Talking DISNEY and MARVEL with Stan

Stan and I talked movies for his site yesterday.  I'm cross-posting it here.  

DISNEY and MARVEL's current problems

 Stan:  I was going to write about FARGO tonight and do what I'm about to do tomorrow night or Friday but Rebecca didn't get all of FARGO watched last night so we're both going to post about it on Thursday.  That freed me up for a roundtable of two that I've been wanting to do.  Thank you to C.I. of THE COMMON ILLS for doing a dialogue piece with me. "Media: They tried to destroy the parade and they failed" is Ava and C.I.'s latest report at THE THIRD ESTATE SUNDAY REVIEW.  We all love their media coverage at THIRD and being on the phone with C.I. is like that and a lot of fun.  So we had talked about doing a movie discussion dialogue and that ended up being something we took to THIRD and  I really hated the "Comic book movie roundtable" that we ended up doing.  I'd asked C.I. if she and I could discuss the topic and then I invited some others and it just got too big.  It's probably a great conversation but it wasn't what I'd hoped for.  So this is just us talking about movies and we do this all the time over the phone and I always enjoy it so I thought my readers might too.  First up, DISNEY's WISH is being called a failure.  It may be, it may not be.  It's at $32 million in North American ticket sales as of yesterday.  The latest Trolls film has been out a week longer and when it was out this same length of time, it had $39 million so not a big difference but I'm not reading "UNIVERSAL bombs!"  There's a desire -- especially by some right wingers -- to destroy DISNEY.  Now one point here, the pandemic took a lot of children out of the theaters.  Teenagers and young adults were the first to go back in big numbers.  But even while there seems to be greater comfort for teens and adults for themselves, parents of children under ten still seem either reluctant to go back or broken of the movie habit and now just wanting to stream at home.  And then you have the economy which is doing well and I'm sure that parents of young children feel that even more than most people.  Now you had a point you were making with regards to a stupid thing Donald Trump said.

C.I.: Yeah, completely unrelated though.  So my point with regards to ticket sales -- and I'm sure I'll echo part of this later when we touch on superheroes -- is the audience is smaller than it was fifteen years ago.  The US birth rate declines starting in 2009 and this continues to this day.  From pre-pandemic, you see a slight increase at the start of the pandemic but even reaching 11.1 births per 1000 US adults does not get you back up to the 2009 figure of 13.5 births for every 1000 US adults.  So we've seen a slow drop off in the birth rate that's gone on for 14 years.  Animated films are seen by all ages, yes, but we're in a period similar to the seventies.  People who were children in the US in the 70s were short changed.  You didn't have all these fast food places with games and playgrounds.  You rarely got a decent movie for kids.  I think WITCH MOUNTAIN and RETURN TO WITCH MOUNTAIN were decent, for example, but some of that stuff was just garbage -- and I would include BARNABY AND ME on that list.  It was a TV movie -- in Australia -- and there was so little content for kids that, in the US, it played in movie theaters.  And Sid Caesar was clearly stoned throughout -- not just drunk, stoned.  You could tell that by watching, you didn't need to read his book years later.  And this is what they served up to kids.  Generation X was trapped between two larger demographics -- the baby boom and Generation Y.  With Y, the children are large enough for the film industry to really cater to them -- so you get DISNEY animation reborn with THE LITTLE MERMAID, BEAUTY IN THE BEAST, THE LION KING, etc.  You also get WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT? and other non-DISNEY films.  And that continued at a steady pace.  But, again, since 2009, the birth rate has gone down.  There's another reason I'd note but it falls into the superhero thing so I'll hold on that.  You did a great job talking about THE LITTLE MERMAID, by the way.  [See Stan's "Weekend box office -- and correcting the lie that THE LITTLE MERMAID is bombing," "THE LITTLE MERMAID -- and the media that lied about it," "Erin Johnson is a racist who writes for SCREEN RANT," "THE LITTLE MERMAID has brought in twice as much money as what?," "PARAMOUNT+ trouble, Idris Elba whines, Halle Bailey shows grace under pressure" for starters.]  You're talking about how some people have a highly vested interest in DISNEY failing and I think that was very evident in the coverage of the live action LITTLE MERMAID.  You did a great job with that, covering it weekly, sometimes daily.

