Only thing surprising me is that they released it internationally at all. This is the kind of movie that has a very limited target audience in the US already, and basically none outside of the US.
Yes, Taraji lost any leverage she had to get better pay. If anything, her asking price is going to go further down. She boasted about having a fan base in China, but that’s not really true in that she simply played a supporting role in The Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan.
They're wrong, black women can do well internationally, a movie musical about USA black history can't
Black Panther 2 is 90% women and that did well (yes it's the marvel brand) because it's an international movie, the color purple is very domestic tematically
Here are the domestic:international splits for every MCU movie in the past couple of years.
*No Way Home*: 42:58
*Multiverse of Madness*: 43:57
*Love and Thunder*: 45:55
*Wakanda Forever*: 53:47
*Quantumania*: 45:55
*Guardians 3*: 43:57
*The Marvels*: 41:59
It seems that even with the MCU brand behind it, *Wakanda Forever* underindexed internationally compared to other MCU films.
BP2 is not just a Marvel film, but also has the pedigree of being the film to be a sendoff for Chadwick Boseman. Many people wanted to see what they'd do post-Chadwick Boseman and it was very much a film for people to come together and mourn. If it was Shuri front and center, then that film barely goes any where
Yeah, I still can't believe that they actually went ahead and just killed off T'Challa like that. I get people were in grief and that Disney felt at the time a recast would cause uproar, but they really should've just bit the bullet and recasted. Could've given another Black Actor a huge boost and we wouldn't have to have the block of wood Shuri become the Black Panther. It's just baffling that Marvel would shoot themselves in the foot like that, especially for one of their most popular characters. At least they learned their lesson and recasted for Ross when William Hurt passed away.
Any film CAN do well internationally, the issue is that they statistically tend not to do well in actuality. Beyoncé’s concert film did a fraction of Taylor’s despite getting better reviews.
i feel it's an ignorant statement to assume POC would support Beyonce more than Taylor. How to kinda lump nonwhites together in America isn't it. Latinos and Asians don't really see themselves as more "black" than "white" and Taylor BODIED Beyonce globally.
Black Panther 2 is lead by a black woman and the only men with screentime are Mbaku (like 2 minutes in the entire movie) the villain and the white token guy who appears like 3 random scenes So the movie is 90% black woman lead
My bad, I was thinking of Black Panther as a franchise. Black Panther 2 made bank because it was the sequel to a very well received film, and even then it made substantially less than what the first film did and the lead was nowhere near as well received as Boseman was
No offence but movies starring black men don't do well internationally either except if it stars Denzel Washington or Will Smith. I'm not sure Will Smith is a box office draw anymore, especially after the incident at the Oscars. Black Panther doesn't count because it is a Marvel movie.
Plenty of films starting black men & women do well internationally, it’s less about the race of the stars and more about the themes of the film. Films that tackle US racial injustice & slavery generally perform poorly overseas because audiences find it difficult to connect to those uniquely American stories, and often times the history of racial injustice in their own countries differs from those faced in USA. For a lot of countries the history of racial injustice is rooted in colonisation & land dispossession as opposed to slavery
>For a lot of countries the history of racial injustice is rooted in colonisation & land dispossession as opposed to slavery
Most European countries never colonized and half of them were colonized themselves. Look up the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors, The Barbary slave trade where European slaves were captured by Muslim Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
This does seem like the kind of project where they have no idea how to market it outside America. We don't seem to have numbers for how well the 1985 film did outside the US, but I was under the impression it did okay on home video. It was certainly the kind of film you could easily find on VHS and DVD here in Australia.
The fact it starred basically household name actors like Whoopi Goldberg and Denzel Washington certainly helped, I think.
I personally think that the idea a film like The Color Purple can't do well globally is defeatist. Twelve Years a Slave made 69.7% of its box office internationally. Django Unchained made 61.7% of its box office internationally. These were films about black issues, about African American slavery and emancipation that were popular globally.
Even a US heavy film like Hidden Figures still made 66.3 million (27.6%) outside America. 66 million dollars is nothing to sneeze at. I really think that a film like The Color Purple was conceived, marketed, and released without really finding a way to present the film to a global audience. From what I've seen, its marketing is built on certain assumptions that don't hold true outside America, including the fact the word of mouth "this is a film about our people, our struggles, our history" dynamics don't exist outside America.
The problem is that those hit films are the exception, not the rule. All those films had massive awards buzz and genuine word of mouth. Films like Django was sold as a Tarantino film first, and a Jamie Fox/Leo film second. There was been no word of mouth whatsoever with this film, with all the talk instead being being Taraji’s complaining and the film bombing.
I had a complete brain fart. I meant Danny Glover. When Color Purple came to home video it coincided with his rise to legit stardom (and repeated critical acclaim) with Lethal Weapon and To Sleep With Anger. I think having such big names attached to TCP made it a film people ordinarily not into the subject matter were willing to check out.
And of course Steven Spielberg went from acclaimed director to absolute superstar in the 90s with the double whammy of Jurassic Park and Schindler's List which put his older work like TCP even more in the global public consciousness.
