Do Sony regret rebooting now?

[henzINNIT]

The "Amazing" series has its fans of course, but looking at the numbers the sequel is bringing in, do you think the execs at Sony are regretting their decision to restart with the property so soon?

 

[Green Goblin]

I actually talked to a friend about this.

Financially the first film was the highest grossing reboot. Didn't make THAT much less than SM2. Internationally the numbers are strong but American numbers has been in decline (since SM1 actually).

ASM2 while considered good, still disappointed. It's 3 week delay impacted more on those numbers. However Raimi's series was only going on for one more film and so that potental for box office was slashed.

With Peter aging much more slowly more Spider-Man films will be made. Rebooting also kets them build up the universe and expand (they wanted to do this back in 2007 with a Venom spin-off). Not only does this let them maximise story potental but from exec logic even more money can be made.

Look at WB with Batman. Exact same reasons for rebooting. He aged very fast and there was lityle potental for a universe.

In conclusion. Sony defenatly do do not regret rebooting but for that billion dollar mark thry need to make something on par with Avengers or Dark Knight. An amazing (pun intended) Amazing Spider-Man film will bring in titan numbers, just as what The Dark Knight did for Batman Begin's dissappointing box office.

 

[BatLobster]

An amazing (pun intended) Amazing Spider-Man film will bring in titan numbers, just as what The Dark Knight did for Batman Begin's dissappointing box office.

The thing is, that film ideally needed to be ASM-2. Not that it was a total bomb or a disaster, but they've potentially lost a percentage of their audience, and it's done nothing to build excitement for all the spinoff films they're trying to build. The foreign market might continue to flock to these movies, but back at home it might be an increasing uphill battle.

Reception and box office wise, it's probably similar to the boat Man of Steel was in...solid, but below studio expectations- only with better foreign as opposed to domestic (which was the reverse for MoS). So rather than a straight sequel, they're playing the Batman trump card and making the next film as much of a world-building spinoff as it is a sequel.

I don't know if Sony has an equivalent trump card to play to get EVERYONE seriously pumped, other than maybe Venom...which has been done before, albeit poorly. Sinister Six is a very hard sell at this point.

That said, even if Sony doesn't hit their billion dollar mark with the franchise, they can probably still coast by on churning out profitable films here and more thoroughly milk the cow. So I would agree that they don't regret rebooting. But I'm not sure that the Spider-Man franchise can return to the top of the mountain anytime soon. The market has changed so much since its heyday.

 

[LizardMan07]

Ideally from my point of view:

TASM3 comes out, critically prasied (93+), good WOM, good marketing, good story that gets people excited for next film, makes about 700-850 BO and sets up the franchise from here.

Andrew Garfield signs on for three more films, a new director comes on.

TASM4 comes out, critically praised, WOM good, film hits 900-950.

SS comes out, is Sony's Avengers, everyone smiles. Yay. 1.3 billion.

Rebooting had to be done, it didn't go as planned, but as much as some people would like it to be, the franchise is far from dead.

 

[Green Goblin]

The thing is, that film ideally needed to be ASM-2. Not that it was a total bomb or a disaster, but they've potentially lost a percentage of their audience, and it's done nothing to build excitement for all the spinoff films they're trying to build. The foreign market might continue to flock to these movies, but back at home it might be an increasing uphill battle.

Reception and box office wise, it's probably similar to the boat Man of Steel was in...solid, but below studio expectations- only with better foreign as opposed to domestic (which was the reverse for MoS). So rather than a straight sequel, they're playing the Batman trump card and making the next film as much of a world-building spinoff as it is a sequel.

I don't know if Sony has an equivalent trump card to play to get EVERYONE seriously pumped, other than maybe Venom...which has been done before, albeit poorly. Sinister Six is a very hard sell at this point.

That said, even if Sony doesn't hit their billion dollar mark with the franchise, they can probably still coast by on churning out profitable films here and more thoroughly milk the cow. So I would agree that they don't regret rebooting. But I'm not sure that the Spider-Man franchise can return to the top of the mountain anytime soon. The market has changed so much since its heyday.

