B5Erik

They grossed 10 Billion. Of which the theaters get half. So the gross for Sony was 5 Billion. Of which a HUGE percentage is eaten up by production and promotion costs.

First, Fox wasn't being sold off mid producion on Apocalypse, which was a disappointment at the box office, and maybe turned a small profit after DVD/BluRay sales. Dark Phoenix was started before the studio went up for sale. The same was true for New Mutants. The knock on Fox is that they took a great franchise and ran it into the ground. Which they did. The marketability of X-Men movies dropped precipitously because of Apocalypse.

Second, Morbius witll take years to make a profit. Maybe a decade. It's going to top out somewhere around $225- $250 Million worldwide. TOTAL Box Office. Of which Sony gets half. So, $125 Million taken in on a cost of $300 million. Do the math. It's a money loser.

Venom 2 was barely breaking even prior to home video and streaming.

Venom 3 is make or break for this series. The box office should have been higher for Venom 2 since it was the Carnage movie, which the fans had been waiting so long to see. But it wasn't good, so the box office dropped, even with ticket price inflation.

Sony doesn't have a good track record over the last decade. Aside from the Jumanji movies and the Marvel produced Spider-Man movies, they've been an utter disaster. A total trainwreck. The quality of their movies has gone to shit. This IS the Fox X-Men situation all over again.

Does anyone think that Kraven's going to be a hit? They're desperately grasping for product to sell. They're running the Spider-Verse franchise into the ground.

Morbius is not an aberration, it's the continuation of the downward spiral.

IBJoel

DUDE WHAT? Morbius only cost $85M to make. Assume double that with marketing/distribution, that's $170M. Assume, OK, a little extra because of multiple delays at $200M. Where are you getting 300?

Sony's also put out multiple James Bond films and the Smurfs and Hotel Transylvania franchises in the last 10 years. Profits were up by $200M in the 2019 fiscal year: https://variety.com/2020/biz/asia/so...us-1234605230/ And 2021 saw an incredible rebound: https://www.sony.com/en/SonyInfo/IR/...q3_sonypre.pdf

Are you one of those people that thinks "If it doesn't make a billion dollars, the movie is a flop"? Do you think Solo was a huge financial disaster? You're deep into some Terryology now.

Like your own argument doesn't make sense. You're saying Sony Pictures has fewer high-value IPs, so then why would they sell-off SPIDER-MAN?

dex14

If only there was someone who works at Sony who could comment... Oh wait...

B5Erik

I would have to think that Morbius cost more than that to make (in real money, not reported numbers). Sony didn't produce the James Bond films. They offered the most money to distribute them. EON made the movies.

I'm looking at Sony's box office numbers. Besides Jumanji and the Marvel produced Spider-Man movies they haven't had a single movie top $300 Million in the last decade. Most other major studios have several movies over that number.

Morbius is a bomb. A bad movie, too. Kraven will bomb, and likely be crap. Madame Web? Are they out of their minds??

You can't tell me that Sony's doing a good job with the IP.

IBJoel

Oh dude, you around Culver City?

IBJoel

Where are you getting your production budget figure for Morbius?

And no, I agree that the Venoms we're dumb, Morbius looks awful, and Kraven is a bad idea.

B5Erik

I don't know who works where. And, frankly, I don't care.

Sony is running this IP into the ground the same way Fox did with the X-Men.

Marvel saved their asses with the last 3 Spider-Man movies. We all know that. The ASM movies were kind of crap compared to the original trilogy, and the box office was way down on those compared to the first three. And the spinoffs have been kind of crap, and are trending downward at the box office.

dex14

Nobody is arguing that these non-Marvel Studiso produced films are any good or that Sony doesn't know how to mange them. They clearly aren't good and they don't know what they are doing. They're debating the figures you are throwing out. There is no way Sony would ever release the rights for anywhere less than billions.

