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Wkd Box Office - 2•1-3•19 - Glass threepeats in a weekend where no one bothers to go to the movies.
- Thread starter kswiston
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Yeah, I called this a long time ago. Plenty of people did.
- Five years is far too long for a sequel to something like the original Lego Movie. This should have been released three years later at the most.
- They tried to milk the success of the original with spin-offs. The Lego Batman Movie was fantastic and I think the franchise could have been fine with a three-year gap between the original Lego Movie and its sequel with Batman right in the middle of that but Ninjago was too much.
- Despite the movie apparently being great, the trailers and overall marketing were fairly poor.
- Five years is far too long for a sequel to something like the original Lego Movie. This should have been released three years later at the most.
- They tried to milk the success of the original with spin-offs. The Lego Batman Movie was fantastic and I think the franchise could have been fine with a three-year gap between the original Lego Movie and its sequel with Batman right in the middle of that but Ninjago was too much.
- Despite the movie apparently being great, the trailers and overall marketing were fairly poor.
I loved LEGO 2 more than the first one, but I agree the brand is diluted. There were too many spinoffs.
The "WB ran the Lego Movie series into the ground" comments are on point. They put the cart before the horse by greenlighting two spinoffs before even letting one proper sequel play out, and then they thought releasing both of said spinoffs in one year was a good idea. They also tried to have their cake and eat it with the Ninjago spinoff; they gave a theatrical film to a television show that didn't have any widespread pull outside of its fans (and maybe the network it aired on), but then (based on comments I've read) made a bunch of continuity changes that didn't match the ongoing plot or characters from said television show to make it more "mainstream" (i.e. a big one was that the characters in the show didn't go to high school, like they do in the movie). At least the Lego Batman Movie made some sense, given that a. he was a breakout character from the original film and b. said character is derived on the company's biggest franchises (and it definitely helps that while it didn't light the charts on fire, it's still a good movie).
I'm sure that the so-called "Billion Brick Race" project, as well as wouldn't be surprised if treatments for a LM3 and LBM2 (which was announced last year) are put on hold following LM2's performance. Nonetheless, WB management is still thirsty for franchises and the publicized mishandling of the DCEU has likely only accelerated that. A Scooby-Doo movie slated for release next year is supposed to launch a Hanna Barbera cinematic universe, and a The Cat in the Hat adaptation is likewise supposed to jumpstart a Dr. Seuss franchise of films.
Even just ignoring the films that are mapped out to be the groundwork for something bigger, it's honestly kinda sad looking at the slate of WAG's announced projects if you're hoping for any original projects like Storks and Smallfoot. No room for any new ideas, since the first two attempts didn't take off financially. (Although those two films --as well as Lego Ninjago-- probably could had performed somewhat better if WB didn't stick them all in September timeslots.) But over the past twelve months, WAG is shown interest in the development of, among other things, a children's book about the Wizard of Oz from the dog's perspective, a live-action/animated Tom and Jerry film, and Funko Pop! dolls. It's going to be fun seeing if any of these actually make it past the pre-production stage.
An unfortunately apt description, given how Sony's already talking about various spinoffs and sequels to fellow Lord/Miller breakout project Spider-Verse, even before that film has even left the theaters. And that film's not trailblazing at the box office like the first Lego Movie did, even given the holiday competition Spider-Verse was up against.
I'm sure that the so-called "Billion Brick Race" project, as well as wouldn't be surprised if treatments for a LM3 and LBM2 (which was announced last year) are put on hold following LM2's performance. Nonetheless, WB management is still thirsty for franchises and the publicized mishandling of the DCEU has likely only accelerated that. A Scooby-Doo movie slated for release next year is supposed to launch a Hanna Barbera cinematic universe, and a The Cat in the Hat adaptation is likewise supposed to jumpstart a Dr. Seuss franchise of films.
Even just ignoring the films that are mapped out to be the groundwork for something bigger, it's honestly kinda sad looking at the slate of WAG's announced projects if you're hoping for any original projects like Storks and Smallfoot. No room for any new ideas, since the first two attempts didn't take off financially. (Although those two films --as well as Lego Ninjago-- probably could had performed somewhat better if WB didn't stick them all in September timeslots.) But over the past twelve months, WAG is shown interest in the development of, among other things, a children's book about the Wizard of Oz from the dog's perspective, a live-action/animated Tom and Jerry film, and Funko Pop! dolls. It's going to be fun seeing if any of these actually make it past the pre-production stage.
