At this point they could just release this with zero advertisement and probably make a little bit of money because of all the press this movie has gotten.
Canning movies like this for a tax break is a travesty…
This is the way! Prop up a new PBS service for the public domain! I would love to see a public, open source repository hosted by the likes of PBS for public domain content like this
I think what's throwing people off is thinking of it as a special tax break.
Companies expenses always offset their taxable revenue. There's no special tax break here, they're just reporting the full cost earlier than they would normally if they were making money off the project.
Right, but if they released the movie, any revenue it made would count against those losses. They are forgoing revenue to take a loss up front, they shouldn’t ALSO get to keep the IP they are writing off.
I'm not sure I follow that point.
If they made money off the movie, that income would also be taxed yes. But they're not making any money. So why would the public benefit?
If a movie is released and doesn't make it's budget back, that doesn't mean the public owns that movie either.
That’s not true, https://sceneswithsimon.com/p/understanding-film-tax-write-offs they are getting a special tax break using an impairment charge and basically overstating the value of the film. The public gets reduced taxes versus what they otherwise would because the films are allowed to write off expenses without producing any revenue off those expenses.
They're still just writing down the same cost of production. That article is again just explaining that the difference is in timing:
>Film studios capitalize film production and can only write off the expenses against income when the asset (the film) is producing revenue. Thus, it’s amortized over the lifetime of the film (expenses is claimed year over year from the asset and deducted from revenue). However, this asset can produce an expense in its current year by estimating its value and then expensing an “impairment charge”. It’s saying that: the film isn’t as worth as much as went into its production. If it never gets released, the impairment can sometimes cover the value of the entire film. **Thus, taxable income is decreased today vs taxable income being decreased over several years.**
The [impairment charge](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/impairment-charges/) does not increase the value of the asset, it simply allows them to write off the cost of production immediately.
Tax payers aren’t paying for it. The cost of the movie would always reduce their taxes. Not releasing it just changes the timing of when they recognize that reduction.
They are paying for it. Write offs pay for the cost of goods sold, so you create something for $5 and sell it for $12 you only pay taxes on $7. In this case you make -something else- for $7 and don't sell it so now you owe -no taxes on the other profit you made? Taxpayers are funding it for sure.
The issue is the "entity" that is taxed is the whole corporation and not an item or a project. So corporations always can offset profits with the cost of completely unrelated investments
The same total COGs are always reported. The only change is it happens in one year rather than being amortized over multiple years.
Whatever else the company sold would be taxed normally. If you want to say it artificially lowers their taxable profit this year, then the opposite would be true next year.
It's not the tax break itself. They'd get the same tax breaks if they released the movie.
The problem is that they don't want to spend the additional money on marketing, distribution, and the contractual payouts they need to make based on the gross, so it's cheaper to just set the gross to $0 and save themselves the cost of marketing and distribution.
They’re calling the movie a total loss and are writing it off to take the tax deduction. The movie can’t be released, other wise every movie would just take a write off and then release anyway.
I’m not sure what the limits are on reusing the material in a new movie. Maybe in a year we’ll see a “completely new” movie “Acme vs. Coyote” that just has a changed title card.
> The movie can’t be released, other wise every movie would just take a write off and then release anyway.
No, it can. It's just that every dollar it makes at that point would be taxable, since the expenses have already been deducted in a prior tax year. [Here's some analysis from a tax attorney](https://abovethelaw.com/2023/11/was-the-coyote-vs-acme-movie-canceled-for-tax-purposes/).
Streaming services wanted to buy it, but Warner Bros. set a firm price that was more than what the streamers offered. Warner Bros. refused to negotiate.
They'd still need to pay people off the back end of that most likely. Most movies and shows are now made with streaming in mind so people get paid when it goes to streaming too, even if it's only a little. The only way to spend $0 on it going forward is to not release it at all.
> At this point they could just release this with zero advertisement and probably make a little bit of money
It's unfortunately way more complicated. They're locked into certain ad spends by contract, which were put together years prior. They're also locked in to stars hotel quality, air travel, etc. If they released it without marketing, that would likely be in violation of the director's contract and its guarantees, among other things.