As the market becomes more clustered the domestic box office suffers. This isn't 2002 where X-Men is the only other decent comic book franchise in town.

If ASM3 is the TDK level film, Sony will have taken six films to do it. Six films is a pretty sinister (pun intended) amount. However even TWS did not reach a billion and it followed Avengers. Spidey, like Batman is iconic. If he finally gets a Spider-Man film everyone loves then word of mouth, along with a beloved character will make a billion.

 

[Green Goblin]

Ideally from my point of view:

TASM3 comes out, critically prasied (93+), good WOM, good marketing, good story that gets people excited for next film, makes about 700-850 BO and sets up the franchise from here.

Andrew Garfield signs on for three more films, a new director comes on.

TASM4 comes out, critically praised, WOM good, film hits 900-950.

SS comes out, is Sony's Avengers, everyone smiles. Yay. 1.3 billion.

Rebooting had to be done, it didn't go as planned, but as much as some people would like it to be, the franchise is far from dead.

Did you know ASM actually has a higher average rating on RT than Spidey 2? The fans and audience make up the box office. Critics are only 200 people who's opinions are no less valid than our own.

 

[Lord]

Let's also not forget that the new films had both inflation and 3D doing them favors, as well as IMAX, with boosts like that, even Spider-Man 2 would have probably reached a billion.

The numbers in the USA were allways decreasing, tat's true, but the first film made way too high numbers, it's the film that has sold the most tickets since 1980 in the USA, the other ones weren't able to reach those heights, but rebooting so soon an Iconic film series like that only ended up hurting those results even more.

A proper Spider-Man 4 that was well received and released in 3D could have possibly been the franchise's deserving transition into the billion dollars club.

Now we'll certainly never know for sure, but i believe that rebooting a franchise that was still hot only ended up alienating a lot of people, then add to it the fact that Amazing Spider-Man 2 was not very well received, unlike The Dark Knight, Batman also had the advantage of rebooting a fanchise that had been killed 7 years before with Batman & Robin at a time when reboots weren't so common in Hollywood, needing a great beginning, and finally a brilliant film in the sequel for the franchise to be active again.

 

[BatLobster]

As the market becomes more clustered the domestic box office suffers. This isn't 2002 where X-Men is the only other decent comic book franchise in town.

If ASM3 is the TDK level film, Sony will have taken six films to do it. Six films is a pretty sinister (pun intended) amount. However even TWS did not reach a billion and it followed Avengers. Spidey, like Batman is iconic. If he finally gets a Spider-Man film everyone loves then word of mouth, along with a beloved character will make a billion.

You may be right. I'm no box office Nostradamus, it just seems like it won't be easy, especially with all the fierce competition out there. And Spider-Man is indisputably more popular oversees than he is in his home country right now. You need that domestic to pick up in a big way in order to hit the billion mark. Most of my friends haven't even seen ASM-1 OR ASM-2, but they've seen every single MCU movie.

 

[Green Goblin]

Let's also not forget that the new films had both inflation and 3D doing them favors, as well as IMAX, with boosts like that, even Spider-Man 2 would have probably reached a billion.

The numbers in the USA were allways decreasing, tat's true, but the first film made way too high numbers, it's the film that has sold the most tickets since 1980 in the USA, the other ones weren't able to reach those heights, but rebooting so soon an Iconic film series like that only ended up hurting those results even more.

A proper Spider-Man 4 that was well received and released in 3D could have possibly been the franchise's deserving transition into the billion dollars club.

Now we'll certainly never know for sure, but i believe that rebooting a franchise that was still hot only ended up alienating a lot of people, then add to it the fact that Amazing Spider-Man 2 was not very well received, unlike The Dark Knight, Batman also had the advantage of rebooting a fanchise that had been killed 7 years before with Batman & Robin at a time when reboots weren't so common in Hollywood, needing a great beginning, and finally a brilliant film in the sequel for the franchise to be active again.

