Lionsgate’s Losing Streak: What’s Behind the Studio’s Seven Consecutive Box Office Flops
Lionsgate’s Losing Streak: What’s Behind the Studio’s Seven Consecutive Box Office Flops
Is Lionsgate's disastrous box office run a blip or a harbinger of the fate of mid-budget movies?
Couldn't be me?
-Executive Management
They would never even think to ask that question
The downturn is striking when compared with the studio’s streak last year of “John Wick: Chapter 4” ($440 million worldwide), “Saw X” ($111 million) and “The Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” ($348 million). Those films, as well as most of 2024’s lineup, were greenlit by then-motion picture group chair Joe Drake, who was replaced by Adam Fogelson in January.
It's tempting to say this was bad luck but Borderlands had so many reshoots that's it's easy to guess the flops were then steered by an inexperienced and ambitious Adam Fogelson.
All the successes listed for that year were sequels/prequels, so there’s an element of playing it safe. This year’s were all originals, which is ambitious, and to be honest, laudable. Just a shame they were shit.
This movie looks like it Made pg 13 during post and the VFX team just removed the blood effects
If you look at the "VFX artists react" episode, it really seems that way.
I've seen some of the movie and it's like one of those 80s cheesy action movies where the hero shoots at a direction, and the bad guys react and fall, but there's no actual blood bullet holes, bullets flying nothing.
Also why no acid and electric guns and shit? Wasn't that a big thing in the games?
bad movies, duh!
The enshittification continues.
Turns out greedy fuck capitalists trying to streamline and privatize the creative process of art to be just another cog in their money printer... turn all art to shit a dog wouldn't bother to piss on. There have always been studio notes maligned by the creatives hindered by them, but now the studio notes are basically the entire script, generated by algorithm based solely on what the algorithm believes will sell. It's wrong, but it makes the capitalists feel like they've got this art crap pegged, and no amount of box office bombs or reality will make them accept the truth that their core value of avarice poisons any capacity to comment on the human condition in an engaging way.
There's no deeper truth, no engaging narrative possible in "give me MOAR! I want MOAR! Give it to me NOW!" which is all these soul killing, unloved, blatant attempts at IP nostalgia manipulating cash grabs are. "Hey, my conglomerate owns the film rights to this character, here, they're standing in front of an explosion like that game you stupid peasants loved 20 years ago for reasons I don't care to understand! You pay me now yes?!"
From games to movies any other form of media, if you traded your heart for that gaping blackhole in your chest that needs to suck up ever MOAR capital they installed when you got your MBA, you can't be creative, and you can't be inspirational, because the great stories creatives dream up usually have someone like you in them, the one dimensional, buffoonish secondary villain complaining about what they own not being respected over the course of the narrative.
Even some greedy fucks of the past understood that their place was on the golf course sucking each other off in their dapper lil pastel polo shirts while the creatives and actually talented/useful cast and crew made them their money.