The bell's already been rung
August 12, 2016 1:38 PM Subscribe
An Open Letter To Warner Bros CEO Kevin Tsujihara About Layoffs, Zack Snyder, and Donuts from a very disgruntled former employee.
'This letter, posted on the website Pajiba, isn’t “shots fired.” It’s “The nuclear codes have been entered.”'
'This letter, posted on the website Pajiba, isn’t “shots fired.” It’s “The nuclear codes have been entered.”'
Suicide squad was so painfully bad.
posted by varion at 1:55 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by varion at 1:55 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh daaaaammmm.
posted by pipoquinha at 1:56 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by pipoquinha at 1:56 PM on August 12, 2016
I am sad, but unsurprised, to hear that Wonder Woman is not going to be good.
posted by emjaybee at 1:56 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
posted by emjaybee at 1:56 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
Probably because they make a ton of money, even if it's not as much as they expected. 1.5 billion worldwide for the superman and the SvB movies combined, that ain't nothin. If Marvel hadn't been knocking it out of the park on a regular basis, the DC movies would be considered pretty damn successful.
I kind of liked Singer's Superman Returns, and it made way less than Snyder's, which I kind of liked, too.
posted by Huck500 at 2:00 PM on August 12, 2016
I kind of liked Singer's Superman Returns, and it made way less than Snyder's, which I kind of liked, too.
posted by Huck500 at 2:00 PM on August 12, 2016
God damn that was great. Especially:
You and your studio are the biggest lesson about life one can learn: The top screws up and the bottom suffers. Peter Jackson phones it in and a marketing supervisor has to figure out a plan B for house payments.
Wooo Christ.
posted by middleclasstool at 2:03 PM on August 12, 2016 [43 favorites]
You and your studio are the biggest lesson about life one can learn: The top screws up and the bottom suffers. Peter Jackson phones it in and a marketing supervisor has to figure out a plan B for house payments.
Wooo Christ.
posted by middleclasstool at 2:03 PM on August 12, 2016 [43 favorites]
The beauty of the Internet is that we can hear about this stuff as it happens rather than waiting a decade for someone to write a tell-all book after the fact.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:03 PM on August 12, 2016 [16 favorites]
posted by tobascodagama at 2:03 PM on August 12, 2016 [16 favorites]
I'm not sure what insider info she has that Wonder Woman is a fiasco in waiting, but she's wrong about a couple of other easily verifiable points: Man of Steel wasn't a "box office failure"--it made $668 million on a budget of $225 million--and similarly BvS has made $872.7 million from $250 million. (Whether or not they've turned a profit is a mystery lost in the labyrinthine depths of studio accounting; I read that BvS had to make $800 million to break even, but it's done that.) Those aren't Avengers numbers, but they're respectable. Similarly, Suicide Squad broke August opening weekend numbers, and has pulled in $335.9 million on a smaller budget than the above two movies. That's not to say that they're at all good--MoS certainly wasn't, and I haven't seen the other two--but she's worried about the ship sinking, and if there's one thing that's going to stop WB from sliding under the waves, it's this franchise.
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Halloween Jack at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I kind of liked Singer's Superman Returns, and it made way less than Snyder's, which I kind of liked, too.
Heresy. Burn. Singer's Superman was boring but it wasn't bad, just not very good. Man of Steel was garbage that butchered the character. Snyder is a director-shaped hole where a filmmaker should be.
posted by the legendary esquilax at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2016 [15 favorites]
Heresy. Burn. Singer's Superman was boring but it wasn't bad, just not very good. Man of Steel was garbage that butchered the character. Snyder is a director-shaped hole where a filmmaker should be.
posted by the legendary esquilax at 2:05 PM on August 12, 2016 [15 favorites]
Why is Zack Snyder still directing any DC movies?
My understanding is that part of the reason is that most of his movies have delivered satisfactorily at the box office, at least well enough to justify their existence. The other reason is that there are very very few directors that have the skillset necessary to listen to and incorporate constant studio meddling into the already insane-to-navigate task of directing a massive effects-driven nine-figure-budget movie. He plays well with the suits, and I've never made a movie, but I know from my experience in corporate life that the larger the company, the more that kind of thing is rewarded.
posted by middleclasstool at 2:10 PM on August 12, 2016 [13 favorites]
My understanding is that part of the reason is that most of his movies have delivered satisfactorily at the box office, at least well enough to justify their existence. The other reason is that there are very very few directors that have the skillset necessary to listen to and incorporate constant studio meddling into the already insane-to-navigate task of directing a massive effects-driven nine-figure-budget movie. He plays well with the suits, and I've never made a movie, but I know from my experience in corporate life that the larger the company, the more that kind of thing is rewarded.
posted by middleclasstool at 2:10 PM on August 12, 2016 [13 favorites]
I'll go out on a limb and say I've liked-to-loved all of Snyders films except Sucker Punch, although I haven't seen BvS. I thought Watchmen was really great, and the others are satisfyingly entertaining.
Also, Ang Lee's Hulk is the best superhero movie and the Wachowski sisters' Speed Racer is just all kinds of amazing.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
The guy who loves bad movies, I guess.
posted by Huck500 at 2:19 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
Also, Ang Lee's Hulk is the best superhero movie and the Wachowski sisters' Speed Racer is just all kinds of amazing.
Yeah, I'm that guy.
The guy who loves bad movies, I guess.
posted by Huck500 at 2:19 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
Why isn't there a link to the actual letter in the FP? It's here for anyone else looking for it.
posted by ElKevbo at 2:22 PM on August 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by ElKevbo at 2:22 PM on August 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
Imagine how much money they could make if those films were actually any good!
posted by blue_beetle at 2:23 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by blue_beetle at 2:23 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
There's not much fire to this smoke other than "I don't like you."
posted by selfnoise at 2:26 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by selfnoise at 2:26 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
Nah, Kevin's doing a great job. He knows that comics fans will go and see every movie about the characters they love, even if they are bad movies. They'll even go to the sequel in the hope that it won't be bad. He knows his product and target market perfectly. He'll probably use this open letter as evidence that he deserves a compensation hike.
posted by scruss at 2:30 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by scruss at 2:30 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Given what we know of Suicide Squad's production, it's pretty clear that the studio is panicking, despite the decent box office returns of the three major releases. Reshooting a majority of the film and having three different editing houses come in to cobble it all together isn't the sort of thing that a calm, collected organization does.
posted by codacorolla at 2:33 PM on August 12, 2016 [13 favorites]
posted by codacorolla at 2:33 PM on August 12, 2016 [13 favorites]
The entire letter is at the bottom of the linked article and I hope people are actually reading it before calling it wrong. The letter doesn't just say "Why are making bad movies? I don't happen to enjoy these films, you're a bad person."
The full line referencing Man of Steel is this:
"I actually started forming it in my head after Man of Steel was a box office failure instead of the modern classic tentpole you were expecting."
It may have made back its budget but it was not the successful franchise set up they needed. None of WB's attempts at nurturing their properties into ongoing popular ventures has been successful and the problem with that is that the people who pay the consequences are the people who didn't have any blame. It's like I inherited an apartment building and nobody wants to live there cause I keep renovating the apartments into ugly, leaky broken travesties that people don't want to live in. But it's not me who suffers, it's the people I hired to implement my terrible ideas. Of course everyone should be mad at me. People needed those apartments and I could be providing good steady work but instead I'm fucking around.
posted by bleep at 2:42 PM on August 12, 2016 [26 favorites]
The full line referencing Man of Steel is this:
"I actually started forming it in my head after Man of Steel was a box office failure instead of the modern classic tentpole you were expecting."
It may have made back its budget but it was not the successful franchise set up they needed. None of WB's attempts at nurturing their properties into ongoing popular ventures has been successful and the problem with that is that the people who pay the consequences are the people who didn't have any blame. It's like I inherited an apartment building and nobody wants to live there cause I keep renovating the apartments into ugly, leaky broken travesties that people don't want to live in. But it's not me who suffers, it's the people I hired to implement my terrible ideas. Of course everyone should be mad at me. People needed those apartments and I could be providing good steady work but instead I'm fucking around.
posted by bleep at 2:42 PM on August 12, 2016 [26 favorites]
It's like you know we're not just talking about works of fiction, and whether people think it's good fiction or not. It's real people's pay checks and that should matter to the people at the top making the same mistakes over and over and not seeming to care.
posted by bleep at 2:44 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by bleep at 2:44 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
I loved Suicide Squad. A complete turnaround from the dark boring struggle every DC movie has been since Heath Ledger died. It has good review scores from actual film-goers, even if the critics hated it.
posted by w0mbat at 2:44 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by w0mbat at 2:44 PM on August 12, 2016
Halloween Jack: I'm not sure what insider info she has that Wonder Woman is a fiasco in waiting, but she's wrong about a couple of other easily verifiable points: Man of Steel wasn't a "box office failure"--it made $668 million on a budget of $225 million--and similarly BvS has made $872.7 million from $250 million. (Whether or not they've turned a profit is a mystery lost in the labyrinthine depths of studio accounting; I read that BvS had to make $800 million to break even, but it's done that.)
