Live data from Hacker News

The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

wegotthiscovered.com

81–90 of 323 posts

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#82
post #61

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 awe…

> I honestly cannot tell if Lana Wachowski hates the Matrix or not.

The movies and the production of them? Yes.

The concept and story? No.

> Did she honestly ruin it on purpose?

Yes. I think she did.

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#83
post #2

Uh 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…

Warners intentionally released every 2021 film simultaneously on HBO Max in an attempt to drive subscriptions. It's likely impossible to attribute marginal subscriptions to a specific film on a service that offers thousands of them plus episodic television, but long run, if the service doesn't die and competes reasonably well with Disney+ and Netflix to drive up AT&T's market value for decades into the future, especially if other telecoms and ISPs start to dwindle in the face of disruption, it's worth it to lose accounting profit on a few specific wide releases for a year or two.

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#84
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much did HBO pay for the streaming rights? I would have bought 3 tickets to this, but watched it on HBO instead.

> How much did HBO pay for the streaming rights? They wouldn't -have paid- anything, HBO is owned by Warner too edit: ...they wouldn't have to have paid anything..

No, they'd have paid exactly what they want to. If they want the movie to make no profit, they'll charge HBO nothing, or perhaps they'd have the gall to have _HBO charge the movie studio part of warner_ a fee for showing it on HBO, perhaps filing that away as 'marketing expenses' or some similar scam. Anybody with monkey points (entitled to a cut of the net earnings) is out of luck.

Conversely if they want it to be a windfall for some reason they charge HBO idiotic amounts of money for the distro rights, which HBO will happily pay because Warner tells them to do so.

That's exactly hollywood accounting.

I have no idea if it was actually 'done' to the matrix here.

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#85

This movie had to be a troll. The ending cover song of RATM's "Wake Up" was just something else.

> This movie had to be a troll. Not so much a "troll", but there's a scene in the first act that literally lays out the entire premise of the production and the creator's feelings about feeling forced to do it. There are "lampshade hanging" fourth-wall breaks in the production meeting scenes that make Deadpool look conservative. The Wachowskis didn't want to do more Matrix. Warner were going to do more Matrix regardl…

I don’t know if it’s true that Lana W was forced to do this. I saw an interview with her and she said she needed to grieve about something and that this was what she wanted to do (or something along those lines). maybe true that WB would have done it anyway, but she didn’t seem forced.

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#86
post #2

Uh 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

Dumb question: how is Hollywood accounting not fraud? I know there have numerous civil court cases over differences of "opinion" over incentive compensation calculations, but has anyone actually gone to jail?

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#87

Not surprised. The Movie was an utter trash cash grab hollywood sellout "look how meta and cool I am" let's shit on the original. If you liked it I'd love to know why?

The meta aspect was a bit tedious at first, but I did enjoy how the story was set up. Neo trapped for years and years? Genius. NPH in the perfect role. It opened early in Japan, so I watched it last month, without trailers or anything. It's best to not expect anything, then it should be perfectly enjoyable.

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#88
post #2

Uh 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…

You can also always take the time to _become_ a CPA. I've thought about it a few times.

Re: The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

#90
post #34

What was the story in this sequel? The original matrix was about "techno-buddhism" and even character names were carefully chosen, e.g. Sati who could cross the boundary. It wasnt about green characters on the screen and black leather suits, and people felt that, even if they werent familiar with this philosophy.

The first act seemed to revolve around this feeling that the inability to accept artificial / inauthentic nature of things has grown into a source of anxiety and personal struggle whereas the original trilogy offered it as an opportunity and advantage. I thought it was a pretty solid take.

The second and third acts were mangled by a lot of unnecessary throwbacks.

Post reply on HN