Half in the Bag Episode 117: Box Office Number Crunching

half in the bag [ __ ] movies hello and welcome to half in the bag I'm I'm like oh my god and we're doing something a little different today yeah that's because we have no interest in watching any of the movies that are out now you know movies like Miss Paraguay's house of pedos Deepwater Horizon the story of an oil rig that blows up spoilers it blows up that's it masterminds the movie that looked like it was going to be so good they delayed its release for at least a year from the director of Napoleon Dynamite oh he hasn't made a hit film since Napoleon Dynamite when I heard masterminds was coming out I thought it was a real release of the film with Patrick Stewart Magnificent Seven which is a remake of the ridiculous six not to be confused with the hateful eight oh and it might be a remake of some other movie - Jesus Christ and lastly the most anticipated film of the last century Bridget Jones's baby which would be called Bridget Jones's too old to have a baby when they said nursing home the producers of the film thought nursing a baby but it was literally a nursing home there's a joke in there somewhere just wasn't presented properly I need a little time to work on that one okay there's a joke in there somewhere Jay all right you know you have approximately 26 minutes and then the episode will be oh okay so we're going to hold out to the end of the episode I'm going to work in the nursing home joke with Renee Zellweger childbearing and being elderly yes I got to put all these pieces together okay so and go timer well Jay why are we really here today if not to talk about trashy films that are out oh we're going to talk about the trashy films that already came out we're gonna talk about the box office so the box office Hollywood is going down Hollywood is in ruins according to all these articles and everyone talking about summer movies we're calling this the death of the summer blockbuster but yet we've made tons of money well that's that's what we have to discuss for everyone talks about every movies a big flop but that's not entirely the case we've discovered let's look at the numbers yes cuz that's that's what's important here is not just articles and Rotten Tomatoes scores it's the hard facts well Jay I have facts here on my clipboard you have like a printed out piece of paper on my clipboard yep like it like an elderly person I personally killed this tree okay although the creation of my smartphone personally killed a couple Chinese kids in a factory so what which is worse I know me I would say that's worth it well yeah that's debatable you know many Chinese people there are who's gonna notice a couple missing oh my god anyways so I took the the summer of this year 2016 and I took 25 films not randomly sampled 25 of the top films from each month from May to the end of August we're talking exclusively about summer blockbusters here summer blockbusters Batman V Superman Ghost Busters x-men Star Trek Jason borin Ben Hur etc well the general rule of thumb is to find out how much a movie's break-even point is you take their production budget and you multiply it by two to account for advertising and marketing so of course there are exceptions to the rule that's not the case for every movie but then the big big ones it's a good rough gauge yeah like Kubo and the two strings for example which had a production budget of 60 million I'm going to guess probably didn't have an advertising budget of 60 million because I never [ __ ] heard of it I I heard about it at what it was out someone said have you seen Kubo in the two strings and I said is that a new hipster band but then yeah movies like Blair Witch where the budget was five million and you know they spent way more than the actual budget on the movie on the advertising yes this is always differences but when a movie costs 150 200 million to make it's a good it's a good rough estimate yeah it's an average Jessica Lee and everything averages itself oh like Google and the two strings I have budget a sixty million the total gross and when I have total gross it's it's worldwide not just domestic is fifty nine million so really like if you were to apply this rule to that we're looking at 120 million and a loss of 61 million dollars Batman V Superman one of the most hated films of all time according to an article I read according to half the Internet yes the other half of the internet thinks it's a brilliant masterpiece budget 250 times that by to five hundred million worldwide gross only eight hundred and seventy three million dollars which means a total profit of three hundred and seventy three million dollars and you know those WB executives think that that's a disappointment because this was supposed to be the biggest movie ever how do you [ __ ] up Batman and Superman and a movie together right and so you sit there and you say oh well the movie made almost four hundred million dollars that's a lot but they're all like panicking it's flopping it's terrible we're [ __ ] because they have taken I'm assuming they expected a billion in profit they take that and they say what are we gonna do with this billion that we're going to make let's put it here and put it here let's put it and then they go oh my god oh we only have 400 million well that's the cost of like an average home in Hollywood I'm sure somebody bought a really nice couch elf off of Batman V Superman yes somebody got a really nice couch maybe just a nice nice small you know 1000 square foot home in the Hollywood Hills oh do they have 1,000 square foot homes in Hollywood there's probably one that's up there okay and it's like the asking price three hundred seventy three million its way at the top where the air is really thin no one actually wants to live but hey it's in Hollywood oh no no the air is cleaner up there the smog is it above this is above the smog okay yeah so this is the guy who produced the Batman B's man-whores ex Neider bought it maybe that's why his movies are the