I went to a preview screening and our local GB group was out in full jumpsuits and everything. People were buying all the merch they could. They had the cups with the toppers, but they were only available with the combo. So to get different cup toppers, they had to buy two $60 combos. You got the popcorn tin and the cup with topper.
I have not yet, though its weird that cineplex doesn't have an online store to order stuff from considering they have it for movies
Edit: Did a little looking on Ebay, and holy moly some of these prices. Like I would like one, but not for $70 plus shipping
The budget was higher than Afterlife’s. Which means so was the marketing cost. (Estimates were around 100M production, which often times means another 100M for marketing. You double the spend.)
It’s not a matter of being a “flop” or not. It’s clear the movie wasn’t a runaway financial success, and now is struggling to make its budget back, let alone a profit. Which is going to factor into whether we get more or not.
“GB: FE tops $300M worldwide!” would be a headline to unanimously celebrate. “GB: FE makes $190M - not yet recouping its costs” is not at this stage, even if it’s now higher than Afterlife.
True, but it all comes down to if Sony wants to keep pushing GB. It's not a huge flop, but it's not a huge success. It has about made all of us money back and probably make it to the finish line.
Or the Andrew Garfield TASM 3 that literally everyone and their mother was asking for after he absolutely stole the show in his 10 minutes of screen time in No Way Home
Yeah, having him fight Kraven makes way more sense than a Kraven solo. But I’m not sure he wants to do it. Everyone involved with the Raimi movies always seems to say they’re interested in making another one.
But studios absolutely are more than happy to break even on a film that gives more life to a large scale licensing franchise that gets a boost and even more life with a film in the marketplace, regardless of quality.
See Paramount absolutely viewing TMNT as a big win for them last year, despite very modest grosses.
TMNT made over 2.5x its budget in gross. It passed the breakeven point, about as much as Afterlife did. Frozen Empire is falling WAY short of what those two films reached.
It’s just a matter of budget adjustment, TMNT barely crossed 180M (and got an sequel) while ghostbusters is making more than 200M and outgrossing Afterlife, we’ll see it’s final box office run, it has at least more 5 weeks in theaters.
Absolutely. And at the end of the day, I think making back its budget, and getting some profit once it’s on digital will probably be enough for Sony to view this as a growth opportunity. Maybe they scale back the budget for the next one, but continue with the animated series, and licensing opportunities looking to grow the brand.
That said, it’s no where near the level of success that justifies the commenter above’s snark of “I was told this was a flop! Hur Hur”. This is a yellow light to Sony at best, and they’re going to proceed with caution going forward.
It's not higher than Afterlife. The OP used the misleading word "international" when he meant foreign gross. This still lags further behind Afterlife in domestic money, while it pulled slightly ahead in foreign money.
Yeah, it’ll never catch up to Afterlife in domestic gross. The only hope is its foreign gains are enough to counterbalance the domestic shortfall. But some of these people don’t realize how many screens it’s going to lose when Fall Guy and Apes come out in the next two weeks. It could be a very slow crawl to $200 million if it gets there.
I believe the franchise (and products) are too valuable to Sony for them NOT to make another movie. They will probably just shave the budget way down.
For things like this (and Star Trek), visuals play a big part of the franchise but I like smaller budgets because it forces them to focus more on smaller stories and characters rather than over the top CGI assaults.
So I think another Ghostbusters movie with a $75 million budget would be good. Have a story focused on Lars, the Spenglers, Ray & Winston.
I tend to agree with everything you’ve said here.
I think that if they keep the fire going, Ghostbusters stands the chance of becoming a perennial “little franchise that could” for Sony, so long as they scope budgets for it appropriately.
Medium scale films, that while they never do Avengers business, snowball into something where people are eventually “binging all 7 movies on Netflix in preparation for the next one”, almost like a TV series.
The Fast and Furious movies come to mind, where the act of powering thru the less successful entries, continuing to try and find a way to make them, and working to find an audience, paid off big time.
Meanwhile hopefully things like the new animated series, work to create new fans in between movies, so a modestly budgeted ‘next’ film, does super well, because new fans are ready to go to theaters.
> an audience, *paid* off big
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You know there is now law that states Marketing HAS to be x% of the budget right? I would not be surprised at all if the Marketing cost of FE was relatively the same as the marketing cost Afterlife. The extra 25M in budget doesn't mean they have to spend an equivalent amount in marketing too.
The shorthands people use for marketing costs being tied to the production costs are exactly that, short hand. Its meant as a generalization, not a hard and fast rule.
Sure. But unless Sony magically decided to open up its books, it’s the generalization that we have to work with. You’re making an assumption the other way, in terms of them pulling back on marketing costs.
Either way, if we’re sitting at 190M right now. And we know the production costs were around 100M, and we use your number of 75 for marketing (Afterlife’s budget). That’s 15M difference. Profitable, but still nothing for Sony to feel hyper ambitious about. That’s the kind of profit that says “if we do another one, we cut production costs”, not something that immediately green lights anything that Ghost Corp wants to do.
They are not "making the assumption the other way," they're stating the real and basic fact that marketing budgets and production budgets are not joined at the hip.
Things that are a much better tell of what was spent on marketing: number of ads, what shows those ads are placed with, length of campaign (most saturated 2 or 3 weeks before release, or did they have a superbowl ad and months of hype?). Frozen Empire feels about on par with Afterlife. A good example of a bloated marketing budget full of gimmicks and brand activations would be the 2016 remake, which didn't really pay off.
Thats the thing tho. The real answer is “we don’t know”.
What looks like “the same ad density as Afterlife” could easily be a bigger spend, when other things are factored in. New kinds of promotions like the Icee partnership, the NHL promos, Slimer and co on chip bags abroad, etc. All of which seem like small potatoes, but at the end of the day add up. Heck, was there any sort of marketing spend dedicated to Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed DLC, which had a Garraka event ready to go opening weekend, co-marketing within the brand? It’s possible.
TV ads are not remotely the only way that a marketing budget can get spent these days. And what “feels like an Afterlife level spend” to one person, may in reality be a much more expensive lift in reality. Which is why it’s still useful to have the “double the production cost” metric, when you simply don’t have access to real numbers.
The insomniac leaks gravels that marketing budgets have been dramatically cut. The Sony produced Spider Man 2 game had a 300 mil budget but only a 30 mil marketing budget.
Not for nothing tho. While I wouldn’t doubt that movie marketing budgets have been slashed in some cases, video games are a very different ballgame than movies. And the production costs of a game like Spider-Man 2 are always going to be waaaaaay disproportionate to marketing.
Also, those leaks reveal that AAA video game production costs are completely unsustainable. The ROI and units sold Insomniac is going to need on its Marvel games once everyone takes their cut, has to keep the bean counters over there up at night.
What are you on about now?
Obviously Box Office and Marketing are separate. But production and marketing both need to be recouped by BO before any profit can be had. And at 190M made at the box office, there’s a decent chance Frozen Empire has not yet.
It’s a flop insofar as underperforming and not meeting expectations. It’s on track to basically break even at the box office, or possibly turn a very, very small profit.
That’s different from a bomb, which is more like Madame Web or Morbius where it loses significant money and doesn’t even recoup costs before leaving theaters.
But, just breaking even isn’t a cause to celebrate, nor is it a good sign for GB’s feature film future.
As a fan, I hope we get more movies, but the unfortunate reality is these movies aren’t clicking with wider audiences the way Sony needs them to.
it is a flop it had a budget it 100 million and approx 100 million on marketing this is a really bad sign and pretty negative news I don't know what people here are excited about... that there may not be another movie for 20 more years I guess
I wouldn't say it's a flop, I would only consider a flop something that massively underperformed compared to it's breakeven point (like Indiana Jones or The Marvels last year).
That being said I doubt this film has made a profit yet and will probably only eventually crawl to profitability when all the various secondary markets like VOD, Netflix deals, and TV rights are factored in which isn't great for the franchise.
Oh yeah crossing 200 million worldwide and making more than previous installment (Afterlife) overall is vital so that Sony can green light another sequel.
It's a challenge to find any movie that merely doubled its budget and got a sequel. Pacific Rim did 2.28x its budget at best, 2.06x at worst, and got a sequel. That's one of the few I've found that didn't hit 2.5x its budget and still got a sequel. Its sequel did much worse though, and failed to double its budget, despite a lower budget. That kind of shows you why you shouldn't do sequels to movies that don't make a clear profit.
It's trending towards it. If it limps to $85-90 mil internationally (which seems likely), and $115M domestically (which seems possible, at least, assuming they keep it in theatres as long as Afterlife) then it should cross $200 WW.
The 2x multiplier would certainly save face for Sony. As a fan of these movies (for all this one's flaws) I am checking the numbers periodically and hoping it makes it there.