Man of Steel had an estimated profit to WB of a measly 42 million dollars according to Deadline.com after factoring in marketing, payouts to theaters, etc. So while it was profitable, it probably was WAY below what they wanted. For comparison, Iron Man 3's profit was over $391M according to that same article. And everyone believes BvS did WORSE profitability-wise than MoS.
If this is all correct, I don't know anyone who would consider $84M dollar profit on two films containing 2-3 (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) of the biggest superheroes in the history of superheroes anywhere near "respectable."
posted by tittergrrl at 3:12 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
Man of Steel had an estimated profit to WB of a measly 42 million dollars according to Deadline.com after factoring in marketing, payouts to theaters, etc. So while it was profitable, it probably was WAY below what they wanted. For comparison, Iron Man 3's profit was over $391M according to that same article. And everyone believes BvS did WORSE profitability-wise than MoS.
If this is all correct, I don't know anyone who would consider $84M dollar profit on two films containing 2-3 (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman) of the biggest superheroes in the history of superheroes anywhere near "respectable."
posted by tittergrrl at 3:12 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
Yeah, Man of Steel didn’t make $668 million in profit at all. Like AAA games tentpole movies cost more to market than they do to make & unlike the production costs, which seem to be semi-public these days, the marketing budget is all off-balance sheet.
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if WB spent half a billion $ marketing Man of Steel. The fact that none of these movies have flopped yet must be a great source of relief to WB execs but at the rate they’re going one of them is going to fail horribly & the costs are going to be huge.
posted by pharm at 3:25 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
It wouldn’t surprise me at all if WB spent half a billion $ marketing Man of Steel. The fact that none of these movies have flopped yet must be a great source of relief to WB execs but at the rate they’re going one of them is going to fail horribly & the costs are going to be huge.
posted by pharm at 3:25 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Also, Ang Lee's Hulk is the best superhero movie and the Wachowski sisters' Speed Racer is just all kinds of amazing.
Oddly I agree with both of these statements while intensely disliking Zach Snyder.
posted by atoxyl at 3:37 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Oddly I agree with both of these statements while intensely disliking Zach Snyder.
posted by atoxyl at 3:37 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
"My understanding is that part of the reason is that most of his movies have delivered satisfactorily at the box office, at least well enough to justify their existence. The other reason is that there are very very few directors that have the skillset necessary to listen to and incorporate constant studio meddling into the already insane-to-navigate task of directing a massive effects-driven nine-figure-budget movie."
Yeah, this is probably it. Making these modern tentpole movies has be insane. There's so much of everything, and so many people that have to be organized and working in the same direction, on schedule. For Warner Brothers, Snyder's organizational skills might be as or even more important than his creative vision. As long as he doesn't lose them money.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:38 PM on August 12, 2016
Yeah, this is probably it. Making these modern tentpole movies has be insane. There's so much of everything, and so many people that have to be organized and working in the same direction, on schedule. For Warner Brothers, Snyder's organizational skills might be as or even more important than his creative vision. As long as he doesn't lose them money.
posted by Kevin Street at 3:38 PM on August 12, 2016
Both Man of Steel and BvS underperformed and are perceived as box office failures within Hollywood. WB needed BvS to break 400m domestic and a billion dollars worldwide, although that assumes a $250m budget, which from what I've heard is much lower than what it actually ended up being.
I'm not sure I'd take the letter writer's concern about Wonder Woman at face value -- that's literally the only property I've heard positive things about, and they haven't even had an assembly screening yet, so it's premature for someone at the studio to be worried about it (not that that's ever stopped anyone at a studio from freaking out before).
As for why Snyder's still directing (and let's also place the blame on Goyer, who is hugely responsible for this mess)...
Justice League literally started filming a week after Batman V Superman came out. They can't fire him in the middle of filming, it's just not feasible, and if they let him go, who're they gonna replace him with? Who would step in to that job? The whole division was run by Snyder, so everyone there has allegiances to him -- and you can't bring in an outside person at this late date, not on a $300m movie. That'd be like Obama dying and the Mayor of Vancouver succeeding him. Think on how big a deal it was when Edgar Wright left ANT-MAN -- and that was for a secondary movie in an already-very-stable franchise.
What they should've done is once they saw an early cut of BvS is delay the start of Justice League to take a beat and figure out how to right the ship - probably starting with cutting the budget in half - but no one at the studio can act like an adult. They don't have a Kevin Feige or an Amy Pascal sort, who can hold a creative person's feet to the fire and force them to make hard calls. Instead what they did was they waited until BvS had already come out and was a massive disappointment for them at the box office, and so they finally buckled and brought on Geoff Johns and Jon Berg (who's a WB exec) to take over the department from Snyder. This was presented as letting Snyder focus on directing while they focused on producing, but this was really a power play, pushing Snyder aside and giving Johns the reins so he can hopefully get the franchise back to solvency. It was the least gutsy move, but at least it was a move.
This reminds me of the Sony email leak, where a lot of people wondered just why Amy Pascal got paid so much money, when it seemed like she didn't do much. I don't know exactly what Pascal would've done if she were in charge of WB, but she had the wherewithal to cut the chord on Soderbergh's MONEYBALL. Actually, my six year-old could probably do a better job running Warner Bros than Tsujihara, whose chief skill is deciding what's the proper ratio of cotton candy stands to roller coasters at a Six Flags.
posted by incessant at 3:45 PM on August 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
I'm not sure I'd take the letter writer's concern about Wonder Woman at face value -- that's literally the only property I've heard positive things about, and they haven't even had an assembly screening yet, so it's premature for someone at the studio to be worried about it (not that that's ever stopped anyone at a studio from freaking out before).
As for why Snyder's still directing (and let's also place the blame on Goyer, who is hugely responsible for this mess)...
Justice League literally started filming a week after Batman V Superman came out. They can't fire him in the middle of filming, it's just not feasible, and if they let him go, who're they gonna replace him with? Who would step in to that job? The whole division was run by Snyder, so everyone there has allegiances to him -- and you can't bring in an outside person at this late date, not on a $300m movie. That'd be like Obama dying and the Mayor of Vancouver succeeding him. Think on how big a deal it was when Edgar Wright left ANT-MAN -- and that was for a secondary movie in an already-very-stable franchise.
What they should've done is once they saw an early cut of BvS is delay the start of Justice League to take a beat and figure out how to right the ship - probably starting with cutting the budget in half - but no one at the studio can act like an adult. They don't have a Kevin Feige or an Amy Pascal sort, who can hold a creative person's feet to the fire and force them to make hard calls. Instead what they did was they waited until BvS had already come out and was a massive disappointment for them at the box office, and so they finally buckled and brought on Geoff Johns and Jon Berg (who's a WB exec) to take over the department from Snyder. This was presented as letting Snyder focus on directing while they focused on producing, but this was really a power play, pushing Snyder aside and giving Johns the reins so he can hopefully get the franchise back to solvency. It was the least gutsy move, but at least it was a move.
This reminds me of the Sony email leak, where a lot of people wondered just why Amy Pascal got paid so much money, when it seemed like she didn't do much. I don't know exactly what Pascal would've done if she were in charge of WB, but she had the wherewithal to cut the chord on Soderbergh's MONEYBALL. Actually, my six year-old could probably do a better job running Warner Bros than Tsujihara, whose chief skill is deciding what's the proper ratio of cotton candy stands to roller coasters at a Six Flags.
posted by incessant at 3:45 PM on August 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
There’s not much fire to this smoke other than “I don't like you.”
Yeah, this is a rant from a former employee. There’s no secrets beyond “Wonder Woman will be bad” which would seem to just be meeting expectations at this point. I suppose if the company responds it’ll be news, but why would they?
posted by Going To Maine at 3:47 PM on August 12, 2016
Yeah, this is a rant from a former employee. There’s no secrets beyond “Wonder Woman will be bad” which would seem to just be meeting expectations at this point. I suppose if the company responds it’ll be news, but why would they?
posted by Going To Maine at 3:47 PM on August 12, 2016
I was given to understand there would be donuts in here.