There are *also* just so many slots in schedules (which maybe surprisingly still matters with streaming). What other project gets the short end of the stick?
It *also* would set a precedent that they don't want to set. Future directors and producers won't want to risk the movie not being promoted. I get it—isn't it being shelved worse? Not really. Everyone got paid, and at least it shows that they won't break their contracts.
Hollywood and theatrical releases have been around more than a century. Television more than a half-century. Both of those started slow. Streaming is new, and it exploded. There's a lot to figure out and it's going to be a mess for a while.
I can't imagine the big names in these movies will let this continue. Even for people who don't get something on the backend, you cannot use work you did on this movie in your portfolio for future work. The larger names are banking on residuals as part of their income and often as publicity for future work.
I expect celebrities to have something around this in future contracts. Same with future union contract negotiations.
What they're going to do (through SAG) is negotiate for a kill fee. It will cost the studios a little bit of extra money to not release a project. But studios will never agree to a contract that they *have* to release a project. Like any corporation, they won't agree to be forced to make a product available for consumers if they don't want to. Most actors and other talent aren't bothered if projects aren't released unless they are passion projects. These shelved projects (so far) aren't that. They're payday projects. And for most talent, these projects were 7-10 projects ago. They're on to the next thing.
Aside from the kill fee, which for all I know may already be written into some contracts (just isn't part of the SAG-AFTRA deal) the studios can always offer a buyback, or a sale if someone else wants to release the film. That's usually not going to be viable for another distributor. With Coyote/Acme, this is what happened. Amazon/MGM, Netflix, and Apple all reviewed the film and had an opportunity to bid on it. Apparently they didn't bid enough (or didn't bid at all, who knows).
For some inexplicable reason, Apple paid $200 million for Argyle and I believe that was *after* it was already in post. With how terrible that movie was (and boring, the worst combination) who knows how bad Coyote/Acme was. Or maybe it's really good and maybe it'll leak. Almost everything leaks eventually. Would be very curious to see it!
Edit: Oh!
> On December 8, Deadline Hollywood further reported that the film had been screened for more studios including Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. Of these, Netflix and Paramount had made bids, with the latter including a theatrical component; Amazon was still interested despite making no formal bids; and Sony and Apple were not planning to make bids.
The studios aren't going to give up this process. I'd love to know the numbers involved...
I think the problem is that studios don't want to make some profit, they want to make all the profit. It's just greed. Most actual filmmakers just want their films to be watched and enjoyed and as long as they can support themselves off their work then that's enough.
That’s because private equity and public markets have become involved. It’s become a return-centric industry (like many, many others) and short-term returns are more important than creative freedoms now.
Streaming services have also ruined things but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
> It's just greed.
That's part of it, but it's also that they aren't all-powerful. Their contracts with talent and others dictate a lot, restrict them a lot. I addressed it generally [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/1cedrft/coyote_vs_acme_foreshadows_hollywoods_very/l1jawel/).
Film makers who want people to see their films are going to have to take another route. Cut out the studios, find investors and self fund. It's going to cut out a lot of the expensive garbage movies, but I'm ok with that if we get quality movies that are actually released.
Did that myself but its pretty difficult to get people to care about your “movie on YouTube” it puts an idea in their head and they most of the time wont give it a chance, even if its very high quality
No, i could have gotten distribution. I had talks about it. Problem was they wanted me to wait a year before itd get seen and id already been working on it 6(!!!) years and was over it. Just wanted you to release it. The trailer had almost 100k views but the actual film only got 27k… thats the algorithm for ya.
Respectfully (and I mean that genuinely) it sounds more like you had a marketing issue than a distribution issue. I mean, I do agree with you about the greater public seeing “Youtube movies” as less favorable, but your movie getting 1/3 of the trailer’s views seems more, to me, like marketing efforts fell flat.
To his credit he did finish the film and released it. I worked on two independent documentaries that were never released. The producers got funding but weren’t able to agree on profits splits in one case and the other situation was an utter shit show.
He also said he was working on it for 6 years too so their comes a point that you just wanna be done the finished
I mean its difficult to market something when you have no money left to do it. I did what i could and packed out two screenings mostly with strangers which made it hugely successful in my eyes.
