Latest news with #MostValuableBlockbuster
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Why Anya Taylor-Joy's Mad Max prequel lost $120m – and why it doesn't matter
Hollywood box office reports can be a disconcerting read for anyone who thinks they understand basic maths. This week, the film industry website Deadline offered up a belter. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which cost $168 million to produce and which made $211m across cinemas, DVD and streaming, somehow still managed to lose $119.6m. The unfortunate (and, on the face of it, inexplicable) figures were revealed in Deadline's annual Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament, which ranks the profitability of the highest-profile theatrical releases in the last calendar year. The biggest winner of 2023 was Disney Pixar's Inside Out 2, which took $650m after all bills were paid, followed by Disney Animation's Moana 2 with $415m and Disney Marvel's Deadpool & Wolverine with $400m. In this era of perpetual industry-wide crisis, one particular studio clearly isn't going to have the bailiffs at the door for a bit. But the Furiosa numbers are especially depressing: by Deadline's calculations, only Joker: Folie à Deux, with its vast production costs and negligible US takings, fared worse. Per the data, Furiosa sunk into the red because Warner Bros' outlay on the project – one blockbuster budget, plus a $108m ad campaign to support it – assumed another Fury Road-sized success would result. But both in the US and internationally, turnout was barely half of what it had been for that now-canonised 2015 predecessor – despite comparably strong reviews and an identical B+ CinemaScore, a stat that reveals the extent to which films meet their opening-night crowd's expectations. So why did the revving legions of Fury Road heads steer clear? The answer – or rather answers – lie in the wider circumstances around the film's release, as well as key creative choices which may have benefitted the film itself (which, to be clear, was one of last year's very best) but only served to dissuade potential viewers from riding eternal, shiny and chrome, or just taking the bus, to their local multiplex. May 2024 was, it transpired, a dreadful time to launch a new movie. America's Memorial Day holiday, the long weekend ending on the last Monday in May, has long been considered a prime site to pitch early summer blockbusters: this year's line-up includes the latest Mission: Impossible and Lilo & Stitch, while Fury Road itself took the slot in 2015. But last year's Memorial Day takings were the feeblest in 26 years, thanks to a thinner release schedule due to the 2023 strikes and a growing awareness that studios were bundling their output onto streaming faster than ever. (Action-comedy The Fall Guy appeared on premium VOD services that very weekend, less than three weeks after opening in cinemas.) Additionally, the majority of premium large format screens – Imax, 4K, Dolby Atmos and the like – had been block-booked by Sony for the early June release of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which gave George Miller's film less than two weeks to be seen in the best possible light. Against that backdrop, Furiosa had to work far harder than its predecessor to quickly pull a crowd. But its stars, Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, weren't the tried-and-true draws that Fury Road's Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron had been nine years earlier, while the film's prequel status meant it had no Max to offer audiences – nor the version of Furiosa they'd come to know last time around. Perhaps most damaging of all, the series' signature we-shot-this-for-real sales pitch had been fatally undermined by an early trailer, whose gaudy palette and unfinished visual effects suggested the whole thing would be an airless CG-drenched trifle, rather than the dust-blown action folk-epic Miller had actually made. Does its commercial failure matter? It certainly seems to have done for the 80-year-old Miller, whose proposed final Mad Max film, another prequel subtitled The Wasteland, hasn't been talked about much since Furiosa's release. And at a tough time for ambitious directors with strong pop sensibilities who aren't called Christopher Nolan, it may make studios even more reluctant to back projects that sit outside the ever-tightening circle of approved IPs. But as far as the film itself goes, Furiosa remains as electrifying as it always obviously was. Far from a money-grubbing trundle back down Fury Road, it's one of the current decade's greatest and most unique blockbusters; an adrenalised collection of legends and lays with their roots coiled deep round silent cinema and ancient myth. Its centrepiece chase, with Tom Burke's dusky Praetorian Jack at the wheel of a war rig and Taylor-Joy's Furiosa clinging to its undercarriage, is the equal of any of Fury Road's mobile battles – the truck is besieged from all sides, including above, by paragliding bandits propelled by industrial fans and lobbing dynamite tipped spears. The plot surrounding it isn't nearly as streamlined as its predecessor's, but comes out in a whispery, Eddaic tumble. It's like listening to campfire stories hauled back through time from beyond the apocalypse, as Chris Hemsworth's Dementus leads multiple raids against the Immortan and his clan, while watching the girl he once made an orphan grow into the only warrior capable of facing him down. Miller's command of early cinema technique makes the whole thing an effortless watch. Yes, it's frenzied in places, but Buster Keaton comedies were too – and like those silent classics, Miller's mayhem has a grace that's missing from almost every other film made today on this scale. Its streaming availability shifts from month to month and place to place, but in the UK it's currently available to watch on NOW and Sky. If you missed it, have a look this weekend, then apply a vigorous kick to your former self's behind for not catching it on the big screen. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
