So, yeah. Ghostbusters. Not looking good, ladies. THR reports:
As of Aug. 7, Ghostbusters had earned just under $180 million at the global box office, including $117 million domestic. 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.
So if $300M is break-even, that means they only spent $22M on worldwide marketing. The movie made $17M on July 15. It made $651,831 yesterday. Might be time to pull the plug. But, wait, Sony already announced the sequel.
Immediately upon the opening of Ghostbusters in mid-July, top Sony executives boldly declared a sequel to Paul Feig’s all-female reboot of Ivan Reitman’s 1984 classic was a given. “While nothing has been officially announced yet, there’s no doubt in my mind it will happen,” said Rory Bruer, president of worldwide distribution at Sony. That was the studio’s last public mention of a sequel.
But everybody’s on board!
Feig hasn’t said whether he’ll return. Stars Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones and Kate McKinnon are said to be signed for two potential sequels, and initially they said they were game.
So let’s hear Sony’s plans for these exciting sequels.
Sony won’t comment on whether it has banished a sequel to the netherworld, but perhaps tellingly, a rep says the studio actively is pursuing an animated Ghostbusters feature that could hit theaters in 2019 and an animated TV series, Ghostbusters: Ecto Force, which is eyeing an early 2018 bow.
Replacing real women with cartoons might be peak patriarchy, but don’t worry, Sony has a solid plan for Ghostbusters to be profitable.
Sony disputes the amount of the potential loss, insisting that revenue streams from merchandising and such attractions as a new Ghostbusters exhibit at Madame Tussauds and a theme park ride in Dubai will help defray any deficit.
Welp. Be sure to buy your daughter 20 Ghostbusters t-shirts to help their plan along. Now, here’s the thing. I went to see this movie without thinking the mere existence of it ruined my childhood. Partly because my dad being a coke head did, but mostly because the original Ghostbusters isn’t gonna be in the Criterion Collection anytime soon. That shit was kinda weak and lame, so let’s not pretend it wasn’t. That being said, the reboot was the wrong hill to die on for feminism. A movie studio gave you a gender-swapped novelty instead of a movie about actual women characters. The talent involved deserved more than that script. It wasn’t great, it wasn’t horrible. It was a Ghostbusters movie. Like, I don’t know if the critics wrote those great reviews out of fear of somebody on Twitter petitioning them to be fired or if they didn’t want their name in a think piece about misogyny or what, but if you can look me in the face and tell me 73% of legit critics thought this movie was great, then I don’t know what to tell you. On the other hand, none of this even matters, because the little girls who sat in the theater watching this didn’t give two shits about plot holes or the cringe-worthy dialogue. All they’ll care about when they grow up is that they saw women on the big screen kicking ghost ass all by themselves. If you’re a feminist, which I assume everyone is, and you disagree, they just announced the female reboot of Oceans 11. Needing the name of a male dominated movie to sell female empowerment, seems a bit disingenuous and not all that empowering, no? And every time a Ghostbusters loses $70M, progress takes a step way the fuck back. Demand more than this shit than dudes demand from Zack Snyder. Y’all could make shit 20 times better.
