Considering the summer's films here I have had little to say about either Barbie, or Oppenheimer--in large part because I have so much interested myself in films' box office prospects, and both those films lack the kind of reference points I usually really on in making my estimates. (Thinking about Indiana Jones 5 we could think about the other four Indiana Jones films--and we could think about, for example, Solo, which turned out to be more relevant. Considering this summer's Memorial Day weekend-released live action adaptation of a three decade-old Disney animated classic The Little Mermaid we could think about 2019's significantly parallel Aladdin--and watching the movie run out of steam before Aladdin could guess at how it would end up. And so forth. Nothing like that exists for Barbie, or Oppenheimer.)
Indeed, that the press has produced the silly portmanteau "Barbenheimer" out of the release of these two very unlike films says something.
Still, there seems something to be said about the pair.
Both, not being the most obvious blockbusters, were heavily promoted on the basis of the director's name and its associated critical cachet--Greta Gerwig, and Christopher Nolan.
Both, if not spectacles of the CGI-packed action-adventure and splashy animated types to which we are accustomed at this time of year, still rely on visual novelty for their interest, be it the plastic-toys-come-to-life pink-saturated images of Barbie, or the IMAXed avant garde-filmmaking of Oppenheimer.
And both in their ways harken back to that mid-century period so critical in defining American social and political and cultural life, with a toy of the 1950s that was to be an icon of the era, and the birth of the atomic age.
The last seems to me especially significant--a reminder that even when a big Hollywood movie is not a sequel the glance remains decidedly backward.
Saturday, July 22, 2023
Courtesy of Forbes: A Negative Review of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer
As anyone attentive to the press for the film is well aware, the critics and the entertainment press generally are in full claqueur mode where the subject of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer comes up.
This makes the more critical exceptions to the "Greatest Thing Ever!" adulation the more interesting--and surprisingly it is Forbes that brings us such an exception, by way of critic Mark Hughes.
While Hughes accounts himself a "huge fan" of Nolan's prior work, and (significant given its parallel with this film) specifically cites Dunkirk as "the filmmaker's greatest achievement to date," such that he expected to join the chorus singing its praises, he was not impressed with this film--and makes a formidable case for his position.
Basically what it comes to is the three-hour Oppenheimer, in spite of some great acting and some well-directed bits, being a pretentious, overstylized piece of postmodernist arthouse fare--fragmented, nonlinear, willfully dissonant and incoherent, and in its irony and superficiality, and the evasions and nihilism ultimately underlying them, taking up a weighty subject and then taking a very long time to say nothing about it at all. Indeed, Hughes likens what Oppenheimer offers to Nolan shooting three different movies about different parts of its protagonist's life at different stages of that life (Nolan's personal involvements with women, the work on the Manhattan Project, his later political troubles), each in a different tone and style and even political sensibility (!) and none of them adding up to much more than a "collage" of scenes that happened, and then chopping them up and mixing the bits together all out of order and connecting them with "clipped and jarring" editing "jumping . . . unequally and unpredictably" from one bit to another that has Hughes waxing poetic about the film perhaps being an artistic "distill[ation]" of quantum physics' conception of reality. Admittedly one might still hope to create something of interest through the juxtapositions such an approach can allow, but this is very, very difficult, and does not seem the case here, the assembly striking Hughes as random, while there is little sense of anything as more important than anything else (as seen in the "excessive" attention to Oppenheimer's romantic life that distracts from rather than complementing or cohering with his scientific work), and the "political sensibilities" are "all over the map," the film "represent[ing] one perspective only to shrug it off in favor of something else . . . while" denying it has any "perspective at all." The result is that in the end it does indeed seem a movie that "says very little, and means none of it" as it ultimately "abandon[s] any visionary search for higher meaning behind the processes of science or politics."
It made for what Hughes thought not only a "disappointing" and "underwhelming" film, but one that he "would have a tough time" just "sitting through . . . again."
Going by Hughes' assessment the film would seem to be all too consistent with earlier readings of the filmmaking of one who, as David Walsh put it, gave us a movie about "the outbreak of World War II without history or politics"; and confirmation of all my skepticism about the movie, and the critics, who even when they are not doing "Job One" by earning their pay as claqueurs, so often show themselves to be Midcult-consuming middlebrows.
Of course, the claqueurs/middlebrows of the entertainment media are one thing, the general public another. As we saw in their failing to excite the general public about The Flash (at this point, an indisputable, catastrophic flop) their applause does not always infect the wider audience as hoped, which is now having its say. Will Nolan's postmodernist three hour art movie that takes up the life of Robert Oppenheimer and the events in which he was involved and turns it into "a movie about nothing" really please the crowds, and they tell all their friends to see it too? Or will those who are not hardcore middlebrows who say they like what cultural Authorities tell them they are supposed to like but just drawn in by vague notions of something special and fondness for Nolan's more popular projects walk away disgusted? We will see this weekend--and of course, the next weekend too, the first-to-second weekend hold more than usually interesting this time around.
This makes the more critical exceptions to the "Greatest Thing Ever!" adulation the more interesting--and surprisingly it is Forbes that brings us such an exception, by way of critic Mark Hughes.
While Hughes accounts himself a "huge fan" of Nolan's prior work, and (significant given its parallel with this film) specifically cites Dunkirk as "the filmmaker's greatest achievement to date," such that he expected to join the chorus singing its praises, he was not impressed with this film--and makes a formidable case for his position.
Basically what it comes to is the three-hour Oppenheimer, in spite of some great acting and some well-directed bits, being a pretentious, overstylized piece of postmodernist arthouse fare--fragmented, nonlinear, willfully dissonant and incoherent, and in its irony and superficiality, and the evasions and nihilism ultimately underlying them, taking up a weighty subject and then taking a very long time to say nothing about it at all. Indeed, Hughes likens what Oppenheimer offers to Nolan shooting three different movies about different parts of its protagonist's life at different stages of that life (Nolan's personal involvements with women, the work on the Manhattan Project, his later political troubles), each in a different tone and style and even political sensibility (!) and none of them adding up to much more than a "collage" of scenes that happened, and then chopping them up and mixing the bits together all out of order and connecting them with "clipped and jarring" editing "jumping . . . unequally and unpredictably" from one bit to another that has Hughes waxing poetic about the film perhaps being an artistic "distill[ation]" of quantum physics' conception of reality. Admittedly one might still hope to create something of interest through the juxtapositions such an approach can allow, but this is very, very difficult, and does not seem the case here, the assembly striking Hughes as random, while there is little sense of anything as more important than anything else (as seen in the "excessive" attention to Oppenheimer's romantic life that distracts from rather than complementing or cohering with his scientific work), and the "political sensibilities" are "all over the map," the film "represent[ing] one perspective only to shrug it off in favor of something else . . . while" denying it has any "perspective at all." The result is that in the end it does indeed seem a movie that "says very little, and means none of it" as it ultimately "abandon[s] any visionary search for higher meaning behind the processes of science or politics."
