Will "The Amazing Spiderman" Flop?

It depends, it's had Hollywood's biggest opening in India. So it depends how popular it is in other countries.

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Its made 50 Million already. I dunno if that qualifies as disappointing or success.

I knew someone would bring this up.

Star Wars, its characters, and pretty much every damn thing associated with it is owned by Lucas. To the point that he even has his own video game division that helps develop the games. Lucasfilm is a producer on the TV shows. Of course he makes more on licensing than other products.

Marvel, Sony, Disney, and God only knows who else have their fingers in Spider-Man. It's my understanding that Sony has the chunk of the film rights to Spider-Man, but that doesn't mean that every popular Spider-Man thing that sells over the coming months will pad their pockets.

Besides, those sales won't matter right here. And, at the end of the day, this is the most important number in how far the franchise will go. Period.

Don't believe me? How much merchandising money do you think The Last Airbender pulled in? It made more than double its budget without ancillary income and where's the sequel talk for that film? For all the people who doubt my movie math, The Last Airbender is damning evidence that I'm right.

Spider-Man will need to make at least $600 million to be worthwhile in the studios eyes.


Again, it's simple math. If they spent $220 million making the film and another $100 million plus on marketing and took in $280 million then they are $40 million short. If they split the revenue right down the middle with theaters (a conservative guess since I'm certain that they made much more than that considering opening weekend percentages for films are usually 80% or so to the studio and that's where the bulk of the revenue comes from), then they made $140 million.

320-140=180. They claimed a loss that was $20 million more than that. So, you're claim that you suspect they spent less than $100 million on marketing doesn't add up. If they made any money on merchandising and tie-ins, where is that revenue factored in?

Again, for tent pole films like John Carter, The Avengers, and Spider-Man, you have to factor in a very large amount of money spent on marketing. Often that number can come close to rivaling the budget of the film. It is extremely expensive to run TV ads, billboards, print ads, etc. in every market, especially when you need to saturate the market in an attempt to make up for the films cost. Although, Spider-Man was one of the few summer films to not run a Superbowl ad, so they saved $2-10 million right there...

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^^

you cant compare last airbender to spidey. thats just ridiculous.

the sequel is already greenlighted. Sony either makes the movies or loses the rights, and they will keep makin em til the public stops coming in droves, which isnt likely in the near future.

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"The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo.

Why not? Quality has absolutely nothing to do with the conversation we are having. Both have overlap in potential audiences. Should Spider-Man simply double its budget there will be at least a strong second look at going ahead with the sequel.

Before The Last Airbender played in theaters it was all but certain that it would spawn an entire franchise.

If The Last Airbender isn't a sufficient comparison I can probably come up with mountains of films that under performed (or over performed based on reviews; Transformers!) that can be compared to a Spider-Man failure.

What would a Spider-Man failure be in your opinion? I pose anything under $550-$600 million would be under performing. What's the number you think they need to be successful?

Why do they need to spend a lot of money marketing Spiderman?

John Carter, yeah, but Spiderman, when everybody including their dog knows about it?

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Couldn't care less.

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Because they already have? There's at least 4 trailers, including the first-person teaser and the four-minute trailer released a couple of weeks ago. There's a massive TV campaign, at least where I live, and I'm in the lower end of the top 20 market.

Every big budget film needs marketing saturation to remind the people to go see it. That's just how business is done. It doesn't matter what the property is, it's the best marketing tactic for the studios to take to ensure that they make the maximum box office off the film.

But how are those trailers and television campaign much different than what the studios spend on a movie that costs one third that? Did they spend three times more on marketing? I doubt it.

I already answered this. They have to run those ads far more often and in more places for big films like this. Again, they have to saturate the market for big films like this in order to ensure larger audiences.

Yes. In fact, they probably spent tons more money on a film like Spider-Man than say something like Lockout or The Transporter. With those lower budget films they don't need everyone and their mother to go see the film to make the money back on the film so they don't have to spend the money to saturate the market with their ads. Spider-Man needs to run their ads on every damn channel at all hours of the day to ensure that everyone remembers that it's coming out, who's in it and when the exact moment is that they can go to the theater and see it.

