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The Matrix Resurrections estimated to lose Warner Bros $100M

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

#131
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…

Yea…I mean, I got through it because I loved the originals but it was very much a fan-service movie.

Not unlike the latest Spiderman with how much it tried to reference from the others in the collection, but the constant flashovers to the originals were a bit exhausting.

Was tough to watch. I mean, I got it…but it was tough to watch.

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

#132
post #38

I 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 think the key point is that streaming companies don't think of it as "our customers are paying us a subscription fee and then our catalog is free to them", but rather as "our customers are paying us a percentage of their subscription fee for each thing they watch".

In terms of figuring out their own cash flow, most of these sorts of subscription services divvy up the subscription fee from each customer between everything that customer consumed from the service during the month. So if you've paid a $10 monthly fee and then only watch one movie, the company interprets that as you paying $10 to watch that movie. If you watch two movies, then you've paid $5 to watch each movie. (maybe with a skew favouring the longer movie or the newer release, depending on their own business logic)

That approach would make it pretty easy for them to figure out a reasonable internal estimate of how much money a particular movie has earned the company via their subscription service. Although that's all fungible internal money and who knows how they'd want to report it, if at all.

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

#133
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.

yep. i watched it at least 3 times on hbo as well. easily would've bought a couple tickets.

same here

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

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> wikipedia says the film cost $190m, which seems reasonable for a film like this And you can add half of that again for the marketing budget.

It seems like it wasn't marketed very much: I didn't realize it was in production, about to be released, or... released. I just happened to see it online ready to watch one day and watched 2/3rds of it before giving up.

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

#135
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 haven't seen the new movie, but RedLetterMedia's review had interesting commentary along these lines.

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

#136
post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think so, or at least the film was very self-aware of the fact the Matrix as a movie franchise has exactly become what the Matrix in the original movie was, a repetitive, stagnant world that exists solely to suck the lifeforce out of its subjects. This is a critique that Baudrillard (whose work is featured in the original) actually had already of the original trilogy itself when he stated that "the matrix is the ki…

The first time I saw Resurrections, I was lol'ing at the brainstorming montage, as I saw it as her explicitly sticking her finger in the eye of all the haters and crackheads out there. But the second time it was cringe. I mean, the first Matrix was this unabashedly bad-ass movie that was so fresh, and then by the time number 4 rolled around, it hates itself and everyone else so much that most of the screen time is sp…

I think there's a way to make Matrix 4 that looks upon its own legacy and destroys that baggage, "kill your darlings" and all that, and even maybe many of the scenes filmed in this one could be present in that movie.

But the film we saw in theaters is not the quality version of that meta-textual film, it is often very confusing with poor writing, execrable action scenes, and plot that is far less clever than its ambitions. Some of the dialogue sounded like the crummy lines from modern Hollywood superhero and other blockbuster movies, a far cry from the at least tonally-consistent writing of the original films.

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

#137
I think the saying "set and setting" applies to movies as much as it does to psychedelics. I was hyped to watch it, I was nicely toasted, I watched it as soon as it came out, and it did everything right in my book. For starters, it grabbed me from the get-go: the shot of a SWAT operator's foot stepping into a puddle was totally gorgeous. Everything else that happened was interesting as hell - a program being evolved in a simulated environment, an agent realizing he's Morpheus, Jessica Henwick being totally gorgeous and speaking in a soft honey voice. If the first moments of a film charm you, you are much more predisposed to like it.

Other things I loved without getting too specific:

+bullet time rewind +Trinity's fresh eyes after nearly dying +the ballet of the helicopters +Sati +Sati's wink +the design of the Anomaleum +holding hands in the sky +army in a coffee shop +the music when the dojo gets initiated +the view from the prison cell +bathroom stall encounter of grandeur and hilarity!

I'm sure I'm missing twice as much amazing things but these are just off the top of my head.

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

#138
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.

What kind of person would take something of their own and ruin it like that?

Tons of people loved the matrix, just let it be.

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

#139
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoting box office sales while ignoring the fact this was released simultaneously for streaming really doesn't tell the full story.

Do they suddenly make more money streaming? Do you have any evidence people joined a streaming platform to watch it? This thing bombed everywhere. People with existing subscriptions watching it doesn't make it any. More profitable to Warner Bros

More money isn't just new subscriptions, it's also revenue from existing subscriptions (which can be cancelled any time).

By this logic, platforms will never need new content ever in order to keep existing subscribers happy.

It's not just new subscriptions, it's also retention: do people stay subscribed to platform X because movies like The Matrix Resurrections are on the platform?

It'd be rather hard to measure for a single film, it's the aggregate of platform content that dictates retention, I would think.

If the answer is yes, then the platforms will continue to pay companies like WB to film "box office bombs".

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

#140
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

How do you do this and how much does it cost?

I would say budget $3000 for beginners.

Bump that to at least $10,000 if you wind up putting down a retainer for a tax lawyer.

But CPAs are just as excited to research the same stuff and can give you the same answers, and their sign off on some activities can have some weight.

It gets easier to rationalize when you follow my simple mantra: do things worth litigating over.

Rules out lots of other ways to waste your time.

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