The Amazing Spider Man 2 (2014)

[Niltusk]

Considering how heavily That sony pictures banked on this film making a billion, at the expense of all other projects, and not even have it break even, i think it likely that The Sony Execs gree with you.

Before ASM1 came out, Forbes had done a write up about how Sony made a mistake renegotiating with Marv-Dis saying they should have gotten in on the ground floor of the MCU and just leased Spiderman back to Disney at the start and let Disney take the risk and Sony rake in the profits without tying up resources, studios, etc. Now, Disney is getting the cash while Sony works to just break even. Pretty much prophetic on Forbes part.
You're probably right, Sony should realize right now they're more screwed then they were when they made their new deal, as cool as some of their Spidey universe ideas are, it sounds like they're just planning themselves into a deeper hole.

 

[jye4ever]

Sony should just stick to Playstation and gouging people with their propriety electronics and leave cbm to Marvel.

Or just rehire Raimi.

 

[Invictus Sol]

Didn't realize Spidey was underperforming this badly. Does make sense, though. Boring, twice told story and nothing learned from SM3 (especially the weak villains -- Gobby in particular). Wishful thinking, but hopefully it does become such an albatross for Sony that they cut their losses and the property ends up back w/Marvel. I'd love to see Spidey integrated into that universe.

 

[jye4ever]

Spiderman-Superman-Batman should not have their origin stories in a movie for the next 25 years.

The characters can't grow if we keep going back to day one with them, its like groundhog day.

 

[Khev]

Emily Blunt: "Come find me when you get rebooted."

 

[Uncanny Web-Slinger]

The time for course correction should have been after ASM. Once they saw that that film didn't wow audiences, they should have acted then. Instead, they spent more money, kept the same production team in place, and rolled the dice.
Not a great plan for your biggest franchise.

They attempted course correction. They listened to the complaints about the tone of ASM being too dark, Peter being too Emo and the suit being to makeshift and they changed all of that for the sequel. They made mistakes in other areas but they did listen to feedback and correct those parts.

Didn't realize Spidey was underperforming this badly. Does make sense, though.

It's not really, the drop-off between this and the first is only around $57 mil. That's not much considering the totals.

Wishful thinking, but hopefully it does become such an albatross for Sony that they cut their losses and the property ends up back w/Marvel. I'd love to see Spidey integrated into that universe.

Not gonna happen, ASM 2 has made $700 Million, to make more of a profit they'll simply spend less next time it would be silly to abandon the whole franchise when they can easily still benefit from it with some financial adjustments.

 

[ironwez20]

All I want is spiderman to be back on top again. I feel like this movie was the last chance for people to have faith in sony to handle spiderman now people pretty much are saying he needs to go back to marvel. An avengers movie with spiderman would make billions and would be a dream. I bet iron man would even take a back seat to the wallcrawler. My honest opnion tho. Just give spidey a break. He sorta needs it. Like batman, then he comes back and dominates.

 

[Niltusk]

They attempted course correction. They listened to the complaints about the tone of ASM being too dark, Peter being too Emo and the suit being to makeshift and they changed all of that for the sequel. They made mistakes in other areas but they did listen to feedback and correct those parts.

Putting fresh paint on a rotten fence doesn't fix it's structural issues. Look at the excitement generated when the new suit emerged...it turned to cringing as soon as the commercials started popping up. You can claim 'haters' all you want, but alot of people who were excited turned sour, they weren't hating this from day 1 like some people have made it out to be. It was a chocolate coating over a sour center.

The X-men did just the opposite, they had naysayers from early pics, etc, then they hit a home run. Notice how the naysayers ( that alot of people said was just manufactured and that these people would hate the movie no matter what...) embraced the story and the majority dug the movie.

Listening to the fans is a great start, but there's more to it, if it were as simplistic as some people seem to think, every company would be throwing out billion dollar movies every few months.

I don't see why it's so hard to comprehend that people desire great visuals as well as a great story. One doesno have to exclude the other.

 

[Niltusk]

...and that's not to say I 100% blame Webb alone, I wonder if he's getting this bloat pushed on him by Sony to get their "universe" going like Rami claimed happened with his pt3

 

[Khev]

The X-men did just the opposite, they had naysayers from early pics, etc, then they hit a home run. Notice how the naysayers ( that alot of people said was just manufactured and that these people would hate the movie no matter what...) embraced the story and the majority dug the movie.

I actually assumed that both ASM2 and DOFP would suck and ended up really enjoying them both.