It made for what Hughes thought not only a "disappointing" and "underwhelming" film, but one that he "would have a tough time" just "sitting through . . . again."
Going by Hughes' assessment the film would seem to be all too consistent with earlier readings of the filmmaking of one who, as David Walsh put it, gave us a movie about "the outbreak of World War II without history or politics"; and confirmation of all my skepticism about the movie, and the critics, who even when they are not doing "Job One" by earning their pay as claqueurs, so often show themselves to be Midcult-consuming middlebrows.
Of course, the claqueurs/middlebrows of the entertainment media are one thing, the general public another. As we saw in their failing to excite the general public about The Flash (at this point, an indisputable, catastrophic flop) their applause does not always infect the wider audience as hoped, which is now having its say. Will Nolan's postmodernist three hour art movie that takes up the life of Robert Oppenheimer and the events in which he was involved and turns it into "a movie about nothing" really please the crowds, and they tell all their friends to see it too? Or will those who are not hardcore middlebrows who say they like what cultural Authorities tell them they are supposed to like but just drawn in by vague notions of something special and fondness for Nolan's more popular projects walk away disgusted? We will see this weekend--and of course, the next weekend too, the first-to-second weekend hold more than usually interesting this time around.
About Those Oppenheimer Posters . . .
A little while ago I discussed here my views of Christopher Nolan's strengths and weaknesses that left me with low expectations for his highly touted new film Oppenheimer.
The poster did not allay those suspicions.
After all, Nolan has shown himself to be exceedingly "conventional" in his views--and where science and engineering are concerned that conventional perspective imagines science as wizardry, and scientists as summoners, or even gods--a false way of looking at the matter, the more in as it is usually reduced to a summoner or god rather than many. That the film is based on and presented as a "biography" (where, as A.J.P. Taylor wrote, instead of history's putting society first, the writer "builds up his individual subject until society is almost forgotten") makes me suspect this will be all the more the case here--reducing that extraordinary example of Big Science, the "Manhattan Project," to the doings of one man.
The poster in which Oppenheimer is seen standing amid the blast of an apparent nuclear explosion would seem to confirm this evil-creation-of-a-god image. The later poster, in which Cillian Murphy stands in front of what looks like a big bomb with an even more than usually creepy expression on his lean, vaguely otherworldly face, confirms it yet again, in its way more powerfully. And frankly this nonsense is the last thing we need right now as the problems raised by the deficiencies of public and even elite understanding of science and technology--of science as method, and of how things actually get invented and made--seem the more pressing by the day; and amid great power conflict, the threat of nuclear war resurges horribly.
That fashionable commentators ignore that as they gabble about the hyping of artificial intelligence only underlines the fact.
The poster did not allay those suspicions.
The poster in which Oppenheimer is seen standing amid the blast of an apparent nuclear explosion would seem to confirm this evil-creation-of-a-god image. The later poster, in which Cillian Murphy stands in front of what looks like a big bomb with an even more than usually creepy expression on his lean, vaguely otherworldly face, confirms it yet again, in its way more powerfully. And frankly this nonsense is the last thing we need right now as the problems raised by the deficiencies of public and even elite understanding of science and technology--of science as method, and of how things actually get invented and made--seem the more pressing by the day; and amid great power conflict, the threat of nuclear war resurges horribly.
That fashionable commentators ignore that as they gabble about the hyping of artificial intelligence only underlines the fact.
Friday, July 21, 2023
Mission: Impossible 7 (Mission: Impossible--Dead Reckoning, Part One)--What Does its Opening Weekend Gross Tell Us About its Longer-Run Prospects?
I previously made an estimate of Mission: Impossible 7's likely global box office gross. Working off of the grosses of past installments in the franchise, while taking into account Boxoffice Pro's tracking and the ways the market may have changed recently (with the usually strong market of China likely to kick in less, but Tom Cruise getting a bump from the success of Top Gun 2 elsewhere), I suggested $850-$950 million as the likely range for the global gross.
I made no prediction regarding the opening weekend, and certainly not the domestic opening weekend--but I did note Boxoffice Pro's initial estimate of $65-$80 million for the first three days of its run, and if Boxoffice Pro was quick in revising the figure downward, right before the opening weekend it still projected over $68 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period.
The movie actually made $56 million in the Friday-to-Sunday--and $80 million for the whole five-day period between the Wednesday release and Sunday (where as late as the preceding week Boxoffice Pro projected $100 million for the first five days).
It is a significant shortfall--about 30 percent below the earlier estimate's ceiling, and 14 percent below its floor, while the five-day take is a rough fifth down from the pre-weekend estimate.
Moreover, it is plausible that the opening weekend shortfall will translate to a commensurate shortfall over its longer run. Where Boxoffice Pro had the film making about four times its initial Friday-to-Sunday gross over the whole run, which gave it $250-$320 million domestically, quadrupling what the movie actually made would give it about $225 million. It is also easy to see this assumption of unusually good legs as optimistic. The immediately prior films have managed more like 3.6 times their opening weekend gross, which from a start of $56 million would work out to more like $200 million. This would put the movie on a level with the series low to date, Mission: Impossible III (the one that came out after the stupid fuss about Cruise's public couch-jumping). And the disappointing opening weekend numbers may hint at the film doing still less well. Should it merely triple its opening weekend gross over the longer run (as with the by-today's-lowered-standard-pretty-good performance of Guardians of the Galaxy 3) it would end up with a mere $170 million in the till.
