Live data from Hacker News

After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

bbc.com

101–110 of 120 posts

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#101
post #5

The solution is painfully obvious for anyone who isn't actually involved in milking every last red cent out of media: make movies people actually want to see, and not just shameless cash grabs recycling everything from 1980 onward. Of course, now every suit expects every movie to gross a billion dollars, so that's not going to happen. It's a fun dream, though.

I think (hope?) many of the movie watchers are caught up on the tropes and the “always makes money” formulas that Hollywood has been riding for years. If they pay attention maybe they’ll greenlight genuinely new IP and try things and let creatives explore again. You can make a lot of “failures” for $160M and if two are hits you’ve made enough to pay for all the rest.

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#102
post #43
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't remember where now, but I read that these reboot cash grabs are largely aimed at overseas markets like China which make up the majority of film earnings nowadays.

There's a reason science fiction was popular in the Soviet Union...

Please elaborate. :-)

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#103
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason science fiction was popular in the Soviet Union...

Please elaborate. :-)

The fantastic is sufficiently detached to provide an allowed, apolitical outlet for social commentary, where more realistic stories would be censored.

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#104
The average person's TV setup (what used to be called "home theater") now matches or exceeds the movie going experience: volume control, pause anytime, cheap food, private bathrooms, no-one talking ot eating next to you, etc. I saw Dune 2 in a nearly empty theater and it was still a terrible experience (good movie though).

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#105
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're a regular movie goer, you can get a monthly pass for a little over $20 at the big theater chains. It pays off if you see 2 movies a month, or just 1 if it's IMAX.

That works well when you go to movies alone, for a family of 4, that cost starts going up to $100/month. And unfortunately, not enough good movies come up during the year to justify spending $1000+ every year on just movies. You’re better off watching a couple movies in theaters and then watching the rest on DVD.

That's a bit of a blanket statement because it's highly location dependent. For example here in the Bay Area, there's a decent amount of Cinemark locations available, and a subscription costs $11/mo for 1 ticket per month with rollover — and those tickets can be used for non-subscibers. They also allow additional ticket purchases at the discounted subscription price.

Even if one only goes to the movies a few times a year it's still a good deal over paying retail. A family of 4 can go to the movies 3x per year on $132 here in the SFBAY, which is a far cry from $1,000.

Yes, AMC has a much pricier subscription but they also hand out waaay more tickets.

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#106
None of the explanations in this topic are relevant if they don't address that "Barbie", "Oppenheimer" and "Super Mario Bros" were all hits last year.

Ticket prices, concession prices, streaming, attention spans, originality (or lack of), home theater setups, length of films... all of these factors were in place last year.

It's probably worth looking at specifically why the marketing for the hits from last year was effective (Barbie marketing particularly was both ubiquitous and highly inventive) versus "Furiosa" and "Fall Guy". Also note that Fall Guy's box office was relatively okay compared to something like "The Lost City" but it's budget was much higher, making it a much tougher financial proposition.

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#108

I’ve seen a lot of explanations for this, but talking to most people my age, there’s only one that’s the real reason: the economics are terrible for watching a movie. The tickets are averaging $20-30 per person around where I live. In 2018, the same movies cost $7-13. Parking and food push the costs even higher. All for a couple of hours of entertainment. I can watch the same movie for $20 when it comes out on DVD. I…

Even bigger expense, bringing bedbugs back home from sitting in the nasty and never cleaned seats. Worth it to just see it at home. Times have changed and going to the movie theater is not what it used to be.

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you really watching DVDs on modern large screens though? Maybe you meant Blu-ray. DVDs look terrible on modern screens.

It’s still called a “DVD release” whether it’s 4K or blue ray or streaming on Amazon. You understood what I was saying. This was an unnecessary nit.

I'm sorry. I genuinely thought you might be watching DVD disks.

Re: After Furiosa flops, Hollywood could be facing a biblically disastrous summer

#110
post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fury Road made sense. The fact that Furiosa is set in between the original Mad Max and the time of Fury Road kinda says "cash grab" to me. No real logical reason to insert this fifth film between films 1 and 4 other than "we don't know how to continue the storyline with something new, so let's just bridge the gaps".

I loved how they bridged the gaps. Further development of the world which made me appreciate Fury Road even more. When I saw the trailers I thought it looked terrible and was a cash grab. After a friend got me to go see it, I was happily proven wrong. I don't think telling a story out of sequence from existing material means that it's a cash grab.

I think the trailer hurt them more than anything. It looks like a crappy CGI imitation of Fury Road, which I loved.
Post reply on HN