Corona | Coming Attractions

Ugh.

Man of Steel didn't make near as much money as they were hoping, so they decided a straight sequel wasn't the route to go. They thought it over for a bit, and someone said, "Let's toss Batman in the next one. Batman usually makes us money." Boom.  

The thing that annoys me most is that it's supposed to borrow heavily from Dark Knight Returns. Dark Knight Rises also borrowed heavily from Dark Knight Returns, and they just released a two-part animated version of Dark Knight Returns. What does this mean? It means we'll probably never get a Dark Knight Returns movie. Maybe it's for the best. I'm sure I'd just wind up bitching about the screenwriter and director.

So this is basically a sequel to The Dark Knight Rises, officially completing The Dark Knight Returns live adaptation.

 MoS still made going on $700m (and counting) and was already on its way to profit before release..... plus DVD and BluRay, PPV and other TV rights to go.  If that's a flop, give me a flop!

Supes isn't even full-on Supes yet.  His relationship with Lois just started, Clark just got the job at the Planet.  No sign of Luther yet.  An interesting angle re: this Krytonian Codec is yet to be explored.  Seems to me that they are missing an opportunity rather than creating one.

 I have just had a horrific thought.

Bruce Wayne's parents are killed, as per usual, however he decides to don a costume and become a crime-fighter following the example set by Superman in Metropolis.  They wouldn't......... would they??

I didn't say it was a flop. I said it underperformed/didn't make near as much as they were hoping it would.

The budget was $225 million. Again, these sorts of movies really need to triple their budget before they're considered genuinely profitable. Holding to this, Man of Steel needs to make $675 million. 

Saying Man of Steel "made going on $700m (and counting)" is a bit of a misrepresentation. So far, the worldwide take for it is only $635 million. In other words, as far as the studio is concerned, it's only edging toward breaking even for them. And don't forget that the production budget doesn't cover distribution and advertising and other post-production costs.

It dropped out of the top ten this week, and it only made seven million last week. It's also down to only 1,050 screens, which means the next screen cut (probably this weekend) will almost certainly take it out of wide release. (1,000 screens or more are needed for a movie to be in what's considered "wide release.")

It will be lucky to make another $15 million domestically. If it doubles that overseas, that gives it another $45 million to add to the $635 million it has already made. If it manages this, the final total will be somewhere around $680 million. The money men would consider this a pretty narrow profit. If it doesn't manage to hit $675 million--and there's a good chance it won't--they won't consider it profitable.

They will look forward to the DVD and on-line sells and hope, but they almost never wait until video sales are in before they decide if there will be a sequel and how they're going to go about it. If the video sales turn out to be out-of-this-world good, it won't matter, because they've already decided on a Bats/Supes movie, and it will already be deep into production. In this case, if you'd wanted a standalone Supes movie, it almost would have been better if the movie had tanked in theaters and done fantastic business on video. Instead, it did decent-but-not-great business in theaters. 

Daltons chin dimple wrote:

Supes isn't even full-on Supes yet.  His relationship with Lois just started, Clark just got the job at the Planet.  No sign of Luther yet.  An interesting angle re: this Krytonian Codec is yet to be explored.  Seems to me that they are missing an opportunity rather than creating one.

They took a gamble. Didn't pay off. They could have made Supes full-on Supes if they had wanted. No one comes away from the '78 Superman thinking he's not full-on Supes, even if it is an origin story. Instead of making him the fully developed Supes, they tried to follow in the footsteps of Craig's Casino Royale. Doing so revitalized the series and did great business for Bond. Didn't do it for Supes.

So they bring in Batman. Pretty lazy, true, but money making is more important to the money men than world building. They only make world building seem important to them when it turns out to be lucrative. Disney has successfully made it seem like world building is important to them where Marvel is concerned because world building has made them a shitload of money.

They kept the costs controlled a bit in their Marvel World, and made it clear they were building to The Avengers from v. early.

The more I think about it, the more genius the Marvel approach seems, from a business p.o.v.

MoS was already some $175m banked against its budget from commercial tie-ups.  Plus the triple budget calculation assumes all costs are 'sunk costs' and I also do not believe the marketing figures tha get banded around these days for all movies are either a) accurate or b) accounted for as additional to production costs.

In short, I think if the commercials were as cut and dried as all us non-industry commentators usually make out, then nobody would ever make movies as there are easier ways to make money.

If Man of Steel had been as profitable as they had hoped it would be, you'd be getting your straight sequel next. It wasn't, so you won't. Sorry.

Resorting to using Batman for a sort-of-but-not-exactly sequel--especially when it was common knowledge that they were developing a straight sequel--is an obvious Hail Mary pass. (Is that a complete Americanism? If it is, and if it's an Americanism with which you aren't familiar, here's a link.)

There's never been a feature film version of Supes and Bats.  it seems like something a lot of people have wanted to see for a long time, including myself.

I hope they put Batman in a Batman suit that actually looks like a Batman suit.

Fat chance.