way they are because his brain is just clouded by la smog but possibly that's why every movie that he makes looks gray well ok so so you have a situation like that which is a unique situation because this is their flagship film that they're going to use the profits from to fund 63 other films their whole cinematic universe their whole cinematic universe so that that's sort of a different thing but then you got like like random movies throughout the whole summer and out of the 25 films I have six that had had a loss which one had the biggest loss well the biggest loss clearly was Ben Hur with a production budget of a hundred million dollars a total worldwide gross of only 87 oh my god 87 million dollars how embarrassing yes um the second biggest disaster well one of the biggest disasters in cinema history was the Ghostbusters remake but Mike I read an article that said that it's actually doing okay it was the highest-grossing opening for a Melissa McCarthy comedy oh my god it's such a hit what were the numbers well I did read an article that was the highest grossing film of all time about four female ghostbusters um the budget of this is quite high at a hundred and forty four million dollars for a Ghostbusters comedy multiply that by two and then you have the total worldwide gross of only two hundred and twenty-eight million dollars worldwide worldwide which is a loss of about sixty million yeah I remember reading an interview with Paul Feig where he was saying that the movie needed to make at least 500 million to break even I think they spent a shitload on marketing for that one right and this is a good example of where marketing may exceed you know times to the production budget right in some cases it may be less in some cases it may be more sure and I know this isn't the case with all the movies on this list but with that movie specifically I know that Sony was really banking on that being like they're one mega blockbuster for the year they started a new division that was going to be an entire company devoted to just making Ghostbusters Universe movies it was called ghost Corp mm-hmm and now it's a ghost corpse now it's a ghost town and all those buildings that they built all those production offices are just empty and paul feig sleeping under a desk well at least he didn't put a shotgun in his mouth um and then of course what would you guess are the other two we talked about Kubo and the two strings which which may or may not have lost money we're not sure but we have two other films all these other films that were in the negative yes [Music] I'll give you a hint okay one was directed by Steven Spielberg oh that's why I don't remember it because everybody's forgotten about the BFG the big [ __ ] giant as it's known yes uh The BFG budget of a hundred and forty million dollars oh my god and worldwide gross of 174 and a projected loss of 106 million dollars those are the movies that essentially lost money right but everything else made money well what about what people are saying is like the biggest flop ever was Warcraft which isn't true yes Warcraft is considered a big flop and I was shocked at the budget the budget was a hundred and sixty million but in China alone it made two hundred and fifty ish million dollars worldwide gross four hundred and thirty three million dollars but 60 million domestically no one in the u.s. cared right China loved it and so they profited 113 million yeah and that's why something like Ghostbusters didn't do well is because it didn't even open in China because they're scared of ghosts that's right yes that hurts it's like Star Wars didn't do well there and they really pushed it now like look at it it's got spaceships and robots I did you're easy get now I'm going to do loosing Joe quite similarly and then something the Warcraft does like gangbusters there yeah I don't think we quite have a handle on what the Chinese like and there's like what some other movie that was like like super big there and it was like some weird-ass movie and look what is that and that's like all those so biggest movie in China it's the biggest movie ever in a minor well find you the major uni mama [Music] so yeah like okay things you consider flops x-men apocalypse flopped everyone sets flopped 178 million dollar budget oh my god and a five hundred and forty three million dollar worldwide take profit at one hundred and eighty seven million dollars and Star Trek beyond say same thing very small profit thirty-four million a hundred eighty five million dollar budget when they killin I the biggest budgets on the whole list Wow that's actually kind of shocking except for Captain America the biggest and Batman so not in the negative but the studio's wants a Jurassic world yes I'm flipped back to my 2015 list which I also did calculations for Jurassic world's budget one hundred and fifty million worldwide take 1.6 billion holy [ __ ] yes total gain 1.3 billion but that's what they're hoping for that they want that one movie like that's I'm sure what Warner Brothers wanted with Batman V Superman that one movie that's just going to hit there it doesn't even matter how many of their other movies you know don't do that well right it used to be you'd make a number of modestly budgeted movies I mean even something like I don't know back to the future like that's not even if you count for inflation I don't think that's anywhere near something like a budget of a Jurassic world or Batman V Superman but there's more movies that make a shitload of money back then and now it's like they're putting all their eggs and you know a couple tiny baskets where a we need we have like three big releases this year and they all need to make you know a billion dollars for us to be profitable part of the reason to is oversaturation because one one thing I looked at which I didn't bother to do for 2015 because after I did 2016 I found a pretty even trend and that's second weekend box office drop off which is in almost every case above 50% oh my and in some cases it's