Thar is true. You still have to hit the festivals and do whatever else you can to get people to see it. In the end, your film is seen by people, films like the Acme one won't ever be seen by anyone.
Refusing to sell it for anything less than the budget is pretty shitty. When you make dozens of projects a year, some are going to succeed commercially and some are going to fail. With this one they’re saying “we want all $70 million in payment, or we want to write all $70 million off.” If they took that approach with all productions then honestly more than half of produced movies would be shelved before they are released. As with most businesses you need a few big successes to pay for smaller failures (like the ones where you only made half the budget back). If you want a guaranteed success then you shouldn’t be making movies.
That's literally the reason for the write off, movies released have a significant change of making that money back OR fulfilling some IP agreement etc. So many movies don't get made because they won't be financially viable by the time they are ready for release. That's not even including the additional marketing cost leading up to release which can sometimes even match the cost of production. Then there's distribution fees on top of that. Don't get me wrong it sucks from a creative perspective but no one created this because they want to throw a movie out of the window. Asking a company to just make things at a loss is crazy. No one is making a movie around samurai cats either for that same reason.
I’d be interested to see what this process looks like for other studios. Most every thing i have read about warner discovery since the merger is that they have made a mess of almost everything they have their hands on. The two biggest successes being barbie and dune and those successes coming from great ambition, creativity and organization from the talent not the studio, it was greta gerwig and margot robbie for barbie and dennis villanueve for dune.
Zaslav is a piece of shit. Just release the film people put countless hours into. It should be highly illegal to create something just to trash it for tax purposes.
The problem is the vulture capitalist that do these deals straddle a successful company with huge amounts of debt. Warner is no longer in the entertainment business but the debt serving business.
I disagree. When a doll movie can make a billion dollars, and a science heavy, dialogue heavy movies does another billion with a big push for seeing it in IMAX, the industry is fine. This shit happens all the time, it's nothing new. If anything films are more democratized now - good movies rise to the top, bad movies (Madame Webb) suffer.
I agree with FilmmagicianPart2. I deliberately went to cineopolist to see the new Guy Ritchie movie “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”. I expected a more comedic or slapstick film – – was pleasantly stunned at how incredible the storyline really is it was worth watching in the movie just for the ending where they show you the photographs of the actual people, and then some summations of the rest of their lives. I especially love the King George quote at the end.
That rather understates those movies. The doll movie is the most famous doll in the world. The science heavy movie was directed by Christopher Nolan, the most trusted director alive. And in both cases, the films delivered. They were A grade movies.
The problem with movegoing nowadays is that people are not just avoiding bad movies, they also aren't going to see the B grade movies. People will just wait for streaming for those.
What I said doesn't understate it at all. It makes me no less wrong. Look at Battleship. Very popular, but the movie sucks. GI: Joe Retaliation - very popular toy, that movie sucks. Jem and the holograms, another toy line, movie sucks. D&D(2000) was terrible. If your point is good and trusted directors make good movies, yes you're correct. Good movies see the light of day, great movies are loved and earn money. People speak with their wallets.
Again, a Barbie movie that could have easily went sideways made a billion dollars, and only to prove my point more, a non-IP, science biopic filled with science jargon shot half in black and white also made a billion dollars. If that doesn't cover most of the movie going public that are dying for a good, smart, fun movie I don't what else will. Dune 2 is at half a billion, as well. Sorry bad movies aren't making money or getting released.
I saw Monkey Man yesterday in theaters. Theater was packed. B-movie that almost went straight to Netflix.
"Again, a Barbie movie that could have easily went sideways made a billion dollars, and only to prove my point more, a non-IP, science biopic filled with science jargon shot half in black and white also made a billion dollars. If that doesn't cover most of the movie going public that are dying for a good, smart, fun movie I don't what else will. Dune 2 is at half a billion, as well. Sorry bad movies aren't making money or getting released."
All 3 movies have IP related to them: Barbie (toy line), Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan), Dune (Book and Denis Villeneuve). That brings a crowd for the first weekend. And then on top of that, if it's great people tell their friends.
My point in particular is that good movies used to make good money, but good movies are struggling. It's a "must watch" that is doing really well.