 

[lerath666]

They attempted course correction. They listened to the complaints about the tone of ASM being too dark, Peter being too Emo and the suit being to makeshift and they changed all of that for the sequel. They made mistakes in other areas but they did listen to feedback and correct those parts.



It's not really, the drop-off between this and the first is only around $57 mil. That's not much considering the totals.



Not gonna happen, ASM 2 has made $700 Million, to make more of a profit they'll simply spend less next time it would be silly to abandon the whole franchise when they can easily still benefit from it with some financial adjustments.

gonna keep repeating it till you remember. international box office dosn't count. Only domestic.
it's not yet broken 200 mil.

and the first ASM was considered a "nessacary finantial flop" to keep the liscense. this was intended to be the solid movie that was projected to make over a billion. BUT IT NEEDSTO MAKE BACK PRODUCTION Domesticly.

it's not gonna happen. Sony knows its's not gonna happen, and has bumped the next film back a couple of years to give them time for one more rework. They might fix it, or they might just say they're done.

 

[Khev]

gonna keep repeating it till you remember. international box office dosn't count. Only domestic.

In what world does money not equal money? Of course worldwide box office matters. That's why Paramount delayed GI Joe 2 to upgrade to 3D after Battleship raked in the 3D dollars overseas.

 

[Uncanny Web-Slinger]

Studios get a little less from international numbers, emphasis on little. If international didn't mean anything studios would've be aiming for that market more than ever.

Frankly to discount the importance of the rest of the world is highly ignorant.

 

[pturtle]

I think they get half the profits from overseas, but international is definitely an important market. Iron Man 3 even had an alternate version to appeal to the Chinese market, and I believe DOFP something similar by getting Bingbing Fan to play Blink, both Iron Man 3 and DOFP did huge numbers in china.

Studios get a little less from international numbers, emphasis on little. If international didn't mean anything studios would've be aiming for that market more than ever.

Frankly to discount the importance of the rest of the world is highly ignorant.

 

[lerath666]

Allow me to clarify.

As far as the film studio executives are concerend, they only care about domestic numbers when figiring out if a film is a flop, or sucsess. They need to make a profit in domestic alone, or a movie is considered a failure.

also, not even breaking 200 million on a summer tentpole film is considered a massive embarrasment.

Yes, it's made 700 mil, if you factor in international box office sales of 500 million

HOWEVER, you've got to consider they also spend a considerable amount of money ( 100's of millions) getting the film there, as well as marketing and advertising the film in other parts of the world.

I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THEY SPENT marketing it overseas. i know that the american Advertising budget is estimated to be in the 100-200 million dollar range.

so a SAFE bet would be 200-300 million for the rest of the world.

so lets assume that sony gets to keep 1/2 of that international Box office sales. that's 350 Million dollars.

minus 200 ( possibly more) for international marketing means 150

which means they spent 350ish million marketing theis 250 million dollar movie worldiwde, give or take. which comes to 700 million TOTAL spent in making this movie.


AND THAT IS ASUMING THEY ARE NOT LYING ABOUT THEIR COSTS ( Which, they are. Holywood Generaly underannounces what they really spend to keep investors happy)

They went in, saying this film was gonn do a billon. Reports said they needed to do 700-800 to break even. That dosn't appear like its gonna happen, and breaking even is not good enough for a summer blockbuster.

TL;DR
Cost too high + Profit Too low = Flop.

 

[lerath666]

IF you'd like to read, here is a little conversation between industy insiders and one of the uninitiated from the Escapist forums About This movie specificly, AND hollyweird accounting and spendign practices.

