How the Business of Box Office Has Changed Over the Last 15 Years
On this week’s episode, I’m joined by Scott Mendelson. For nearly a decade at Forbes, Scott wrote one of the best, most in-depth looks at the box office on a day-in, day-out basis; he’s now headed to The Wrap where he’ll hang up his box office spurs and write about the industry more broadly. But I wanted to pick his brain about how things have changed since he started doing this way back in 2008 with his Mendelson’s Memos: from the rise of the MCU and the monster opening weekend to the death of the high-concept star-driven vehicle to the pandemic’s acceleration of streaming dominance to the monetary potential of the premium video on demand (PVOD) window, a great deal has changed over his run, and he’s here to provide his insights.
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Welcome back to the Bulwark post Hollywood. My name is Sunny Bunch. I’m culture editor at the Bulwark. And I’m very pleased to be joined today by Scott Mendelson, who is a film reporter for the rap. But before that, he was Forbes’s box office columnist for nine years.
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And for five years before that, author ed Mendelson’s memos. So he has he has been he has been doing the bock office thing for a long time. And I I’d wanted to get Scott on and I I now that he is he’s getting out of the box office game, it feels like or at least the daily, you know, what is happening in the world of box office at a nitty gritty granular level. Might be a good time to, like, talk about how the industry has changed over the last fifteen years from a pure business perspective. Scott, thank you for being on the show.
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I
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really appreciate it. I feel bad. I wish you knew he wanted me. Would have offered myself years ago. I enjoyed
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it.
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I odds. Yeah.
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I know. Any risks out here. No. It’s
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it’s great to have you all. Alright. So let’s let us talk about first, I wanna know what your what your daily life was like. Especially on the weekends. Because this is like the the first thing I do when I wake up on a Saturday or Sunday, and this is not a joke, is I check to see what the box office reporting is, but that because somebody else has done it and compiled all of the information.
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From what is your what was your average Saturday, Sunday, Friday night, like, what what was that like for you?
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Well, it depended on how much work I had gotten done ahead of time. If we’re just talking about the weekend box office figures, it’s a situation where I would get some rough numbers from people like Trusted. So I could do a rough draft of the article as long as the math, you know, I could do the math, I could do the analysis, I could read the comparison, And nine times out of ten, the numbers were close enough to the real thing that I didn’t have to scramble to rearrange anything. When the real numbers started dropping on Saturday morning or Sunday morning. Ironically, the one exception that was usually, you know, a huge massive mega opening.
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Because if a film did, you know, a multiplier, you know, a weekend multiplier, that means it’s it’s opening weekend total divided by what it did on Friday. So, you know, if a film does a two point five multiplier, you know, from a ninety million dollar day be opening day versus a two point five million dollar five multiplier from a ninety. That’s a wildly different number. Then if you’re just talking about a movie, it’s gonna open with ten to twenty million dollars. But, you know, more often than not, I try to do as much as possible on Friday afternoon, Friday evening if time allowed than what my kids were up to.
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Just so I wouldn’t have to do as much of a hustle in the
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morning.
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Because my kids still, like, food and shelter and all that stuff. You know, sometimes we like my company. So generally speaking, I would I do one new I would do one new release report on from Saturday, and won a holdover movie report on Saturday. And then on Sunday, I’d do another double. I try to make them as as fresh as possible, you know, not just repeating the same thing and putting a new headline on it.
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A, because there were often new insights, b, I think, you know, my editors didn’t necessarily want me just copying and pasting from one report to another, just because, you know, and I get
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that.
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As far and as far as what I would do, once I had the numbers, or trustworthy members. I would, you know, is this any good? What is this compared to? If it’s a Friday number, then what are the possible weekend figures based on realistic multipliers. You know, is the semi score good?
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If it is, that means the multipliers probably gonna be pretty decent. If it’s not that it might not be with the exception of horror, because here’s something you you know, trivial whatever. Cinema score is, you know, the one poll that I actually trust because it’s not an opt in one. People who go to the movies, pay money and watch the whole damn movie, are then old by people walking out of the theater and opening back. You can’t reviewbaum, cinema score.
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You can’t clog up you know, it’s not like a rotten tomatoes user score. IMDB user score, or really anything else of that nature. So I kinda trusted the score more than anything else. But something about horror is that horror movies to end up all lower than average because you’ll get people that give it a low score because it wasn’t scary enough. But you have lots of good people to give it a low score because it was too scary to make them feel unpleasant.
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And that’s now that’s unique to horror. Nobody is down in a comedy because it was too funny. I mean, that’s that’s joke out at least why I’ve actually come down some theaters anymore.
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Well, it’s funny. It’s funny. I actually had I actually had the the head of cinema score on the show once last year, and we talked about this exact phenomenon. He said it’s the he said it’s the weirdest thing. It’s the only The only genre that that happens with, you know, you you can count on if an audience loves a superhero movie, it’s gonna get an ARNA plus If an audience loves a romantic comedy, it’s gonna get an a or an a plus, but a horror movie is always gonna be about a grade lower at least.
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Than what
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than what you would expect to say exceptions. And I’m gonna, you know, slightly smaller than old horror movies, so I apologize in advance. Films that have an unapologetically happy ending and the bowl better, you know, happy death day, get out at chapter one. I think the black phone hold pretty well, and I I I Mhmm. Yo.
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I’m not dancing on a genius. Right? I think when I saw that in Vegas, like, oh, this is gonna be because it’s It’s such a crowd pleasing adventure film that’s also a good horror adventure. And it’s it’s different than, you know, stereotypically speaking, your a twenty four film like men or hereditary that, you know, I know it’s a very a hereditary is an interesting example. Because that’s a film It opened with, like, thirteen and change in summer twenty eighteen.
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Got a d from summer score and you had, like, a week of people going, moviegoers are done. Why aren’t they embracing this sore film. And that’s when I wrote the piece that I wrote about porn and cinema score. It’s like, look, it’s it’s like the example I gave was a name, two thousand nine, two thousand ten when
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when Barack
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Obama was trying to get the Affordable Care Act into law. And you’d be pulling and the majority of people were did not approve of it. And does that mean that they didn’t want the ACA or no. You had people that loved it. You had people that thought it was a a, you know, government scheme and you had people that didn’t think it went far enough in terms of government run healthcare.