I hope they spend an hour on how Bruce Wayne's parents got shot and how it turned him in to Batman.

 So Supes Returns seemed to be highly anticipated, got great reviews and did nothing like the business they expected.

And then MoS was massively hyped, got the suits all kind of excited, and apparently didn't live up to expectations.

Does this mean that there just isn't the market they think there is for a cinematic Superman?

I think so. Maybe. Maybe it'll change in time.

It kinda blows, since he's the original. It's a different world, I guess.

I've heard a lot of people say he's not as interesting a character as X hero, but I've always thought he was pretty interesting. They'll say he's not interesting because blahblah, and I'll counter by saying they're oversimplifying and will provide things about him that I find interesting, and they'll counter my counter with "But still!"

 I still think MoS left this cinematic version of Supes with some really interesting places to go.

He carries in him the complete genetic code for the entire Kryptonian race, meaning all sorts of extraterrestrial threats who may have beef with Krypton, or reason to want to code, could come looking.

Also, as nobody ever stays dead in comic books, and everyone on Krypton in this version was engineered, coded, if you will, then somewhere in side him is the code to resurrect Zod sometime with some fancy off-world genetic engineering technology.

There is still a lot of the aftermath of the world dealing with his existence to cover.  Some still fear him.

 Then on the more human side of things, explore the whole Lois knowing angle of her relationship with Clark.  She places herself in increasingly dangerous situations to get her stories as a reporter, maybe becoming a little too blasé because her super-powered boyfriend will be there to save her, but he can't be everywhere at one, and it can create tension between them.

 And address the whole massive destruction in Metropolis thing.

City industrialist, power figure and favourite son, Lex Luthor, has contributed billions to the rebuilding effort whilst bolstering his political influence in the process.  On the face of it he publicly, but cautiously, supports Supes for political reasons.  Underneath, he has his agenda.

And the destruction following the Zod battle is fuel to the anti-Supes camp in general.

The government and the military, meanwhile, continue to play both sides of the fence.

 Well, I think it's potentially interesting, and a shame to dilute it with needless Bat-shaped distractions.

But still!

Daltons chin dimple wrote:

City industrialist, power figure and favourite son, Lex Luthor, has contributed billions to the rebuilding effort whilst bolstering his political influence in the process.  On the face of it he publicly, but cautiously, supports Supes for political reasons.  Underneath, he has his agenda.

The first part of that is a logical next step. The second part isn't bad, but I think the first part offers us a good setup for introducing Brainiac. It would also help us get away from using Luthor, yet again, as the central villain. If all of rebuilt Metropolis is rebuilt with LutherCorp parts, the city itself is vulnerable to Brainiac. And if Brainiac is going to take over a human, why not go for the smartest guy around? He's taken Luthor over in the comics, after all.

We get to keep Luthor in the movie, which the money men would be sure to support, but it's understood that Brainiac is the villain and Luthor is the sock puppet.

Once the Brainiac threat is neutralized, you have a nice setup for a sequel where Luthor *is* the main villian, but he finally has a new set of motivations that he never had in the cinematic Superman universe. He feels violated and humiliated by alien tech, and Supes is the only alien around for him to vent at. Also, maybe he was psych-linked with Brainiac and some of Brainiac's resentment toward Supes infected him during the linkup and lingers after its severance.

And of course there's that old saw of a plot line where Luthor-the-man feels he has to take on Supes-the-god to establish human tenacity and intellect as a superior force. (Thanks for appointing yourself our champion yet again, Lex!) It looks like they'll be using Batman to that end this time around, though.

Don't bet on this being even a sort-of sequel to Man of Steel. There's no fucking chance they'll put Batman in this movie and make him second fiddle to Supes. Batman's top cinematic dog by a big margin. At best, it'll be half Supes and half Bats. That said, don't be surprised if it winds up more Bats than Supes.

They tried to make MoS gritty. How do you make it grittier? Add Batman!

I can't wait for Justice League. It's got Batman in it too. It's gonna be SOOOOO gritty!

 What Goits said.  Doesn't need Bats.  Simple, elegant, interesting and sets MoS3 up nicely.

Fuck this shit, we should run Hollywood.

 LexCorp tech is the city wide super fast broadband, post Zod-Supes destruction.  It's the intel system the police use, the wired security systems, the air-traffic control op system at Metropolis International etc. etc.

Braniac is some kind of AI construct of that fancy Kryptonian computer system controlled by those keys in the first movie and its programming is to seize control to assist the establishment of a new Kryptonian colony (as per all that colonial stuff in the first film and fitting with Zod's MO).

Still no need for Bats.  Unless he is the only person who can stop a Braniac 'possessed' Supes at some point?

Something tells me the direction Goyer would have gone if Man of Steel had made more money would have been less interesting than the setup we just crapped out.

 They already had the seeds for Braniac in that fancy shape-shifting screen stuff they showed lots of on Krypton, and the super aggressive defence systems in the Kryptonian scout ship.

Its not too much of a leap.

Gritty, Motherfuckers!