This Summer's Box Office Bombs!

Page 2 - Seeking answers? Join the AnandTech community: where nearly half-a-million members share solutions and discuss the latest tech.

alareau

Senior member
Sep 3, 2000
566
0
76
Originally posted by: sohcrates
Originally posted by: Reliant
It looks like that new Eddie Murphy movie will flop too.

yep, adventures of pluto nash cost like 80-90 million, but made less than 2 million on opening weekend

well haven't they learned that eddie murphy these days doesn't have the star power to keep a movie afloat alone.

and when you have trailers that pretty much go show eddie murphy flexing his holographic muscle and when his name is anonced he goes ha. And i usually go to movies about once a week and the movie trailer sucks as much as the tv one


 

Demon-Xanth

Lifer
Feb 15, 2000
20,551
2
81
Originally posted by: kami
Man, a lot of movies bombed this summer.

Title - Cost - Domestic Box Office

The Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course - $32m - $26.2m Will make approximately alot in video rental/sales before being shown on "Animal Planet" 200 times/month
Hey Arnold!: The Movie - $16m - $13.5m Should've just gone straight to video
The Powerpuff Girls Movie - $26m - $11.2m ditto for this one
Stuart Little 2 - $160m - $50.3m Will make a metric buttload of a cash in video sales before appearing on any channel with the name "Disney" in it on a daily basis
The Master of Disguise - $46m - $18.6m I like Dana Carvey, but this one just looked BAD

 

SaltBoy

Diamond Member
Aug 13, 2001
8,975
10
81
It's a shame more people didn't see Undercover Brother. That movie kicked the CRAP out of Goldmember in terms of originality and hilarity.
 

Cougar

Golden Member
Feb 26, 2000
1,761
0
0
Originally posted by: kami

Especially "OUCH" for Deuces Wild...costs $40m and it makes $6m. Kinda funny.

That movie deserved to flop. I've never heard the "F" word wpoken so many times in a "gang" movie. The movie is sort of like The Outsiders, Grease or even West Side Story (yeah, yeah it's a stretch with it being a musical and all) and those movies were far better. It's almost like the director/producer was trying to take some sort of title away from Joe Pesci.

"Yeah boys, that was a good take, but lets roll it again and say f*ck every other word. I think that will give the scene just the kick it needs. In fact I think if we do that throughout the entire script, the whole movie will be more edgy...more real. Forget the fact that this movie takes place in the ~50's and no one in their right mind spoke like that back in the day."
 

kami

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
17,627
5
81
Originally posted by: tigerwannabe
i hate to say it(being a fan), but i wonder if star wars, episode 2 will be on the bomb list :(

Star Wars didn't bomb by any means, but it's still $15 million less than LOTR, which no one thought would happen.
 

gittyup

Diamond Member
Nov 7, 2000
5,036
0
0
Straight to video. Maybe they can make up some of the movie costs in that market. Maybe not. :)
 

bentwookie

Golden Member
Aug 3, 2002
1,771
0
0
Originally posted by: tigerwannabe
i hate to say it(being a fan), but i wonder if star wars, episode 2 will be on the bomb list :(

$115m to make
$300m in US alone...Still #1 movie in Japan I don't think it will bomb.
 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,381
8,131
126
Maybe it has something to do with ticket prices going up, and the quality of movies going down.

Hmmmmmm.....
 

Draco

Golden Member
Oct 10, 1999
1,899
0
0
I wonder how they spend that much money on some of those movies. Stop paying the actors so much! One comment on the Crocodile Hunter movie: It sucked, BAD. I'm all for Steve and his zoo, etc, but his movie really sucked bad. I made the mistake of seeing it in the dollar theater over the weekend, I walked out.

 

vi edit

Elite Member
Super Moderator
Oct 28, 1999
62,381
8,131
126
I wonder how they spend that much money on some of those movies. Stop paying the actors so much!

A lot of it is special effects. Having a computer animated mouse in stewart little for the entire length of a 90 minute movie couldn't have been cheap.

Same thing for Scooby Doo.
 

pulse8

Lifer
May 3, 2000
20,860
1
81
Originally posted by: BD2003
Too many bad movies...hell, too many moves altogether. Most movies arent in the theater for more than 2 weeks nowadays. 10 years ago, if a movie was in the theater for only 3 weeks, it sucked. Geez...

That's a load of crap. Most movies, unless they bomb miserably, are in theaters for a while. 10 years ago you didn't have quite as many of these megaplex type theaters with 24 or even 32 screens.

And how good the movie is has nothing to do with how long or short it's in a theater. There are plenty of good movies that will be removed from the theater because it just isn't making money. Hell, Shakespeare In Love won the Oscar that year and it took the film 10 weeks before it was number one and the only reason it was number one was because on the 8th week the nominations came out. Who knows how many theaters pulled the movie before that 10th week.


Anyway, those numbers don't include international sales, so I think they are pretty much meaningless.
 

krackato

Golden Member
Aug 10, 2000
1,058
0
0
Pay the actor's less?! What the hell do you care how much a few Billionaires pay some millionaires? Trust me, movie companies don't really share any of the wealth when a movie that cost $3 million (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) makes $50+ million. I doubt the stars of that film got more than $20,000 if that. If they make more money on their next film thanks to success of this first one, then more power to them.

