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Considering by your post, you don't understand why Captain Marvel is likely to be a disaster, I'll help you out. After 20 years of them trying to shove her into some type of hero-type body-of-situation, and it failing every time. They then made a movie, where the lead actor proceeded to pull an EA. In EA's case, that was a bold movie...and they seem to be having one hell of a run with commercial failures these days. ME:A, BFV, Anthem(it's already 50% off in some stores). Do you understand now, or would you like me to draw you a picture?

I'm reading the reports now:

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/...
[Captain Marvel] delivered the franchise's seventh largest opening weekend of all time while grossing more over its first three days than the combined totals of any previous three-day weekend so far this year...
Captain Marvel proved a massive success...
Historically, the performance ranks among openings that include The Dark Knight ($158.4m opening), The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($158m opening), Rogue One ($155m opening) and The Hunger Games ($152.5m opening), the four of which representing a total domestic gross ranging from $408-530+ million...
Internationally, Captain Marvel delivered an estimated $302 million, making it the fifth highest international opening weekend of all-time and the sixth largest worldwide debut ever...

Your prediction of Captain Marvel likely being a disaster was enormously off the mark. I wonder what you think about that?

How To Make More Cash From One Game Than 10 James Bond Films

Back your claim up with numbers, adjusted for inflation. Note that the source is Bloomberg, who recently released the Chinese motherboard chip hack article.

The top 10 James Bond films, adjusted, got about 3.6 billion domestically combined. While the big boy Skyfall brought in $1.1 billion worldwide, it cost $200 million to make, at LEAST $200 million to advertise, and the studio gets only a small fraction of the ticket sales. Remember, it's not (1100 - 200 - 200) * percentage, it's 1100 * percentage - 200 - 200.

While the percentage take on ticket sales is larger in the foreign box office, that's changing. And the foreign box office is only really relevant for the newer films - the ones with the massive production budgets and marketing spends.

https://www.boxofficemojo.com/...

Meanwhile, Pokemon GO has pulled in over $2 billion, almost all of it profit. Take away the 30% Google/Apple tax and you're still at $1.4 billion. Development and running costs are another 2 significant figures away.

You mean the Solo movie that has been released for at most 3 months and even less in world, but which has already racked up $213,588,649(us domestic) + $179,081,082 (foreign) = $392,669,731(total) in that 2-3 month span? That gives it $1.57 billion - $2.36 billion depending on how you want to weight the months and portion of the year completed since its release so far. Estimates and all it will probably be less than 2.36 billion total but very likely to break 1.5 billion. Rather than a failure, again, the available evidence puts it at the same level of success at the other new releases. This is just good business.

You can just tell us three.

Oh, I think I know this one. We can start with Michael Bay, Uwe Boll, and Jason Friedberg.

Because, can you honestly find any other reason they were ever (and at least one case, still is) allowed to direct movies?

Michael Bay has made studios a lot of money. That's what keeps the wheels moving, not maleness, staleness, or paleness.

Michael Bay has made studios a lot of money. That's what keeps the wheels moving, not maleness, staleness, or paleness.

Actually, I think it's more accurate to say Michael Bay has not lost as much money for the studios as he could have. In theory, those movies could have been worse. I'm not sure exactly how, but Uwe Boll certainly could have found a way to actually lose money on them. The problem, for me, is that Bay's movies are entirely underwhelming. They're not even good blockbusters, they're just explosion filled garbage. Which I find sad, because I usually like explosion filled movies. Bay, however, is frittering away the good will of the brands that he's trampling with incoherent plots and incomprehensible action scenes. Take a look at the Transformers movies' box office, for example, the first three each made more than the last two combined. As Bay is allowed more latitude, his movies get progressively worse.

Bay can only coast on nostalgia and expensive explosions for so long... But you can't argue that Bay is definitely male, stale, and pale, although I would argue that the stale part is the biggest problem.

