Quote from: SM on Feb 27, 2018, 03:05:38 AM
I would say the days of Ridley Scott making low budget genre movies had passed - if they had in fact ever existed in the first place.
It depends what you consider "low budget" but crime film
The Counselor (2013) had a 25 million dollar budget. So, your statement doesn't hold completely true.
Quote from: The Eighth Passenger on Feb 27, 2018, 04:51:18 PM
Quote from: Prof. a on Feb 26, 2018, 10:44:37 PM
The key will be a lower budgeted film. If Alien: Covenant was crafted with a $40 million production budget, that North American opening weekend of about $36 million looks a lot better.
The marketing budget is tied to the production budget. A $40 million dollar Alien film wouldn't have had the same advertising budget that Covenant had and so wouldn't have made $36 million on it's opening weekend. More likely something in the region of $10 - 15 million or so.
But a lower budget Alien film would certainly be less of a risk to the studio. And with R-rated films your audience is limited so mid-budget films often perform the best.
Not always true. Marketing budget is different than production budget in every way. Example:
Get Out has 4.5 million dollar production budget but it is quite obvious the studio spent much more on advertising. Low production budgets do not equal low advertising budgets -
Blair Witch Project, anyone
Quote from: SiL on Feb 27, 2018, 04:00:05 AM
Annihilation is a terrible example. It's only being released theatrically in the US. It's straight to Netflix for everyone else - and that's because of in fighting behind the scenes over how 'cerebral' the film is.
You can simply compare North American box office returns without the international receipts. When you compare things, they are never going to be identical - an argument of this nature is quite pedantic. There are whole fields of Comparative Politics or Comparative Literature. Do you not compare things because of differences? So you shouldn't compare political systems in Italy and France because they have different institutions or speak different languages?
Films are generally compared on a genre basis. It doesn't make sense to compare Alien films to Marvel films, for example. Hence, the hullaballoo over the box office of
IT and
Get Out - they were hyped because those types of horror movies previously hadn't brought in those types of returns.
Does anyone think there is a better, more recent comparison? Any other R-rated, Sci-Fi/Horror films over the past two years? Any with financial success?