As I have previously mentioned, the one bright spot about the existence of the otherwise extremely uninspiring and uninteresting ‘Batman v Superman’ movie (really, I remember having huge misgivings as soon as the project was announced–Zack Snyder, talking about DKR as his inspiration, feels like it could be the dictionary definition of “toxic masculinity”) was that it held the potential for some truly wacky studio hijinks. After all, the movie looked like it was going to tank, at least by the standards of Hollywood blockbusters…
A word about that, for everyone saying, “Hey, it made $850 million, why is it being called a failure?” It’s being called a failure because different standards apply to Hollywood blockbusters. These things are designed, through merchandising, product placement, synergistic endorsement deals and aggressive promotion, to make back their money even if the film is basically just two solid hours of Arnie flipping the bird to the screen and shouting, “SUCKER!” in an Austrian accent every few minutes. (Spoilers for ‘Terminator: Genesys’!) It is very hard for them to actually lose money, because so much of the money is made before the film hits theaters–‘Phantom Menace’ would have been profitable without selling a single ticket–and so much more of the money is made before the reviews come out. These films are not judged on the absolute money they make, but on the money they make relative to each other, because their job is not to make money. Their job is to make the kind of obscene, world-shattering money that lets studio execs throw $50 million at some crazy vanity project sight unseen because they’re making ten times that per extremely reliable Avengers movie and have money to burn. On that scale, BvS has failed. ‘Ant-Man’ did better in its fourth week than ‘BvS’ in its fourth week. You do not want to be the guy who makes a Batman/Superman movie that makes less than ‘Ant-Man’.
OK. So the point is, all I was really hoping for is that WB execs would lose their shit and we would get some entertaining panic. Would they dump Snyder overboard like a hot potato? Would he give great snippy bitchy interviews where he blamed audiences for not getting his vision? (I’m still holding out hope for that. If there’s one thing I can say about Snyder besides the fact that he’s a shitty director, it’s that he’s incredibly thin-skinned and holds grudges with reviewers that he works out every time he does a press junket. He’s still holding court on ‘Sucker Punch’, ferfucksake.)
Instead, we get Seth Grahame-Green quitting the ‘Flash’ movie. Now, I can’t say this would have been a great movie–I loved the hell out of the book of ‘Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter’, but he hasn’t been able to translate his skills into movie-making quite yet and it’s distinctly possible that this would have been a big whiff. (Especially since this would have been his directorial debut, and giving someone a huge summer blockbuster as their first movie even though these things have damn near broken guys like Sam Raimi and Joss Whedon seems like its own category of fascinating train wreck.) But in terms of whose vision I’d rather see in the DC Murderverse, it’s an untested Seth Grahame-Green over Snyder any day.
And now James Wan is talking about ditching ‘Aquaman’. And while…look, I cannot stand ‘Saw’, okay? I absolutely think the final twist is the kind of irredeemable bullshit that makes me want to throw things at the screen, an infuriating and unearned “gotcha” that makes no sense and requires six billion coincidences that the killer can’t possibly arrange all to fall in a very particular way for the movie not to literally end on Page Two of the screenplay. (“Hey, I found these keys stuck in the drain! Let’s just go!”) I cannot stand this movie and I will gleefully spoil it for strangers on the grounds that it is better for you to not watch the movie than feel like you wasted two hours on it. (The killer is the guy on the floor. He’s not really dead. Yes, it’s bullshit.)
But that’s all the script. The direction in ‘Saw’ actually makes a movie about two guys stuck in a room all night compelling. It’s impressive work. James Wan has a solid and impressive body of directing behind him. If WB is backing Snyder, whose biggest hit is now over ten years behind him and wasn’t written by him in the first place, over Wan, this is going to be less “fun trainwreck” and more “oh. oh, that poor man. oh god, his wife is crying, and she’s covered in blood, and…is that her blood? is that her husband’s blood? oh god, they had a cargo flat full of adorable baby lambs, and they’re squealing, they won’t stop squealing, there’s just so much pain….”
I’m hoping that doesn’t happen. I’m really hoping that the backstabbing and panic leads to good movies in the end, rather than good movies being shitcanned in order to double down on the Snyder vision of a Bat-boot stamping on a human face forever. Because this, this thing of interesting and creative people fleeing the DC movies like rats leaving the sinking ship? Not actually what I was hoping for.
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I agree with the majority of your statement, save and except for the (apparent?) conclusion that it is unfortunate if the talented and interesting people are deserting DC properties.
Since a failure on such a property can wreck a promising career, I’d probably prefer that these people avoid the oncoming train wreck and actually work on the properties they can discover and / or create themselves.
Getting sucked into multi-decade franchises can mean vastly reduced output from talented directors – cf Raimi, Cameron.
