Report: Ghostbusters to See a $70 Million Loss, Sequel Likely Shelved

[DemomanHusband]

As long as this Ecto-force thing doesn't cast mildly funny comedians in completely unfunny roles, they might just have a shot of not completely shitting the bed.

Oh, there's also the whole "Turning the secretary from a sassy woman who doesn't take shit into a complete idiot male because competent men aren't funny" thing, but I sincerely doubt that the same mistake can be made twice. Although, this is non-gaming Sony we're talking about.

 

[RJ Dalton]

I always wonder what kind of world we live in when 220 million dollars is not enough to even break even on a film. Isn't that kind of horrid budgeting problems one of the reasons why the original Hollywood system crashed in the 50s? And again in the 70s?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

Well, I mean when you actively chase away nearly all the fans of the old movies by calling them misogynists, nerds, basement dwellers and the like....

What did they expect?

They went for a niche market and forgot there are plenty of women that are fans of the original movie who hate being pandered too. Hollywood instead of appearing to exclude women, it now is making movies like women were literally discovered as a new race in the 90s and had never seen any media from before 1991.

I think its fair to say that the majority of women thought "glass ceiling broken" when this movie was announced. Hopefully the Ocean's 8 movie takes cues from this and invites their fans instead of insulting them.

 

[Bedinsis]

On the other hand, Amazing Spiderman 2 made ~$200 million as well and that's what finally convinced Sony to give Spiderman back to Marvel. There is an expectation that if you market a movie enough, you'll get ticket sales. The fact that Ghostbusters did this bad with no strong contenders shows that pumping money into marketing only gives a very small return (or in this case, a loss). It's a tell that people don't want this.

I dunno, given how poorly received the trailer for the movie was the takeaway could just as well be that they should have spent more money on making sure the trailer looked enticing. They can spend all the money in the world to make people aware that Ghostbusters is a movie playing in theatres but if Ghostbusters don't look enticing, why should people turn up?

I will admit I don't know how big impact the trailer had in these numbers.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

On the other hand, Amazing Spiderman 2 made ~$200 million as well and that's what finally convinced Sony to give Spiderman back to Marvel. There is an expectation that if you market a movie enough, you'll get ticket sales. The fact that Ghostbusters did this bad with no strong contenders shows that pumping money into marketing only gives a very small return (or in this case, a loss). It's a tell that people don't want this.

I dunno, given how poorly received the trailer for the movie was the takeaway could just as well be that they should have spent more money on making sure the trailer looked enticing. They can spend all the money in the world to make people aware that Ghostbusters is a movie playing in theatres but if Ghostbusters don't look enticing, why should people turn up?

I will admit I don't know how big impact the trailer had in these numbers.

That's what I'm getting at. They spent a ton of money on advertising and it got them some "meh, fuck it" tickets, but there wasn't a good movie underneath to get real sales.

 

[Tireseas_v1legacy]

I'm inclined to wait until about a year from now when the BluRay/Streaming/OnDemand/licensing numbers are fully figured in before they determine if it is a profit or a loss. Initial theater sales is becoming a smaller and smaller share of the revenues of movies, and given a lot of reviews were positive overall, I would not be surprised if it has more of a bounce there.

I'll say that I liked the movie as a good-not-great summer movie. I think the gender backlash did have an effect on the box office, but not enough to make or break the movie (especially given the sheer size of the loss being described). I know I'd like a sequel, but it might need a few years to wait until there's less saturation during the summer or opt for a lower budget (similar to GIJoe 2) to lower the profit threshold and move to a late September/October Halloween release. The promotional budget was clearly too large and squandered, so that would need to be dialed back tremendously, especially early marketing.

 

[The Enquirer]

Maybe the director shouldn't have insulted his target audience and the movie would have done better.

 

[NickBrahz]

Bring on the claims it is a flop from them because everybody is sexist not because it is a pile of crap and insulting the target audience.

 

[Callate]

I'm a little surprised, honestly. Box Office Mojo lists its production costs as $144 million; I got the sense that it wasn't doing all that well, but I hadn't realized that other costs (promotion etc.) had more than doubled the stake.

