RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amSony is run by Tom Rothman. Tom Rothman has one of the worst reputations in the entire industry, which is saying something. His time at 20th century Fox is legendary for it’s incompetence.
I'm aware of Tom Rothman and his reputation.
RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amPlease stop talking about global box office as if that’s that we are talking about. Please just stop. Do the Super Bowl commercials show worldwide? That’s what we are debating. Domestic. American. North American. I make that clear over and over. You don’t pay for a Super Bowl Spot for the global market. That’s what this is about. You talking about global box office is an indication that you really aren’t grasping at the point here. Of course global box office is important. But we aren’t talking about that. Don’t move those goal posts. Global box office is a totally different ball game. That Chinese box office Hollywood loves to chase only returns 25% of the reported gross.
Global box office is the only applicable parameter for movies like
Black Widow,
Mulan,
F9, and
Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which are all owned by their studios globally.
Ghostbusters is, I suppose, the one that is least historically positioned to be a global grosser, but there's no way you can make the case that Sony isn't invested in how it does worldwide and not buying a Superbowl spot is probably a savings they will use in marketing the movie worldwide. (Since it's sustained the IP for 35 years, while there's no question they're aiming for more than 2016's box office, I think their #1 priority edging that is probably merchandise sales, which would be global.)
RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amIf you had the choice of losing 30 million, or 50 million, which would you choose? A Super Bowl trailer could help with that. You are looking at it as well, “X” movie failed and lost money so clearly the Super Bowl commercial wasn’t worth it. Yes “X” movie lost money, but it COULD HAVE lost more. That’s the *gamble*. That’s the game.
Of course I'd rather lose $30m than $50m, but that's not the question on the table.
Surely every studio has some kind of metric -- exit polling, marketing surveys, etc. -- that tells them, as much as they're capable of knowing, how much publicity a Superbowl spot adds. Airing one is obviously a calculus between the cost of the spot -- it could gain you anywhere from 99 million to 0 additional viewers, but you would for sure sink almost $6m into one. You can't make that decision without factoring in an unrevokable loss of almost $6m. And I don't think there's any study, metric, analysis that would tell you now, in the age of the internet, that a Superbowl spot is a safe route to ensuring more than $6m extra at the box office, which has to be something you're confident in
before you could make a "lose $30m or lose $50m" argument. That's an argument inherently based off of a Superbowl spot being a relatively
safe (not guaranteed, but reliable) $20m increase. Even you call it gambling. Obviously, you have to factor in the money you're putting on the table.
RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amTwist your words?? Not my intent. Come on. You said the trailer was not “ideal” and then saying it’s not as bad as fan or YouTube made it out be.
Fine, let me be clearer: it's not a good trailer.
This is not mutually exclusive from the trailer also having been additionally brigaded by trolls on YouTube downvoting it and leaving nasty comments, which I think we can all agree is objectively true. It can be a disaster and still have been a magnet for an unwarranted level of hatred. Plenty of trailers are bad every year; they don't all end up on YouTube's most disliked videos of all time lists.
RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amAgain, if Super Bowl spots didn’t work no one would do them.
In a pre-YouTube age, I wouldn't argue that Superbowl ads weren't good as gold. But Sony's sat out a few years now, Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox didn't bite this time, and even Disney and Paramount (per the THR article) are also partially shifting to pre- and post-game spots that cost less. All I'm saying is, don't be surprised if studios start forgoing the game completely in a few years.
RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amIf you’ve read my opinion on the matter and my arguments to back it up and still walk away from here thinking Sony made the right call, cool. I don’t think there’s anymore I could say to convince you otherwise. I think I’ve made a pretty decent case for why it was the wrong move. If you don’t agree, fair enough.
Ultimately this comes down to: Do you trust Sony to market this movie properly. And no. I don’t.
If Sony doesn’t have Spider-Man or The Rock/Kevin Hart or QT they are...poor at this.
I don't agree they should've bought a Superbowl spot
and I don't necessarily trust them to market the movie properly yet.
I also think it's funny that you say, "except for their two most successful franchises and one of the buzziest movies of 2019..." Sure, easy sells, presumably, but nonetheless. The results are the results.
RichardLess wrote: ↑March 23rd, 2020, 3:02 amKeep in mind. I think it was you I had the debate with over Kevin Feige and his involvement with the Spider-Man Homecoming series. You thought he wasn’t very involved and debated that point. I said he was extremely involved. In the months afterward it came out how involved he was. Which was extremely. So Ha!
Nothing I've read since has changed my evaluation of how much Feige contributes to those movies, so, you'd have to link something. (The rest of the Superbowl argument, I've said all I need to say, and we can move on.)