All things Star Wars

[Vin]

13 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Isn't this the case with all franchises?

Basically what others said . 

China LOVES transformers . 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

17 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Imagine a crossover between those two.  

Pacific Rim as well. China made the first film profitable, more or less.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2018&p=.htm

Interesting that Infinity war made a lot more as a proportion of the total gross than Black Panther did.  Ready Player One did way better overseas it looks like.  I never would have guessed that.

[Yukle]

7 minutes ago, Vin said:

Basically what others said . 

China LOVES transformers . 

Hard to see why, given all they do is blow up Chinese cities.  

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

2 minutes ago, Deadlines? What Deadlines? said:

Pacific Rim as well. China made the first film profitable, more or less.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2018&p=.htm

Interesting that Infinity war made a lot more internationally as a proportion of the total gross than Black Panther did.  Ready Player One did way better overseas it looks like.  I never would have guessed that.

 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

14 minutes ago, Vin said:

Basically what others said . 

China LOVES transformers . 

Pacific Rim as well. China made the first film profitable, more or less.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/chart/?view2=worldwide&yr=2018&p=.htm

Interesting that Infinity war made a lot more internationally as a proportion of the total gross than Black Panther did.  Ready Player One did way better overseas it looks like.  I never would have guessed that.

At the rate it's declining, Infinity War might not beat Black Panther domestically.

[Vin]

12 minutes ago, Yukle said:

Hard to see why, given all they do is blow up Chinese cities.  

I think they just really like special effects and big stunts in general . They're Michael Bay's spiritual homeland. 

[Darth Richard II]

37 minutes ago, كالدب said:

Not really. Transformers does better overseas. Marvel is pretty close to 50/50. I think Resident Evil oddly does well overseas.

The real difference is that when Star Wars came out the international arket was maybe 10-20% of overall sales; now it's closer to 50-60%. 

The OT was never even released in China. Don’t know about the prequels.

[Kalbear]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

The OT was never even released in China. Don’t know about the prequels.

Right. Back then the international market was primarily England, other English-speaking countries, and a few other European places that specialized in English movies. I'm not sure in 1977 if movies were even allowed to be seen regularly. 

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

34 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I think there are many many factors involved, but I would say the biggest one was the marketing.

I don't know if it was the biggest but it definitely hurt.  The first teaser they ran was the 30 second Super Bowl ad in February.  If you're doing a spring release you really should have a teaser out by Thanksgiving and a full trailer in time for Christmas. Instead there was endless gossip about the Lord and Miller situation. Not ideal.

[RumHam]

4 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

The OT was never even released in China. Don’t know about the prequels.

The prequels were. According to box office mojo Phantom Menace made just over $4 mil. There were also the bootleg versions with the hilariously bad English sub titles. (DO NOT WANT., etc. )

[Cas Stark]

11 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

The OT was never even released in China. Don’t know about the prequels.

Not even the redone versions from the 90s?

[Darth Richard II]

8 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The prequels were. According to box office mojo Phantom Menace made just over $4 mil. There were also the bootleg versions with the hilariously bad English sub titles. (DO NOT WANT., etc. )

Oh god, yeah, I remember that now.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

35 minutes ago, RumHam said:

The prequels were. According to box office mojo Phantom Menace made just over $4 mil. There were also the bootleg versions with the hilariously bad English sub titles. (DO NOT WANT., etc. )

Wasn't The Phantom Menace one to the first western films to get an official release in China?  I think the international film market there was virtually non existent 20 years ago.

[Werthead]

I've revised my figures from earlier. Since 2012 Lucasfilm has made $4.3 billion in pure profit for Disney, and that is hugely conservative (especially on the video game and toy side of things, and even more on the DVD and streaming sales). It may be a lot closer to, or even in excess of, $5 billion.

A key factor in that which I didn't take into account previously was ILM. Industrial Light and Magic remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lucasfilm, so Disney got it with Lucasfilm and it remains in operation under the Lucasfilm banner, so any profits it makes goes through Lucasfilm. That's bananas, Disney would have probably paid $5 billion for ILM by itself. ILM is the biggest vfx company in the world. Given it apparently made $180 million a year in 1997 (!), it easily makes $200 million a year now (probably between two and three times that). Times that by 5 (for 2013-2017) and you have another billion right there. That's not even counting the cost savings Disney have made from buying-in ILM's services as a contractor (as they did before 2012) to using them as an in-house team on all of the MCU movies and their live-action cartoon stuff.

[Jaxom 1974]

3 hours ago, sperry said:

That would be an argument, if we were talking absolutes. But we are talking percentage drops, which accounts for that fact.

Wait. I thought only Sith dealt in absolutes...

[RumHam]

2 hours ago, Cas Stark said:

Not even the redone versions from the 90s?

