The decline of Marvel

[Randy Stankey]

...a large, expensive machine that is burned out and just going through the motions.

Like this?

SS.Metropolis.jpg

[Jon Dent]

Minus the coordinated marching, yes.

[Randy Stankey]

Watch the whole scene. [From the movie, "Metropolis." (1927)]

I would have posted it but I thought it too much detail when just the picture would do.
Search YT for "Metropolis Movie M Machine" and you should find a clip.

It's the scene from the movie where the M-Machine breaks down and dozens of workers are "eaten" by the machine.
There's a section where the workers are dressed as slaves and the robot overlords are throwing them into the machine.

BTW: The name "M-Machine" sounds kind of ironic when we're talking about the "Marvel Machine."
Who would have thought this would have been predicted, way back in 1927!

[James Wyrembelski]

All I hear about lately is "I stopped caring after Endgame". It's showing.

Marvels is panning out to be the lowest grossing film of the year for us.

[Lyle Romer]

There are multiple issues with the Marvel franchise. It really hurt when they started having confusing plots that required viewing of various Avengers and "stand alone" movies to put together. The release frequency was too high and led to Marvel fatigue. Whatever crap they shove out on Disney+ doesn't help either.

Disney is doing the same thing to the Star Wars franchise. I guess the Lucas prequels helped to get the process started somewhat. The original trilogy was a simple "good vs. evil" story, there were a few years between movies to build anticipation and you could figure out the sequels without seeing the prior movies.

[Randy Stankey]

I agree! The original Star Wars trilogy had a message: No matter how big, bad and evil you are, there is still a chance for redemption if you only see the error of your ways and repent.

Today's movies are just a superficial, flash in the pan, compared to the originals, with lots of "flash" and very little "pan."

[Mike Blakesley]

I guess they (Marvel and Disney) probably know they have a problem. What they don't have is a solution. Their real problem is, they have all these subscribers paying every month who MUST be kept satisfied. Therefore they MUST keep shoveling out content, to keep the machine running. They say they're in the storytelling business, but they're not, not anymore: They're now in the machine fuel business. The problem with that is, that's not the reason you make movies.

I really wonder what the end-game of all of this is going to be. The status quo is not sustainable. They've created a beast that is now eating them.

[Randy Stankey]

Studios are putting out virtual tripe and consumers are eating it because that's all there is to eat.

If they made good movies that people would want to watch, consumers would buy it, just the same.

The benefit is that, making good movies that stand the test of time will bring better profits in the long run when people watch them over, again, as new sequels and spin-offs come out.

How long did movies like "Gone with the Wind" and "Sound of Music" play in theaters when they first came out? Months and even years? Sure, I understand that times are different and there are more choices for entertainment. That's bound to change the way new releases are timed. Still, the basic concept is there: Play your hand for the long term.

It's funny how people like stock brokers will tell you to invest for the long term and don't concentrate on short-term gains while movie studios do just the opposite. They don't listen to good advice. Now, they are paying the price.

[Frank Cox]

Flailing around for something to get people to give them money, I guess.

https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/14/...pin-collecting

Disney Pinnacle is preparing to be the next big NFT failure

Collectible digital tokens have crashed hard since peaking in early 2021, but here comes Disney Pinnacle to try it all over again.

NFTs aren’t gone yet — Disney will launch an “all-new socially driven collectible experience” called Disney Pinnacle later this year, turning characters from Pixar, Star Wars, and its classic animated films into tradable digital pins. The Disney Pinnacle website has a waitlist for interested traders and collectors; however, it doesn’t explain what the “digital pins” are actually like or why the company would bother to create a verifiable digital hoard.

While announcing Pinnacle, Disney and its partner Dapper Labs won’t even say the word “NFT.” Dapper Labs still calls itself “the NFT company,” but between a variety of scams, an eye-blistering episode at a recent Bored Ape event, and a market that has plunged since peaking in early 2021, that’s a term they apparently will steer clear of. The only thing available on the site right now is a privacy policy that makes clear this is a Dapper Labs effort that’s licensing content from Disney — not an in-house effort on the level of Disney Plus.

The NFT collection is being launched through an iOS app, and a spokesperson tells CoinDesk that web and Android applications will come later. Even without any appreciable details beyond a simple animation of the pins spinning around, there are reasons to believe Dapper Labs can get things off to a good start — it did that with NBA Top Shot in 2020 as well as with earlier projects like CryptoKitties.

However, anyone thinking about buying in should remember the history of Dapper’s previous projects. In 2017, flipping CryptoKitties was hot, with millions of dollars in sales. Now, CryptoKitties is remembered for its “spectacular fall,” while a channel for interested buyers in its official Discord has had messages from three people since September.