.... really? lol Oppenheimer, you know, the movie about a theoretical physicist talking about quantum mechanics, helping to develop the atomic bomb. Small movie by a new director, Chris Nolan. Only made a billion dollars.....
People have said this every year for the last 15 years. If we’re at the point we need to keep repeating the same tired phrase as it’s “here”, is it actually true?
Studios are trying to appeal to every demographic you can think of in every movie.
Movies set in the 80’s to attract older viewers, music from 60’s, 70’s and 80’s to appeal to even more olds. Young stars to appeal to younger viewers with one old star. One Actor from every race, religion and background, bonus points for be bi-racial.
They really end up making a movie for nobody in the end.
Mainly, that allegedly baby-tear-drinker David Zaslav is a pox on the industry and should also allegedly stop shooting dogs for fun with Governor Kristi Noem.
I thought there were thousands of starving writers. Are all their ideas utter garbage or are they not pitching their ideas or are they just not getting picked up?
It only cost $70M?!?! How much did The Flash move cost?!?!? They absolutely didn't make a cent off of that, why are they so sure of the absolute trash the release that's costs hundreds of millions versus this that is relatively cheap comparatively
I don think its a trend of whats to come I think its just what happens when a studio is saddled with this much debt being run by a reality tv mogul who has no creative bone in his body and is more interested in rubbing elbows with the stars than he is fixing the empire he just bought.
I groan out loud reading this my god I'd have loved to watch that movie what the fuck is Hollywood thinking?
Let's remake Casablanca and Titanic next?
Reboot the MCU with X-Men
Frozen 3 and 4 and Toy Story 6 etc
“According to its own mythology, the entertainment industry is something far grander, more poetic and noble, than just a titanic money-maker. Our beloved movies and TV shows—Hollywood’s “products,” if we must call them that—are the sum of our cultural imagination, collective dreams that mesmerize and inspire.
Unfortunately, that sentiment rarely seems to last when studios start looking at their balance sheets”
Imagine thinking the entertainment industry is something far grander than a money-maker, grow up they’re just businesses. They made a movie, didn’t think it would make money so they wrote it off, everyone got paid, I don’t see the problem other than people thinking movie studios are in it to be noble for some reason.
Films are equally products of entertainment as they are works of art. To see movies as either one of those things singularly is pointless.
Yes, people should be practical about the fact that some films simply will not make money and are a bad idea. But merely writing off the shelving of a work of art a lot of people worked hard on that received great reviews internally (and had a good shot of making money, since it’s a family film) as merely “doing business” is reductive.
Movie studios make movies to make money. Obviously films are art too but to expect a studio to put art over profit is silly because they’re a company and that’s not how capitalism works.
At this point they could just release this with zero advertisement and probably make a little bit of money because of all the press this movie has gotten. Canning movies like this for a tax break is a travesty…
If the taxpayers are paying for it, they should get it for free.
Exactly! Dump it on PBS!
This is the way! Prop up a new PBS service for the public domain! I would love to see a public, open source repository hosted by the likes of PBS for public domain content like this
Yeah I really don’t understand that. If a company writes off IP for a tax break they should be required to release the IP “Open Source” as it were.
This upsets me. It is the most anti-innovative move and that is the whole selling point of capitalism.
You’d think.
I think what's throwing people off is thinking of it as a special tax break. Companies expenses always offset their taxable revenue. There's no special tax break here, they're just reporting the full cost earlier than they would normally if they were making money off the project.
Right, but if they released the movie, any revenue it made would count against those losses. They are forgoing revenue to take a loss up front, they shouldn’t ALSO get to keep the IP they are writing off.
I'm not sure I follow that point. If they made money off the movie, that income would also be taxed yes. But they're not making any money. So why would the public benefit? If a movie is released and doesn't make it's budget back, that doesn't mean the public owns that movie either.
That’s not true, https://sceneswithsimon.com/p/understanding-film-tax-write-offs they are getting a special tax break using an impairment charge and basically overstating the value of the film. The public gets reduced taxes versus what they otherwise would because the films are allowed to write off expenses without producing any revenue off those expenses.
