, the second).
However, those "analyses" of the film's performance I have encountered seem to be doing so as part of a particular game--emphasizing that yes, this particular superhero movie is a flop, but one should not draw any wider conclusions from that. Chalk this one up as a misfire suggestive of nothing more than slightly better management over at Marvel could easily fix--not superhero fatigue.
Yet consider the undeniable pattern since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s Phase Three wrapped up back in 2019. Of the MCU movies released since only one really went "above and beyond" at the box office--Spider-Man in December 2021. Of course, one could reasonably chalk up the lackluster performance of its three predecessors (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) to the effect of the pandemic and the associated experimentation with streaming (and at the global level, Marvel's shutout from the Chinese market, even if in fairness Marvel should have understood what it was getting into there), but it was also the case that Dr. Strange 2 looked like an underperformer given how well the Spider-Man film it was tied in with had just done, and the fainter than usual competition that season. And everything since has been unambiguously less successful, with the four next MCU sequels (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3), when the grosses are adjusted for inflation, down 20 to 50 percent from the grosses of the preceding films in their series'. Now Captain Marvel 2 seems almost certain to do worse than that. (Going by my estimates its gross could end up 80 percent down from what the first Captain Marvel made.)
And of course, what has been bad for the MCU has been worse for its principal rival, the DC Extended Universe, which saw Black Adam get a weak reception (failing to crack $400 million global), Shazam 2 make the third-stringer performance of the first Shazam look like boffo b.o. by comparison, and The Flash . . . well, it was pretty shocking back in June, though now we are used to such performances.
This seems to me like a pretty consistent pattern of weak performances by such films--the more in as, in contrast with the 2020-2021 period other movies are becoming really vast successes (as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie did, for example).
Considering all that my only objection to talk of superhero fatigue is that it understates the problem when we look at a year in which along with the declining grosses of the superhero films Fast and Furious, Transformers, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible also suffered. Superhero fatigue is really a subset of a wider franchise fatigue and action movie fatigue and blockbuster fatigue, which fatigue for the moment shows no sign of abating--while being a thing Hollywood, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press, can still less afford to admit given how much more deeply threatening it is to the model by which they have made so much money for so long, and for which the increasingly battered studios have absolutely no substitute at hand as they try to keep themselves afloat.
Do Computer Programmers (and Programming) Get Disproportionate Attention in Discussion of the Labor Market?
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in May 2022 the U.S. had some 133,000 computer programmers at work.
This is out of some 158.3 million employed people that very month--which means that computer programmers comprise a mere 0.084 percent of total American employment, fewer than one in eleven hundred of those persons employed in this country actually a "computer programmer."
One would never guess that from the sheer amount of time spent talking about coders and coding.
Of course, computer programmers are just one of a wider range of jobs in the computer field (with some of which programmers may be synonymous in the minds of those not too meticulous in their use of the terminology). Still, as the BLS statistics show, the full range of computer science-related jobs comes to some 5 million nationally--with this, again, working out to not much more than 3 percent of the work force.
Again it is a rather smaller proportion of the work force than one would suppose from the time spent gabbing about them, to say nothing of such fashionable nonsense as coding being the "new literacy"--or the notion that people losing their other jobs could, in line with the inane sneer of the conventional wisdom-abiding, simply "learn to code," precisely because it is inconceivable that there would be enough work to go around for all of them even if they all excelled at it, with the category of "truck driver" exemplary. We have over 3.2 million drivers of light, heavy and tractor-trailer trucks--which is to say 24 times as many truck drivers as we do coders, and some three-fifths as many truck drivers as we do people employed across the whole computer field (again, something we would never guess from how people conventionally discuss these matters).
All of this is before we get to the matter of whether or not coding is itself going into decline as a profession in the wake of advances in artificial intelligence, as suggested by one working programmer whose remarks I read this week. As is so often the case with the essays in his increasingly unfortunate chosen forum (sufficiently unfortunate that it seems to me undeserving of a link that would bring it more readers) he meanders quite a bit and never really makes a point worth making, and subjects the reader to a great many stupid conventionalities as he does so (like the whole coding as the new literacy idiocy). All the same, it does provide some interesting anecdotal evidence of the new chatbots increasingly taking over the task, in large part because they are increasingly able to outdo humans at this very practical function the way they have recently outdone them at functions that were less necessary to the "structures of everyday life" (as with mastery of games like chess and Go).
Taking such claims at face value it seems to me that, while it is not inconceivable that more people will be involved in software development in one way or another, those who actually code as we have known it--and do so as trained, paid, full-time professionals--will probably become fewer rather than more numerous within the years ahead, making the disconnect between the occupational realities and the media-promulgated perceptions about coders discussed here even wider than it is now.