If you look at the inflation adjusted grosses here

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/f...

You see

Star Wars
Star Wars: The Force Awakens
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Return of the Jedi
The Empire Strikes Back
Star Wars: The Last Jedi
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones

So the first film made a tonne of cash, then you see the first films of the reboot and first film of the prequels, then the sequels to the original, then the sequels to the reboot, then the sequels to the prequels.

What's probably happening here is that if you reboot something people remember from their childhood they'll go along to see if its any good. Once they realise it isn't they'll just wait for the next reboot.

Solo : A Star Wars story will be fairly fair down in that list I predict, somewhere beneath Rogue One and Attack of the Clones. Same with Episode 9.

Of course all these films are still profitable which means they'll keep making more of them. However it looks like a clear case of diminishing returns. Mind you a reboot would help - look at how Star Wars: The Force Awakens did much better than the last two prequels.

It sounds like Rian Johnson DID make what he wanted. If you don't like it, don't watch it.

Many people didn't

Industry insiders leaked to the press. Go look on youtube, there are plenty of videos with cites to all this info

Youtube is not a great source of news, os I'm not going to wade through hours of nutcases ranting in order to possibly find a kernel of truth that i then have to verify by other means anyway.

Angry neck beards? Have you even glanced at the angry youtube videos?

No. First, I get my daily dose of stupid right here; I don't need another source. Second youtubers are about 0.01% of the actual star wars fans who are again about 0.01% of the people actually going to see the film.

Oh.. and it looks like the entire nation of china where they just canceled 92% of the planned showings.

Interestingly, none of the people you mentioned being offended were Chinese. China hasn't exactly ever been a hotbed of Starwars fans given the first 6 were never even released in the cinemas there.

I can accept and respect that a bit less than half of the fans didn't hate the movie. And probably about a fourth of fans like it for various reasons. Enough to see it 2 or 3 times but that's about it. They'll go see IX too.

Both me and my partner have seen it more than once and we'll certainly go and see the last installment too.

But disney isn't going to get the same sweet deal for the next film after theaters lost so much money on this one. Box office plunged and by the time the 4 week period ended and theaters started getting a share of the box office- 90% of the expected gross of the film had been collected.

Maybe some disappointment, but it's currently the third highest grossing Disney have ever made.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/s...

And if you look at the figures, it's likely to make it within a hair of the second, but not quite get there. Not bad at all.

Disney expected this to be in the 57% of sequels which make more money than the immediately prior film in the series.

Sequels tend to make more than the FIRST film in the series, not more than the 7th film in the series.

If the film hadn't been a horror show

It wasn't.

and an insult to the fan base,

It wasn't that either. Some fans were offended, some liked it. The most neckbeardy who have read all the books and have "invested" in model lightsabres probably were.

What can you say about a film that kills an entire galaxy of people and leaves less than a dozen characters alive- one of whom the actress in real life is now dead?

The film was overall good (with some flaws) and WTF? Do you think an angry fan assassinated Carrie Fisher because of the film or something? What? How is that at all relevant to this discussion or the fault of Disney?

Last Jedi has grossed ~$360m at this point, $220m opening weekend so 140 since then. i.e. ticket sales are decelerating so fast they might not even hit $500m. This has been a flop, financially.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/w...

Wreck-It Ralph was Disney, not Pixar. It was a success but not a blockbuster: $189 million gross domestic, $471 million worldwide, with a $165 million production budget. Source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m...

Based upon what I've read on sites like http://www.the-numbers.com/ and http://www.boxofficemojo.com/ everything he/she wrote was correct

Edge of Tomorrow came out in 2014, a scant 3 years ago.

Interstellar came out in 2014, a scant 3 years ago.

Looper came out in 2012. It wasn't as big as the other ones I've mentioned, but its box office returns were 6x its production budget (which is much better than some of the bigger names above).