Sure actor's are overpaid in that "teacher's should make millions in a fair world" sort of way, but the world isn't fair. It's capitalism.
 

rh71

No Lifer
Aug 28, 2001
52,853
1,048
126
How do movies like Unfaithful and The New Guy justify the costs it took to make them?! $75mil and $33mil respectively. What in the movie could have possibly costed much (besides the actors' salaries in Unfaithful)?
 

kami

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
17,627
5
81
Anyway, those numbers don't include international sales, so I think they are pretty much meaningless.
Not really...the domestic takes in these cases are pretty evident of the worldwide takes. The only one with a decent international numbers is Stuart Little 2 with around $30m overseas and About a Boy with around $40m. All the rest are below $10m I believe.
 

Nemesis77

Diamond Member
Jun 21, 2001
7,329
0
0
Originally posted by: kami
Anyway, those numbers don't include international sales, so I think they are pretty much meaningless.
Not really...the domestic takes in these cases are pretty evident of the worldwide takes. The only one with a decent international numbers is Stuart Little 2 with around $30m overseas and About a Boy with around $40m. All the rest are below $10m I believe.

Could it be because most of those movies haven't been released overseas yet?
 

kami

Lifer
Oct 9, 1999
17,627
5
81
Originally posted by: Nemesis77
Originally posted by: kami
Anyway, those numbers don't include international sales, so I think they are pretty much meaningless.
Not really...the domestic takes in these cases are pretty evident of the worldwide takes. The only one with a decent international numbers is Stuart Little 2 with around $30m overseas and About a Boy with around $40m. All the rest are below $10m I believe.

Could it be because most of those movies haven't been released overseas yet?

I think they'd be out in the major countries (except in asia maybe)...maybe not some of the minor ones that account for virtually no sales.

Regardless, they are all bombs...and even a good international run wouldn't save the majority of them. K-19 and Windtalkers for example...I don't think they'll ever recoup until video. Maybe it's a hint we have enough damn war movies already :)
 

Parrotheader

Diamond Member
Dec 22, 1999
3,434
1
0
Originally posted by: vi_edit
Maybe it has something to do with ticket prices going up, and the quality of movies going down.

Hmmmmmm.....
Amen. Actually I don't think movie quality is going down all that much as you can pick and choose with a lot more options these days. And that's kind of a subjective measurement anyway (although it stands to reason that when studios are making WAY more movies than they were 20 years ago that the quality might be more suspect.) Not to mention the fact that we're simply seeing a saturated market. There's TONS of movies to choose from now and unless you have lots of money and nothing else to do, you can only see so many of them before they finish their run.

And ticket prices are definitely not subjective as the rise in those have definitely far outpaced inflation over the last decade. There have been plenty of threads on this before, but I still maintain the media ought to start using 'tickets sold' and not box office gross (or even screens as megaplexes keep popping up everywhere dilluting that number) as the primary reporting metric. But they won't because it doesn't have the same feeding-frenzy, self-marketing, hype appeal; 40 million tickets sold doesn't sound as impressive to the average joe as $300,000,000.

It's the very rise in ticket prices that keep me from going to the movies as much as I used to. After paying for just two tickets I've already covered the cost to purchase the DVD when it's released later (which I can then watch as many times as I want.) And God forbid if you want something to drink or some popcorn. It used to be that going to movies was considered a cheap date. Now it's sometimes cheaper to go out and pay the cover charge for a band or a comedy club and have a few drinks at inflated bar prices.
 

Azraele

Elite Member
Nov 5, 2000
16,524
29
91
I'm afraid to add up how many millions were spent making those movies. :Q
 
Jan 9, 2002
5,232
0
0
OUCH. Those are some pretty harsh losses! Crap movies like The Country Bears and Undercover Brother deserve it, but that's horrible on K-19. :(
 

Chadder007

Diamond Member
Oct 10, 1999
7,560
0
0
Who wants to bet the movie companies will blame this BS on "PIRATES" (arr matey!)
LOL


But truthfully I agree with this previous statement....
Maybe it has something to do with ticket prices going up, and the quality of movies going down.


BTW...just saw The Time Machine on DVD....great movie!!
 

Vinny N

Platinum Member
Feb 13, 2000
2,277
1
81
Ugh.

I thought I noticed that there was nothing worth seeing this summer...

I don't think people would even want to pirate some of those movies.
 

Pooteh

Senior member
Aug 12, 2002
503
0
0
I wonder how they spend that much money on some of those movies. Stop paying the actors so much!


very few actors get paid a ton. julia roberts commands 20 million because she can generally open a film at 50 million. if you can do that consistently then u too will also earn 20 mil a film:p

as for foriegn release making up for losses, eh, only sometimes. depends on film, depends how close it was to breaking even in the US already. you know they have to spend millions promoting it over seas too, so its not free money out there.


A lot of it is special effects. Having a computer animated mouse in stewart little for the entire length of a 90 minute movie couldn't have been cheap.

Same thing for Scooby Doo.


yup ad the animation of stewart is always underrated. they do him damn near perfect:) the first film was so hard on the studio they had to bring outside help:p
 

Electric Amish

Elite Member
Oct 11, 1999
23,578
1
0
I haven't heard of half of those.

Only wanted to see a few of them.

Only actually saw Reign of Fire....and liked it a lot. I'll get the DVD.

amish