Yeah, they are spending a crap ton of money to do this.

I know Lucas has the rights to the toys, which is why I brought it up.

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They don't need to show the trailers more becuae people alteady know about Spiderman. They are not worried about grandma because they are not advertising on channels geared toward older people. I watch those channels and they are not plugging Spiderman. Three times marketing budget doesn't affect a well known property like Spiderman. Dark Shadows, yeah, and they botched that by not revealing the type of movie it was until shortly before it was released and that turned out to be misleading.

You keep moving the goal posts all over hells half acre.

Underperforming does not = Failure which in turn is different than Flop.

Too soon for a reboot? Yes. Up side is that I like the look and angle they are taking from what I have seen in ads.
If it does flop, maybe we will see the Avengers become the flagship film property for Marvel and Spidey a guest star in the Universe until enough time passes.
Still, if I like it, I don't care if it doesn't make a cent.

That said, just to get it out of my system, I really don't see why the series Raimi started couldn't go on.
Garfield and Stone could take over the roles, maybe the actor who played Doc Connors would stay, as he wanted to, build on the relationship he and Peter had in the previous 3 films and become the lizard - a character the audience has known since the beginning that is suddenly a threat.
Perhaps much of the other cast would have stayed too.
Spider-man has a rich history of stories and characters and three films just sold it short.

Many franchises go on and on without a reboot, just new crew and cast but the same characters and world. Look at 007 (until recently) or any one of a dozen Horror franchises (once again, until recently). Sure, maybe grosses will fluctuate or plateau (like 007), but different directors and cast shed new light and angles, style and feel.

BATMAN was a very good example of that idea gone wrong though. LOL

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Ok, either you're not understanding me or you're simply choosing not to.

They probably don't need to advertise the hell out of the film for the sake of the audience, especially the target audience, but they will do it anyway. Look at The Avengers. Everyone who had seen any of the films leading up to it knew about the film, but they had multiple trailers and TV ads (including a superbowl ad) and print campaigns and marketing tie-ins and God knows what else. And the film performed spectacularly. It doesn't matter if that great box office was a result of the ad campaign or not, every high budget release gets the same treatment because that is the business model that works!


What the hell are you even talking about? I never said whether or not Spider-Man would flop, but, since you can't seem to remember which leads to you claiming I'm "moving the goal posts", I'll throw it out again:

Now, I will also say again that anything under $550-600 million will be bad for Sony considering the budget and marketing and theater take. If it does anything over the $550 range I imagine the executives will breathe easy.

Do you or don't you agree with that?

At some point did the general rule of a big budget film needing to double its budget in order to be profitable change?

Here's an interesting link for those who keep questioning me. Look at Avatar. Now, these numbers may not be exact, but they're close enough for comparison purposes. Avatar made a gross of $2,783,918,982 but the profit for the studio is listed as $1,154,959,491. That's less than half!

Titanic gross=$1,842,879,955 Profit=$721,439,978 Way less than half!

Harry Potter 8 gross=$1,328,111,219 Profit=$539,055,610 Way less than half!

Is that enough for you? Now, given that info, why are my numbers wrong? Do you understand why Spider-Man making less than $550 million sounds bad?

This most likely means profit after everyone got paid, Director took their 10% gross share or whatever they get, Studio Executives, Actors, Writers etc took their %.

As the link itself states Meaning the higher the profit, the more everyone gets paid. The profit as you listed meaning what is left after everyone has got what they are entitled to based on performance of the film.

If the film had flopped then the figure paid out would be way less.

None of this changes the numbers.

very rough estimates

Never trust studio figures.

The truth is it is not unusual for them to make sequels to movies that they claimed flopped. Some of them did on initial release, but became huge hits in their DVD release. Box office receipts are not the final word for determining if a movie is profitable.