Of course, the Mission: Impossible series has long depended on the international markets for its profitability. Still, even assuming the movie does relatively as well there as Mission: Impossible--Fallout, the movie will just multiply the domestic gross by a factor of 3.6 (funny how that number comes up here too) such an expectation could prove overoptimistic given how film franchises very well-received in China in the past (the MCU, Fast and Furious, Transformers) have recently done, with Mission: Impossible 7's performance here so far no exception. (Thus far the movie has collected a mere $31 million in China, as against the spectacular $181 million it made back in 2018, even before we think of inflation.) If we think more in terms of how Mission: Impossible 4 (which had respectable but still more restrained foreign numbers, in part because of a more modest boost from China), then the movie just triples its domestic gross. And for the time being the movie is doing less well than that, with a 35/65 domestic/foreign split--which is to say, a global multiplier of 2.8.
So where does that leave us?
My guess as to the domestic range is now $170-$225 million, with the multiplier for the global take in the 2.8-3.6 range. Rounding to the nearest $50 million that works out to a global range of $500-$800 million. The high end of that range (just a bit below the floor on my earlier guess) would not be too bad, especially if people came away from the film looking forward to Part 2 of "Dead Reckoning." But anything much below it would likely be a real problem for yet another post-COVID movie that saw its budget bloated by delays, inflation and interest rates as the box office softened, with it seeming to say something that Deadline has drawn a comparison between it and what is looking like the unmitigated financial catastrophe of Indiana Jones 5.
The result is that while the second weekend is always important in clarifying how a movie is likely to do in the end Mission: Impossible 7's weaker than hoped for start in a shaky market, and the particularly high expectations that come with a near-billion dollar franchise and a near-$300 million production budget, make it even more than usually so.
Expect a follow-up after the numbers for this weekend are in.
I made no prediction regarding the opening weekend, and certainly not the domestic opening weekend--but I did note Boxoffice Pro's initial estimate of $65-$80 million for the first three days of its run, and if Boxoffice Pro was quick in revising the figure downward, right before the opening weekend it still projected over $68 million for the Friday-to-Sunday period.
The movie actually made $56 million in the Friday-to-Sunday--and $80 million for the whole five-day period between the Wednesday release and Sunday (where as late as the preceding week Boxoffice Pro projected $100 million for the first five days).
It is a significant shortfall--about 30 percent below the earlier estimate's ceiling, and 14 percent below its floor, while the five-day take is a rough fifth down from the pre-weekend estimate.
Moreover, it is plausible that the opening weekend shortfall will translate to a commensurate shortfall over its longer run. Where Boxoffice Pro had the film making about four times its initial Friday-to-Sunday gross over the whole run, which gave it $250-$320 million domestically, quadrupling what the movie actually made would give it about $225 million. It is also easy to see this assumption of unusually good legs as optimistic. The immediately prior films have managed more like 3.6 times their opening weekend gross, which from a start of $56 million would work out to more like $200 million. This would put the movie on a level with the series low to date, Mission: Impossible III (the one that came out after the stupid fuss about Cruise's public couch-jumping). And the disappointing opening weekend numbers may hint at the film doing still less well. Should it merely triple its opening weekend gross over the longer run (as with the by-today's-lowered-standard-pretty-good performance of Guardians of the Galaxy 3) it would end up with a mere $170 million in the till.
Of course, the Mission: Impossible series has long depended on the international markets for its profitability. Still, even assuming the movie does relatively as well there as Mission: Impossible--Fallout, the movie will just multiply the domestic gross by a factor of 3.6 (funny how that number comes up here too) such an expectation could prove overoptimistic given how film franchises very well-received in China in the past (the MCU, Fast and Furious, Transformers) have recently done, with Mission: Impossible 7's performance here so far no exception. (Thus far the movie has collected a mere $31 million in China, as against the spectacular $181 million it made back in 2018, even before we think of inflation.) If we think more in terms of how Mission: Impossible 4 (which had respectable but still more restrained foreign numbers, in part because of a more modest boost from China), then the movie just triples its domestic gross. And for the time being the movie is doing less well than that, with a 35/65 domestic/foreign split--which is to say, a global multiplier of 2.8.
So where does that leave us?
My guess as to the domestic range is now $170-$225 million, with the multiplier for the global take in the 2.8-3.6 range. Rounding to the nearest $50 million that works out to a global range of $500-$800 million. The high end of that range (just a bit below the floor on my earlier guess) would not be too bad, especially if people came away from the film looking forward to Part 2 of "Dead Reckoning." But anything much below it would likely be a real problem for yet another post-COVID movie that saw its budget bloated by delays, inflation and interest rates as the box office softened, with it seeming to say something that Deadline has drawn a comparison between it and what is looking like the unmitigated financial catastrophe of Indiana Jones 5.
The result is that while the second weekend is always important in clarifying how a movie is likely to do in the end Mission: Impossible 7's weaker than hoped for start in a shaky market, and the particularly high expectations that come with a near-billion dollar franchise and a near-$300 million production budget, make it even more than usually so.
Expect a follow-up after the numbers for this weekend are in.
Indiana Jones 5's Third Weekend in Theaters
Once again I look back to April and think of how I wondered if I was not doom-mongering in suggesting a comparison between Indiana Jones and Solo. Now there would probably be relief if the film did as well as Solo, which pulled in a whole $393 million back in 2018, five inflationary years ago.
Monday, July 10, 2023
What Will Aquaman 2 Make? A Box Office Prediction
In considering what the final DCEU film, Aquaman 2, may make later this year one can find a basis for guesses in analogies with other comparable films--and application of these to what might be expected for it on the basis of the original Aquaman.
An obvious starting point is how major superhero franchise films have been doing lately--with and without the China market over which so many question marks hang (and which was so important to the first Aquaman movie's success).
At one end of the spectrum Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made $864 million at the global box office--which comes to $1.07 billion in May 2023 dollars. Without China's $100 million in ticket sales it comes to more like $948 million.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is likely to finish up with not much less than the original in current dollars--about $850 million. Without China the figure is more like $763 million. The result is that the film's gross is, in China's absence, about a fifth down, and this the best any such movie seems likely to do these days.
At the other end of the spectrum Black Panther 2 made just over half (53 percent) of what the original Black Panther did in real terms. Exclusion from China was a factor, but even when we set China aside the movie still made just 58 percent of what the original did.
So let us assume that in the best-case scenario the movie makes 80 percent of what the original did outside China, in the worst-case scenario, just 60 percent.