An unfortunately apt description, given how Sony's already talking about various spinoffs and sequels to fellow Lord/Miller breakout project Spider-Verse, even before that film has even left the theaters. And that film's not trailblazing at the box office like the first Lego Movie did, even given the holiday competition Spider-Verse was up against.
Was literally just thinking about that movie today, don't even know why. I fucking love that movie, and I will defend it to the death
Yes and no, the very nature of the spider verse film lends itself to spin offs. Anyone who has seen that movie basically expects and even wants spinoffs. Everyone I have spoken to basically talks about spinoffs for various spider-people before even thinking of a direct sequal. But Lego movie? I never fricken expected a Lego Batman, that was a "huh, they're doing that" when I heard they were making it. But if you tell me they're making a spidergwen? That makes sense. She came from her own fully fleshed universe, I want to see that. But batman? He's a character within that Lego universe. He didn't come from his own universe
It's SPA's highest earning film (domestic) of all time, and probably going to end up #4 worldwide SPA of all time (unless Japan does something weird).
Adding to that, it tripled the Annie awards won by SPA from 3 to 9, won their first Golden Globe, and has a good shot at the Oscar.
Sony being enthusiastic over it is not incompetence. And using Sony Pictures as short hand for incompetence hasn't been accurate for a number of years now, like Paramount (even if they're improving) and Lionsgate are right there.
Saw A Wandering Earth on thursday in 3D IMAX at my local AMC (A-List), it was pretty awesome. Chinese movie released to coincide with chinese lunar new year, looked polished and expensive as fuck. The story is set sometime in the distant future (~2050+) and how our sun is discovered gonna turn into a red giant in a few decades, so our planet decides to attach 5000 engines and move Earth from our star to alpha centauri. Thats right motherfuckers, we taking Earth into spaaaaaaaace. An absolutely insane, bonkers idea that was goofy and fun as hell to watch. The thing that impressed me the most was the lavish attention to detail, previously chinese "blockbuster" movies have always felt like B-level compared to Hollywood summer blockbusters but 90% of the CGI/visuals/backgrounds looked totally up to ILM standards here. Hollywood should definitely be scared, China is getting the formula exactly right and moving ahead full steam.
I think the story is based on a book by Cixin Liu, who wrote the three body problem trilogy which is awesome space opera and I think amazon is turning it into a TV show.
I think the story is based on a book by Cixin Liu, who wrote the three body problem trilogy which is awesome space opera and I think amazon is turning it into a TV show.
I've been looking forward to Wandering Earth for some time. Glad to hear that it turned out.
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Oh, wow. Always loved the premise, so seeing Cixin Liu already did a story on it made me happy, after reading The Three Body Problem. Just haven't gotten around picking it up.
That trailer looks nuts. Too bad it is probably gonna take forever till it is shown in my country.
I feel responsible for this somehow.
I think I'm channeling too much of my power into Detective Pikachu.
Avatar watch out.
Man the insane growth of the Chinese box office over the last several years has been nothing short of amazing.
Against All Enemies wasn't the type of movie that was ever gonna get a wide release in the first place. Unless it was really, really good, it'd be more likely to perform like Chappaquiddick than your average Oscar contender. I'd actually argue that Amazon is more likely to give it a bigger theatrical push than it would have gotten otherwise (unless one of the boutique arms of a major studio picked it up, like Sony Pictures Classics or Fox Searchlight).
I'm talking in the sense of the source material the character is based on is the Batman series. In that respect he's not some unknown character, there even exists a different Lego Batman from the Lego licensed games that's separate from the Lego Movie Batman character.
In the general context of talking about WB milking the Lego Movie series, I'm pretty sure I was talking more on the creative side rather than finances. On in which I'm sorry, but I still don't (entirely) trust my faith in Sony on that front.