Stan: Thank you.  Apparently a woman of color as the lead in a fairy tale is more threatening than nuclear radiation.  Imagine if all the right wing crazies that were gunning for Halle Bailey had instead focused their energies on reducing the stockpile of  nuclear weapons? They wanted that film to flop and that really does include the press.  They called it a bomb after the first weekend.  They kept raising the bar on how much it would need to make in order to be profitable.  They did that with James Cameron's last AVATAR as well. [See Stan's "Weekend Box Office" for starters.] "  People forget that but the press ripped his film apart and insisted it was a bomb and kept that up for weeks.  It ends up making 2.3 billion dollars in worldwide ticket sales and none of those people or outlets -- DEADLINE included -- went back and apologized or even wrote a "Woops we got that wrong!" THE LITTLE MERMAID didn't do that -- very few films do.  But it did rack up 569 million dollars in worldwide ticket sales.  It's a hit and then some.

C.I.: Agreed.  Can I bring up something else that's related?

Stan: Yeah.

C.I.:  Last week, I think on Monday, you were upset by something you saw at one of the movie websites.  I think that's a good example of how the same press that rips apart films with people of color -- apparently even the Avatars are a threat to them -- I'm joking but only semi -- will bend over backwards to justify the films they love.

Stan:  Thank you!  I forgot about that.  I wrote a post on that after we talked.  And it was perfect, I thought, so naturally I lost it.  I was reading over it and decided to add a sentence.  I don't have a mouse or even a stick on my laptop, just a square I touched and I touched it and it highlights the entire post and I'm not paying attention so as soon as I type one letter, the whole post is gone.  So I was mad for a few hours.  But it wasn't SCREEN RANT, it was some sight light that.  I know you like Martin Scorsese, I know he's a friend.  But I did not like KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON and I was glad that it didn't do well.  The budget was $200 million.  And it is not a hit.  If you go worldwide it's made $152 million and, this past weekend, it fell out of the top ten.  It's money making days are over.  But this website tried to lie and say it was a hit.  Why?  Well APPLE+ is doing that to draw viewers to their streaming service so it's not a flop or a bomb even if can't make back it's shooting budget.  They do that for their heroes, lie for their heroes.  It's a bomb.

C.I.:  --

Stan: So everyone knows, C.I. just did a heavy sigh.  Did I bring a tough topic?  I do know you guys are friends.  Sorry.

C.I.: No.  Martin's made enough classic films that he can handle a so-so on his resume.  He needs to stop working with De Niro.  Grumpy Grandpa has been his image since he teamed up with Ben Stiller and it's become his dramatic characters as well.  There is no freshness left in him.  Maybe he could step away from films for a year or more and refill the well but he's running on fumes.  Another actor would have worked better, my opinion.  But the sigh?  How far do we want to go?  I don't want to lose anyone in the weeds.

Stan: The financials are worse than I presented.

C.I.: Much worse.  You know about foreign markets.

Stan: Right.  They get a chunk that's larger so less return than in North America.  In both -- in all -- the theaters get a percentage of the sale of tickets.  That's why, and you explained this to me, that a theater loves, for example, Sandra Bullock.  Her fans are there for weeks.  And the longer the film plays in theaters, the higher the percentage of ticket sales the theater gets.  So they like someone like Sandra who can pull in audiences for weeks and weeks.  The studios are okay with a film that opens at $75 million and then drops off big in the second week because they get the largest % of ticket sales on opening weekend.

C.I.: Right so those things impact and they mean that $152 million is smaller.  But the real problem is Leo.

Leonardo Di Caprio.