Meanwhile let us consider the film's prospects in China. In the worst case the film will not come out there at all, but should it come out one may take the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man franchises as suggestive of the range. In China Guardians of the Galaxy 3 did, if less well than elsewhere, relatively well by the standards of Hollywood in China these days, taking in 70 percent of what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did. By contrast Ant-Man 3 took in just 30 percent of what Ant-Man 2 did there.
In May 2023 dollars Aquaman took in $1.04 billion outside China. It also took in $350 million in China, for a take of nearly $1.4 billion overall.
The most positive scenario, with 80 percent of the non-China gross, and 70 percent of the China gross, of the original, would come to a $1.09 billion total take (less than a quarter down from the original's gross).
The least positive scenario within the range discussed here would come to more like $730 million (scarcely half what the original made).
Round for the nearest fifty million, and you end up with a range of $750 million-$1.1 billion, with, splitting the difference, somewhere around $900 million the middle of the range.
If a significant comedown from what might have been hoped from the strength of the original's reception, this would probably be the best gross of any superhero movie, or any live-action movie, this year. However, just as this kind of calculation was (as I warned back in April and as has since been amply confirmed) overoptimistic in the case of Indiana Jones 5 (which conventionally should have been a safe bet for a billion-dollar gross given the performance of prior entries in the series), given the headwinds it faced (which have all too clearly mattered), so it may be with Aquaman 2--given very poor buzz about the quality of the film, the way the DCEU seems to be going less than gracefully, the poor impression made by the overhyping and the disappointing reception of The Flash. Indeed, just as I warned about the possibility of a Solo-like collapse on the part of Indiana Jones 5, so does it seem worth warning about the possibility of a similar collapse in the case of Aquaman 2. Just as Indiana Jones 5 now looks like it will struggle to make forty percent of what might have been normally expected for it (and Aquaman 2's preceding DCEU universe, The Flash, looks as if it is doing the same) Aquaman 2, instead of the circa $900 million that could be expected for it amid the lowered expectations of today's global box office, could likewise find itself falling short of the half billion dollar mark, and even the $400 million mark.
To sum up: in May 2023 dollars, a likely range of $750 million-$1.1 billion, $900 million as the figure I think most likely assuming a "normal" run, with, not to be forgotten, a real prospect of collapse seeing it make less than half that (<$400 million) in these not-so-normal times.
An obvious starting point is how major superhero franchise films have been doing lately--with and without the China market over which so many question marks hang (and which was so important to the first Aquaman movie's success).
At one end of the spectrum Guardians of the Galaxy 2 made $864 million at the global box office--which comes to $1.07 billion in May 2023 dollars. Without China's $100 million in ticket sales it comes to more like $948 million.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is likely to finish up with not much less than the original in current dollars--about $850 million. Without China the figure is more like $763 million. The result is that the film's gross is, in China's absence, about a fifth down, and this the best any such movie seems likely to do these days.
At the other end of the spectrum Black Panther 2 made just over half (53 percent) of what the original Black Panther did in real terms. Exclusion from China was a factor, but even when we set China aside the movie still made just 58 percent of what the original did.
So let us assume that in the best-case scenario the movie makes 80 percent of what the original did outside China, in the worst-case scenario, just 60 percent.
Meanwhile let us consider the film's prospects in China. In the worst case the film will not come out there at all, but should it come out one may take the Guardians of the Galaxy and Ant-Man franchises as suggestive of the range. In China Guardians of the Galaxy 3 did, if less well than elsewhere, relatively well by the standards of Hollywood in China these days, taking in 70 percent of what Guardians of the Galaxy 2 did. By contrast Ant-Man 3 took in just 30 percent of what Ant-Man 2 did there.
In May 2023 dollars Aquaman took in $1.04 billion outside China. It also took in $350 million in China, for a take of nearly $1.4 billion overall.
The most positive scenario, with 80 percent of the non-China gross, and 70 percent of the China gross, of the original, would come to a $1.09 billion total take (less than a quarter down from the original's gross).
The least positive scenario within the range discussed here would come to more like $730 million (scarcely half what the original made).
Round for the nearest fifty million, and you end up with a range of $750 million-$1.1 billion, with, splitting the difference, somewhere around $900 million the middle of the range.
If a significant comedown from what might have been hoped from the strength of the original's reception, this would probably be the best gross of any superhero movie, or any live-action movie, this year. However, just as this kind of calculation was (as I warned back in April and as has since been amply confirmed) overoptimistic in the case of Indiana Jones 5 (which conventionally should have been a safe bet for a billion-dollar gross given the performance of prior entries in the series), given the headwinds it faced (which have all too clearly mattered), so it may be with Aquaman 2--given very poor buzz about the quality of the film, the way the DCEU seems to be going less than gracefully, the poor impression made by the overhyping and the disappointing reception of The Flash. Indeed, just as I warned about the possibility of a Solo-like collapse on the part of Indiana Jones 5, so does it seem worth warning about the possibility of a similar collapse in the case of Aquaman 2. Just as Indiana Jones 5 now looks like it will struggle to make forty percent of what might have been normally expected for it (and Aquaman 2's preceding DCEU universe, The Flash, looks as if it is doing the same) Aquaman 2, instead of the circa $900 million that could be expected for it amid the lowered expectations of today's global box office, could likewise find itself falling short of the half billion dollar mark, and even the $400 million mark.
To sum up: in May 2023 dollars, a likely range of $750 million-$1.1 billion, $900 million as the figure I think most likely assuming a "normal" run, with, not to be forgotten, a real prospect of collapse seeing it make less than half that (<$400 million) in these not-so-normal times.
