This post was created by berzeli of Resetera. All credit goes to him/her.
If you're feeling that you're having a shit year, take solace in knowing that you're not alone. Or if other people's misery doesn't comfort you, just point and laugh at corporate idiocy. I'm here to help with a recap of Paramount Doom Watch™ 2017, something that started when
kswiston pointed out that
Wonder Woman had eclipsed all of Paramount's slate, something which held true until
November.
So in 2017 Paramount has released 11 films;
The total Paramount b.o. take (domestic) for the year so far is $525,103,131
For reference, the domestic total for
Beauty and the Beast is $504,014,165
This is obviously bad, but it's also historically bad. They are heading for a sub 5% market share, which I don't even know when the last time it happened.
Or if you want that in a graph form (red line):
source:
the-numbers
Now there are two things saving them:
1) They only made $525M in 1995, and I won't adjust for inflation because I'm lazy (and it's not the most accurate way of doing this).
2) The easily accessible records don't go further back than 1995 and I'm lazy (and well, I'm just lazy).
But for fun a quick comparison with 1995:
In 1995 Paramount sold 121,812,497 tickets with an almost 10% market share
In 2017 Paramount sold 58,004,179 tickets (and counting, but the number still won't be pretty) with a sub 5% market share
So what went wrong this year? Well let's take a look at the films (all numbers worldwide unless otherwise noted):
The Hits:
No
The Hits, but:
xXx:The Return of Xander Cage | $346M on a $85M budget is good, but a very weak $44M domestic performance drags it down.
Transformers:The Last Knight | $605M worldwide is impressive, but the budget was $217M and the results are nothing short of an implosion for the series (down 45%).
Daddy's Home 2 | $168M (and counting) for a comedy this year is impressive, but the reported budget was a fairly high $69M.
The Meh:
Rings | It made it's money back, but no one cares about it. (or rather they care about
It)
Baywatch | $177.8M isn't bad. But factor in a $69M budget and a disappointing domestic run and it's less impressive.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power | It's definitely a disappointment compared to its predecessor, but it having a tiny production budget helped.
The Bombs:
Monster Trucks |
so bad they had to take a write-down on it before it even opened (did $64M on a $100+M budget)
Ghost in the Shell |
so bad its soundtrack album got cancelled (did $169M on a $110+M budget)
mother! |
so bad Jennifer Lawrence and Darren Aronofsky broke up (did $44M on a $30M budget)
Suburbicon | so bad I don't even have anything interesting to put here (did $5M* on a $25M budget)
Downsizing |
so bad that Damonsplaining got brought back (currently underperforming its tracking on a $68M budget)
*domestic number only
It's always hard to pinpoint what exactly caused this, was it just mismanagement by former CEO Brad Grey? or was it the mismanagement of the parent company under former Viacom CEO Phillipe Dauman? Was it the bitter feuding about what to do with Paramount at their parent company with over 20+ lawsuits around Sumner Redstone and family + associates that distracted?
Who can really say? (it's all of them)
Now at least the future is looking brigh-
Oh.