JKKS085
Sidekick
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It's not being negative and it's the point that I was trying to get across in the Suicide Squad bo threads (and in the Man of Steel threads, and Amazing Spider-Man threads before that).
Numbers are what they are, numbers, raw and stubborn data and as soon as you try spinning them in a positive or negative light you're doing something wrong. At the very least I can understand how your negativity or positivity towards a a movie, a franchise or a studio could affect your predictions and how you perceive the future prospects of any movie. But that is part of the game.
Now when it comes to break even point and profitability it's just maths. No movie exists in a vacuum. We've seen this time and time again, people trying to bring up things such as product placement and tax breaks to put a positive spin on disappointing numbers but the playfield is about the same for every major blockbuster. Discounting releasing costs just because they are in part supported by group companies is a farce unless you have subsidiaries working for free and being in the business of losing money. More often than not people tend to underestimate how tough this business is.
In any case and to put things in perspective, aside from obvious bombs like Fant4stic or Green Lantern, all these films will make money one way or another, either by being box office juggernauts (like say The Avengers) or by relying on revenues from ancillary markets (which is were studios make the bulk of their money especially in the genre). So yes, studios will break even, will surely turn a decent profit on most of these ventures but then again no movie exists in a vacuum and breaking even in theaters, or after factoring in home video revenues isn't the only bar for success. Which leads me to my final point.
I think when it comes to Doctor Strange specifically:
- Anything under Iron Man ww unadjusted numbers would not be good, or anything under any of the phase 1 origin movies for that matter. That is just my opinion to be clear but I think that the film needs to clear 585M ww to be deemed successful. Granted the concept is more outlandish than Iron Man, and the character is probably even more obscure for the GA but with 8 years of inflation, the growth of international markets, the 3D/Imax/PLFs and the current strength of the Marvel brand closing in on 600M ww is a realistic expectation. Again just my opinion.
- Now we don't have an officially reported production budget but if that 165M number is to be trusted a good performance on a strict profitability standpoint would be to match TDW 644M ww. And anything above that would be tremendous fo course.
Finally I think we should pay attention to the domestic multiplier as it will be indicative of the bo potential of an eventual sequel. IF the film opens to underwhelming numbers dom and still manages to display a good holding power (i.e. a multiplier above 2.5 which would still be under any of the previous origin movies in the MCU btw) that's a good thing that could offset a possibly disappointing domestic run. Also the domestic/os split is important. I don't think the movie is going to be an outlier in the mcu even if it seems to be tracking better os than dom so far but a good domestic performance (above 200M) is crucial.
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