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So those two forces combined to push the average down. It doesn’t mean that the the bill was the the core idea of the bill, which is, you know, quote unquote, fixing healthcare. Was unpopular with majority viewers. And then hereditary comes out and almost trickles its opening weekend. And it’s it was until recently eight twenty four’s biggest question.
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See. Yeah.
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And you see we see something similar right now with a smile. Right? Yes. Smile. I think Smile got a b minus for cinema score, which normally would be soft if you if that’s on any other genre, you’re like, oh my god, a b minus.
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But with horror, it’s like, okay. B minus. And then it’s it’s it’s now at a multiple of at least three. Right? It’s
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heading towards
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a hundred million.
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Yeah. It’s gonna cross a hundred million sometime this week. It’s at a hundred and eighty six in counting worldwide, which means it’s the biggest grossing live action not from China, original in worldwide grosses of the year. I made it original. I mean, I mean, live action or not.
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I mean, there haven’t been any animated non sequel — Yeah. — IP that have done that either. So it’s it probably might not earn as much domestically as Jordan comes to note versus one twenty three. That’s already passed that film’s one seventy one global total, which is a huge surprise. I my box office betting poll was terrible this summer because I I I over bet on nope.
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And I under bet on nopka, and you can guess how that went.
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Yeah. Yeah. Well,
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that’s a tough one too because, I mean, everyone was pretty excited for Nope. Everyone thought, okay. It’s another it’s another Jordan people original. People show up for for that. But I think they were also counting on it to be more of a horror instead of what it is, which is closer to sci fi — Right.
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— since more of a sci fi close encounters type movies. Yeah.
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And and as far as Top Gun, I mean, first of all, would the film earn noticeably more than it would it as it had it opened as just another summer biggie in summer twenty twenty. I have there’s several movies in the quote unquote COVID era that I would argue it before better. Than they would have had they just been another ten pole for the week. Godzilla v Kam, a free guy, Top Gun Maverick, Spider Man, no way on would have been a huge blockbuster in July twenty twenty one. But I don’t think it would be at one point nine billion dollars as just another, you know, MCU movie in the middle of the summer.
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It benefited from the Christmas legs and being essentially the only game in town in late twenty twenty one and early twenty twenty two, with the exception of of scene two. And Illumination films have always done well alongside whatever big tent pole is out
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there. Well, let me ask let me get your your take on this because, obviously, you know, right now, we’re living through a much different era of box office results than we were three years ago, right, in twenty nineteen. The pandemic upended everything. It changed everybody’s expectations. And it has reset things in a way in ways that are both good and bad.
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I let me get to the I’ll go with the good part first because I think you’re right. I think some of these movies have performed better than they would have otherwise. Because there is less competition. We’re not getting a hundred million dollar movie every single
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weekend, less we
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used to. Now we get a hundred million dollar movie once every two or three weekends, you know, maybe once a month. And I understand look, I understand why theater owners hate this. Like it’s a it’s it is not this is not a sustainable model for the theatrical exhibition business. But it does make more sense from on the studio side of things.
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Right? Just in terms of letting things breathe a little more?
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Yes and no. I mean, the good news is you have fewer big movies, but longer legs for those films
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on
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the whole. The problem is And this is a problem going well before COVID. The bottom kind of fell out on the studio programmer in late twenty fifteen, early twenty sixteen. When you had a large segment of what I call moviegoers that went to the movies just to go to the movies. They might see the event film, but they’d see something else too.
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That audience gravitated almost overnight to streaming. And when that happened, you know, the quote unquote studio programmer, the star plus concept non franchise, non intently just a good movie, just Saturday night at the movies, you know, that Mitch, God forbid, I called Mitch the movie at Mitch, has been struggling for six or seven years. And if more people could be counted on more regularly to show up or ring other movies like Don’t worry Darling and The Woman King. And not just, you know, lower budget horror films like Marbury and Smile, then that would be great to not have year round tentpole scheduling. I mean, do you run tempo scheduling was always gonna be a problem because A, you wanna do or die release every week that, you know, doesn’t have the the space it needs to, you know, build legs and build word-of-mouth.
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And then, you know, sometimes you wouldn’t happen mid early twenty eighteen where you had Black Panther, which acted like titanic except all the movies that it Steve rolled. Weren’t small little movies like deep rising and dark city and wild things. They were big budget franchise titles like Tomb Raider and a week when time, Pacific Rim, uprising, etcetera, etcetera. And, you know, you could laugh at that, you know, because Blackbeth was you know, to a certain extent, you know, bucking conventional wisdom. The reason I got cranky about that is a lot of the films that steamrolled.
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Were big studio pictures that start not a white guy. You know, John Boiega, Pacific Rim sequel, a new tune radio film. Did you know, Ava DeVerne is a ringtone and die. And, you know, that was sort of one of Hollywood’s chess’s to show that, yes, people will put their money where their mouth is in terms of includes STEMI and diversity. And everybody, I would argue, punch their, you know, diversity, punch card with an MCU superhero movie to ignore else, which I think is an industry wide matter.
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Yeah. And
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do you think
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that well, let me
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ask let me just ask a question about this real quick because I I do think it’s interesting. The idea the idea of punching the diversity you know, take it on your on your movie pass or whatever, right, our IP. The do you think that movies can be marketed that way success fully or let me let me change that. Do you think it is wise to market movies that way? Because if you look at something like Black Panther, I would argue Black Panther was definitely helped by being like here is the first, you know, huge big African American superhero movie you know, we’re all all black cast, black writers, black director, you know.
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But then you you look at something like prose and that movie just gets destroyed at the box office. I mean, nobody shows up because it I would argue at least in part because it is marketed as, like, we are an important movie you should come see us, and that is your homework for the weekend. And nobody wants to show up for that. No.
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And then the it’s not even dark. Secret because it’s sort of obvious. I would argue it’s obvious is that people in general will not show up for a film they don’t otherwise want to see just because it’s a representation of limestone. And that makes sense. I mean, you know, it’s it’s up to each individual person what matters to them in terms of what’s worth going to see in a theater.