This is out of some 158.3 million employed people that very month--which means that computer programmers comprise a mere 0.084 percent of total American employment, fewer than one in eleven hundred of those persons employed in this country actually a "computer programmer."
One would never guess that from the sheer amount of time spent talking about coders and coding.
Of course, computer programmers are just one of a wider range of jobs in the computer field (with some of which programmers may be synonymous in the minds of those not too meticulous in their use of the terminology). Still, as the BLS statistics show, the full range of computer science-related jobs comes to some 5 million nationally--with this, again, working out to not much more than 3 percent of the work force.
Again it is a rather smaller proportion of the work force than one would suppose from the time spent gabbing about them, to say nothing of such fashionable nonsense as coding being the "new literacy"--or the notion that people losing their other jobs could, in line with the inane sneer of the conventional wisdom-abiding, simply "learn to code," precisely because it is inconceivable that there would be enough work to go around for all of them even if they all excelled at it, with the category of "truck driver" exemplary. We have over 3.2 million drivers of light, heavy and tractor-trailer trucks--which is to say 24 times as many truck drivers as we do coders, and some three-fifths as many truck drivers as we do people employed across the whole computer field (again, something we would never guess from how people conventionally discuss these matters).
All of this is before we get to the matter of whether or not coding is itself going into decline as a profession in the wake of advances in artificial intelligence, as suggested by one working programmer whose remarks I read this week. As is so often the case with the essays in his increasingly unfortunate chosen forum (sufficiently unfortunate that it seems to me undeserving of a link that would bring it more readers) he meanders quite a bit and never really makes a point worth making, and subjects the reader to a great many stupid conventionalities as he does so (like the whole coding as the new literacy idiocy). All the same, it does provide some interesting anecdotal evidence of the new chatbots increasingly taking over the task, in large part because they are increasingly able to outdo humans at this very practical function the way they have recently outdone them at functions that were less necessary to the "structures of everyday life" (as with mastery of games like chess and Go).
Taking such claims at face value it seems to me that, while it is not inconceivable that more people will be involved in software development in one way or another, those who actually code as we have known it--and do so as trained, paid, full-time professionals--will probably become fewer rather than more numerous within the years ahead, making the disconnect between the occupational realities and the media-promulgated perceptions about coders discussed here even wider than it is now.
Wednesday, November 15, 2023
Captain Marvel 2: Looking Ahead to the Second Weekend
We now have some perspective on the opening weekend of The Marvels; some sense of how its second weekend is likely to go; and the reaction to all of the same.
Right now much is being made of not only how the movie's opening compares to that of the original Captain Marvel ($47 million versus the $153 million the first made, and just a quarter of the $186 million to which that gross would be equivalent now), but how it has had a weaker opening than any of the prior thirty-two Marvel Cinematic Universe films released to date in current dollar figures, including 2008's The Incredible Hulk fifteen inflationary years earlier (that movie made $55 million, which is more like $78 million today after adjustment for price rises), and long before the MCU became a brand--and all this accomplished by a non-sequel centered on a CGI-based character who had already proven hard to set up as the lead of his own movie (such that the MCU has not repeated the feat since), in contrast with the kind of hit the first Captain Marvel was.* Moreover, there seems little expectation of Captain Marvel 2 being saved by a leggy run, Boxoffice Pro projecting a 65 percent drop from the first weekend to the second to give it a second weekend take of $16 million, leaving the movie with only a bit over $71 million after ten days in release.
By comparison The Flash had almost $88 million collected at the same point in its run.
Should the film's grosses, falling from a lower level to start (The Flash opened bigger), continue to decay at that rate for any length of time the movie could be expected to finish out with a run well below that of The Flash ($108 million), and indeed below the long-depreciated $100 million mark.** (Just consider the opening weekend multiplier for the June release--1.97. Applied to Captain Marvel 2 it leaves one with just $92 million, near the low end of the range I suggested right before opening weekend.)
Meanwhile it has been noted that the overseas markets seem unlikely to come to the rescue, with these accounting for 57 percent of the gross to date, and China especially weak--the movie opening to under $12 million there, versus the $89 million it managed in 2019 (which constitutes an 89 percent drop in opening weekend gross in real terms). And while I have not seen any estimates of the international gross in the film's second weekend, I have no expectation of their being any better than those projected for North America.
If this movie is going to turn things around the way Elemental did (a possibility I thought slight but still worth raising) it will either be very soon or not at all.
* I refer, of course, to the reception to 2003's Hulk.
