Ghostbusters: Afterlife (2021)

[RossyG]

Originally Posted by HomerThompson

129M domestically is not poor business. Especially last November just as theatres started to really re-open.

$204m worldwide on a $75m budget is a poor return on investment when you factor in advertising costs and cinemas keeping half the money. It needed $250m plus just to break even.

Spider-Man: No Way Home opened just four weeks later, so the Covid excuse is pretty weak, too.

For whatever reasons, and I suspect some were inherited from the previous film, this film simply wasn’t a hit.

[levcore]

I agree that this film probably didn't make any money. Sony are in a slightly tricky position now though as the movie got good reviews but didn't make much at the box office. They can't reboot again so they have to go all in on a sequel for this and hope it makes more money. TBH though i expect the same middling responses in terms of audience attendance.

I feel this movie and its sequel will be like the Sonic movies, although less successful lol.

[HomerThompson]

Originally Posted by RossyG

$204m worldwide on a $75m budget is a poor return on investment when you factor in advertising costs and cinemas keeping half the money. It needed $250m plus just to break even.

Spider-Man: No Way Home opened just four weeks later, so the Covid excuse is pretty weak, too.

For whatever reasons, and I suspect some were inherited from the previous film, this film simply wasn’t a hit.

It performed as big as it could with the kind of film it was reintroducing the franchise on a smaller budget. Spider-Man is not comparable as that’s part of a long running built in audience.

It showed that there was an audience for it domestically. Overseas Ghostbusters has never been a draw. Yes, it was a hit which is why there is a theatrical sequel coming with the same creative team and cast.

Let’s not pretend most 75M movies wouldn’t want a 130M domestic gross.

[RossyG]

You're arguing against facts, I'm afraid. Afterlife didn't break even financially.

$75m negative cost (ie. no advertising) and a $130m gross = theatrical flop. No studio wants that.

[BluBonnet]

Afterlife didn't break even financially.

I love these fanciful fairy tales where the commercial life of a movie always ends the second it is out of theaters, and the movie never makes another cent.

[50strat54]

Regardless of how much the movie made I loved it...A LOT!

I hated the all girl Ghostbusters, not because it was all female leads but because it wasn't funny. I loved Bridesmaids and that had all female leads.

Based on 75 - 250 the movie at least broke even or made a little

If there's no sequel that's fine at least the series ended on a good note.

Also in any box set the all girl Ghostbusters should be included. Lots of bad films are included in box sets...look at Star Trek V it's in the new box set.

[RossyG]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

I love these fanciful fairy tales where the commercial life of a movie always ends the second it is out of theaters, and the movie never makes another cent.

I very clearly said theatrical flop.

As Sony doesn’t have a streaming platform, Afterlife will have made money by being sold to other streamers and it sold on disc, too ($17m-worth, apparently). But theatrically it didn’t break even.

[BluBonnet]

Whether or not it broke even theatrically, I do not know for a fact. Everyone knows that under Hollywood accounting, no movie ever made a profit

But regardless of the performance during the theatrical release, it served to reinvigorate interest in the franchise, and probably also on all of the merchandising - which is still going fairly strong for a franchise based on an 80s comedy.

[GuruAskew]

I don’t think it reinvigorated anything. By what measure is Ghostbusters more popular after the release of Afterlife? Not even a year later and the movie is all but forgotten. There isn’t a new generation of Ghostbusters kids running around pretending to be Podcast or whatever. If you walked into Walmart or Target right now you’d probably be 10x more likely to find non-Afterlife Ghostbusters merch than anything associated with Afterlife. Even the new video game that’s coming out seems to all but ignore it. So what’s the point?

Actually, we all know what the point is. The point is to make that Top Gun money. Ghostbusters was a bigger movie than Top Gun. Ghostbusters has much-broader appeal than Top Gun. And they ****ed Afterlife up so badly that they would have been able to sell just as many toys and t-shirts than if they’d never made a movie at all while a sequel to a less-popular movie grossed 8-9x as much. Why bother?

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by GuruAskew

I don’t think it reinvigorated anything.

