Forum - View topicNEWS: Imagi's Astro Boy Brings in US$1.8 Million on Friday
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Splitter
 Posts: 1276 Location: Knockin' on Heaven's Door |
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OUCH.
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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Huge flop, lol.
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Tenchi
 Posts: 4541 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Astro Boy seems like one of those middling-quality animated movies that would probably have done a bit better if released in February or March, a good time of year for "sleeper" kids movies.
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I SHALL WIN THE INTERNETZ
Posts: 29 |
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a CG movie flopping like this only make Pixar's penis harder.
good luck, gatchaman... |
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vega427
 Posts: 80 Location: lansing, MI |
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I doubt I'll ever see it, I can't get interested in Astro boy. Has anyone bothered to see it? Good, Okay, or Got ripped off?
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hikaru004
 Posts: 2306 |
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That's not a flop. It's a 40 year old franchise after all. 1.8 mil was more than Ponyo's OP and if it reaches 7 mil this weekend it would have done great imo. That would be close to 1/2 of Ponyo's total earnings in 1 weekend.
Last edited by hikaru004 on Sat Oct 24, 2009 3:54 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Tenchi
Posts: 4541 Location: Ottawa... now I'm an ex-Anglo Montrealer. |
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Comparing it to Ponyo is apples and oranges, since Ponyo was only a "limited wide" release aimed more at the cinephile crowd than at a general audience, with limited Prints & Advertising costs.
3000 screens is "saturation level" wide release where anything below a $10 million opening weekend is considered a bomb. |
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hikaru004
Posts: 2306 |
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It's a 40 year old franchise. I wouldn't consider those numbers as bombing. Besides, we're in the middle of a recession. I think that figure should be downgraded.
Ponyo wasn't for cinemaphiles as it contained the voices of the pop Disney channel sibs. It was for mainstream. |
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Craeyst Raygal
 Posts: 1383 Location: In the garage, beneath a 1970 MGB GT. |
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"It's a 40 year old franchise" is a defense that only works if age is a consistent problem for animated franchises AND if the age of the source material is a factor preventing the work from appealing to its core audience.
IMAGI, near as I can tell, was aiming this film at the children/grandchildren of adults who remember the black and white show from days gone by, and want their children to experience the same fun that they had experienced in the past. I've come to this conclusion because IMAGI has been extraordinarily conservative in their marketing. Near as I can tell, IMAGI wasn't scouring around for a new audience, nor were they attempting to tie the film together with a marketing/merchandising blitz. Sony Pictures has proved in past weeks that you can at least have a profitable new CGI film (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs) even if you're not going to nail down Pixar's level of critical praise. Astro Boy could have been a solid child's film in terms of financial performance. Quite frankly, there aren't enough good films for children being produced and released in the latter half of the year. Unfortunately, IMAGI - possibly through no fault of their own because of their finances - failed to create enough positive buzz and thus enough audience awareness for their film. |
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Megiddo
Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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It's a HUGE flop considering this film was made for the American audience. Ponyo was made for the Japanese audience and was a HUGE hit over there. I'll be curious to see how Astro Boy does on the international scale, but $600 average per screen on opening day is just awful. |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
 Posts: 1685 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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Regardless what we think here, Hollywood sees this as a huge flop. A $65M family film on 3000+ screens is more or less expected to do a total cume of 25-30M, and if it opens this weakly that will simply not happen. I'm hearing some blame being thrown at distributor Summit Entertainment (who is responsible for the marketing, not IMAGI); Summit is a recent entry into the theatrical game, and with a few noteworthy exceptions, has only really succeeded in marketing the Twilight franchise.
Regardless who's to blame, this is really really really bad news for Imagi, who already struggled to finish this movie before running out of cash. I would consider Gatchaman in doubt at this point. Hopefully the film will do better overseas. |
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cetriya
 Posts: 156 Location: NJ |
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65M and they were struggling to finish? man I have no idea how much movies cost to make I'm assuming most went to higher priced employees cause like everyone said, marketing wasnt too good.
I only knew about the movie 2 days ago |
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jsevakis
Former ANN Editor in Chief
Posts: 1685 Location: Los Angeles, CA |
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$65M is all production cost, so that'd likely be the CG work (which is quite expensive if it's not going to look like an old episode of Reboot), the voice talent, the producers, the film-output, the audio mix, etc. Marketing, known as "P&A" (prints and advertising) is separate and usually not reported. |
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Primus
 Posts: 2817 Location: Toronto |
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I knew this movie wasn't going to do so hot. But that's atrocious given the theatre count. Unless it does remarkabley well internationally, or has legs of steel it's gonna join the ranks of other unprofitable anime adaptations. As it stands, only DragonBall Evolution actually has made a profit theatrically from the recent Hollywood anime adaptations (produced on $30 million, grossed $56 million), although it didn't perform well in the domestic market (but up to it's studio's expectations).
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animeboy12
Posts: 160 |
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If there is one industry that has always been recession proof, it's the movie industry (not even the depression could kill it). But these numbers are pretty depressing |
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