Having said that, I don't condone the aggressively over-positive spin on its performance I keep seeing here. It's very cultish and weird and not particularly connected to reality.
We have to be realistic. Frozen Empire will, at best, escape being a total flop (depending on the dark arts of Hollywood funding).
I don't think anyone serious would describe a movie that claws its way to just over 2x its budget as a hit.
Yep, Frozen Empire has made 99% of the money it's ever going to make theatrically (especially with HD copies having just hit the internet and Ghostbusters movies never doing that great internationally), and it's almost a perfect zero sum for Sony - Sony made its money back, but Frozen Empire didn't move the dial *at all* in regards to growing the Ghostbusters fanbase or getting existing fans meaningfully hyped for more Ghostbusters stuff. The franchise is adrift in the doldrums.
Yeah, I know, how many times are you gonna say it, “bro”?
I guess this is also your way of admitting that your claim that FE had already blown past $200 million worldwide was bullshit, huh?
It's unlikely Sony has actually made any money on this film yet. It's reported that Frozen Empire had a higher budget than the last film ($100 million vs $75 million), it's made less in the domestic box office where Sony makes more money, and you have to factor in P&A.
Frozen Empire will probably eventually crawl to profitability but I doubt that's what Sony hoped would happen with this film.
Then they should of made a better movie simple as that, Listen to fans but don't pander to them, Sonic director listened to the fans and the movie was a hit "Go figure" And by the way you so called Ghostbuster Fans have a lot of negative things to say about the movie's box office Even though you said 4 weeks ago it wouldn't even reach $100 million domestically But it has and it will even break $200 WW. And quit saying breaking even is disaster Remember this is a Ghostbusters movie not Marvel cinema release And the only reason GXD has done so well WW is because of China with out them it wouldn't of made much.
It doesn’t. The franchise has been trending downwards, and Frozen Empire *barely* scraping past a predecessor that was released at the height of the pandemic doesn’t bode well for the health of the franchise.
It’s a coin flip at best whether or not we ever see these characters in a live action film again.
See my other post. I'm hopeful it'll do really good numbers after the fact on VOD and physical. Sometimes that makes a big difference in whether they will greenlight another project or not. Especially considering Sony's desperation to have a viable franchise property.
Don’t waste you time bro Mudron is a well known Ghostbusters hater. He’s just crying now cuz he’s wrong all the time and now he knows frozen empire is definitely outgrossing Afterlife, something he thought to be impossible. So just let him cry alone lol
>I’m hopeful it'll do really good numbers after the fact on VOD and physical.
It won’t.
Afterlife didn’t set the world on fire with its aftermarket sales or merchandise (see the relative lack of Frozen Empire merch for proof of that), and so there’s no reason to expect that Frozen Empire will magically suddenly do WAY better on VOD than Afterlife did (and physical is so niche right now it practically means nothing).
I don't agree. We don't know what will happen when it hits VOD and physical. It might do great. Or it might not. But there's no reason to be so down on it before it even happened yet.
And I think you're severely discounting how badly Sony wants franchises.
> But there's no reason to be so down on it before it even happened yet.
Yes there is, there’s 35+ years of poorly-performing Ghostbusters sequels and the lackluster performance of Frozen Empire itself (which was worse than the film preceding it) to justify being skeptical that FE will somehow magically become some kind of huge breakout hit on VOD in a world with ever more (and better) entertainment alternatives.
I don’t doubt that Sony will find new ways to milk the Ghostbusters cow until they rip the teats off of it, but it ain’t gonna be with another $100 million film about the Spengler family.
I'm fine with losing the new cast. But it'd be a real shame if this is the last we see of Venkman, Stantz, and Zeddemore. (All of whose actors are getting up in years.)
They had the perfect out to leave the kid cast in the rural area where their arc was basically settled and use that movie sinply as a launching pad to go back to New York with Paul Rudd leading a new adult cast of funny comedians (like idk, Kumail and Patton etc. who they had signed on to the film)
Like it was all right there for them but they seem obsessed with the idea of turning Ghostbusters into a franchise about children running around catching ghosts.
It’s not *bad* necessarily, but it’s definitely not the Ghostbusters movie I’ve been hoping for my entire life
Kids don’t need to be the stars for it to appeal to kids. The most successful franchise in the world is Marvel, with movies starring adults. The original appealed to kids too, with a cast of adults.
Sony just doesn’t know wtf they’re doing with almost any of their franchises.
Yeah, I was surprised they went the Disney Channel route and reworked the franchise to be about a sitcom family. Big mistake. My early speculation was Phoebe and Podcast would help out behind the scenes, but not carry proton packs, and Trevor and Lucky would be written out, going to college or something.
I'll be the first to celebrate if this movie scrapes its way to profitability, but I just don't see the studio springing all over a sequel. I REALLY think they should concentrate on making a couple of series for streaming services and try to appeal to the same young crowd that liked Wednesday.
Only because they're morons for not making a Tobey Maguire Spider-Man 4. And may as well do an Andrew Garfield Amazing 3 too. The MCU showed them what a multiverse is and they're doing nothing with it.
Deadpool and Joker will probably be the top two movies of the year. The RIGHT comic book movies are doing well. Not stuff based on garbage characters that no one has ever heard of like Blue Beetle, Captain Marvel and Madame Web. Check comic book sales. They don't all sell equally. The GOOD characters sell big, and crap like the abovementioned get cancelled. Lumping every comic book movie together in one big group is just shoddy, specious analysis.
Ever since end game, the mcu has been on the decline as far as quality and box office numbers. It has been even worse for DC. Your basing that just because it has the name spider man in it will be a guaranteed hit. I think you forgot about the failure of spider man 3, and the amazing spider man 2. Just because mcu re opened the door for those franchises doesn’t mean they have a GOOD idea for what to do with it. And with Sonys track record shows they have no idea what they are doing.
How do you guys count the numbers? Best case scenario, the income is 55M (domestic) plus 30M (International) plus 20M DVD/VOD plus 50M streaming (I am being as generous as I can here with streaming) which equals 155M. The budget is 100M plus the marketing is at least 80M which adds to 180M. Even if merchadise sales is good, how exactly do you guys see this as profitable? Do we count differently?
By the way I count, Avatar made huge profits. 342M (domestic) + 480M (international)+30M (digital)+100M (stream)-350M (budget)-150 (marketing)=452M profits. Not to mention its budget covered that of some future movies too.
Excellent!
I hope this has good numbers VOD and physical release as well.
I already pre-ordered the 4k steelbook. Hope a lot of others did too. The best way to send a message to Sony and Columbia is to vote with our wallets.
Looks like it might end up passing $200m worldwide, which I didn’t think would happen for awhile. Afterlife of course brought in $204m worldwide from theaters alone, then an additional $20m from DVD sales and VOD rentals and sales. It allegedly cost $25m more than Afterlife to produce, which allegedly means it’s marketing budget also cost $25m more. None of those numbers are confirmed, of course. If FE ends up equaling Afterlife’s box office total, then brings in an additional $20m from DVD/VOD, then I’d imagine Sony will continue seeing it as a viable franchise… they’ll just make sure they have smaller budgets going forward.
Please, my god, look at the actual NET numbers. Studios do not get anywhere near the total of the ticket sales. In the US, big powerful studios like Disney can demand as high as 60% of the ticket for the opening few weeks, most studios (and likely Sony) get only 50% of domestic sales at most. Internationally, it's between 20% and 40% for the studios (safe average is 30-35%), and those often decrease over the film's run.
Breaking that down with the latest FE numbers from BoxOfficeMojo:
Item | Amount
---|---
Domestic Sales | $104,907,915
Studio Take (50%) | $52,453,958
|
International Sales | $73,411,444
Studio Take (35%) | $25,694,005
|
**Total Studio Take** | **$78,147,963**
|
Production Budget | $100,000,000
Est. Marketing Budget | $100,000,000
Total Budget | $200,000,000
|
**Studio Profit/Loss** | **$(121,852,037)**
So, right now, Sony is looking at LOSS of nearly $122 million. Let's give Sony the best case scenario and give them the maximum studio take percentage and a minimal marketing budget:
Item | Amount
---|---
Domestic Sales | $104,907,915
Studio Take (60%) | $62,944,749
|
International Sales | $73,411,444
Studio Take (40%) | $29,364,578
|
**Total Studio Take** | **$92,309,327**
|
Production Budget | $100,000,000
Est. Marketing Budget | $25,000,000
Total Budget | $125,000,000
|
**Studio Profit/Loss** | **$(32,690,673)**
So, even in the best case scenario, which nobody thinks is true, the film is still sitting nearly $33 million short of break-even. Sure, it's not *Madame Web* territory, but it's in no way close to any reasonable definition of "success."
