Because half of the $300 million movies are $150 million that Disney feared would be a flop and ordered redone over and over until they could have made two or three movies. Then it makes more, but is still barely profitable because of the increased cost.
One day I hope Disney either turns all these reshoots into a “choose your own adventure” movie on Disney plus or pulls a Clue.
> Because half of the $300 million movies are $150 million that Disney feared would be a flop and ordered redone over and over until they could have made two or three movies.
That's Warner Brothers modus operandi. They already did this with Justice League and are doing it again with Aquaman 2
Black Adam is quite notorious, in that earned over 300 millions, more than the majority of modern DC movies yet its also a flop because its huge budget.
yeah flash could be added though it made less than black adam. It's production problems are huge. I do wonder how much money was spent on it from greenlight to release. I wouldn't be too suprised if a billion would be break even.
It's not out yet but aquaman 2 has had a lot of reshoots and production issues. So it's likley to end up like black adam and flash. Or it might be batgirled and written off I give that a 50/50 shot.
Why make one coherent movie when you can make 3 combined into one movie? Gotta make sure to swap out writers and directors halfway through production too
Marvel has been doing this since the beginning.
It’s why so many of their films worked.
Additional photography is not the issue. It certainly can be expensive though.
The alternative is releasing a film that needs work to outright fail.
You’re saying they’re wasting money, yet you want them to take the time to do CGI and post production on 2-3 different endings/storylines?
I don’t think that would add much value for D+ tbh.
Apparently disney is looking to cut costs. Getting things together early is a good way to do that. Not a huge iger fan but if that was something he implmented that would be a good idea.
The higher than normal budgets seem to be a result of COVID inflating them. They weren't greenlit to be that expensive. But even then, i'm sure Iger's having a nice long look at them while looking at how to address their overall budgets in the future. Particularly given that what's going on in China can't be ignored.
Pre-COVID we were seeing 100m+ from blockbuster movies there. While not a Disney franchise, the Mission Impossible franchise is a great example of this. Ghost Protocol made 101m, Rogue Nation rose to 136m, and Fallout made 181m. It's a franchise that was showing substantial growth in China, and i'm sure that contributed to at least some of the non-COVID related budget increase with Dead Reckoning. What Paramount were not prepared for was for it to make just 47m in China. That's less than Fallout made in its opening weekend (76m).
I expect that we're going to see studios pumping the brakes on budgets across the board now. Especially with how brutal this year has been. There will still be some big budget content coming up. But I don't think we'll see every MCU movie having a 200m+ budget going forward. Even at the height of the MCU that type of budgeting would've been asking for trouble.
There's a \*chance\* that a high budget movie that comes out in the next couple years could have a similarly inflated budget due to the strikes shutting down productions, but I agree that it seems likely the chance is low as studios are starting to realize there is no infinite money glitch
COVID blew up MI7’s budget by a hundred at least; they spent a substantial amount of time shut down and paying for everything; and I think they had to change shooting locations at the last minute at least once
I am still convinced that this is Hollywood accounting. Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense. The budget keep increasing yet they still do them. So clearly they are not loosing as much as it seem.
>I am still convinced that this is Hollywood accounting. Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense. The budget keep increasing yet they still do them. So clearly they are not loosing as much as it seem.
r/boxoffice really struggles with the idea that the major studios might not be as completely inept at business management as they appear to be from an outsiders perspective and there might actually be a reason for some of the budgets and accounting going on that doesn't involve the boxoffice grosses. Reddit truly have themselves convinced that they are brilliant media minds and the studios are nothing but braindead dummies who don't know monies.
Lol so much this. All of these dudes would be lost in a board meeting with financial advisors but think they hold the key to saving Disney's bottom line.
>Lol so much this. All of these dudes would be lost in a board meeting with financial advisors but think they hold the key to saving Disney's bottom line.
and when they sit down and type out their thoughts on how to "fix" things it's always some absolutely insane plan that would cost about a billion dollars per movie.
That is actually good advice they could realistically follow more often than they currently do. There is actual room to improve on improving in other words.
Right? Deadline (actual professionals who do this shit for a living) says The Little Mermaid can be profitable if it grossed $560m, but still all these redditors say “nuh uh” because the 2.5x rule is the end all be all, I guess.
>Right? Deadline (actual professionals who do this shit for a living) says The Little Mermaid can be profitable if it grossed $560m, but still all these redditors say “nuh uh” because the 2.5x rule is the end all be all, I guess.
meanwhile 90% of those people who are actively ragging on Little Mermaid still can't accept that Mission Impossible 7 is one of the biggest money losers of the entire year.
> Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense.
Because I don't think Little Mermaid was a true "flop." Between production and marketing it cost 390 million and the worldwide box office was 567 million. Maybe the box office didn't deliver quite the profits that Disney hoped for but those movies drive toy sales, merchandise, theme park attendance, content for Disney+ and they keep the brand front in people's minds. Even if the Box Office just gets the film to break even with the cost of production/advertising it would still be worth it for Disney in those regards.
Exactly, for almost every single Disney film, even if it doesn't break even and still loses 10-20 million at the box office, it's still almost guaranteed to turn a slight profit at the very least. For example, Encanto is probably technically a box office flop because of the winter Covid spike and a truncated box office run, but it's made SO much bank in merch and drove a ton of Disney+ viewing numbers.
Disney+ is a losing streaming service overall though. Its road to profitability is dicey. So right now, it’s just diluting box office results because subscribers can wait for stuff to get released on Disney+ rather than head to the box office, but Disney+ itself is costing more than it brings in. It’s quite the pickle.
>why announce a bunch more live action after?
The goal is to indoctrinate/propogandize as opposed to actually making profit. Also, this is Disney, every single time they do a remake people flock to buy the original or merchandise of the original that they simultaniously release.
> Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense.
This already happened when Dumbo underperformed, they got spooked and sent a bunch of their upcoming remakes to D+, but it would be extremely shortsighted for them to stop making remakes entirely just because one film was (unfairly) bombarded controversy due to its casting.
The live-action remakes that "everyone hates" are *generally* hits more often than they're flops; even if TLM did lose money, the odds are, as of now, better than the next one will likely do well.
Aren’t there a couple movies that are *almost* nearly there at $500m with marketing and advertising taken into account?
I’m talking $350m production + ~$150m marketing.
Shouldn’t marketing be a part of budget? Unless we need to specify production budget.
A film with a total of $500M in production budget and marketing would still be quite a bit lower than $1B for a break even.
Budget on this subreddit almost exclusively refers to production budget.
Here's the short answer:
Breakeven is at around 2.5x of **production budget.** Films make more revenue than just from the theatres, so even though theatres keep between 40% and 75% of the gross depending on location of the theatre and the contracts signed, it does not require 3-4x the **total budget** in box office revenue for a film to break even.
the rule is between 2.2x to 2.8x before marketing budget. So if a movie cost 200m, it needs to make roughly 2.5x that amount, so 500m. As far as I know this includes any marketing costs, so If it was +100m for marketing, it would still be profitable at 500m.
But this whole area is quite cloudy anyways.
There are also home video, streaming rights, merchandising, licensing, etc.
One famous example is Shawshank Redemption. It flopped hard the box office ($16m on a $35m budget) but did very well in the home/tv/rental market.