...Ouch.

Wellll... I would hardly be the first one to suggest that, whatever the Internet may have coughed up to spite it, the reaction of the powers that be wasn't exactly wise. It's easy to "armchair quarterback" a situation like this, but I think the only message that might have helped would have been something along the lines of: "Look, we understand some of you have doubts, and this property means a lot to you for a variety of reasons. But we really care about what we're doing here, we're fans of the Ghostbusters, too, and we think you'll be pleasantly surprised if you give us a chance."

Instead, bluntly, the reaction of Feig and Sony might have been summed up as: "Oh, yeah? Well, we don't need any of you!"

And no amount of righteous rage is a substitute for box office receipts.

There comes a time when you need to swallow your pride and recognize you can't get to where you want to be alone. You didn't have to be some kind of misogynistic Internet troll to be a little nonplussed by just how tone deaf they were being.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

I think the big problem is that they made a comedy with the the budget of a summer blockbuster. That never works out. It's always weird to hear about this movie on the Escapist though. Everywhere else I'm hearing meh to great things about it. I wouldn't be surprised if it gets a cult-classic label later. If nothing else because the science jargon being relatively accurate (outside ghosts existing, obviously)

And nobody gets to shit-talk Kevin. Kevin is awesome.

Awwww I wanted to see a modern take on Zuul and Gozer, and the post-credit scene was pointed toward this. Would Gozer be gender-flipped too, since it can take any form? How would that look?

It'd look like David Bowie, I'd imagine.

 

[Arnoxthe1]

Can Hollywood just crash already? Please? And it's not like there's ANY shortage of talented and aspiring filmmakers to take their place. In fact, they're ravenous for it.

 

[Burnouts3s3]

Okay, I guess I'll play the Devil's Advocate here. (Puts on Fedora).

Don't any of you think that the reception and vitriol the film received was a 'little' unfair, just based on the premise alone? That the negative comments against Paul Feig, Melissa McCarthy, Kristin Wiig, Kate McKinnon and especially Leslie Jones was a little unfair and just them defending themselves against all that hate was something they had to do?

Look, I know Sony and Paul Feig's comments as painting all critics as misogynists was a bit much, that much I agree with, but is that an excuse to brush aside and not pay attention to the death threats, the comments on appearance and Feig's sexuality that was received? Did anyone give this movie a fair chance? Because a lot of what I saw, people were wanting to hate this film and see negative criticism.

Since when do two wrongs make a right? Just because Paul Feig or Sony or the cast tried to defend themselves against the negative comments and might've aimed incorrectly at some people who didn't deserve it, doesn't mean Feig and co. deserved the abuse they received for almost a year.

 

[Jingle Fett]

Good. Faith in humanity restored slightly. The only way to see fewer of these reboots is by voting with the wallet. It also pleases me that they're not getting rewarded for their attitude of "everyone who disagrees is a misogynist". You don't get to reboot something and expect fans of the originals to stay quiet...

 

[Bedinsis]

Look, I know Sony and Paul Feig's comments as painting all critics as misogynists was a bit much, [...]

When did they do that? The Escapist did a very poor job in representing what Mr. Feig actually said regarding his critics, so I'm curious if you have source on that?

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I suspect it was down to the sheer amount of politics and nonsense surrounding this film. They should've just left Ghostbusters be and made something new. By rebooting a beloved franchise with an SJW/feminist thing, and making a hash of even that, this film was never likely to succeed. The original was a unique thing that worked because of the stars aligning with the cast/crew, story, script and so on. This one had none of those things from the start....it was a deliberate cash in made for the most cynical of reasons and combined with the politics was never going to please anyone.

 

[Zontar]

Kick out Tom Rothman,

As much as I hate Rothman and am genuinely shocked that Sony hired him after Fox fired him, this failure is due to Amy Pascal (who got fired because of it midway through production when Sony realized how badly she had fucked up) and Paul Feige.

