Considering who the film’s target audience was, I’d say that makes it a success.
As a female considerably above 18, I thought it was hilarious. So did my Mom, and actually, my Dad enjoyed it too. Kate McKinnon is my new crush.
As near as I can tell, every woman who saw that film walked out with a crush on Kate McKinnon. Like, you could start the show as a Kinsey 0, and by the end of it you’re at least a 1. It’s inevitable.
On Monday I had this conversation with a coworker who is straight and married. (I am neither.)
HER: I saw Ghostbusters over the weekend, and…I have a new crush.
ME: I saw Ghostbusters last week and I have a new crush.
HER: Kate McKinnon can nerd all over me any time.
ME: Get in line.
I had actually thought at first that she perhaps meant she’d gained new appreciation for Chris Hemsworth after discovering he could do comedy, but nope. 
The backlash didn’t start with the trailers.
So, in response to what you characterize as impugning motives without evidence, you impugn motives without evidence? Yes, the sexist backlash that began just when the project was announced primed people to see criticism in general in light of that sexism, and you point to one case in which you find a critic was unfairly accused. From there apparently without irony or any sense of proportion, you jump to:
Wow. Are we going to need a corollary to Godwin’s Law?
Will I be called a “soft sexist” if I say I disliked the movie? Even if I defended it at the moment they announced that it would be all women? Even if I defended it past the awful trailers and made the fist Ghostbusters thread?
I don’t agree with either side of this argument, or rather, I think this was a mashup between sexism, and bad marketing.
I did wind up catching a matinee showing today, and thought it held up well upon second viewing…although it was even more obvious to me that important material wound up on the cutting room floor.
Others mentioned upthread that it seemed like there must have been a scene cut where the Kristen Wiig character has a fight with the others and quits the team. The first time I saw the movie I think I just mentally filled this in, but while the plot still works I think the “reconciliation” would have carried a lot more weight if there’d actually been an on-screen rift between Wiig and the others. It also seemed like it should have been mentioned that either the Bill Murray skeptic character had survived being thrown from the window or that the mayor’s office was hushing up his death.
The theater was mostly full, which kinda surprised me, primarily families with kids and a few small groups of older people. During the credits a family in my aisle had to squeeze past me to leave, and I saw that their adolescent daughter was wearing a Ghostbusters t-shirt. Once they got down the steps and were moving towards the exit she started doing a pretty good imitation of the disco moves in the big dance number shown during the credits. I got a little verklempt, to be honest. This may not be the bestest movie ever, but I would have loved it when I was that girl’s age and even as an adult I thought it was a lot of fun.
Now that this dumpster fire of a “movie” is going to cost Sony tens of millions of dollars, maybe they’ll think twice the next time they decide to market a movie by insulting their potential audience.
Or maybe Sony will realize that they didn’t need to spend so much money on conventional marketing when they got plenty of free publicity for this movie thanks to whiny manbabies throwing tantrums about it.
Heh… manbabies. I might steal that one.
I never realized how overrated the original Ghostbusters was, until I saw how many people were pressed about their childhood being “ruined” by a remake.
Speaking of ruining people’s childhoods, one of the sadder things I’ve seen on the Internet recently is people giving negative reviews to TOYS because they are angry about the Ghostbusters remake. (I won’t link to them, but if you look for the action figures on Amazon you’ll see what I mean.) And I’m not just guessing that most of the one-star reviews are from people angry about the movie rather than people who were genuinely displeased with the quality of the toys, many of them explicitly say negative things about the movie without even mentioning the toy itself. As far as I’ve seen none of these negative reviews are from “Verified Purchases” on Amazon.
I doubt many parents would be swayed by these reviews, especially since the toys have positive ratings from people who actually bought them, but the intent is apparently to discourage parents from buying their children the toys they’ve asked for. If the new Ghostbusters movie truly managed to retroactively ruin the childhoods of these creeps then my only complaint is that it didn’t also ruin their conceptions.
What makes you think it lost money? From what I can tell, it’s pulled in $182,849,002 of revenue on a $144,000,000 budget, which would make it a modest success.
Not really. The studio doesn’t get all of the box office revenues. I think I’ve heard that they get about half of it. Plus you have to add marketing costs to the $144 million budget.
It is true that the studio will make money other ways, such as through product placement and co-marketing arrangements. (For example, there was a commercial for Progressive Insurance that featured the movie.)
But this is hardly a knock-it-out-of-the-park success. And the studio was hoping for a big success so they could build a big franchise.
From The Hollywood Reporter, “The film still hasn’t opened in a few markets, including France, Japan and Mexico, but box-office experts say it will have trouble getting to $225 million despite a hefty net production budget of $144 million plus a big marketing spend. The studio has said break-even would be $300 million.”
The production budget doesn’t include marketing and distribution costs, so a movie needs to pull in more than its production budget in order to turn a profit. However, the box office gross doesn’t include money generated from merchandise (the toys have reportedly sold well), future DVD sales, or renewed interest in the original movie. I don’t know enough about this sort of thing to predict whether when all is said and done Ghostbusters 2016 will be profitable for the studio, but it’s more complicated than production budget vs. box office gross.
I remember seeing an article about fifteen years ago about one of the James Bond films that was to be released. The article mentioned that the studio had received enough in product placement fees to offset the entire production budget. But that’s unusual, in that Bond films are particularly well suited to extensive product placement (the car, the watch, the liquor, etc.)
That China miscalculation was a big one.
There’s no way you can call this film a success for the studio. The foreign take is terrible for a film with its budget, and it’s not going to make its money back. There’s a reason they’ve scrapped a live-action sequel and handed control back to Ivan Reitman.
To put this in perspective, the original made $295m worldwide, in 1984 dollars. The remake is at $185m worldwide in 2016 dollars.
Or put another way, estimated tickets sold domestically:
Ghostbusters 1984: 68m
Ghostbusters II: 28m
Ghostbusters 2016: 14m
Well, it successfully entertained many people who watched it. It also somehow managed to destroy the childhoods of some terrible, terrible people even without them watching it.
I realize that this doesn’t translate to financial success, but if I’d made a movie that had actual kids literally dancing in the aisles I’d feel pretty good about myself. Admittedly not as good as if the same movie also made a gajillion dollars, but pretty good. If Sony is disappointed with how much money Ghostbusters has made I figure they can comfort themselves with the $245 million they grossed worldwide last year with the widely panned Pixels.
Well, I said “success for the studio”. And Feig, for that matter–he’ll be kept from anything that isn’t a small budget comedy for a long, long time.
Keep in mind that I like Feig. I loved Freaks and Geeks and I bought one of his books. But this film didn’t have the appeal it needed, given Sony’s plans for a massive shared universe.
It’s nice that it touched some kids, but it reminds me of this exchange from The Simpsons:
Lisa: You know, if we get through to just that one little girl, it’ll all be worth it!
Stacy: Yes. Particularly if that little girl happens to pay $46,000 for that doll.
ETA: Longer post removed because I’m cranky and should probably have gone to bed already. Let’s just say my heart doesn’t bleed for the financial problems of Hollywood studios.