Gravity, 2013, might be argued to not be sci-fi but science fact, but presuming we can reasonably call it Sci fi, it did pretty well, bringing in about $723M in revenues.

Inception, 2011, made approximately 5.5x its budget and brought in around $826M, which is successful by most people's account

District 9, 2009, brought in only around $210M, but only cost around $30M or so, so a 7x multiplier, and hugely popular

(all numbers courtesy of http://www.boxofficemojo.com/)

Now, it's likely -- this being Slashdot -- that someone will argue that some/all of these movies aren't good, or particularly original. That's fine. The original claim was "no successful Sci-fi movies in the last decade who aren't remakes, [s|pr]equel, or spin-offs. None of these movies are that.

They "think they have a franchise" based on an Emoji Movie. Jesus.

Sounds goofy to me too, but Angry Birds was a smash hit for them (definitely their biggest of the year):
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/y...

$349.8M The Angry Birds Movie
$239.1M Passengers (2016)
$229.1M Ghostbusters (2016)
$220.0M Inferno
$160.4M The Magnificent Seven (2016)
$140.7M Sausage Party
$119.1M The Shallows
$109.9M The 5th Wave
$46.1M Risen
$25.2M The Brothers Grimsby

It clobbered Ghostbusters (and Passengers) with less than half the budget (maybe worse after you account for marketing). The execs may not understand how horribly Ghostbusters was marketed (by openly trashing the fans), so they may well come to the conclusion (because they do understand profit loud and clear) that silly interweb franchises are way more valuable to them than beloved classic franchises (or original stories).

The box office is up only because the average ticket price continues to rise. Both because of inflation, and because an increasing percentage of total ticket sales are for premium theaters. The number of tickets being sold has been falling for a number of years; after the peak year of 2002 there was a big dropoff in 2005 and a slow decline since. (But not steady; years go up and down a bit.) Source: https://www.statista.com/stati...

2002 featured movies in three of the biggest franchises ever: Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter. But the #1 film in the US wasn't any of those; it was Spider-Man. My Big Fat Greek Wedding was fifth. LOTR: The Two Towers was #1 globally. Source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/y...

So if the majority of the population believed that the Earth is flat, does that make it so?

Strawman #1

A phone will never be the equivalent of a desktop PC.

Strawman #2

And if people cared so little about games, then why is the PC gaming industry so huge as to dwarf the console game industry, the movie industry and the music industry?

You should stop reading Gartner. US PC video game revenue is roughly 650M Movie revenue topped 11B Not sure what your definition of "dwarf" is.

I don't even know what the fuck the problem was. If you don't want to go see the Ghostbusters reboot, don't go see it.

Men ARE from Mars.

And if you say you don't want to watch a Ghostbusters rema...rebo... restar... cynical cash grab then you are a sexist mysoginist buthurt baby child(?) salty regressive trans-hater.

You must also be one of those men (i.e. THE men) who sabotage female shows on imdb.
We know that cause you are pretending to ignore that "'The Angry Video Game Nerd,' a misogynistic web show whose sycophantic Wikipedia entry made me pine for hemlock in my coffee" even exists.
When it was after all, right there in the article featured right here.

BTW, all that was even before the movie which was promoted like this came out to fantastic reviews which keep talking about women and naysayers and ruined bro childhoods of little boys - and to a disaster at the box office.
Then again, The Nice Guys also had FANTASTIC reviews and yet it flopped... but the tone of the reviews is markedly different.

Now, take all that happening before the Twitter controversy and consider if there is perhaps a chance that the entire thing was blown out of proportion on purpose?
By a company known for faking reviews for marketing purposes.

With rating movies statistically there are a number of methods:

- Box office takings, such as Box Office Mojo

- DVD and Video sales

- Movie audience figures (when broadcast on television or similar)

- Industry awards, such as the Academy Awards or the Baftas

- Ratings from critics, such as Rotten Tomatoes or Metacritic - Ratings from general users, such as IMDB

- and finally, "Best of" listings voted on by critics or interest groups.