C.I.: Right.  He's one of the most reliable male actors at the box office today and has been for decades -- plural.  This was not a passion project of Leo's so he was paid very well.  But he also got a back end.  And it's gross, not net.  And it started with the first dollar the film earned.  In 1997, he got less than 2% of the gross on TITANIC.  He's had many big hits since so that number is much higher now.  Let's pretend it's only 5%.  That would mean 7.6 million of the ticket sales would be going to Leo.  And here, we're not talking about after the studio recoups.  He gets gross -- not net -- and he gets from the first dollar the film makes in ticket sales.  Let's pretend no one else on the film got a percent of the gross.  $152 million just became $142 million.  Any name actor with a successful track record is going to ask for a percentage -- and unless they're a dupe, they'll want a percentage of the gross.  But Leo's up there with Tom Cruise meaning those two write their own tickets, dictate their own terms.

Stan: So Scorsese got a percentage as well?

C.I.: I don't know that but, yes, that would be a good guess.  When they're throwing around $200 million, it's a bit hard to bleed the talent.  They had Barbra Streisand over the barrel with YENTYL because it was a passion project and she wanted it made and worked for years to get it made.  Scorsese clearly had a strong pitch that the studio was interested in so he held the cards.  I don't see him getting pushed around or denied a percentage.  I'd also add that the claim that it doesn't matter is nonsense.

Stan: I thought so too.  NETFLIX is having to scale back on its slate of programs because they're not making the money they need to.  So how is APPL+ exempt from that?  It's not.

C.I.: No, it's not and it also doesn't have the number of subscribers that NETFLIX has.  It's offerings get talked about a lot but it's not pulling in the eyeballs.

Stan: NETFLIX has about 250 million subscribers around the world.  APPLE TV+ has how many?

C.I.: They claim 25 million but that probably includes a level of inflation.  And, no, 25 million subscribers can't pay for a $200 million budget.  That's not smart, they're bleeding funds.  

Stan: This is a lot of fun.  I note at my site how much I've learned from speaking with you.  That's why I feel comfortable making projections.  And that includes with the box office and factoring in the lead or leads -- do they have legs to keep a film going, etc.

C.I.: You make a lot of strong projections.  In terms of me, I can be wrong and a recent example of that would be Taylor Swift's concert film.  I had no idea people would go to the theater in those numbers to see her.  I would expect Beyonce to do well with her upcoming concert film.  But Taylor's a more limited performer.  I don't mean that in a mean way.  Taylor's not a dancer.  Taylor's not blowing the audience away with spectacle.  She's not got these special effects.  She's a singer-songwriter.  And that's not an insult.  My favorite genre is singer-songwriters.  If you came up to me and said, "I only have money to download one album," I'd ask you what you were considering.  I'd then recommend the singer-songwriter arguing that they'd be more reliable in most cases because they wrote their songs and have obviously written at least one you like since you're considering buying it.

Stan: I think she's an exception.  And I'm surprised by that because I'm not impressed with her.  She, sorry Taylor fans, has been making the same two songs over and over for years now.  She's got a weak voice.  I wish I could remember how Aretha Franklin shaded her.

C.I.: Asked what she thought of Taylor, Aretha said, "Great gowns, beautiful gowns."

Stan: Yeah.  Like Rachel saying to Joey on FRIENDS, "You're so pretty."  Okay, superheroes and I know you want to pack somethings in here.  Burn out.

C.I.: You've been writing about that for some time.  You were noting it when everyone was pretending it wasn't there.

Stan: Yeah and I don't get how they couldn't see it.

C.I.: My thing about that and about DISNEY kid movies is that you've planted the same crop over and over each year in the same spot.  You're leaching the soil, you're robbing the nutrients.  You have to rotate crops, you have to rotate where you plant.  There's no rotation when you're doing the same thing over and over.  That's happened with the superhero films and that's happened with too much DISNEY product.  THE LITTLE MERMAID, THE JUNGLE BOOK, THE LION KING, all these live action DISNEY films that are remakes of animated classics, for example, are not delighting in the way a new film with new characters would. 

Stan: I see your point.

C.I.: You made one about the need to put some visionaries behind superhero movies.  Get an auteur and maybe it doesn't work but it's still something unique that's not predictable.  I think that's a good point.

Stan: The sameness of it all really grates on me.  Chris Pratt is the hero of MAGA and maybe that's why GUARDIANS does so well.  I have no idea.  But that is a film franchise that is lousy.  It's poorly written and it's poorly acted.  And I like Chris Pratt as an actor, this isn't "HATE ON CHRIS!"  THE MARVELS was awful and I wanted to talk about that.  Why is it that women are hired by DISNEY, for example, and they create such hideous women characters.