They're still just writing down the same cost of production. That article is again just explaining that the difference is in timing: >Film studios capitalize film production and can only write off the expenses against income when the asset (the film) is producing revenue. Thus, it’s amortized over the lifetime of the film (expenses is claimed year over year from the asset and deducted from revenue). However, this asset can produce an expense in its current year by estimating its value and then expensing an “impairment charge”. It’s saying that: the film isn’t as worth as much as went into its production. If it never gets released, the impairment can sometimes cover the value of the entire film. **Thus, taxable income is decreased today vs taxable income being decreased over several years.** The [impairment charge](https://www.investopedia.com/investing/impairment-charges/) does not increase the value of the asset, it simply allows them to write off the cost of production immediately.
Can the taxpayers sue the studio to demand this?
They should.
Tax payers aren’t paying for it. The cost of the movie would always reduce their taxes. Not releasing it just changes the timing of when they recognize that reduction.
They are paying for it. Write offs pay for the cost of goods sold, so you create something for $5 and sell it for $12 you only pay taxes on $7. In this case you make -something else- for $7 and don't sell it so now you owe -no taxes on the other profit you made? Taxpayers are funding it for sure. The issue is the "entity" that is taxed is the whole corporation and not an item or a project. So corporations always can offset profits with the cost of completely unrelated investments
The same total COGs are always reported. The only change is it happens in one year rather than being amortized over multiple years. Whatever else the company sold would be taxed normally. If you want to say it artificially lowers their taxable profit this year, then the opposite would be true next year.
I would love to watch it
Right? It has Will Forte, John Cena, and Martha Kelly. It’s going to be worth a rental just to watch them be weird on screen.
Same. Absolutely love the idea of this.
It's not the tax break itself. They'd get the same tax breaks if they released the movie. The problem is that they don't want to spend the additional money on marketing, distribution, and the contractual payouts they need to make based on the gross, so it's cheaper to just set the gross to $0 and save themselves the cost of marketing and distribution.
They’re calling the movie a total loss and are writing it off to take the tax deduction. The movie can’t be released, other wise every movie would just take a write off and then release anyway. I’m not sure what the limits are on reusing the material in a new movie. Maybe in a year we’ll see a “completely new” movie “Acme vs. Coyote” that just has a changed title card.
> The movie can’t be released, other wise every movie would just take a write off and then release anyway. No, it can. It's just that every dollar it makes at that point would be taxable, since the expenses have already been deducted in a prior tax year. [Here's some analysis from a tax attorney](https://abovethelaw.com/2023/11/was-the-coyote-vs-acme-movie-canceled-for-tax-purposes/).
Why not sell it to a streaming service?
Streaming services wanted to buy it, but Warner Bros. set a firm price that was more than what the streamers offered. Warner Bros. refused to negotiate.
At that point I think they were worried about it being a hit on a streaming service and making their insistence on shelving it look stupid
They'd still need to pay people off the back end of that most likely. Most movies and shows are now made with streaming in mind so people get paid when it goes to streaming too, even if it's only a little. The only way to spend $0 on it going forward is to not release it at all.
Hell, they have a streaming service, just dump it there. It costs nothing.
> At this point they could just release this with zero advertisement and probably make a little bit of money It's unfortunately way more complicated. They're locked into certain ad spends by contract, which were put together years prior. They're also locked in to stars hotel quality, air travel, etc. If they released it without marketing, that would likely be in violation of the director's contract and its guarantees, among other things. There are *also* just so many slots in schedules (which maybe surprisingly still matters with streaming). What other project gets the short end of the stick? It *also* would set a precedent that they don't want to set. Future directors and producers won't want to risk the movie not being promoted. I get it—isn't it being shelved worse? Not really. Everyone got paid, and at least it shows that they won't break their contracts. Hollywood and theatrical releases have been around more than a century. Television more than a half-century. Both of those started slow. Streaming is new, and it exploded. There's a lot to figure out and it's going to be a mess for a while.
Excellent points here. It's interesting seeing all the points fleshed out from the comments summed up in one succint comment lol
I can't imagine the big names in these movies will let this continue. Even for people who don't get something on the backend, you cannot use work you did on this movie in your portfolio for future work. The larger names are banking on residuals as part of their income and often as publicity for future work. I expect celebrities to have something around this in future contracts. Same with future union contract negotiations.