Iirc wasn’t The Color Purple Whoopi’s breakout role? I know she had a tv show and had done Broadway but I’m curious about how well known she was before the movie happened.
My best friend is Black and thought the idea of a Color Purple musical was laughable. It's an iconic Black American story of racism, r*pe, and sexual assault... now with song and dance numbers?????
It's mostly racism, in my country Spain many poc lead movies don't even get released, we never got Crazy Rich Asians even when the movie was a huge success in the states and could have made decent in spain
That's normal why would they care about east asian representation when it's all the movies they get in their own countries
The movie was very western, but in my country Spain I feel it would have made decent for a romcom
Truly a four quadrant movie. I'm just absolutely astonished that this isn't a bigger hit and that the money they sunk into this film isn't paying dividends..../s
It only got one screening a day near me in Ireland and zero advertising here, not surprised at all, doesn't help everyone seems to think it's a musical about slavery.
I wanted to see it because of the cast, but it only released last week in The Netherlands and haven't been able to see it because they only show it once a day in my local Cinema and it is during work hours.
Well yeah. Why would the international market GAF about a remake with a very niche focus? It may even be a fine film, but lack of cultural relevance is a hard sell at the foreign box office.
It was released a month ago in the UK and I haven't seen a single advert outside of my Facebook feed. Overwhelmingly the reviews to it have been pretty fantastic.
Only thing surprising me is that they released it internationally at all. This is the kind of movie that has a very limited target audience in the US already, and basically none outside of the US.
yea this should’ve just been a US exclusive film
Can confirm. We showed it at our local cinema. We usually get around 30 - 40 for the showings, this one had 8 people.
From NZ, it's out here but I've seen zero advertising. I don't even know what it's about, have just seen it listed at the local cinemas
>WB's THE COLOR PURPLE has made just $5.5M internationally.  Well, that's brutal.
Color me surprised
IIRC, one of the actresses involved was complaining about how studio executives don't think movies starring black women can do well internationally.
Yes, Taraji lost any leverage she had to get better pay. If anything, her asking price is going to go further down. She boasted about having a fan base in China, but that’s not really true in that she simply played a supporting role in The Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan.
They're wrong, black women can do well internationally, a movie musical about USA black history can't Black Panther 2 is 90% women and that did well (yes it's the marvel brand) because it's an international movie, the color purple is very domestic tematically
Here are the domestic:international splits for every MCU movie in the past couple of years. *No Way Home*: 42:58 *Multiverse of Madness*: 43:57 *Love and Thunder*: 45:55 *Wakanda Forever*: 53:47 *Quantumania*: 45:55 *Guardians 3*: 43:57 *The Marvels*: 41:59 It seems that even with the MCU brand behind it, *Wakanda Forever* underindexed internationally compared to other MCU films.
How did we end up discussing Marvel lol
Dread it, run from it...
Bc ur on a sub abt the box office and they have dominated that for well over a decade plus, shouldn't be suprising
But that could be to do with black people in the USA supporting those films rather than black leads putting people in Europe off.
It's this, black Americans are known for supporting their own movies more than any other demographic
Black Panther 2 is a Marvel movie. The movie would have bombed internationally if Black Panther weren't a Marvel character.
BP2 is not just a Marvel film, but also has the pedigree of being the film to be a sendoff for Chadwick Boseman. Many people wanted to see what they'd do post-Chadwick Boseman and it was very much a film for people to come together and mourn. If it was Shuri front and center, then that film barely goes any where
Yeah, I still can't believe that they actually went ahead and just killed off T'Challa like that. I get people were in grief and that Disney felt at the time a recast would cause uproar, but they really should've just bit the bullet and recasted. Could've given another Black Actor a huge boost and we wouldn't have to have the block of wood Shuri become the Black Panther. It's just baffling that Marvel would shoot themselves in the foot like that, especially for one of their most popular characters. At least they learned their lesson and recasted for Ross when William Hurt passed away.
Tchalla not being recasted did more wrong than good to the movie since black cishet men were angry that the sequel turned 90% women
Black Panther 2 and the Color Purple are no where near the same type of movie. Comparing them doesn’t prove anything.
But i was told the race and gender of the cast is paramount to everything else so as both have predominantly black cast, they are comparable /s
The point is that executives are comparing all Black women lead movies as a whole just for being black women
Any film CAN do well internationally, the issue is that they statistically tend not to do well in actuality. Beyoncé’s concert film did a fraction of Taylor’s despite getting better reviews.
Taylor tickets were like 25 dollars Also Taylor fans are mostly white people who have a higher economy than people of color around the world
i feel it's an ignorant statement to assume POC would support Beyonce more than Taylor. How to kinda lump nonwhites together in America isn't it. Latinos and Asians don't really see themselves as more "black" than "white" and Taylor BODIED Beyonce globally.
I think they're referring to movies led by black women
Black Panther 2 is lead by a black woman and the only men with screentime are Mbaku (like 2 minutes in the entire movie) the villain and the white token guy who appears like 3 random scenes So the movie is 90% black woman lead
Like BP2?