I include the last not because it is really a very good statistical comparison as compared to any of the other methods, but because it is the only one analogous to the sorts of lists being considered in the Worlds Without End rankings.

To get a good statistical ranking for books or movies we need to get a comprehensive set of data that covers all (or most) of the entries, and which applies the same rankings to each. None of the rankings for Movies which I have listed really does that, but some do better than others in some ways at least. For example, ticket and unit sales cover all movies, though they have the problem that the number of people going to movies, and the price they pay per ticket, have increased over time so that the ranking metric isn't the same for all movies. It also has the disadvantage that ticket sales are not necessarily related to how good a movie is. Industry awards can probably be assumed to cover all movies released in a given year and therefore cover the whole population, but have the problem that the award givers may not cover all entries equally, and may be subject to bias. Critical judgement, whether from professional critics or members of the public, also have the problem of coverage - I personally cannot expect to be able to see every movie made, and the ones I do see will be affected by by things like advertising budgets which are not necessarily related to how good the movie actually is.

With books we do have some similar data sets. Figures for number of books printed, or sales on the likes of Amazon can be compiled, though these have the same problem of not being related to quality. I don't know of any compilation sites for professional book critics (anybody?), but there are sites such as Goodreads where members of the public can give their subjective rankings. Industry awards also exist, such as the Hugo or Nebula awards, but these have the disadvantage of being subject to politics (*cough* Puppies vs SJW anyone?). Finally, there are "Best of" lists, such as the ones cited by Worlds Without End.

Books have a problem compared to movies in that far more books get published than movies get made. While a good critic can expect to see all the movies that come out in a year (at least all those released theatrically), reading every book that is published is impossible. This eats into the quality of critical rankings out there, or even into Industry awards. Any "Best of the Year" list can't really hope to be definitive, because a book - especially a ground breaking, iconoclastic new classic - will take time to find a wide audience and be widely recognised.

For my money, I think the likes of Goodreads are probably the best bet as an objective, comprehensive and timely statistical source for

well, Gore's documentary grossed half a billion (that's BILLION with a "B") Dollars in the US in its first eighteen weeks.

Box Office Mojo lists the worldwide gross as $49,756,507. The imdb numbers are cumulative, not weekly. Not adjusting for inflation, a half billion dollar box office performance would put you in the #7 all time spot between The Dark Knight and The Phantom Menace.
Source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m...

It was a financial success in the same way that getting a "C+" grade is an academic success: sure, you passed, but...

"This was a moderate hit, and while it make back its investment with a profit, all accounts speak of the studio being disappoint[ed], and cancelling any hopes of a sequel, if there was a story to follow." http://futurewarstories.blogsp...

Context for box office revenues of other movies released that year: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/y... It came in between Neverending Story and the first Terminator movie, but did a hell of a lot worse than Ghostbusters, Gremlins, etc.

Here's another movie that was said to be a disappointment in its first weekend US domestic box office and that never reached number one in that market. But it did fine overall, helped considerably I suspect because it managed $121+ million USD in China. What is also interesting is this movie actually removed all references to China's space program between the rewrites of its script, and at least in the version shown in the US, had multiple displays of the US flag on the astronauts' space suits, and even showed in the final scene a US flag flying over the new settlement's base camp.

While Liam Neeson was an established actor with some memorable roles (Schindler's List / Les Mis / Excalibur) his career was completely transformed by Star Wars. He went to leading roles in action movies and franchises. Before Star Wars, he had never been in a movie that grossed 100 mil, and afterwards was in the Batman, Narnia, and Taken, Titan's franchises and is #16 on the boxofficemojo gross list. To dismiss SW having an impact by just saying he was already established is a pretty poor statement. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/p...