02-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Why Anya Taylor Joy's Mad Max prequel lost $120m – and why it doesn't matter
Hollywood box office reports can be a disconcerting read for anyone who thinks they understand basic maths. This week, the film industry website Deadline offered up a belter. Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which cost $168 million to produce and which made $211m across cinemas, DVD and streaming, somehow still managed to lose $119.6m. The unfortunate (and, on the face of it, inexplicable) figures were revealed in Deadline's annual Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament, which ranks the profitability of the highest profile theatrical releases in the last calendar year. The biggest winner of 2023 was Disney Pixar's Inside Out 2, which took $650m after all bills were paid, followed by Disney Animation's Moana 2 with $415m and Disney Marvel's Deadpool & Wolverine with $400m. In this era of perpetual industry-wide crisis, one particular studio clearly isn't going to have the bailiffs at the door for a bit. But the Furiosa numbers are especially depressing: by Deadline's calculations, only Joker: Folie Deux, with its vast production costs and negligible US takings, fared worse. Per the data, Furiosa sunk into the red because Warner Bros' outlay on the project – one blockbuster budget, plus a $108m ad campaign to support it – assumed another Fury Road-sized success would result. But both in the US and internationally, turnout was barely half of what it had been for that now-canonised 2015 predecessor – despite comparably strong reviews and an identical B+ CinemaScore, a stat that reveals the extent to which films meet their opening-night crowd's expectations. So why did the revving legions of Fury Road heads steer clear? The answer – or rather answers – lie in the wider circumstances around the film's release, as well as key creative choices which may have benefitted the film itself (which, to be clear, was one of last year's very best) but only served to dissuade potential viewers from riding eternal, shiny and chrome, or just taking the bus, to their local multiplex. May 2024 was, it transpired, a dreadful time to launch a new movie. America's Memorial Day holiday, the long weekend ending on the last Monday in May, has long been considered a prime site to pitch early summer blockbusters: this year's line-up includes the latest Mission: Impossible and Lilo & Stitch, while Fury Road itself took the slot in 2015. But last year's Memorial Day takings were the feeblest in 26 years, thanks to a thinner release schedule due to the 2023 strikes and a growing awareness that studios were bundling their output onto streaming faster than ever. (Action-comedy The Fall Guy appeared on premium VOD services that very weekend, less than three weeks after opening in cinemas.) Additionally, the majority of premium large format screens – Imax, 4K, Dolby Atmos and the like – had been block-booked by Sony for the early June release of Bad Boys: Ride or Die, which gave George Miller 's film less than two weeks to be seen in the best possible light. Against that backdrop, Furiosa had to work far harder than its predecessor to quickly pull a crowd. But its stars, Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth, weren't the tried-and-true draws that Fury Road's Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron had been nine years earlier, while the film's prequel status meant it had no Max to offer audiences – nor the version of Furiosa they'd come to know last time around. Perhaps most damaging of all, the series' signature we-shot-this-for-real sales pitch had been fatally undermined by an early trailer, whose gaudy palette and unfinished visual effects suggested the whole thing would be an airless CG-drenched trifle, rather than the dustblown action folk-epic Miller had actually made. Does its commercial failure matter? It certainly seems to have done for the 80-year-old Miller, whose proposed final Mad Max film, another prequel subtitled The Wasteland, hasn't been talked about much since Furiosa's release. And at a tough time for ambitious directors with strong pop sensibilities who aren't called Christopher Nolan, it may make studios even more reluctant to back projects that sit outside the ever-tightening circle of approved IPs. But as far as the film itself goes, Furiosa remains as electrifying as it always obviously was: far from a money-grubbing trundle back down Fury Road, it's one of the current decade's great blockbusters; an adrenalised collection of apocalyptic legends and lays with their roots coiled deep round silent cinema and ancient myth. Its streaming availability shifts from month to month and place to place, but in the UK it's currently available to watch on NOW and Sky. If you missed it, have a look this weekend, then apply a vigorous kick to your former self's behind for not catching it on the big screen.