Dapper Labs followed that up with NBA Top Shot in 2020, replacing the cat artwork with “moments” collectibles commemorating players and highlights that appeal to basketball fans. Data from CryptoSlam shows the market peaked in February 2021 with over $220 million in sales, just before it broke 165,000 unique sellers. Top Shot hasn’t broken $2 million in monthly sales since the start of the current NBA season, there are fewer than 10,000 active sellers, and many people who bought into the hype aren’t happy with how things turned out.

Dapper Labs and its CEO, Roham Gharegozlou, are also facing a lawsuit accusing Top Shot of selling unregistered securities.

A similar effort with the NFL never reached those lofty heights, as NFL All Day NFT activity peaked with around 54,000 owners in the fall of 2022. The most recent data shows fewer than 1,000 owners are currently active.

A press release announcing Disney Pinnacle didn’t mention financial terms, but Disney’s IP can’t be cheap. This news was also revealed on the same day the ESPN Bet gambling operation is launching, with Penn Entertainment scheduled to pay Disney $1.5 billion over 10 years for a partnership that includes licensing the name of its sports channel.

[Bill Seipel]

Studios are putting out virtual tripe and consumers are eating it because that's all there is to eat.

If they made good movies that people would want to watch, consumers would buy it, just the same.

The benefit is that, making good movies that stand the test of time will bring better profits in the long run when people watch them over, again, as new sequels and spin-offs come out.

How long did movies like "Gone with the Wind" and "Sound of Music" play in theaters when they first came out? Months and even years? Sure, I understand that times are different and there are more choices for entertainment. That's bound to change the way new releases are timed. Still, the basic concept is there: Play your hand for the long term.

It's funny how people like stock brokers will tell you to invest for the long term and don't concentrate on short-term gains while movie studios do just the opposite. They don't listen to good advice. Now, they are paying the price.

Well, our tickets sales are down 30% since 2018. So I wouldnt say everyone's eating.

This is the most 'risk-averse' business culture that has ever existed IMO.

The only sincere movie I've been waiting for this year? "The Holdovers" starring Paul Giamatti.

[Frank Cox]

Everyone I talk to says their sales are down between 30% and 50% so you're not alone.

I really don't know how some folks are still holding on.

[Mike Blakesley]

We are down quite a bit from last year, but we didn't have a Top Gun Maverick or a Jurassic World Dominion this year either. Almost all of the shortfall can be found in those two movies. The other "culprit" is Disney - they are so far off their game, we didn't even play a lot of their offerings. I'm hoping for better things from "Wish" -- if anything can do it for them, an old-style Disney animated movie can.

[James Wyrembelski]

We're also significantly down from pre 2020 still. Considering that ticket prices have went up since as well. Down 10% compared to this time last year. We were closed for a total of 3 weeks this year however.

If Wish doesn't perform, concern is going to turn into worry. At least as far as Disney titles. Although very little appears to be sticking to the wall.

Have had a long streak of sub 1k grosses for each week since Barbie left. Beginning to tap my foot......

[Martin McCaffery]

The only things doing slightly well for us are classics. It's not an indication of how well we are doing, but how horrible things are in general, that last week, our single screening of To Kill A Mockingbird not only out grossed every reported* screen, we beat the totals for the entire day of all three multiplexes. And believe me we didn't even make it half full.

*Thursday night, so the early openings don't get reported as Thursday grosses, and we can't see them.

[Mike Blakesley]

Have had a long streak of sub 1k grosses for each week since Barbie left. Beginning to tap my foot......

Same here. It's been the worst October/November in a long time.

We have got to figure out a way to get the studios off of the two-week minimum thing. It needs to be ONE week, with a threshold number to require a second and third week. There are so many titles we'd have played for one week, but we skipped, only to never play them at all due to the short video window.

The studios have devalued their own product by reducing the video window to almost nothing, so there is NO REASON why we should still be held to the same playtimes we've been stuck with since the video window was six months or more.

There's also a good list of "big" movies that we didn't play this year, due to schedules overlapping. That didn't help. We played about half the movies on the break this year as we did last year, mostly due to the stupid overlapping long playtimes. We had to make choices.

What we've all predicted for years is coming to pass, to wit: Every time there is a short video window, a few more people realize that there's a short video window, and some of those customers are lost. There are people who prefer to see movies in a theater, but a long time ago on this forum I asked: Are there enough of those people to sustain us? We may be getting our answer.

On the other hand, we had a dynamite year last year. It's hard to imagine things could get THIS shitty THIS fast because people have decided en masse that they're done with theaters. There's gotta be other factors at play and we will get out of this slump somehow. We may not get any help from the major studios, but something will happen -- after all, something always has.