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And unfortunately, what I found is that a lot of the people that talk online about diversity and positivity, tend to only put their money where their mouth is when it’s in a franchise title that they already want to see, whether it’s the fast and furious or Star Wars or a Marvel movie. There are obviously some exceptions. I mean, everything everywhere all at once, I mean, COVID or not, that’s
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a miracle. And
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the fact the woman came is actually done pretty well at the domestic box office. I did not hope because for the last six, you know, but even for COVID, for the last several years, I was bang in my head against the desk, you know, because everyone in the media is saying diversity is great. Diversity makes money inclusivity is great. Arguistically and socially, it is, of course. But I was having to write these terrible box office write ups for bad time to the El Ruell that you give the spine ducked me, the darkest minds.
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A ridiculous time widows again and again and again and these films that were supposed to be what people say they wanted in theaters, but nobody was actually showing up. And one issue that to be fair is that there’s a difference between demographics that are perpetually online versus those that aren’t. And those that aren’t, obviously, they will only see a movie when it’s something they specifically wanna see in a theater quickly because it’s you know, even before COVID, you had a new normal where films were had on VOD in relatively pristine viewing format. In anywhere from seventy five to ninety days after theatrical, you could rent it for five bucks and watch it on your big screen four k television with a decent sized sound system or soundbar. You know, I mean, at least going back to twenty sixteen, theaters have been dealing with an issue where the only thing they really have to offer is temporary exclusivity.
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And that’s why they thought so hard about collapsing the theatrical windows because there was a reason to believe that that was the only Trump guard they had left. The example I always like to give and I’ve been, you know, seeing this song for years is that video game RKs were huge in, what, seventies and eighties. You could play your Nintendo at home and play your mediocre adaptation of Devil Dragon or to get written u-turnals or you’re the arcade and play the real deal. But by the late eighties, early nineties, you know, the super Nintendo, the Genesis, the first PlayStation, much that I’m probably forgetting about. They started offering at home video game experiences that we’re as good at as if not better than anything you could find an arcade.
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And almost overnight, the the video game arcade became an endangered species. And the ones that do exist now the ones that are explicitly or taking a nostalgia. You know, when you’ve got, like, a Dave and Buster’s or, you you know, a Chuck E. Cheese or most of your name arcades, they tend to have immersive experiences that you can’t replicate at home. Most people do not have a giant air hockey table in their house.
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Most people do not have a shooting game you can if you have gotten in a in a cabinet at home, or when you play Mario Kart, you can’t actually sit in a booth and drive a car. And I have long feared that that was what was going to happen to the movie theater. That things that that were only in theaters immersive experiences IMAX friendly temples were going to be the the bread and butter of the theatrical industry, and almost everything else was going to be VOD or streaming. Yeah.
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Well, I
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let’s talk a little bit about how the industry has changed over the last fourteen or fifteen years or so as you’ve been doing this kind of, you know, on an on an intense granular level.
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You know, I I
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feel like once upon a time, the the theatrical experience was not
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limited to
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the big event picture in a way that it feels like it is now. Right? I mean, you know, when when you started writing about this, what was your kind of sense of what would play and what wouldn’t play? And how has that changed?
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I struck it early two thousand eight. And I’ll be honest, I took this as a, you know, any movie could be a
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hit. Now,
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obviously, you know, moving, you know, towards the library of tooling. Not everyone can get chef, but a great chef can come from anywhere. So, you know, not every movie will be a hit, but any movie has the potential to be a hit if it has x y z ingredients. And because you had a large component of people that would go to the movies just to see a movie, you know, they go they give a movie like twenty one that loosely based on a true story blackjack thriller, a twenty million dollars opening weekend with such huge stars as Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey, and and god. I don’t remember who the male lead in that is.
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Kinda mixed by me out. But you also had, you know, a a you didn’t need franchises as much because actors were the franchise. Sizes. Whit Smith and a romcom, Adam Samler in a body comedy, Jim Carey, in a goofy keeper, Julia Roberts in a romcom Harrison Ford in action movie. Tom Hanks, they feel good, you know, melodrama.
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These these people in their cast to type, for some news, were the franchises. You know, the
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example I
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always give is is a nineteen Ninety four, ninety five, you make a dummy boy, which stars Chris Farley and James Wade. And that film is a popular, well liked hit. You don’t make coming boy too, you win them back together, you make black sheep. And that was the mentality when not everything needed to be a sequel spotting franchise. They didn’t green light that that hangover or the expectation would, you know, spot at blockbuster trilogy.
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It was just a good movie with interesting elements and a strong cook. You know, three three goofballs wake up from a basket party in Vegas is no memory of what happened, and the groom is missing. That’s a great look. And they were, you know, able to sell that movie in a relatively smaller freeway. Now does that mean that I’m sitting here thinking, oh, it’s absolutely gonna open forty four million dollars?
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No, of course not. But the potential was there. In my opinion, the death of the star system. In my eye, I mean, people no longer show up with a few exceptions. To a movie star in a non franchise, non marquee character package.
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Yeah. Tom Hardy is not a star, but Tom Hardy has Venom as a star. That kind of thing. Sure. Or Tom Holland, as John Cherry, every place in Cherry is a joke, was obviously gonna draw, but him as Peter Parker in Spider Man is obviously a huge draw.
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Or related to that, him in uncharted basically playing Nate Drake as, you know, Peter Parker with guns, that’s a draw. When you when you you can kind of have a star value when you’re have a a well liked actor, actors playing off their on stream or off stream persona So I’m not gonna say that Ryan Reynolds in a grim dark drama is bankable, but Ryan Reynolds in something like detective Pikachu or Free Guy. Or voicing Pikachu in a Pokemon movie, that’s of certain added value because, you know, he’s a well liked figure and he’s playing either a riff on deadpool or something that feels like a fun side version of the indirect deadpool. And, again, this is a case by case basis. You know, ninety percent of Robert Baddison’s boat boat’s Twilight films were not well seen.