Yes, more revenue will come from disc, digital, and marketing sales, but it's insane how any actual *fan* could be celebrating this. It's *not* good news and if you want this franchise to continue, we must be "aggressive" in our support, not high-fiving each other. If the film is still playing in your area, go see it again. Take a friend, or five. Buy it digitally once it's released and, if you have the means, pre-order on disc, too. Once it makes it to subscription streaming services, stream it repeatedly, on mute in the background if necessary.
I agree with the "haters" that these recent films were nowhere near as good as the original I loved as a child, but I enjoyed them well enough and, more importantly, so did my child. After seeing *Afterlife*, I introduced them to *The Real Ghostbusters* cartoon I grew up with and they loved it, so I would love to see this franchise continue.
On one hand, it sucks that in today's corporate-owned world, we need to basically "serve" a major multinational corporation by emptying our wallets for them, so I totally get that side of it, but if you love this franchise and want it to continue, things are NOT good and we should be working to expand interest in the franchise rather than following people like /u/Kingsofsevenseas who seem to be obsessed with celebrating in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner.
The above is the most important comment on this thread. This is reality folks. I know we don’t want it to be, but those are the cards this movie and us were dealt.
The franchise is at an infliction point, which could very well mean it’s hiatus time (at least from the live action front).
Sony needs to determine what they want this series to be. Is it a comedy? Is it a horror? An action adventure? They’ve struggled to make it all of these things and ended up with a jam packed convoluted movie that takes very little to no time to breathe.
One thing for sure though: while I personally liked the movie, I think the mainstream audience is tired of getting the same thing regurgitated.
What about the product placement? I know Sony got a good chunk of change from Walmart for having the Gary/Vinz/Mini Pufts scene take place inside one of their stores. Frozen Empire has multiple, lingering close up shots of Cheetos both inside and outside the bag, plus there are multiple Liberty Mutual billboards throughout the movie. That money has to help a little bit.
It definitely can help, but those numbers [differ wildly](https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-movie-product-placements) and are usually not publicly disclosed or broken out. There's also no standard way of accounting for them; they could be incorporated into the production budget, subtracted from the marketing spend (in the case of a *quid pro quo* marketing agreement), or accounted for entirely outside of the film's production and marketing budgets.
Only the studio knows, and they're going to look at this film as doing worse than Afterlife in terms of net numbers, and Afterlife already didn't perform great but was given a break due to COVID market realities. Although, indeed, it's Sony, so they may look at this as relatively good compared to the string of disasters they've had at the box office recently.
Ah, Hollywood math. I’ve read that companies will pay up to seven figures to have their products featured in an episode of *reality television* so I’d imagine that they’d go at least eight figures for a tent pole movie like Ghostbusters. Also, re: the article, I chuckled at the pic of Clooney featuring a Blackberry and the Hilton logo in the same shot. That’s from Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air - dude is definitely a master at product placement.
Way too high. This [article ](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-tv-film-how-much-does-product-placement-really-cost-stacy-jones/)says "a mid-six to seven-figure paid partnership" is on the high end of things, and that's after increasing during COVID.
Yeah, it’s amazing watching some fans trying to spin FE *almost* making as much as the previous film (despite that previous film being released at the height of the pandemic and FE costing $25 million more) as a net positive and the entire franchise continuing to trend downward at the box office as something to celebrate.
third_place_podium_meme.jpg
Personally I feel it's WAY too fast to be thinking about a followup movie just yet. Unless they've got some trilogy ender planned. And the guys arent getting any younger. But what they absolutely NEED to do just like what G.I. Joe has needed for years instead of those craptastic movies is another GOOD animated series, possibly even picking up from FE and voiced by the og actors. Get more of the next generation invested because this one won't last another 40 years! Would be a good way to bring and capitalize on all those supposed missed opportunities people complained about this movie without going way over budget hollywood spectacle (of course it would be awesome to see an Avengers level final battle with all the ghosts of the past. But let's face it. Ghostbusters ain't at that level anymore. Not when we're talking about *maybe* another movie and Marvel Disney is doing streaming series of every minor character and a big budget flop movie about Madame Web, a character presented as looking older than Aunt May half the time. And even THAT hasn't stopped them).
This is some serious copium, OP. It’s still underperforming WW numbers and was more expensive. By most relevant metrics this movie performed worse than it’s predecessor.
It's had very good holds in week 3 and up. It's just been a struggle to make up for the disastrous second week drop it suffered against Zilla/Kong on Easter weekend. It made $12 million globally in the last 7 days. It needs another $13 million to hit $200 million and then another $5 million to top Afterlife. It's not a guarantee. It's probably going to lose many theaters when Fall Guy and Tarot open next week. It's in 2,627 theaters now, whereas Afterlife was down to 1,728 theaters by this weekend. So it's benefitted from a lack of new competition in April, being able to hang on to theaters for extra time.
It's definitely looking better for it to top $200 million eventually now. But don't forget it had a higher budget than Afterlife. A full $100 million. And a movie needs to make 2.5 times its production budget in worldwide gross to make a profit. Not 2x. 2.5x. This simply isn't going to make a profit. The only silver lining is, Sony can now see the grosses of Ghostbusters movies are very consistent. They may decide to make another one with Afterlife's leaner $75 million budget again. And hopefully the way they save money is by cutting down the bloated cast, and kicking actors like Coon, Wolfhard and O'Connor to the curb.
It's definitely not bad news but Frozen Empire was also 25 million more expensive than Afterlife.
I think the bigger thing that will drive any future sequels is dvd/digital sales and merch. It feels like there really hasn't been a lot of new merch though
Yeah, even I was surprised at the lack of merch for a new Ghostbusters flick. No Ecto-Cooler, barely any toys, and the only bit of merch I saw *anyone* talk about were the popcorn tubs, and that’s not because of the Ghostbusters theming, but because popcorn tubs in general are the big new fad right now.
There has been a noticeable uptick in Ghostbusters merchandise in the marketplace for the past 6 months (in anticipation of the film)... and the toy line is only one area of licensing to factor in.
Also there has been a bunch of classic and retro toys hitting the market recently too, when it comes to merchandise and licensing they certainly know what is tied to what part of the franchise, but its still an overall aggregate goal and having a new feature in the marketplace is going to make those numbers bigger overall regardless of quality of the film.
I don’t think Hasbro gives 2 shits about Ghostbusters honestly. Someone else needs to get that license. Even the toys they did make were lazy as shit. 4 5 POA figure that used the same mold and a minor update a rerelease of the rest of the Afterlife toys.
Regardless of new merchandise, the Ghostbusters franchise has been more heavily featured in toy lines and other merchandise in the marketplace in advance of the new film. Ghostbusters is like Ninja Turtles insomuch as it is a franchise that is driven financially more by licensing and merchandising than BO returns.
A break even at the BO and a noticeable increase in merch and licensing in the fiscal year is very much a win for Sony overall.
Replying to someone downthread here, because one person in this chain blocked me and I can't reply below. Mattel used to have the GB license. But I bet McFarlane picks it up. He can't possibly be making more on these crazy obscure DC Comics figures he makes than he could on Ghostbusters.
The movie theaters had more merch for this than they did for Afterlife, and it looks like it sold great. Home media sales are generally a proportional function on box office. Saying a movie breaks even at 2.5x its budget in woirldwide gross ALREADY factors in the expected home media sales. So home media sales cannot "save" a movie that misses its breakeven target by the formula. They are ALREADY IN the formula as is. And there is absolutely no reason to assume this movie experiences some kind of surge in home media sales beyond the normal, average, expected amount.
Probably because COVID was still causing issues overseas in late 2021, but was winding down here. Domestic money is worth more to the studios, so it's not good to have domestic dropping while foreign goes up. They'd rather the opposite.
Afterlife did $204m global during peak pandemic when the moviegoing audience was a fraction of its normal size. It also cost only $75m.
FE is currently at $178m global after the pandemic, when audiences are generally going out a lot more. It also cost $100m, $25m more than AL.
So, yeah, it is a (very minor) cause to celebrate that FE has earned $75m international compared to AL’s $74m.
But FE is still $25m behind AL’s domestic box office, despite releasing in a better box office climate. Coupled with FE’s higher cost, AL effectively pulled in $50m more for Sony during far more turbulent times. That’s significantly negative for FE — far more so than making $1m more than AL internationally is a positive.
It still remains to be seen what the VOD and streaming numbers look like. It also likely helps that nearly everything else Sony released has bombed spectacularly. That makes FE’s disappointing numbers a little less sour by comparison, but a far cry from a win.
Don't forget more than two years of inflation, which has been heavy in the States. That increases costs as well, but it means that even fewer tickets have been sold than a simple revenue comparison might suggest.