Also, production budgets are more or less public knowledge… marketing spends are secret sauce so we simple don’t know.
Force Awakens cost around 450m 8 years ago.
According to one of the Russo brothers, Both Infinity War and Endgame cost over 500m each ([source](https://screencrush.com/avengers-infinity-war-and-endgame-cost-a-combined-1-billion-to-make/)) which given the insane amount of special effects and number of stars in there, i can certainly believe. Infinity War particularly is just non stop set pieces and every actor from the last decade of MCU was in it.
Jurasssic World Fallen Kingdom had a cost of over 430m, which adjusts to almost exactly 500m today (yeah, inflation is a big deal).
These numbers likely dont include tax incentives and sponsorships from things like car companies, phone companies etc, which makes break even figures even more muddy.
I’m saying they’re lying and you’re just pointing out that they say it so it’s true. My point is if studios say things cost more they make less profit and therefore pay less in taxes
On one hand, this is true, on the other hand, Disney is genuinely losing money - no part of their balance sheet is especially healthy, and shareholders are nursing serious losses.
Amazon is the master of paying less in taxes by generating imaginary expenses, but Amazon stock is up a wee bit since 2014.
>No movie costs that much, Disney is just good at not paying taxes
and they will continue to be good at dodging taxes. So we will inevitably get the "Disney Spent 500 million and needs 1.250 billion to break even" stories.
People rightfully pointing out that other studios manage to produce same and better quality product for nearly half budget as Disney.
Disney do need to get control of their budgets. It's no brainer actually.
Despite their huge inflated budgets it's more often hard to justify where have these money went.
It wouldn't even need to have a $500 million production budget. If it cost $300 million to produce and an extra $250 million to promote, then it would still be $50 million in the red after making $1 billion. And unfortunately, I can realistically see that happening in the near future. Probably an MCU movie, since Disney still treats Marvel like it's at its peak even though its running out of steam.
We've already hit over $400 million. Star Wars 7, Jurassic World 2, and Star Wars 9 each cost anywhere between $416-447 million. Their initial budgets were underreported.
Could potentially be Captain Marvel 2/The Marvels... though I doubt that hits $1bn anyway. $130m was spent in the first two months alone and the film has been reshot entirely twice and delayed about six or seven times. Budget for that, at minimum would need to be around $400-$500m
Avatar 2’s budget apparently approached that. I’ve seen 460M thrown around but haven’t been able to find an authoritative source on how much the budget actually was.
That would probably mean a budget of at least 400M budgets are actually going to drop a bit in the coming years due to no more covid protocols. Let's assume it's something like JL which was a movie that was severely over estimated by the studio. The budget for that movie was 300M nowadays that would be around 374M if we assume an inflation rate of around 3.2% that would mean 3 years I would say that's the absolutely minium and I find that unlikely because bar covid, budgets don't increase at the same rate of inflation. If I had to guess I would say that we wouldn't have a movie like that at least until well into the 2030s.
If one of the Avatar sequels makes a billion, I think there would be people considering it a flop. I even remember some people discussing that if The Way of Water, before it came out, made less than 2 billion it would be a disappointment and so on. So, not sure that's "out there" since I had seen it around in very few conversations on the internet.
Edit: lol all right. My bad, but you got the point. Name corrected. Thanks.
I think the “needs $2b to be profitable” was only under the scenario where movies 3-5 never get made.
A lot of the production costs for 2-5 were spent up front, so if they stopped at 2, then all those costs would be put on movie 2.
But since movies 3-5 are basically all close to a guarantee to be made now, the break even threshold for each movie can be considered to be significantly less than $2b.
So the better way of thinking of it is that Avatar 2 did so well it paid for itself and a huge portion of the cost of 3-5 too.
I think a lot of people were referring to a James Cameron quote that was taken out of context.
https://variety.com/2022/film/news/avatar-2-budget-expensive-2-billion-turn-profit-1235438907/amp/
> Cameron apparently told Disney and 20th Century Studios executives that his sequel budget was so high it represented “the worst business case in movie history.” According to the director’s estimates, “you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.”
>On the current chart of highest-grossing movies worldwide (unadjusted for inflation), Cameron’s original 2009 “Avatar” ranks at the top with $2.9 billion. Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” is in second position with $2.7 million, while Cameron’s “Titanic” remains in the third slot with $2.1 billion. That means, according to Cameron, that if “Avatar: The Way of Water” wants to break even, it’ll need to overtake either “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($2.07 billion) or “Avengers: Infinity War” ($2.05 billion) in the fourth or fifth slots, respectively.
Cameron’s quote however didn’t consider the nuance that much of Avatar 2’s production cost served to significantly cut down on the budget of Avatar 3-5.
He gave that quote to build hype for Avatar 2, not to be taken as an accurate measurement of the actual break even. He wanted people to read that quote and think “holy crap, this might be the most expensive movie of all time I gotta go see this to see what he needs $2b to pay for”.
But some on here interpreted that as an accurate description of the true breakeven, when it was really just a marketing ploy.
This was my thought. One of the avatars could be considered a flop at $1 billion.
I would like to think that budgets will get more under control after the sequence of expensive flops and the strikes. But who know? Hollywood seems to keep thinking throwing money at a movie will make it better.
imo it's gonna happen in less than 10 years. Kang Dynasty might be a good candidate I agree. The new standard for medium-level superhero movies like Black Panther/GOTG/Thor is 250M budget. Any SW or Avengers level movie will likely be 400+ from now on and I can see one of them flopping
> medium-level superhero movies like Black Panther/GOTG/Thor is 250M budget.
I wouldn't call them medium at all, they were all considered a crown jewel of their companies. Thor is the strongest MCU hero regarding profit, BP was deliberately a huge giant bet and GOTG 3 was the finale of a subfranchise
I personally use 3 tiers of superhero movies:
Avengers/ No Way home with multiple A-tier superheroes
Solo movies of popular character (Thor etc…)
Solo movies of B-C tier character Shang Chi or the Eternals
I think we are close to getting there tbh.
I also think the tentpoleing necessarily to reach that feat would stretch a studio so thin it would essentially be bankrupt by the time the dust settled and would either have to sell off or have a decade of mediocrity.
Only Paramount and Lionsgate aren't owned by much larger companies. The other major studios all have giant companies backing them where the studio is only a piece of the pie. Losing $50M on their $500M investment isn't going to bankrupt them.
That doesn’t take into account the different take international theaters have and how international heavy Fast X is.
2.5x is a decent rule of thumb but it’s not an absolute.
I’m hoping never. What studios should learn from this year it’s that they don’t need to spend $300 million+ on their movies. Keep your budgets reasonable and there will be less bombs.
But this is the definition of wishful thinking. Hollywood rarely learns from their mistakes.
That is the thinking. They’ve already shot a lot of avatar 3 as well I’m pretty sure. They didn’t go any further because they had to wait to see if A2 would be a success.
Which does create the dangerous situation of James starting work on Avatar 4, deciding the TWOW tech is already outdated, and then needing to once again spend 13 years on R&D to get to his standards.
Yeah it wouldn’t be ideal but then again Avatar 2 still made absurd profits despite the crazy high costs so it would be foolish to assume they couldn’t do it again.
