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I’ve been to plenty of screenings in the past of movies that were out for over a month, and they would feature trailers for movies that were already in theaters. When I saw GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY 2, I actually only caught when it had already been out for seven weeks, so I’d see trailers for movies like WONDER WOMAN, THE MUMMY, BAYWATCH, all titles that were already running for awhile.
Will Superman make it to $600 million? I would think that having it available to rent or watch at home starting tomorrow will make that unlikely to happen.
Interesting to watch how Hollywood adjusts to a reduced return on their investments and films. The budgets of films will need to adjust to the new reality that billion dollar films are unlikely to occur. How much tightening and what gets tightened?
Amazing that a film that makes $580 million is seen as a modest success. Studios will not continue to lose money. Will DC adjust their future film schedule? If Superman tops out under $600 million, what hope is there for Clayface or Supergirl?
I don’t think it’ll matter when you account for things like home media, merchandising etc.
But I’m not blind and can acknowledge financially this isn’t a rip roaring success (it’s actually underperformed quite dramatically in its own way, although it’s not an embarrassing failure. Superman’s non US takings a a bit thin, and I think it’s due to many things, including a lack of quality/consistent films in the franchise. Plenty to expand on though). They’ll go ahead with Gunn’s DC. To be honest, I think the test will be seeing how Batman Part 2 does (first one was a pretty big success for what it was and when it was released, with room to expand given a good sequel). I know it’s not connected to Gunn’s DC but it gives the DC brand that superficial boost. Most viewers don’t care about any universe distinction here, and as weird as it sounds, yes, more acknowledge if it’s ‘DC’ or ‘Marvel’ nowadays. And everyone loves a Batman film, especially at the start of Autumn/after a long summer (not dissimilar to Bond).
I’m from the US.
I think its success is mostly attributed to being domestic hit, as it has currently accumulated $334m in North America.
The solution is tighter, locked shooting scripts (at a smaller scale), get back into pre-vis so your VFX team has time to develop quality assets at an affordable rate, not a last minute expensive patch job like most Hollywood films have ended up with.
The first X-Men, for example, is very humble, and by X3 they're carrying a bridge across the bay in full VFX glory. That's how this works.. prove your concept, build up the budget on the back of success. You don't have to make the first one such a big expensive thing.
You certainly can’t make a Superman film on the budget of that first X-Men, which was fairly mid-budget for its time.
I think, after this performance, $225m is clearly too much for a Superman movie, if they don't make money back.
One of the key complaints in this film is the lack of grounded (cheaper) elements, like more Daily Planet staff and activities (not putting them in a CGI space ship might help), also maybe Batman. Street level Superman? Go back to the farm. All of this MoS does right, it was rewarded.
As much as I didn’t enjoy this latest Supernan, I’m glad you’re not in charge of any of this 😉
You got everything you wanted and it wasn't enough.
Maybe the secret to finding some places to go back to practical effects?
I hear the film will turn a modest profit. That is arguably the biggest property you have as a studio, or second biggest if you think Batman is bigger. If Superman can turn modest profit with $590 million. What chance does Clayface or Supergirl have? I would hope their budgets aren't as big as Superman.
Just watched Nobody last night for the first time. The budget of the film was $16 million and I was entertained and felt like the money is up on the screen. Film made $55 million in the pandemic not bad. But that type of film making is perhaps a lost art.
Depends on the character really. For example Todd Phillips’ first Joker film was done on a budget of $50 million - but I’d say the Joker is a character who can justify having such a low budget for his film. Superman on the other hand practically demands a bigger budget.
Having said that, people who insist that the film is flop are wrong. I’m sure to some executives it’s a bit of a disappointing performance - but it passed its breaking point as MakeShift mentioned above and considering everything that was going against this film - the controversy behind Cavill’s departure, the receptions of the last few Superman films, the damage done to the DC brand and the general feeling of “superhero fatigue” - I’m frankly amazed the film made as much as it did - and I sure as hell wouldn’t have thought the film would walk away as the highest grossing comic book film of the year. The legs on this movie are really impressive - so I wouldn’t go all doom and gloom on future DC projects. I think the brand still has a lot of work to do winning back audiences after the failure of the DCEU - but it’s in good hands now.