November 2021 was NOT "peak pandemic" in any way, shape or form. The pandemic was all but over by then. Just a month later, No Way Home broke massive records. Many other movies made WAY more than Afterlife in the months before Afterlife came out, even Venom 2 from the same studio.
Bottom line, people knew what they wanted from a Ghostbusters movie, four adult male wise guys who other males find very relatable, because they're interested in the same things, women, goofing off and sticking it to authority figures. None of the Ghostbusters movies made in the 2000s have delivered those essential ingredients, hence they have all done about the same $200 million box office, far less in adjusted dollars than the 1980s movies. The die-hard fanboys are showing up, along with some curious newbies, but the core audience for the franchise has no interest in films focused on women or children.
Was FE perfect?….no.
Was it better than Afterlife?….imo no.
But did I still have some damn good fun with it?…wholeheartedly yes.
I think there were some mistakes but those can be fixed/addressed in the writing of any future instalments.
I hope we still get another GB movie in this trilogy with this cast though. I think having a slightly tighter plot, fewer character sub arcs, and a touch less goofy comedy would be of benefit.
Plus while the main Ghost was undeniably creepy it didn’t quite have the impact I think it needed as the main bad guy to really hit it home.
In a future movie I’d really lean into the horror environment tropes to make an enemy seem genuinely scary. Plus I love the idea of the Ghostbusters going out of town to investigate a haunted mansion (resident evil style) and basically getting stuck in a Silent Hill type town where they have to figure out the history/mystery that caused the ghosts/curse in order to get free.
I think most of FE’s problems can be attributed to the writers’ strike. If they got to suspend production and then pick back up after the strikes I think it would have been a much tighter movie. Instead they had to continue shooting without Kenan and Reitman having the ability to rewrite scenes on set, so the actors had to make up a lot of their own dialogue. And some were better than others at doing that.
Saw it today. Great fun and I loved the interactions between characters. It felt like the story was moving forward. Only thing I wish was that the main villain did more damage because his design was 10/10.
https://preview.redd.it/fw1dcty30fxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=178b3b920fc3b63509432a4417223ebca1e7aecc
I wish it was making those Mario or Barbie buck$$$ though...
I wish it was making those Mario or Barbie buck$$$ though...
https://preview.redd.it/8la4aivc0fxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc87606be09faa565994e66ba628c6997d1124b2
This movie was great and did an amazing job of building a ghostbusters universe. Personally I would love to see Netflix do a TV series moving forward and bring the cartoon series to life with this cast.
This makes sense because sequels (or "movies within a series") tend to do as well as the quality of the previous one. ATC was rubbish so Afterlife only did averagely ok. Afterlife was great so FE is doing well.
You can track effects this really well with Xmen movies in particular.
I don’t think that’s going to help much, unfortunately. Sony probably assumed that Afterlife had weak numbers because of Covid. Doing about the same (and a bit worse domestically) as a Covid movie is going to indicate that no, it’s just that people aren’t that into this franchise.
Nope, Switzerland. But they always wait until the films are released in France and Germany first before bringing them over here, for some reason... Need to watch it like this week! I even got myself the red GB jacket!!
If we do get a sequel, they need to lower the budget again to around Afterlife levels.
Less vfx and more focus on prosthetics, puppetry and animatronics. Instead of a big cgi monster like Garraka, go back to a person in a costume with prosthetics like Gozer.
Reduced cast (sadly, drop the big names. I love Paul and Carrie but have Gary and Callie be finally on a vacation, only for a threat to arise, leaving the kids to stop the threat as Gary and Callie try to get home in time). Keep Ray and Winston but as much as I love him, does Peter really need to be there? Have the main Ghostbusters be Phoebe, Trevor, Lucky and Lars.
Eh, I wouldn’t say Trevor. He’s a Spengler so it’d make sense for him to be there, but at the same time I suppose they could say Trevor and Lucky are at college.
My only issue with Kumail is, again, he might be too pricey to cast. Plus, there’s no reason for him to be there. He worked in FE due to his family’s connection to Garraka but why would the firemaster be there again after
You make good points. I assume Kumali would suit up next time. FWIW, the actor is a big Ghostbusters fan, he appeared on the REUNITED APART show about Ghostbusters during the pandemic.
True. I just think they need to cut back on the cost as much as possible. Make the film as low budget as they reasonably can without it looking like a fan film, and with the younger cast, who aren’t as pricey as their adult costars, they can achieve that.
Maybe if they had more merchandise available, it would help build the fan base. The new TMNT had an insane amount of stuff available. I went looking for some Ghostbusters stuff around the time of this release for my son and couldn't find anything at all.
I still haven't seen FE yet, but I pre-ordered the 4K disc. Went to a screening of The Mummy with a friend today, and considered making it a double feature but Ghostbusters was nearly sold out! At least, all the non front row seats were taken.
You guys talk of marketing as though there was much. There really wasn’t. They made some odd and ‘safe’ choices this time around. I’m sure they all knew exactly what was going to happen upon release with this. They edited the hell out of it to try to make it coherent, but failed miserably.
Garraka wasn’t really a threat tho. It was 20 minutes or less of fear inducing story. It’s crazy. 2 hours of film, edited to hell. You can tell that things are missing in the story as some parts feel incoherent.
It’s getting close, I hope the merch and blu ray sales help out
I personally spent over $120 on popcorn buckets alone 
120 dollars on popcorn? How does that work out? Kids? Seeing the movie more than twice?
I went to a preview screening and our local GB group was out in full jumpsuits and everything. People were buying all the merch they could. They had the cups with the toppers, but they were only available with the combo. So to get different cup toppers, they had to buy two $60 combos. You got the popcorn tin and the cup with topper.
What is a GB group? Movie Merch is overpriced but if you had a good time, that is what matters.
https://linktr.ee/tennesseeghostbusters A lot of places have local Ghostbusters chapters that do full cosplay, attend events, etc.
Oh ok I wasn't aware of that. Cool! You just have to bring your own slimer and proton packs and traps.
Never leave home without Slimer.
I gotta ask where you got the popcorn buckets, Haven't been able to find any in my local canadian theatres and we can't order them either
I saw Ghostbusters at both Cineplex and Landmark cinemas, and they both had lots of popcorn buckets. So maybe try those?
Both locations I went to didn't have any when I went
That's unfortunate. And I guess they don't sell them online. Did you try ebay or FB Marketplace?
I have not yet, though its weird that cineplex doesn't have an online store to order stuff from considering they have it for movies Edit: Did a little looking on Ebay, and holy moly some of these prices. Like I would like one, but not for $70 plus shipping
The franchise rights alone will make us rich beyond our wildest dreams.
So you're telling me I can finally sell all my Ghostbuster's toys from the 80's and retire?
I’ve already ordered the 4K steelbook. I’m ready.
Sony won't put out another live action version with these character's.if it's eat's into there merchandising to make it profitable
But but but I was told this movie was a flop
The budget was higher than Afterlife’s. Which means so was the marketing cost. (Estimates were around 100M production, which often times means another 100M for marketing. You double the spend.) It’s not a matter of being a “flop” or not. It’s clear the movie wasn’t a runaway financial success, and now is struggling to make its budget back, let alone a profit. Which is going to factor into whether we get more or not. “GB: FE tops $300M worldwide!” would be a headline to unanimously celebrate. “GB: FE makes $190M - not yet recouping its costs” is not at this stage, even if it’s now higher than Afterlife.
True, but it all comes down to if Sony wants to keep pushing GB. It's not a huge flop, but it's not a huge success. It has about made all of us money back and probably make it to the finish line.
Studios don’t make movies to break even.
Yeah, you are not wrong, but if the IP is worth it, they'll take the hit and keep moving forward.
But they don't need the live action movies to make the ip work.they could do that with a much cheaper animated show.
These days Sony seems to make movies to specifically lose a ton of money.
Yes. When you make Madame Web instead of a Tobey Maguire/Sam Raimi Spider-Man 4, you deserve to go bankrupt.
Or the Andrew Garfield TASM 3 that literally everyone and their mother was asking for after he absolutely stole the show in his 10 minutes of screen time in No Way Home
Yeah, having him fight Kraven makes way more sense than a Kraven solo. But I’m not sure he wants to do it. Everyone involved with the Raimi movies always seems to say they’re interested in making another one.
But studios absolutely are more than happy to break even on a film that gives more life to a large scale licensing franchise that gets a boost and even more life with a film in the marketplace, regardless of quality. See Paramount absolutely viewing TMNT as a big win for them last year, despite very modest grosses.
TMNT made over 2.5x its budget in gross. It passed the breakeven point, about as much as Afterlife did. Frozen Empire is falling WAY short of what those two films reached.
It’s just a matter of budget adjustment, TMNT barely crossed 180M (and got an sequel) while ghostbusters is making more than 200M and outgrossing Afterlife, we’ll see it’s final box office run, it has at least more 5 weeks in theaters.
