Bumblebee Box Office Discussion

Discussion in 'Transformers Movie Discussion' started by Music, Dec 18, 2018.

  1. LeeleeSTAR

    LeeleeSTAR Active Member

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    Where does this supposed breakeven calculation even come from? How does anyone know what a company has spent or is planning on spending on marketing?

    Surely one film that had a $100m budget could possibly have a marketing budget twice or three times the size of another than had the same sized production budget.
     
  2. Aernaroth

    Aernaroth <b><font color=blue>I voted for Super_Megatron and Veteran

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    It's a general rule of thumb used for a very ballparky estimate, but I expect that except for films with very low or very high production budgets, the marketing budget would more or less scale accordingly, because you don't want to overpromote a product you don't have confidence in, or underpromote a product you have a significant investment in.
     
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  3. RichP

    RichP Slick Doohickey

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  4. chandler55

    chandler55 Member

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    China box office only gives 25% to the movie company, and a big portion of bumblebee $ will be China so... if what you say is true there’s no way they make a profit. Disastrous even.
     
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  5. LeeleeSTAR

    LeeleeSTAR Active Member

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    Surely they wouldn’t spend $135m just on marketing. It must include other things as well.
     
  6. Autobot Burnout

    Autobot Burnout ...and I'll whisper "No."

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    The majority of non-production related costs are marketing, so they kind of become a header for all the costs not directly related to making the film. It's easier just to use marketing as a catch-all term instead of specifying the breakdown.
     
  7. Music

    Music Primetimus Prime

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    Yes, but they don't include the most recent numbers. They are usually a day or two behind.
     
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  8. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    Makes sense, he's a recognizable, charismatic dude who went out of his way to learn their language.


    Also makes sense- just style-wise it's the type of movie that frontloads less and gets more return watchers.


    Yes. Also a lot of the cost *and* income numbers are murky and hidden by arcane accounting. Not all of the budget is money that goes out of the company (it can include stuff like one department paying another) and such, and some marketing deals are 'worth X' but do not involve that money changing hands but is more of a tit-for-tat deal. So while not all the box office goes to the studio, similarly not all the budget is 'real' budget.

    Twice-budget is a rough estimate that more-or-less balances the murkiness of both sides. Movies like the first Pacific Rim got a sequel on twice-budget with a mostly Chinese take, so I think it's still pretty solid even with numbers coming mostly from there.
     
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  9. Aernaroth

    Aernaroth <b><font color=blue>I voted for Super_Megatron and Veteran

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    I mean at the end of the day I don't think Paramount is going to come out and say ''bumblebee made a profit of X million dollars", and so as there's a ton of factors in play (which we can discuss as nauseum) we'll probably never know for sure just how well/poorly the film does at this point. It didn't completely bomb (I'm not sure why people keep insisting it's been a disastrous release, given the more spectacular failures this year at the box office), and it was far from a smash hit in terms of sales (it's made basically the least of any live action tf film, and what's worse, that isn't really a surprise to anyone, given the situation).

    The Bumblebee movie, barring some massive legs or a radical shift in performance, looks like it's going to settle in that nebulous region between minor failure and modest success. It didn't do great, but plenty of movies did worse this year.

    We'll probably only know the real impact of its box office performances, which will probably be a lot less obvious than it was for the first tf films, if Lorenzo comes out and says all the other greenlit films are now cancelled, or alternatively, if they start talking about how the Bumblebee movie is going to influence them.
     
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  10. drbeakman

    drbeakman Well-Known Member

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    i just saw this! pretty impressive!
     
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  11. ZapRowsdower

    ZapRowsdower Selling oddities in a shack. In the woods.

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    Smart would be hiring Chinese actors and shooting in China again - but Paramount got burned by too many lawsuits and clearly doesn't care to go back. Which is unfortunate, given how much they depend on CHINA for the success of these movies! :rolleyes2 

    John Cena can't carry the entire slack, Paramount! Throw in some Chinese TFs into the pictures! At this point, I wouldn't consider it pandering to include a Chinese warrior TF with some amazing battle scenes - it's literally the best way to sell your movie in your biggest market!
    I'm shocked by your analysis.

    I thought, for sure, BB would do better than TLK! Right? Isn't it doing better? What about comparing movie costs to sales? I can't live in a world where the BB movie can't perform better than a Bay movie! :eek:  We cannot let Michael Bay continue believing he is the TF messiah! :cry 
     
  12. Aernaroth

    Aernaroth <b><font color=blue>I voted for Super_Megatron and Veteran

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    I know you're being sarcastic here, but I think a number of people in the thread are underestimating just how hard the deck was stacked against this movie, partly because of how TLK performed.

    At the end of the day though, I think that led to a willingness to take a different approach with this film, and even to take chances, in a way we haven't seen in the better part of a decade. The end result was a much better film than its immediate predescesors (imo), regardless of how it performs at the box office.
     
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  13. ZeroiaSD

    ZeroiaSD Autobot

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    Forbes expects it to get around 400m in the end, which is about thrice budget. If they're right, that'd be comfortably in the success range.


    Paramount really does not have a lot of franchises at the moment (Star Trek 4 is canned so while there's going to be more in the future that's a gap in the schedule, TMNT live action is over), they've got TF and Mission Impossible.

    I think odds of a sequel are very high. Good word of mouth and fan goodwill + solid if unexceptional profit + lack of anything else safe to put on the schedule means another lowish-budget solid BB flick would be reassuring to the studio heads.


    This. Making 2 to 3 times budget in these circumstance is impressive.
     
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  14. siccoyote

    siccoyote Worst side of the fandom

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    It seems like.many prople want this to be a failure and are trying to twist the facts to suit their theories instead of theories to suit facts.

    It seems it is doing very well for saying it's a Christmas release following on from a critical and commercial failure in tlk. I'm sure that will be taken into account.

    Good word of mouth and good critical reception is good but can take time to take effect. Either this will need to hang on in theatres or it will help it's home video sales and/or the bump will be felt by the next movie.

    This shows signs of a positive course correction for the series.
     
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  15. Miyaren

    Miyaren Well-Known Member

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    Chinese people would be turned off if it’s a straight up Chinese robot or something like that. They actually would think it’s lame....casting another Chinese actor provided it makes sense in the story, can work
     
  16. siccoyote

    siccoyote Worst side of the fandom

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    Like Jackie Chan?
     
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  17. Miyaren

    Miyaren Well-Known Member

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    Believe it or not Jackie chan isn’t that well liked on mainland china
     
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  18. siccoyote

    siccoyote Worst side of the fandom

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  19. electronic456

    electronic456 Well-Known Member

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    我现在觉得很丢脸。

    No Google Translate was used by the way.
     
  20. AutobotStrider

    AutobotStrider Well-Known Member

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    Given the marketing they put into this, this has been a flop and honestly I\'d be glad because they should either reboot the whole thing or stick to the formula that worked.