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2015/06/star-wars-china-premiere

[mcbigski]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I've revised my figures from earlier. Since 2012 Lucasfilm has made $4.3 billion in pure profit for Disney, and that is hugely conservative (especially on the video game and toy side of things, and even more on the DVD and streaming sales). It may be a lot closer to, or even in excess of, $5 billion.

A key factor in that which I didn't take into account previously was ILM. Industrial Light and Magic remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lucasfilm, so Disney got it with Lucasfilm and it remains in operation under the Lucasfilm banner, so any profits it makes goes through Lucasfilm. That's bananas, Disney would have probably paid $5 billion for ILM by itself. ILM is the biggest vfx company in the world. Given it apparently made $180 million a year in 1997 (!), it easily makes $200 million a year now (probably between two and three times that). Times that by 5 (for 2013-2017) and you have another billion right there. That's not even counting the cost savings Disney have made from buying-in ILM's services as a contractor (as they did before 2012) to using them as an in-house team on all of the MCU movies and their live-action cartoon stuff.

Is that a reasonable extrapolation?  CGI has gotten a lot cheaper over the years.  Past a certain point there were a lot lower barriers to entry for competition.  Maybe a level assumption is reasonable but id want a deeper dive on the data to say for sure.

[Yukle]

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

I've revised my figures from earlier. Since 2012 Lucasfilm has made $4.3 billion in pure profit for Disney, and that is hugely conservative (especially on the video game and toy side of things, and even more on the DVD and streaming sales). It may be a lot closer to, or even in excess of, $5 billion.

A key factor in that which I didn't take into account previously was ILM. Industrial Light and Magic remains a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lucasfilm, so Disney got it with Lucasfilm and it remains in operation under the Lucasfilm banner, so any profits it makes goes through Lucasfilm. That's bananas, Disney would have probably paid $5 billion for ILM by itself. ILM is the biggest vfx company in the world. Given it apparently made $180 million a year in 1997 (!), it easily makes $200 million a year now (probably between two and three times that). Times that by 5 (for 2013-2017) and you have another billion right there. That's not even counting the cost savings Disney have made from buying-in ILM's services as a contractor (as they did before 2012) to using them as an in-house team on all of the MCU movies and their live-action cartoon stuff.

How insane is this?!

Steve Jobs' departure from Apple left him wanting something new to do. He thought ILM's 3D animation software was interesting, so he bought it off them for $10 million in 1986. It was renamed Pixar. They've made 14 of the top 50 highest grossing films ever, and that's before including the fact they print money with their merchandising as much as Marvel and Star Wars do.

And Disney owns that company now, too.

[Yukle]

44 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Is that a reasonable extrapolation?  CGI has gotten a lot cheaper over the years.  Past a certain point there were a lot lower barriers to entry for competition.  Maybe a level assumption is reasonable but id want a deeper dive on the data to say for sure.

Yes and no. There's a lot more to effects than just CGI. Owning the hardware to run it is still astronomically expensive (rendering times for final cuts are still measured in days, for instance).

Make-up, models, miniatures, props and so on are still needed. Effects companies generally incorporate elements of costuming and props as well as just computer effects.

If you have Revenge of the Sith on DVD, watch the making of documentary Withing a Minute. It's literally the best making of I've ever seen for a film. It shows everything, from catering to direction, that goes into making one minute of film. It's surprising how little of the special effects are done on computer. Generally, real-life is both cheaper and looks more realistic.

ILM did extra CGI work on Star Wars films, as well as the Young Indiana Jones films, which Lucas produced in-house for a huge loss. But he just wanted to push the boundaries and see what was possible. He even paid twice for Jar Jar Binks (perhaps two times too many), once to do him CGI and once as a costume with motion-capture. He wanted to see which was cheaper and a better choice in the long run.

So as painful as it is, without Jar Jar there is no Gollum.

For all of the hate Lucas gets, his weakness is script-writing. But his strengths in editing and effects are outstanding.

ETA: ILM also pioneered the digital cameras which are now commonplace, allowing them to do some effects within moments of a shot, to help with early drafting.

It's true that costs have dropped, but this has led to the workload increasing. With more that can be done on computers, more is asked of them.

[Deadlines? What Deadlines?]

34 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

Is that a reasonable extrapolation?  CGI has gotten a lot cheaper over the years.  Past a certain point there were a lot lower barriers to entry for competition.  Maybe a level assumption is reasonable but id want a deeper dive on the data to say for sure.

For that you'd have to go to Disney's quarterly reports, and they don't break down fine enough to say what ILM's net contribution is to the company's earnings.  I suspect they get lumped in with everything else under "Studio activities".

I wonder how many patents Disney acquired when they bought Lucasfilm.  A company as large and innovative as ILM has to have its share of patents.  That means either they are the only ones who can do certain things or they license those things to others for a fee.  Probably doesn't generate much revenue if at all but still.