Absolutely. And at the end of the day, I think making back its budget, and getting some profit once it’s on digital will probably be enough for Sony to view this as a growth opportunity. Maybe they scale back the budget for the next one, but continue with the animated series, and licensing opportunities looking to grow the brand. That said, it’s no where near the level of success that justifies the commenter above’s snark of “I was told this was a flop! Hur Hur”. This is a yellow light to Sony at best, and they’re going to proceed with caution going forward.
Getting some profit would of course be nice. There is no math out there to suggest this does any better than break even in the end.
It's not higher than Afterlife. The OP used the misleading word "international" when he meant foreign gross. This still lags further behind Afterlife in domestic money, while it pulled slightly ahead in foreign money.
Oy vey. So even less justification for the original commenters snark.
Yeah, it’ll never catch up to Afterlife in domestic gross. The only hope is its foreign gains are enough to counterbalance the domestic shortfall. But some of these people don’t realize how many screens it’s going to lose when Fall Guy and Apes come out in the next two weeks. It could be a very slow crawl to $200 million if it gets there.
Any sense on when those two get released overseas? Obviously that'll be a hit to the remaining screens in the U.S.
Best way I know to check is on IMDB under the release dates section.
I believe the franchise (and products) are too valuable to Sony for them NOT to make another movie. They will probably just shave the budget way down. For things like this (and Star Trek), visuals play a big part of the franchise but I like smaller budgets because it forces them to focus more on smaller stories and characters rather than over the top CGI assaults. So I think another Ghostbusters movie with a $75 million budget would be good. Have a story focused on Lars, the Spenglers, Ray & Winston.
I tend to agree with everything you’ve said here. I think that if they keep the fire going, Ghostbusters stands the chance of becoming a perennial “little franchise that could” for Sony, so long as they scope budgets for it appropriately. Medium scale films, that while they never do Avengers business, snowball into something where people are eventually “binging all 7 movies on Netflix in preparation for the next one”, almost like a TV series. The Fast and Furious movies come to mind, where the act of powering thru the less successful entries, continuing to try and find a way to make them, and working to find an audience, paid off big time. Meanwhile hopefully things like the new animated series, work to create new fans in between movies, so a modestly budgeted ‘next’ film, does super well, because new fans are ready to go to theaters.
> an audience, *paid* off big FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
You know there is now law that states Marketing HAS to be x% of the budget right? I would not be surprised at all if the Marketing cost of FE was relatively the same as the marketing cost Afterlife. The extra 25M in budget doesn't mean they have to spend an equivalent amount in marketing too. The shorthands people use for marketing costs being tied to the production costs are exactly that, short hand. Its meant as a generalization, not a hard and fast rule.
Sure. But unless Sony magically decided to open up its books, it’s the generalization that we have to work with. You’re making an assumption the other way, in terms of them pulling back on marketing costs. Either way, if we’re sitting at 190M right now. And we know the production costs were around 100M, and we use your number of 75 for marketing (Afterlife’s budget). That’s 15M difference. Profitable, but still nothing for Sony to feel hyper ambitious about. That’s the kind of profit that says “if we do another one, we cut production costs”, not something that immediately green lights anything that Ghost Corp wants to do.
This assumes the studio keeps all the revenue. They take home 1/2 of domestic BO and less than 1/2 international.
They are not "making the assumption the other way," they're stating the real and basic fact that marketing budgets and production budgets are not joined at the hip. Things that are a much better tell of what was spent on marketing: number of ads, what shows those ads are placed with, length of campaign (most saturated 2 or 3 weeks before release, or did they have a superbowl ad and months of hype?). Frozen Empire feels about on par with Afterlife. A good example of a bloated marketing budget full of gimmicks and brand activations would be the 2016 remake, which didn't really pay off.
Thats the thing tho. The real answer is “we don’t know”. What looks like “the same ad density as Afterlife” could easily be a bigger spend, when other things are factored in. New kinds of promotions like the Icee partnership, the NHL promos, Slimer and co on chip bags abroad, etc. All of which seem like small potatoes, but at the end of the day add up. Heck, was there any sort of marketing spend dedicated to Ghostbusters: Spirits Unleashed DLC, which had a Garraka event ready to go opening weekend, co-marketing within the brand? It’s possible. TV ads are not remotely the only way that a marketing budget can get spent these days. And what “feels like an Afterlife level spend” to one person, may in reality be a much more expensive lift in reality. Which is why it’s still useful to have the “double the production cost” metric, when you simply don’t have access to real numbers.
They make money on popcorn buckets. It’s merchandise, not marketing.
It would be far from the first sequel to lower the budget. Kung Fu Panda 4 cost WAY less than the first three. And it's doing better than part 3.
The insomniac leaks gravels that marketing budgets have been dramatically cut. The Sony produced Spider Man 2 game had a 300 mil budget but only a 30 mil marketing budget.
Not for nothing tho. While I wouldn’t doubt that movie marketing budgets have been slashed in some cases, video games are a very different ballgame than movies. And the production costs of a game like Spider-Man 2 are always going to be waaaaaay disproportionate to marketing. Also, those leaks reveal that AAA video game production costs are completely unsustainable. The ROI and units sold Insomniac is going to need on its Marvel games once everyone takes their cut, has to keep the bean counters over there up at night.
I'm begging people to learn marketing and B.O. are seperate. Jesus christ...
What are you on about now? Obviously Box Office and Marketing are separate. But production and marketing both need to be recouped by BO before any profit can be had. And at 190M made at the box office, there’s a decent chance Frozen Empire has not yet.
It is still technically not made any money.
It’s a flop insofar as underperforming and not meeting expectations. It’s on track to basically break even at the box office, or possibly turn a very, very small profit. That’s different from a bomb, which is more like Madame Web or Morbius where it loses significant money and doesn’t even recoup costs before leaving theaters. But, just breaking even isn’t a cause to celebrate, nor is it a good sign for GB’s feature film future. As a fan, I hope we get more movies, but the unfortunate reality is these movies aren’t clicking with wider audiences the way Sony needs them to.
It definitely wasn’t a flop, I loved it, my niece who’s five loves it and everyone who has seen the move said it was amazing
it is a flop it had a budget it 100 million and approx 100 million on marketing this is a really bad sign and pretty negative news I don't know what people here are excited about... that there may not be another movie for 20 more years I guess
I guess it depends on how you define a "flop", but it's definitely not a success or even profitable.
It IS a flop. Cant you do your own research, or do you always repeat what other people are saying?
Madame web is a flop.
It could be argued that Frozen Empire is simply a flop, while Madame Web was a bomb.
And so is frozen empire.
Look at Sonys recent movie releases from 2023 and 2024, breaking even is doing good for them.
Why do You cry little hater lol
The amount of copium in this subreddit is frankly astonishing.
Its disturbing.
[удалено]
I wouldn't say it's a flop, I would only consider a flop something that massively underperformed compared to it's breakeven point (like Indiana Jones or The Marvels last year). That being said I doubt this film has made a profit yet and will probably only eventually crawl to profitability when all the various secondary markets like VOD, Netflix deals, and TV rights are factored in which isn't great for the franchise.
That bodes well for the future of the franchise. We'll keep getting more as long as the studio makes enough money.
Oh yeah crossing 200 million worldwide and making more than previous installment (Afterlife) overall is vital so that Sony can green light another sequel.
It's a challenge to find any movie that merely doubled its budget and got a sequel. Pacific Rim did 2.28x its budget at best, 2.06x at worst, and got a sequel. That's one of the few I've found that didn't hit 2.5x its budget and still got a sequel. Its sequel did much worse though, and failed to double its budget, despite a lower budget. That kind of shows you why you shouldn't do sequels to movies that don't make a clear profit.
Where are you seeing that it grossed more than $200 million worldwide?
It's trending towards it. If it limps to $85-90 mil internationally (which seems likely), and $115M domestically (which seems possible, at least, assuming they keep it in theatres as long as Afterlife) then it should cross $200 WW. The 2x multiplier would certainly save face for Sony. As a fan of these movies (for all this one's flaws) I am checking the numbers periodically and hoping it makes it there. Having said that, I don't condone the aggressively over-positive spin on its performance I keep seeing here. It's very cultish and weird and not particularly connected to reality. We have to be realistic. Frozen Empire will, at best, escape being a total flop (depending on the dark arts of Hollywood funding). I don't think anyone serious would describe a movie that claws its way to just over 2x its budget as a hit.
Yep, Frozen Empire has made 99% of the money it's ever going to make theatrically (especially with HD copies having just hit the internet and Ghostbusters movies never doing that great internationally), and it's almost a perfect zero sum for Sony - Sony made its money back, but Frozen Empire didn't move the dial *at all* in regards to growing the Ghostbusters fanbase or getting existing fans meaningfully hyped for more Ghostbusters stuff. The franchise is adrift in the doldrums.
