SydLexia.com - The Forums :: View topic - Bombed, tanked, etc., what do those even mean?

Posted: Jul 30 2009 04:13 pm

Earlier today, I looked at the 2007 box office results to see how well Death Sentence did. On the way down, I passed Aliens Vs. Predator: Requiem, which came in 64th place out of 150 that year, the lowest-grossing film between the two franchises and apparently reviled more than it's PG-13 prequel. Still, it did far better than Death Sentence, which, as it turns out, came in 149th place that year.

That's right, the movie I defended in another thread recently, the one where the theater was packed the night I saw it, was the second-lowest-grossing film of 2007. Disappointed as I was, it got me to thinking: How low a place at the box office constitutes a failure, exactly?

According to the Nostalgia Critic, Batman And Robin and Roland Emmerich's Godzilla both bombed, when, in truth, they were the twelfth- and ninth-highest-grossing films of 1997 and 1998, respectively. So if a movie doesn't make it into the year-end top 10, or even 5, does that make it a failure? If so, then a staggering amount of cinema has failed over the decades.

Chew on that.

Posted: Jul 30 2009 04:51 pm

Profit. Profit is the key for success, and Deathrace made a little bit less than double its money back. Not a rousing success but not a failure either.

This is why crap horror movies keep getting made, and why its a genre so popular with indie filmmakers; they're cheap as free to produce.

Posted: Jul 30 2009 05:44 pm

RobotGumshoe wrote:

Profit. Profit is the key for success, and Deathrace made a little bit less than double its money back. Not a rousing success but not a failure either.

This is why crap horror movies keep getting made, and why its a genre so popular with indie filmmakers; they're cheap as free to produce.

Where is Death Race coming from. Isn't Death Sentence the movie with Kevin Bacon? Can't really recall at the moment. I'd never even heard about it til I saw it for rent awhile back. That's what I consider a failure. But I definitely agree with Robot that it's all about Profit. Anything that makes any money over the budget is considered Successful in my book.

Posted: Jul 30 2009 06:13 pm

It's also not just budget that you have to take into account.

Let's say you make a film, and the budget comes in at $100 million.

You want't to place it in 3,000 Theaters in North America.

Now you have to pay for distrubution and marketing to those theaters.

Next, you have to pay for advertising. (TV Spots, Websites, Magizine & Newspaper ads, billboards, radio spots, etc.)

Now you have pay for Worldwide distrobution and advertising.

That movie that cost you $100 million to make, has now cost you a total of about $150-$160 million to release.

So, if said $100 million movie makes $140 million in theaters, you still lost money, and the movie is a bomb. Now, all you can do, is hope you can make the rest of your money back via DVD, Blu-Ray, and Pay-Per-View sales.

Posted: Jul 31 2009 03:32 am

Douche McCallister wrote:

RobotGumshoe wrote:

Profit. Profit is the key for success, and Deathrace made a little bit less than double its money back. Not a rousing success but not a failure either.

This is why crap horror movies keep getting made, and why its a genre so popular with indie filmmakers; they're cheap as free to produce.

Where is Death Race coming from. Isn't Death Sentence the movie with Kevin Bacon? Can't really recall at the moment. I'd never even heard about it til I saw it for rent awhile back. That's what I consider a failure. But I definitely agree with Robot that it's all about Profit. Anything that makes any money over the budget is considered Successful in my book.

Disregard that I suck cocks. My mind read death race instead of death sentence for some reason, maybe cause I'm not a big Kevin Bacon fan but a enthusiastic Jason Statham fan (not enough to see some of the crap movies he was the best one in but still).

In any case, I looked it up and Batman and Robin at least included the marketing campaign into their budget of 140 million, still managing to make a profit. It was however a critical bomb and killed the license for years. Theres also no standards for what a cinema bomb would entail, so there is that.

Joined: Dec 06 2007 Location: Connecticut Posts: 11244

Knyte I thought all of that was part of the budget.

However, the bottom line isn't really what determines how a movie did.

Hype vs Reality counts for a lot. The Matrix movies all did well, yet when they were current I used to hear that they bombed or tanked. There is some subjective measure... except for Water World. That was just a waste of money.

Posted: Jul 31 2009 10:58 am

i always thought tanked meant you were drunk as hell

Joined: Sep 17 2007 Location: The Opium Trail Posts: 3475

anybody who thinks Batman & Robin bombed is a fucking retard. It might not have been a great movie, but it was the highest grossing Batman movie up to that point.

Posted: Aug 02 2009 07:30 pm

Gross profit is irrelevant; it's all about net. That's why Waterworld bombed. Waterworld actually grossed a decent amount of money, but Kevin Costner got the studio to invest an excessive amount of money in the film so that he could shoot it on-location, when it should have been done in a soundstage. The studio never made their money back, and Costner's career never recovered. Another movie that had similar problems was Cutthroat Island. Although not as famous as Waterworld, direct Renny Harlin's spending was even more wasteful. The movie starred his then-wife Geena Davis, and was shot on-location. The couple had all sorts of catered food flown into them during filming, and they bought an entire truck full of bottled water that they never came close to finishing. They left it behind when filming wrapped.

Joined: Dec 06 2007 Location: Connecticut Posts: 11244

I always wondered... why wasn't the number of tickets/showings and the number of DVDs/VHS added together to become the measurement of a movie's success?

As inflation increases movie costs keep going up, so it is hard to measure how well movies did compared to each other unless they were out in the same year or season. Even then, some movies do very well on DVD but suck in the theater.

I just think that it would be a more meaningful number if we just saw the total number of sales.

Posted: Aug 03 2009 08:00 am

If a movie does poorly in theaters, but becomes popular in home sales and rentals, it's considered a cult classic.

Between home sales, the American box office, and international distribution, it is damn near impossible for a movie to lose money. A bomb is any mainstream Hollywood movie that receives negative reviews from major critics and takes in poor or tepid money at the box office. Budget is also a factor. If a film costs 20 million to make and nets 11 million in profits, it's a success. If a film costs 200 million to make and nets 11 million, it's a bomb.