Weekly Box Office and Film Discussion Thread

Drtooth

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Boy, has Strange Magic flopped, debuting at the box office at 7th place with only a puny $5.5 mil. gross. Not even The Nut Job opened that poorly in the same month!
Kinda think "from the mind of George Lucas" scared everyone off. Come to think of it, other than Star Wars and Indiana Jones, no one really cares much about his movies. It did look kinda good, though.
 

Drtooth

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Okay, Strange Magic's supposedly getting horrid reviews, but even then it's general consensus the music's good. It would be nice to see this get some love in the soundtrack area. Then again, it still looks a lot better than the last CGI kiddy movie based on a Shakespeare play Touchstone released. Unfortunately, it's not getting that audience. Maybe because the CGI characters are a little more realistic and not the fat, round, cute little obnoxious Gnomes of that one. Even if this movie does suck, I do like the look of it.

On another note, don't you just love how American Sniper's getting it from both sides who are casually ignoring the point of the film? It's to be expected that a small amount of left wing complaining that it glorifies war. That's obvious. What's disturbing is that the right's making the same exact Freedom Fries, You're with us or Against us, Patriotism is only agreeing with Us remarks they made when the Iraq War started up. I'll agree with the common sense middle ground, despite not having or wanting to see the movie. The film isn't prowar or antiwar, it's about the fact that the people who were roped into this were people who loved their country, and come home to find out they were G.I. Joe toys tossed aside when they served their purpose. The film was directed by a famously Anti-Iraq War Libertarian. And yeah, he may have been hired to do that embarrassing spectacle for the GOP Convention (and wrongly blamed the current president for the wars created by the last guy), but Libertarianism is not Republicanism, no matter how much Tea Party they try and shove in there.

My sentiments are exactly what reasonable people are saying. Soldiers are people, they fought because they love the country and got swept up in kneejerk warmongering running rampant at the time. They've been dehumanized from every side (those who can't separate the soldiers from the idiots in charge and the chickenhawks that have no qualms in sending in wave after wave of their own men), and this film should be bringing up the conversation of how the government screwed them over. Nope. It's just a disturbing reminder that Patriotism=picking on other countries to look strong and if you disagree you're as bad as the warmongers on the other side that want us to go to war with them.

GOSH! I hope this film is popular on the merits of the film and Bradley Cooper, and not because of a wave of Islamophobia from the Charlie Hebdo attacks.
 

Muppet fan 123

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It's clear that Disney really doesn't care about Strange Magic and they didn't have much faith in it either, seeing how they only announced it's existence three months prior and the advertising campaign was poor. Seems like they got stuck with it because of the Lucasfilm purchase, because there's no way they would green-light a movie like this and then shamefully roll out this movie.
 

Drtooth

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It's clear that Disney really doesn't care about Strange Magic and they didn't have much faith in it either, seeing how they only announced it's existence three months prior and the advertising campaign was poor. Seems like they got stuck with it because of the Lucasfilm purchase, because there's no way they would green-light a movie like this and then shamefully roll out this movie.
Yeah, but you see... they pulled the same thing with Gnomeo and Juliet... even worse because they really didn't want to release it. John Lassiter tried his darndest to stop the film from getting made. Disney only released it as a contractual obligation under the Touchstone banner. And for all the dumping it in January their did, there was this one weekend that turned the film around and it made a decent amount of money. Unfortunately. If it wasn't for the obvious Spongebob movie coming up a couple weeks later, it would probably manage to make something less embarrassing than 5 Mil. Not to mention Paddington is still in theaters. Gnomeo had no competition.

Still, George Lucas's name is polarizing. I bet most film goers were thinking he'd pull the film after a week for a special edition or something. Plus, there's rumblings about unfortunate implications with Elves being black people... this from the guy who gave us the embarrassing Chinese stereotypes in the prequel trilogy.

So anyway, what about that Mortdicai film? Seems that the second it was released, everyone stopped talking about it.
 

Drtooth

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Considering I was shut out from seeing it, no thanks to 2 more snowstorms this weekend selling out the only showing I could have got to, I'm very happy that Spongebob topped the box office with 56 Million. That's most of it's budget, correct?