But the first made much more than Batman Begins. Rebooting isn't the problem, it's that it hasn't reached TDK level.

Spider-Man 3, while critics liked it, was hated by fans and GA. Look at any worst comic book films list. No Batman and Robin but Empire with 100,000 votes put SM3 as the 50th worst movie ever.

 

[Rorschach2012]

i wish we could've at least gotten SM4.. They should've rebooted after SM4.

 

[Spider-Fan]

Did you know ASM actually has a higher average rating on RT than Spidey 2? The fans and audience make up the box office. Critics are only 200 people who's opinions are no less valid than our own.

Dude, the audience rating on RT is a beyond flawed metric. Anyone can go on there and vote 500 times that they disliked something just to drive the rating down out of spite, and this happened when TASM came out. All the Raimi numbers "suddenly" dipped when SM4 was cancelled. I don't think that is a coincidence.

This is why I don't take the audience rating on RT seriously at all. IMDB is also flawed.

 

[The Joker]

Dude, the audience rating on RT is a beyond flawed metric. Anyone can go on there and vote 500 times that they disliked something just to drive the rating down out of spite, and this happened when TASM came out. All the Raimi numbers "suddenly" dipped when SM4 was cancelled. I don't think that is a coincidence.

This is why I don't take the audience rating on RT seriously at all. IMDB is also flawed.

Exactly.

Plus you also have to factor in that the Raimi movies have A LOT more votes than the TASM movies. Only natural since they've been out a lot longer than the reboot ones. And it has an 81% like rating, over TASM's 77%. TASM 2's is dropping every week.

 

[Oscorp]

Eh, I really don't think they regret it despite the critical failure of TASM 2.

Raimi and Sony didn't agree about the story and characters. Tobey wasn't exactly excited about the franchise anymore. Kirsten Dunst even less.

Not to mention that, as far as I understand, they wouldn't make SM4 in time before the rights would revert back to Marvel Studios. The script for a reboot was already written and just needed some adjustments.

 

[A Necessary Evil]

Sony may not, but I (still) do.

 

[Lord]

But the first made much more than Batman Begins. Rebooting isn't the problem, it's that it hasn't reached TDK level.

Because the Batman franchise was dead at that point, they weren't pissing that many people and was doing something that hadn't been done before.

Spider-Man 3, while critics liked it, was hated by fans and GA. Look at any worst comic book films list. No Batman and Robin but Empire with 100,000 votes put SM3 as the 50th worst movie ever.

The GA? You're kidding right? The GA liked the film, the people that rate movies in sites like Rotten Tomaties aren't those, the GA doesn't care about rating movies. Otherwise, the Transformers movies wouldn't make so much money, the only people i see complaining about that film are fanboys.

 

[Human Torch]

The GA? You're kidding right? The GA liked the film, the people that rate movies in sites like Rotten Tomaties aren't those, the GA doesn't care about rating movies. Otherwise, the Transformers movies wouldn't make so much money, the only people i see complaining about that film are fanboys.

I don't think Sony regrets it.They probably have an easier time imposing their will on Webb than they could with Raimi.

 

[henzINNIT]

While I never appreciated Sony's decision to reboot, I understood to an extent. Cheaper to make, younger talent that are easier to retain, more control for franchise building....

... All of that seems to have been squandered now. I do kind of think Sony must be doubting their choice.

Long term, Garfield was a good choice but is already much older than the part, and the franchise building has been awful so far. They've failed to show me anything that couldn't have been handled just as well in the original continuity to justify the change. On the business side, so much money poured into this last film that hasn't paid off. I wonder what another sequel to Raimi's series would have done in comparison. They did much better numbers, and that was before 3D. I really doubt there has been an increase in profit from this reboot.

 

[spiderman2]

While I never appreciated Sony's decision to reboot, I understood to an extent. Cheaper to make, younger talent that are easier to retain, more control for franchise building....

... All of that seems to have been squandered now. I do kind of think Sony must be doubting their choice.