Box Office Mojo reports that it took in $1.4 million on Friday, which puts it into eighth place, and it "could wind up with less than $4 million over the three-day weekend, which would be one of the worst debuts ever for a movie playing in at least 2,500 locations."

Hollywood does take risks, the problem is that the movie-going public doesn't! There were plenty of good movies last year but 11 of the 15 top movies in 2014 were remakes or sequels or superhero movies. Sadly the previous list has no correlation to the movies that audiences and critics actually enjoyed.

The problem is that people choose movies to go and see by optimizing for the size of its marketing campaign, or opening weekend gross. So they go and participate in a feedback loop that encourages Hollywood to make more and more low-risk superhero sequels. A much better way to avoid disappointment is to choose a movie that other people who have seen the movie (i.e. reviewers) actually liked, and avoid the ones that reviewers have told you are going to be shit. It sounds obvious but people don't do this.

Even here on Slashdot where we were warned that The Hobbit would be shit. But I see other posts where Slashdotters still went and watched it and are posting here that it was shit. As if that was a surprise, and it's all Hollywood's fault!

A few people here have already mentioned Rotten Tomatoes. If you're not already using it or something similar, you should. Otherwise you're probably part of the problem.

I'm not sure how to work in slapping momma and spitting on the flag, but fucking an apple pie can rake in over $100 million.

IV even had an oddball plot about whales and was still the highest grossing film in the whole series

Incorrect, the first JJ Abrams film was the highest grossing, both in raw and inflation adjusted dollars for the US box office. source.

Since when is Frozen poorly performing? http://boxofficemojo.com/movie...

Jammers? No.. Wrap the building in tin foil. And if the usher sees a light from any device, they can toss the offender out. Unfortunately, you won't find many ushers who are paid enough to give a damn. Regardless, the box office agrees with me... People like to gather together, even now.

If you take into account inflation, Gone With The Wind (1939) is the largest grossing movie.

As that's so long time ago, you may even have to take into account the population at large. Selling 1,000 tickets to a population 10,000 in size is much more impressive than slling the same number of tickets in a population 1,000,000 in size. Plus of course the lack of competition by television or more recent developments such as The Pirate Bay.

.
It is the same reason that Hollywood always touts dollar amount of ticket sales and not the number of tickets sold. With the ever increasing ticket prices, ticket sales will always increase, even if the number of ticket sales remains the same. If you take into account inflation, Gone With The Wind (1939) is the largest grossing movie.

IPOs are subject to a similar inflationary hype. This is the same Wall Street that crashed the world economy a few years back. They want to make it appear as if everyone is farting sunshine and rainbows so Main Street will start sending money to Wall Street once again.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

> I suspect that the name is also a bit of an homage to Back to the Future, but given that Musk is of South African origin and didn't move to North America until three years after the movie came out, I'd like to hear it from the horse's mouth to be sure.

Back to the Future 1 did 45% of it's box office gross internationally ( http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m... ). I assume South Africa had movie theaters in 1985. Most reasonably developed countries did.

It seems to me that the entire purpose of any secret government agency is to benefit the secret government agency.

Michael Moore is a self-taught movie maker. His movie about U.S. government corruption in secret agencies, Fahrenheit 9/11, made $222,446,882. It's not like extreme U.S. government corruption is unknown.

There is a HUGE conflict of interest, and the U.S. government seems to have no influential methods of dealing with conflicts of interest. If there is security, people who work for the NSA are less likely to be promoted, and may lose their jobs. That is a powerful reason for NSA employees and management, and other secret U.S. government agencies, to create more insecurity. Since they work entirely in secret, no one can stop them.

U.S. government policies allow many secret agencies. I find it odd that news stories assume that, other than doing things that almost no citizens want, the secret agencies are otherwise well-managed. Numerous examples show that they aren't. For example, Edward Snowden, an employee of an NSA sub-contractor, was able to walk away with all the data.

