I don't understand Laika, at all.
How do you spend $100m on a stop motion film?
It looks like Phil/Travis Knight are what the wrestling business calls money marks: People who love the industry thus will pump money in without any real plan.
How do you spend $100m on a stop motion film?
It looks like Phil/Travis Knight are what the wrestling business calls money marks: People who love the industry thus will pump money in without any real plan.
Or do you not understand why people would fund $100m into a stop motion film?
Probably because the financiers view stop-motion as an art worth funding. Art shouldn't need to come with financial gains to raise funding.
If you're going to go into business, go into business.
If you're going to run a charity, run a charity.
When you think you're doing one, but actually doing the other, you're going to have a bad time.
Son's rap career - which daddy finances, including putting him up for an extended period in a Manhattan penthouse - flops.
Daddy convinces animation company that he's an investor in to hire son as an intern.
Company continues to struggle, daddy invests more and becomes controlling shareholder.
Son promoted to board of directors, despite having no management experience at all.
Son promoted to vice president.
Layoffs.
First major film release, middling at best financial results. Maybe broken even with home video sales.
Second major film release, makes less money, almost certainly lost money overall.
Third film, ditto.
Son promoted to president and CEO, also given board seat at Nike
Releases 4th film, son's directorial debut. Bombs. Likely loses ~$60-70 million dollars
Releases 5th film, massive bomb, likely loses at least $150m, possibly $200m.
Son still president and CEO. Other executives fired.
Maybe he's a lousy CEO. Maybe somebody else needs to come in and say, "Look, you people keep thinking of these films as art but the market wants Minions, so you'd better dumb this stuff down, pronto." Maybe that'd work. But I honestly think it's a shame that Laika isn't doing better.
Is it hard to understand considering previous films of theirs pulled in more than $100m at the box office?
None of their prior movies made money according to standard box office accounting, which requires a box office take of 2.5x the budget.
This is because budgets don't include advertising spending, and also the film companies actually only receive about 60-70 cents on the dollar of ticket sales.
The closest any of them came was Coraline, a 2.07x multiple. None of the rest even cleared 2x. Kubo barely even covered the actual budget.
It's like the dotcom boom era when companies were selling a $10 bag of dogfood for $7.
You don't get to keep making movies if they lose money. Laikas movies have done well, even if you don't want that to be true.
Nobody is going out to see a stop motion film because Hugh Jackman or Charlize Theron is in it, but someone got convinced of that somewhere along the line.
Celebrities buy you publicity and brand in a way that is hard to replicate elsewhere.
Disney's old plan was to hire past their prime actors. Starting around the 90s when Robin Williams did well for Aladdin, they started courting celebrities who are parents and want to make movies their kids can watch. Also, voice work is considered "easy" (voice actors will fight that connotation). No odd call times, make up, wardrobe, or flying to locations and staying in a hotel (Shrek had Mike Myers record some last-minute dialog inside a limo).
And some of them were exceptionally talented, like Robin Williams or Michael Meyers. Others, like Eddie Murphy, Gilbert Gottfried, Cameron Diaz - they were hired for their voice and their name on the billing. And it worked, it still works, and major productions today don't throw $100 million at a project without stars attached. That'd be crazy.
At least in Germany, animated movies are rarely advertised as "featuring X" whereas in the U.S. I saw the names of the voices in advertisements.
Just picking big name actors for a cartoon won't really do much. Everybody knows Tom Cruise by his performances on screen, but people probably won't be throwing down $15 to hear him as a talking donkey like they would with Eddie Murphy.
I couldn't care less who voiced the Spanish version of the genie, and animated movies are huge internationally.
Fantastic Mr. Fox was made for $40m and had AT LEAST the calibre of cast that any of the Laika films have had.
Lots of good films are made for less money, and lots of bad films are made for more money. Many many movies lose money. That’s the reality of movie making, it’s risky. Many many businesses lose money, those are also risky. That’s the extent of what you’re arguing here. If you really want to understand how easy it is to spend a lot of money and lose it, all you need to do is make a movie or start your own company, and witness first hand how good ideas and business plans that seem strong at the time fail to make returns.
It’s not weird or hard to understand when big projects lose money. It’s weird when they make money.