Beyond “Megaflopolis”: box office wins and losses are all about the zeitgeist

The fall box office season is a strange mess, a veritable mix of opportunistically timed horror films, Hollywood blockbusters and art festival favorites hoping to gain mainstream attention and Oscar buzz as “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” prepare to take over theaters before the holiday Thanksgiving.

Then there’s “Megalopolis,” which defies categorization, for better or for worse.

Francis Ford Coppola’s self-financed $120 million project took off as expected, grossing $4 million in domestic ticket sales and earning a brutal “D+” grade from audience polling company CinemaScore. Professional critics were very divided on this. Moviegoers were amazed by this. It was never going to be a huge commercial success.

And yet, shouldn’t we be in some sense happy that it exists?

Coppola, the creator of “The Godfather,” “Apocalypse Now” and “The Conversation,” risked his own millions to make it happen, even selling part of his wine empire to raise the money. It covered the production budget, marketing and distribution costs. Lionsgate took the reputational risk and released the game in the US for a fee and without financial risk.

Such disasters led studios to bankruptcy. In the case of “Megalopolis,” it’s hard to say who suffered from the failure beyond Coppola’s estate. Oh, and let’s not forget the marketing consultant who used artificial intelligence to generate fake quotes from real critics that ended up being used in the trailer. (Lionsgate withdrew the video and apologized for it.)

Lionsgate film chief Adam Fogelson said in an emailed statement that the studio was proud to release the film, adding that “like all true art, it will be viewed and appreciated by audiences over time.” If “Megalopolis” turns out to be remembered as a curiosity or an extremely expensive museum exhibit – true art for art’s sake – that’s fine. If future viewers find this a misunderstood gem, so much the better.

But it was just never going to hit the zeitgeist, and that’s what makes movies successful in 2024. Meanwhile, DreamWorks Animation’s “Wild Robot,” an acclaimed family film based on an illustrated children’s book, exceeded expectations with $35 million in ticket sales. from the US and Canada, a solid start for the non-sequel film and a promising sign of the animation industry’s health.

Overall domestic income figures for 2024 are still down around 11% compared to last year and significantly worse compared to pre-pandemic levels.

As ticket sales slowly improved, it became increasingly clear that a film’s success or failure was not determined by some micro-trend in audience preferences, although trying to identify them was just as fun. The point is whether the films in question refer to the current mood in culture. That’s what the game is all about right now and that’s why the business is so hard to predict.

After all, what determines the zeitgeist? Is this originality? Not necessarily. Is it animation or family appeal? NO. Are these critic reviews? Definitely not, although they don’t hurt. It’s an intangible feature. Is this marketing? Sure, a good campaign can amplify something that already has potential, but it can’t create it on its own. “Long Legs” had it. Like “Inside Out 2” and “It Ends With Us.” Good luck extracting universal conclusions from such an eclectic group of hits.

This weekend, another film will hit theaters in which we will try to capture this moment, and it will be “Joker: Folie à Deux” by Todd Phillips. Warner Bros. sequel appears five years after the original, which undoubtedly caused a cultural wave. The first “Joker” opened with $96 million domestically and grossed $1 billion worldwide. It was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture and won for acting and original score.

Analysts don’t expect the sequel, an ambitious quasi-musical starring Lady Gaga opposite Joaquin Phoenix, to reach such heights. Most forecasters are projecting a North American opening of $50-60 million based on the latest viewership research, which would be lower than previous estimates.

The previous “Joker” fit into a certain national atmosphere. It was also, in a dark and semi-substantive way, a fresh take on the origin story of supervillains. However, this is a grim series, and it’s unclear whether today’s audiences are in the mood, given the bleakness Americans are inundated with on a daily basis.

And the mood, it seems, is of great importance.

Things we wrote

Sony photos Chief Executive Officer Tony Vinciquerra will step down and be succeeded by Ravi Ahuja. Vinciquerra is credited with quietly turning over the Culver City studio and executing a profitable “arms dealer” strategy at a time when competitors are grappling with billions in streaming losses.

A judge denies the release of Hannah Gutierrez, the armorer from the disastrous movie “Rust”. In July, a judge in New Mexico reconsidered Gutierrez’s case after dismissing charges against actor and producer Alec Baldwin. Gutierrez served nearly seven months for her manslaughter conviction.

Governor Gavin Newsom will veto AI security bill that Silicon Valley opposes. Newsom rejected Senate Bill 1047, which would have imposed certain requirements on tech companies including ChatGPT maker OpenAI and Facebook parent company Meta.

We went to a gala of films produced by artificial intelligence. Here’s what we saw. Behind the scenes of the film gala held in San Francisco, during which films made using artificial intelligence were presented.

Disney+ is starting a crackdown on password sharing. What you need to know. Walt Disney Co.’s flagship streaming service. allows you to share passwords away from home. But as with Netflix, they will have to pay.

New in the news:

Brian Williams will be covering election night for Amazon
Newsmax Settles Smartmatic’s Defamation Lawsuit
Hoda Kotb will leave NBC’s “Today” early next year
Jeff Glor and three correspondents are leaving CBS News

Hollywood layoff season:

Activision Blizzard is laying off hundreds of people in SoCal
Disney lays off 300 corporate employees
Paramount begins phase two of planned cuts

Week number

The deal that has long seemed inevitable is finally taking place.

Satellite television provider DirecTV said Monday that it has signed a pact to buy longtime rival Dish Network. El Segundo-based DirecTV has agreed to pay a nominal amount of $1 (that’s not a typo) for Dish’s pay-TV business and its Sling TV streaming service, while assuming Dish’s billion-dollar debt.

The deal, if approved by regulators, would allow DirecTV to add more than 8 million Dish homes to its current subscriber base of about 10 million.

Under the agreement, Dish’s parent company, Englewood, Colo.-based EchoStar, will receive a $2.5 billion loan to help restructure its debt ahead of the upcoming repayment. Private equity firm TPG will take full control of DirecTV by purchasing AT&T’s 70% stake in payments worth a total of $7.6 billion by 2029.

With this deal, both AT&T and Charlie Ergen, the billionaire founder of EchoStar, exited the pay TV industry, a significant milestone.

The merger between Dish and DirecTV has been a long time coming. Regulators blocked an earlier attempt to merge the two companies, proposing it in 2002.

As my colleague Meg James wrote, the landscape has changed dramatically since then. Netflix, Amazon and YouTube have taken up most of viewers’ time, and both Dish and DirecTV are hemorrhaging customers, as are cable operators. Since 2016, both companies have lost over 60% of their customer base.

Film sessions

Location shooting remained steady week-over-week and increased 18% year-over-year (though the number of filming days for feature films remained low), according to FilmLA.

At last …

I haven’t read a book by Black Sabbath bassist Geezer Butler yet. But his interview with Marc Maron was extremely funny.