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And they were the kind of films that were gonna be well seen. They were hard films. But casting sexy rapper Madison as, you know, emo Bruce Wayne, that has value. And but once you started losing the notion where you could just get away with just a movie star, you know, Will Smith in a romantic comedy with a good concept gets you pitched, which makes a hundred million domestic of a forty four million dollars opening. That’s when you started seeing, you know, oh, no, people don’t show up to original movies anymore.
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It wasn’t that they desired originality over IP and franchises. It’s that the actor or actress, and in some cases, the director, was enough to get them off their butts and do a theater in the first place. It wasn’t like they went to the fifth element in nineteen eighty seven because it was a bold new visionary sci fi adventure of the future from the guy that made let’s be honest. Most of those people did not see point of note or the femm Makita. But — Sure.
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— it was
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a
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ninety million dollar FX failed Bruce Willis Acton Venture Company. And that in nineteen ninety seven, that was
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enough. Yeah. Yeah. I
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mean, yeah, it’s funny you start this you start doing this in two thousand eight, which feels in and of itself like a real hinge point
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here. Yes.
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Two thousand eight is the year that the dark knight comes out and Ironman come out. They come out within two months of each other. I think one was May, one the other was July. And that changes everything. I mean, changes everything in two ways.
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One start of the MCU, obviously, you know, almost doesn’t even need to be explained, but I’ll have you explain it. And then the the second thing is the enormous opening of the dark night. The the just the outrageous sum of money that that that movie made changes how, I think, people look at opening weekends and how and and and what the expectation set is. So how does how does two thousand eight work as a hinge point in the in the history of the box office from your from your point of USM who got into it? I
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guess, in a number of ways. I mean, even by two thousand and eight, you were starting to see a situation where, oh, it’s nice that this original start this concept film like Lakeview Terrace starring Samuel Jackson and I believe Patrick Wilson. You know, opens well and does decent money or a what I what I think with also the big part of two thousand eight is that with sex in a city, mamamia, and twilight, you finally started to have a conversation about wait, did we like wasting entire six, seven, eight years ignoring women? Because we were blindsided by Spider Man Shrek and Harry Potter. And, you know, the answer to that is yes.
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And that’s when you first started at least at the mainstream, started seeing a real conversation about attempting to address the gender specific inequities in the industry. And that is important because as the industry becomes more focused on depots and franchises and blockbusters. The kind of films that used to give actresses a solid, stable career mostly white actresses, but I digress. You know, there were men at comedy, the the legal thriller. The the movie, you know, asked Lee Judd asked me a call.
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You know, a field like that may have been, you know, polished b movie Hocum in the Senate criticism that’s valuable. But today, it would be, oh my goodness. It’s almost a prestige picture. Yeah. And because, you know, it’s an original, female driven story that acknowledges institutional sexism and blah blah blah blah.
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Back in, you know, nineteen ninety nine, double jeopardy was just a movie. It was just a, you know, a high concept movie with a good look. And it had glamorous movie stars and comedy Jones playing to type, and that was enough. And But as far as the, you know, the what I what I find
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annoying, I
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guess, and this isn’t Marvel’s fault, is that they look at the oh, the the the Forbes of Iron Man, a film that made three hundred and eighteen million domestic and five eighty five worldwide on a one hundred and forty budget. That changes Hollywood. Everyone wants you know, the MCU is born. It’s gonna change how we make movies. Wilson’s Hancock, an original film, make six twenty four million worldwide.
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And nobody cares. Hell, it’s even tagged as a flop preemptively because the buzz is so bad. That even though it actually is a hit, no one really noticed. Yeah. Which is something one reason that I got into the business in two thousand eight to sort of beat back when I felt with some of the tabolity
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coverage
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elsewhere. And especially the notion that people would make their judgments on opening weekend and not check back six months later to see what had happened. Yeah. Especially for films that would underperform in North America, that maybe kick ass in their seats. And, you know, I feel like, you know, the dark night comes out, makes a billion dollars a little wide, does five thirty three domestic?
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But overseas, it only makes about five million more than Indian or over under five million more or less than Indian does the team in custom school. Which made two hundred million more than Ironman, by the way. AI and only five million more than Mamma Mia, which opened on the same day, and made six zero nine million worldwide on like a fifty million dollars budget. But that film’s success doesn’t count. That’s a fluke.
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We’re not gonna learn any lessons from that. And that is sort of the ongoing notion of how Hollywood is treated successes that don’t star, you know, young white dudes. You know, if it’s something that bucks conventional
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wisdom, The conventional
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wisdom
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is that it’s a fluke and can’t be copied. But if random white guy headlines a franchise film that does pretty well, all these shitties have income groups.
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Yeah.
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I mean, it’s interesting. The you you mentioned overseas overseas box office because I think that’s another big story of the last fifteen years. Right? Is first, the influx of particularly Chinese but really global just in general — Yes. — cash into the Hollywood system and then the revocation of it in twenty twenty one.
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I mean, I I I don’t think it can be understated how much of that changed what movies Hollywood makes and — Yes. —
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and what
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what gets green light. And
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I have
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long been of the opinion that Hollywood’s obsession with China was basically a self induced con. I’m not saying China con and I’m saying Hollywood con themselves. And by that, I mean, if you trace it from, you know, Avatar comes out in two thousand ten in China and does two hundred million dollars on, you know, which is a stunning, shocking number for any movie in China. And it does it on, like, ten percent of the screens that will be available a decade later for a few times I gave you, by the way. And then you have a handful of very big movies that do better than a, you know, really, really well in China.
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Transformers are each of extinction, which actually was, you know, had this entire interaction in Hong Kong and was somewhat tailored to the Chinese government, you know, when I say Chinese audiences, nine hundred and ten. It’s what the Chinese government wants. Right. They don’t wanna they’re not a model that they’re not a belong. They often, sometimes, have better taste that we do, Frank.
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Okay. You know, Coco, you know, a representational milestone barely made two hundred million dollars in North America. But in China, we’re, oh, Chinese people so gracious. They only did one hundred million in the Black Panther. Coco made a hundred and eighty nine million in China, which is more than every Pixar movie there combined at that time.