Opinions vary

[GuruAskew]

But I’m not talking about an opinion. The movie was terrible, that’s an opinion. Post-Afterlife Ghostbusters is no more popular than it was before. That’s a fact.

That’s a big problem, especially with a movie that so blatantly courts a new audience while asking its original audience to take a back seat. Afterlife was a merch commercial for kids first and foremost and the merch bombed.

[BluBonnet]

Yeah, that's still just an opinion

[GuruAskew]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

Yeah, that's still just an opinion

No it isn’t. Popularity is quantifiable. It can be measured. Show me something, anything, that would suggest that Ghostbusters is more popular in the year of our lord 2022 than it was in, say, 2019.

[BluBonnet]

I've seen a lot more merchandise, Twitter activity, and overall interest among my friends now than I did before the latest installment came out. Since your experience obviously differs, it's still a matter of different opinions

[DrWally]

Movies are assets in perpetuity. A new entry in a well-loved property that's been dormant for a while is not only an asset in isolation, it also renews interest in and maintains the value of library content. In that regards a new Ghostbusters movie acts a bit like the meat that sells the whole sandwich.

So whilst I'm sure that Sony, a company with a total net worth of over $130 billion, is touched by Rossy's concern for their financial well-being, petty back and forth over the precise amount that Ghostbusters Afterlife 'needs' to make to break even really misses the bigger picture.

[BluBonnet]

Originally Posted by DrWally

Movies are assets in perpetuity. A new entry in a well-loved property that's been dormant for a while is not only an asset in isolation, it also renews interest in and maintains the value of library content. In that regards a new Ghostbusters movie acts a bit like the meat that sells the whole sandwich.

So whilst I'm sure that Sony, a company with a total net worth of over $130 billion, is touched by Rossy's concern for their financial well-being, petty back and forth over the precise amount that Ghostbusters Afterlife 'needs' to make to break even really misses the bigger picture.

On this we agree 100%. A franchise that goes completely dormant loses value every single day as the memories and interest of the fans begins fading.... I remember how Star Wars merchandise gradually disappeared from stores during the 80s when no new movies were coming out. Interest wasn't revived until the special editions in '97 and even more with the 1999 release of TPM.

[GuruAskew]

To use your shitty analogy: Ghostbusters Afterlife is like when Subway spends hundreds of millions of dollars improving the quality of their ingredients and sees no increase in revenue. It’s that kind of meat selling the same amount of shitty sandwiches.

[Shingster]

Originally Posted by BluBonnet

Opinions vary

They do indeed, but you seem to think yours is the only one that actually matters!

[GuruAskew]

According to this article Afterlife didn’t gross 1/3 of what Bron and Sony expected it to gross:

https://www.indiewire.com/2022/08/br...re-1234755634/

the go-to cope reaction to this is that they had unrealistic expectations, but again, Top Gun has destroyed that narrative. A well-received Ghostbusters movie that successfully replicated what made the original Ghostbusters a phenomenon could absolutely gross $650 mil.

[Shingster]

Anyone with half a brain knows that films like Ghostbusters Afterlife are never put into production to simply skate by at the theatrical box office and eke out a profit by the skin of their teeth then coast on home video and streaming.merch deals. The latter stuff is simply insurance made by the Hollywood money men who know how to cover their tracks so studios don't flop when they miss the mark.

Films like Afterlife are put into production to light like wildfire within the zeitgeist and kick start a successful franchise. In that regard Afterlife was undoubtedly a failure. Was it a flop? No, but it wasn't a success, regardlless of its merits as a film - which for the record in my humble opinion, aren't very high, it was about as "meh" and instantly forgettable as Feig's reboot, it just had more memberberries in it and utilised the original cast a little bit better, although in that regard the old adage of "too little, too late" definitely stands given they only got to shine for about 15mins at the end of a verry poorly paced movie.)

To deny this basic fact, which is plain common sense to anyone with even a passing interest in the Hollywood machine, is to bury your head in the sand and refuse to acknowledge that the film just didn't deliver on any level beyond offering a warm glow for a few minutes in the hearts of the biggest fans of the original films.