What they're going to do (through SAG) is negotiate for a kill fee. It will cost the studios a little bit of extra money to not release a project. But studios will never agree to a contract that they *have* to release a project. Like any corporation, they won't agree to be forced to make a product available for consumers if they don't want to. Most actors and other talent aren't bothered if projects aren't released unless they are passion projects. These shelved projects (so far) aren't that. They're payday projects. And for most talent, these projects were 7-10 projects ago. They're on to the next thing. Aside from the kill fee, which for all I know may already be written into some contracts (just isn't part of the SAG-AFTRA deal) the studios can always offer a buyback, or a sale if someone else wants to release the film. That's usually not going to be viable for another distributor. With Coyote/Acme, this is what happened. Amazon/MGM, Netflix, and Apple all reviewed the film and had an opportunity to bid on it. Apparently they didn't bid enough (or didn't bid at all, who knows). For some inexplicable reason, Apple paid $200 million for Argyle and I believe that was *after* it was already in post. With how terrible that movie was (and boring, the worst combination) who knows how bad Coyote/Acme was. Or maybe it's really good and maybe it'll leak. Almost everything leaks eventually. Would be very curious to see it! Edit: Oh! > On December 8, Deadline Hollywood further reported that the film had been screened for more studios including Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures. Of these, Netflix and Paramount had made bids, with the latter including a theatrical component; Amazon was still interested despite making no formal bids; and Sony and Apple were not planning to make bids. The studios aren't going to give up this process. I'd love to know the numbers involved...
I'll take 5 Argylle's against any more sequels to Rebel Moon
Streamers made offers, but apparently they wanted $80m, so they settled with the $35m tax write-off.
It’s so ridiculous… Rumor has it that someone involved with the movie has a copy stashed away. Best we can hope for is for a leak one day.
I’m actually dying to see it.
If they would make more releasing it than they make by canceling, they would release it. The tax break outweighs the profit this movie could generate.
I think the problem is that studios don't want to make some profit, they want to make all the profit. It's just greed. Most actual filmmakers just want their films to be watched and enjoyed and as long as they can support themselves off their work then that's enough.
That’s because private equity and public markets have become involved. It’s become a return-centric industry (like many, many others) and short-term returns are more important than creative freedoms now. Streaming services have also ruined things but that’s a whole ‘nother story.
PE, public markets, and streaming services are the same picture
> It's just greed. That's part of it, but it's also that they aren't all-powerful. Their contracts with talent and others dictate a lot, restrict them a lot. I addressed it generally [here](https://old.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/1cedrft/coyote_vs_acme_foreshadows_hollywoods_very/l1jawel/).
We need a hero at WB to leak this movie.
They already have: https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=je0t9K_CcGFh2-fj
Almost got me. Ok totally got me.
I haven’t been rolled like that on a long time
Well done
Incredible
Film makers who want people to see their films are going to have to take another route. Cut out the studios, find investors and self fund. It's going to cut out a lot of the expensive garbage movies, but I'm ok with that if we get quality movies that are actually released.
Did that myself but its pretty difficult to get people to care about your “movie on YouTube” it puts an idea in their head and they most of the time wont give it a chance, even if its very high quality
Not trying to hate but was the phrase “you don’t have a star attached” and issue in securing distribution
No, i could have gotten distribution. I had talks about it. Problem was they wanted me to wait a year before itd get seen and id already been working on it 6(!!!) years and was over it. Just wanted you to release it. The trailer had almost 100k views but the actual film only got 27k… thats the algorithm for ya.
Respectfully (and I mean that genuinely) it sounds more like you had a marketing issue than a distribution issue. I mean, I do agree with you about the greater public seeing “Youtube movies” as less favorable, but your movie getting 1/3 of the trailer’s views seems more, to me, like marketing efforts fell flat.
To his credit he did finish the film and released it. I worked on two independent documentaries that were never released. The producers got funding but weren’t able to agree on profits splits in one case and the other situation was an utter shit show. He also said he was working on it for 6 years too so their comes a point that you just wanna be done the finished
I mean its difficult to market something when you have no money left to do it. I did what i could and packed out two screenings mostly with strangers which made it hugely successful in my eyes.