** The Flash opened to $55 million in its first three days--17 percent higher than Captain Marvel 2's opening.
Right now much is being made of not only how the movie's opening compares to that of the original Captain Marvel ($47 million versus the $153 million the first made, and just a quarter of the $186 million to which that gross would be equivalent now), but how it has had a weaker opening than any of the prior thirty-two Marvel Cinematic Universe films released to date in current dollar figures, including 2008's The Incredible Hulk fifteen inflationary years earlier (that movie made $55 million, which is more like $78 million today after adjustment for price rises), and long before the MCU became a brand--and all this accomplished by a non-sequel centered on a CGI-based character who had already proven hard to set up as the lead of his own movie (such that the MCU has not repeated the feat since), in contrast with the kind of hit the first Captain Marvel was.* Moreover, there seems little expectation of Captain Marvel 2 being saved by a leggy run, Boxoffice Pro projecting a 65 percent drop from the first weekend to the second to give it a second weekend take of $16 million, leaving the movie with only a bit over $71 million after ten days in release.
By comparison The Flash had almost $88 million collected at the same point in its run.
Should the film's grosses, falling from a lower level to start (The Flash opened bigger), continue to decay at that rate for any length of time the movie could be expected to finish out with a run well below that of The Flash ($108 million), and indeed below the long-depreciated $100 million mark.** (Just consider the opening weekend multiplier for the June release--1.97. Applied to Captain Marvel 2 it leaves one with just $92 million, near the low end of the range I suggested right before opening weekend.)
Meanwhile it has been noted that the overseas markets seem unlikely to come to the rescue, with these accounting for 57 percent of the gross to date, and China especially weak--the movie opening to under $12 million there, versus the $89 million it managed in 2019 (which constitutes an 89 percent drop in opening weekend gross in real terms). And while I have not seen any estimates of the international gross in the film's second weekend, I have no expectation of their being any better than those projected for North America.
If this movie is going to turn things around the way Elemental did (a possibility I thought slight but still worth raising) it will either be very soon or not at all.
* I refer, of course, to the reception to 2003's Hulk.
** The Flash opened to $55 million in its first three days--17 percent higher than Captain Marvel 2's opening.
Sunday, November 12, 2023
Captain Marvel 2's Opening Weekend: The Numbers Are In (and They're Not Pretty)
As of late Sunday (by which time, most of the period has passed and few surprises remain on these matters) Captain Marvel 2 was expected to take in $47 million on opening weekend--not the lowest figure predicted for it, but safely within the range Boxoffice Pro predicted before the weekend ($35-$49 million).
At least as of this point the film has not defied the expectations for it--and indeed the media is pretty gloomy about the movie (even as the claqueurs, being claqueurs, fall all over themselves declaring "I don't wanna hear about no superhero fatigue!"). Still, while it is almost impossible to picture this movie getting anywhere near the gross of the billion-dollar hit that was the original, as I have said before even relative successes are less front-loaded than they used to be--the possibility existing that decent legs will at least partially compensate for a weak initial reception. Indeed, while everything would pretty much have to go right for the movie after this point (the way they did for Elemental) for this to happen, it is not wholly out of the question that the movie will grind its way somewhere near the break-even point I previously suggested might be in the vicinity of $600 million.
The result is that how things go in the next two weeks will be worth watching for anyone following this story--while there may be some hope for the movie in the 84 percent Audience score at Rotten Tomatoes, and the relatively weak competition the movie can be expected to have through the coming holiday season.
At least as of this point the film has not defied the expectations for it--and indeed the media is pretty gloomy about the movie (even as the claqueurs, being claqueurs, fall all over themselves declaring "I don't wanna hear about no superhero fatigue!"). Still, while it is almost impossible to picture this movie getting anywhere near the gross of the billion-dollar hit that was the original, as I have said before even relative successes are less front-loaded than they used to be--the possibility existing that decent legs will at least partially compensate for a weak initial reception. Indeed, while everything would pretty much have to go right for the movie after this point (the way they did for Elemental) for this to happen, it is not wholly out of the question that the movie will grind its way somewhere near the break-even point I previously suggested might be in the vicinity of $600 million.
The result is that how things go in the next two weeks will be worth watching for anyone following this story--while there may be some hope for the movie in the 84 percent Audience score at Rotten Tomatoes, and the relatively weak competition the movie can be expected to have through the coming holiday season.
Friday, November 10, 2023
Disney Has Shaken Up its Release Schedule. What Will it Mean for the MCU?
Just recently the expectation had been that three Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would be coming out in 2024--Deadpool 3, Captain America 4 and The Thunderbolts, with at least one of them snagging that first weekend in May that for decades has been monopolized by the MCU. (Originally it was supposed to be Captain America 4, but then they said it would be Deadpool 3, and then because the movie was not actually finished some said Captain America 4 again.)