So, what I've been on a soap box for years has been proven true. You can make money off of a current cartoon series getting a big screen release instead of waiting 20-30 years for a bad live action remake. Though I'm certain the 3-D gimmick, the strangely good timing, and the fact Spongebob's been consistently popular for the past 15 years or so has something to do with it's success. It finally dethroned Paddington as far as successful family movies go. I just wonder how Cloud Atlas 2: Space Buggaloo did. I want to feel sorry for the Wachowskis, since they haven't made a successful film since the last Matrix movie. A shame since Speed Racers was actually good for a live action remake. At least they watched the series and tried to make a movie that wasn't a "shut the kids up for 90 minutes" goof fest. But then there's the matter of Jupiter guzzling all the 3-D showings from Squidward and co, so...

In other news, while I'm disappointed that Big Hero 6 rushed to DVD despite being pretty successful, it seems that for the past several weeks Japan finally gave the movie its due. You see, Disney made a huge mistake with their staggering of international releases, but none as idiotic as what happened there. You seem the film opened up opposite the debut movie of an anime called Yokai Watch (proof to my previous "current popular cartoon on the big screen" point). Yeah, you'll hear of soon, as we're bound to get a watered down, American Grandparent pleasing dub to sell toys. This series is so popular that it broke records in its opening, taking all the biz away from Big Hero. After about a month in theaters, Big Hero managed to finally eclipse and make a very decent amount of money. It's been number one for around 5 weeks after Yokai Watch's reign. Glad to see it's one of the times we ape their style and they actually like it.
 

Drtooth

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WOW.

Jupiter Ascending made less than 19 Million. Seriously... the film industry picked the wrong film to give more 3-D showings to. If it's going to even make back its bloated budget, they're going to have to rely on the foreign box office.
 

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I hope the yellow sponge is able to soak up some more money over the next weekend. And with Valentine's Day coming up, it seems like a nice alternative to 50 Shades of Plagiarism.

And the budget's actually around $74 mil., almost 2.5 times the cost of its predecessor and around half that of an all-CGI feature from Pixar or Dreamworks. Who says a (mostly) traditionally animated movie has to be costly? :smile:
 

Drtooth

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I hope the yellow sponge is able to soak up some more money over the next weekend. And with Valentine's Day coming up, it seems like a nice alternative to 50 Shades of Plagiarism.
Seems like something the moms will dump their kids onto. Not to mention regional winter breaks will pop up those daily totals.

I could go on a long rant on how Fifty Shades is essentially porn for those who are too bashful to bother with real porn, and how I've been told that the bondage in the novel was done with no research or even a basic understanding. I mean, considering this was someone's Twilight fan fiction where the relationship is even more abusive written so said fan ficcer can...well... we know what that kind of fan fic is for. But I'm hoping that Spongebob and Kingsmen keep it at bay enough. I'd totally go see Kingsmen if it wasn't for Spongebob. Looks good. I'm hoping 50 Shades manages to snag a Razzie nomination next year. The scary thing is, there's a huge chance that the book will be seen as better than the film. :eek:

And the budget's actually around $74 mil., almost 2.5 times the cost of its predecessor and around half that of an all-CGI feature from Pixar or Dreamworks. Who says a (mostly) traditionally animated movie has to be costly? :smile:
Eh, just use the same outsourced Korean animation, only higher quality. I wouldn't be surprised if most of the budget went into the CGI. If there's one thing that keeps me excited for this movie, it's the fact the CGI looks exactly like the 2-D animation, or at least approximate enough. They manage to keep that distinct cartoony look in both forms. Keeping the bounciness of the characters is essential.
 

Drtooth

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&^%$!

That shouldn't come as a surprise. But who would have thought there were that many hormonal yet prudish housewives clamoring to see a terrible off-porn? It made freaking Guardians/American Sniper money. Nice that Kingsman manged to eke out a small win, and Spongebob has passed recouping its budget, and any regional vacationers that aren't buried under an 8th foot of snow in 3 weeks (I wish I was exaggerating) are going to add to its total. But seriously?! And even the critics gave it a waaaaay too generous 30% on RT! Those critics have officially lost all right to complain about Transformer movies. Even the humans in that movie series have better dialogue than the book ever did. It all goes to show. Terrible "getting off" fan fiction can be profitable.

Jupiter Ascending should retitle itself to Jupiter Plummeting. I'm wondering if this is the film that finally kills their careers.
 
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