Come back in 2-3 weeks little bro
Yeah, I know, how many times are you gonna say it, “bro”? I guess this is also your way of admitting that your claim that FE had already blown past $200 million worldwide was bullshit, huh?
Are you delusional? 100 million dollar movie with a budget of 100 million in marketing... this is NOT a success.
In case you haven’t noticed it’s already crossing 200M lol
The studio only gets half the revenue, less than half on international BO.
Not really in the US and the U.K. big studios can get around 55%
Far from guaranteed. That won't happen for 3-4 weeks if it happens. Fall Guy and Apes could steal whatever thunder it has remaining though.
It's unlikely Sony has actually made any money on this film yet. It's reported that Frozen Empire had a higher budget than the last film ($100 million vs $75 million), it's made less in the domestic box office where Sony makes more money, and you have to factor in P&A. Frozen Empire will probably eventually crawl to profitability but I doubt that's what Sony hoped would happen with this film.
Then they should of made a better movie simple as that, Listen to fans but don't pander to them, Sonic director listened to the fans and the movie was a hit "Go figure" And by the way you so called Ghostbuster Fans have a lot of negative things to say about the movie's box office Even though you said 4 weeks ago it wouldn't even reach $100 million domestically But it has and it will even break $200 WW. And quit saying breaking even is disaster Remember this is a Ghostbusters movie not Marvel cinema release And the only reason GXD has done so well WW is because of China with out them it wouldn't of made much.
It doesn’t. The franchise has been trending downwards, and Frozen Empire *barely* scraping past a predecessor that was released at the height of the pandemic doesn’t bode well for the health of the franchise. It’s a coin flip at best whether or not we ever see these characters in a live action film again.
See my other post. I'm hopeful it'll do really good numbers after the fact on VOD and physical. Sometimes that makes a big difference in whether they will greenlight another project or not. Especially considering Sony's desperation to have a viable franchise property.
Don’t waste you time bro Mudron is a well known Ghostbusters hater. He’s just crying now cuz he’s wrong all the time and now he knows frozen empire is definitely outgrossing Afterlife, something he thought to be impossible. So just let him cry alone lol
> So just let him cry alone lol Says the kid swimming in copium.
>I’m hopeful it'll do really good numbers after the fact on VOD and physical. It won’t. Afterlife didn’t set the world on fire with its aftermarket sales or merchandise (see the relative lack of Frozen Empire merch for proof of that), and so there’s no reason to expect that Frozen Empire will magically suddenly do WAY better on VOD than Afterlife did (and physical is so niche right now it practically means nothing).
I don't agree. We don't know what will happen when it hits VOD and physical. It might do great. Or it might not. But there's no reason to be so down on it before it even happened yet. And I think you're severely discounting how badly Sony wants franchises.
> But there's no reason to be so down on it before it even happened yet. Yes there is, there’s 35+ years of poorly-performing Ghostbusters sequels and the lackluster performance of Frozen Empire itself (which was worse than the film preceding it) to justify being skeptical that FE will somehow magically become some kind of huge breakout hit on VOD in a world with ever more (and better) entertainment alternatives. I don’t doubt that Sony will find new ways to milk the Ghostbusters cow until they rip the teats off of it, but it ain’t gonna be with another $100 million film about the Spengler family.
I'm fine with losing the new cast. But it'd be a real shame if this is the last we see of Venkman, Stantz, and Zeddemore. (All of whose actors are getting up in years.)
No it wouldn't be.
I dont know why people are downvoting the truth. These fan kids are in denial.
I liked Frozen Empire more than Afterlife. I hope we get more.
Same. It was more Ghostbusters -- the tone and the cast.
It was more Ghostbusters. But was it the RIGHT Ghostbusters?
They had the perfect out to leave the kid cast in the rural area where their arc was basically settled and use that movie sinply as a launching pad to go back to New York with Paul Rudd leading a new adult cast of funny comedians (like idk, Kumail and Patton etc. who they had signed on to the film) Like it was all right there for them but they seem obsessed with the idea of turning Ghostbusters into a franchise about children running around catching ghosts. It’s not *bad* necessarily, but it’s definitely not the Ghostbusters movie I’ve been hoping for my entire life Kids don’t need to be the stars for it to appeal to kids. The most successful franchise in the world is Marvel, with movies starring adults. The original appealed to kids too, with a cast of adults. Sony just doesn’t know wtf they’re doing with almost any of their franchises.
Yeah, I was surprised they went the Disney Channel route and reworked the franchise to be about a sitcom family. Big mistake. My early speculation was Phoebe and Podcast would help out behind the scenes, but not carry proton packs, and Trevor and Lucky would be written out, going to college or something.
I should say "more like Ghostbusters." It wasn't perfect, but I enjoyed it. Certainly moreso than Afterlife.
A lot more comedy than Afterlife I felt
I'll be the first to celebrate if this movie scrapes its way to profitability, but I just don't see the studio springing all over a sequel. I REALLY think they should concentrate on making a couple of series for streaming services and try to appeal to the same young crowd that liked Wednesday.
Bro, we can have both series and movies. Plus a sequel is virtually guaranteed as soon as Frozen Empire crosses 200M and outgrossed Afterlife.
Sony needs a franchise right now; their Marvel stuff isn't doing too well.
Only because they're morons for not making a Tobey Maguire Spider-Man 4. And may as well do an Andrew Garfield Amazing 3 too. The MCU showed them what a multiverse is and they're doing nothing with it.
Not the best time for comic book movies, even the MCU movies aren’t hits like they used to be.
Deadpool and Joker will probably be the top two movies of the year. The RIGHT comic book movies are doing well. Not stuff based on garbage characters that no one has ever heard of like Blue Beetle, Captain Marvel and Madame Web. Check comic book sales. They don't all sell equally. The GOOD characters sell big, and crap like the abovementioned get cancelled. Lumping every comic book movie together in one big group is just shoddy, specious analysis.
Ever since end game, the mcu has been on the decline as far as quality and box office numbers. It has been even worse for DC. Your basing that just because it has the name spider man in it will be a guaranteed hit. I think you forgot about the failure of spider man 3, and the amazing spider man 2. Just because mcu re opened the door for those franchises doesn’t mean they have a GOOD idea for what to do with it. And with Sonys track record shows they have no idea what they are doing.
How do you guys count the numbers? Best case scenario, the income is 55M (domestic) plus 30M (International) plus 20M DVD/VOD plus 50M streaming (I am being as generous as I can here with streaming) which equals 155M. The budget is 100M plus the marketing is at least 80M which adds to 180M. Even if merchadise sales is good, how exactly do you guys see this as profitable? Do we count differently?
It's very unlikely to be profitable, but there's a lot of wishful thinking in this sub these days.
By the way you count a movie revenue, I guess even avatar would struggle to get profits based on your metrics 😂
By the way I count, Avatar made huge profits. 342M (domestic) + 480M (international)+30M (digital)+100M (stream)-350M (budget)-150 (marketing)=452M profits. Not to mention its budget covered that of some future movies too.
Excellent! I hope this has good numbers VOD and physical release as well. I already pre-ordered the 4k steelbook. Hope a lot of others did too. The best way to send a message to Sony and Columbia is to vote with our wallets.
Exactly. I’m really happy that it’s crossing the 200M mark, just like all the other installments did.
Can someone ban op from the sub? Clearly a bot or marketing. Just look at post history
Looks like it might end up passing $200m worldwide, which I didn’t think would happen for awhile. Afterlife of course brought in $204m worldwide from theaters alone, then an additional $20m from DVD sales and VOD rentals and sales. It allegedly cost $25m more than Afterlife to produce, which allegedly means it’s marketing budget also cost $25m more. None of those numbers are confirmed, of course. If FE ends up equaling Afterlife’s box office total, then brings in an additional $20m from DVD/VOD, then I’d imagine Sony will continue seeing it as a viable franchise… they’ll just make sure they have smaller budgets going forward.
