Avatar film earnings over 2 billion

[dragon]

Despite a lot of hate for the movie 2 billion in sales in damn impressive.

Its foreign haul has risen to $1.474 billion. Add in domestic, and its worldwide gross stands at an incredible $2.075 billion

link

[The Romulan Republic]

Its just not fair that Cameron gets to break his own record, while so many better movies are comparatively overlooked.

[starfury]

@Alan De Smet / AR:

I’d be happier with that article if it demonstrated basic competence with facts. (E.g., First National Pictures was NOT absorbed by Paramount but by Warner Bros., which is why so many 1930s and 1940s movies on TCM carry the line “A Warner Bros.-First National Picture” at the bottom of the credits.) Carelessness with the small facts in this case also stands for carelessness with the larger facts.

SHORTER THORNTON: The vertically integrated movie industry put adults in charge, and they could efficiently produce mass entertainment that could be enjoyed by all audiences. By busting up the system, the government unleashed economic forces (intra-industry competition between actors, producers, crew members, etc.) that sap efficiency and prevent the kind of self-regulation that allows intelligent cinema to flourish.

SHORTER ME: The movie industry always adapts to most efficiently meet audience demand. The audience composition changed dramatically between 1950 and 1975, and the industry has adapted to serve an audience that is disproportionately young and male. The best way to serve that audience is to make movies that are … well, much stupider than the average movie made in 1939. Meanwhile, overall changes in the economic landscape since 1950 also means that it is more efficient for Hollywood to radically decentralize its production structures while simultaneously consolidating its control over distribution and copyright resources.

Every major historian/analyst of Hollywood economics I have ever read has asserted that the Paramount Decrees that broke up the old Hollywood system were, at best, irrelevant to the changes that were already occurring, and may have benefited the studios because they quickly destroyed an economic structure that was coming down anyway.

LONGER ME: Between 1910 and 1950 the movie industry had a captive audience with little better to do with its free time than go to the movies. During the 1940s especially, when government rationing left urban workers with lots of nominal pay but nothing to buy, they spent disproportionate amounts of their income on movie tickets. Because everyone went to the movies, Hollywood could make movies for everyone in the reasonable expectation that they would be financially successful, and adults (especially adult women) were far and away the largest audience segment, so movies that appealed to adult sensibilities dominated.

After TV began to spread, audience attendance collapsed dramatically. Suburban flight and industrial decentralization also took its toll. (Before 1950, Hollywood revenues came disproportionately from urban movie palaces in the US’s largest cities.) Today, a family trip to the movies is a major undertaking, typically involving a lengthy drive time, dinner, parking, babysitting (possibly), all on top of finding something that everyone wants to see. And that’s before paying non-matinee prices for several people and then loading up on outrageously overpriced snack foods. Most adults would prefer to stay home, and most of them do just that.

As a result, the movie audience today is disproportionately composed of teenagers and young adults, who have the time and discretionary income to spend on matinees, and who find it much easier to organize movie-going expeditions from among their friends. Exhibitors (who pay close attention to these things) have noticed and reported to producers that their key audiences don’t care for story, characterization or dialogue; they only care for spectacle. This is why contemporary movies are (to be brutally frank) dumb: because the people who go to see them are drawn by action- and spectacle-filled trailers and concepts, not by anything that could credibly be called a story. If you hype it, they will come.

You can see that Thornton is mostly talking nonsense when you see that Hollywood has reorganized into something like the old studio system, and yet the benefits he claims for vertical integration have not materialized. Today the entertainment industry is dominated by a smaller group of conglomerates (six vs. the “Big Eight” of the 1940s) whose grip is even more far-reaching than that of Golden Age Hollywood, encompassing TV networks (Disney-ABC, NBC-Universal), cable networks (Viacom, Time Warner, Disney, Fox, NBC-Universal), TV stations, and cable systems. The only things they don’t (in general) own are theaters. They don’t because the exhibition business is now outside their area of expertise: A theater is nothing but a concession stand that covers its mortgage payments by selling cheap food at exorbitant prices, and uses a short-term licensed monopoly on film exhibition to attract patrons. For Paramount to buy a theater chain would make about as much sense as for it to buy Burger King.

Again, this goes back to a change in audience composition: Studios make most of their money by selling to kids, and they actually make most of their money by selling ancillary stuff: all the toys and games and keychains and theme park rides. The Star Wars prequels are a case in point; apparently only about 15% of the total revenues collected off those films by Fox/Lucasfilm came from North American theaters, and only about 30% came from theaters worldwide. The rest of it? Well, go down to a store that sells books/CDs/DVDs/comic books and look around–that’s where almost 3/4 of George Lucas’s money comes from. And people buy it even though they HATED the prequels. You want to punish George Lucas for ruining your childhood? Stop buying his crap.

