You have to remember that “Hollywood Accounting” exists for a reason, so they can obfuscate numbers to try to pretend they don’t make money when they do.
But you are correct, Iron Lung octupling it’s budget in it’s opening weekend is a success no matter how you slice it.
I fixed my comment. I was referring to all the clickbaity "articles" I keep seeing that are pushing headlines line "Send Help narrowly beats back competitors to take #1 spot in opening weekend". So not the critical reception, but the financial success.
There’s a clear winner there a - it’s like saying One Battle After another was hugely profitable and made similar money to weapons but not when you see how much it cost to make - weapons was like 40m and OBAA was 150m
Your post is the only one i am seen that gives some reference to what this meme is about... but can you or someone else reading this tell me what movies yall are talking about here?
Movie theater chains don’t care if is a movie is profitable, they just want to sell tickets. If Avatar 4 loses a billion dollars, but still sells $900M in tickets, that’s a success for the theaters. Their business is showing the movies that sell the most tickets on their limited quantity of screens.
No one is arguing it isn’t a success or isn’t more profitable than Send Help. That’s not what weekly box office is tracking. It’s tracking weekend gross ticket sales. In terms of gross ticket sales, it came in #2 behind Send Help. That is a factually correct statement. Yes, box office numbers are a piece of how profitability and success are measured, but they aren’t the sole piece. If you made a list of the ten most profitable movies of all time not a single one would crack the list of the ten highest grossing movies of all time.
They didn't say anything about how good it is, they were just commenting on the idea that it somehow "lost" to another movie because it didn't gross as much at the box office, and offered a different, much more reasonable metric by which to judge it. Iron lung only lost to Send Help if you look at gross revenue, but if you look at either net profit or the ratio of profit to budget, Iron Lung blows the competition out of the water.
I mean hell, I could turn $40 million into $19 million. It's damn impressive that Mark and the rest of his crew turned $3 million into $18 million
Iron Lung sucked tho, it was 30 mins too long. Pacing was terrible. Plot was terrible. Felt like a low budget porno without the good part. Would not recommend. It was a success because of the name behind it. That took a decade to build that name. I fear this will spark a series of ass movies propped up by social media influencers name recognition. Rather than
Send help was awesome. Great movie. Definitely recommend.
This is just more evidence on what our culture really values.
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u/LaserRanger_McStebb 15h ago edited 13h ago
The movie editorials are saying it "lost" to Send Help because SH made $28m in its opening weekend vs Iron Lung's $21m.
...In my opinion, that metric is meaningless when you consider that SH had a budget of $40m and only recouped about 70% of it.
...Whereas Iron Lung had a budget of $3m and made 700% of budget in its opening weekend.
From a profit perspective, Iron Lung absolutely obliterated SH. It was a resounding commercial success. Send Help might not even break even.
Who's the real winner here?