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 3:59 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
posted by under_petticoat_rule at 3:59 PM on August 12, 2016 [8 favorites]
Suicide squad was so painfully bad.
Warner Brothers doesn't care about that.
Suicide Squad did $135 million its first weekend. That's what Warner Brothers cares about.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:17 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
Warner Brothers doesn't care about that.
Suicide Squad did $135 million its first weekend. That's what Warner Brothers cares about.
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 4:17 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
I loved Suicide Squad. A complete turnaround from the dark boring struggle every DC movie has been since Heath Ledger died. It has good review scores from actual film-goers, even if the critics hated it.
I assume that anyone showing up to Suicide Squad after Man of Steel and BvS:DoJ is going to be just delighted by it.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:20 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I assume that anyone showing up to Suicide Squad after Man of Steel and BvS:DoJ is going to be just delighted by it.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 4:20 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I think it might make more sense to blame David S. Goyer as much as Snyder. Both Goyer and Snyder seem to be of those artists who do well when they're kept under supervision and some limits are set (or the budget is limited, or whatever), but produces shit if he's given too much freedom and is allowed to do everything themselves and they start buying into their own hype (see also George Lucas and Neill Blomkamp). So Goyer wrote Blade, Dark City, and the Nolan Batman movies, which were good, and Jumper and Man of Steel, which were ok, but let him loose, and he makes Blade: Trinity and The Fucking Unborn. Similarly, Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake is great, 300 is pretty good (if you can ignore the fascism it inherits from Frank Miller), and Watchmen is also pretty great, but Sucker Punch is a disaster, Man of Steel is ok, and BvS is not so good.
Let screenwriters write, directors direct, and producers produce, I think, and don't let someone take on one job based on their track record in another one. Those are different skills altogether. And have some responsible adults supervise everything.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:21 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Let screenwriters write, directors direct, and producers produce, I think, and don't let someone take on one job based on their track record in another one. Those are different skills altogether. And have some responsible adults supervise everything.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:21 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
There is no serious dispute over the tire fire that is Warner Brothers' use of DC.
It is not good commercially when your movies are critically savaged and audienced meh'd. Superman and Batman are worth less than they were a year ago. Wonder Woman ain't looking great. Anyone who is optimistic about Aqua Man or the Green Lantern, probably shouldn't be.
Contrast this to Disney's tending to Marvel. A decade ago, you had to be a legitimate comic book nerd to have any connection to Iron Man, Thor or Captain America. They're worth billions each. Three years ago you had to be a super esoteric-specializing nerd to have any connection the Guardians of the Galaxy. Billions more today. Disney is so good at it that Sony realized they were better off having half of Disney's Spider-Man than 100% of their own Spider-Man; doubtless the guys in Rupert Murdoch's Excel dungeon are reaching the same conclusion about owning half of Disney's Fantastic Four. (But for tax issues, I think that Murdoch would be swapping X-Men, the FF, and the original Star Wars trilogy to Disney to become the number one shareholder, or maybe heads up for ESPN.)
Look at DC on live action television. Reasonably well liked by critics and those who watch the shows, but every last one has ratings that can barely be seen with a microscope and all but Gotham air on the least prestigious lowest-carried network around, the CW. Super-Girl got up and running on CBS -- massive audience -- but has now been exiled to the CW too. For Disney's they've got the Netflix critical acclaim / audience beloving and some mass market acclaim for Agents of Shield on ABC. For DC -- the marketing and creative focus is entirely on a super-young audience which is basically 1998's demographic strategy calling; television now makes money by attracting a broad age base with a hefty dose of high income people in their 30s and older. And moreover, look at Snyder's absolute insistence that the DC television shows have no continuity with and frankly be dis-synergistic with the features, whereas Disney has a very thoughtful and pragmatic approach, looking for ways for the features and TV to help each other, but not demanding it, either.
posted by MattD at 4:27 PM on August 12, 2016 [21 favorites]
It is not good commercially when your movies are critically savaged and audienced meh'd. Superman and Batman are worth less than they were a year ago. Wonder Woman ain't looking great. Anyone who is optimistic about Aqua Man or the Green Lantern, probably shouldn't be.
Contrast this to Disney's tending to Marvel. A decade ago, you had to be a legitimate comic book nerd to have any connection to Iron Man, Thor or Captain America. They're worth billions each. Three years ago you had to be a super esoteric-specializing nerd to have any connection the Guardians of the Galaxy. Billions more today. Disney is so good at it that Sony realized they were better off having half of Disney's Spider-Man than 100% of their own Spider-Man; doubtless the guys in Rupert Murdoch's Excel dungeon are reaching the same conclusion about owning half of Disney's Fantastic Four. (But for tax issues, I think that Murdoch would be swapping X-Men, the FF, and the original Star Wars trilogy to Disney to become the number one shareholder, or maybe heads up for ESPN.)
Look at DC on live action television. Reasonably well liked by critics and those who watch the shows, but every last one has ratings that can barely be seen with a microscope and all but Gotham air on the least prestigious lowest-carried network around, the CW. Super-Girl got up and running on CBS -- massive audience -- but has now been exiled to the CW too. For Disney's they've got the Netflix critical acclaim / audience beloving and some mass market acclaim for Agents of Shield on ABC. For DC -- the marketing and creative focus is entirely on a super-young audience which is basically 1998's demographic strategy calling; television now makes money by attracting a broad age base with a hefty dose of high income people in their 30s and older. And moreover, look at Snyder's absolute insistence that the DC television shows have no continuity with and frankly be dis-synergistic with the features, whereas Disney has a very thoughtful and pragmatic approach, looking for ways for the features and TV to help each other, but not demanding it, either.
posted by MattD at 4:27 PM on August 12, 2016 [21 favorites]
Goyer was essentially removed from the DC creative team when Chris Terrio came on to rewrite Batman V Superman. I agree he was part of the problem on Man of Steel, but he doesn't bear much blame for everything that's followed.
posted by incessant at 4:41 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by incessant at 4:41 PM on August 12, 2016
I actually really, really like Gotham. I wish that they could make a feature length film with that same spirit, because it combines cartoon reality, with fairly good "dark" material (although it's dark like Vincent Price is dark, not dark like Nolanverse Batman is dark), with goofy and self aware moments, with fantastic and stylized production design, and acting that ranges from serviceable to very good. It's everything that's fun and worthwhile about comic books, in the opinion of someone who's fairly sick of comic book movies.
DC actually does have all of my favorite comic book properties: G-Mo's Animal Man, Invisibles, and Doom Patrol, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, the 90s run of Demon. They've already ruined Watchmen by giving it to Snyder, but I think that there is actually a good film somewhere between the covers of the book.
I guess what I'm saying is that I wish they would let comic book movies just be weird. Comic format storytelling is great because it allows for visual / temporal / fourth wall weirdness in its artistry, concepts, and design. Trank's Fantastic Four screenplay apparently played with a lot of those ideas before a different studio (Fox) came in and mangled it to try and make a franchise. It's like these studios take all the wrong messages from a breakout hit like Guardians or Deadpool.
posted by codacorolla at 4:54 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
DC actually does have all of my favorite comic book properties: G-Mo's Animal Man, Invisibles, and Doom Patrol, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing, the 90s run of Demon. They've already ruined Watchmen by giving it to Snyder, but I think that there is actually a good film somewhere between the covers of the book.
I guess what I'm saying is that I wish they would let comic book movies just be weird. Comic format storytelling is great because it allows for visual / temporal / fourth wall weirdness in its artistry, concepts, and design. Trank's Fantastic Four screenplay apparently played with a lot of those ideas before a different studio (Fox) came in and mangled it to try and make a franchise. It's like these studios take all the wrong messages from a breakout hit like Guardians or Deadpool.
posted by codacorolla at 4:54 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
doubtless the guys in Rupert Murdoch's Excel dungeon are reaching the same conclusion about owning half of Disney's Fantastic Four.