close to 70% what I had set up close to 70 Batman V Superman x-men apocalypse 65% Suicide Squad 67% but even films that are successful you know Captain America Civil War 59% drop off oh wow and that made 1.1 billion dollars worldwide so really you have you have your opening weekend to make or break your film because regardless of of how big of a hit it is or how much money it's made it almost always gets cut in half or more Warcraft 70% drop second weekend and rotten tomato scores all over the map there there the movies have bigger budgets and there's more of them so only one out of ten or one out of twenty can can really be that big hit and it's almost like they're I mean at least everybody's working there's all these people making these movies and it's almost like throwing [ __ ] at the wall to see what sticks now and if one of them sticks then you cover the other nine but it's become it's it's so like machine-like and disposable it that's I was gonna say feels so calculated where it's not even about the quality of the movie anymore it's about the making sure that it plugs in all these elements that will appeal appeal to all these people and we've talked in the past about movies that do additional photography to account for the Chinese market or they re edit our movies to make sure that they appeal to a Chinese market the one thing that continues and this sickens me to the core is the Transformers films they consistently make over a billion dollars in profit each film both in the the US right like it's not like they're just huge in China it's it's a combination they do well here and they do well yeah they do you know two three hundred million here but when you add in overseas especially China they it's pulling in a billion each and and I was looking to 2017 there's transformers five coming out oh my god and then they've already have six and seven yeah in the works because it's they're up to five and there has not been any diminishing returns I don't think I think it's either been consistent or getting better yeah I I think it's because there's no sort of cultural barrier that the movie has to get past like those feel like foreign films in the u.s. I watch them and I'm like I don't know what's happening I feel like I'm watching a you know a Bollywood movie [Music] to get down man you cannot haha let's talk about 2017 so I went through and I guessed on the budget the the domestic take the international take and what the Rotten Tomatoes score is going to be okay so this is are your predictions for these are my predictions so come back to this video in exactly one year's time yep the end of September and we'll see and tell us how how how Mike did The Mummy 120 million dollar budget that's your guess that's my guess okay none of these budget entities that confirmed yet twenty-eight million dollar domestic take is going to flop hard because it's called The Mummy even with Tom Cruise sure so it's gonna it's gonna have an international take of a hundred million dollars oh okay so it's going to make some money it's going to play very well in Egypt because Egyptians like Tom Cruise oh of course the Beauty and the Beast film which I was thinking might have been a CGI film and I have a budget of 75 million but since it's not it's going to go up a little okay so I'm going to say a hundred and twenty million dollar budget for Beauty and the Beast that sounds reasonable a domestic take of one hundred and ten million and a worldwide take of three hundred million this is this is a pretty stable bet absolutely they've been pretty consistent with those live-action Disney movies lately yeah a 74% Rotten Tomatoes score my mummy score is at 36% by the way the power rangers film while it will profit 100 million 150 million dollars it's going to suck it's going to suck hard it's going to get a twenty six percent on Rotten Tomatoes and its budget is going to be 120 million again and it's only going to bring in 50 million domestically and it's going to have a 70% drop off at the first weekend international take of 200 million it's going to do well in the Asian markets they like them big robots yes but it's going to get a terrible review of 26 around Tomatoes Jumanji now Jumanji is gonna suck sure I predict a 31% score on Rotten Tomatoes but remember it is a Sony film oh it is this changes everything I made very clear to note that however even though it's this is this is dipping into Adam Sandler territory yeah it's a Sony film but has the rock and it has Kevin Hart in it oh he's pretty big right the Central Intelligence film was a hit a comedy film that was a hit so the rock and Kevin Hart our new comedy duo because the rock is so tall and Kevin Hart is so short right there the new Abbot and Costello if you don't know who that is just dust off like an old book that your grandfather has in his library and it's it's going to have a hundred and fifty million dollar budget it's going to make two hundred and fifty million dollars in the US and and internationally probably less than a hundred yeah so it's going to profit it's going to profit a lot it's going to be better in the u.s. than it will overseas yeah thank you yes transformers five two hundred million dollar budget two hundred thirty million u.s. and nine hundred million internationally okay putting the profit near a billion I think it's going to start to wane I think this will be the first one that dips below the billion dollar mark oh in terms of profit right the Justice League I foresee better things for the Justice League than I do for Batman V Superman well I think they're trying to course-correct at this point yes yeah that early comic-con teaser for it they're like look there's jokes in this they're going to lighten it up yeah budget 250 safe to say probably 250 movie Superman 250 okay and all the Avengers movies were 250 yeah domestic 350 million dollars that's your guess yeah oh my god less worldwide 600 million I think it's going to do much better than Batman vs Superman so yeah I think they're gonna