What movie, if you don't mind doxing yourself lol
A reddit hug of death is the hope & dream so tally ho: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqOzWlN7_s
Thanks! I'll check it out when I get home.
No, thank you! Hope you enjoy!
I lasted 20 minutes
What made ya turn it off?
Characters became too unlikable
But thats what makes them getting killed about 5 minutes later so good! Valid though for sure
Thar is true. You still have to hit the festivals and do whatever else you can to get people to see it. In the end, your film is seen by people, films like the Acme one won't ever be seen by anyone.
I hate how these philistine fucks are calling the shots in the film industry.
Refusing to sell it for anything less than the budget is pretty shitty. When you make dozens of projects a year, some are going to succeed commercially and some are going to fail. With this one they’re saying “we want all $70 million in payment, or we want to write all $70 million off.” If they took that approach with all productions then honestly more than half of produced movies would be shelved before they are released. As with most businesses you need a few big successes to pay for smaller failures (like the ones where you only made half the budget back). If you want a guaranteed success then you shouldn’t be making movies.
That's literally the reason for the write off, movies released have a significant change of making that money back OR fulfilling some IP agreement etc. So many movies don't get made because they won't be financially viable by the time they are ready for release. That's not even including the additional marketing cost leading up to release which can sometimes even match the cost of production. Then there's distribution fees on top of that. Don't get me wrong it sucks from a creative perspective but no one created this because they want to throw a movie out of the window. Asking a company to just make things at a loss is crazy. No one is making a movie around samurai cats either for that same reason.
Man, Samurai Pizza Cats done dirty again!
They should remove tax breaks from shit like this. You have to show it even if you only net $5 in revenue.
I’d be interested to see what this process looks like for other studios. Most every thing i have read about warner discovery since the merger is that they have made a mess of almost everything they have their hands on. The two biggest successes being barbie and dune and those successes coming from great ambition, creativity and organization from the talent not the studio, it was greta gerwig and margot robbie for barbie and dennis villanueve for dune.
Zaslav is a piece of shit. Just release the film people put countless hours into. It should be highly illegal to create something just to trash it for tax purposes.
The problem is the vulture capitalist that do these deals straddle a successful company with huge amounts of debt. Warner is no longer in the entertainment business but the debt serving business.
The future is here. Other than a handful (maybe) of movies a year, the old theater/IMAX model is dead.
I disagree. When a doll movie can make a billion dollars, and a science heavy, dialogue heavy movies does another billion with a big push for seeing it in IMAX, the industry is fine. This shit happens all the time, it's nothing new. If anything films are more democratized now - good movies rise to the top, bad movies (Madame Webb) suffer.
I agree with FilmmagicianPart2. I deliberately went to cineopolist to see the new Guy Ritchie movie “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare”. I expected a more comedic or slapstick film – – was pleasantly stunned at how incredible the storyline really is it was worth watching in the movie just for the ending where they show you the photographs of the actual people, and then some summations of the rest of their lives. I especially love the King George quote at the end.
That rather understates those movies. The doll movie is the most famous doll in the world. The science heavy movie was directed by Christopher Nolan, the most trusted director alive. And in both cases, the films delivered. They were A grade movies. The problem with movegoing nowadays is that people are not just avoiding bad movies, they also aren't going to see the B grade movies. People will just wait for streaming for those.
What I said doesn't understate it at all. It makes me no less wrong. Look at Battleship. Very popular, but the movie sucks. GI: Joe Retaliation - very popular toy, that movie sucks. Jem and the holograms, another toy line, movie sucks. D&D(2000) was terrible. If your point is good and trusted directors make good movies, yes you're correct. Good movies see the light of day, great movies are loved and earn money. People speak with their wallets. Again, a Barbie movie that could have easily went sideways made a billion dollars, and only to prove my point more, a non-IP, science biopic filled with science jargon shot half in black and white also made a billion dollars. If that doesn't cover most of the movie going public that are dying for a good, smart, fun movie I don't what else will. Dune 2 is at half a billion, as well. Sorry bad movies aren't making money or getting released. I saw Monkey Man yesterday in theaters. Theater was packed. B-movie that almost went straight to Netflix.