But which half? Mr. Fantastic and The Thing? Or all of upper bodies?
posted by Going To Maine at 4:56 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
But which half? Mr. Fantastic and The Thing? Or all of upper bodies?
posted by Going To Maine at 4:56 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Similarly, Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake is great,
If Snyder had gone into seclusion after Dawn of the Dead and not directed anything since, he would be regarded as, well, not a genius but a skilled craftsman with massive unfulfilled promise. And if it were announced the he would be coming out retirement to make Justice League, I would be rejoicing at the Distinguished Competition to Marvel finally getting into the game. As it is, after three Snyder-directed or -produced DC movies, I am in the "maybe I will catch it on Netflix during a bout of insomnia" camp.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:34 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
If Snyder had gone into seclusion after Dawn of the Dead and not directed anything since, he would be regarded as, well, not a genius but a skilled craftsman with massive unfulfilled promise. And if it were announced the he would be coming out retirement to make Justice League, I would be rejoicing at the Distinguished Competition to Marvel finally getting into the game. As it is, after three Snyder-directed or -produced DC movies, I am in the "maybe I will catch it on Netflix during a bout of insomnia" camp.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 5:34 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
But which half? Mr. Fantastic and The Thing? Or all of upper bodies?
Mr. Fantastic by himself should count as half, though some might consider that a stretch.
posted by Sand at 5:38 PM on August 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
Mr. Fantastic by himself should count as half, though some might consider that a stretch.
posted by Sand at 5:38 PM on August 12, 2016 [7 favorites]
Uh, I have to call bullshit on the TV thing. Agents of Shield is loved by no one; Agent Carter was watched by no one. DC is doing just fine there.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:49 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:49 PM on August 12, 2016
But all of these movies still make money. Ghost Rider made money! Ghost. Rider. So who is at fault here, exactly? The Hollywood hacks who churn out the crud or the public who keeps supporting the crud even when they know it's crud before they buy the tickets?
Until the public stops supporting mediocre movies, we will keep getting more of them, and I'm just as guilty, because Vin is my favorite movie star. I ought to be ashamed, but I fit right in, so meh.
posted by Beholder at 5:53 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Until the public stops supporting mediocre movies, we will keep getting more of them, and I'm just as guilty, because Vin is my favorite movie star. I ought to be ashamed, but I fit right in, so meh.
posted by Beholder at 5:53 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Uh, I have to call bullshit on the TV thing. Agents of Shield is loved by no one; Agent Carter was watched by no one. DC is doing just fine there.
You're leaving out the Netflix shows, which were big critical and popular wins. People who didn't care much about Luke Cage are suddenly really excited about Luke Cage.
And Carter was not a huge ratings success but had an intensely loyal following.
DC is doing far better in TV than movies, though.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:56 PM on August 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
You're leaving out the Netflix shows, which were big critical and popular wins. People who didn't care much about Luke Cage are suddenly really excited about Luke Cage.
And Carter was not a huge ratings success but had an intensely loyal following.
DC is doing far better in TV than movies, though.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:56 PM on August 12, 2016 [6 favorites]
But all of these movies still make money. Ghost Rider made money! Ghost. Rider. So who is at fault here, exactly? The Hollywood hacks who churn out the crud or the public who keeps supporting the crud even when they know it's crud before they buy the tickets?
That's the thing. Hollywood's marketing machine is so fine-tuned that it's almost unheard of for a big tentpole movie to actually lose money. So that can't be the line between success and failure. But it's definitely possible for a blockbuster to not be as profitable as planned.
But MattD makes the excellent point that cultural capital is an important factor as well. And it does translate into actual cash money down the line.
Case in point: The Transformers franchise. All very profitable movies. But they're all critical flops, and the pattern they followed is that they all make about the same amount of money. Compare with the Fast and the Furious franchise. The first few get middling ratings, but starting with Fast Five the critical reception turns around. And what happens at the box office is an almost exponential growth in profits.
Blockbuster movies will always make money. But quality blockbusters make more.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:10 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
That's the thing. Hollywood's marketing machine is so fine-tuned that it's almost unheard of for a big tentpole movie to actually lose money. So that can't be the line between success and failure. But it's definitely possible for a blockbuster to not be as profitable as planned.
But MattD makes the excellent point that cultural capital is an important factor as well. And it does translate into actual cash money down the line.
Case in point: The Transformers franchise. All very profitable movies. But they're all critical flops, and the pattern they followed is that they all make about the same amount of money. Compare with the Fast and the Furious franchise. The first few get middling ratings, but starting with Fast Five the critical reception turns around. And what happens at the box office is an almost exponential growth in profits.
Blockbuster movies will always make money. But quality blockbusters make more.
posted by tobascodagama at 6:10 PM on August 12, 2016 [9 favorites]
That's the thing. Hollywood's marketing machine is so fine-tuned that it's almost unheard of for a big tentpole movie to actually lose money.
Truly, the most fascinating part of this essay was realizing that people care about the heritage and pedigree of major movie studios. Which - of course they do! People care about everything. But it's foreign to my experience and thinking.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:18 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Truly, the most fascinating part of this essay was realizing that people care about the heritage and pedigree of major movie studios. Which - of course they do! People care about everything. But it's foreign to my experience and thinking.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:18 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
To the company's credit, DC's animated productions - series and features - also have been pretty good generally, while most of the Marvel-related animated series struggle to reach mediocrity, and the longer Marvel animated features I've seen have been mostly atrocious.
There's a "movie" streaming now (can't remember if it's Netflix or Amazon) with Iron Man and the Hulk that's just complete garbage - the script is terrible, animation looks like cut scenes from a dated video game, voice acting is stiff, you name it. But for the real nadir, go back a few years and find the Dr. Strange animated feature, in which the head-trauma-stupid climactic battle features the Sorcerer Supreme involved in some kind of dopey swordfight instead of casting spells. D'oh!
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that DC could do worse than letting, say, Bruce Timm, or some of the people who made the "New Frontier" movie have a shot at doing something in live action.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 6:24 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
There's a "movie" streaming now (can't remember if it's Netflix or Amazon) with Iron Man and the Hulk that's just complete garbage - the script is terrible, animation looks like cut scenes from a dated video game, voice acting is stiff, you name it. But for the real nadir, go back a few years and find the Dr. Strange animated feature, in which the head-trauma-stupid climactic battle features the Sorcerer Supreme involved in some kind of dopey swordfight instead of casting spells. D'oh!
All of which is a long-winded way of saying that DC could do worse than letting, say, Bruce Timm, or some of the people who made the "New Frontier" movie have a shot at doing something in live action.
posted by Nat "King" Cole Porter Wagoner at 6:24 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Blockbuster movies really really really do not always make money. Just so far this year, here are some giant movies which have lost many millions of dollars:
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
GODS OF EGYPT
STAR TREK BEYOND
GHOSTBUSTERS
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN
DIVERGENT: ALLEGIANT
THE HUNTSMAN
THE BFG
posted by incessant at 6:25 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
ALICE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS
GODS OF EGYPT
STAR TREK BEYOND
GHOSTBUSTERS
THE LEGEND OF TARZAN
DIVERGENT: ALLEGIANT
THE HUNTSMAN
THE BFG
posted by incessant at 6:25 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Batman V Superman made good money, it's true, but that movie had no legs. It had negative legs. Take a look at the day-by-day earnings and compare them to sequels that are widely regarded as so bad they forced the studio to reboot -- Amazing Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, and X-Men 3. By the third week, BvS was taking in less money every day than any of those three -- in unadjusted dollars , never mind normalizing for inflation. The bad reviews absolutely cost WB money there, and not a small amount of it.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 6:27 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
‘Wonder Woman’ Director Patty Jenkins Responds to Claim That Film is ‘A Mess’
Patty Jenks is on Twitter, so you can read her direct response for yourself. Bottom line, filtered through me agreeing with her: the linked letter is an anonymous piece of shit with no sources and is just as likely an attempted hit piece as it is an accurate portrayal of what's really going on with Wonder Woman:
Woah, just saw this press about WW having problems. Are they serious? This is some made up bs right here. Made up! Produce a source, anyone.
You can’t because it’s entirely false. Don’t believe the hype people. Someone’s trying to spread some serious misinfo.
Isn’t until you are intimately involved in these things that you realize how totally false these rumors can [be]. Let me reassure you...
Zero about the movie we are making has been called a mess by anyone in the know. Fact.
Real lasso of truth, time, will reveal that letter to be false soon enough. But lame something so transparent in its agenda gets traction.
I say this as someone who hates everything the Zack Snyder Murderverse stands for and wishes Warner/DC would kick him to the curb completely: this letter is ridiculous and doesn't deserve the time of day.
posted by mediareport at 7:16 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
Patty Jenks is on Twitter, so you can read her direct response for yourself. Bottom line, filtered through me agreeing with her: the linked letter is an anonymous piece of shit with no sources and is just as likely an attempted hit piece as it is an accurate portrayal of what's really going on with Wonder Woman:
Woah, just saw this press about WW having problems. Are they serious? This is some made up bs right here. Made up! Produce a source, anyone.