Aside from your conclusion, which I don’t agree with but it’s a matter of personal taste, I strongly disagree with this sentiment:
“These films are not judged on the absolute money they make, but on the money they make relative to each other, because their job is not to make money.”
It is absolutely their job to make money. The studios are a for-profit company. That’s why you have 8 Fast & Furious movies. No one over there thinks they’re any good. They just make a lot of money. So they make them again and again.
BTV was supposed to make billions, like Dark Knight or The Avengers. It might create backlash if it didn’t make as much money as it was supposed to. But if it makes enough money for the studio, they might just stuck with Snyder.
The definition of “enough money for the studio,” though is something like a billion dollars. Missing that by 150 million (15% of your target) is probably not going to make the studio happy.
I don’t know why directors are jumping off of DC properties like they’re on fire. But I suspect it has to do with a combination of factors. Flash, for example, was always going to be a problem for the Murderverse. Assuming Barry Allen, he’s a naturally optimistic and lighthearted guy. He’s not going to fit in well with neck-breaking utterly alien Superman or neo-fascist machine-gunning Batman.
So I think that, if I were a first time director looking at these facts, and I was getting notes from Snyder saying “More gritty realism, less of this hippy-dippy crap where the Flash is cracking jokes.” Yeah, I might quit. It’s a big payday, potentially, but you better hope it’s big enough to live on for the rest of your life, because that could end a career.
@Itai Assaf Raizman-Greif: It was a joke that may have fallen flat. I said, “…their job is not to make money. Their job is to make (…) obscene, world-shattering money…”
Basically, if all a summer tentpole movie does is clear $20 mil in profit, it’s a failure even though twenty million dollars is a lot of money by our standards, because big studio movies like this are supposed to make enough money to cover up four or five gambles that failed on the accounting balances. 🙂
I’m just happy with the term “DC Murderverse”.
Just gotta pin our hopes on Suicide Squad.
If Ayers can produce a hit worthy of the name, maybe whatever clown car is driving the cinema division of the DCU will sit up and take notice.
@Jake, though I also love the term, I can’t claim it as my own. Although I have to say, it’s such great shorthand to distinguish between the DC movies, which make me sad, and the TV shows, which are uneven, but generally joyful.
Yeah, I believe that “DC Murderverse” was coined by Rob Bricken on io9. It’s just such a great name for it, though!
@John,
Agree with your gist, but here’s a little “insider” math that the situation is even more dire than it looks at first blush:
Current worldwide gross for BvS is ~$862M – but that’s *gross* that’s what the theatres take in total sales, not what they pass on to the studio/distributor. The exact amount varies on a film by film basis but a good napkin calculation is “about 50%” – and money from foreign markets (which is >60% of the BvS take) can be a lot less depending on local taxes, entertainment levies, and currency implications).
PLUS the films “production budget” (reportedly ~$250M) doesn’t include the “p&a” (prints and advertising) costs which (reportedly) adds another $150M.
Taken all together, it’s entirely possible that the film had actual costs >$400M and has made <$400M 6 weeks into it's release.
Yes, tentpoles have lots of other revenue streams – but that's not good math no matter *what* business you're in.
For anyone interested, I go into slightly more detail (using BvS as an example) here:
https://www.quora.com/Why-does-a-film-have-to-make-two-to-three-times-its-production-cost-to-make-a-profit
Because when I look for a lighthearted, fun counterpoint to the current DC cinematic universe, the first thing that comes to mind is Suicide Squad, all right.
Sorry for the sarcasm, I have no idea whether Suicide Squad will actually turn out to be good on its own merits. All I’m saying is, it really doesn’t look like the next DC movie will have the mood that people who were disappointed by BVS are looking for. Wonder Woman and/or Justice League, maybe.
Actually, I think the biggest problem is the tremendous negative buzz that BvS generated. It made money, but it also kinda guaranteed that, at best, the next franchise film was going to make a lot less money. I can’t imagine how hard it would be right now to sell people on a Justice League film, and BvS+WW should have made that a slam-dunk.
More comparative numbers: As of Wednesday, BS had a domestic gross of $326 million. That puts it $114 million behind Age of Ultron, $98 million behind Dark Knight Rises, and $70 million behind Iron Man 3 at the same point in the theatrical run of each of those films.
Look at it this way: If BS was doing as well as Ultron, its global box office would be almost a billion dollars.
Tenken347’s point about negative buzz is a good one. Reviews eviscerating BS became almost a genre unto themselves, and I think BS has firmly entered the “blockbuster nobody liked” category. This is not a foundation on which to build a series of interlocking movies for the next couple of decades. But WB also can’t change course too easily, since they’ve got Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman on deck and Justice League in production. I think filming on that has begun, but there has been nothing in terms of hype, interviews, set leaks, etc. about it.