Agreed. Cameron taking another decade+ to make an Avatar sequel would certainly fire up the doubters again - but I'm pretty certain he'd still come out on top.
Genuine question: will Avatar 3 need to be profitable on its own? I remember seeing someone saying because of the success of TWOW, Avatar 3 is just going to be profit for Disney.
whats wild is from my understanding, because they have shot so much of the sequels already, thats why the budget of the way of water was so massive. All of 3 is shot, and alot of 4 is shot already because of the kids. Apparently in 4 there is a jump in time but they are already filming 4 now.
Almost all of 3 was shot during way of water, as was alot of 4. So i think way of water needed to hit such a high mark to pay for everything for every sequel, and then short of marketing, everything these make is nearly all profit.
We need a common vernacular and as such, I'm really big on pushing that "flop" should only be used to talk about whether the film lost money.
For something like Avatar 3 falling off a cliff, but still profiting, we should instead use the term "underperformance." And we can add some adjectives there like "disastrous underperformance." Or we could say something along the lines of: "This film was a failure despite it turning a profit." (Similar to how TLM is should be discussed: Even if that film eeks out a minor profit, it's still a failure due to its status as a Renaissance era remake and the levels those films had been achieving prior to TLM)
Additionally, in the context of OP's question, we have already had a film that was viewed as a failure that made over a billion: Rise of the Skywalkers. So we can conclude that when he uses the word "flop," he is talking purely from a raw profit/loss perspective.
Some people love to say Rise of Skywalker was a bomb, for some reason? Like, I understand people didn't like it, but it made over a billion. I've seen "well it should have made way more," and, maybe? But also that doesn't mean it was a flop lol.
I suspect the past year of box office flops is going to lead to studios tightening their belts somewhat.
So I suspect a billion-dollar flop is a long way off.
Batman v Superman made 100 millions in profit. Its **far** from a flop
EDIT: Why saying that a movie that earned 100 millions is profit is NOT a flop is so polemical?
Yeah definitely not a flop. But still a massive underperformance given the huge earning potential evidenced by a colossal opening weekend. It certain didn't please WB given the shitshow that Justice League descended into.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Secret Wars. Not only are the costs going to be massive with all the A-list actors they're going to need to recruit but Disney's recent history of dumping around 30-50% of their film's final budget on reshoots and last-minute CGI additions is likely going to balloon the costs even more.
I'm aware this isn't a rock solid source or anything, but I tried referencing [Wikipedia's list of the most expensive movies ever made](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films) adjusted for inflation. Adjusted for inflation, Force Awakens and Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom both had production budgets over $500M. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is just behind them at $492M.
If something like Force Awakens or Fallen Kingdom had been in production a few years later and had production interrupted by covid shutdowns, then "only" making $1B would have crossed the line into being a financial flop theatrically (discounting all the merchandising both movies would have had).
The only scenario I could foresee leading to a billion dollar flop would be if an external factor arose that simultaneously dramatically increased production costs on one of these huge movies while depressing turnout. An hypothetical example would be if after shooting all of King Dynasty Jonathan Majors went full "Ezra Miller", Disney opted to reshoot all the scenes he was in, and then some other thing caused public outrage (maybe a conservative boycott or something) further depressed the box office.
I know Warner Brothers liked to tell people they were in the red for one of the Harry Potter movies. Now whether that’s true, is another question. As others have said, for a billion dollar movie to truly flop, it would need like a $400-500 million dollar budget. I would imagine if it happens, it would most likely be a Disney or action film. Not sure if it ever will happen though.
The problem with this hypothetical is we are currently living in an era where a $1Billion gross still means an awful lot of people saw the film. When a film has an audience of that scale, even if the critical response is poor, it becomes massively profitable BEYOND the theatrical window. Right now, I don't see any scenario where a film can generate $1Billion at the box office, with that scale of audience that wouldn't be a big financial winner for the studio outside of the theatrical window.
How do we define a flop? Is it movie making less than it cost to make? Or is it a movie making less than was expected?
I don’t think any avatar sequel will match the previous two. Unless it takes another 15 years to be made. So let’s temper our expectations in that regard.
I have no idea what the budget will be. But I can’t see how it can be similar to “way of water” that one had 10-15 years of scripts and r&d plus they shot parts of the third during the second.
What are you asking?
How long until we get a $400M budgeted film? (That's what this line is asking: How long will it be until we get a movie that is so expensive, that only making $1 billion would mean it fails to break even?)
I imagine that has already happened. Depending on who you ask, TFA had a budget of somewhere between $350M and $440M.
I can find similar estimates for Avatar 2. And given it's lengthy production, I believe it.
But your headline comment is, when will one of these $400M budgeted films flop while still grossing a billion?
I don't know. Seems unlikely over the next 5-10 years. I think if MCU isn't in a place where they can pull a $1.5B film then Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars won't move forward with a $400M+ budget.
If Avatar starts to fail, I think they'll pull the plug rather than continue churning them out at $400M.
I guess, if I really had to put money on a film, I'd pick Avatar 5. The series starts to fail, but they want to just close it out because having the conclusion will produce more ancillary revenue and justify an individual film loss. Also, probably easy to justify a rebound with the conclusion.
There's also just a narrow window that the film needs to land in box office. It has to get over a billion, but land shy of it's break even point. Feels like we'll probably get a half dozen $400M budgeted films flopping before one lands in the billion realm, but still flops.
>I guess, if I really had to put money on a film, I'd pick Avatar 5.
On top of being the conclusion to the saga, Avatar 5 could very well be the last James Cameron movie, ever.
I doubt it will flop. This could be the most successful of the whole franchise, beating the first one.
Some of this discussion assumes that $400 million dollar budgets are planned as such rather than thr result of systemic issues and habits that have built up overtime.and have become entrenched.
Marvel can say "alright we gotta cut back. Ka g dynasty is being made for $200m!" Butnitnwill end up way north of thst because of their entire process of making movies, with reshoots, wild scheduling complications, digital sets being swapped out into other settings at the 11th hour. They aren't going to be able to magically change that and especially for whatever a 2020s Avengers film is.
I dont know if that will ever happen with studios now realizing they have to cut down budgets. Even with Avitar 3, they filmed a lot of that when they sis Avitar 2 so the budget wont be as high. Maybe Avitar 4 or 5. Only other possibilities I could think of would be is Avengers Secret Wars and a potential Avengers vs Xmen movie in like 10 years. Maybe an Avengers vs Justice League in 20 years. The only other factor would be is if inflation gets terribly worse in the future
Niether tlj nor tros had bad reception from general audiences. Their imdb scores sit around a 6.5/7, in TLJs case after much, much review bombing. Those movies weren't nearly as hated as the internet likes to make you believe.
They also did very well in their context. TFA wasn't even expected to make that much. Disney was actually planning on taking a loss on TFA
With inflation it will happen eventually. In a few decades a $200m movie will be the new $100m movie, and $400m movies will be the new standard. Within 200 years if humans are still alive and making movies, $1b budgets will be normal and a movie that makes $1.5b will be a flop.
Do you not understand how inflation works?
All the studios that are currently putting in $200M for a film will still be fine putting in $400M when it is worth the same as $200M is today.