MovieBob: It hasn't broken even. I probably ought've noted this in the news post itself (my mistake - when you read/report studio news long enough you forget not everyone is readily aware of certain "given" nuances of studio accounting math) but the rule of thumb by which movie studios operate is that a film hasn't broken even until it makes 3 times it's stated overall cost; and even then no one actually goes bragging about "profit" until the percentage is too far out in front to be anything but certain. The number it needs to hit to be "even" has gone back and forth between $750 and as high as $800 million (Hollywood accounting is designed to make sure you can always look like you did well but not well enough for underlings to expect raises) but they'll likely settle around $750 mil now that it looks like it won't get much higher than that ($755 is the guess over at Deadline, but it'll either go up or down depending on what happens when Godzilla hits in a week.) ​ Could you go into some more detail (or recommend where I can find more detail) about this? I'm not an expert accountant, but everything I've learned from accounting indicates that if your project has a net present value of zero, then you've broken even. Obviously the "time value of money" principle says that making a dollar today doesn't make up for spending a dollar two years ago, but the discount rates they'd have to use to require 300% return to break even would be through the roof.
PuckFuppet	69 POSTED: 11 May 2014 6:48 pm
Entroducing. ​ Posts: 339 Joined: 10 Jan 2009	dyre: everything I've learned from accounting indicates that if your project has a net present value of zero, then you've broken even ​ I might just confuse the situation more with this answer, so feel free to move on. 1. Hollywood doesn't do math, or in this specific case accounting. It does what it says is accounting and what it can prove is accounting for tax purposes but almost every production coming out a major studio is wrapped in such a byzantine blanket of unpredictable expenses and outsourcing that the production company itself often won't know how much money it has actually spent for almost a year or two later, maybe even more. Rather than seeing this problem fade away as your production gets a larger budget, the logic being that with more money being spent there is more accountability D) for that money, it actually increases dramatically because of the size of the production warranted by your now 8-9 figure budget. This is why the film industry generally uses the term "budget" instead of the term "cost". I can think of too many instances where a budget has been steadily revised upward as the production continues, often just to catch up or be within a few million of what was actually spent. It suffices to say, Hollywood doesn't do math. 2. Hollywood likes contracts. They are an absolute in all matters from what kind of shower facilities people get access to on set to the kind of shoes they can wear at events. That said these contracts rarely do much in the way of helping to track money, particularly when you have four or five different small digital studios doing post-effects work largely contracted by a primary company that you actually hold the contract with, who themselves have a contract that includes plenty of monetary leeway without actually allowing that kind of money to filter down to anyone outside of management D). The problem with this is that often contracts result in very strange expenses. I heard tell once of an actor who, by right of their contract, was entitled to coffee house quality coffee. Anytime. Anywhere. On a production that'd take said actor to several international locations. So they had the catering company hire three baristas to work in round the clock shifts, shipping the necessary equipment and consumables with the set. Who paid for this? **** knows. The catering company didn't, so likely someone high up in the production picked it up, who'd charge it to the company, who'd pay him then check the contract, then get the money from the budget. Maybe. 3. Hollywood likes advertising. Often another company, separate to the production, will be hired to manage advertising. That company would then subcontract with advertising companies across the globe, who would in turn do work with local companies, to get the advertising they wanted out. The full cost of which might not reach the clients, the production company, books for almost a year or maybe more depending on how far flung the advertising went. This is all before you consider that often advertisers will get specific directions from producers regarding certain material etc., the extra cost of which couldn't be initially accounted for. --------------- Almost all of this is subject to deliberate manipulation on every level to keep expectations in range without scaring any investors with things like cost projections. With a fight happening between the companies at the end of the line who want to get paid and the people interacting with investors and "industry analysts" who want to look like they've hit jackpot. Bottom line, Hollywood accounting is witchcraft.
dyre	70 POSTED: 11 May 2014 7:03 pm
Gone Gonzo ​ Posts: 3241 Joined: 30 Mar 2011	PuckFuppet: dyre: snip ​ big snip ​ Hmm, okay, thanks for the explanation. So basically when they announce costs, they make up some ******** number that's actually way lower than the reality (after all the contracts are satisfied), to keep investors happy? That sounds ridiculously inefficient at best and downright unethical at worst. These morons seriously need to hire some management consultants...

Edit: jesus christ i'm lord typo.

 

[ironwez20]

Gotta love the spiderman threads

 

[jye4ever]

While I enjoyed ASM 2, at this point I would rather just have Spiderman in small to moderate dosages, like a decent size cameo in a MCU movie.

It would only benefit Sony to loan Spiderman to Marvel for that big action set piece cameo

Then he could jump back into his Sony standalone movies.

Fox could also benefit from sharing Wolverine and FF4 with Marvel.

I'm starting to think that Superhero burnout is only with standalone movies, fans and regular audiences are ready for Superhero sharing.

Maybe WB sees this coming and that's why they rushed into Dawn of Lots Of Superheros.

 

[lerath666]

it's possible. episodic storytelling IS where the money is. marvel figured this out in the 60's.

 

[Uncanny Web-Slinger]

While I enjoyed ASM 2, at this point I would rather just have Spiderman in small to moderate dosages, like a decent size cameo in a MCU movie.

It would only benefit Sony to loan Spiderman to Marvel for that big action set piece cameo

Then he could jump back into his Sony standalone movies.

Fox could also benefit from sharing Wolverine and FF4 with Marvel.

I'm starting to think that Superhero burnout is only with standalone movies, fans and regular audiences are ready for Superhero sharing.

Maybe WB sees this coming and that's why they rushed into Dawn of Lots Of Superheros.

You mean for free?