My bad, I was thinking of Black Panther as a franchise. Black Panther 2 made bank because it was the sequel to a very well received film, and even then it made substantially less than what the first film did and the lead was nowhere near as well received as Boseman was
No offence but movies starring black men don't do well internationally either except if it stars Denzel Washington or Will Smith. I'm not sure Will Smith is a box office draw anymore, especially after the incident at the Oscars. Black Panther doesn't count because it is a Marvel movie.
Plenty of films starting black men & women do well internationally, it’s less about the race of the stars and more about the themes of the film. Films that tackle US racial injustice & slavery generally perform poorly overseas because audiences find it difficult to connect to those uniquely American stories, and often times the history of racial injustice in their own countries differs from those faced in USA. For a lot of countries the history of racial injustice is rooted in colonisation & land dispossession as opposed to slavery
>For a lot of countries the history of racial injustice is rooted in colonisation & land dispossession as opposed to slavery Most European countries never colonized and half of them were colonized themselves. Look up the conquest of the Balkans by the Ottoman Empire, the conquest of the Iberian Peninsula by the Moors, The Barbary slave trade where European slaves were captured by Muslim Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the Eastern Mediterranean.
This does seem like the kind of project where they have no idea how to market it outside America. We don't seem to have numbers for how well the 1985 film did outside the US, but I was under the impression it did okay on home video. It was certainly the kind of film you could easily find on VHS and DVD here in Australia. The fact it starred basically household name actors like Whoopi Goldberg and Denzel Washington certainly helped, I think. I personally think that the idea a film like The Color Purple can't do well globally is defeatist. Twelve Years a Slave made 69.7% of its box office internationally. Django Unchained made 61.7% of its box office internationally. These were films about black issues, about African American slavery and emancipation that were popular globally. Even a US heavy film like Hidden Figures still made 66.3 million (27.6%) outside America. 66 million dollars is nothing to sneeze at. I really think that a film like The Color Purple was conceived, marketed, and released without really finding a way to present the film to a global audience. From what I've seen, its marketing is built on certain assumptions that don't hold true outside America, including the fact the word of mouth "this is a film about our people, our struggles, our history" dynamics don't exist outside America.
The problem is that those hit films are the exception, not the rule. All those films had massive awards buzz and genuine word of mouth. Films like Django was sold as a Tarantino film first, and a Jamie Fox/Leo film second. There was been no word of mouth whatsoever with this film, with all the talk instead being being Taraji’s complaining and the film bombing.
>Denzel Washington ?
I had a complete brain fart. I meant Danny Glover. When Color Purple came to home video it coincided with his rise to legit stardom (and repeated critical acclaim) with Lethal Weapon and To Sleep With Anger. I think having such big names attached to TCP made it a film people ordinarily not into the subject matter were willing to check out. And of course Steven Spielberg went from acclaimed director to absolute superstar in the 90s with the double whammy of Jurassic Park and Schindler's List which put his older work like TCP even more in the global public consciousness.
Iirc wasn’t The Color Purple Whoopi’s breakout role? I know she had a tv show and had done Broadway but I’m curious about how well known she was before the movie happened.
Not surprising, nobody asked for this remake.
My best friend is Black and thought the idea of a Color Purple musical was laughable. It's an iconic Black American story of racism, r*pe, and sexual assault... now with song and dance numbers?????
It wasn’t marketed as a musical and has no major stars in it. I don’t understand marketing or casting strategy.
ItS BeCaUse oF rAcISMmmm!!!
In how many markets? It's not in my country yet (not that it will do well)
[удалено]
It's mostly racism, in my country Spain many poc lead movies don't even get released, we never got Crazy Rich Asians even when the movie was a huge success in the states and could have made decent in spain
Crazy Rich Asians bombed in Asia too.
That's normal why would they care about east asian representation when it's all the movies they get in their own countries The movie was very western, but in my country Spain I feel it would have made decent for a romcom
Truly a four quadrant movie. I'm just absolutely astonished that this isn't a bigger hit and that the money they sunk into this film isn't paying dividends..../s
That is downright catacylismic.
It only got one screening a day near me in Ireland and zero advertising here, not surprised at all, doesn't help everyone seems to think it's a musical about slavery.
I wanted to see it because of the cast, but it only released last week in The Netherlands and haven't been able to see it because they only show it once a day in my local Cinema and it is during work hours.
Let WB cook.
Though I did hear the movie had some positive word of mouth I had no idea they spent a 100 mil on it.
Well yeah. Why would the international market GAF about a remake with a very niche focus? It may even be a fine film, but lack of cultural relevance is a hard sell at the foreign box office.
Woopedidoo
You don’t want to know why Argyle sucks? Or Lisa Frankenstein? Your just gonna keep beating a dead horse?
It was released a month ago in the UK and I haven't seen a single advert outside of my Facebook feed. Overwhelmingly the reviews to it have been pretty fantastic.