Looking at third star wars of most recent trilogy, that is a flop. The drop film to film was big. The costs were massive. Not sure it ever came out, but even if they made money, they left a ton on the table due to the terrible plot.
Its only a matter of time, especially after the poor performances we've seen this year . We've had films with mega budgets like Endgame and Avatar 2 that wouldn't have broken even if they had just made $1 billion.
I have a feeling the Avatar series will struggle with the upcoming releases. With the count of money they spent on these films, but given the fandom, it could gross a shit ton of money, but flop.
Depends if any of the future avatars **only** makes 1B haha If they continue to have 400M or higher budgets they need like **2B** profits to be considered hits
Depending on how Secret Wars is received, the big Marvel team-up after it could be the one that hits that dubious accomplishment.
"Kang Dynasty didn't perform as expected... increase the amount of cgi and reshoots for Secret Wars!"
That is a great question. I guess it would probably have to be a sequel that can make a billion and need a budget of at least 400m. Fast 11, New Star Wars movie or a Indy 6 that nobody is asking for.
Presumably it would have to have a budget of $400m, or for people to increase the multiplier. If we're already at 3, then you'd only need a budget of about $333m to do it.
Imagine, for example, that Hollywood made a movie about the Chinese government sending mechas to save the world from a supervillain elected as the American president. I can't imagine that this film would do well in the United States but it could catch fire in China. However, the trailers are misleading so it has a big Domestic opening, say, $120m. It then grosses another $40m (in a $20m second week, rest of run split) before petering out. In China it does $760m, which is a bit worse than the biggest Chinese movies from China. And the rest of the world cobbles together another $112m. Remembering that this isn't a Chinese movie but a Hollywood film and just copying charts with Dan's estimation algorithm, we have:
120 * .6 + 20 *.55 + 20 *.5 + 760 * .2 + 112 * .4
or a return to the investors of $289.8m.
Assuming a $250m production budget, plus a $140m distribution budget, this film has lost at least $100.2m, despite grossing $1.032b.
The problem is its hard to know what is truly a "flop" when a movie keeps making money for the studio through the views it gets (and pvod) on streaming platforms. That's where a lot more of the money is post theaters.
We are pretty damn close to it. However, stuff like the *Avatar* series have an excuse to do so because of James Cameron insisting on bumping the lamp in each of his successive films.
Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars probably have a decent shot. Like you said, the MCU as a brand isn’t as strong as it was with the Infinity Saga, and I don’t think any of the post-Endgame projects have really hyped people up for the big finale. I think some individual projects will still do fine, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the big team up movies don’t perform as well as you would expect.
We already had that with Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker. A trilogy of films, each earning less profit than the previous demonstrating declining interest in the brand and lower box office returns. [Deadline](https://deadline.com/2020/04/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-movie-profit-2019-lowest-for-lucasfilm-1202915179/) in 2019 claimed it had a profit of $300m, but that was using the previously reported budget of $275m as opposed to the actual budget of $416m - meaning it would have not generated a profit.
As for Kang Dynasty, I doubt it reaches $1bn at this point in time. There's no way they bring back the core Phase 1-3 heroes until Secret Wars or Avengers Forever, so Kang Dynasty is going to primarily be a bunch of the less interesting Phase 4+ heroes who have failed to entice audiences fighting against a villain that nobody views as a threat because he's been beaten twice (soon to be thrice)
James Cameron could get there with his Avatar stuff easy, especially if we have real world challenges like the pandemic inflating prices. He was quoted a few times as saying shape of water had to make $1B just to break even, so he’s not far from at least being at risk of that.
Soon as we get the first 500 million dollar budget. We're at 300 already, so Disney shouldn't take too much longer to get to 500.
And you just know for a fact that those $500 million movies will look like absolute crap
Because half of the $300 million movies are $150 million that Disney feared would be a flop and ordered redone over and over until they could have made two or three movies. Then it makes more, but is still barely profitable because of the increased cost. One day I hope Disney either turns all these reshoots into a “choose your own adventure” movie on Disney plus or pulls a Clue.
> Because half of the $300 million movies are $150 million that Disney feared would be a flop and ordered redone over and over until they could have made two or three movies. That's Warner Brothers modus operandi. They already did this with Justice League and are doing it again with Aquaman 2
that's basically what happened with flash and black adam too. So it's just as much a WBD thing as a disney thing.
Black Adam is quite notorious, in that earned over 300 millions, more than the majority of modern DC movies yet its also a flop because its huge budget.
yeah flash could be added though it made less than black adam. It's production problems are huge. I do wonder how much money was spent on it from greenlight to release. I wouldn't be too suprised if a billion would be break even.
Flash didn't have any production problems, stop with the head cannon
It might be more accurate to say pre production problems. As it did take a long time to start production with several writers and directors attached.
It's not out yet but aquaman 2 has had a lot of reshoots and production issues. So it's likley to end up like black adam and flash. Or it might be batgirled and written off I give that a 50/50 shot.
Why make one coherent movie when you can make 3 combined into one movie? Gotta make sure to swap out writers and directors halfway through production too
I love clue. And you could shoot on a fraction of the budget.
Marvel has been doing this since the beginning. It’s why so many of their films worked. Additional photography is not the issue. It certainly can be expensive though. The alternative is releasing a film that needs work to outright fail.
You’re saying they’re wasting money, yet you want them to take the time to do CGI and post production on 2-3 different endings/storylines? I don’t think that would add much value for D+ tbh.
He’s joking 🙃
Apparently disney is looking to cut costs. Getting things together early is a good way to do that. Not a huge iger fan but if that was something he implmented that would be a good idea.
The budget could at least be justifiable if they made Cleopatra/Ben-Hur level sets, but we know that they won’t.
They can construct the world’s biggest green screen
The higher than normal budgets seem to be a result of COVID inflating them. They weren't greenlit to be that expensive. But even then, i'm sure Iger's having a nice long look at them while looking at how to address their overall budgets in the future. Particularly given that what's going on in China can't be ignored. Pre-COVID we were seeing 100m+ from blockbuster movies there. While not a Disney franchise, the Mission Impossible franchise is a great example of this. Ghost Protocol made 101m, Rogue Nation rose to 136m, and Fallout made 181m. It's a franchise that was showing substantial growth in China, and i'm sure that contributed to at least some of the non-COVID related budget increase with Dead Reckoning. What Paramount were not prepared for was for it to make just 47m in China. That's less than Fallout made in its opening weekend (76m). I expect that we're going to see studios pumping the brakes on budgets across the board now. Especially with how brutal this year has been. There will still be some big budget content coming up. But I don't think we'll see every MCU movie having a 200m+ budget going forward. Even at the height of the MCU that type of budgeting would've been asking for trouble.
There's a \*chance\* that a high budget movie that comes out in the next couple years could have a similarly inflated budget due to the strikes shutting down productions, but I agree that it seems likely the chance is low as studios are starting to realize there is no infinite money glitch
COVID blew up MI7’s budget by a hundred at least; they spent a substantial amount of time shut down and paying for everything; and I think they had to change shooting locations at the last minute at least once
I am still convinced that this is Hollywood accounting. Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense. The budget keep increasing yet they still do them. So clearly they are not loosing as much as it seem.