I'm inclined to wait until about a year from now when the BluRay/Streaming/OnDemand/licensing numbers are fully figured in before they determine if it is a profit or a loss.

Investors don't care about that, and for good reason: they only get the money from the theatrical release because that's what they paid for. Hollywood is odd in how it's structured, where only Disney, Paramount and Universal are currently set up in a way where the money made form physical release and streaming ends up in the same pockets as that which gets the money from theatrical release.

This is only made worst by the fact that big blockbusters don't tent to bring in more then 50 million in the post-theatrical release period in the year long period where the studio sees any actual money before the marginal licensing fee level prices come in (the sudden price drop one to two years after theatrical release happens when the studio takes a downright massively smaller cut of the disk). For Ghostbusters to brake even using Blu Ray, DVDs and streaming licencing, they'd need to be just as much of a smash hit in the buying and streaming market as the blockbusters it was expecting to bring in as much money as (500+ million world wide gross) did, and do so at a noteworthy level of success.

This very unlikely turn of events is only made worst by the fact that the pitfall could actually be larger then 70 million for Sony as some have pointed out (in a comment I saw yesterday on the source that seems to have been deleted or buried) that it seems that the real loss will be closer to 130 million, an unprecedented level of physical release and streaming money if true. God knows the toys and video game are not going to close that gap.

 

[Kameburger]

"Bold" is not the word I would use for this. It's only "bold" in a feminist context, but I don't really think that in itself makes a movie bold. I think there is a sort of illusion that the world on mass isn't "ready" for women, but I don't really believe that's the case. I don't want to participate in outrage culture. I think this movie shackled itself to the marketing of this movie, and the marketing of the movie tried to lean hard into the idea of this movie being MRA assholes versus the feminists and their allies. The truth is that they made a cynical cash grab reboot, with some funny ideas but no care given to the execution.

 

[Igor-Rowan]

I was kind of predicting this would backfire somehow... I'm really disappointed at being right. When I heard Sony's representative's cynical way of telling us he wanted the controversy, I don't think the huge amount of backlash would get them any good.

I like Bridesmaids and this movie had its moments, when it was being its own thing that is, not blatantly riding nostalgia, because the thing is, I didn't grow up with the movie, so when I noticed the "fanservice", it was really jarring.

 

[Steve the Pocket]

I'm surprised that the movie costs amounted to 225 million in the first place. Not because it was bad or anything, I haven't seen it, to be fair. I was more just speculating as to where the costs went.

I'm wondering too, because from what I hear, it sure didn't go into the special effects.

 

[RebornKusabi]

I loved the movie but hot goddamn was the marketing bad for it. When your marketing is literally based around alienating not just the old fans but any potential new ones by blanketing criticism for the movie as "misogyny", and specifically targeting AVGN for his refusal to review it even though his opinion was no more invalid than Polygon's, and specifically attacking not just him but his f***ing wife and daughter? I'm sure that turned a lot of people off.

That says nothing of the fact that... Why wasn't this merchandised more? I'm an early millenial, I was born in '87, so I remember the toy craze of the early 90's, so I specifically remember having tons of Ghostbusters toys and merch, and because I watch Cartoon Network for Teen Titans Go and Steven Universe (and that's it), I don't recall EVER seeing an add for a new proton pack toy, toy weapons, merch aimed at young girls and boys, none of that. Why?

My only response to people saying Sony marketing wasn't responsible for the shitty reception the trailers got is this video:

http://redlettermedia.com/scientist-man-analyzes-ghostbusters-2016/

It's a comedic video, and it uses generalizations of MRA's and TUMBLRina's opinions and I take some parts of it with a grain of salt, but it made me better understand some of the backlash for other issues mounted against the movie.

So with attack pieces, audience alienation, manufacturered controversy, no merchandising, what the capital F*** did they think was going to happen? Because I don't buy the excuse that "women-led movies don't sell". It's always gone back to "BAD SHITBIRD women-led movies don't sell". Make a good one, or even a decent one (Hunger Games series, Divergent series), and it'll sell.