Indiana Jones 5's Second Weekend Box Office Gross
Looking at Boxoffice Pro's estimate for the second weekend take of Indiana Jones 5 (a 53 percent drop to $28.6 million) I thought their figures overoptimistic--and indeed they were. But not by much. With a 56 percent drop and $26.5 million collected this weekend the gross was down only 7 percent from their prediction--leaving Indiana Jones with $121 million grossed domestically in its first ten days. On that level, at least, the film has avoided the kind of first-to-second weekend collapse seen with films like Ant-Man 3 (70 percent) or The Flash (73 percent) but, apart from the indignity of already having been knocked down to #2 at the box office (and that not by another blockbuster but a low-cost horror movie), at the same time proved itself far from leggy (to return to the analogy some drew, no Top Gun 2, and not even a Guardians of the Galaxy 3).*
It will be a long road toward $200 million domestically--too long, I think. (Guardians of the Galaxy-like legs--an extra two-thirds above its ten day take--would let it get there. Ant-Man 3-like legs over the longer haul--just a quarter more--would give it more like $150 million. For now my guess is the movie's ending up somewhere in between, if a little closer to Guardians. Call it about what it would get if the week-to-week drops held to 50 percent, $180 million.) Meanwhile, in contrast with the 40/60 domestic/foreign split on the prior Indiana Jones films the movie's take is currently more like 49/51 percent. (Extrapolating from the $180 million figure it would end up with $370 million or so.)
Still, even if the film does a good deal better than that it would be far from profitable--the anticipation of a Solo-like (or worse) collapse still dismayingly borne out.
* Top Gun 2 saw its Friday-to-Sunday gross slide a mere 29 percent, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 48 percent, from its first to its second weekend.
It will be a long road toward $200 million domestically--too long, I think. (Guardians of the Galaxy-like legs--an extra two-thirds above its ten day take--would let it get there. Ant-Man 3-like legs over the longer haul--just a quarter more--would give it more like $150 million. For now my guess is the movie's ending up somewhere in between, if a little closer to Guardians. Call it about what it would get if the week-to-week drops held to 50 percent, $180 million.) Meanwhile, in contrast with the 40/60 domestic/foreign split on the prior Indiana Jones films the movie's take is currently more like 49/51 percent. (Extrapolating from the $180 million figure it would end up with $370 million or so.)
Still, even if the film does a good deal better than that it would be far from profitable--the anticipation of a Solo-like (or worse) collapse still dismayingly borne out.
* Top Gun 2 saw its Friday-to-Sunday gross slide a mere 29 percent, Guardians of the Galaxy 3 48 percent, from its first to its second weekend.
Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse's Sixth Weekend: The Movie Becomes the #1 Superhero Film of 2023 at the North American Box Office
Ant-Man 3, Shazam 2 and The Flash all flopped hard this year, making it easy enough for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse to blast right past them on its way up the year's box office charts. Now it has, coming four weeks after Guardians of the Galaxy, managed to nose ahead of it, with $357,648,000 in the till as against Guardians' $357,577,000.
Expect Spider-Man, which pulled in $8 million this past weekend (as against Guardians of the Galaxy 3's $1 million), to continue extending its lead, perhaps by a considerable margin. Where Guardians of the Galaxy 3, after displaying impressive staying power, especially in later weeks, seems bound to sputter out just a little north of $360 million, Spider-Man seems a safe bet for the vicinity of $380 million even in the event of week-to-week drops in the range of 50 percent--and should the drops be more like those of last week's 30.5 percent, get up near $400 million before finishing out.
Especially given the shaky prospects of Captain Marvel 2 and Aquaman 2 later this year it seems to me the movie has a pretty good chance of still holding the #1 crown at the end of the year in the domestic market (though in the international market, where Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has taken in almost 70 percent more than Spider-Man, Star-Lord and friends will still have that title).
* As of this past weekend Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had grossed $482 million internationally, as against Spider-Man's $284 million--interest in that movie not quite catching internationally the way it did domestically (even if the gross there, too, is still an improvement over that of the first animated Spider-Man movie).
Expect Spider-Man, which pulled in $8 million this past weekend (as against Guardians of the Galaxy 3's $1 million), to continue extending its lead, perhaps by a considerable margin. Where Guardians of the Galaxy 3, after displaying impressive staying power, especially in later weeks, seems bound to sputter out just a little north of $360 million, Spider-Man seems a safe bet for the vicinity of $380 million even in the event of week-to-week drops in the range of 50 percent--and should the drops be more like those of last week's 30.5 percent, get up near $400 million before finishing out.
Especially given the shaky prospects of Captain Marvel 2 and Aquaman 2 later this year it seems to me the movie has a pretty good chance of still holding the #1 crown at the end of the year in the domestic market (though in the international market, where Guardians of the Galaxy 3 has taken in almost 70 percent more than Spider-Man, Star-Lord and friends will still have that title).
* As of this past weekend Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had grossed $482 million internationally, as against Spider-Man's $284 million--interest in that movie not quite catching internationally the way it did domestically (even if the gross there, too, is still an improvement over that of the first animated Spider-Man movie).
Saturday, July 8, 2023
Indiana Jones 5's First Five Days in Release--and the Upcoming Weekend
As noted here Indiana Jones 5 has had its debut--taking in some $60 million domestically during its first three days, and perhaps $84 million over the first five.
Speculating about the movie's course from here on out one can consider the extremes. Top Gun 2 saw a mere 29 percent drop from its first Friday-to-Sunday period to its second--an extremely rare performance for any major film, but especially for a highly anticipated sequel coming out on a major holiday weekend. By contrast The Flash (while not even coming off a holiday weekend) saw a 73 percent drop.
Boxoffice Pro currently expects the film's performance to fall almost exactly midway between the two extremes, with a 53 percent drop from the first Friday-to-Sunday period to the second, giving it $29 million this coming weekend and boosting its domestic total to nearly $126 million.
This would really not be bad, relatively speaking--almost as good as Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had after its debut (a mere 48 percent drop from a non-holiday weekend). Still, even if the movie managed Guardians of the Galaxy 3 legs and roughly tripled its opening weekend gross this would mean just $180 million in the till. If, going by the first ten days rather than the first weekend, we assumed that the film, like Guardians, managed to make an extra two-thirds atop its $126 million take it would still end up with just $210 million--scarcely touching the low end of the already downwardly revised long-range projection the folks at Boxoffice Pro had offered down to the opening weekend ($211 million).
What about the overseas picture? The last two Indiana Jones films managed a roughly 40/60 domestic/international split, which would work out to a global gross of over a half billion in the circumstances ($525 million). However, the film's first three days saw it take in $70 million internationally, which works out to a rough 46/54 percent domestic/foreign split for the period. In combination with the $210 million domestic total this works out to $450-$460 million taken in globally.