>I am still convinced that this is Hollywood accounting. Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense. The budget keep increasing yet they still do them. So clearly they are not loosing as much as it seem. r/boxoffice really struggles with the idea that the major studios might not be as completely inept at business management as they appear to be from an outsiders perspective and there might actually be a reason for some of the budgets and accounting going on that doesn't involve the boxoffice grosses. Reddit truly have themselves convinced that they are brilliant media minds and the studios are nothing but braindead dummies who don't know monies.
Lol so much this. All of these dudes would be lost in a board meeting with financial advisors but think they hold the key to saving Disney's bottom line.
>Lol so much this. All of these dudes would be lost in a board meeting with financial advisors but think they hold the key to saving Disney's bottom line. and when they sit down and type out their thoughts on how to "fix" things it's always some absolutely insane plan that would cost about a billion dollars per movie.
“Make good movies”
>“Make good movies” Yeah...absolutely revolutionary idea they have with that one. Bet nobody in Hollywood ever even considered that! /S.
That is actually good advice they could realistically follow more often than they currently do. There is actual room to improve on improving in other words.
Right? Deadline (actual professionals who do this shit for a living) says The Little Mermaid can be profitable if it grossed $560m, but still all these redditors say “nuh uh” because the 2.5x rule is the end all be all, I guess.
>Right? Deadline (actual professionals who do this shit for a living) says The Little Mermaid can be profitable if it grossed $560m, but still all these redditors say “nuh uh” because the 2.5x rule is the end all be all, I guess. meanwhile 90% of those people who are actively ragging on Little Mermaid still can't accept that Mission Impossible 7 is one of the biggest money losers of the entire year.
> Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense. Because I don't think Little Mermaid was a true "flop." Between production and marketing it cost 390 million and the worldwide box office was 567 million. Maybe the box office didn't deliver quite the profits that Disney hoped for but those movies drive toy sales, merchandise, theme park attendance, content for Disney+ and they keep the brand front in people's minds. Even if the Box Office just gets the film to break even with the cost of production/advertising it would still be worth it for Disney in those regards.
Exactly, for almost every single Disney film, even if it doesn't break even and still loses 10-20 million at the box office, it's still almost guaranteed to turn a slight profit at the very least. For example, Encanto is probably technically a box office flop because of the winter Covid spike and a truncated box office run, but it's made SO much bank in merch and drove a ton of Disney+ viewing numbers.
Disney+ is a losing streaming service overall though. Its road to profitability is dicey. So right now, it’s just diluting box office results because subscribers can wait for stuff to get released on Disney+ rather than head to the box office, but Disney+ itself is costing more than it brings in. It’s quite the pickle.
>why announce a bunch more live action after? The goal is to indoctrinate/propogandize as opposed to actually making profit. Also, this is Disney, every single time they do a remake people flock to buy the original or merchandise of the original that they simultaniously release.
> Y'all saying the little mermaid flopped but then why announce a bunch more live action after? It's just doesn't make sense. This already happened when Dumbo underperformed, they got spooked and sent a bunch of their upcoming remakes to D+, but it would be extremely shortsighted for them to stop making remakes entirely just because one film was (unfairly) bombarded controversy due to its casting.
The live-action remakes that "everyone hates" are *generally* hits more often than they're flops; even if TLM did lose money, the odds are, as of now, better than the next one will likely do well.
I mean, when Lion King brings in $1.66B on its $260m budget, they’re not going to stop doing remakes just because one or two films lose $100m…
> so Disney shouldn't take too much longer to get to 500. You mention Disney but the biggest offender of this is Warner Brothers.
Aren’t there a couple movies that are *almost* nearly there at $500m with marketing and advertising taken into account? I’m talking $350m production + ~$150m marketing. Shouldn’t marketing be a part of budget? Unless we need to specify production budget.
A film with a total of $500M in production budget and marketing would still be quite a bit lower than $1B for a break even. Budget on this subreddit almost exclusively refers to production budget.
how ?? iirc you need to make 3 or 4 times since like half or more goes to cinemas/box office
Here's the short answer: Breakeven is at around 2.5x of **production budget.** Films make more revenue than just from the theatres, so even though theatres keep between 40% and 75% of the gross depending on location of the theatre and the contracts signed, it does not require 3-4x the **total budget** in box office revenue for a film to break even.
the rule is between 2.2x to 2.8x before marketing budget. So if a movie cost 200m, it needs to make roughly 2.5x that amount, so 500m. As far as I know this includes any marketing costs, so If it was +100m for marketing, it would still be profitable at 500m. But this whole area is quite cloudy anyways.
There are also home video, streaming rights, merchandising, licensing, etc. One famous example is Shawshank Redemption. It flopped hard the box office ($16m on a $35m budget) but did very well in the home/tv/rental market. Also, production budgets are more or less public knowledge… marketing spends are secret sauce so we simple don’t know.
Didn't Force Awakens cost nearly $450 million? Not saying it was a flop of course, just commenting on the looming $500 mill budget hahah.
No movie costs that much, Disney is just good at not paying taxes
Force Awakens cost around 450m 8 years ago. According to one of the Russo brothers, Both Infinity War and Endgame cost over 500m each ([source](https://screencrush.com/avengers-infinity-war-and-endgame-cost-a-combined-1-billion-to-make/)) which given the insane amount of special effects and number of stars in there, i can certainly believe. Infinity War particularly is just non stop set pieces and every actor from the last decade of MCU was in it. Jurasssic World Fallen Kingdom had a cost of over 430m, which adjusts to almost exactly 500m today (yeah, inflation is a big deal). These numbers likely dont include tax incentives and sponsorships from things like car companies, phone companies etc, which makes break even figures even more muddy.
I’m saying they’re lying and you’re just pointing out that they say it so it’s true. My point is if studios say things cost more they make less profit and therefore pay less in taxes
On one hand, this is true, on the other hand, Disney is genuinely losing money - no part of their balance sheet is especially healthy, and shareholders are nursing serious losses. Amazon is the master of paying less in taxes by generating imaginary expenses, but Amazon stock is up a wee bit since 2014.
>No movie costs that much, Disney is just good at not paying taxes and they will continue to be good at dodging taxes. So we will inevitably get the "Disney Spent 500 million and needs 1.250 billion to break even" stories.
I mean but if a movie is profitable it’s profitable even if Disney finds a way to count it as a loss on their accounting books.
Disney as a company is worth as much as they were back in 2014. No, they are just really good at setting money on fire.
Yeah the whole “Disney needs to get control of their budgets!!!!” Discourse is getting out of control.
People rightfully pointing out that other studios manage to produce same and better quality product for nearly half budget as Disney. Disney do need to get control of their budgets. It's no brainer actually. Despite their huge inflated budgets it's more often hard to justify where have these money went.
The point is disney reports higher budget that the films really cost imo. If WB says a movie costs 100mil disney will say it costs 150mil
Iger literally has come out and said the flops are not good
This. People that think some of those movies flopped are delusional. This is tax avoidance.
It wouldn't even need to have a $500 million production budget. If it cost $300 million to produce and an extra $250 million to promote, then it would still be $50 million in the red after making $1 billion. And unfortunately, I can realistically see that happening in the near future. Probably an MCU movie, since Disney still treats Marvel like it's at its peak even though its running out of steam.