C.I.: I would say some women are not comfortable with their own power.  Some are.  But some aren't and they're not able to rise above that and create a powerful character.  So they turn She-Hulk into Ally McBeal -- who was a pathetic character and hasn't really existed in the pop culture world since the show ended.  They make them quirky and this and that instead of making them heroes and powerful women.  I wasn't a devotee of Red Sonja but I really wish one of the plans in the last ten years to make a movie -- another movie -- would have taken place because I don't know how you cow Red Sonja.  They did with She Hulk, they did with the young Ms. Marvel, they did with Scarlet Witch.  And that is behind the backlash against THE MARVELS because Brie Larson played one of the few strong women in MARVEL's big screen offerings and they destroy her sequel by saddling her with a TV character who is weak and a joke.  Ms. Marvel was Scrappy Doo and the fans reacted accordingly.

Stan: See, I look at it and think, "Oh, woman director!  This'll be great for women!"

C.I.: That's not the case.  I mean you can argue, "Well a woman doing it shows that it can be done."  And, yeah, there's a point to be made for that argument.  But --

Stan: Okay, you and Ava, you two always say that you present a feminist view -- "a" and not "the."

C.I.: Right.

Stan: So just like feminism has different schools and aspects, that's what you're talking about.

C.I.: Sure.  That's a good way to narrow it down.  I'm not a cultural feminist, for example.  And I think that if some of the women working on WANDAVISION claimed feminism, it would be that sort.  They believe that women are different and that they're more different than the same and they go glassy eyed over books like IN A DIFFERENT VOICE.  I'm not of that school.  I'm more of the Carol Tavris school, she wrote THE MISMEASURE OF WOMEN: WHY WOMEN ARE NOT THE BETTER SEX, THE INFERIOR SEX, OR THE OPPOSITE SEX."  You can boil that book down two we're members of the same species.  

Stan: It's just too damn cutesy and self-aware -- WANDAVISION, Ms. Marvel and She-Hulk.  And I like those characters in the comic book but I hate how they have been portrayed on DISNEY+.

C.I.: We talk a lot, you and I, about Barbara Stanwyck.  She played strong characters and, sadly, she didn't have a lot of feminists to rely on.  Her directors were all men.  She had one or two women who did identify as feminist -- one or two who wrote scripts for her films.  And you respond to her characters and I respond to her characters.  That's because we like strong characters.  And that's why the male directors she worked with were interested in the films with her and interested in her portrayals.  They liked strong women.  The answer for better female characters, sadly, is not an easy fix, "Hire more women!" It's hire qualified women.  When you're joking more than you're physically fighting, don't pretend you've created a superhero film or TV show.  James Cameron is not a woman.  But he likes strong women and that's why you see them in his work.  I think Anne Fletcher likes strong women and that's why they're in her films.  And we could continue down this thread if you wanted.  Women have been shamed forever and a day for wanting power or seeking power or owning their own power and when we're seeing Scarlet Witch turned into a TV spoof of BEWITCHED and THE BRADY BUNCH and other nonsense, that's why we're seeing what we're seeing.  

Stan: DISNEY.  It's future?

C.I.: I own stock.  I'm not rushing to sell it.  This is probably a good time to buy it.  I think the press needs to grasp that every year is not a success, that there are peaks and valleys.  I think this could be a short-term problem for DISNEY or a long term.  The economy, the population distribution and the product are factors currently.  Implementing your idea could shake things up -- and DISNEY's release schedule is way too predictable -- getting an auteur to handle a film and bring in their own unique look and manner of storytelling -- would be a smart thing to do, very smart.  You've got to create some excitement to sell tickets and there's been too much sameness of late for excitement.  

Stan: I love that and I think it's a good place to end on.  This went way longer than I expected so thank you for that.  Are you going to cross-post?

C.I.: I will.  I'll do it on Thursday night. That way it can be up at your site for a day before it goes elsewhere.  And thank you because this was fun.

Stan: Thank you --  a lot of fun.