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You know, Green Book made, like, seventy million dollars in China. Yeah. Black Panther did a hundred and five, which is perfectly normal for an MCU movie. At that time. Prior to two thousand eight, most MCU movies that weren’t Avengers team up films did over under a hundred and twenty.
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Where China was helping, especially in two thousand seventeen and two thousand eighteen, were films that were doing pretty well, but worick comic book movies, you know, pirates of Caribbean senior diets of the Megg, which was a Chinese American co co production that actually was the only big budget one of those that actually went in on both shores. The great wall was not — Yeah. — because you were trying to please both audio. You’re trying to appeal that both audiences ended up boring both of them. I say that somebody likes the film, but commercially speaking — Yeah.
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— somebody cared. And most of the big films that did exceptionally well in China with the same franchise films that kick ass everywhere else. You know, the fact that a fast and furious film did better than normal in China, that’s great. That’s wonderful. But Furious seven still would have made one point one billion dollars than a penny from China.
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You know, Avengers: Age of Ultron did three hundred million in China. Oh my god. Okay. Well, it’s still at one point four billion globally. So it didn’t even need China to crack one point one billion.
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And there are very few examples of big Hollywood movies that bombed pretty much everywhere else. But did so well in China. They were retroactively its. The one that comes to mind is VINDiesel’s triple X, the reserve of Xandr cage. Which was, you know, maybe, like, forty five domestic.
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Did I think two thirty five worldwide outside of China or maybe one seventy five wrote it down? Anyway, point we had a hundred and sixty four in China, which is ridiculous. Yeah. And the eighty five million dollar picture made three hundred and eighty five million in China. But it’s been five and a half years.
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Have you heard anything on Triple X4? Well,
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I you know, for a while, it’s it’s interesting that you mentioned that because one I was thinking of just the other day, two. I was thinking of two the other day. One was Alida, which lead a battle angel, which did pretty well in China. Did I mean, not not good
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enough. Not
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good enough. But the other was Warcraft. Now Warcraft did huge, huge numbers in China. Did an enormous amount of business in China. To the extent that everyone was like, Well, I guess this is I guess it’s okay that it made what?
-
Eighty fifty eighty million dollars — Forty five
-
million dollars in North America. — made made enough
-
made virtually enough time. Then
-
I were screaming at the top of my lungs about how bullshit that was. We’ll do respect. Because
-
here’s the
-
thing. Warcraft was a very popular game in China. Video games are very popular. China. People were interested in warcraft.
-
The film made ninety million dollars in its first two days, made a hundred and fifty six since Wednesday’s Sunday debut. And topped that at two twenty. They didn’t like it any more than we did. Mhmm. It was their Batman, the Superman.
-
Mhmm.
-
And that idea that so many people were using China or warcraft is home, China’s the future war, China Chinese audience are stupid because they shouldn’t have warcraft. Which, you know, yellow arrow get into there. But again, they came. They put their thumbs down and they left. And the film made four hundred and forty million worldwide with, yes, about half of that in China.
-
That wasn’t enough to make it a hit. There is no work graph too on the horizon. And a handful of films that did well enough in China to get people’s attention, triggering your Genosys specific rim, even like Expent apocalypse. We did a hundred and twenty three in China out of five hundred and forty three million worldwide, which convinced Fox that it was a success even though it dropped like a rock. From X Men days of Future Pass to North America elsewhere.
-
What happens two or three years later? Dark fate bombs in China? Dark Phoenix bombs in China. Pacific Rim uprising underwhelms in China. Again, Chinese audiences are perfectly capable of going to this movie because they think it looks good, saying, that’s stuck.
-
I’m not gonna go to the next
-
Yeah. Let’s talk it’s funny you mentioned Hancock a few minutes ago because I have always been a fan of Hancock. I’ve always been a defender of that movie as one that’s maybe that was at least five, maybe ten years ahead of its time because it’s a deconstruction of Oh,
-
yeah. The superhero
-
genre, but before like, it’s funny. You have a couple of these movies in a row. Two thousand eight, there’s Hancock, two thousand nine, there’s or two thousand ten, there was Watchmen. Right? And both were kinda pitched as,
-
like, here’s your
-
line. We’re we’re breaking down we’re breaking down the superhero genre you’ve seen you’ve had many of these movies and we’re we’re deconstructing them. And it’s still like fifteen years later, we’re still going with them. They’re they can’t they can’t be stopped. The
-
funny thing about Hancock is and this is neither criticism nor compliment because it’s it’s interesting to me. That movie and it’s it’s and there’s only, like, a hundred minutes. It’s three hundred and there’s, like, a hundred and ten minute extended cut, it’s pretty good. But that movie in a nutshell, is what I think Zach Schneider and Friends were trying to do with the first three DC films. The idea of, you know, balancing being a world powerful superhero that do good, I can make a difference.
-
But with the notion that every everything I do is an air leak political. And without getting into the discourse of those films, you know, he had Conga sort of the Cliff Notes version of that for
-
me. Yeah. It’s it’s
-
on it’s on Netflix now. I almost threw it on the other day just because I was I I was curious to see if it held
-
up as well as I
-
I thought it did. Let’s talk let’s let’s shift gears slightly. I wanna I wanna talk about a mild controversy in the world of movie discourse a couple weeks back, a month or month or two back, you know, Martin’s court says he said, you know, it’s it’s ridiculous that everybody pays so much attention to the box office. And we nobody should you know, we shouldn’t we shouldn’t we shouldn’t be Well,
-
I’m not I’m not doing the marble thing. I’m not doing
-
where I’m not doing not doing the marble, but different different different thing. He he he said something that’s germane to this discussion. I think it’s I think it’s worth thinking about. You know, he he came out and he said, look, you know, it’s ridiculous that everybody pays so much attention to the box office. Movie’s paying shouldn’t care about the box office.
