General Chat / Holy shit! Look who it is...

he looks fuckin badass even tho it kinda looks like hugh grant with tentacles

If by "no competition", you mean Attack of the Clones, then you would be correct.

Well yeah... I'm a Star Wars fan and even I agree the movie wasn't that good.

That pic looks kickass! It's a perfect poster, dramatic with a flair of mystery. I'm looking forward to it. Spiderman was good, but not the type of movie I'd want to see over and over again, IMO.

If by "no competition", you mean Attack of the Clones, then you would be correct.

Alright smart guy if you want to get all factual, Spider-Man was released two weeks before Attack of the Clones and in that time it made $223,040,031 making it the movie that reached 200 million the quickest. This is with no competition. Opening the same week as Spider-Man were Hollywood ending (2 million) and Deuces Wild (2.7 million). The following week had Unfaithful (14 million) and The New Guy (9 million). Attack of the Clones opened with 80 million the next week and Spider-Man still managed to rake in 45 million. Two weeks is a hell of a long time, hardly anything stays at the top longer than two weeks. Compare that to this year where Matrix Reloaded started off strong (though still disappointing compared to Spider-Man) with 91 million but by the end of the summer T3, Pirates, and Bad Boys II all came out one week apart and all made around 45 million opening weekend. The biggest reason for Spider-Man's succes is that it came out in early May before any of the other big blockbusters (well except the Scorpion King but that hardly counts) and it had no competition for a good two weeks. Typical blockbuster, perfect timing.

Finding Nemo is still raking in the dough... I think it's just that a lot of the "blockbusters" this summer just suck. Good movies make good money. Generally, that's how it goes. Of course some of the best films are independent works, but as far as studio films go, the good ones bring it in. Sure it helps with timing, but Spider-Man was going to smoke the competition no matter what.

Anyone know how much POTC grossed?

Good movies make good money.

I wish I could believe that.

Good movies make good money.

Hahahahaha. Yeah, but sucky movies make better money.

Actually, it is true. Good movies make really great money, so long as they have the distribution and marketing to make it happen. And bad movies, with the same distrubution and marketing, often fail or start out strong and then completely loose speed afterward.

The reason so many major money makers are terrible, and a lot of great films are flops is due to the way you look at it.

A movie opens up with a whopping $500,000, entering in out of the Top 10. Another movie opens up with a whopping $25,000,000. So, the average movie goer would assume that the $25,000,000 opener was the film which succeeded and the other flopped.

That's wrong, though!

The $25,000,000 movie may very well have cost two or three times that much to make, and millions upon millions were probably spent on marketing. Moreover, shortly after the opening weekend, the $25,000,000 movie may very well (as usually happens) fall off the face of the earth.

The $500,000 movie may have cost $1,000,000 to make and nothing to market. As the weeks go by, it gets more and more money and eventually finds itself on the Top 10, if albiet at number 10. It then stalls out around there, making more and more money. In fact, it may even jump to number eight or even seven, due to good word of mouth.

In no time the film has made four or five times what it cost to make and market, while the film grossing 25,000,000 dollars has lost millions.

This isn't an example of any particular movie, no. And the numbers are probably quite off too, but the principal is the same as many true life cinematic success stories (and flops).

So, um, uh, yeah...

Good movies with good marketing and distribution, tend to make more money than crap movies with good marketing and distribution as well.

And a great film with no distribution or marketing can make a lot of money (relatively speaking)!

In fact, My Big Fat Greek Wedding had no distrubition, no marketing and was open in only a few hundred theatres at any given time, but it was still one of last summers biggest hits (and its largest money maker overall, I believe... the other ones had to pay for huge budgets and overblown marketing plans).

Yes cg but a low budget movie staying up there even half as long as My Big Fat Greek Wedding is very rare. In rare cases a movie like MBFGW or Memento will pick up a lot over time due to good word of mouth but the rest of the time these brilliant movies come and go all the time barely making back there small budgets while Scooby Doo and Charlie's Angels reign supreme at the Box Office. The movies that make money are not any better than the ones that don't, they just have hugely marketable commodities like Spider-Man that people will go see no matter how bad it is just because it's a Spiderman movie. Those movies come with a guaranteed audience while movies like Memento have to win their audience through reviews and word of mouth. This is why brilliance like Blade Runner and Fight Club make nothing. If good movies made good money than we wouldn't have to endure movies like T3 and LXG and Charlie's Angels but that just isn't true.