they're going to make some some course corrections like you said you know what that means that means we may finally get that Aquaman movie we've all been dreaming of well the Wonder Woman movie is coming out before this and a lot of it banks on that to those whether or not that flops hard and I and I really don't know I think it might so if that tanks and it's like okay hmm but I think people thought because of the reception to Batman V Superman that Suicide Squad as a reaction to that was going to do really poorly and that didn't really well so you never know this will be the movie that it when people look at history and they'll say this is the point where superhero fatigue began I feel like we've been saying that for the last three years though it's gonna happen we're gonna hit that superhero fatigue and it just never happens and finally the wild-card spider-man homecoming this is this is this is problematic okay let me say this it's problematic one spider-man fatigue the last two films sucked they sucked hard I think the strength of love for Marvel is higher than the spider-man fatigue however we have a potential josh trank slash david ayer situation with you remember before when i asked you if you knew who john watts is i don't know that is he's the man who's directing spider-man homecoming oh he directed the movie clown yes about a killer cloud and he also directed the Kevin Bacon film cop car yes which I've heard is good I haven't seen it which I wrote is good it's about he's a kids steal a cop car uh I don't know what these have to do with spider-man I'm a killer clown and a stolen cop car well cop car was like an indie hit so that's what they do now is they take the guy who made the one small movie that was well-received got good reviews and they immediately thrust him into a 200 million dollar franchise and it always goes well and it always goes well exactly okay the Josh Trank effect right um but then you do have someone like like a James Gunn you know who did super for next to nothing and then went on to do guardians of the galaxy and that works I and your Joss Whedon too um by Colin Trevorrow even though I didn't like that Jurassic world is a huge hit yeah I mean I guess we could look at are they going to push him around and say you and told you that don't do that or are they gonna let him make the movie I don't know I think I think it depends on how much he wants that check because you have someone like Edgar Wright who's like they were trying to bully him around with ant-man he's like I'm out I don't need this yeah I think most of the other Marvel filmmakers kind of understand that they're gonna have to compromise with some things yeah like oh you got to shove in you know Thor into this one scene and they're like okay do I get that check um so yeah the that's that's that I'm I'm hesitant to say my my predictions on spider-man homecoming well you got to do it alright we've come this far I think I think it despite the questions of the you know uncertainties I think it will do well I'm I have a budget of I'm going to say 200 million the the Avengers movies are 250 I think there'll be a lot of effects in action but you don't have to pay Robert Downey jr. yes you might have a cameo I don't know but domestic take 300 million international take 600 million okay so we're talking about a nine hundred million dollar a movie take not profit then you - about five hundred for the film's budget and the marketing costs yeah a solid hit at four hundred million dollar profit it's not going to be a billion dollar Avengers style movie what's there on tomato scar Oh Rotten Tomatoes score I have a 72 percent okay I've a feeling it's going to be better than the last ones so those are my numbers numbers are all listed here in one giant screen image format for looking at later and we'll revisit us in a year mark October 2017 on your calendar so you remember to come back to this video October 1st 2017 we'll make a video if both of us are still alive well Jay did you enjoy not talking about a specific movie for once well it's interesting to look at all these numbers because everyone always talks I mean we do it too or like this movies a huge flop this movies a huge flop and we use around Tomatoes some people use it as like a like a hard fact this movie sucks because the Rotten Tomatoes score is you know whatever twenty percent which is never the case it's an aggregator you shouldn't judge whether you want to see a movie or not based on that necessarily but a lot of people do that's where we are that's where we are now and some movies that have low Rotten Tomatoes scores make tons of money and vice-versa yeah for some reason Ghostbusters yeah it was certified fresh' which they now put on the the blu-ray cases for movies that do well but they want to make sure people understand our well received yeah that's mysteriously Ghostbusters got a very very high rotten tomato score and the area I don't know why and yet it's still one of the biggest flops of the year yeah I lost a ton of money we may never know how that happened Jay you keep talking about this film called ghostbusters you're talking about the newly released film called answer the call oh yeah they changed the the title for the blu-ray release right yeah I think it's so did they want to trick people into thinking that it's a sequel to the Ghostbusters that came out earlier this year I think they're trying to trick people into thinking it was completely different movie something might make some money on the blu-ray sale I should have just called it Captain America Civil War well we'll see what next summer brings more big movies with big budgets making okay money and Hollywood executives getting fired or committing suicide when they don't reach the 1 billion dollar mark like they promised their bosses I swear this thing's going to be a next Jurassic world oh [ __ ] the magic of Hollywood it's like you could sit out on a nice starry night in Hollywood and like a lawn chair and just listen for [Music] you