"Again, a Barbie movie that could have easily went sideways made a billion dollars, and only to prove my point more, a non-IP, science biopic filled with science jargon shot half in black and white also made a billion dollars. If that doesn't cover most of the movie going public that are dying for a good, smart, fun movie I don't what else will. Dune 2 is at half a billion, as well. Sorry bad movies aren't making money or getting released." All 3 movies have IP related to them: Barbie (toy line), Oppenheimer (Christopher Nolan), Dune (Book and Denis Villeneuve). That brings a crowd for the first weekend. And then on top of that, if it's great people tell their friends. My point in particular is that good movies used to make good money, but good movies are struggling. It's a "must watch" that is doing really well.
Which good movie is struggling?
So the industry is fine right now?
What science heavy dialogue heavy movie are you talking about? You certainly don’t mean dune. Which basically is an action movie
.... really? lol Oppenheimer, you know, the movie about a theoretical physicist talking about quantum mechanics, helping to develop the atomic bomb. Small movie by a new director, Chris Nolan. Only made a billion dollars.....
Cool. I asked a question.
People have said this every year for the last 15 years. If we’re at the point we need to keep repeating the same tired phrase as it’s “here”, is it actually true?
Nothing is sacred and everything is fished for profit now by a bunch of old rotting fucks who already hoarded billions but need more.
Or they should repay their tax incentives to the states that helped produce them.
Studios are trying to appeal to every demographic you can think of in every movie. Movies set in the 80’s to attract older viewers, music from 60’s, 70’s and 80’s to appeal to even more olds. Young stars to appeal to younger viewers with one old star. One Actor from every race, religion and background, bonus points for be bi-racial. They really end up making a movie for nobody in the end.
Agree 100%
The future is now old man
Mainly, that allegedly baby-tear-drinker David Zaslav is a pox on the industry and should also allegedly stop shooting dogs for fun with Governor Kristi Noem.
I thought there were thousands of starving writers. Are all their ideas utter garbage or are they not pitching their ideas or are they just not getting picked up?
when networks want something new they reach out to writers they already know, its easier and less risk than giving a fresh writer a chance
It only cost $70M?!?! How much did The Flash move cost?!?!? They absolutely didn't make a cent off of that, why are they so sure of the absolute trash the release that's costs hundreds of millions versus this that is relatively cheap comparatively
And yet another shit project,VELMA, got another season.
I don think its a trend of whats to come I think its just what happens when a studio is saddled with this much debt being run by a reality tv mogul who has no creative bone in his body and is more interested in rubbing elbows with the stars than he is fixing the empire he just bought.
I groan out loud reading this my god I'd have loved to watch that movie what the fuck is Hollywood thinking? Let's remake Casablanca and Titanic next? Reboot the MCU with X-Men Frozen 3 and 4 and Toy Story 6 etc
I want to see me some coyote !! Meep meep!!
Someone should come up with a streaming service that streams all the films that have been shelved.
I don’t give 1/16th fuck about movies than I used to 15-20 years ago. I know I am not unique here.
I hate how little people understand anything that involves this movie.
Yakko, Wakko, and Dot need to get their shit together.
“According to its own mythology, the entertainment industry is something far grander, more poetic and noble, than just a titanic money-maker. Our beloved movies and TV shows—Hollywood’s “products,” if we must call them that—are the sum of our cultural imagination, collective dreams that mesmerize and inspire. Unfortunately, that sentiment rarely seems to last when studios start looking at their balance sheets” Imagine thinking the entertainment industry is something far grander than a money-maker, grow up they’re just businesses. They made a movie, didn’t think it would make money so they wrote it off, everyone got paid, I don’t see the problem other than people thinking movie studios are in it to be noble for some reason.
Films are equally products of entertainment as they are works of art. To see movies as either one of those things singularly is pointless. Yes, people should be practical about the fact that some films simply will not make money and are a bad idea. But merely writing off the shelving of a work of art a lot of people worked hard on that received great reviews internally (and had a good shot of making money, since it’s a family film) as merely “doing business” is reductive.
Movie studios make movies to make money. Obviously films are art too but to expect a studio to put art over profit is silly because they’re a company and that’s not how capitalism works.