-
They should care about the movies and etcetera, etcetera. And I agree with that. And I think that he’s he’s he’s right to a certain extent to say, like, the the treating, the box office, like, the the box score of a baseball game is foolish. Like, that’s the there’s no reason for the average fan to
-
be obsessed
-
with them. And and there’s and there’s not very good reason for the coverage to be kind of driven the way it is. I do disagree
-
though in a broader
-
sense because I think it is useful for people to understand what is a success, what isn’t, and how that helps, or how that guides what movies actually get made. I mean, I don’t think I don’t think there’s any I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having a basic understanding or sense of how the business is going and how that impacts what people end up seeing. Right? I mean, you you you live you live and breathe this stuff or have for the last — Yeah. — of the record, I agree with
-
him more or less. And you know, I mean, Andrew, even thirty years ago said, you know, don’t follow the box office movie, don’t extend a sport. And, you know, to a certain extent, I agree in that
-
I
-
think the problem is too many people that follow it, and in some cases, you even didn’t write about it, don’t understand. And they take the wrong conclusions or they don’t, you know, it’s it’s again, if everybody made explicit attention to the marketplace, and understood why consumers make some of the choices that they do, they wouldn’t be blindsided when something like birds and prey under realms. Or when nobody shows up to widows, even though they should. Or they wouldn’t pretend to be outraged when the writer of Bohemian Rhapsody gets higher and it wouldn’t be used in the biopic. Yeah.
-
Twitter may have thought it was controversial, but we even rapidly made nine hundred and five million worldwide. That gets you the next job. That’s how this works. And it was a film that outside the Twitter sphere, most people liked. Yeah.
-
I do think And I don’t wanna get on my high horse and say, oh, you know, get on, hop on
-
it. People like, well, I
-
mean, I think one
-
of the
-
issues in the last four, five years is that
-
fandoms
-
have become so tribalized, and now every IP has their glorified segments of fandom that are cults. And they tend to interpret any news about their favorite prized IP as a virtual attack against
-
them. So,
-
you know, it’s it’s it’s And I think that infects everything, including box office analysis. You know, it’s it’s it’s and again, this is mostly among potentially online But because of the way the online media works these days, those people can often skew the the the narrative. Because in an SEO driven media landscape, if you have a bunch of really loud people saying something shocking and you can turn that to an article, people are saying, that it doesn’t really matter if most people really aren’t saying that. You know, most people didn’t give a shit, you know, didn’t love or You know, most people didn’t like the last Jedi that much more than the Force Awakens. Most people didn’t hate Rise of Skywalker that much more than the last Jedi.
-
Most people thought Star Trek into darkness was fine, whatever. Most people thought Spider Man three was maybe a step down from Spider Man two, but not a war crime. You know, most, you know, most people did not have strong opinions about Anna Athalyk or that Eva Eva thought she was a good actress or they didn’t give her any you know, who cares? It’s not my concern. You know, I saw her as Catelyn and the Dark Knight rises.
-
That was cool. I saw her name as Rock because I like the show whatever in the story. But, you know, because of the Internet and the way the Internet works, you get this weird online only trend of how the haters. Why are people trying to bring down this successful young actors just for being, you know, driven and eager and ever. And and in a vacuum, that would be terrible because she has done nothing to earn their score.
-
But my theory has always been that that was always a massage. The example I always give is is in two in late two thousand fifteen, there was a hashtag called boycott episode seven. And it was, you know, theoretically, let’s boycott the force of wicked because there are women in black
-
people in it. And
-
it turned out that the hashtag was created by, like, four trolls online that were just trying to get trending for fun. And it did get trending. But something like ninety six percent of the conversations around that were people condemning or responding to the original outrage. So in even in the Twitter world, nobody was actually wanted to boycott episode seven. But once the media learned that he could take a false online controversy like that and turn it into a people are saying story, complete with juicy quotes of people clapping back or responding in a righteous way.
-
That was a game over. Yeah. It’s funny. I I remember
-
when that happened. I I wrote a piece for the site I used to work for. It was it was headline very simply, there there is no Blackstorm trooper controversy. Because there wasn’t. I mean, I remember I remember Disney put out a letter saying, like, some people are, you know, gonna be angry about this, but nobody was angry about it.
-
Nobody was actually upset about it. And as you mentioned in all of the pieces that accompanied this, it was a bunch there were a bunch of tweets embedded or, you know, YouTube comments, you know, condemning the outrage and but there was no actual outrage. It’s very very fascinating, and it’s
-
all the time. Yeah. And every single time, you know, people didn’t care about women only, women’s screenings. Mhmm. For that matter, people didn’t care that you know, she was the movie is being sold using thick thin protein bars
-
or
-
that. Mhmm. People
-
didn’t air
-
about Captain Marvel. No one really thought she was gonna relaunch she was gonna get fired and or ruin the MCU. For that matter, regular, you know, general moviegoers thought Greenbulk was stuck light. They thought Bohemian Rhapsody was a rock and roll entertainment spectacular. They thought those that saw I thought that, you know, three endings of three billboards in Evan Missouri was a pretty decent movie.
-
And every time they have one of these pre released non diverseies, that’s I should trademark that non accuracy. And, like, oh, is this gonna affect the box? No. It’s not. Well, I mean, the woman king has made something like sixty five million domestic.
-
So obviously, the boy cop, the woman king has turned on and clear is a sword and success.
-
Yeah. And one thing that
-
I found incredibly problematic over the last few years as things have shifted streaming, is we have a turning red. Turning red was supposed to be liters. It got sent to Disney Plus, and we can whine about that later if you want. After the film came out, there was a lot of online chatter, most of it through social media, about how, you know, parents and people were upset about the film because it was teaching about puberty, it was teaching daughters to be mean or their parents, or it was, you know, it was sexualizing minors and all that. All that’s bullshit.
-
And The film got review bombed on IMDB and it got review bombed on one tomatoes. But if the film had been in theaters,
-
You
-
could have commanded that bullshit with strong box office. People showed up, strong cinema scores, people that showed up actually liked it. And, rotten tomatoes, when you buy it, when you see something in a theater, you can vote in a verified version of their use their user polls, which shows that you bought your ticket through Fandango. So if there’s a huge discrepancy between the verified users, and the non verified users, you know, something’s up. And it’s a bunch of racist, sexist trolls, review botting things.