Once more, that is about what Solo made in inflation-adjusted terms. And this is in a relatively optimistic scenario of very decent legs at home and abroad. As I remarked, audiences may be kinder than the critics who saw it first (the situation is quite the reverse of what we saw with Indiana Jones 4 at present), and the competition in the coming weeks is not too strong by the season's usual standards, but we also know that this kind of film is very front-loaded, and that by and large it is depending on the fading nostalgia for the series, limiting its potential. The result is that I suspect that come next Sunday Boxoffice Pro's prediction will prove optimistic--and that even if it does not, barring the movie's legs being not merely Guardians of the Galaxy 3-like, but Top Gun-2 like, it will not make much difference to the film's final fate commercially.*
* Top Gun 2 pulled in 5.7 times its initial Friday-to-Sunday gross, which in the case of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would work out to an unspectacular but respectable $340 million. Should this go along with the current domestic/foreign split it might have a chance of at least breaking even via revenue from home entertainment, etc.. (With $350 million+ from theatrical rentals, and the equivalent of another 80 percent+ of that from those other revenue streams, the intake would at least be within range of the $600 million that seems likely to be the lowest outlay on the total project going by the formula I discussed here.)
Speculating about the movie's course from here on out one can consider the extremes. Top Gun 2 saw a mere 29 percent drop from its first Friday-to-Sunday period to its second--an extremely rare performance for any major film, but especially for a highly anticipated sequel coming out on a major holiday weekend. By contrast The Flash (while not even coming off a holiday weekend) saw a 73 percent drop.
Boxoffice Pro currently expects the film's performance to fall almost exactly midway between the two extremes, with a 53 percent drop from the first Friday-to-Sunday period to the second, giving it $29 million this coming weekend and boosting its domestic total to nearly $126 million.
This would really not be bad, relatively speaking--almost as good as Guardians of the Galaxy 3 had after its debut (a mere 48 percent drop from a non-holiday weekend). Still, even if the movie managed Guardians of the Galaxy 3 legs and roughly tripled its opening weekend gross this would mean just $180 million in the till. If, going by the first ten days rather than the first weekend, we assumed that the film, like Guardians, managed to make an extra two-thirds atop its $126 million take it would still end up with just $210 million--scarcely touching the low end of the already downwardly revised long-range projection the folks at Boxoffice Pro had offered down to the opening weekend ($211 million).
What about the overseas picture? The last two Indiana Jones films managed a roughly 40/60 domestic/international split, which would work out to a global gross of over a half billion in the circumstances ($525 million). However, the film's first three days saw it take in $70 million internationally, which works out to a rough 46/54 percent domestic/foreign split for the period. In combination with the $210 million domestic total this works out to $450-$460 million taken in globally.
Once more, that is about what Solo made in inflation-adjusted terms. And this is in a relatively optimistic scenario of very decent legs at home and abroad. As I remarked, audiences may be kinder than the critics who saw it first (the situation is quite the reverse of what we saw with Indiana Jones 4 at present), and the competition in the coming weeks is not too strong by the season's usual standards, but we also know that this kind of film is very front-loaded, and that by and large it is depending on the fading nostalgia for the series, limiting its potential. The result is that I suspect that come next Sunday Boxoffice Pro's prediction will prove optimistic--and that even if it does not, barring the movie's legs being not merely Guardians of the Galaxy 3-like, but Top Gun-2 like, it will not make much difference to the film's final fate commercially.*
* Top Gun 2 pulled in 5.7 times its initial Friday-to-Sunday gross, which in the case of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny would work out to an unspectacular but respectable $340 million. Should this go along with the current domestic/foreign split it might have a chance of at least breaking even via revenue from home entertainment, etc.. (With $350 million+ from theatrical rentals, and the equivalent of another 80 percent+ of that from those other revenue streams, the intake would at least be within range of the $600 million that seems likely to be the lowest outlay on the total project going by the formula I discussed here.)
Is the Box Office Becoming More "Top-Heavy?"
To answer the question raised by the title of this post I looked at the data on Box Office Mojo for this century to determine the share of the year's box office gross accounted for by the ten highest-grossing films.
In the decade 2000-2009 they ranged between just over 23 and just under 27 percent of the total, and averaged 25 percent over the whole decade.
In 2010-2014 the take of the top ten movies ranged from 24 to just under 30 percent, with the average for the five-year period 27 percent.
In 2015-2019 the figure, never lower than 31.7 percent (in 2017), averaged 34 percent, dragged up by how in 2019 it ran 38.5 percent.
Of course, the two years after that (2020, 2021) were so chaotic that it was hard to get much sense out of the numbers, but in that year of comparative recovery, 2022, the proportion was higher still, the top ten movies accounting for 52 percent of the total--more than twice as much as in the decade of the '00s ($3.85 billion of the $7.37 billion taken in).
And in 2023 so far the top ten have accounted for an even higher 59 percent of the total box office gross ($2.68 billion of the $4.51 billion collected at last count).
The result is that it seems indisputable that there was a trend toward a more top-heavy box office clearly underway over the twenty-first century's second decade, and especially after 2015, with the pandemic seeming to give it another boost--as, perhaps, it got people out of the habit of going to the theater for anything but the most "must-see" release. Moreover, there seems little sign of the trend reversing, or even slowing, any time soon.
In the decade 2000-2009 they ranged between just over 23 and just under 27 percent of the total, and averaged 25 percent over the whole decade.
In 2010-2014 the take of the top ten movies ranged from 24 to just under 30 percent, with the average for the five-year period 27 percent.
In 2015-2019 the figure, never lower than 31.7 percent (in 2017), averaged 34 percent, dragged up by how in 2019 it ran 38.5 percent.
Of course, the two years after that (2020, 2021) were so chaotic that it was hard to get much sense out of the numbers, but in that year of comparative recovery, 2022, the proportion was higher still, the top ten movies accounting for 52 percent of the total--more than twice as much as in the decade of the '00s ($3.85 billion of the $7.37 billion taken in).
And in 2023 so far the top ten have accounted for an even higher 59 percent of the total box office gross ($2.68 billion of the $4.51 billion collected at last count).
The result is that it seems indisputable that there was a trend toward a more top-heavy box office clearly underway over the twenty-first century's second decade, and especially after 2015, with the pandemic seeming to give it another boost--as, perhaps, it got people out of the habit of going to the theater for anything but the most "must-see" release. Moreover, there seems little sign of the trend reversing, or even slowing, any time soon.