Exactly.

ddrknghtrtns

Columbia pictures also owns the Ghostbusters and Men In Black IP.
Probably a better chance of a mega merger betwwen Sony / Disney than Sony giving back the Spider-Man license

Anyway, after watching Black Widow and The Eternals, my confidence in Marvel Stuidios s beginning to wane. If the Dr. Strange sequel delivers nothing but cameos and ugly special effects, afraid we are in for another bad batch of MCU movies.

B5Erik

No Way Home has saved their profitability on this IP. However, it's safe to say the next one won't make this much money. Success like that is rarely continued the next time out. It will likely drop 25%-50%. Then you factor in the losses from Morbius and Kraven (and anything else they decide to do, like Madame Web), and the IP won't be an asset to them the way it is now.

An IP is only good if you're making a profit off of it. They have been, but all things come to an end, and the way they're running the franchise into the ground that day will come sooner rather than later.

Fox was a cautionary tale, but Sony didn't learn from it. At all.

These big budget movies can be profitable, but they can also end up being big money losers, too. Without Marvel's help Sony is headed downward into the money loser territory.

As a studio, Sony is utterly incompetent. I am pretty sure they'll run this thing into the ground, just like Fox did with the X-Men. They'd already be there if it weren't for Marvel Studios saving their asses.

Hokeyboy

Two Three things to consider:

1) Reported budgets are just that. Reported. Often they are more. Sometimes they are actually less, especially when the studio anticipates a loss.

2) Hollywood Accounting is a real thing. According to the Studios, massive blockbusters like Batman (1989), Forrest Gump, Coming To America, etc. were massive money losers.

3) Box office is only one fraction of a movie's income stream. A studio can capitalize on a movie in multiple ways that go beyond box office.

With all that considered, SONY would be incredibly foolish to sell Spider-Man back to Marvel. While I never say never, it's near impossible for to even remotely happen anytime soon.

And other than the co-produced Marvel Spidey movies and the massively entertaining Into The Spider-Verse, SONY has no idea what it's doing with this IP, and haven't learned a single fucking lesson from Spider-Man 3 and Amazing Spider-Man 2.

IBJoel

Yes, I believe Order of the Phoenix STILL "has not made a profit", despite a nearly-billion dollar gross

My mom always told me, "If you land a role or sell a script, make sure your % of the box office is gross, not net"

Hokeyboy

Net profit participation is like receiving stock options at a dotcom in 1999

B5Erik

Hollywood accounting makes sure that anyone getting points on NET profits actually gets NOTHING.

It's points on GROSS BOX OFFICE or you don't get paid.

Spiderbite

I find it funny that Morbius sucks so bad that this movie review thread is anything but.

Nobody either saw the film or if they did, they don't want to discuss it.

B5Erik

And, yeah, Morbius is so bad, and such a bomb, that discussion of ANYTHING else is far more interesting.

ViewAskewbian

LOL, I was going to post the same thing.
If Morbius has given us anything, it's a fine discussion on Hollywood accounting.

And herpes...Mobius gave me herpes.

Why So Blu?

I just saw Morbius on 4K disc and it was fun. I think folks got sucked into the meme social media bullshit about it being cool to hate on, because it's cool to hate on anything. I think what hurt it was the multi-year-pandemic delay. If it had been released last fall when the brand new full trailer was released, it would have made more than releasing it on April 1st of this year.

I think it's a fun movie along the lines of the first Venom movie and totally buries the shitstorm of that Venom 2 movie. Now that was godawful.

TomOpus

This is on Netflix. According to the poll, not many liked it.

asianxcore

Finally checked it out on Netflix.

Pretty generic superhero film

Mike86

Tried to watch this on Netflix tonight. I got a little under an hour in and I just couldn’t get into it so I stopped it. Just very generic and not really interesting.

mndtrp

I watched it a few months ago. Like pretty much everyone else, I didn't find it all that great. It wasn't terrible, but it did nothing for me.

devilshalo