To me, it is also odd that news stories assume that the NSA works to improve security of the U.S. and U.S. citizens. For example, the book House of Bush, House of Saud explains that the Bush and Cheney families worked for the Saudis, who paid them billions for their help. The U.S. taxpayer paid for the arms, military presence, and violence that supposedly was free security for the Saudi government, but actually was, as Saudi acquaintances I met in a gym said long before the 9/11 attack, Saudi government oppression of the Saudi people.

Why does the NSA record phone calls? Is it because learning about some of those calls makes money for someone in control? Investment information, perhaps?

The U.S. government's war in Iraq is now being called a "mistake". For example, Hans Blix: Iraq War was a terrible mistake and violation of U.N. charter. It wasn't a "mistake", other articles say, it was deliberate deception. For example, Stop Calling the Iraq War a 'Mistake'.

NSA = No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that anything complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer may have intentional defects or surveillance methods.

NSA = No Sales for America. The NSA is a powerful advertisement that anything complicated made by a U.S. manufacturer may have intentional defects or surveillance methods.

U.S. government policies allow many secret agencies. I find it odd that news stories assume that, other than doing things that almost no citizens want, the secret agencies are otherwise well-managed. For example, in the case of Edward Snowden, someone who worked for a sub-contractor was able to walk away with all the data.

To me, it is also odd that news stories assume that the NSA works to improve security of the U.S. and U.S. citizens. For example, the book House of Bush, House of Saud explains that the Bush and Cheney families worked for the Saudis, who paid them billions for their help. The U.S. taxpayer paid for the arms, military presence, and violence that supposedly was free security for the Saudi government, but actually was, as Saudi acquaintances I met in a gym said long before the 9/11 attack, Saudi government oppression of the Saudi people.

There is a HUGE conflict of interest, and the U.S. government seems to have no influential methods of dealing with conflicts of interest. If there is security, people who work for the NSA are less likely to be promoted, and may lose their jobs. That is a powerful reason for NSA employees and management to create more insecurity. Since they work entirely in secret, no one can stop them.

Michael Moore is a self-taught movie maker. His movie about U.S. government corruption in secret agencies, Fahrenheit 9/11, made $222,446,882. It's not like U.S. government corruption is a secret.

The U.S. government's war in Iraq is now being called a "mistake". For example, Hans Blix: Iraq War was a terrible mistake and violation of U.N. charter. It wasn't a "mistake", other articles say, it was deliberate deception. For example, Stop Calling the Iraq War a 'Mistake'.

Of the top 10 box office hits of 2013, nine are sci fi (only the Fast and the Furious 6 is not)...

Erm, most of those films are not Sci-Fi by even the loosest definition of the word.

1. Hunger Games - Children/Fantasy
2. Iron Man - Superhero/Fantasy (I'll give you this one on a technicality that the Iron Man suit is technological)
3. Frozen - Children/Fantasy
4. Despicable Me 2 - Children/Comedy
5. Man of Steel - Superhero/Fantasy
6. Monsters University - Children/Fantasy
7. Gravity - Sci-Fi
8. The Hobbit: the Desolation of Smaug - Fantasy
9. The Fast and the Furious 6 - Action
10. Oz The Great and Powerful - Fantasy

Fantasy and sci-fi are not the same thing. Neither are most Superhero movies sci-fi, they fall under the fantasy category. So out of that list, only one was sci-fi with a second being given as a technicality and I'm using the loosest definition of sci-fi I can, realistically neither Iron Man 3 or Gravity were proper sci-fi films, Gravity was more a drama (and a crap drama at that) and Iron Man 3 is more an action film.

The massive media attendance at Comic Con indicates that producing Sci Fi (and I do use the term loosely) is almost the sole occupation of the entire movie, TV, game, and publishing industry. Try going to your local multiplex and not have to choose science fiction as some thematic component. Of the top 10 box office hits of 2013, nine are sci fi (only the Fast and the Furious 6 is not)...