-
Yeah. But when you don’t have that, there’s no there’s nothing to counteract the bullshit scandals. Yeah. Well, I
-
accept viewing numbers and turning red did huge huge numbers. I mean, I
-
like, I don’t really isn’t yeah. You know, for better or streaming, streaming figures have not entered the popular consciousness the way box office has. And to be fair, I don’t know if they ever will. Mhmm. You know, we still don’t really talk about DVD sales and Blu ray sales as tangible whatever.
-
And, you know, whatever. I mean, the people involved with turning red know they made a good movie, and I believe the director got promoted at Pixar anyway. So happy ending. It’s just, you know, it’s really frustrating because we know this stuff is bullshit, and we’re losing the tools to prove it day after day.
-
Well, let’s let’s shift from the deleterious effect of Twitter, which is enormous Everyone should get off to where I should get off Twitter, we should all get off. But and and two, the streaming revolution. Because this has this has, again, has changed everything. The pandemic accelerated a lot of changes that were probably coming anyway, but it has it has massively upended of the the business of filmmaking. I mean, would from your from from your seat as the the box office guru, you know, I think one of the things that you said in your goodbye thread was I I can finally stop yelling at studios every time.
-
They take something streaming only. Which is a which it was a is I still get slightly annoyed by that stuff too. You know, it’s bad for theaters, bad for the theatrical experience, and for all the reasons you say it, it creates fewer data points to show if something is successful. Whatever, what is your what is your take a bit on the last two years or so of the rise of streaming?
-
I think what we’ve seen at generically speaking, and this is still all work in progress, is that people do not want as much of a disruption in they consume entertainment as studios may have believed. And as I’ve been arguing for years since the beginning, it was like, look, The streaming revolution that came about in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one was circumstantial. If you can’t leave your home without getting, you know, risking a deadly disease, You’re gonna watch more Netflix. You’re gonna sign up for Disney plus thing earlier than you otherwise would have. And the streaming gains were circumstantial.
-
And that would be fine if these weren’t publicly traded companies that weren’t now going to a Wall Street than expected growth every quarter and did not or would not take into account the fact that, hey, maybe the booms in twenty twenty were kind of a special situation and the fact that Disney plus hits, like, twenty twenty
-
four marker in
-
twenty twenty one or whatever should be taken into account when seeing how well they did and, you know, twenty twenty three and beyond, but they don’t. So now you have this weird situation where Netflix and Disney of especially Netflix and Disney have, you know, sort of unprecedented growth for the streaming markets right now when Disney plus was launching due to a once in a generation, hopefully. Event. And, you know, I was like, okay. What the hell do we do now?
-
Because Wall Street still looks like just to grow and grow and grow and that’s why, you know, Bob Japak was sending all the Pixar movies to streaming because, you know, anything to goose that Disney plus goose. But what we’ve seen, generically speaking, and there are some exceptions. Is that movies that would accept with outside of Netflix, because Netflix has such a cute subscriber base that is almost playing in its own castle. The the lazy comparison is, at least in pre COVID terms, you know, Netflix was basically China. We had these big Chinese blockbusters that were making five, six, seven, eight hundred million dollars just in China.
-
And that’s almost irrelevant to everyone else. So those movies were pretty good, by the way. But, anyway, outside of China, we know H. B. O.
-
Max just need plus, Paramount plus, Deepak. Films at playing in theaters tend to do better when they come to streaming versus just streaming premieres. You know, the marketing dollars are there, the awareness campaign is there, the notion of prestige because the film played in theaters. All of that combines to where you’re not hurting the film’s streaming potential like, what are you in theaters
-
first? And
-
in some cases, you’re helping the film’s treatment potential. And I think whether he’s evil or not, I think David Zaslow gets this. Yeah.
-
In a
-
way that perhaps Jason Tillar, either did not or was encouraged to ignore And again, there were outside forces. He’s not the villainous. This is not good and evil. Sure. That’s not the argument.
-
That’s not the root causes. How often these business conversations about popcorn entertainment, devolve and do conversations about virtual. And I’m not even talking about people misbeating on VSATs. That’s if you’re harassed or actors, you should go, and it’s still way more or less. But I’m talking about things like, you know, oh, David says love as evil because he canceled bad girl.
-
Or, you know, whatever. It’s like, I’m not thrilled with that decision, but it’s not with an evil here. Anyway, I’m getting off track. I apologize. The long and short of streaming, is that I believe that theatrical distribution for movies, even studio programmers will benefit the streaming after life.
-
And I think Sony realized that, and they signed a big deal with Netflix. For the first ATV window a couple years ago, and that started to go into effect this year. So they now have a cushion to make films like the Woman King and Bulleitrade and we’re the standout sing. As well as film like, you know, Spider Man four, Men in Black, or Jumanji four or whatever. So even if those films don’t kick ass the apically, they’re still gonna do very well on Netflix by virtue of consumers that still want to use streaming to watch comfort food.
-
And as much as the hot must watch streaming originals tend to get on the bus, and this is especially outside of Netflix. The content that does best for a lot of the streaming stuff are the comfort food. The studio programmers that they remembered seeing in theaters ten years ago. The studio programmers that they forgot to see in theaters ten years ago. You know, side film, friends, the office, the new girl, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
-
I mean, fucking Dolby is
-
doing well because
-
people just wanna watch all these action movies. Tuby. And I think
-
so. The
-
future. Yeah. I love Tuby. That’s one of the elements I do for fun, other than Shutter.
-
Well, I we are we’re running along here. I don’t I don’t wanna cut you off, but I do always like to close by ask him if there’s anything I should have asked. Like, what what do you think folks should know about the state of the industry or, you know, how things have changed over the last fifteen that we didn’t we didn’t get a chance to to talk about here. Wouldn’t been
-
a very good news. This may be a mirage. I find it fascinating that the PVOD window, which Universal basically invented in April of twenty twenty to the April twenty twenty with Trolls Wolfdoor, which a lot of people, myself, and I was like, uh-oh, this could be the end of the theatrical. I wasn’t that mental matter. But on the inside, I want, so it’s like, god.
-
God. God. God. God. Here’s what actually happened.