Not trusting Sony studios proper is fair. But Sony animated? I think they're track record speaks for itself. Hotel Transylvania should not be as good as it is quite frankly, it screamed cheap cash grab when I heard of the first one but they're excellent
He's stealing money from Avatar to boost Detective Pikachu's total.
He's a fine supporting character, but LEGO Batman's shtick doesn't work in a leading role. He became insufferable after the first ten minutes. The movie was good in spite of him. Should have followed LM1 up with LM2 at most two years later. Five years between animated movies is absurd.
Highly disagree with this.
Felt like some of the special effects scenes were rendered at like half the frame rate at the rest of the movie. Overall most of the visuals looked pretty bad with a few nice shots. The movie was cheesy as hell (like most action movies) but also overly sappy like typical Chinese movies and as I mentioned in the wandering earth thread
had stupid anti Japanese and Indian bits injected into it, ie Japanese commuted suicide instead of helping and the Indians just gave up and quit , both countries had 5 seconds of screen time.
As you mentioned lunar new year, the speech toward the end is basically ID4 "this is our Independence Day" speech levels of dumb. I know people enjoy hokey shit but come on... overall it was "enjoyable" to go with friends and experience the event of it all but it was a shitty movie imo. Average at best.
This is completely off topic. But could someone tell me why the hell Pixar movies are so expensive? I just watched sing which was made on a 75 million budget and it looks good. Spiderverse done on 90 million of course looks spectacular. Pixar looks really good, but three times the budget good? I don't see it
Huh. I totally meant to go see Lego Movie 2 tonight. Completely forgot to do so. And this was after seeing the friday numbers and saying "Ouch".
I guess that's why Lego Movie 2 is doing what it is though. Because I wouldn't be doing that with a bunch of other films I've seen the past few months.
I guess that's why Lego Movie 2 is doing what it is though. Because I wouldn't be doing that with a bunch of other films I've seen the past few months.
Extremely long production times, basically. Polar films will strive to have extremely complicated backgrounds and character animation than most.
Production time I understand and appreciate. But the animation stuff I quite frankly don't even notice. And I feel like most people don't. I'm sure it's super impressive when slowed down, but people don't watch moves at one fifth speed
Compare the most recent trailers for Toy Story 4 and The Secret Life of Pets 2:
Just compare the backgrounds, the textures, the hair, the lighting, the character movement.
Pixar is on a whole other level, and they have the checkbook to let them achieve that. Artists want to be able to create art. Sure Illumination is "good enough" and will the average person even notice? Probably not. But also the average person sucks and is stupid and I want to look at really pretty things instead of "good enough"
You don't notice it's there until it isn't. Silly from Monster's Inc had 2 million individually animated hairs for fur. Think about the elaborate settings in Wall-E, Coco or Monster's Inc. There's just more "going on" in a frame of most Pixar films.
I just realized that there is also a 5 year gap between How to Train Your Dragon 2 and 3.
Please don't bomb!
More awareness than Lego, but chances aren't looking good. The trailers are also massively underwhelming
All those impressive visuals don't mean much if the writing is lacking. I swear The Good Dinosaur was a tech demo for how realistic looking PIxar can make the environment.
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At the very least the movie offers something even if the story is lacking, unlike your average (ie. mediocre) Illumination movie.
Though The Good Dinosaur kinda botched whatever goodwill the gorgeous backgrounds and landscapes gave me by having those goober dinos wandering all over it.
Sure.
But it's a new Toy Story. It'll be as amazing as the previous trilogy.
I didn't even realize Lego Movie 2 was coming out this weekend until someone posted about it in my Facebook movie group. We went to a pretty late showing but there were like 5 people in the theater.
Sometimes having really expensively detailed CGI isn't where the focus should be. Spider-Verse didn't cost as much as a Pixar movie yet they were able to come up with something stellar looking.At the very least the movie offers something even if the story is lacking, unlike your average (ie. mediocre) Illumination movie.
Though The Good Dinosaur kinda botched whatever goodwill the gorgeous backgrounds and landscapes gave me by having those goober dinos wandering all over it.
Eh, I saw it tonight and it was vapid, cliched and derivative. The only good thing about it is that its CG stands up there if with the best of the Hollywood disaster blockbusters, which is a rare sight from Asian cinema.
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