Implied in the Kickstarter funding concept is that somehow the hard core genre fanbase would do a better job of bringing (or reanimating) some much beloved work or franchise. This ignores the role of producers, hard working key grips and this thing called professional actors. It also ignores this thing called accountability. Believe it or not, if something is good, it's good for just about everybody. Being terrified of being cancelled can bring out the best in a work.

Many recent well-deserved box office bombs are the result of betting on the hard core allegiance to marginal sci fi classics. "Ender's Game", "John Carter" etc...without realizing that it's more important to just make a good movie.

I use the term sci fi loosely. Of the REAL uncut stuff all you need are the pulp magazines, cover by Michael Whelan and this undeveloped resource called your imagination. Crowdfunding could really help with the marginal economics of magazine publishing. Who the heck wants to WATCH a bunch of space academics debate how to run a foundation.

Actually, looking at http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm - they put the average 2013 ticket price at $8.16 - this means that if you want to compare apples to apples, then the $800mm in sales is equal to $108.8mm - which doesn't even get to HALF the #200 all time box office movie, adjusted for inflation.

For comparison, the last Twilight movie made $292mm. Just under triple what GTA V pulled in, if you want to compare apples to apples.

If you want a worldwide comparison, and ignore controlling for cost of ticket/cost of game, GTA V is in 39th place overall (http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/) - not bad, but if you adjust for ticket price, it's not even in the top 500 worldwide overall.

Drive in theaters and theaters in general are not popular because for many people the additional cost is not reflected in additional quality and user experience.

For not being popular... why are there nearly twice as many screens as there were twenty five years ago? How did the top five movies released in 2012 collectively gross two billion dollars? Who bought the 1.37 billion movie tickets sold in the US in 2012?
 

That said implying the outdoor theatre is dead simply because operators are making a rational decision not to invest in their firms is a bit overreaching. There are two theaters in my city that show live and filmed entertainment. They are both free. They are both jam packed.

Brace yourself - I have a shocker for you... "your city" != "all of the US". (In fact, I suspect it's not even close to being typical.)

Then there's the films every geek should watch ... Avatar....

Worldwide: $2,782,275,172. Rank: 1 . You have an odd definition of what constitutes a Geek film.

Flop. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

As of today the movie's already made US$178 million, with a production budget of US$180 million, and it hasn't yet opened in Japan and China, where the buzz is tremendous.

The funny thing is, Hollywood may come to the conclusion that there is a direct relationship between how crappy a movie is and how well it does.

Although this is not a set-in-stone relationship (I'm looking at you, Jon Carter); the general rule of thumb is, the crapper a movie is, as determined by RottenTomatoes/MetaCritic, the worse it does over the long run.

And Pacific Rim, by the way, is NOT a flop, at least not yet. It's made $175 million, and it's budget was $180 million.

That $175 million comes from a claim off BoxOfficemojo.com which when looking at the Foreign value of > $110 million doesn't add up in their own listing of totals: http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=intl&id=pacificrim.htm

It is even more interesting when you look at number of tickets sold rather than adjusted gross:

http://boxofficemojo.com/alltime/adjusted.htm?adjust_yr=1p=.htm

It's way too early to mark Pacific Rim off as a flop.

As of today it's worldwide haul is $175 Million, which is close to it's actual budget of $180 million.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm

It has not yet opened in China or Japan, where it is expected to do gangbusters business. It may or may not make back the marketing costs and become profitable, but there is a good chance that it will, which will put it into the esteemed category of "Movies people think were flops but which actually weren't".

The jury is still out.

Yes, I expect it will make a good profit when all worldwide takings are added up. We must also remember that movies have to gross about three times what ever it took to make them in order to break even. There is usually an expensive promotional budget on top of original production costs, and the theaters and DVD/Blu-ray retailers also get to take a profit.

Pacific Rim is not a flop, at least not yet.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm

It's way too early to mark Pacific Rim off as a flop.

