I saw it twice. I honestly cannot tell if Lana Wachowski hates the Matrix or not. There was this meta montage of "oh we have to make a sequel to the Matrix because the suits wanted it, everybody pile on stupid crap", which was obviously a middle finger to...someone. I laughed out loud at how over the top that blatant F-U was...but given that the movie proceeded to then actually crap on every single thing that was awesome about the first Matrix (hey, Trinity is a literally a soccer Mom now? Morpheus is the most newly freed mind and completely unimportant? Smith is completely unintimidating? It's inexplicably set in 2020, not 1999 that was supposed to be the peak of human civilization?) Did she honestly ruin it on purpose?
The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
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Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#62Doesn't HBO Max streaming somewhat counteract the losses in the theater? When HBO & Warner Bros decided to release all their movies on big screen and streaming at the same time for 2021 (only), part of it was a play to increase their streaming app subscription base? I know that we got a family subscription to HBO Max for exactly this as the main reason. I would be interested in understanding how the increased revenue…
Not counting the benefit of it HBO Max is like saying every single Netflix produced show was a loss. It's part of the reason people have the service, so part of the money made from the service (and cable subscriptions) can be counted to it. Doing otherwise is effectively lying.
Overall, there's no way this movie lost money.
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#63Uh huh. Sure. There's a reason they call it Hollywood Accounting[1]. Not that Warner Brothers is new to this game either: >A Warner Bros. receipt was leaked online, showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended up with a $167 million loss on paper after grossing nearly $1 billion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
You don't need Hollywood accounting when the expenses exceed the revenue, you can still pocket the revenue for yourself though. You can just stagger things across tax years.
Everyone should do themselves a favor and pay for a CPA firm (not just your friend that happens to be a CPA), learn some things just treat it as expensive education.
Its very different doing exploratory stuff with a CPA, compared to needing a CPA last minute for a problem you already have. They have excerpts from journals they are subscribed to that can inspire you about things you didnt know.
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#64Uh huh. Sure. There's a reason they call it Hollywood Accounting[1]. Not that Warner Brothers is new to this game either: >A Warner Bros. receipt was leaked online, showing that the hugely successful movie Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix ended up with a $167 million loss on paper after grossing nearly $1 billion. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting
Any reason to believe that this is an instance of Hollywood Accounting? At a glance, wikipedia says the film cost $190m, which seems reasonable for a film like this, and only received $124.5m in box office sales. Conversely, wikipedia lists Harry Potter OotP as a "150–200 million" budget on $942m in box office sales. It's certainly possible this is a case of Hollywood Accounting, but is there any particular reason we…
Hollywood Accounting, as I understand it, entails having a separate production company for each movie. That company then buys services from the parent company, something like a franchisee. Some of those services may be inflated. All of the costs incurred by the production company will be paid off before anyone gets residuals.
There's also the matter of "marketing costs" which also help out the parent company.
So, of the $190 million that the movie cost, some of it was raised from WB, but some of it also went back to WB. From the outside it's really hard to say when they come out even.
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#65This movie had to be a troll. The ending cover song of RATM's "Wake Up" was just something else.
So at first I dismissed your comment and moved on. But then I realized... maybe this was a troll? If WB really did try to strong arm her into making another one, this feels like the perfect response. "Sure, I'll make another one..." and then proceeds to make sure they never make a 5th. On the other hand, she has said in interviews that she was motivated by a personal loss to reach out and try to make it. Not sure who…
Both can definitely be true. The movie can be trolling Warner Bros and be trying to say something personally valuable to the director.
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#66In comparison, Spiderman No Way Home is the 8th highest grossing film of all time. I haven't seen it yet, but some of my friends have said the two films are equally bad. It seems they both attempt to sell nostalgia, and one of them worked and one didn't
I guess that heavy marketing and hyping nostalgia to fans and reheating an old film's ingredients somehow still works with die-hard super-fans. However, the result of this and reviews from the fans generally always ends in disappointment as their expectations are never met.
Sequels are even harder to impress fans and critics these days. Always better to ignore and cut through the hype as the opposite just happens.
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I've seen a lot of online whining about it, but as someone who enjoyed the Matrix throughly in my teens, I thought it was a great film. Definitely wish the ambiguity of the first act was stretched a bit further though, that was my favorite part.
First act was by far the strongest point!
It was like two movies. The first act was amazing, and the second was just a marvel clone. They should have just stuck with the meta self-referential in-matrix story for the whole movie. Furthermore, they could have taken it even further and epxlored the idea of onion layers of reality, with magical realms, multiple dimensions a la spiderverse, etc
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#68I don't understand how they do the math with streaming. In a way, you can say that everyone who is an HBO subscriber has already paid for the Matrix Resurrections. Obviously you don't have to watch it immediately, since it's now part of the streaming service catalogue, so unlike a movie theater where all people who intend to see the movie must watch it before it leaves the cinema, all HBO max subscriber can just thin…
I'm not sure how anyone does the math with streaming. Netflix is still able to raise money for production though.
Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#69Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M
#70Resurrections was like someone saying, “Hey remember that awesome movie we made in the 90’s? Yeah that was so great…” Axiom: You can only see The Matrix for the first time, once.
I just watched ghostbusters: afterlife and it was very similar, except 1980s. Procedurally generated fan service.