Long term, Garfield was a good choice but is already much older than the part, and the franchise building has been awful so far. They've failed to show me anything that couldn't have been handled just as well in the original continuity to justify the change. On the business side, so much money poured into this last film that hasn't paid off. I wonder what another sequel to Raimi's series would have done in comparison. They did much better numbers, and that was before 3D. I really doubt there has been an increase in profit from this reboot.

While how much cheaper was it really? ASM1 cost like 225 million even though it didn't look like it and asm2 cost 255 plus the spent a lot on budget. If sm4 had been made it is almost a garitey that the movie would have made more then asm1 has a lot of people didn't want a reboot but they probly thought sm4 would do more damaged to the one after that manying sm5 or a reboot and that it would be better to do the reboot before sm4 so it wouldn't get in even worse shap. How ever with the way asm1 and 2 have been recived that donsnt look to be the cause has asm2 is going to end up saleing like 50% less tickets then sm 1-3 did.

 

[Oscorp]

Sony may not, but I (still) do.

That's not what this topic asks about though.

 

[The Joker]

Considering both reboot movies have been critically and financially less favorable than Raimi's movies, I'd say yes they regret it to some extent. Which they should. The reboot movies are weak.

 

[LizardMan07]

I think the concept of a reboot was fine, heck, even the casting was really good. It's just the execution that was a little off. I think they'd love to go back to 2012 and start over though.

Just a correction, TASM was recieved better than Spiderman 3.

 

[Visualiza]

Considering both reboot movies have been critically and financially less favorable than Raimi's movies, I'd say yes they regret it to some extent. Which they should. The reboot movies are weak.

I don't know if they do, but they ought to. What they've put forth has not lived up to the promises or expectations at all. The so-called untold story was lukewarm at best and nearly everything else has been mishandled or sub-par.

I think the concept of a reboot was fine, heck, even the casting was really good. It's just the execution that was a little off. I think they'd love to go back to 2012 and start over though.

Just a correction, TASM was recieved better than Spiderman 3.

That's not exactly the benchmark they should be aiming for.

 

[jeffjhicks]

I think they do. Spider-Man used to be an event each year. Now it's kind of a joke

 

[Tacit Ronin]

If the goal of a reboot is to reintroduce the character to a brand new generation and expand your viewer base to a bigger height, then it has failed unquestionably by doing the opposite. Due to their impatience, the result of which was a a premature reboot, not only did the they not gain any significant consumers, it instead served to drive away a noticeable section of the audience that watched the Spider-man films.

But as many rejuvenated franchises have proven, if you reward the audience with quality, you stand a good chance of winning them back. But they happened to make their present problem a bigger one. Instead of building their audience back, they managed to drive away yet another portion of the already reduced viewer base that bothered to support the first one.

Does the bad news end here? They wish. Instead of wisely reducing their budget to reflect the downward trend, they make it more extravagant. But even that show of budgetary affluence looks like a Bronx ghetto compared to the helium explosion that is their marketing budget. Bombarding us relentlessly with the same sequences over and over again. The monotony of which was only exceeded by suffering the corresponding scenes in the actual cinema. That's right. If the movie is as highly problematic as it was, Sony should've aimed for smarter exposure of the imagery free fall. In the end, it wasn't even a surprise that the movie had exactly the problems the trailers, spots, bill boards, cups, toys, clips, superclips, hyperclips, mega trailers hinted there was.

So, um, yes. The reboot was a mistake. Their rationale for starting over was because so they would release the reboot faster then Raimi's fourth effort. Yet it came out at the same time Raimi's would've. But the similarities end there. Raimi's Spider-man 4, provided it was a return to form (like Singer's DOFP), would've assuredly made more than ASM. They could've been smart and elected a Bond-like soft continuity to Raimi's with a different cast after that, and all would've been right with the world.

 

[MessiahDecoy123]

I don't think SM4 would've been the masterpiece many around here were expecting.

But we'll never know so I guess everyone gets to assume it would've been way better than SM3/ASM1.