To borrow from your earlier post, success is a determination driven by goals.
And that means...oh, that WB has goals we can't possibly know, for a series of events we are not privy to. Which may, if we follow the logical extension of how studios run, include licenses and DVD sales.
The reason for that is that is they have expertise in the movie business, However they are a publicly traded company. The shareholders only interest is in how the success of superman or any other movie will affect the value of their stocks. As such the COO or president of TW has if he has any sense has to have a goal of maximizing his shareholder's wealth.
The valuation of these stocks are directly determined by the BO performance of a film and analysts forecasts of future films tied to the performance of a known property such as Superman. They use the BO of a film as in indicator for BO of its sequels. Even the announcement of a sequel will affect the share price of TW stock.
If the president of a company does not care about the shareholders money he will shortly find himself with a pink slip from the board of his company.
This is the way public companies are run.
When Superman or any movie is greenlit it is obviously based on the projected forecast or return on investment. The average return of the stock market is said to be 10 % over time. If the company you invest in is not giving you more than 10 % most shareholders move their money elsewhere (we are always looking for the best kept secret). This is how people lose there jobs.
Fascinating. And we needed this explained because...
Movie studios do not depend entirely on box office to measure the overall success of a film. I could care less on what shareholders depend on, because we aren't talking about shareholders and their measure of success. At least we weren't.
It is clear that Superman could I think have done Spiderman numbers.
Not this version of Superman, and that should have been obvious from Day One. This version of Superman does not lend itself to being a kids movie, which is a huge reason SPIDER-MAN and SPIDER-MAN 2, and PIRATES and PIRATES 2 and so on and so forth...did so well at the box office.
As such I suspect the internal forecasting was higher than the numbers we are seeing.
Probably. But isn't it generally?
To suggest that TW does not care that much about the money is nonsense. They waited all this time to restart the franchise, why is that do you think. I beleive they care very much how much money SR makes. I can bet that in the back of their heads are the POTC2, Xmen, Spiderman, and Batman Begins BO numbers.
If they are, indeed, thinking that way, then that's their problem. It's foolish to expect THIS version of Superman to do Spider-Man numbers. It's even more foolish to expect it to do such numbers pitted against PIRATES 2. Now, since WB greenlit THIS version and no other, and decided on the release date they did, they pretty much have only themselves to blame for any amount this film falls short of their expectations.
I am, however, pretty sure that in the end, they will be content with massive DVD sales and a ****load of merchandising licenses.
If I was the head of TW I would be working full time trying to track down the reasons my actuals are so different from my projected estimates. that is what the studios do every Sunday when the try to estimate what Sunday will do BO for a movie after they see the saturday numbers, why, cause that info affects the stocks monday morning when the stock market opens.
Problem is, you're making assumptions about what their own estimates were. WB probably knew all along it was a bit of a gamble, and went with it anyway.
Superman is bigger than Spideraman and it started the whole comic book movie industry.
And SUPERMAN: THE MOVIE, which was obviously lighter in tone, and something new, reflected that in it's numbers. However, since then SPIDER-MAN, SPIDER-MAN 2 have simply surpassed it it terms of filmmaking, and are far more relatable films to kids than SUPERMAN RETURNS could hope to be.
I feel sorry for Singer, brandon and everyone else. This is now a very precarious situation for them. For their sakes supes has to get to at least 200m just so that the suits can try to pacify the shareholders. They can play with the numbers as much as they like but Xmen did 237m and counting. Like it or not the two rival studios are a benchmark for each other and the shareholders are taking note.
Uh huh. Tell me. Are the shareholders of a massive movie company lacking the intelligence to realize that DVD sales account for what, 3 to 4 times a movie's box office, and that merchandising accounts for a good bit more?
I truly hope that Supes pulls it off. STM was in my opinion easily the best superhero movie ever made. I hope Singer if he gets a shot can do better but I am sure that the suits are huddled somewhere watching these numbers as much as we are.
