Fantastic frustration: Can hype harm a movie's box office?

Sydney Morning Herald

2 days ago

Consumer resistance is a real and measurable force, Schiffer says. 'For most people, there is a memetic element that drives behaviour, meaning when they see others do it, they want to follow,' he says. 'We're mammals, so we're conditioned this way for survival, when you see certain members of the tribe do certain things, you tend to mimic it.'
But others, he says, are outliers and 'will look at mimicked behaviour as a group and want to reject it, they like to go against the pack. But we're talking about subtle things and everyone is different. There's no formula in general. There's a set of underlying forces behind how this works, but it's part science and part art.'
Hollywood mathematics is a little complicated, working off the rough algorithm that a film costs it budget again to take to market. That's the cost of marketing: trailers and TV commercials, posters, outdoor advertising, press junkets and promotional activities, distributor fees and the creation of either actual film prints or the digital cinema package (DCP) for cinemas. So, a $US100 million dollar movie needs to make $US200 million to turn a profit, and so on.
It is worth noting that the box office number for The Fantastic Four stumbled in sync with another superhero movie, the DC Studios reboot of Superman. In their second weeks, the two films dropped sharply with a 66 per cent and a 53 per cent slide in US domestic ticket sales respectively. That suggests that fatigue with superhero movies in general might also be a cause for concern.
And the fatigue is real, Schiffer adds. When broken down in terms of brand, 'what it really means is, predictability. Meaning, you know what you're going to get. And the problem in knowing what you're going to get is good from a trust perspective, but it can be terrible for entertainment,' he says.
'Entertainment is built on the unexpected and surprise and not knowing what you're going to get,' Schiffer says. 'That's a key component of the core of what it means to entertain, which is to grab and hold. Variety and variance and the unexpected, in a franchise, becomes harder and harder to do over time, and that does create fatigue.'
The answer is not easy to lock on to, he adds. 'How do you keep it interesting and entertaining without selling out the franchise or taking a risk in alienating the core fans? You saw this with attempts to revisit managing the Star Wars franchise and there was tremendous alienation of the fan base.'
Another hurdle for superhero films in general, and Marvel films in particular, is the perception that you need to have watched an extensive library of filmed story to follow what is going on. The fact that The Fantastic Four is the 37th film in the MCU doesn't help that case, though it is important to point out that The Fantastic Four has a separate continuity. (It's a multiverse thing.)
But another Marvel film, Thunderbolts, which was released earlier this year, featured characters who had already appeared in several Marvel TV series, including Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), who had appeared in Hawkeye, and Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan), Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) and US Agent (Wyatt Russell), who had appeared on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
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Thunderbolts pulled a $US382 million box office, off a US$180 million budget. Profitable, but only by a whisker.
So, what does a movie marketing department do if the hype turns into a runaway train? Schiffer takes no prisoners on that issue. There are no runaway trains, he says, and film studios are rarely unable to recalibrate their strategy.
'Because [the studio] has control of the assets and control of the next layer, the next leg of the storytelling,' Schiffer says. 'The way you control that is like an orchestra leader. You're aware of where the heat is, you're aware of the sentiment, you're aware of the audience, and then you pull those layers back as needed.'
When hype hit the wall: Four close call case studies
John Carter (2012)
Budget: US$307 million.
Box office: US$284 million.
Why it should have been a hit: A young-skewing action film.
The big sell: The film was based on books by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs.
What went wrong: A confusing title, bad trailers and the lack of a star in the lead.
The Lone Ranger (2013)
Budget: US$250 million.
Box office: US$260 million.
Why it should have been a hit: A classic American story with an A-list cast.
The big sell: Pre-scandal Armie Hammer and Pirates of the Caribbean star Johnny Depp.
What went wrong: A budget blowout and marketing hype that the film couldn't deliver on.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Budget: US$185 million.
Box office: US$277 million.
Why it should have been a hit: A blue-chip franchise with A-list stars.
The big sell: Harrison Ford and Ryan Gosling.
What went wrong: The pre-release marketing was too generic, and the film was saddled with an R-rating
The Flash (2023)
Budget: US$220 million
Box office: US$271 million
Why it should have been a hit: A broad-appeal superhero movie surfing off a popular franchise.
The big sell: Ezra Miller as The Flash, plus a cameo from Michael Keaton's Batman.
What went wrong: Too much hype. It was 'the best superhero movie I've ever seen,' according to the Warner Bros CEO, plus behavioural issues with the film's star.