Sunday, July 2, 2023
How Much Money Will Indiana Jones 5 Lose Disney?
We are hearing $295 million as the price tag for producing Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. Given that the total outlay on a film's production, distribution and promotion tends to run two to three times its production budget it seems reasonable to think the complete bill for this already colossal but much-delayed and heavily hyped production will run to $600-$900 million.
Of course, with the film barely out it is harder to make guesses about revenue--but given its opening weekend it seems unlikely to do much better than a half billion dollars, and could easily take in just $400 million (or even less). Assume (optimistically) the studio gets half that $400 million figure--$200 million. Now consider the home entertainment/TV/streaming revenue. At this level movies rarely match their theatrical grosses through these sources, but even in the event that the film achieves that--making another $200 million here--the movie ends up with some $400 million, as against that $600-$900 million outlay. The result is that a shortfall in the $200 million+ range is far from inconceivable, even if the movie avoids a worst-case outcome.
And in the worst-case outcome . . . we could be talking about twice that or more. (After all, $900 million-$400 million=. . . I don't even want to finish that bit of arithmetic.)
All of this makes the movie a strong contender for Deadline's "biggest box office bombs" competition next year--but admittedly just one in what is already proving a field of very strong contenders for the title this year.
Of course, with the film barely out it is harder to make guesses about revenue--but given its opening weekend it seems unlikely to do much better than a half billion dollars, and could easily take in just $400 million (or even less). Assume (optimistically) the studio gets half that $400 million figure--$200 million. Now consider the home entertainment/TV/streaming revenue. At this level movies rarely match their theatrical grosses through these sources, but even in the event that the film achieves that--making another $200 million here--the movie ends up with some $400 million, as against that $600-$900 million outlay. The result is that a shortfall in the $200 million+ range is far from inconceivable, even if the movie avoids a worst-case outcome.
And in the worst-case outcome . . . we could be talking about twice that or more. (After all, $900 million-$400 million=. . . I don't even want to finish that bit of arithmetic.)
All of this makes the movie a strong contender for Deadline's "biggest box office bombs" competition next year--but admittedly just one in what is already proving a field of very strong contenders for the title this year.
What About Indiana Jones' 5-Day Opening Weekend Gross?
The numbers are already in for Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's opening weekend--a $60 million gross that would be deemed disappointing for any big Independence Day weekend release, never mind an installment in a classic Lucas-Spielberg saga.
But what about the prospects for the full five-day "weekend?"
Boxoffice Pro, which had down to the film's release anticipated its getting up near $94 million now has it doing not much better than $82 million--which seems to me unlikely to be the last downward revision of projections regarding the film.
Still, the film will have at least one chance to surprise the dismayed and dismaying--next week, when we will see how it holds up. Will good word of mouth offer at least partial compensation for a disappointing opening, the way it did for Guardians of the Galaxy 3? Or will the fall just continue, the way it has for The Flash?
Thoughts, readers?
But what about the prospects for the full five-day "weekend?"
Boxoffice Pro, which had down to the film's release anticipated its getting up near $94 million now has it doing not much better than $82 million--which seems to me unlikely to be the last downward revision of projections regarding the film.
Still, the film will have at least one chance to surprise the dismayed and dismaying--next week, when we will see how it holds up. Will good word of mouth offer at least partial compensation for a disappointing opening, the way it did for Guardians of the Galaxy 3? Or will the fall just continue, the way it has for The Flash?
Thoughts, readers?
Who's Watching Indiana Jones 5? (Hint: Old People)
While the press is overwhelmingly focused on the disappointing box office numbers the Boxoffice Pro analysis regarding Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny's debut offers an interesting tidbit about the makeup of the dismayingly small portion of the moviegoing audience that did show up. As their report indicates, just "a quarter of the film’s opening weekend audience was under the age of 25," while "moviegoers above the age of 54" comprise "the title's largest age group with 21 percent of ticket sales."
Presenting my initial speculation about the likely misfire that is this film back in April I wrote that
Presenting my initial speculation about the likely misfire that is this film back in April I wrote that
I think Indy 5 will be the movie that reduces Indiana Jones from the tiny and ultra-exclusive club of "absolute, inarguable, classic, totally failure-proof franchise" to "just another movie franchise" (like Star Wars had become in 2017-2019) and maybe even "franchise old people see mainly out of nostalgia" (like the James Bond films have seemed to be, especially after the Waller-Bridge co-scripted No Time to Die[)].It thus seems that, just as I had speculated, Indiana Jones 5, like No Time to Die, really is confirming the film series' hanging-on-out-of-nostalgia status--a fact that did not bode well for the Bond film, and also does not bode well for this film, which seems that much less likely to be saved by good legs at the box office as a result.
Indiana Jones 5 vs. Solo: the Opening Weekend Box Office Gross--and Beyond
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is presently said to be headed for a $60 million gross--at the bottom end of even the latest, much-lowered range projected by Boxoffice Pro.
At this point further comparisons with prior Indiana Jones films seem pointless. Let us compare the performance with the opening of the film that has been on my mind since I started thinking about Indiana Jones' box office prospects back in April, Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Solo took in $84 million back in 2018--which adjusted for inflation is equal to over $100 million in current prices. The result is that we are, so far, looking not at a Solo-like collapse, but something possibly worse here. Should Indiana Jones 5, like Solo, make about 2.5 times its opening gross domestically it will not much overtop $150 million, never mind the $211 million that Boxoffice Pro predicts as the low end of the range of the film's likely gross (and about the $214 million Solo made in current dollars, never mind the $260 million or so it made in inflation-adjusted, 2023 dollars).
Could Indiana Jones do better than that? There may seem some hope in the Rotten Tomatoes ratings--where the critics' ratings have edged upwards (to 68 percent), and the audience's ratings are more generous still (the "Verified" audience affording an 89 percent score, the "All Audience" score 81 percent), suggesting that many will have a more favorable view of the film than the crowd that got the first look at it at Cannes. The film may also benefit from surprisingly weak competition--the market packed this year not with hits but with flops, such that The Flash will not be much of a rival, while in what is an all too familiar pattern this year Boxoffice Pro is already downgrading its expectations for the next possible rival, Mission: Impossible 7. Still, it is not the launch that might have been hoped for, with very good legs required to get it merely to the $200 million mark, and even Top Gun 2-like endurance not quite getting it to $400 million--all as, again, I see little reason to expect a big boost from overseas. The result is that I think $200 million about as well as it is likely to do domestically, and given the 60/40 international/domestic split on prior Indiana Jones films, $300 million the best that can be reasonably hoped for there, working out to a half billion dollars as the likely ceiling for this one--as it happens, about what Solo did globally in 2023 dollars.