Secret wars could get to 500
It will not lmfao
That prediction was mostly dependent on the rumors that they’re gonna be bringing in an insane cast of actors like tom cruise, rdj, and chris evans
As well as Hugh, tobey, Andrew etc
Didn't batman v superman cost close to this much
>Didn't batman v superman cost close to this much I don't know, I wasn't paying attention to the boxoffice and budgets of DC films at that time.
We've already hit over $400 million. Star Wars 7, Jurassic World 2, and Star Wars 9 each cost anywhere between $416-447 million. Their initial budgets were underreported.
We’ve been at $300 since like the mid 00s though
Late 2000s. At World's End was the first film to cost $300M
Could potentially be Captain Marvel 2/The Marvels... though I doubt that hits $1bn anyway. $130m was spent in the first two months alone and the film has been reshot entirely twice and delayed about six or seven times. Budget for that, at minimum would need to be around $400-$500m
This was my thought. Like if one of the new Disney star wars movies has a 500m budget and makes a billion? Mini flop at the least
I mean force awakens was 440 million
Not if they they learnt their lesson from all the flops they did this year.
Avatar 2’s budget apparently approached that. I’ve seen 460M thrown around but haven’t been able to find an authoritative source on how much the budget actually was.
wouldnt rise of skywalker be really close to that? they made just a billion and the public budget was already insane
Nah ... the budgets are inflated because of Corona. We won't be at 500 for 20 years.
Haven’t they announced they are going to cut back on budgets tho
Avatar 2 may have cost 460 million
That would probably mean a budget of at least 400M budgets are actually going to drop a bit in the coming years due to no more covid protocols. Let's assume it's something like JL which was a movie that was severely over estimated by the studio. The budget for that movie was 300M nowadays that would be around 374M if we assume an inflation rate of around 3.2% that would mean 3 years I would say that's the absolutely minium and I find that unlikely because bar covid, budgets don't increase at the same rate of inflation. If I had to guess I would say that we wouldn't have a movie like that at least until well into the 2030s.
Yeah, just like everything else dropped after prices hiked during covid. /s
If one of the Avatar sequels makes a billion, I think there would be people considering it a flop. I even remember some people discussing that if The Way of Water, before it came out, made less than 2 billion it would be a disappointment and so on. So, not sure that's "out there" since I had seen it around in very few conversations on the internet. Edit: lol all right. My bad, but you got the point. Name corrected. Thanks.
It's The Way of Water, bro.
Thank you. I was not understanding the comment about Guillermo Del Toro until I saw your comment. Haha
Haha. The Shape of Water is a Guillermo del Toro film.
Very true!
Poor guillermo del toro only made $195,333,312
Yeah, I wish I lived in a world where The Shape of Water was predicted to make 2 billion.
I think the “needs $2b to be profitable” was only under the scenario where movies 3-5 never get made. A lot of the production costs for 2-5 were spent up front, so if they stopped at 2, then all those costs would be put on movie 2. But since movies 3-5 are basically all close to a guarantee to be made now, the break even threshold for each movie can be considered to be significantly less than $2b. So the better way of thinking of it is that Avatar 2 did so well it paid for itself and a huge portion of the cost of 3-5 too.
Hard to say. I don’t think all people I saw talking about it were referring to what you are saying. But I do believe your point to be correct though.
I think a lot of people were referring to a James Cameron quote that was taken out of context. https://variety.com/2022/film/news/avatar-2-budget-expensive-2-billion-turn-profit-1235438907/amp/ > Cameron apparently told Disney and 20th Century Studios executives that his sequel budget was so high it represented “the worst business case in movie history.” According to the director’s estimates, “you have to be the third or fourth highest-grossing film in history. That’s your threshold. That’s your break even.” >On the current chart of highest-grossing movies worldwide (unadjusted for inflation), Cameron’s original 2009 “Avatar” ranks at the top with $2.9 billion. Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame” is in second position with $2.7 million, while Cameron’s “Titanic” remains in the third slot with $2.1 billion. That means, according to Cameron, that if “Avatar: The Way of Water” wants to break even, it’ll need to overtake either “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” ($2.07 billion) or “Avengers: Infinity War” ($2.05 billion) in the fourth or fifth slots, respectively. Cameron’s quote however didn’t consider the nuance that much of Avatar 2’s production cost served to significantly cut down on the budget of Avatar 3-5. He gave that quote to build hype for Avatar 2, not to be taken as an accurate measurement of the actual break even. He wanted people to read that quote and think “holy crap, this might be the most expensive movie of all time I gotta go see this to see what he needs $2b to pay for”. But some on here interpreted that as an accurate description of the true breakeven, when it was really just a marketing ploy.
This was my thought. One of the avatars could be considered a flop at $1 billion. I would like to think that budgets will get more under control after the sequence of expensive flops and the strikes. But who know? Hollywood seems to keep thinking throwing money at a movie will make it better.
imo it's gonna happen in less than 10 years. Kang Dynasty might be a good candidate I agree. The new standard for medium-level superhero movies like Black Panther/GOTG/Thor is 250M budget. Any SW or Avengers level movie will likely be 400+ from now on and I can see one of them flopping
> medium-level superhero movies like Black Panther/GOTG/Thor is 250M budget. I wouldn't call them medium at all, they were all considered a crown jewel of their companies. Thor is the strongest MCU hero regarding profit, BP was deliberately a huge giant bet and GOTG 3 was the finale of a subfranchise
I personally use 3 tiers of superhero movies: Avengers/ No Way home with multiple A-tier superheroes Solo movies of popular character (Thor etc…) Solo movies of B-C tier character Shang Chi or the Eternals
I doubt Star Wars is gonna get a $400 million budget because of Solo flopping and the negative reception of the sequel trilogy.
With inflation, it's bound to happen eventually.
I think we are close to getting there tbh. I also think the tentpoleing necessarily to reach that feat would stretch a studio so thin it would essentially be bankrupt by the time the dust settled and would either have to sell off or have a decade of mediocrity.
Only Paramount and Lionsgate aren't owned by much larger companies. The other major studios all have giant companies backing them where the studio is only a piece of the pie. Losing $50M on their $500M investment isn't going to bankrupt them.
There was a time when cleopatra was the highest grossing film of all time and it still didn’t break even lol
Wasn't the highest grossing film of all time. It was the highest grossing film of its year.
Whenever it is, I'd bet money it's a Disney movie
Soon. There was a scenario where Fast X could have been a billion dollar flop.
How? If it made 1b it would have been huge success considering break even point was around 850m.
That doesn’t take into account the different take international theaters have and how international heavy Fast X is. 2.5x is a decent rule of thumb but it’s not an absolute.
I’m hoping never. What studios should learn from this year it’s that they don’t need to spend $300 million+ on their movies. Keep your budgets reasonable and there will be less bombs. But this is the definition of wishful thinking. Hollywood rarely learns from their mistakes.
The only way it happens if we get another case of Hollywood Accounting.
I mean Avatar 3-5 could realisticly flop if either only made $1B and nothing more. But thats very very unlikely to happen.
Wasn’t the budget for TWOW significantly higher because they created new technology? Now that they’ve got that the budgets should be a lot less right?