Decisions like announcing this is separate from the very popular Batman that made far more money was really boneheaded in hindsight.
That’s pretty much it. The way to tell if an audience likes the movie isn’t by how big its box office opening was, but how it performed after the fact. THE FANTASTIC FOUR for example opened just about as big as Supes, except it had bigger drops between the weeks that it now looks like it’s only going to make $250m domestic when all is said and done. Meanwhile Superman’s looks to be ending between $340m-$350m. That’s VERY good given the context of comic book movies today.
Why on earth would that matter? It was always going to be its own thing, and you can’t exactly just surprise people by not revealing vital information about your film beforehand.
I think that’s absolute nonsense considering how well integrated practical effects are with CGI in a lot of big movies nowadays. If anything we know much more about practical effects nowadays. If you want to look at how they achieved a good bit of this movie, here’s a good video to start
It depends on the movie, but I can see the logic in developing smaller budget movies with smaller characters. Lower risks and higher rewards. Not guarantee of success by any means (Clayface isn’t Joker), but there’s not really any formula for success.
Superman’s not like Batman which has had several recent iterations in film, video games, and tv. He’s somewhat of an underused character. It takes time to build up a reputation like that for a superhero, and DC (owing to many poorly received prior films) don’t have the brand recognition of quality Marvel do.
Simply put, few outside of America care about Superman anyway. Honestly, I didn’t prior to this film (many of the films, even the later Reeve ones, to me are notoriously bad, and that’s the reputation Superman was dealing with).
It’s somewhat of an underwhelming box office draw, but it’s really not a disaster. There’s no real way they can course correct (can’t exactly return to Snyder territory) so the way of looking at it is they now have to grow this new DC brand. It’s a major reason they put so much into advertisement, to grow Superman’s brand in the long run. Not an easy job.
This is what has happened with Superman. I think Gunn is savvy enough to know that reaching for a billion dollars wasn’t going to happen, which is why $500m was made the goal. Right now Superman and DC as a whole needs to win back audiences, and part of the reason it had strong legs is because of its strong word of mouth. LucknFate claims nobody liked this film, but the numbers don’t support that. Most people who had actually gone to see the flick mostly liked it, enough that resulted in small drops between box office weekends.
If Gunn keeps delivering consistently then we’ll definitely see an uptick. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and the MCU didn’t see its first billion dollars hit until six films in. We just have to see how things pan out and hope Gunn/WB avoids the kind of mistakes Snyder/WB made a decade ago.
At last, we might be getting someone who gets Superman, after Donner. Let's be honest, some of his viewpoints were flawed too (you can tell Tom Mankiewicz wrote it, Lois Lane does become a bit of a bimbo when the earthquake hits and she's out of gas. Yet she thinks that the car will magically start). There are still a lot of lessons to be learned in Superman from a cinematic viewpoint. Everyone here knows my main problems with cinematic Superman: Stop overusing Lex and Zod, or nonsense original villains, WB. There is little more that you can do with them in terms of evil schemes!
Here's the good news: it seems that Gunn truly wants Brainiac for his DCU future, (as did Donner, Singer and Snyder).
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/articles/superman-making-documentary-hints-super-200033805.html
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/james-gunn-peacemaker-dcu-superman-saga-production-1236344333/
So, it seems that Superman's cinematic future is in safe hands for now. I have some story ideas to pitch if they want to hear them. Also, we're getting Supergirl next year. So we may see David Corenswet back as Superman sooner than we think!
With Superman? Lex, and Zod… I guess you could count Doomsday, even though it was basically a weird zombified/mutated Zod mixed with Lex’s blood for some dang reason.
I do give credit to Gunn that even though Lex is reused he at least brings us two heavies for Superman to go toe to toe with Ultraman and Engineer.
At this rate, we should definitely be seeing Brainiac and Metallo soon, who both should have been used as early as the Reeve films.