-
At least, especially for universal. But, you know, the other one you know, they’re not the only studios that do this now. But The PVOD window, which is basically you rent this movie for twenty bucks, and you keep it for forty eight hours. And that’s a window in between theatrical and the general VOD, write it for five bucks, buy it for twenty, or buy it on DVD, whatever. This in between window created an entirely new revenue stream that so far has not kept cannibalized theatrical.
-
And as a result, we’re seeing Evidence of evidence because they won’t give me the numbers because they’re mean. So evidence of evidence that studio programmers like the Northmen and ambulance are actually doing well enough on the PVOD marketplace and then on streaming for them to be qualified as successes. So if ambulance can cost forty million dollars and make fifty one more live, that would be a flop, but still do well enough on PVOD and and whatever. For Universal to assign a deal
-
with Platinum
-
News and stay in the Michael Bay business, That seems to imply that there is now commercial value in making a film like ambulance and putting it in
-
theaters. Where
-
there might not have been before PvOD. Let me ask two questions about that because
-
this is really interesting to me. And it’s something I I have not been paying enough attention to, frankly. And I’m I’m I’m always kinda curious by so the the two part question is this. One, is this essentially replacing or serving as a stand in for the revenue that DVD and Blu ray used to generate. Is that is that that that
-
I am hesitant to say yes because a, I don’t have the numbers. And b, I think it was always intended, if I’m speaking optimistically. As as a supplement to
-
I
-
would say a lot of what Hollywood has done in the last ten years or so, including their gamesmanship in China has been about replacing DVD revenue. Yeah. I mean, that’s sort of the the missing piece of the puzzle. I mean, Matt Damon is correct. He talks about that being one big reason
-
why.
-
Right. It’s so much riskier to just release a movie and theaters. But even if it doesn’t you know, if it’s even if it’s not a one to one
-
comparison,
-
I have seen, again, evidence of evidence, and I generally use it that blood.
-
That the
-
PVOD revenue stream as well as the value that these theatrical films bring to streaming platforms has created a possible new normal where it is now a
-
better situation
-
for studio programmers, just movies. To exist for theatrical distribution than I’ve seen in the last six or seven years. Because if studios are in the
-
minds that
-
they can release this theatrical film, And even if it doesn’t kick ass in theaters, it’s gonna do pretty well on p v o d. It will add value to the streaming marketplace. And they’ll still get their ATV windows and all that DVD sales, all that jazz, to where it’s not that risky
-
Then we may
-
see more movies and theaters, and a greater variety of movies and theaters. Then a curmudge and cynical bastard like me ever thought multiple years ago. Well, that’s the optimistic. That’s the biggest athlete.
-
That’s the fingers crossed. The the second part of this question is, is Is the success of this PVOD window in addition to theatrical and everything else? Is it a function of audiences not knowing ahead of time when something is gonna PVOD. So for instance, I’m
-
looking at my fear.
-
Yeah.
-
That’s
-
my
-
fear. I’ve my understanding is that Rose is doing pretty well on pvOD. I don’t know for sure, but I I pay a lot of attention. I pay a ton of attention to what is coming out when. And I did not know that Rose was gonna be hitting pvOD four weeks after the theatrical release, which suggests me that it was moved up.
-
I know it was also or
-
three weeks, I had a couple days. Okay. It wasn’t I mean, generically speaking, when they say it’s a seventeen day window, they generally mean, like, a twenty one day window. Yeah. Because it has its seventeenth day, that’s the third this third Sunday, and then that next Friday into the weekend, it comes out on PVOT.
-
With pros, for whatever reason, they dropped it that Tuesday, which is when, you know, most VOD, DVD stuff comes out
-
anyway. Yeah. Is that
-
the new normal? I don’t know, but it wasn’t unusual in that case. Not only in a couple days. Yeah. Okay.
-
Maybe maybe
-
I just wasn’t paying enough attention then. I also I mean, I also felt like the Northman came out a little earlier on pvOD than I was expecting. But again, maybe I just didn’t That was yeah. That
-
was focused features that I did not open to fifty million dollars. Right. But again, if the Northman can somehow be seen as profitable because of this new normal, then everything is safe. Yeah. That’s a seventy million dollar r rated start free.
-
All due respect, I mean, Taylor Joy is not a cuts and seats drop. Most of them aren’t unless you’re, like, we are a capri with Sandra Bullock and — Sure. — under certain circumstances, Denzel Washington and Gerard Butler for a budget, except anyway, that’s a longer conversation. It’s Decaprio, Bullock, and everybody else. But so, you know, if that film can you know, it made, like, sixty five million worldwide on a seventy budget, If that film can somehow be considered profitable through BVOD and streaming and all that jazz,
-
then I have
-
hope for the future. Yeah.
-
Let’s let’s end on a
-
positive note then. Alright? Scott, thank you. Scott, thank you for being on the show again. Congratulations.
-
On the gig, very exciting. Tell people where to come come find you. The rep. Just go to the rep. You know,
-
Yeah. Right
-
right now, I’m working on my first quarter. I’m working on a big b c or whatever. So I’m there I’m not putting many points in the board yet, but it’s my first week. To get adjusted. But
-
it takes Hopefully, in a month, there’ll be as busy as I used to be.
-
And in two months, I’ll be as busy as I used to be pre COVID. That’s it.
-
Yeah.
-
Fingers crossed. And follow Scott on Twitter. He’s a he’s a great he’s a great follow-up. I will
-
still be annoying and I’m not just a a memetic on Twitter.
-
And we will again, thanks for being on the show. It was it was great for anyone. I should have done this. It should have done this last year. Should have done this years ago.
-
Alright. My name is Sunny Bunch. I am the culture editor at The Bulwark, and I will be back next week with another episode of The Bulwark OZ Hollywood. We’ll see you guys then.
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Get an inside look at Hollywood with Michael Rosenbaum. Let’s get inside Deborah Ann Wall. If you have to choose between True Blood daredevil to do a them. Partially because
-
the
-
Marvel series feel unfinished to me because we got canceled when we thought we were gonna have more. Whereas true slurred, we did get to wrap it up. I knew that we were wrapping it up. I could say goodbye to everyone. I stole something from the set.
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I know I didn’t get a steal anything from our daredevil set. Inside of you
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with Michael Rosenbaum, wherever you listen.