This, by the way, is why my reaction to “Panic Attack” is one of stark, staring horror rather than Shamus’s eager sense of anticipation. Hollywood tries to make movies that are (a) as cheap as possible while (b) as popular as possible with the typical moviegoer. “Casablanca,” to take a beloved classic almost at random, will never be cheap to make, for all the reasons Alexander Ibrahim has listed. And it will never be popular with today’s movie audience (14-year-old boys, mostly). But if you could take “Casablanca” and for only $500 add zombies and spaceships and giant robots and an asteroid crashing into the Mediterranean … Well, you’d ruin the movie, but now all those 14-year-old boys will rush out to see it because of that awesome shot in the trailer of Ilsa Lund (played by Megan Fox in the remake) surfing on the back of a Transformer and shooting Major Strasser with a missile launcher. The new Casablanca will be much more popular than the old, and not much more expensive. Bottom-line: The stuff that makes for a good story–script, character, plot development, acting–will be cheap, and will never get cheaper to put on screen. But the special effects that nowadays substitute for these thing have gotten cheaper and will get cheaper still, and will continue to crowd out the good “story” elements.

You think I’m exaggerating? Everyone here loves to complain about how bad the Matrix sequels were. Yeah, but also remember how many box office records they shattered at the time. You laugh at the sequels now because it makes the pain go away for a little while. But Warner Bros. is still counting its opening weekend grosses, and they’re laughing (hard) at how well they rooked each and every one of you. And they know they can (and will) do it again with another stupid movie sold with a flashy trailer. Probably one that looks a lot like “Panic Attack.”

For most people, Movies in theater are for spectactle anyways, for other stuff, they just stay home and the TV or the internet, hence my need to post that info from twenty sided blog again.

[Anguirus]

You're absolutely right. I go see movies with awesome VFX in the theatre. For other movies I wait for the DVD, watch it on my mediocre television, and lose almost nothing.

I have neither the time, the money, nor the inclination to go see everything that I think is "deserving" in the theatre.

[Axiomatic]

Well, yes. If there's a movie that doesn't depend on a huge theater screen, then why watch it at the theatre? Casablanca works just as well on a home TV as it does at the movies. Spectacle, on the other hand, loses a lot of its power when it's shrunk to the size of something that can fit inside a home.

Also, I wonder if the person who wrote that blog ever saw the trailer for Casablanca, because it is as close to his example of a stupid yet exciting trailer as you could get by editing Casablanca into James Bond: As Time Goes By.

[starfury]

Well this isn't from his blog itself, but one of a response to Posts he made on the costs of movie making, I thought was very illiumating posts on why summer movies like Transformers are so successful as make the nerd and critics's response rather irrelevent. the blog itself is here

http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/

[Stark]

I had basically no interest in seeing this movie; I didn't even know anything about it until it was discussed here. The marketers really dropped the ball.

Anyway, now that it's made heaps of money I guess nobody can criticise the movie?

[starfury]

Anyway, now that it's made heaps of money I guess nobody can criticise the movie?

More like it hardly matters for the studies that make the movie, they only see the Heaps of Money, and until it stops they hardly cared.

[Starglider]

Casablanca works just as well on a home TV as it does at the movies. Spectacle, on the other hand, loses a lot of its power when it's shrunk to the size of something that can fit inside a home.

The difference between a 30" standard definition TV and a cinema screen is stark. The difference between a 50" 720p plasma and a cinema screen is rather less. IMHO, the difference between an 80" 1080p projection screen (which will fit into any home right down to a student dorm room) and a cinema screen is marginal. If it is sufficiently large to fill your field of vision without focusing issues, that's large enough. In fact prefer our home screen to everything except an Imax screen because the seating position is always good (and of course no travel, no expensive food, no idiot teenagers using cellphones constantly). Currently the only thing we go to the cinema for is 3D - and 3D home projectors are just starting to become viable.

[Tanasinn]

Anyway, now that it's made heaps of money I guess nobody can criticise the movie?

You can, but it will be implied (directly or indirectly) that you're doing it just to look cool or because you're a closet racist.

[adam_grif]

I was sure that Avatar would fade into obscurity when I first watched the trailers for it. I never thought a SciFi film would have this kind of mass market appeal.

[mr friendly guy]

I had a feeling it was going to be big, not because of the trailer but because of the nerdy internet hate that it generated. It meant people were going to see it just to see what the fuss was about.

[JME2]

Oh great, another box-office intake to stroke Cameron's ego...

[adam_grif]

For a Cameron movie, Avatar was disappointingly formulaic. You can tell that most of the effort was put into creating a setting, not telling a story. Hopefully Avatar 2 is more interesting plotwise, now that the setting is firmly established.