Yahoo
26-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
‘It Ends With Us' Is No. 6 On 2024's Most Valuable Blockbuster List
Deadline's Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament has returned, and as you'll see from the most profitable films of 2024 that we're about to disclose, a movie's game doesn't end at the box office. Rather, its downstream revenues and subsequent home windows must be taken into account. Streaming continues to be a wildcard: While traditional motion picture studios such as Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Paramount and Universal rely on lucrative pay two and pay three streamer deals to catapult their slates into the black, those streamers who've embraced theatrical (specifically Amazon MGM Studios and Apple Original Films) have a clandestine metric as to how they evaluate a movie's post-cinema success. By traditional studio P&L standards, some of those releases would be considered flops. Given that, Apple and Amazon are excluded from this year's survey. The Most Valuable Blockbuster series runs later rather than sooner as we gather the best data possible from seasoned and trusted sources on 2024's event films, bombs, and low- to midsize-budget wins. IT ENDS WITH USSony Pictures More from Deadline 'Dune: Part Two' Provides Spice To Box Office As No. 7 Most Valuable Blockbuster Of 2024 Sony's Screen Gems Sets Fall Theatrical Release For 'Sisu' Sequel Blake Lively Reveals Her Mother Was Assaulted Years Before She Was Born Despite the brutal headlines and legal clash between It Ends With Us star and producer Blake Lively and its filmmaker and financier Justin Baldoni, and all the on-set gritty details that have been exposed in court documents, if there's one thing to be said about the success of this movie, it's not that one star got paid more than the other. Had that been the case, we'd probably have heard that by now. From a business standpoint, there's a positive takeaway here in Wayfarer's wisdom in recognizing the popularity of and nabbing the rights to the 2016 Colleen Hoover novel and its 2022 sequel It Starts With Us. At the aorta of this movie's success is Hoover's fevered fan following on BookTok, with more than 2 billion views on her hashtag. The first novel was published by Atria Books in August 2016, and by 2019 had sold more than 1 million copies around the globe. Thanks to TikTok, It Ends With Us experienced a huge boom during the pandemic, and by 2022 was the top-selling print book, with a 135-week run on the New York Times Bestseller List by the end of 2023. Hoover served as EP and worked closely with the production on the big-screen adaptation. The movie was made for a thrifty $25M, 50% co-financed by Sony Pictures, and dealt with a production pause due to the strikes. Despite the behind-the-scenes drama around the film, it clearly didn't drive business off the road: women showed up at 84% for the big-screen take of a florist (Lively) who deals with an abusive spouse (Baldoni). Tracking had the movie opening to $15M, but heading into its August 9 theatrical release, it boomed to $50M stateside. Sony has been here before in regards to dynamiting female moviegoers (Hollywood could make more movies for them), with previous hits like Little Women and Where the Crawdads Sing. Sony prides itself on yielding great studio margins, and the $60M P&A spend was a targeted sell to women with a big digital boost. Sony, Lively and the It Ends With Us team were keen about moving the romance drama from February to June to two weeks after Deadpool & Wolverine. They capitalized off that heat, not just because Lively had a cameo in the MCU title but also husband Ryan Reynolds, his mom and Hugh Jackman ultimately and hysterically junket-bombed the It Ends With Us presser, a stunt that took off on social. Lively rolled up her sleeves and became a lynchpin in the marketing campaign, involved with the first trailer's edit and obtaining use from her BFF Taylor Swift the song 'My Tears Ricochet.' Sony also receives a healthy worldwide distribution fee after its co-finance of the movie here. Its pay-one deal is with Netflix, and monies from that are seen in the $120M global streaming and TV line item. Participations are figured at $50M, our sources contending that Baldoni and Lively were paid at cash breakeven. The net profit here after $153M in worldwide expenses is a robust $207M. Best of Deadline Everything We Know About The 'Hunger Games: Sunrise On The Reaping' Movie So Far Everything We Know About Netflix's 'The Thursday Murder Club' So Far TV Show Book Adaptations Arriving In 2025 So Far