According to Variety there will only be one--coming out in the next fourteen months--Deadpool 3, hitting theaters on that last July weekend before the traditional dump month of August (the same weekend Captain Marvel 2 was originally supposed to release on this year). Meanwhile Captain America 4 has been bumped to February 2025 and The Thunderbolts to that last weekend of July 2025.
Some of this is an unavoidable function of the delays imposed on these productions by the recent strikes. Still, one may wonder if, given the way the MCU has been doing lately--and the way that Captain Marvel 2 seems set to become a flop of historic, The Flash-like proportions, Disney-Marvel is not finding it in its interest to give the brand a breather and try to rebuild some good will with audiences. One can see the decision not to push back Captain America 4 to May 2024 but instead still have a belatedly released Deadpool 3 be the next movie as consistent with that logic. As Deadpool was originally not part the MCU franchise (it was spun off from FOX's X-Men films), and looks and feels different from the other films (in its R-rated "edginess," its having what Peter Biskind called the "first alt-right superhero"), many who are less than happy with the recent MCU films may still be enthusiastic about a new Deadpool movie, while the MCU's runners may hope that any good will that movie earns the franchise will carry over to the next MCU films--all as any disappointment with which Captain Marvel 2 becomes associated fades in the public's memory in at least some degree. Assuming I am right about this I think this is a very limited strategy--but admittedly the runners of the MCU, just like the rest of Hollywood, do not exactly have a lot of great options at this stage of the game.
According to Variety there will only be one--coming out in the next fourteen months--Deadpool 3, hitting theaters on that last July weekend before the traditional dump month of August (the same weekend Captain Marvel 2 was originally supposed to release on this year). Meanwhile Captain America 4 has been bumped to February 2025 and The Thunderbolts to that last weekend of July 2025.
Some of this is an unavoidable function of the delays imposed on these productions by the recent strikes. Still, one may wonder if, given the way the MCU has been doing lately--and the way that Captain Marvel 2 seems set to become a flop of historic, The Flash-like proportions, Disney-Marvel is not finding it in its interest to give the brand a breather and try to rebuild some good will with audiences. One can see the decision not to push back Captain America 4 to May 2024 but instead still have a belatedly released Deadpool 3 be the next movie as consistent with that logic. As Deadpool was originally not part the MCU franchise (it was spun off from FOX's X-Men films), and looks and feels different from the other films (in its R-rated "edginess," its having what Peter Biskind called the "first alt-right superhero"), many who are less than happy with the recent MCU films may still be enthusiastic about a new Deadpool movie, while the MCU's runners may hope that any good will that movie earns the franchise will carry over to the next MCU films--all as any disappointment with which Captain Marvel 2 becomes associated fades in the public's memory in at least some degree. Assuming I am right about this I think this is a very limited strategy--but admittedly the runners of the MCU, just like the rest of Hollywood, do not exactly have a lot of great options at this stage of the game.
Was an Expectation of a $250 Million Worldwide Gross Overoptimistic for Captain Marvel 2?
Back in May I estimated on the basis of the performance of prior Marvel Cinematic Universe films (and especially what seemed to me the closest point of comparison, Black Panther 2) that Captain Marvel 2 (The Marvels) would in real terms make half what the original did--some $600-$700 million globally.
However, the way big franchise films just like this one kept flopping over the summer had me increasingly considering (as I had, correctly, with Indiana Jones 5) the possibility of a Solo-like collapse for the MCU franchise with this movie. And when I saw Boxoffice Pro's first publicly released tracking-based estimates that was what seemed to have come to pass, such that I downgraded my estimate to the $250-$500 million range a month ago.
Of course, expectations for the film have only continued to erode since (with a $50-$75 million opening weekend now thought too high, the last estimate in the $35-$49 million range), and on that basis I recently broached the possibility that the film would fail to make even $100 million in the North American, domestic, market--doing even less well than the DCEU's The Flash. Should that nightmare scenario come to pass for the film it is possible that, should the domestic/international split for the film be the same as it was for the original Captain Marvel); or the foreign gross erode even more heavily in an era in which Chinese moviegoers will not be buying $150 million in tickets the way they did last time; the film's gross could easily fall short of the $250 million mark globally.