As of today it's worldwide haul is $175 Million, which is close to it's actual budget of $180 million.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm

It has not yet opened in China or Japan, where it is expected to do gangbusters business. It may or may not make back the marketing costs and become profitable, but there is a good chance that it will, which will put it into the esteemed category of "Movies people think were flops but which actually weren't".

The jury is still out.

It's way too early to mark Pacific Rim off as a flop.

As of today it's worldwide haul is $175 Million, which is close to it's actual budget of $180 million.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm

It has not yet opened in China or Japan, where it is expected to do gangbusters business. It may or may not make back the marketing costs and become profitable, but there is a good chance that it will, which will put it into the esteemed category of "Movies people think were flops but which actually weren't".

The jury is still out.

From http://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/boxoffice.htm

Production Budget refers to the cost to make the movie and it does not include marketing or other expenditures.

Gross refers to gross earnings in U.S. dollars. On average, the movie's distributor receives a little more than half of the final gross

So I don't know how far gross == production cost is to break even. Seems like at least 2x away.

Pacific Rim has been out for a little over a week and it's already made back it's production budget http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=pacificrim.htm . I'm curious to know what Nerval's Lobster's definition of a Hollywood bomb is.

The series of summer bombs is promising to shake up the American movie industry.
Whether that means they'll spend more on multiple smaller movies or just spend more on sequels....

Except many weren't bombs. A couple, yes, but by and large the summer movies made money.
From this page, you can click the title of recent movies and see their production budget, and compare it to their gross.
Anything that has been out for at least a month has pretty much made back its production budget at a minimum..

And this is no different than prior summer movies dating back decades.

Don't disagree with some of your complaints, but they are nothing new, and the same complaints people have had for decades. And CLEARLY they do not in fact significantly dissuade people from going to the theater, as 2012 was the biggest box office gross in history, and 2013 is on par to match or exceed it. Yes, SHITLOADS of people still "go to the movies", to the tune of almost $11B in ticket revenue last year...

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/yearly/

perhaps $10 million for a lead actor is a slightly over the top wage

Because it's not. Or at least it wasn't. Back in the days when distribution required printing thousands of copies, inking deals with thousands of theaters to show them, and contacting hundreds of local TV stations, magazines, and newspapers for advertising. Back then the barrier to entry was so high that only a few companies could make widely-distributed movies. Which meant only a few movies could become national (or worldwide) memes. Which meant only a few movies could rake in hundreds of millions of dollars. Which meant the actors who could consistently help you create a blockbuster movie commanded extraordinarily high salaries.

The Internet completely pulls the rug out of that at the very lowest layer. Distribution is now essentially free, advertising nearly so especially if you can go viral. The obvious (well, obvious to me) outcome of all this is that whereas we used to have a few big studios, a few big movies, and a few big stars, now we're going to have lots of smaller studios, lots of smaller movies, and lots of small stars. Aggregate "filmmaking" revenue will go up, but it'll be distributed across a much larger population so average revenue per studio/movie/actor will go down. Yeah there will still be the blockbuster, but it's going to become increasingly rare (be sure to take into account inflation before you post any data claiming otherwise - the top grossing domestic film of all time in inflation-adjusted dollars is still 1939's Gone with the Wind).

The established studios are scared to death of this, so are fighting tooth and nail to prevent it and preserve their old, outdated business model. Just like happened with the VCR and movie rental stores. They fought those tooth and nail too, claiming they'd be the doom of the movie industry. Instead they turned into the lifeblood of the industry (tape/disc sales and rentals have long since surpassed movie theaters for revenue).

The openings were nice, but the Avengers is sitting at $1.5 billion worldwide and Iron Man 2 about $620 million.. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=avengers11.htm

...dying business model of the entertainment industry.

I'm sorry, Netcraft has not confirmed that. Of course, in order to avoid honoring its obligations, the industry will tell you they didn't make a dime.