The Marvels - Nov 10
Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes - Nov 17
Trolls Band Together - Nov 17
Wish - Nov 22
Napoleon - Nov 22
Poor Things - Dec 8
Wonka - Dec 15
Aquaman 2 - Dec 22
Migration - Dec 22
The Color Purple - Dec 25
Argyll - Feb 2
Madame Web - Feb 14
Field
Hunger Games looks like it may come in at the low end of a projected $50-60 million for its opening weekend.
Looks like it may end up behind The Marvels. Trolls at $30 million.
Box Office: ‘Hunger Games’ Prequel Opening to $45M-$50M, ‘The Marvels’ Suffers Historic Drop
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/mo...235663158/amp/
The big story of the weekend is Marvels absolutely tanking in its second weekend. A $10 mil haul is a epic drop, one of the worst ever by a large, mainstream movie. This is a scream in the face of Kevin Feigie and Marvel that what they are doing is not work at all. I now think Marvels may only earn around $100 mill total.
It would not be at all surprising for Marvel to go back to the drawing board and re-think everything... in fact, there are reports they are doing that already.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
I saw the Marvels last week. Had immensely low expectations, so it was a low bar for the movie to exceed them, which it did, but not by much.
One of the real problems is that I had not seen Ms. Marvel on Disney. And so I had no idea her back story. It's a bad decision to have a major movie where you needed to have seen something on a streaming platform to fully understand it. I actually kind of liked her, but the "oh you're my hero" stick got old quick, and it's already been done (much better) with the Spiderman remake. And her parents were funny for about 5 minutes, and then I just wanted them off the screen completely.
Also, the villain was a massive YAWN and you never understood how she would even have a chance against Captain Marvel, who is one of the strongest super heroes ever.
And don't get me started on the mid credit scenes. No spoilers, but man oh man are they beating a dead horse with this kind of stuff.
Up until Infinity Wars and Endgame, Marvel could barely miss. They made some fantastic movies, including numerous ones that brought in tons of characters and story arcs and were engaging, funny and an absolute blast. Since then? Yuck.
Black Widow - bad/borderline terrible
Ten Rings - I kind of liked. Saved by the humor.
Eternals - bad/borderline terrible (saved only by a cool concept of how you beat someone like a Superman)
No Way Home - good.
Dr Strange - bad. Would be borderline terrible except for one part, which was then ruined for me by how quickly everyone was killed.
Thor: terrible
Black Panther - pretty bad (I liked it a lot less than most - dumb back story, unbelievable villain)
Ant Man - bad/borderline terrible
Guardians - easily the best of the bunch
Marvels - bad/borderline terrible
That's 7 swings and misses, with 1 really good movie, 1 pretty good movie and 1 that was decent.
Honestly, at this point they may be better served starting over with reboots of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America.
So, is this turning into the least bad 5 movies of the winter?
I'm beginning to wonder about the retirement of Bob Iger, the short but potentially impactful stint of Bob Chapek as CEO, and the pandemic have done to Disney's ability to produce content. Plus, the potential impact of the streaming pkatform, Disney +, on all of the above.
Was something like Wish greenlighted during Chapek's time or does it pre-date his tenure?
Development on Wish began in 2018, but it is not clear how fast the film moved from concept to script writing to animation production. It is also not clear where along that timeline the wheels began to come off. Iger left the CEO chair in Feb of 2020. I think it is pretty reasonable to cast Wish as a film made primarily under Chapek's tenure.
That said, I am far from convinced that the CEO of Disney has all that much to say about the production efforts of Walt Disney Animation Studio. I guess they might get updates and likely see early cuts of the film, but this isn't a level of control like Kevin Feigie or other prominent Hollywood EPs.
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
In this case, I'm thinking less of Chapek than of Kareem Daniel, whom he placed in charge of Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution.
"Financial executives, not those who developed the programming, were in the driver’s seat."
https://www.latimes.com/entertainmen...bob-chapek-era
Hunger Games - Nov 17 - $98,373,951
The Marvels - Nov 10 - $76,853,446
Trolls Band Together - Nov 17 - $63,298,460
Napoleon - Nov 22 - $32,500,000
Wish - Nov 22 - $31,700,000
What movie has had the lowest total and still managed to make the top 5? Have a feeling this contest will be breaking that record.
I can't speak for everyone, but Oppenheimer sucked me into thinking Napoleon had a chance.