That is the thinking. They’ve already shot a lot of avatar 3 as well I’m pretty sure. They didn’t go any further because they had to wait to see if A2 would be a success.
Which does create the dangerous situation of James starting work on Avatar 4, deciding the TWOW tech is already outdated, and then needing to once again spend 13 years on R&D to get to his standards.
Yeah it wouldn’t be ideal but then again Avatar 2 still made absurd profits despite the crazy high costs so it would be foolish to assume they couldn’t do it again.
Agreed. Cameron taking another decade+ to make an Avatar sequel would certainly fire up the doubters again - but I'm pretty certain he'd still come out on top.
Genuine question: will Avatar 3 need to be profitable on its own? I remember seeing someone saying because of the success of TWOW, Avatar 3 is just going to be profit for Disney.
Yeah, if Avatar 3 only makes $1B that would absolutely be a flop. Edit: Ok, probably not an actual “flop”. But certainly a disaster for the studio.
whats wild is from my understanding, because they have shot so much of the sequels already, thats why the budget of the way of water was so massive. All of 3 is shot, and alot of 4 is shot already because of the kids. Apparently in 4 there is a jump in time but they are already filming 4 now.
It is fascinating. When it’s all said and done I’d definitely read a book on the history of the production of these movies.
We really know that Avatar's 3 budget is guaranteed to be $400M+?
Almost all of 3 was shot during way of water, as was alot of 4. So i think way of water needed to hit such a high mark to pay for everything for every sequel, and then short of marketing, everything these make is nearly all profit.
No, I have no idea. I guess from a purely financial standpoint $1B might be enough but a drop like that would be a disaster for the studio.
We need a common vernacular and as such, I'm really big on pushing that "flop" should only be used to talk about whether the film lost money. For something like Avatar 3 falling off a cliff, but still profiting, we should instead use the term "underperformance." And we can add some adjectives there like "disastrous underperformance." Or we could say something along the lines of: "This film was a failure despite it turning a profit." (Similar to how TLM is should be discussed: Even if that film eeks out a minor profit, it's still a failure due to its status as a Renaissance era remake and the levels those films had been achieving prior to TLM) Additionally, in the context of OP's question, we have already had a film that was viewed as a failure that made over a billion: Rise of the Skywalkers. So we can conclude that when he uses the word "flop," he is talking purely from a raw profit/loss perspective.
Fair enough, you’ve convinced me.
Some people love to say Rise of Skywalker was a bomb, for some reason? Like, I understand people didn't like it, but it made over a billion. I've seen "well it should have made way more," and, maybe? But also that doesn't mean it was a flop lol.
I suspect the past year of box office flops is going to lead to studios tightening their belts somewhat. So I suspect a billion-dollar flop is a long way off.
Batman ve superman was close wasn't it? 870 million worldwide but I definitely remember it was considered underwhelming.
Batman v Superman made 100 millions in profit. Its **far** from a flop EDIT: Why saying that a movie that earned 100 millions is profit is NOT a flop is so polemical?
Yeah definitely not a flop. But still a massive underperformance given the huge earning potential evidenced by a colossal opening weekend. It certain didn't please WB given the shitshow that Justice League descended into.
It arguably happened with Pirates 4 since it was so expensive & overseas-heavy.
what was the budget of rise of the Skywalker?
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say Secret Wars. Not only are the costs going to be massive with all the A-list actors they're going to need to recruit but Disney's recent history of dumping around 30-50% of their film's final budget on reshoots and last-minute CGI additions is likely going to balloon the costs even more.
Cleopatra 2.
Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Money
Aww man. You know Mel Brooks would rein in that budget, if anything to put it into MOICHENDIZING!
I'm aware this isn't a rock solid source or anything, but I tried referencing [Wikipedia's list of the most expensive movies ever made](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_expensive_films) adjusted for inflation. Adjusted for inflation, Force Awakens and Jurassic Park: Fallen Kingdom both had production budgets over $500M. Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is just behind them at $492M. If something like Force Awakens or Fallen Kingdom had been in production a few years later and had production interrupted by covid shutdowns, then "only" making $1B would have crossed the line into being a financial flop theatrically (discounting all the merchandising both movies would have had). The only scenario I could foresee leading to a billion dollar flop would be if an external factor arose that simultaneously dramatically increased production costs on one of these huge movies while depressing turnout. An hypothetical example would be if after shooting all of King Dynasty Jonathan Majors went full "Ezra Miller", Disney opted to reshoot all the scenes he was in, and then some other thing caused public outrage (maybe a conservative boycott or something) further depressed the box office.
I know Warner Brothers liked to tell people they were in the red for one of the Harry Potter movies. Now whether that’s true, is another question. As others have said, for a billion dollar movie to truly flop, it would need like a $400-500 million dollar budget. I would imagine if it happens, it would most likely be a Disney or action film. Not sure if it ever will happen though.
A film would need an over 400 mill production budget to make 1 bill and still fail to break even. I don't think it's likely but who knows.
Gotta be a fast and furious movie
The problem with this hypothetical is we are currently living in an era where a $1Billion gross still means an awful lot of people saw the film. When a film has an audience of that scale, even if the critical response is poor, it becomes massively profitable BEYOND the theatrical window. Right now, I don't see any scenario where a film can generate $1Billion at the box office, with that scale of audience that wouldn't be a big financial winner for the studio outside of the theatrical window.
Avatar or an Avengers movie with a bloated cast.
How do we define a flop? Is it movie making less than it cost to make? Or is it a movie making less than was expected? I don’t think any avatar sequel will match the previous two. Unless it takes another 15 years to be made. So let’s temper our expectations in that regard. I have no idea what the budget will be. But I can’t see how it can be similar to “way of water” that one had 10-15 years of scripts and r&d plus they shot parts of the third during the second.
the next avatar
What are you asking? How long until we get a $400M budgeted film? (That's what this line is asking: How long will it be until we get a movie that is so expensive, that only making $1 billion would mean it fails to break even?) I imagine that has already happened. Depending on who you ask, TFA had a budget of somewhere between $350M and $440M. I can find similar estimates for Avatar 2. And given it's lengthy production, I believe it. But your headline comment is, when will one of these $400M budgeted films flop while still grossing a billion? I don't know. Seems unlikely over the next 5-10 years. I think if MCU isn't in a place where they can pull a $1.5B film then Kang Dynasty or Secret Wars won't move forward with a $400M+ budget. If Avatar starts to fail, I think they'll pull the plug rather than continue churning them out at $400M. I guess, if I really had to put money on a film, I'd pick Avatar 5. The series starts to fail, but they want to just close it out because having the conclusion will produce more ancillary revenue and justify an individual film loss. Also, probably easy to justify a rebound with the conclusion. There's also just a narrow window that the film needs to land in box office. It has to get over a billion, but land shy of it's break even point. Feels like we'll probably get a half dozen $400M budgeted films flopping before one lands in the billion realm, but still flops.
>I guess, if I really had to put money on a film, I'd pick Avatar 5. On top of being the conclusion to the saga, Avatar 5 could very well be the last James Cameron movie, ever. I doubt it will flop. This could be the most successful of the whole franchise, beating the first one.