Avatar and Titanic, his biggest successes, are probably his movies that I'm least interested in (except maybe Piranhas: the spawning). Sigh. I'mma go watch T2 and Aliens again.

[Anguirus]

^ Oh yeah, the man's made two movies in twelve years. One set the domestic BO record, and the second one beat the first one. He just won life.

You can, but it will be implied (directly or indirectly) that you're doing it just to look cool or because you're a closet racist.

People have been called racist for NOT liking Avatar? Since when? I think Avatar has such inept racial connotations that you could just as easily argue the reverse (that you're racist for liking it).

I do have a friend who decided long before the movie came out that she was a RABID hater, and she got mad at me for SUGGESTING that she see it, which I don't understand. I also don't understand the genocide-wankers. I REALLY don't understand the obsessive "life is meaningless now" crowd that got the article written about them. It was just a fuckin' movie man, it was fun, but I might not even have seen it twice if not for my girlfriend. I got more excited for Transformers!
(Though Avatar is a better movie than TF1, much better than RotF.)

[Tanasinn]

People have been called racist for NOT liking Avatar? Since when?

Tends to come up whenever someone asks why the humans didn't just drop nukes/space rocks on the Na'vi and be done with the whole thing. The more vehement the poster, the quicker it tends to come up. That the suggestion ignores the apparent in-universe politics of the film is probably a factor.

As to the film itself, District 9 did what Avatar does better and cheaper. My two cents.

[The Romulan Republic]

As to the film itself, District 9 did what Avatar does better and cheaper. My two cents.

Indeed. Personally I'm supporting District 9 against Avatar for Best Picture.

Damn, I miss the old days when Cameron made really cool movies.

[Darth Wong]

As to the film itself, District 9 did what Avatar does better and cheaper. My two cents.

District 9 was a pretty good movie, but it's overrated by the fans. It doesn't really give you anything positive to go with the negative. Avatar does, like it or not. The sheer beauty of Pandora is a positive. The sense of immersion is a positive. District 9 is nothing more than grinding theme park ride through the depravity of the human soul. The only moment in the whole movie which can induce a smile is the flying pig kill.

[ray245]

While I'm not defending the genocide wankers, I think I can understand some of the reasons why a few of them will prefer D-9 over Avatar.

I think the reason why Avatar turns a few people off is that they are trying to depict the na'vi as holier than thou. This essentially making the Na'vi look too unrealistic for them to believe, and make people want to find reasons to exterminate them.

[Darth Wong]

While I'm not defending the genocide wankers, I think I can understand some of the reasons why a few of them will prefer D-9 over Avatar.

I think the reason why Avatar turns a few people off is that they are trying to depict the na'vi as holier than thou. This essentially making the Na'vi look too unrealistic for them to believe, and make people want to find reasons to exterminate them.

I can give you a much simpler reason than that: District 9 is "gritty" and cynical, and self-conscious angry teenagers love to wallow in their own disillusionment.

[Axiomatic]

People used the phrase "race traitor" unironically to describe Jake Sully almost everywhere in the geek-controlled portions of the internet. It was pretty dismaying for me to discover how many places, which I had thought were fun, were actually infested with stormfronters.

Seriously, Race Traitor. What the fuck.

[Darth Wong]

People used the phrase "race traitor" unironically to describe Jake Sully almost everywhere in the geek-controlled portions of the internet. It was pretty dismaying for me to discover how many places, which I had thought were fun, were actually infested with stormfronters.

Seriously, Race Traitor. What the fuck.

Racism did not die after the Civil Rights Act. It just learned how to disguise itself. There are still a shitload of people out there who don't call themselves racists and may even believe they're not racists, but whose political opinions on race boil down to "let's find a politically correct way to express the same basic sentiment on race that my grandfather did".

[Shroom Man 777]

Anyway, now that it's made heaps of money I guess nobody can criticise the movie?

You can, but it will be implied (directly or indirectly) that you're doing it just to look cool or because you're a closet racist.

There's a big difference between criticizing the movie for its flaws as a film, and making bullshit arguments to support genocide/ethnic cleansing/other atrocities and/or going on about stupid weapons systems nobody gives a fuck about? Who knew!

[Anguirus]

Tends to come up whenever someone asks why the humans didn't just drop nukes/space rocks on the Na'vi and be done with the whole thing.

Oh please, that's not a legitimate critique of the film. That's Internet armchair bloodlust and deserves all the mocking it can get.

[Rye]

Oh great, another box-office intake to stroke Cameron's ego...

Is Cameron's ego doing things to you in real life or something? Why do you care if his ego's stroked? He's earned it, it makes no difference to your life in any way.