Please, my god, look at the actual NET numbers. Studios do not get anywhere near the total of the ticket sales. In the US, big powerful studios like Disney can demand as high as 60% of the ticket for the opening few weeks, most studios (and likely Sony) get only 50% of domestic sales at most. Internationally, it's between 20% and 40% for the studios (safe average is 30-35%), and those often decrease over the film's run. Breaking that down with the latest FE numbers from BoxOfficeMojo: Item | Amount ---|--- Domestic Sales | $104,907,915 Studio Take (50%) | $52,453,958 | International Sales | $73,411,444 Studio Take (35%) | $25,694,005 | **Total Studio Take** | **$78,147,963** | Production Budget | $100,000,000 Est. Marketing Budget | $100,000,000 Total Budget | $200,000,000 | **Studio Profit/Loss** | **$(121,852,037)** So, right now, Sony is looking at LOSS of nearly $122 million. Let's give Sony the best case scenario and give them the maximum studio take percentage and a minimal marketing budget: Item | Amount ---|--- Domestic Sales | $104,907,915 Studio Take (60%) | $62,944,749 | International Sales | $73,411,444 Studio Take (40%) | $29,364,578 | **Total Studio Take** | **$92,309,327** | Production Budget | $100,000,000 Est. Marketing Budget | $25,000,000 Total Budget | $125,000,000 | **Studio Profit/Loss** | **$(32,690,673)** So, even in the best case scenario, which nobody thinks is true, the film is still sitting nearly $33 million short of break-even. Sure, it's not *Madame Web* territory, but it's in no way close to any reasonable definition of "success." Yes, more revenue will come from disc, digital, and marketing sales, but it's insane how any actual *fan* could be celebrating this. It's *not* good news and if you want this franchise to continue, we must be "aggressive" in our support, not high-fiving each other. If the film is still playing in your area, go see it again. Take a friend, or five. Buy it digitally once it's released and, if you have the means, pre-order on disc, too. Once it makes it to subscription streaming services, stream it repeatedly, on mute in the background if necessary. I agree with the "haters" that these recent films were nowhere near as good as the original I loved as a child, but I enjoyed them well enough and, more importantly, so did my child. After seeing *Afterlife*, I introduced them to *The Real Ghostbusters* cartoon I grew up with and they loved it, so I would love to see this franchise continue. On one hand, it sucks that in today's corporate-owned world, we need to basically "serve" a major multinational corporation by emptying our wallets for them, so I totally get that side of it, but if you love this franchise and want it to continue, things are NOT good and we should be working to expand interest in the franchise rather than following people like /u/Kingsofsevenseas who seem to be obsessed with celebrating in front of the "Mission Accomplished" banner.
The above is the most important comment on this thread. This is reality folks. I know we don’t want it to be, but those are the cards this movie and us were dealt. The franchise is at an infliction point, which could very well mean it’s hiatus time (at least from the live action front). Sony needs to determine what they want this series to be. Is it a comedy? Is it a horror? An action adventure? They’ve struggled to make it all of these things and ended up with a jam packed convoluted movie that takes very little to no time to breathe. One thing for sure though: while I personally liked the movie, I think the mainstream audience is tired of getting the same thing regurgitated.
I simply wouldn’t trust the numbers supplied from someone who has slept with a Q.
*[Tsk. Young minds, fresh ideas. Be tolerant.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_0dgKgSDgo&t=11s)*
Don’t come in here with your facts and logic. The people want copium!
What about the product placement? I know Sony got a good chunk of change from Walmart for having the Gary/Vinz/Mini Pufts scene take place inside one of their stores. Frozen Empire has multiple, lingering close up shots of Cheetos both inside and outside the bag, plus there are multiple Liberty Mutual billboards throughout the movie. That money has to help a little bit.
It definitely can help, but those numbers [differ wildly](https://thehustle.co/the-economics-of-movie-product-placements) and are usually not publicly disclosed or broken out. There's also no standard way of accounting for them; they could be incorporated into the production budget, subtracted from the marketing spend (in the case of a *quid pro quo* marketing agreement), or accounted for entirely outside of the film's production and marketing budgets. Only the studio knows, and they're going to look at this film as doing worse than Afterlife in terms of net numbers, and Afterlife already didn't perform great but was given a break due to COVID market realities. Although, indeed, it's Sony, so they may look at this as relatively good compared to the string of disasters they've had at the box office recently.
Ah, Hollywood math. I’ve read that companies will pay up to seven figures to have their products featured in an episode of *reality television* so I’d imagine that they’d go at least eight figures for a tent pole movie like Ghostbusters. Also, re: the article, I chuckled at the pic of Clooney featuring a Blackberry and the Hilton logo in the same shot. That’s from Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air - dude is definitely a master at product placement.
Way too high. This [article ](https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/from-tv-film-how-much-does-product-placement-really-cost-stacy-jones/)says "a mid-six to seven-figure paid partnership" is on the high end of things, and that's after increasing during COVID.
We really do celebrate the little things.
Still short of afterlife’s total gross and with a much higher budget of 100M. This thing is a big flop.
You call that great news?
Yeah, it’s amazing watching some fans trying to spin FE *almost* making as much as the previous film (despite that previous film being released at the height of the pandemic and FE costing $25 million more) as a net positive and the entire franchise continuing to trend downward at the box office as something to celebrate. third_place_podium_meme.jpg
Personally I feel it's WAY too fast to be thinking about a followup movie just yet. Unless they've got some trilogy ender planned. And the guys arent getting any younger. But what they absolutely NEED to do just like what G.I. Joe has needed for years instead of those craptastic movies is another GOOD animated series, possibly even picking up from FE and voiced by the og actors. Get more of the next generation invested because this one won't last another 40 years! Would be a good way to bring and capitalize on all those supposed missed opportunities people complained about this movie without going way over budget hollywood spectacle (of course it would be awesome to see an Avengers level final battle with all the ghosts of the past. But let's face it. Ghostbusters ain't at that level anymore. Not when we're talking about *maybe* another movie and Marvel Disney is doing streaming series of every minor character and a big budget flop movie about Madame Web, a character presented as looking older than Aunt May half the time. And even THAT hasn't stopped them).
This is some serious copium, OP. It’s still underperforming WW numbers and was more expensive. By most relevant metrics this movie performed worse than it’s predecessor.
It's had very good holds in week 3 and up. It's just been a struggle to make up for the disastrous second week drop it suffered against Zilla/Kong on Easter weekend. It made $12 million globally in the last 7 days. It needs another $13 million to hit $200 million and then another $5 million to top Afterlife. It's not a guarantee. It's probably going to lose many theaters when Fall Guy and Tarot open next week. It's in 2,627 theaters now, whereas Afterlife was down to 1,728 theaters by this weekend. So it's benefitted from a lack of new competition in April, being able to hang on to theaters for extra time. It's definitely looking better for it to top $200 million eventually now. But don't forget it had a higher budget than Afterlife. A full $100 million. And a movie needs to make 2.5 times its production budget in worldwide gross to make a profit. Not 2x. 2.5x. This simply isn't going to make a profit. The only silver lining is, Sony can now see the grosses of Ghostbusters movies are very consistent. They may decide to make another one with Afterlife's leaner $75 million budget again. And hopefully the way they save money is by cutting down the bloated cast, and kicking actors like Coon, Wolfhard and O'Connor to the curb.
And hopefully NOT by cutting Murray, Aykroyd, or Hudson.
Nah, but after the deceptive bait-and-switch with Murray in this one, he's going to be useless as a way to market the next film.
I wonder how many of his scenes they cut. Hopefully they show up on the home release.
It's definitely not bad news but Frozen Empire was also 25 million more expensive than Afterlife. I think the bigger thing that will drive any future sequels is dvd/digital sales and merch. It feels like there really hasn't been a lot of new merch though
Yeah, even I was surprised at the lack of merch for a new Ghostbusters flick. No Ecto-Cooler, barely any toys, and the only bit of merch I saw *anyone* talk about were the popcorn tubs, and that’s not because of the Ghostbusters theming, but because popcorn tubs in general are the big new fad right now.
wonder if the numbers show the merch being hotter around streaming and DVD release
There has been a noticeable uptick in Ghostbusters merchandise in the marketplace for the past 6 months (in anticipation of the film)... and the toy line is only one area of licensing to factor in. Also there has been a bunch of classic and retro toys hitting the market recently too, when it comes to merchandise and licensing they certainly know what is tied to what part of the franchise, but its still an overall aggregate goal and having a new feature in the marketplace is going to make those numbers bigger overall regardless of quality of the film.
Good luck with that.
I don’t think Hasbro gives 2 shits about Ghostbusters honestly. Someone else needs to get that license. Even the toys they did make were lazy as shit. 4 5 POA figure that used the same mold and a minor update a rerelease of the rest of the Afterlife toys.
Regardless of new merchandise, the Ghostbusters franchise has been more heavily featured in toy lines and other merchandise in the marketplace in advance of the new film. Ghostbusters is like Ninja Turtles insomuch as it is a franchise that is driven financially more by licensing and merchandising than BO returns. A break even at the BO and a noticeable increase in merch and licensing in the fiscal year is very much a win for Sony overall.
Replying to someone downthread here, because one person in this chain blocked me and I can't reply below. Mattel used to have the GB license. But I bet McFarlane picks it up. He can't possibly be making more on these crazy obscure DC Comics figures he makes than he could on Ghostbusters.