You can’t because it’s entirely false. Don’t believe the hype people. Someone’s trying to spread some serious misinfo.
Isn’t until you are intimately involved in these things that you realize how totally false these rumors can [be]. Let me reassure you...
Zero about the movie we are making has been called a mess by anyone in the know. Fact.
Real lasso of truth, time, will reveal that letter to be false soon enough. But lame something so transparent in its agenda gets traction.
I say this as someone who hates everything the Zack Snyder Murderverse stands for and wishes Warner/DC would kick him to the curb completely: this letter is ridiculous and doesn't deserve the time of day.
posted by mediareport at 7:16 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
You're leaving out the Netflix shows, which were big critical and popular wins.
We really don't know how many people watch the Netflix shows, is the thing. They may be seen by a much smaller audience than DC's much larger commercial TV slate, if a chattier one. That said, I am excited about the Luke Cage show, which to be frank looks like Marvel put money into one of its shows at last.
On point, I too am astonished and even angry that DC's movies aren't better, because in all seriousness any person given hundreds of millions of dollars to make a fucking Superman or Batman movie should be able to make a great one. I say with every confidence in the world that given three weeks -- three days for brainstorming, eight days for writing, ten days for editing -- I could write a Batman movie that would make two billion dollars. Why? Because it's Batman, the most unfuckupable media property of all time. Any doofus can write Batman and make it sell. It's easy.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:17 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
We really don't know how many people watch the Netflix shows, is the thing. They may be seen by a much smaller audience than DC's much larger commercial TV slate, if a chattier one. That said, I am excited about the Luke Cage show, which to be frank looks like Marvel put money into one of its shows at last.
On point, I too am astonished and even angry that DC's movies aren't better, because in all seriousness any person given hundreds of millions of dollars to make a fucking Superman or Batman movie should be able to make a great one. I say with every confidence in the world that given three weeks -- three days for brainstorming, eight days for writing, ten days for editing -- I could write a Batman movie that would make two billion dollars. Why? Because it's Batman, the most unfuckupable media property of all time. Any doofus can write Batman and make it sell. It's easy.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:17 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
To all the folks pointing out that these critically savaged movies made money: then why was the marketing supervisor fired?
posted by kenko at 8:00 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by kenko at 8:00 PM on August 12, 2016
But all of these movies still make money. Ghost Rider made money! Ghost. Rider. So who is at fault here, exactly? The Hollywood hacks who churn out the crud or the public who keeps supporting the crud even when they know it's crud before they buy the tickets?
I think the big deal here is that these are franchise movies. Even if BVS makes money, being sort of boring (the best I've heard about it) to complete and utter trash (the worst) is not a good way to inspire faith in the franchise. Especially as superhero fatigue sets in. Especially when Snyder is the honcho doing Justice League.
posted by codacorolla at 8:07 PM on August 12, 2016
I think the big deal here is that these are franchise movies. Even if BVS makes money, being sort of boring (the best I've heard about it) to complete and utter trash (the worst) is not a good way to inspire faith in the franchise. Especially as superhero fatigue sets in. Especially when Snyder is the honcho doing Justice League.
posted by codacorolla at 8:07 PM on August 12, 2016
Uh, I have to call bullshit on the TV thing. Agents of Shield is loved by no one; Agent Carter was watched by no one.
ABC L + 3 Results: ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Emerges as Number 1 Scripted Show For Timeslot in Adults 18-49
Now, the fact that a 2.6 rating makes it #1 says a lot about the decline of TV viewing, but that's not relevant here. The more salient point is it doesn't matter, because they run on ABC. And since ABC is owned by Disney, the entire network is basically a marketing arm for the company's other products. They can be a 3rd place network forever, Disney doesn't care. The budget to make an entire season of AoS is less than the special FX budget for the next Avengers movie, so whatever money it loses is probably written off as advertising costs.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:13 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
ABC L + 3 Results: ‘S.H.I.E.L.D.’ Emerges as Number 1 Scripted Show For Timeslot in Adults 18-49
Now, the fact that a 2.6 rating makes it #1 says a lot about the decline of TV viewing, but that's not relevant here. The more salient point is it doesn't matter, because they run on ABC. And since ABC is owned by Disney, the entire network is basically a marketing arm for the company's other products. They can be a 3rd place network forever, Disney doesn't care. The budget to make an entire season of AoS is less than the special FX budget for the next Avengers movie, so whatever money it loses is probably written off as advertising costs.
posted by The Pluto Gangsta at 8:13 PM on August 12, 2016 [4 favorites]
I recently read a book that was compelling enough to me that it only took two sittings to get to the end and I made a bunch of notes. Algorithms to Live By. In it the authors talk about human problems as if they are iconic programming problems. Storage and sorting and halting and whatnot. They had a chapter on explore / exploit and they said the fraction of sequels indicates the businesses of Hollywood studios are all focused on the exploit cycle, inference being the deciders have decided just about all the good movie ideas that could ever be found have already been found and the biggest remaining play in the industry is to milk the proven ideas for every last dwindling dollar possible.
posted by bukvich at 8:34 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by bukvich at 8:34 PM on August 12, 2016 [3 favorites]
Incessant, Ghostbusters didn't lose money. It made a decent return on its budget.
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:35 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by dorothyisunderwood at 8:35 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
Ghostbusters grossed more than its $140M production budget. There has been buzz over this article from The Hollywood Reporter claiming that marketing and other costs require Ghostbusters to gross $300M to break even.
posted by Monochrome at 8:51 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Monochrome at 8:51 PM on August 12, 2016 [1 favorite]
The studio gets about half the box office. The distributors and the theaters get the rest. Ghostbusters cost $140 million to make but it's estimated that about another $120+ million was spent on promotion and on distribution costs (such as making copies of the movie for the theaters to show). So yeah, for the studio to turn a profit it needs to take in about $300 million, which means it needs to do about $600 million at the box office -- and at this point that looks very, very unlikely.
(Yeah, there's additional revenue from BD sales and licensing from HBO and broadcast networks, but there's also interest that has to be paid on the initial investment used to make the movie. Movie financing is very esoteric, and the studios WANT it to be esoteric; they play amazing accounting shenanigans for exact that reason, to avoid paying taxes for instance. But in this case it's pretty straight forward: Ghostbusters is a bomb. It isn't going to come even close to making a profit.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:34 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
(Yeah, there's additional revenue from BD sales and licensing from HBO and broadcast networks, but there's also interest that has to be paid on the initial investment used to make the movie. Movie financing is very esoteric, and the studios WANT it to be esoteric; they play amazing accounting shenanigans for exact that reason, to avoid paying taxes for instance. But in this case it's pretty straight forward: Ghostbusters is a bomb. It isn't going to come even close to making a profit.)
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 9:34 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
I was with her 'til she dished on Jupiter Ascending.
posted by Sauce Trough at 9:58 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Sauce Trough at 9:58 PM on August 12, 2016 [2 favorites]
That's an interesting way to look at it, bukvich. But I don't think the studio executives know or care if all the good movie ideas have been found, they're just looking for a way to make the greatest profits with the least risk. Sequels are less risky than original ideas because you can (usually) estimate how much money they'll make. Original ideas may or may not make money, the studios just don't know, and that uncertainty can wreck careers. For them sequels are like investing in a mutual fund and original ideas are like playing the roulette wheel.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:08 PM on August 12, 2016
posted by Kevin Street at 11:08 PM on August 12, 2016
I'm waiting for Dial H for Hero: The Musical
posted by benzenedream at 1:19 AM on August 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
posted by benzenedream at 1:19 AM on August 13, 2016 [7 favorites]
That's true, but relying on sequels as much as they do and sticking to "tried and true" story-telling techniques over and over again lowers some risk of loss, but also doesn't improve the chance for exceptional reward. At the franchise level, that in itself can lead to a different sort of long term risk as one devalues a potentially much more lucrative cornerstone for your studio.
Allowing for more experimentation, not even radical experimenting, just different approaches, may make any given film riskier, but it can potentially also make for greater long term value if some of those choices do succeed.