In other words, the movie will have grossed--not netted, grossed--less than the outlay for just the production, with the result a flop that even by this year's standards could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Still, as audiences are just now starting to see the film there remains the possibility that this movie, like so many others this year, will manage to surprise the box office-watchers--with, as I suggested in an earlier post, audiences liking what they see, and good legs partly redeeming a weak opening to make what (as with Elemental) looked like a sure flop a hit instead. For what it is worth it seems that audiences right now are being kinder to the film than the critics (even the "All Audience" score on Rotten Tomatoes 73 percent, against the 61 percent score the critics provided), but one way or the other we will probably have a pretty good idea of which way things will tend not much later than Thanksgiving weekend.
However, the way big franchise films just like this one kept flopping over the summer had me increasingly considering (as I had, correctly, with Indiana Jones 5) the possibility of a Solo-like collapse for the MCU franchise with this movie. And when I saw Boxoffice Pro's first publicly released tracking-based estimates that was what seemed to have come to pass, such that I downgraded my estimate to the $250-$500 million range a month ago.
Of course, expectations for the film have only continued to erode since (with a $50-$75 million opening weekend now thought too high, the last estimate in the $35-$49 million range), and on that basis I recently broached the possibility that the film would fail to make even $100 million in the North American, domestic, market--doing even less well than the DCEU's The Flash. Should that nightmare scenario come to pass for the film it is possible that, should the domestic/international split for the film be the same as it was for the original Captain Marvel); or the foreign gross erode even more heavily in an era in which Chinese moviegoers will not be buying $150 million in tickets the way they did last time; the film's gross could easily fall short of the $250 million mark globally.
In other words, the movie will have grossed--not netted, grossed--less than the outlay for just the production, with the result a flop that even by this year's standards could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Still, as audiences are just now starting to see the film there remains the possibility that this movie, like so many others this year, will manage to surprise the box office-watchers--with, as I suggested in an earlier post, audiences liking what they see, and good legs partly redeeming a weak opening to make what (as with Elemental) looked like a sure flop a hit instead. For what it is worth it seems that audiences right now are being kinder to the film than the critics (even the "All Audience" score on Rotten Tomatoes 73 percent, against the 61 percent score the critics provided), but one way or the other we will probably have a pretty good idea of which way things will tend not much later than Thanksgiving weekend.
Writing, Editing and the "80/20 Rule"
Not long ago I remarked the rather miserable quality of the advice that we tend to get about writing and editing. Indeed, it seems to me that when it comes to editing we can often find better advice--even about editing prose--just looking at discussion of software editing.
Why is that? I suppose that it is that people generally don't think much of writing as a practical activity where "time is money" and deadlines press (even though they do for professional writers), but that they do think in such terms when considering software writing, and so discuss the matter more seriously.
The particular bit of this that I have in mind is the Pareto principle-derived "80/20 rule"--or rather, one particular form of it, holding that 80 percent of a software engineering team's effort on a project will have to do with just 20 percent of the piece of software, an extreme disproportion (the team putting in 16 times as much work, relatively speaking, on that part as the whole rest of the thing). In at least a broad way this principle seems to me to apply to work on prose as well, limited portions of a text likewise likely to suck up an extremely disproportionate share of the time and effort.
I might add that this becomes clearer in hindsight than in advance as those doing the work find themselves going over that bit again and again and again to get it right, or as close to right as they can, with even those who know that this kind of thing happens unpleasantly surprised when it does happen in a particular place and time (the more in as they may have hoped to get lucky and avoid it). The fact plays its part in so often making the start of a writing project a much more enjoyable thing than its end (how, as Winston Churchill put it, a book is a plaything at the beginning but eventually turns tyrant and monster), and the wretchedness to which the rewriting process so often ends--to say nothing of how often writers, like software engineers, find themselves running behind schedule, making the process that much more miserable.
Why is that? I suppose that it is that people generally don't think much of writing as a practical activity where "time is money" and deadlines press (even though they do for professional writers), but that they do think in such terms when considering software writing, and so discuss the matter more seriously.
The particular bit of this that I have in mind is the Pareto principle-derived "80/20 rule"--or rather, one particular form of it, holding that 80 percent of a software engineering team's effort on a project will have to do with just 20 percent of the piece of software, an extreme disproportion (the team putting in 16 times as much work, relatively speaking, on that part as the whole rest of the thing). In at least a broad way this principle seems to me to apply to work on prose as well, limited portions of a text likewise likely to suck up an extremely disproportionate share of the time and effort.
I might add that this becomes clearer in hindsight than in advance as those doing the work find themselves going over that bit again and again and again to get it right, or as close to right as they can, with even those who know that this kind of thing happens unpleasantly surprised when it does happen in a particular place and time (the more in as they may have hoped to get lucky and avoid it). The fact plays its part in so often making the start of a writing project a much more enjoyable thing than its end (how, as Winston Churchill put it, a book is a plaything at the beginning but eventually turns tyrant and monster), and the wretchedness to which the rewriting process so often ends--to say nothing of how often writers, like software engineers, find themselves running behind schedule, making the process that much more miserable.