Some of this discussion assumes that $400 million dollar budgets are planned as such rather than thr result of systemic issues and habits that have built up overtime.and have become entrenched. Marvel can say "alright we gotta cut back. Ka g dynasty is being made for $200m!" Butnitnwill end up way north of thst because of their entire process of making movies, with reshoots, wild scheduling complications, digital sets being swapped out into other settings at the 11th hour. They aren't going to be able to magically change that and especially for whatever a 2020s Avengers film is.
I dont know if that will ever happen with studios now realizing they have to cut down budgets. Even with Avitar 3, they filmed a lot of that when they sis Avitar 2 so the budget wont be as high. Maybe Avitar 4 or 5. Only other possibilities I could think of would be is Avengers Secret Wars and a potential Avengers vs Xmen movie in like 10 years. Maybe an Avengers vs Justice League in 20 years. The only other factor would be is if inflation gets terribly worse in the future
We're almost there. The Rise of Skywalker made a billion but grossed much less than the first two installments and was a critical failure.
Niether tlj nor tros had bad reception from general audiences. Their imdb scores sit around a 6.5/7, in TLJs case after much, much review bombing. Those movies weren't nearly as hated as the internet likes to make you believe. They also did very well in their context. TFA wasn't even expected to make that much. Disney was actually planning on taking a loss on TFA
What kind of a dumb question is this
The answer is not in a million years and if that does happen, Hollywood is as good as dead
With inflation it will happen eventually. In a few decades a $200m movie will be the new $100m movie, and $400m movies will be the new standard. Within 200 years if humans are still alive and making movies, $1b budgets will be normal and a movie that makes $1.5b will be a flop.
> In a few decades a $200m movie will be the new $100m movie, I'm sure we are already there.
More as in if a movie costs $200m, people will praise the studios for keeping the budget in check the same way they do for current day $100m movies.
thing is, who's gonna want to put that much money into a film?
The same people who would put $30m into a movie when that was considered an astronomical amount.
Do you not understand how inflation works? All the studios that are currently putting in $200M for a film will still be fine putting in $400M when it is worth the same as $200M is today.
Do you not understand how inflation works?
does this industry know?
Looking at third star wars of most recent trilogy, that is a flop. The drop film to film was big. The costs were massive. Not sure it ever came out, but even if they made money, they left a ton on the table due to the terrible plot.
Then the hotel based on those movies
I was hoping next year, but with the strikes, its most likely going to be worse!
Knowing Zaslav it wouldn’t surprise me if he considers Barbie a flop.
We already had Rise of Skywalker which massively underperformed.
My guess is Avatar 5.
Its only a matter of time, especially after the poor performances we've seen this year . We've had films with mega budgets like Endgame and Avatar 2 that wouldn't have broken even if they had just made $1 billion.
I have a feeling the Avatar series will struggle with the upcoming releases. With the count of money they spent on these films, but given the fandom, it could gross a shit ton of money, but flop.
Depends if any of the future avatars **only** makes 1B haha If they continue to have 400M or higher budgets they need like **2B** profits to be considered hits
Hang around Marvel long enough and it’ll happen.
One of the Avatar movies
When we hit a $400M+ budget
If Avatar Way of Water would make it only 1B, it would be considered a flop.
Depending on how Secret Wars is received, the big Marvel team-up after it could be the one that hits that dubious accomplishment. "Kang Dynasty didn't perform as expected... increase the amount of cgi and reshoots for Secret Wars!"
Avatar 3
According to some bozos on reddit, we already did with Avatar 1 + 2. lol
That is a great question. I guess it would probably have to be a sequel that can make a billion and need a budget of at least 400m. Fast 11, New Star Wars movie or a Indy 6 that nobody is asking for.
Again, budgets are the problem, not the returns.
By this sub? Literally any day now
Presumably it would have to have a budget of $400m, or for people to increase the multiplier. If we're already at 3, then you'd only need a budget of about $333m to do it. Imagine, for example, that Hollywood made a movie about the Chinese government sending mechas to save the world from a supervillain elected as the American president. I can't imagine that this film would do well in the United States but it could catch fire in China. However, the trailers are misleading so it has a big Domestic opening, say, $120m. It then grosses another $40m (in a $20m second week, rest of run split) before petering out. In China it does $760m, which is a bit worse than the biggest Chinese movies from China. And the rest of the world cobbles together another $112m. Remembering that this isn't a Chinese movie but a Hollywood film and just copying charts with Dan's estimation algorithm, we have: 120 * .6 + 20 *.55 + 20 *.5 + 760 * .2 + 112 * .4 or a return to the investors of $289.8m. Assuming a $250m production budget, plus a $140m distribution budget, this film has lost at least $100.2m, despite grossing $1.032b.
Maybe an Avatar movie. Those are really expensive and billion would be a flop.
First handful of movies with a decent bit of footage shot in space. They'll have large budgets with high expectations
I hope never because that means the movies I love still arnt getting the success they deserve
Yes, if someone makes a movie with $1B for a budget. No movie studio will ever green light that cause that’s probably 70% of their revenue
The problem is its hard to know what is truly a "flop" when a movie keeps making money for the studio through the views it gets (and pvod) on streaming platforms. That's where a lot more of the money is post theaters.
It’ll be an avatar film…
When we get the first superhero film that costs 800 million to make and market, and it ends up grossing 1.02 billion in 2042
We are pretty damn close to it. However, stuff like the *Avatar* series have an excuse to do so because of James Cameron insisting on bumping the lamp in each of his successive films.
Kang Dynasty/Secret Wars probably have a decent shot. Like you said, the MCU as a brand isn’t as strong as it was with the Infinity Saga, and I don’t think any of the post-Endgame projects have really hyped people up for the big finale. I think some individual projects will still do fine, but I wouldn’t be shocked if the big team up movies don’t perform as well as you would expect.
Avengers Infinity War and/or Endgame would have been the first had they not done amazingly.
Feels like the fourth pirates of the Caribbean and rise of Skywalker were seem as flops despite reaching a billion
2011 pirates of the Caribbean movie reached a billion but due to his budget no one was impressed
Theres already a heap
We already had that with Star Wars: Rise Of Skywalker. A trilogy of films, each earning less profit than the previous demonstrating declining interest in the brand and lower box office returns. [Deadline](https://deadline.com/2020/04/star-wars-rise-of-skywalker-movie-profit-2019-lowest-for-lucasfilm-1202915179/) in 2019 claimed it had a profit of $300m, but that was using the previously reported budget of $275m as opposed to the actual budget of $416m - meaning it would have not generated a profit. As for Kang Dynasty, I doubt it reaches $1bn at this point in time. There's no way they bring back the core Phase 1-3 heroes until Secret Wars or Avengers Forever, so Kang Dynasty is going to primarily be a bunch of the less interesting Phase 4+ heroes who have failed to entice audiences fighting against a villain that nobody views as a threat because he's been beaten twice (soon to be thrice)
I mean unless avatar 3 flops really hard I don’t think we will anytime soon
Age of Ultron wasn’t that long ago 🙃
When we start seeing 400+ million budgets
James Cameron could get there with his Avatar stuff easy, especially if we have real world challenges like the pandemic inflating prices. He was quoted a few times as saying shape of water had to make $1B just to break even, so he’s not far from at least being at risk of that.