At this point further comparisons with prior Indiana Jones films seem pointless. Let us compare the performance with the opening of the film that has been on my mind since I started thinking about Indiana Jones' box office prospects back in April, Solo: A Star Wars Story.
Solo took in $84 million back in 2018--which adjusted for inflation is equal to over $100 million in current prices. The result is that we are, so far, looking not at a Solo-like collapse, but something possibly worse here. Should Indiana Jones 5, like Solo, make about 2.5 times its opening gross domestically it will not much overtop $150 million, never mind the $211 million that Boxoffice Pro predicts as the low end of the range of the film's likely gross (and about the $214 million Solo made in current dollars, never mind the $260 million or so it made in inflation-adjusted, 2023 dollars).
Could Indiana Jones do better than that? There may seem some hope in the Rotten Tomatoes ratings--where the critics' ratings have edged upwards (to 68 percent), and the audience's ratings are more generous still (the "Verified" audience affording an 89 percent score, the "All Audience" score 81 percent), suggesting that many will have a more favorable view of the film than the crowd that got the first look at it at Cannes. The film may also benefit from surprisingly weak competition--the market packed this year not with hits but with flops, such that The Flash will not be much of a rival, while in what is an all too familiar pattern this year Boxoffice Pro is already downgrading its expectations for the next possible rival, Mission: Impossible 7. Still, it is not the launch that might have been hoped for, with very good legs required to get it merely to the $200 million mark, and even Top Gun 2-like endurance not quite getting it to $400 million--all as, again, I see little reason to expect a big boost from overseas. The result is that I think $200 million about as well as it is likely to do domestically, and given the 60/40 international/domestic split on prior Indiana Jones films, $300 million the best that can be reasonably hoped for there, working out to a half billion dollars as the likely ceiling for this one--as it happens, about what Solo did globally in 2023 dollars.
The Mounting List of Flops in the Summer of 2023
As it is already July it does not seem unreasonable to stop and consider the course of the box office this summer.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3, despite the deflation of expectations and a weaker-than-hoped-for debut, managed an $850 million global total--in real terms a decline from its predecessors, but a relatively better performance than the preceding Marvel Cinematic Universe films, and quite enough to make it one of the more profitable films of the year. Meanwhile the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has nearly doubled the original film's domestic gross, while if the international audience is less enthusiastic it is still improving its totals on the first film there as well.
By contrast the other big movies of the summer seem to all be performing somewhere between badly and disastrously. Thus does it go with Fast X, Transformers, The Flash--each of which could well mean a nine-figure loss for their studio. And now Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is at this point performing no better.
Meanwhile, along with the big action movies the family-oriented animated films, and adaptations of animated films, are suffering--as seen with The Little Mermaid, Elemental, and now something called Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken as well.
Considering this let us allow that every summer has its flops. But the ratio of flops-to-successes, the severity of the flops (as with The Flash), and the qualified nature of such successes as we are seeing (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is at the least an underperformer when graded on anything but a curve), is really something special, with the big-picture numbers confirming the fact. While this is the first summer since 2019 with a "normal" slate of films, when we adjust the grosses for inflation the overall domestic box office take for May and June is down not just from the 2015-2019 average, but the depressed level of last summer as well (reversing the upward trend seen in January-April).
No matter how loud the claqueurs claque they cannot conceal the fact that things are not going well--and I have little expectation of them getting better this season given that the summer has already given us its "best shot," while the prospects of the most promising movies coming out later this summer, and this year, seem either very finite (as with Mission: Impossible 7, about which Boxoffice Pro is already becoming less bullish), or very shaky indeed (as with Captain Marvel 2 and Aquaman 2), with all this going for the foreign markets as for the United States.
Indeed, considering the situation I recall my suggestion in the first week of May that no live-action movie coming out this year will make a billion dollars. Right now I feel more confirmed in that assessment that ever--and its implications for the beleaguered film industry.
Guardians of the Galaxy 3, despite the deflation of expectations and a weaker-than-hoped-for debut, managed an $850 million global total--in real terms a decline from its predecessors, but a relatively better performance than the preceding Marvel Cinematic Universe films, and quite enough to make it one of the more profitable films of the year. Meanwhile the sequel to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse has nearly doubled the original film's domestic gross, while if the international audience is less enthusiastic it is still improving its totals on the first film there as well.
By contrast the other big movies of the summer seem to all be performing somewhere between badly and disastrously. Thus does it go with Fast X, Transformers, The Flash--each of which could well mean a nine-figure loss for their studio. And now Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is at this point performing no better.
Meanwhile, along with the big action movies the family-oriented animated films, and adaptations of animated films, are suffering--as seen with The Little Mermaid, Elemental, and now something called Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken as well.
Considering this let us allow that every summer has its flops. But the ratio of flops-to-successes, the severity of the flops (as with The Flash), and the qualified nature of such successes as we are seeing (Guardians of the Galaxy 3 is at the least an underperformer when graded on anything but a curve), is really something special, with the big-picture numbers confirming the fact. While this is the first summer since 2019 with a "normal" slate of films, when we adjust the grosses for inflation the overall domestic box office take for May and June is down not just from the 2015-2019 average, but the depressed level of last summer as well (reversing the upward trend seen in January-April).
No matter how loud the claqueurs claque they cannot conceal the fact that things are not going well--and I have little expectation of them getting better this season given that the summer has already given us its "best shot," while the prospects of the most promising movies coming out later this summer, and this year, seem either very finite (as with Mission: Impossible 7, about which Boxoffice Pro is already becoming less bullish), or very shaky indeed (as with Captain Marvel 2 and Aquaman 2), with all this going for the foreign markets as for the United States.
Indeed, considering the situation I recall my suggestion in the first week of May that no live-action movie coming out this year will make a billion dollars. Right now I feel more confirmed in that assessment that ever--and its implications for the beleaguered film industry.
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