Thursday, November 9, 2023
Captain Marvel 2 (The Marvels) Comes Out Friday. What Do the Predictions for the Movie's Opening Weekend Look Like?
Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast for the opening weekend of Captain Marvel 2 had the film debuting to a $50-$75 million gross.
Now, as might have been expected given the erosion of their expectations for the film in the subsequent weeks, with the weekend upon us, the high end of the range they project is below the low end of the range they announced a month ago--$35-$49 million.
Of course, as Boxoffice Pro published this figure as part of the weekend forecast, not a long-range forecast, they have not published a prediction for the film's overall run. However, they generally had in mind the movie making somewhere around two-and-a-half times its opening weekend gross (a typical figure for such movies until recently at least), which, when they still predicted a $45-$62 million opener, worked out to an estimate of $109-$156 million last week. Should we apply the same multiplier to the $35-$49 million opening weekend, then we would end up with the movie making somewhere in the range of $85 million and $125 million--in other words, plausibly falling short of the $100 million mark that even The Flash managed to breach, and making Ant-Man 3 look like a spectacular success by comparison.
Make no mistake--if this projection is accurate this is bad, for the movie, and for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to which it is so important. But is it accurate? Just a few days ago I attempted to chart out the most favorable scenario for which the film's backers could hope--that audiences actually like the movie, and good word of mouth gives it legs that partially redeem a weak opener, as happened to some extent with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and as happened with that other Disney release Elemental especially. This could still happen--but to say it is likely would be another, different, thing, and it now seems a little less likely with the critics proving not at all kind to the movie. (Right now the Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 58 percent.) Of course, we have seen audiences prove much more favorable than critics to films this year that ended up performing above expectations--as with those video game-based hits The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights at Freddy's. (For the latter film the audience score is an approving 88 percent--against the appalling 29 percent score the critics gave it.) Still, The Marvels seemed to me unlikely to be that kind of critics-hate-it-but-viewers-love-it success (the more in as the critics have been so good to the MCU films over the years), leaving this movie that much longer and harder any road to success.
Now, as might have been expected given the erosion of their expectations for the film in the subsequent weeks, with the weekend upon us, the high end of the range they project is below the low end of the range they announced a month ago--$35-$49 million.
Of course, as Boxoffice Pro published this figure as part of the weekend forecast, not a long-range forecast, they have not published a prediction for the film's overall run. However, they generally had in mind the movie making somewhere around two-and-a-half times its opening weekend gross (a typical figure for such movies until recently at least), which, when they still predicted a $45-$62 million opener, worked out to an estimate of $109-$156 million last week. Should we apply the same multiplier to the $35-$49 million opening weekend, then we would end up with the movie making somewhere in the range of $85 million and $125 million--in other words, plausibly falling short of the $100 million mark that even The Flash managed to breach, and making Ant-Man 3 look like a spectacular success by comparison.
Make no mistake--if this projection is accurate this is bad, for the movie, and for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to which it is so important. But is it accurate? Just a few days ago I attempted to chart out the most favorable scenario for which the film's backers could hope--that audiences actually like the movie, and good word of mouth gives it legs that partially redeem a weak opener, as happened to some extent with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and as happened with that other Disney release Elemental especially. This could still happen--but to say it is likely would be another, different, thing, and it now seems a little less likely with the critics proving not at all kind to the movie. (Right now the Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 58 percent.) Of course, we have seen audiences prove much more favorable than critics to films this year that ended up performing above expectations--as with those video game-based hits The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights at Freddy's. (For the latter film the audience score is an approving 88 percent--against the appalling 29 percent score the critics gave it.) Still, The Marvels seemed to me unlikely to be that kind of critics-hate-it-but-viewers-love-it success (the more in as the critics have been so good to the MCU films over the years), leaving this movie that much longer and harder any road to success.
Say it With Me: "Celebrities Do Not Write Their Own Books."
The celebrity memoir epitomizes the logic of publishers--selling the name on the book rather than its content, which is so often banal, and at any rate unlikely to be by the person whose name and face are on the cover anyway.
Why is that? The plain and simple answer is that while idiots do not realize or admit it writing is hard work and a demanding craft--especially at the level of producing anything remotely resembling a publishable book-length manuscript, or even a first draft of one, which is likely to be a very time-consuming activity. The pampered high school drop-outs who make up the Hollywood A-list are unlikely to have the skills to perform the task, the opportunity to go about it if they are constantly out in front of the camera as they seem to be, or the patience to endure the grind even if they really try their hand at it, especially when they can with much greater ease and profit spend their time shilling for their lines of crappy "wellness" products instead as they leave the writing to someone else.