Channel: RedLetterMedia

Views: 1,372,657

Keywords: redlettermedia, red letter media, red, letter, media, plinkett, half in the bag, best of the worst, mike stokasa, jay bauman, rich evans

Id: jLk2LBGkMd4

Length: 27min 59sec (1679 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 10 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/CalculusWarrior]

I never got my Bridget Jones nursing home joke, YOU HACKS

[u/mstrblaster]

Ah those big corporations, never releasing their numbers.

Space Cop (2016)

Budget	Domestic B.O.	International B.O.	RT Score
?	?	?	68%

[u/TheZB17]

Added to the description:

Also, WE’RE HACKS! Our Box Office figures didn’t factor in the theater chains’ take of the profits. Sorry about the oversight!

[u/[deleted]]

Can we discuss how the Magnificent Seven remake is an awful idea. The original was an adaption of Seven Samurai, and any new attempt to address that story should have been adapted into a more modern setting and theme.

There is a dearth of movies that address the wars of the last 15 years, and that's an area that Magnificent Seven could have delved into. The Magnificent Seven remake should have been Three Kings with four more people.

[u/Reginald_Venture]

I think he's low balling Beauty and The Beast. Alice in Wonderland did a $1 Billion, and this has a much more recent nostalgia, and they are already pushing it hard. For better or worse, its going to make a lot of money.

[u/Themaster20000]

Surprised Mike didn't talk about Ghost in the Shell for his 2017 predictions. If that does well,it's really going to influence what Hollywood starts greenlighting.

[u/Oster]

If this subject interests you, TimStarz put out a similar video a few months ago called The Hollywood Crash is Coming. Max Landis commented on the video saying, "This is incredible." I think he was exaggerating a bit but it's still alright. It contains some of the same estimating mistakes RLM made but it goes a bit further into the subject matter. He tries to explain why production budgets are higher, why the profits are lower and what the consequences for the entertainment business might be.

[u/[deleted]]

RemindMe! 1year "Were the hack frauds correct?"

[u/NimbleJattAnalysis]

The Warcraft video games are huge in China so I'm not surprised it did great there. Warcraft 3 is one of the biggest video games ever in the country.