the Godzilla box office guessing game.

[jellydonut25]

[Dai]

I suppose the big question now is whether KotM's tepid box office will cause Warner Bros to freak out and force changes to Godzilla vs Kong, the same way they did with Justice League when Batman v Superman 'under-performed' (with a mere $872m ). Considering Adam Wingard's eratic track record, I don't know if that would be a good or bad thing.

[lhb412]

^ Expectations were stupid high and the budgets were bigger for those. Also; WB may have been concerned with the overall story direction of Snyder's films and the ramifications for the use of their most prominent DC heroes for some time to come. In other words: better to sabotage one film to free up creative space for Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Shazam, and whatnot.

[Benjamin Haines]

It really doesn't matter which movie tops the weekend box office chart. G:KotM ranked #1 on its opening weekend but that didn't make its $47m debut any less disappointing. It was already expected to open lower than G'14 but opening 22% lower than Kong: Skull Island was a letdown regardless of the 1st-place weekend ranking.

What matters is how each individual film performs on its own terms. G:KotM is already unlikely to turn a profit theatrically. At this point, the key questions are how leggy it will be and whether it can make enough worldwide to break even before it hits the post-theatrical market. K:SI reportedly needed to top $500m worldwide to break even on its $185m budget (it finished with $566m), so my guess is G:KotM will need to hit around $460m to break even at a cost of $170m. It would need to be just as leggy as K:SI both in North America and internationally just to top $450m.

Domestically, if G:KotM collapses as fast as G'14 (-66.8%), it'll make $15.8m in its second weekend. In the unlikely event that it holds up as well as Rampage (-43.8%), it would bring in $26.8m. Legs like K:SI (-54.4%) would get it to $21.7m this weekend, which is probably the best we can hope for whether it ranks #3 or #6 for the weekend.

[gyaos]

KOTM looks to drop close to 70 percent!!! this weekend. That is offical "bomb" status.

The most concerning thing is that the film got an OK cinemascore (B+), so while the legs weren't going to be good, there should not have have been an immediate freefall. This points to Godzilla just turning off the general audience now.

Add in G vs K continuing the awful story from KOTM that the audience thoroughly rejected, and the monsterverse is kaput after next March.

[O.Supreme]

That is provably untrue. KotM has received generally positive reviews from those who have seen it. It's just the realization that Godzilla isn't that popular period. KotM is IMHO far more entertaining than even Skull Island ( which I thoroughly enjoyed).

It's just that Godzilla will seemingly always be niche despite being a cultural icon.

Even though it won last weekend's domestic Box office, it sadly was only king for a day with a strong Friday, but Aladdin barely outgrossing it on Saturday and Sunday, seemingly each weekday this past week as well.

I was hoping it would only fall to #3 in it's second weekend, but it appears more likely to slip to #4

[goji4ever]

[lhb412]

[battrafan]

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=godzilla2.htm

Will be over $70 million domestic after this weekend, international numbers have not been updated since the 2nd.

Both Dark Phoenix and Secret Life of Pets 2 are projecting low this weekend, maybe it's not anything specific to Godzilla.

[lhb412]

^ Seems like a real bloodbath. Disney's movies seem to have sucked all the oxygen out of the room for the present. Pikachu, which everyone thought would be a megahit (as well a prespective game-changer for video game and anime adaptations) also underperformed as Avengers was still doing gangbusters a few weeks in.

[gojira_fan]

Maybe we’re starting to see a little bit of sequel fatigue, excluding Marvel. Although it’s going to be interesting to see how things go post Endgame.

[Russzilla]

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

^ I think it's entirely possible that the novelty of Godzilla fighting King Kong is enough to put butts in the seats in a way the mythology of a shared film universe can't. Then again, as bad as it may sound, if that is the case it may behoove WB to realize that is the case and that they can't simply spend the same amount of money on a follow up film and expect it to do the same numbers as the heavyweight match.

---edit---

You know, when the Godzilla series was at its height of popularity in Japan in the 60s they did so using this unconventional genre mash-up formula. They used genres and performers that were popular at the time and injected them into the monster plots. What would that look like today? Keanu Reeves as a secret agent, the bad guys he's fighting turn out to be aliens, surprise - it's Godzilla vs. Mechagodzilla? Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum go to Monster Island? That's no more strange than King Kong vs. Godzilla being a salaryman comedy!

[battrafan]

Approaching $300 million worldwide: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?p ... zilla2.htm

[lhb412]

^ Again, we have to re-examine our ideas of popularity. Godzilla made $300 million in 11 days. If the movie cost only $100 million all the executives would the shaking hands and congratulating themselves over how great and smart they are!

[O.Supreme]

That's the problem though. Could they make a *good* Godzilla film for 100M or even 50 M. Sure. Would it look as good as KotM....not by a long shot. I'd still enjoy the heck out of it, bit it would have likely proportionately less gross.

I know we have seen many smaller budget horror films and comedies do well. But I could easily see a 50M G film opening only to 20M in it's opening weekend no matter how good it looked

[lhb412]

^ Just look at The Host, Shin Godzilla, or Cloverfield. Sure, a few of those are foreign films and as such have had limited play that can't necessarily be called mainstream, nevertheless I've seen them go over like gangbusters with audiences besides your average monster or kaiju fan. By Hollywood standards they were cheap as hell. All it takes is smart filmmaking, and a slick, engaging film can be made for far less money. In other words, concentrate on what you know you can pull off and do it well.

Just imagine how much less Godzilla: King of the Monsters would cost if they eliminated half the cast, subtracted, say, Rodan (even though he's my favorite monster in the movie, he's the least necessary for the plot), and just concentrated on making the human element very engaging, maybe by having Millie Bobby Brown as the audience identification character and having her have actual relationships with the people in the terrorist organization, who are actually characterized an interesting instead of faceless goons? If you make the humans interesting you could have shaved off 10 minutes of monsters and no one would miss it.

Let's take my example of making a Keanu Reeves action movie with Godzilla. John Wick 2 still has the most impressive an incredible action of the series, and that movie cost about 50 million. Now imagine you had an additional fifty million for 20-30 minutes worth of monster footage.

Shazam cost $100 million. That's half as much as the big superhero movies these days. People liked the story, so they didn't care it was less expensive. Warner Brothers even had the confidence to keep the big special effects sequences from the second half of the movie out of the advertising so as they'd be a big surprise!

[Gwangi]

[O.Supreme]

[Benjamin Haines]

[lhb412]

If the audience is fully invested in the story the last thing they'll be worried about is holding up a stopwatch to measure how many seconds Godzilla is on screen. Unfortunately, the 2014 film had a very passive lead character that allowed the audience to become antsy. Filmmaking, in essence, is about manipulation. In the hands of a master manipulator you can be made to believe just about anything. You can believe you seen far more than you really have. And by all means, have a smaller cast and shorter run time! Modern Hollywood has decided simply inflating movies beyond their capacity of characters and subplots justifies their budgets and run times!

But, back to the subject of box office, the movie had another strong weekend in Japan. It's attendance has already beaten Tokyo SOS and Final Wars. It's slightly behind Shin Godzilla, but that's to be expected, right? It's good to see that after the dwindling audience of the Millennium films that Godzilla has a healthy fan base on his home turf.

https://mobile.twitter.com/GMANonScifie ... 6375358465

[lhb412]

[Baltan II]

Like Final Wars but with Keanu as the lead... holy crap.

[lhb412]

^ Exactly!

I'm thinking maybe Donny Yen for the alien leader and Tony Jaa for the second in command.