Still, obvious as this all seems, the fact is rarely spoken--indeed, seems to me to be even less spoken than it was back when C. Wright Mills estimated in his classic White Collar that the chances of a book by a "prominent but non-literary" public figure actually having been written by that public figure as no better than "fifty-fifty," and that in an era in which I think it safe to say the odds of famous people really writing their own memoirs were probably a good deal higher than they are today (and this going all the more for the kind of famous people whose books make the lists).
Why is that? The plain and simple answer is that while idiots do not realize or admit it writing is hard work and a demanding craft--especially at the level of producing anything remotely resembling a publishable book-length manuscript, or even a first draft of one, which is likely to be a very time-consuming activity. The pampered high school drop-outs who make up the Hollywood A-list are unlikely to have the skills to perform the task, the opportunity to go about it if they are constantly out in front of the camera as they seem to be, or the patience to endure the grind even if they really try their hand at it, especially when they can with much greater ease and profit spend their time shilling for their lines of crappy "wellness" products instead as they leave the writing to someone else.
Still, obvious as this all seems, the fact is rarely spoken--indeed, seems to me to be even less spoken than it was back when C. Wright Mills estimated in his classic White Collar that the chances of a book by a "prominent but non-literary" public figure actually having been written by that public figure as no better than "fifty-fifty," and that in an era in which I think it safe to say the odds of famous people really writing their own memoirs were probably a good deal higher than they are today (and this going all the more for the kind of famous people whose books make the lists).
On the Popularity of Celebrity Memoirs
I have previously remarked the prominence of celebrity "memoirs" ghostwritten on behalf of illiterates which say absolutely nothing, and the eagerness with which the public seems to eat them up, rewarding the Dauriats of Park Avenue for their so crassly selling the "distinguished" names on the covers of books rather than the stuff between the covers so that the already rich and famous get richer and more famous while they tell real writers who may actually have something to say to (to put it relatively politely) go to hell.
Where the memoirs of celebrities from the world of politics--"Showbusiness for ugly people"--are concerned, those who find this reality distasteful and depressing at least can take comfort in the thought that their sales figures substantially represent purchases by backers looking to subsidize and promote their bought politicians, and reward them for services rendered, directly and by helping the books be bestsellers by making them bestsellers. (Eddie Murphy's 1992 satire The Distinguished Gentleman may not have been particularly well-received by the critics, but it did have its moments--not least Joe Don Baker's Olaf Andersen thundering at Lane Smith's Dick Dodge that among much else he had done for him he bought ten thousand copies of his "boring, dull-ass autobiography!")
Alas, in contrast with the faked show of interest in the self-serving garbage that the memoir of a career politician looking to get further up the greasy pole must necessarily be, a great portion of the public's apparent enthusiasm for the supposed "Big Thinks" of people from just plain "Showbusiness" seems to me to be genuine--such that while costly publicity efforts doubtless played their part in making their books bestsellers (and indeed, any bestselling book is probably open to the charge that it is a bestseller because its backers bought their way onto the bestseller lists these days), these publishing blockbusters cannot be wholly dismissed on those grounds, however much many of us would like to think so.
Where the memoirs of celebrities from the world of politics--"Showbusiness for ugly people"--are concerned, those who find this reality distasteful and depressing at least can take comfort in the thought that their sales figures substantially represent purchases by backers looking to subsidize and promote their bought politicians, and reward them for services rendered, directly and by helping the books be bestsellers by making them bestsellers. (Eddie Murphy's 1992 satire The Distinguished Gentleman may not have been particularly well-received by the critics, but it did have its moments--not least Joe Don Baker's Olaf Andersen thundering at Lane Smith's Dick Dodge that among much else he had done for him he bought ten thousand copies of his "boring, dull-ass autobiography!")
Alas, in contrast with the faked show of interest in the self-serving garbage that the memoir of a career politician looking to get further up the greasy pole must necessarily be, a great portion of the public's apparent enthusiasm for the supposed "Big Thinks" of people from just plain "Showbusiness" seems to me to be genuine--such that while costly publicity efforts doubtless played their part in making their books bestsellers (and indeed, any bestselling book is probably open to the charge that it is a bestseller because its backers bought their way onto the bestseller lists these days), these publishing blockbusters cannot be wholly dismissed on those grounds, however much many of us would like to think so.
Sunday, November 5, 2023
Will The Marvels Be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's Solo?
