Kingpin wrote: ↑April 5th, 2023, 5:47 pm Given what happened to Shazam: Fury of the Gods, that may not be as much of a danger as it used to be now.
The first Aquaman movie made over a billion dollars. Shazam made about 700 million dollars LESS. The first Shazam wasn’t a big hit at all. I wouldn’t sleep on Aquaman because Shazam 2 didn’t do well. Did you see that movies marketing? It was crap. Lame villains. Plus everyone wanted Shazam V Black Adam. Not doing that movie was a massive miscalculation.
Let’s see if Sony blinks. I don’t think they are worried about Aquaman. Sony is worried about Wonka. It opens on the Friday before. I think GB gets moved. Which is a shame. But Wonka has some legit buzz about it. That time of year? Oh yeah. And if Flash is the movie everyone thinks it is and does huge, & maybe it increases Aquaman’s “must see” by a significant margin.
If they open the movie anywhere but December, it loses 50% or more in the 2nd weekend. It won’t make more than 50m opening. It just won’t. And once again we end up in 130-140 domestic territory. Unless the movie is something crazy special. December gives us legs. Lots of it if the movie is good.
My guess? Sony blinks. Moves the movie to Mid Feb or early March. I know some of you want a June 2024 release for the 40th anniversary but that’d be a huge mistake. This is no longer a franchise that can compete in the summer months. It’ll get swallowed up & left for dead.
prodestrian wrote: ↑April 5th, 2023, 10:57 pmdeadderek wrote: ↑April 5th, 2023, 9:09 pm I keep seeing people doubting Firehouse can make a December release date. With as much pre-planning time they've have/had, I feel it's absolutely doable.
GB1 finished filming end of January 1984, released June 1984. That's around 130 days.
If Firehouse finishes filming end of June 2023, a December release date would give them 170+ days. Assuming they have a similar balance between practical and digital effects as Afterlife, that's probably more than enough time.
Also, Afterlife finished filming on October 18th 2019, and we got the first trailer on December 10th. It was missing a lot of effects (terror dog coming out of the trap, and the RTV in front of the Ecto, for example) but it was still pretty polished.
I'm hoping for a Firehouse trailer in July or August. A teaser in the next month or two would be great too, even if it's as short as that first Afterlife teaser.
Yes Ghostbusters had an insane production schedule. But that movie is a freak of nature. And I’m sorry to say but the date totally affected the FX. There are a lot of FX shots that were only finaled because they just didn’t have any time.
Ghostbusters is what happens when everything goes right. And how often does that happen? Not very. It had less than 180 FX shots. Movies today routinely have more than 1,500-2,000 FX shots. Less time means compromises, it means “good enough” will do. Because you don’t have a choice. It means CGI companies doing things as quickly as possible.
A better example is Ghostbusters 2. Why? Because the finished film was compromised by the deadline. They ran out of time. Now some of you will say “I love GB2! It’s awesome!” But audiences & critics thought differently in 1989. And Ivan Reitman wanted a much bigger climax but just ran out of time.
Releasing GBA 2 by December can be done. 100%. But if the product suffers, when you are watching the movie Christmas 2023 and you are left wondering “Why? Why would they do it like that” the answer may in fact be: “They just ran out of time”. And if the movie sucks, and the critical reviews are bad and maybe it underperforms and now because of that we are left with a dormant franchise. And to prevent all that perhaps the movie just needed some more time. Time to reshoot or rewrite. Who knows.
So don’t be so quick to prop up GB1 as an example of short production schedules. It is the exception. Most movies aren’t so lucky. You end up with crap like X-Men 3, Green Lantern or X-Men Origins Wolverine.