Look at Singer's horrible handling of the X-Men franchise for example. They kept hammering at the "sure thing" of Wolverine and largely wasted most of the rest of the characters by slotting them as interchangeable supporting roles. They both take the biggest stories from the comics and deplete their use and meaning by having no build up to any events, and deplete the value of the characters by shifting roles so it's the same handful of known faces that get the spotlight. Magneto, Professor X, Mystique, and Wolverine primarily. If they changed that in the most recent film, I can't yet say because I refuse to support these bozos by seeing these movies at the theaters. I don't want to be a party to enabling the generic money centered vision of most Hollywood films anymore. If I go to a movie it'd better be something unusual and with some artistic risk involved.
As an aside, it is also worth noting how heavily Hollywood relies on overseas markets for their films. China in particular now drives much of the thinking on production, which is likely another excuse to minimize experiment.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:34 AM on August 13, 2016
Allowing for more experimentation, not even radical experimenting, just different approaches, may make any given film riskier, but it can potentially also make for greater long term value if some of those choices do succeed.
Look at Singer's horrible handling of the X-Men franchise for example. They kept hammering at the "sure thing" of Wolverine and largely wasted most of the rest of the characters by slotting them as interchangeable supporting roles. They both take the biggest stories from the comics and deplete their use and meaning by having no build up to any events, and deplete the value of the characters by shifting roles so it's the same handful of known faces that get the spotlight. Magneto, Professor X, Mystique, and Wolverine primarily. If they changed that in the most recent film, I can't yet say because I refuse to support these bozos by seeing these movies at the theaters. I don't want to be a party to enabling the generic money centered vision of most Hollywood films anymore. If I go to a movie it'd better be something unusual and with some artistic risk involved.
As an aside, it is also worth noting how heavily Hollywood relies on overseas markets for their films. China in particular now drives much of the thinking on production, which is likely another excuse to minimize experiment.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:34 AM on August 13, 2016
So do pitches nowadays consist primarily of describing how original the project isn't?
posted by rhizome at 1:43 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by rhizome at 1:43 AM on August 13, 2016
Well there have always been sequels and tons of adapted works of popular plays and novels, but the difference now is in how much of the studio is tied to these sorts of films, with their enormous budgets and hoped for franchise possibilities. Previous to this era, franchise films were made more to help the studio afford to take risks on other projects, they weren't the entire focus of the industry in the US.
posted by gusottertrout at 1:56 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by gusottertrout at 1:56 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh, and I neglected to mention in my other post what's especially irksome about Warner's handling of the DC films is that as much as I personally think Nolan is a mess as a director, at least he was trying something a little different when he hit big on Dark Knight, but instead of seeing the value in experiment, the studio took the track of trying to duplicate Nolan's perspective, over and over again with ever lessening results. It was the wrong lesson to take away from Nolan's success with that film.
posted by gusottertrout at 2:05 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by gusottertrout at 2:05 AM on August 13, 2016
Suicide Squad did $135 million its first weekend. That's what Warner Brothers cares about.
It made 131M and dropped 40% from Friday to Saturday. That's the number WB should be worried about.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:40 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
It made 131M and dropped 40% from Friday to Saturday. That's the number WB should be worried about.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:40 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
There's also a lot of talk that Ghostbusters is fine, because it DVD preorders, and with DVDs of the original and the toy line are through the roof. But no specific numbers have been that balance out the movie's middling performance box office wise, so I'm skeptical.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:51 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:51 AM on August 13, 2016
I sort of enjoyed Suicide Squad because of some of the performances but I was pretty amazed at how badly constructed it was. I can't remember a big budget film that was so poorly edited, both on a micro and macro level. Individual scenes were totally incoherent and the thing as a whole was just so weirdly paced that it managed to feel sluggish and rushed at the same time.
It also felt very tiny for a $175M film. There were no really memorable action set pieces that you'd expect for something that expensive; the best action scene was shot in a generic looking office floor. The whole thing felt like the script had big sections that said "[FILL IN DETAILS HERE]" but they never got around to actually doing that.
posted by octothorpe at 6:45 AM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
It also felt very tiny for a $175M film. There were no really memorable action set pieces that you'd expect for something that expensive; the best action scene was shot in a generic looking office floor. The whole thing felt like the script had big sections that said "[FILL IN DETAILS HERE]" but they never got around to actually doing that.
posted by octothorpe at 6:45 AM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
DC television is not successful. The ratings are minuscule and the audience is kids who will move on to other things.
Ghostbusters was a horrific failure. Take a beloved franchise that Sony owned 100%, make an entirely forgettable reboot that inexplicably provokes an alt-right hate fest and then gets dragged into the Rotten Tomatoes end zone by critics who want to teach the alt-right a lesson ... and which even with all that free publicity audiences ignore to the extent humanly possible. That this is the second reboot in a a few years for Sony to have done this on (after Amazing Spider-Man) is crazy, but of course Fox did even worse with the Independence Day sequel/reboot.
As someone who thinks a lot about investing in media companies I am increasingly focused on the creative dynasty issue. A huge amount of success comes from small groups of people working together for many years with some consistent and calm take on the market.
To go back to Rupert Murdoch's Excel dungeon, someone there should be thinking "hey, we have these guys in the biggest offices on the lot who just F'd up the Independence Day and Fantatic Four reboots, ground out that uninspiring X-Files restart and let Singer hit the wall on X-Men ... but over in converted caterers'' offices we've got the team at FX that did Louie, The Americans, Fargo, Archer and the OJ series. Maybe they're supposed to switch budgets at some point."
Time Warner could do the same exercise about the Warner Brothers team vs the HBO team but of course HBO is far more profitable and nobody's messing with it.
posted by MattD at 7:16 AM on August 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
Ghostbusters was a horrific failure. Take a beloved franchise that Sony owned 100%, make an entirely forgettable reboot that inexplicably provokes an alt-right hate fest and then gets dragged into the Rotten Tomatoes end zone by critics who want to teach the alt-right a lesson ... and which even with all that free publicity audiences ignore to the extent humanly possible. That this is the second reboot in a a few years for Sony to have done this on (after Amazing Spider-Man) is crazy, but of course Fox did even worse with the Independence Day sequel/reboot.
As someone who thinks a lot about investing in media companies I am increasingly focused on the creative dynasty issue. A huge amount of success comes from small groups of people working together for many years with some consistent and calm take on the market.
To go back to Rupert Murdoch's Excel dungeon, someone there should be thinking "hey, we have these guys in the biggest offices on the lot who just F'd up the Independence Day and Fantatic Four reboots, ground out that uninspiring X-Files restart and let Singer hit the wall on X-Men ... but over in converted caterers'' offices we've got the team at FX that did Louie, The Americans, Fargo, Archer and the OJ series. Maybe they're supposed to switch budgets at some point."
Time Warner could do the same exercise about the Warner Brothers team vs the HBO team but of course HBO is far more profitable and nobody's messing with it.
posted by MattD at 7:16 AM on August 13, 2016 [5 favorites]
I thought Suicide Squad was a mean spirited and unpleasant. That said, they could make an okay movie if they recut the good scenes together.
Amanda Waller was great, Harley Quinn was great when she was Harley Quinn, Will Smith has genuine film charisma..
But there were 3 films all smushed together. The grindhouse unpleasant one, the flat and oddly paced ones mentioned above, and the well acted and characterized almost justice league cartoon quality stuff..
DC is proper fucked if they don't get a handle on making some quality films. They need to figure out tone and start treating the material how it needs to be treated. Yeah they might break even, or make 40-50 mil profit on a film, but investors want to see 2x, 3x, 4x roi, not 10%.
I like DC, but holy fuck they've been going out of their way to make god awful films for years, Even Sony had the sense to let Disney take point on the new spiderman.
posted by Lord_Pall at 7:17 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Amanda Waller was great, Harley Quinn was great when she was Harley Quinn, Will Smith has genuine film charisma..
But there were 3 films all smushed together. The grindhouse unpleasant one, the flat and oddly paced ones mentioned above, and the well acted and characterized almost justice league cartoon quality stuff..
DC is proper fucked if they don't get a handle on making some quality films. They need to figure out tone and start treating the material how it needs to be treated. Yeah they might break even, or make 40-50 mil profit on a film, but investors want to see 2x, 3x, 4x roi, not 10%.
I like DC, but holy fuck they've been going out of their way to make god awful films for years, Even Sony had the sense to let Disney take point on the new spiderman.
posted by Lord_Pall at 7:17 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Looks like the (totally pointless) Ben Hur re-re-remake might be the next big summer flop.
posted by octothorpe at 7:34 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by octothorpe at 7:34 AM on August 13, 2016
Looks like the (totally pointless) Ben Hur re-re-remake might be the next big summer flop.