Since that's their job...yeah...I'd say so.
And that explains why the posts in the complaints thread is in in the thousands and the number of posts in the we love it is in the hundreds. What are you smoking?
So you just assume every post made in whichever thread is negative towards the movie? Of course a negative thread is going to have more posts in it. More discourse arises, and therefore, more discussion. But go look at the actual POLLS about the film.
At my last count...
29 percent rate it an 10.
21 percent rate it an 9
16 percent rate it an 8.
Any way you spin those numbers, something like 66 percent of the people polled at SHH gave SUPERMAN RETURNS an 8 or higher. Add 7’s to that and the percentage becomes 74. Only 23 percent of the people polled gave it a 6 or lower.
And I notice you ignored the statement about a 75 percent rating at RT.
Solid box office. It was expected to make 2 times as much the opening week. It was expected to still be in the number 1 or 2 spot by now.
Expected to make twice as much by who, exactly?
Warner's said it was a tent pole movie for them
And so it is, going by what tent pole flick means:
"The industry term for a movie (usually but not always a franchise flick) that a major studio expects will be a blockbuster (but often isn’t)"
and it is only at 164 mill in its 4th week of release. And it was sucha box office Warner is making every excuse it can on why it failed.
I have yet to see a single excuse as to why it "failed". Or an admission of failure.
yeah I don't see them toys flying off the shelf.
They may not be "flying off the shelves" (nothing is, really, right now), but they're still selling. I've seen kids buying SUPERMAN RETURNS stuff, wearing it in public, etc. Are you watching every store every day of the week? How about online stores? How about taking into account the upcoming Christmas and holiday season?
And why is it that the tie in wiht Burger King started 3 weeks after the movie came out? Who the hell dropped the ball on that.
Who cares? A movie tie-in is a movie tie-in and people tend to be suckers for them.
No it hasn't. It is now second only to Poseidon in box office dispointment for Warners.
If your definition of success is "huge box office", we're just going to go around in circles. When I said it had succeeded, I was obviously not referring to just box office, as I pointed out pretty early in discussion. And again, this movie's "take" is not yet decided. Not by a long shot.
Warning. No one ever go into business with the professor here. You could invest a million dollars and only sell one 5 dollar thing and he woudl be walking around like a c**k on the wall with pride over being so successful.
Why, it's another ****ty analogy. Whoda thunk it?
so according to you, they knew they were going to fail and still just threw money at it anyway. And it is not selling merchandise. Toys are not moving off the shelves.
And you know this because...
Anyone see SR toy display at their local toy store with any change as to how many toys are on it as opposed to a few weeks ago.
You do realize that toy stores, like grocery stores, hire something called "stockers", right?
At all the Fred Meyers I ahve been too, I maybe have seen two or three dolls out of a few stores. It aint selling. Stop making stuff up.
What the hell is a Fred Meyers? A Meijer? Funny, because the Toys R Us I "frequent" has kids looking at and yes, buying SUPERMAN RETURNS toys. I've even seen three of those inflato-suits at my place of business. In public. Those make little kids look hilarious.
By struggling to make its budget back domestically? Yeah, a real success.
First, you kind of have to take into account that it's budget is 260 million dollars in this equation. That's a pretty big hill to climb for a serious, fairly non-mainstream, film. That's a hundred million dollars more than the budget of BATMAN BEGINS. "Struggling" to make it's budget back when it's not a kids film, or all that mainstream to begin with, seems like something that should have been expected.
Fortunately for WB, they own Superman (WB owns DC Comics).
I'm simply pointing out why the car analogy sucks.
Continuing with this analagy, right now, SR is looking a lot like the Edsel.
The Edsel was a far more collosal failure than SUPERMAN RETURNS will ever be. And IT never had a 75 percent approval rating. Ever.
What is there in SR which lends itself to a kids' show, other than Jason (and the superboy copyright is tied up in the courts right now..)
It was a joke.