This was probably always a longshot. There was a profound difference between the shared universe of Marvel's superheroes, with their separate though interlinkable adventures, and the cinematic equivalent of the Star Wars Expanded Universe, with regard to the potential to appeal to a really mass audience. And reality caught up with Disney-Lucasfilm that way in 2018, when Solo crashed and burned at the summer box office, putting paid to plans to make Star Wars the equivalent of the MCU. The only Star Wars movie that came out after that was the conclusion of the new main-line trilogy in 2019, after which nothing has appeared--and will not be appearing before 2025 at the earliest as Kathleen Kennedy now speaks not in terms of the spectacularly high output MCU but the low output James Bond films (these days, very, very low output), all as new Star Wars is mainly reserved for the small screen.
Right now it looks as if Captain Marvel 2--aka The Marvels--will be as big a flop as Solo, and perhaps even worse. (Solo made over $200 million domestically--more like $250 million domestically when you adjust for inflation--whereas according to the latest data Captain Marvel 2 may be lucky to make even $150 million.)
Given all this one may wonder if Captain Marvel 2 will not be the MCU's Solo, a flop that forces Disney to back off and profoundly change course. However, sheer inertia will keep the movie from being that, no matter how badly it does at the box office.
After all, when Solo hit theaters Disney's Star Wars movies had been coming out for a mere two-and-a-half years, with Solo only the fourth film in the sequence.
By contrast the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been going strong for over fifteen years now, with Captain Marvel 2 the 33rd movie in the sequence. What Disney merely hoped to achieve with Star Wars, but did not, it did achieve with the MCU, especially in Phase Three--which at this point may be feeling more and more distant for fans, but for the executives probably feels like it was "just yesterday," and not just because time passes differently for old people, or because executive types are slow on the uptake. After all, if things have gone less well since, Spider-Man: No Way Home was as big a success as could have been hoped for even pre-pandemic; if they did not do so well as hoped, the latest Dr. Strange, Thor, Black Panther sequels were among the most profitable movies anyone in Hollywood had in 2022 (#4, #5 and #9 on Deadline's list); Guardians of the Galaxy 3 was at least a respectable performer in the end; and even the disappointment with Ant-Man 3 can be chalked up to exaggerated expectations for what an Ant-Man movie could do and the Chinese market becoming less open to the franchise rather than catastrophic across-the-board collapse.
The result is that where with Solo there was little cushioning against their worst fears that they were acting in a profoundly foolish way in regard to Star Wars. By contrast, even the worst that has been predicted for Captain Marvel 2 runs up against that massive success already behind them so that they can think of it as a fluke and hope for better the next time.
Or several times.
After all, even if the studio really is given pause by Captain Marvel 2's failure, that same matter of inertia leaves them heavily invested right now in a plethora of additional MCU films--with Captain America 4 already in post-production, and three more movies in production (Deadpool 3, The Thunderbolts, Blade), enough to keep the movies coming until at least 2025. Meanwhile there is the lesser investment in two more movies already in "pre-production" (Fantastic Four, Avengers: The Kang Dynasty), to say nothing of others "in development."
Lucasfilm had nothing comparable to that roster of films going when Solo made the studio's management change course, and one cannot picture Disney-Lucasfilm shutting all that down simply because one movie underperformed (however severely). The investment is recognizably the bigger when we consider Marvel's streaming TV empire (Star Wars hadn't got one yet as of the summer of 2018), and the revenue Marvel derives from the way the new films keep up interest in and trickles of revenue coming from the increasingly vast collection of old films (32 before this one!), the merchandising, and the rest on a scale that may also dwarf Star Wars when one puts it all together.
As if all that were not enough the fact that even as Star Wars was not working out Disney was doing so well with its other properties made it easier for the studio chiefs to make the hard decision to back away from its earlier plans for that franchise. After all, they had Pixar, they had their live-action adaptations of their animated classics, they had the MCU, all generating billion-dollar movies in ticket sales on a regular basis. (Indeed, counting the 2019 Spider-Man film the top eight movies at the box office were all Disney productions, each and every one a grosser of $1 billion or more worldwide and the eight together collectively accounting for over $10 billion in ticket sales.)
Now the MCU, even in its weakened state, looks like their strongest asset, with any replacement a long way off, making it far more likely that those calling the shots at Disney will feel that much more pressure to hold on to the MCU for dear life, and hope for the best. The result is that there is probably zero prospect of Captain Marvel 2's failure (should it fail--let us not forget this has not actually happened yet) making Disney change course with the MCU the way that it did with Star Wars. However, it could mean some changes in the longer-term planning, and perhaps more caution in regard to those projects they can still alter.
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