Oh Lord, they actually call this a "reboot". What is wrong with people?
posted by bongo_x at 8:50 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
Oh Lord, they actually call this a "reboot". What is wrong with people?
posted by bongo_x at 8:50 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
And a "reimagining"! I had hoped that Burton's Planet of the Apes had killed off that word but no such luck.
posted by octothorpe at 9:22 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 9:22 AM on August 13, 2016 [1 favorite]
> Uh, I have to call bullshit on the TV thing. Agents of Shield is loved by no one; Agent Carter was watched by no one.
Huge fan of both, and am not, to the best of my knowledge, 'no one'. I was even a Nielsen family during Agent Carter's second mini-season.
posted by davelog at 9:24 AM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Huge fan of both, and am not, to the best of my knowledge, 'no one'. I was even a Nielsen family during Agent Carter's second mini-season.
posted by davelog at 9:24 AM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
SS was ok, but the rumored darker version by Ayers sounds more interesting. The film is pretty forgetable.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:41 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:41 AM on August 13, 2016
Ouch, Sausage Party beat out SS, which fell 79% from last weekend.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:47 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 9:47 AM on August 13, 2016
Generation X movie execs grew up in the 80s, when the Baby Boomers set an example of nihilistic future-squandering. I can't decide if all of this garbage is revenge or inheritance.
posted by rhizome at 10:38 AM on August 13, 2016
posted by rhizome at 10:38 AM on August 13, 2016
Snyder is a great second unit director. Have him film exotic locales, sweeping panoramas, some car chases. Leave actual directing the movie and the characters to someone who has a grasp on the story and an understanding of characters' motivation.
Or, more simply, while mainly an X-book reader, I read some Batman growing up. In college, I loved Morrison's golden age run on JLA*(*Superman wrestling an archangel to the ground while berating the archangel for endangering *Superman's* people is pretty much an iconic, and proper starting point for the character, if you can ignore that he was blue and made of lightning at the time). From time to time I read Iron Man, but never any Avengers, and never any Captain America. Absolutely no interest in those (or Spider-Man, either).
Now here I am loving the Marvel movies, based on characters I never followed, going back (for Daredevil and Iron Man at least) to read classic storylines. After how awful and tone deaf Man of Steel was (Superman is a boyscout. He is the platonic ideal of a superhero, yet also utterly devoted to being the best possible human he can be. How hard is that to understand? How good at bullshit do you have to be to get someone to give you hundreds of millions of dollars to tell that story badly?) and hearing nothing but horror stories about BvS, I still haven't seen it. I love Dark Knight Returns, but even in that, there's the simple unbreakable fact: Batman DOES NOT KILL, and yet Snyder fucked it up. I have no interest in BvS, I can't imagine watching it if there is any other option available. The buzz around SS is not making me rush out to see a couple random moments of people looking like badasses in slow motion stacked around two hours of what-the-hell-were-they-thinking. And Justice League? A movie I've waited for since I was maybe ten? I doubt I'll watch it, if it's Snyder's "vision."
Meanwhile, I'm eagerly anticipating Dr. Strange (never read even a single issue) Black Panther (same), GotG2 (never liked Marvel's space opera stuff), Captain Marvel (again, same) and Thor:Ragnorak (even knowing how much of a weak link the Thor movies have been).
Movies can be fun. Superheroes (Batman and Xmen aside) can be fun.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:05 AM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Or, more simply, while mainly an X-book reader, I read some Batman growing up. In college, I loved Morrison's golden age run on JLA*(*Superman wrestling an archangel to the ground while berating the archangel for endangering *Superman's* people is pretty much an iconic, and proper starting point for the character, if you can ignore that he was blue and made of lightning at the time). From time to time I read Iron Man, but never any Avengers, and never any Captain America. Absolutely no interest in those (or Spider-Man, either).
Now here I am loving the Marvel movies, based on characters I never followed, going back (for Daredevil and Iron Man at least) to read classic storylines. After how awful and tone deaf Man of Steel was (Superman is a boyscout. He is the platonic ideal of a superhero, yet also utterly devoted to being the best possible human he can be. How hard is that to understand? How good at bullshit do you have to be to get someone to give you hundreds of millions of dollars to tell that story badly?) and hearing nothing but horror stories about BvS, I still haven't seen it. I love Dark Knight Returns, but even in that, there's the simple unbreakable fact: Batman DOES NOT KILL, and yet Snyder fucked it up. I have no interest in BvS, I can't imagine watching it if there is any other option available. The buzz around SS is not making me rush out to see a couple random moments of people looking like badasses in slow motion stacked around two hours of what-the-hell-were-they-thinking. And Justice League? A movie I've waited for since I was maybe ten? I doubt I'll watch it, if it's Snyder's "vision."
Meanwhile, I'm eagerly anticipating Dr. Strange (never read even a single issue) Black Panther (same), GotG2 (never liked Marvel's space opera stuff), Captain Marvel (again, same) and Thor:Ragnorak (even knowing how much of a weak link the Thor movies have been).
Movies can be fun. Superheroes (Batman and Xmen aside) can be fun.
posted by Ghidorah at 11:05 AM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Ragnorak: The waterproof jacket of the Norse Gods.
posted by Grangousier at 11:43 AM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
posted by Grangousier at 11:43 AM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
At this point with the DCU, I just hope Wonder Woman is good. It would wonderful if it was great, but at this point I just have my fingers crossed for it to be good. They can mess up everything else, but at least make WW good.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:07 PM on August 13, 2016
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:07 PM on August 13, 2016
I'm not sure Peter Jackson was phoning it in - I think there is a phenomenal film adaption of The Hobbit trapped within that artistically-idiotic profit-driven studio decision to inflate one short book into a trilogy of bloated three-hour movies. Re-edit it to the take out the cash-grab bloat and padding and it would be a movie up there with LotR. (One movie. Not six movie-lengths of footage crammed into three movies.)
posted by anonymisc at 12:12 PM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by anonymisc at 12:12 PM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
The Hobbitt adaptation was pretty good. The additional material was nice, though it probably should have been kept to two movies, not three.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:44 PM on August 13, 2016
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 12:44 PM on August 13, 2016
I disliked the Hobbit movies as much as I loved the Lord of the Rings films. The book is a fun romp and Jackson turned it into a tortured slog.
posted by octothorpe at 1:04 PM on August 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by octothorpe at 1:04 PM on August 13, 2016 [6 favorites]
The Progressive, Controversial History of Suicide Squad’s Amanda Waller
I'm pleased to report that the Amanda Waller in the Latest DC Comic's Suicide Squad (the Reborth issue) is the proper Amanda Waller.
posted by Artw at 3:04 PM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
I'm pleased to report that the Amanda Waller in the Latest DC Comic's Suicide Squad (the Reborth issue) is the proper Amanda Waller.
posted by Artw at 3:04 PM on August 13, 2016 [4 favorites]
Copra, anyone?
posted by Going To Maine at 6:55 PM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
posted by Going To Maine at 6:55 PM on August 13, 2016 [2 favorites]
Hollywood Reporter: "'Ghostbusters' Heading for $70M-Plus Loss, Sequel Unlikely"
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:10 PM on August 13, 2016
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 11:10 PM on August 13, 2016
Blockbuster movies really really really do not always make money. Just so far this year, here are some giant movies which have lost many millions of dollars:
STAR TREK BEYOND
Except Star Trek hasn't opened everywhere yet, and did you notice the Alibaba credit at the beginning of the film? It could easily make a couple of hundred million in China, which would push it into profitability. Here's an analysis from Screenrant.
posted by Huck500 at 5:23 PM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
STAR TREK BEYOND
Except Star Trek hasn't opened everywhere yet, and did you notice the Alibaba credit at the beginning of the film? It could easily make a couple of hundred million in China, which would push it into profitability. Here's an analysis from Screenrant.
posted by Huck500 at 5:23 PM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Also, Ang Lee's Hulk is the best superhero movie...