If good movies made good money than we wouldn't have to endure movies like T3 and LXG and Charlie's Angels but that just isn't true.

All 3 of the movies you listed have been bombing. Some more than others.

Yes but the point is that if good movies always made good money than why would studios make bad movies? What do T3, Charlie's Angels and LXG have in common? Marketable commodities meaning the studios that made them thought they would make good money. Movies only get made when somebody somewhere pays for them and that somebody usually expects to get their money back. It doesn't pay to produce flops. If good movies made all the money there would be a hell of a lot more of them.

T3 was awesome imo. You guys are on crack.

i know. who cares. i mean, its not as if they're all loaded anyway.

This is why brilliance like Blade Runner and Fight Club make nothing.

Blade Runner and Fight Club are by no means brilliance, and were no more or less popular than all of the films you named (except Spiderman, obviously).

Also, things like Memento aren't rare at all. Every week there are at least one or two like that!

Not nessecarily as popular, but movies which recieve great word of mouth and reviews, and so everyone goes. Houses were just as packed for Whalerider this week, as they were for the Hulk during its opening week. At least they were at the theatre I went to.

So, yeah, whatever...

I wasn't referring to indepent films with my statement.

The good STUDIO films make good money, generally. I mean, do you really think that Pirates of the Caribbean would have made so much (and still going strong!) if it was shitty? No. But, Disney surprising came through with a great movie. Simply put, if the movie sucks, it doesn't have legs.

Blade Runner and Fight Club are by no means brilliance, and were no more or less popular than all of the films you named (except Spiderman, obviously).

Also, things like Memento aren't rare at all. Every week there are at least one or two like that!

Not nessecarily as popular, but movies which recieve great word of mouth and reviews, and so everyone goes. Houses were just as packed for Whalerider this week, as they were for the Hulk during its opening week. At least they were at the theatre I went to.

So, yeah, whatever...

Fight Club was pretty much loathed by critics and audiences when it was released in theaters. It found a cult (pretty big cult) home on DVD. So it definately didn't perform up to "average" level.

I agree with what you said about word of mouth and your experience with Whale Rider. The screening I saw of "Winged Migration" was packed (with a shitload of little kids, which to some extent pissed me off), and it owed alot to the **** review that the Baltimore Sun had given it that morning.

i think there is a clash of what people are calling a good movie here...
As such, this argument could go on forever =P

Fight Club was pretty much loathed by critics and audiences when it was released in theaters.

No, it has an 81% on the TomatoMeter. Critics loved it. Audiences didn't for some reason.

No, it has an 81% on the TomatoMeter. Critics loved it. Audiences didn't for some reason.

Tou che... my memory is obviously fuzzy.

No doubt though, it bombed.

Probably can be related to marketing. It didn't seem like anything more than ultra machismo crap from the previews.

Blade Runner and Fight Club both flopped. They've since made their money back on rentals and video/dvd sales but they made no money in the theaters. I use those as examples because they are both studio films with reasonably high production values that, in contrast to the afformentioned blockbusters, actually had ideas in them. They didn't simply milk a popular franchise for more profits. Anyway I'm not saying people don't see small budget films, all I'm saying is that the biggest determining factor of how much money a movie makes is not how good it is, not even close. And there's a difference between a good movie and a movie with good production values. Millions of dollars won't buy you a good movie, that takes talent and more importantly it takes ideas. Even with it's 30 million dollar budget and 1982 technology Blade Runner looks more convincing than the 170 million dollar T3 because the filmmakers took time to actually think of what their universe should look like and how to accomplish that. All I ask is that the filmmakers care about their movies and show me something new. I couldn't care less about the next big budget spectacle because there's absolutely no heart or soul behind it. Worthless trash I say. Sure I'm exaggerating a little but that's only because nobody listens unless you make a lot of noise.