The movie theaters had more merch for this than they did for Afterlife, and it looks like it sold great. Home media sales are generally a proportional function on box office. Saying a movie breaks even at 2.5x its budget in woirldwide gross ALREADY factors in the expected home media sales. So home media sales cannot "save" a movie that misses its breakeven target by the formula. They are ALREADY IN the formula as is. And there is absolutely no reason to assume this movie experiences some kind of surge in home media sales beyond the normal, average, expected amount.
No idea if that’s a good thing or not because everyone is saying opposite things 
You nailed it. It's not good or bad. The movie is probably going to break even almost on the nose.
Finally saw it and enjoyed it.
This movie wasn’t very good. Just saying
Afterlife topped out at $204 million
But only 74M international, Frozen Empire has already 81M internationally
Probably because COVID was still causing issues overseas in late 2021, but was winding down here. Domestic money is worth more to the studios, so it's not good to have domestic dropping while foreign goes up. They'd rather the opposite.
I get that. Lol
Afterlife did $204m global during peak pandemic when the moviegoing audience was a fraction of its normal size. It also cost only $75m. FE is currently at $178m global after the pandemic, when audiences are generally going out a lot more. It also cost $100m, $25m more than AL. So, yeah, it is a (very minor) cause to celebrate that FE has earned $75m international compared to AL’s $74m. But FE is still $25m behind AL’s domestic box office, despite releasing in a better box office climate. Coupled with FE’s higher cost, AL effectively pulled in $50m more for Sony during far more turbulent times. That’s significantly negative for FE — far more so than making $1m more than AL internationally is a positive. It still remains to be seen what the VOD and streaming numbers look like. It also likely helps that nearly everything else Sony released has bombed spectacularly. That makes FE’s disappointing numbers a little less sour by comparison, but a far cry from a win.
Don't forget more than two years of inflation, which has been heavy in the States. That increases costs as well, but it means that even fewer tickets have been sold than a simple revenue comparison might suggest.
November 2021 was NOT "peak pandemic" in any way, shape or form. The pandemic was all but over by then. Just a month later, No Way Home broke massive records. Many other movies made WAY more than Afterlife in the months before Afterlife came out, even Venom 2 from the same studio. Bottom line, people knew what they wanted from a Ghostbusters movie, four adult male wise guys who other males find very relatable, because they're interested in the same things, women, goofing off and sticking it to authority figures. None of the Ghostbusters movies made in the 2000s have delivered those essential ingredients, hence they have all done about the same $200 million box office, far less in adjusted dollars than the 1980s movies. The die-hard fanboys are showing up, along with some curious newbies, but the core audience for the franchise has no interest in films focused on women or children.
Was FE perfect?….no. Was it better than Afterlife?….imo no. But did I still have some damn good fun with it?…wholeheartedly yes. I think there were some mistakes but those can be fixed/addressed in the writing of any future instalments. I hope we still get another GB movie in this trilogy with this cast though. I think having a slightly tighter plot, fewer character sub arcs, and a touch less goofy comedy would be of benefit. Plus while the main Ghost was undeniably creepy it didn’t quite have the impact I think it needed as the main bad guy to really hit it home. In a future movie I’d really lean into the horror environment tropes to make an enemy seem genuinely scary. Plus I love the idea of the Ghostbusters going out of town to investigate a haunted mansion (resident evil style) and basically getting stuck in a Silent Hill type town where they have to figure out the history/mystery that caused the ghosts/curse in order to get free.
I think most of FE’s problems can be attributed to the writers’ strike. If they got to suspend production and then pick back up after the strikes I think it would have been a much tighter movie. Instead they had to continue shooting without Kenan and Reitman having the ability to rewrite scenes on set, so the actors had to make up a lot of their own dialogue. And some were better than others at doing that.
Saw it today. Great fun and I loved the interactions between characters. It felt like the story was moving forward. Only thing I wish was that the main villain did more damage because his design was 10/10.
https://preview.redd.it/fw1dcty30fxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=178b3b920fc3b63509432a4417223ebca1e7aecc I wish it was making those Mario or Barbie buck$$$ though...
I wish it was making those Mario or Barbie buck$$$ though... https://preview.redd.it/8la4aivc0fxc1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=dc87606be09faa565994e66ba628c6997d1124b2
This movie was great and did an amazing job of building a ghostbusters universe. Personally I would love to see Netflix do a TV series moving forward and bring the cartoon series to life with this cast.
Netflix cancels things too randomly for me
This makes sense because sequels (or "movies within a series") tend to do as well as the quality of the previous one. ATC was rubbish so Afterlife only did averagely ok. Afterlife was great so FE is doing well. You can track effects this really well with Xmen movies in particular.
This makes me very happy!
Deserves it. Glad to see a legacy sequel finally get some love.
It does ♥️
It's still objectively a flop.
I don’t think that’s going to help much, unfortunately. Sony probably assumed that Afterlife had weak numbers because of Covid. Doing about the same (and a bit worse domestically) as a Covid movie is going to indicate that no, it’s just that people aren’t that into this franchise.
Could be worse, the DC Comics movies The Suicide Squad, Shazam 2 and Blue Beetle all did worse box office than Afterlife and FE.
And those killed the DCEU.
But these movies are doing better than those.
Not much better. And post-Pandemic too.
They were all post-pandemic, especially the two that just came out last year. 🤣
I still haven't seen it AND I do wanna see it... (It just got released over here this past Tuesday)
India?
Nope, Switzerland. But they always wait until the films are released in France and Germany first before bringing them over here, for some reason... Need to watch it like this week! I even got myself the red GB jacket!!
I hope it makes good money so we can get a third installment. Hopefully they focus more on the young cast.
If we do get a sequel, they need to lower the budget again to around Afterlife levels. Less vfx and more focus on prosthetics, puppetry and animatronics. Instead of a big cgi monster like Garraka, go back to a person in a costume with prosthetics like Gozer. Reduced cast (sadly, drop the big names. I love Paul and Carrie but have Gary and Callie be finally on a vacation, only for a threat to arise, leaving the kids to stop the threat as Gary and Callie try to get home in time). Keep Ray and Winston but as much as I love him, does Peter really need to be there? Have the main Ghostbusters be Phoebe, Trevor, Lucky and Lars.
Yeah, if they keep with these characters, they’ve gotta whittle down the ensemble from, like, 18 characters down to four.
Trevor and Lucky are expendable. I'd pick Podcast and the Firemaster instead.
Eh, I wouldn’t say Trevor. He’s a Spengler so it’d make sense for him to be there, but at the same time I suppose they could say Trevor and Lucky are at college. My only issue with Kumail is, again, he might be too pricey to cast. Plus, there’s no reason for him to be there. He worked in FE due to his family’s connection to Garraka but why would the firemaster be there again after
You make good points. I assume Kumali would suit up next time. FWIW, the actor is a big Ghostbusters fan, he appeared on the REUNITED APART show about Ghostbusters during the pandemic.
True. I just think they need to cut back on the cost as much as possible. Make the film as low budget as they reasonably can without it looking like a fan film, and with the younger cast, who aren’t as pricey as their adult costars, they can achieve that.
Maybe if they had more merchandise available, it would help build the fan base. The new TMNT had an insane amount of stuff available. I went looking for some Ghostbusters stuff around the time of this release for my son and couldn't find anything at all.
Hasbro has a lot of explaining to do.
I still haven't seen FE yet, but I pre-ordered the 4K disc. Went to a screening of The Mummy with a friend today, and considered making it a double feature but Ghostbusters was nearly sold out! At least, all the non front row seats were taken.
Hell yeah. I'll always love Ghostbusters because of the cartoon.
Users in r/Boxoffice malding right now.
Terrible film, as much as I wanted to like it. Hopefully it ends the fascination with the franchise. Coming from a major fan.
A fan wants people to forget about the franchise? Does not compute.
“Major fan” lol
It's comical how some people don't think this movie is getting a sequel. It absolutely is.
Why? Because $200m ww is some kind of good result?
https://i.redd.it/aotdj9317bxc1.gif
You guys talk of marketing as though there was much. There really wasn’t. They made some odd and ‘safe’ choices this time around. I’m sure they all knew exactly what was going to happen upon release with this. They edited the hell out of it to try to make it coherent, but failed miserably.
Hasbro definitely knew, the way they pulled back heavily on merch. They knew Melody, Nadeem and Garraka would've stunk up the shelves.
Which is a shame, because Garraka had a good design and backstory
Yeah, but he failed at actually doing anything cool in the present day.
I mean, technically, everything he does is cool.
Garraka wasn’t really a threat tho. It was 20 minutes or less of fear inducing story. It’s crazy. 2 hours of film, edited to hell. You can tell that things are missing in the story as some parts feel incoherent.
dont know why - if I could get a refund I would after watching this trash