My favourite too. Peace.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:46 PM on August 14, 2016
My favourite too. Peace.
posted by turbid dahlia at 5:46 PM on August 14, 2016
Hulk is in the same category with Jackson's King Kong for me, good films that could have been great if they'd been cut down to about two hours.
posted by octothorpe at 6:30 PM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by octothorpe at 6:30 PM on August 14, 2016 [1 favorite]
Hulk also suffered from not-great CGI. Lee's movie was a good story with mediocre CGI and action scenes, and Norton's follow up was exactly the opposite.
posted by middleclasstool at 6:07 AM on August 15, 2016
posted by middleclasstool at 6:07 AM on August 15, 2016
Still waiting for that sequel with The Leader.
posted by Artw at 6:21 AM on August 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by Artw at 6:21 AM on August 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
About That Open Letter To Warner Bros…
So right off the bat there's no reason to really take this open letter seriously [...] But there's more. In a lengthy list of WB's sins in the last couple of years "Gracie Law" somehow neglects to mention Mad Max: Fury Road going on to win a whole bunch of Oscars (despite the studio having no faith in it. Were she an insider this would actually be one of her main arguments, that even when WB does well lately it's totally by accident). She calls The Hobbit trilogy, which made just under 3 billion dollars worldwide, a case of diminishing returns (and while the films did make less money with each release, they still all made A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY. And look, I don't like the movies either, but the decision to go from two films to three may have cost the final film some BO but upped the general BO of the entire series. There's easily an extra half billion dollars brought in by adding a movie, and that's just theatrical). She doesn't really talk about WB's new strategy of silo-ing its tentpole properties to focus on them but she sure does get mad about this year's Comic-Con presentation, a dog and pony show that - wait for it - only matters to the fans.
That is what my big takeaway from this open letter is - she's a fan. She's a fan who not only doesn't understand how a studio is run but how big business works. Did she work on the lot? Maybe, but again, she definitely wasn't privy to anything of any interest. And that's the next thing: her claim that Wonder Woman is a mess.
[...] But Devin, you say, you've reported that you've heard movies are a mess very early in the process. That's totally correct! Sometimes movies are a mess very early in the process, and sometimes they never get fixed. Sometimes it's clear that nobody working on a movie shares a vision for it, or that the studio execs see the movie very differently than the filmmaker does or the filmmaker was unable to capture his/her vision on set. Sometimes these situations result in disaster, sometimes they result in classics (remember, Mad Max: Fury Road, the great unmentioned movie in this open letter, was a total fucking wreck the entire production). What's important is to understand why a movie is a mess before you report on it. Take, for instance, my reporting on Suicide Squad and its reshoots, which was eventually backed up by The Hollywood Reporter. It wasn't just that I heard it was a mess, I heard very specifically that what the studio wanted from the movie - a tone like that popular first trailer - was not what David Ayers had delivered. That's a recipe for a real mishigoss, and it turns out it was. But how is Wonder Woman a mess? I'd like to know, and I think any good reporting on this should include some kind of specifics (note I said reporting - this sort of cheap gossip is fine for Twitter, but if you're running it on your site hopefully you have something to back it up).
There are other things that bug me about this reporting of the movie being a mess (and about it being picked up so widely). One thing is that I have known, over the years, studio employees - even exec level employees - to have absolutely no fucking clue what they have on their hands. I'll never forget being told by Paramount employees that Zodiac was a total disaster. That movie is my favorite film of the 21st century. I remember being told by someone in the know that Guardians of the Galaxy was a nightmare. It turns out that person saw an in-house screening that removed all the jokes from the movie (Marvel's process was weird as fuck), and what they saw was nothing like the finished film.
posted by cendawanita at 8:21 AM on August 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
So right off the bat there's no reason to really take this open letter seriously [...] But there's more. In a lengthy list of WB's sins in the last couple of years "Gracie Law" somehow neglects to mention Mad Max: Fury Road going on to win a whole bunch of Oscars (despite the studio having no faith in it. Were she an insider this would actually be one of her main arguments, that even when WB does well lately it's totally by accident). She calls The Hobbit trilogy, which made just under 3 billion dollars worldwide, a case of diminishing returns (and while the films did make less money with each release, they still all made A WHOLE LOT OF MONEY. And look, I don't like the movies either, but the decision to go from two films to three may have cost the final film some BO but upped the general BO of the entire series. There's easily an extra half billion dollars brought in by adding a movie, and that's just theatrical). She doesn't really talk about WB's new strategy of silo-ing its tentpole properties to focus on them but she sure does get mad about this year's Comic-Con presentation, a dog and pony show that - wait for it - only matters to the fans.
That is what my big takeaway from this open letter is - she's a fan. She's a fan who not only doesn't understand how a studio is run but how big business works. Did she work on the lot? Maybe, but again, she definitely wasn't privy to anything of any interest. And that's the next thing: her claim that Wonder Woman is a mess.
[...] But Devin, you say, you've reported that you've heard movies are a mess very early in the process. That's totally correct! Sometimes movies are a mess very early in the process, and sometimes they never get fixed. Sometimes it's clear that nobody working on a movie shares a vision for it, or that the studio execs see the movie very differently than the filmmaker does or the filmmaker was unable to capture his/her vision on set. Sometimes these situations result in disaster, sometimes they result in classics (remember, Mad Max: Fury Road, the great unmentioned movie in this open letter, was a total fucking wreck the entire production). What's important is to understand why a movie is a mess before you report on it. Take, for instance, my reporting on Suicide Squad and its reshoots, which was eventually backed up by The Hollywood Reporter. It wasn't just that I heard it was a mess, I heard very specifically that what the studio wanted from the movie - a tone like that popular first trailer - was not what David Ayers had delivered. That's a recipe for a real mishigoss, and it turns out it was. But how is Wonder Woman a mess? I'd like to know, and I think any good reporting on this should include some kind of specifics (note I said reporting - this sort of cheap gossip is fine for Twitter, but if you're running it on your site hopefully you have something to back it up).
There are other things that bug me about this reporting of the movie being a mess (and about it being picked up so widely). One thing is that I have known, over the years, studio employees - even exec level employees - to have absolutely no fucking clue what they have on their hands. I'll never forget being told by Paramount employees that Zodiac was a total disaster. That movie is my favorite film of the 21st century. I remember being told by someone in the know that Guardians of the Galaxy was a nightmare. It turns out that person saw an in-house screening that removed all the jokes from the movie (Marvel's process was weird as fuck), and what they saw was nothing like the finished film.
posted by cendawanita at 8:21 AM on August 15, 2016 [5 favorites]
Having seen the superhero movies except SS and BVS, I'm of the opinion that the executives in question are the type who just don't like superhero comics -- the kids who made fun of the comic-book reading kids back in grade school, who mocked those who kept reading in High School and College, and who continue to look down upon them as so-called adults. Sure, so long as they make money, they'll continue to fight over ownership and do the bare minimum to keep them in their copyright-stockpile, but they don't like them, won't properly use them, and as the keepers of the purse will infuse everything with their anti-geek attitude.
Add to this in increasing influence of foreign investors who didn't grow up on this stuff, who as additional financial influences and who are subject to their own governments' laws and cultural preconceptions of the genera, and now you have the current situation: everyone trying to milk as much as they can get out of the cow, when what viewers want is some quality milk.
I'm half convinced that the killing spree variants of Batman and Superman came about because the idea of an American law-enforcement stand in who wasn't a murdering brute is both part of the perception of America by these investors, and the governments in question would quash the import of a movie that didn't make America look as bad as it does in the mass media, if not worse. You want Bejing's $50 million? You take their "suggestions" for the plot and pass them verbatim to the director, who is informed he will adhere or they'll find someone who will make the investors happy. After all, it's all the executives see or care about: how to make ever more money, and make those who are supplying it happy to give even more. Film quality is secondary, assuming it's even on the radar (somone lower-down is responsible for that.)
posted by Blackanvil at 9:47 AM on August 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
Add to this in increasing influence of foreign investors who didn't grow up on this stuff, who as additional financial influences and who are subject to their own governments' laws and cultural preconceptions of the genera, and now you have the current situation: everyone trying to milk as much as they can get out of the cow, when what viewers want is some quality milk.
I'm half convinced that the killing spree variants of Batman and Superman came about because the idea of an American law-enforcement stand in who wasn't a murdering brute is both part of the perception of America by these investors, and the governments in question would quash the import of a movie that didn't make America look as bad as it does in the mass media, if not worse. You want Bejing's $50 million? You take their "suggestions" for the plot and pass them verbatim to the director, who is informed he will adhere or they'll find someone who will make the investors happy. After all, it's all the executives see or care about: how to make ever more money, and make those who are supplying it happy to give even more. Film quality is secondary, assuming it's even on the radar (somone lower-down is responsible for that.)
posted by Blackanvil at 9:47 AM on August 15, 2016 [1 favorite]
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posted by doctor_negative at 1:47 PM on August 12, 2016 [6 favorites]