I didn't realize this movie had $175 million budget. That's a lot for a PG-13 film, let alone R. There is no way it will recover from that deficit during a pandemic. What a shame.
One of the HBO Max guys said that the viewership was very impressive, but whether that means anything or is even true remains to be seen.
I watched the video earlier. I find myself agreeing with a lot of what they're saying, and their point about it playing things straight is one that should not be ignored. More comic book movies need to do that.
Problem is they dont rent it out on HBO Max. Its just there for free if you have the subscription.
So its only new subscriptions that would matter financially.
Financially speaking though, what a terrible model. I thought Disney plus was bad for allowing rentals of new releases. HBOs way just seems Suicide (no pun intended).
At least allow it in theatres for a month before putting it on your streaming service. Jeez.
The old model worked just fine though. Look at Fast 9, its made tons at the box office, and will make tons more later on streaming.
It's good to know that streaming viewership has been good. I've been curious how that would work for benefiting the success of the film. I don't know how many views would make up for a deficit in box office receipts, for example. But I guess I'll just cross my fingers and hope it does well enough.
I found it particularly amusing that the studios don't want to sell the rights to even the most obscure superheros because they never know what riches they will bring. They certainly come in handy for James Gunn films. Haha..
It's not a bad model or unprofitable. If it was they wouldn't do it. Releasing it to streaming straight away makes a return while saving them outlay. Let's look for example at Disney Plus. Scarlet Johanson's contract pays her (along with all other key actors) a percentage based on box office. It's been revealed by someone who knows her contract and the drop in box office due to releasing to streaming that this cost her pày of around $50m (hense why she is suing). Usually streaming services don't offer viewers numbers but Disney did reveal that BW rental netted them $30m on top of the $80M domestic box office. That isn't counting what ever new subscriptions they got. Let's say they got a modest 200,000 subscribers join because of BW. So they make a little less but pay a Lot making it fR more profits.
In 2020 Netflix added 26 million subscriber taking their numbers to over 200,m. At $7.99 a month 200 million subscribers means a monthy earnings of $1.6Billion.
HBO Max has reportedly 47 million subscribers innthe US and a Total of 67 million. With their charge of $9.99 they bring in $1.9 billion a month. Netflix had a total net income (profit after expenses) of over 2.76 billion U.S. dollars in 2020 wNt a larger piece of that pie.
Faulty logic. They are experimenting during the pandemic.
In fact they delayed all these movies from releasing last year. That tells us they were never going to forego the theatrical release completely because that would be a guaranteed bomb.
That's just playing dirty though. It has nothing to do with the benefits of streaming. They simply duped her. And like you said she's suing which could cost them much more.
There's a reason they only gave the figures for the opening weekend, then went quiet.
This model is missing them out on repeat viewings at the theatre, and also massively increasing piracy.
F9 on the other hand, made massively more at the box office, and will continue to bring in the dough in digital rentals/sales later on, and even more dough from whatever streaming service it ends up on.
As for subscribers, you would get them anyway for the content. BW will be on Disney Plus in 3 months regardless.
Having said that, I already stated Disney plus made some financial sense by charging the rentals. HBO Max isn't even doing that, whilst indirectly making a perfect pirate copy available worldwide (HBO Max isn't avaiable worldwide.
It obviously benefits HBO Max who needs a lot more subscribers to compete with Disney Plus.
But no rentals means the movie itself is clearly going to flop.
Release in theatres first, then make available on HBO Max 1-3 months after. That would still bring in the new subscribers, but without dampening the box office. And they have learned from this botched experiment:
I think they're going to end up doing a combination, depending of location. What's happening now is testing the markets.
[Hypothetical] if they find out that in London there's more money to be made in theaters than streaming, then there will be longer theater releases and a delayed streaming release. If in Houston they find out that Texans hate going to theaters and would rather stay put at home on their fat asses to watch a film, low theater release with opening day streaming.
End of day, they're going to do whatever brings them the most profits.
Not sure if it was pointed out earlier, but the character Bloodsport was added as a current replacement for Deadshot. Idris Elba was gonna replace Will Smith as Deadshot at first, but they put Bloodsport in his place in part so Smith could have a shot at playing Deadshot again in the future. Smart move, and Bloodsport was a cool character too, so it worked out.
Also agree that this was by far the best of Margot's Harley, though not saying much. King Shark I expectedly loved too.
KMC Community Forums
Aug 8th, 2021 10:46 PM
Exactly.
