Disney reported beat not beat

How cheap can you get, and still offer a reasonable product? Gareth Edwards did “Monsters” for half a million, that is $500,000. Used high end consumer grade HD video equipment. Did the CGI on his laptop. Shot on location through Central America, using local people for all the parts except the two stars that the film follows.

1 Like

Suppose half the $$$ were from sequels and the other half from new, non-sequel films. That would mean equal demand for both types of movies.

The difference is that the sequels are a relatively small number coming from the six major studios while the non-sequel films are a large number coming from many sources.

The data in the graph are for feature films that played in theaters.

In any case, I think it is a mistake to blame the studios for this seeming glut of high cost blockbuster sequels. Look at the main reason this is happening.

A premiere subscription to Netflix costs $20/month. That’s the price of one movie ticket, popcorn, and a drink. The only way a theater can compete with that is to show movies where the experience in a theater is significantly better than on a high def, large screen TV in one’s living room. In other words, the survival of movie theaters largely depends on movies with special effects (SFX) or wide vistas best seen on the biggest screen possible. Even then the studios still feel it necessary to let these big budget extravaganzas run exclusively in theaters for awhile before releasing them to the streamers.

The widespread availability of movies for relatively low prices across a broad spectrum of providers is why there is a need for big-budget sequels.

1 Like

North American total box office was just under $7.5B in 2022. A rough count of sequels comes to about $5B of that. That’s about 2/3.

Worldwide is much better, with sequels totaling under 50%. Again, just based on rough eyeballing of the numbers.

Note that ALL of the top-10 are sequels.

1 Like

I am going to disagree with both you and Goofy on this. The turn to on demand internet movies has changed the calculous because more movies when released get seen. Just counting box office at the theaters is wrong. That is all the flag ship stuff but the nuts and bolts of Hollywood are less reliant on that than at any time in the history of Hollywood.