Will The Superhero Bubble REALLY Burst Soon?
It seems almost impossible to have a big budget superhero movie come out without every pundit with a MacBook smugly blogging about how the “superhero bubble” will burst soon, quoting Wikipedia’s list of comic book movies by year as proof that we as a planet will eventually get tired of watching superheroes punch things. And while I can’t say with definitive certainty that we never will, I think these people are missing the point. The key to the argument that one day Hollywood will say “That’s it, we’re done!” and drop superhero movies out of their lineups is as follows:
All it takes is a big flop to crash the market.
Comic book movies are notoriously expensive, averaging from $100 million to $250 to make. Studios expect to make 2 dollars at the box office for every 1 they spend, meaning a movie that costs $200 million to make and $100 million for marketing needs to haul $600 million globally to break even, which is immense pressure on a movie. It can mean less risks, it can mean excessive focus groups to make sure it appeals to as many people as possible, potentially harming the quality of the movie. We’ve seen it with Spider-Man 3, studio interference meddled with Sam Ramie’s vision because they’d pumped so much goddamn money into it, and ended up ruining the movie. And all it takes is a few big budget movies to flop completely, and studios will start to scale back on their comic book efforts.
The problem is that studios are increasingly spending more in debut movies: they don’t even know how the movie will be received because it’s the first time they’re doing this, but they feel the need to spend $200 million on it anyway. Comic book movies should provide a safer bet as they already have a built-in fanbase, but even if every comic book geek buys a ticket, it’s often not enough to pay off the humongous budget. The mega-budget movie should be the sequel, not the original. If a movie does well it’s a sign that you can reasonably spend more on the sequel and make it back. Notice pre-Avengers, the only movie to cost more than $150 million was Iron Man 2, which got a significant budget increase, but with it came lots more studio interference because hey, $200 million is a lot money to gamble! The success of all those movies led Marvel to really push the boat out and spend big on The Avengers. And now $200 million is the average for Phase 2 movies, even GOTG was given that kind of money, relying on the tag “from the studio that gave you The Avengers!” to sell it. What happens in Phase 3, will $240 become the norm? While Marvel haven’t had a flop yet in their impressive 11 movie streak, nothing is too big to fail.
But…
Well, we’ve already had some of the biggest flops in movie history happen since the year 2000, and comic book movies are no exception. Green Lantern, RIPD and Superman Returns are examples of films that did not make back the exorbitant costs it took to make them, and yet they haven’t killed the genre. Just as the 2003’s failed Peter Pan movie hasn’t stopped no less than 3 studios feverishly working on their own Peter Pan movie. Looking at the list of box office bombs, a clear theme is studios pumping huge budgets into first-time movies in hope that they all hit big and net a massive income. The Lone Ranger was a radio show your grandfather used to listen to, and John Carter was a sci-fi novel from the early 1900s you never heard of, yet Disney felt it was appropriate to spend $250 million on each movie. It was a ballsy risk, and it didn’t pay off. The movie Battleship made $300 million, which is astonishing for a movie based on a goddamn board game, I don’t care how much Liam Neeson you put in it. Unfortunately, the movie cost around $220 million to make, plus marketing, meaning the movie lost money by not making twice it’s budget back.
The message isn’t as much about superhero films flopping, it’s that studios need to learn the old adage “you’ve got to spend money to make money” isn’t holding up. And while that does apply to comic book movies, it’s a lesson the entire movie industry needs to take on board.
Okay, so we’ve looked at their failures, now look at their successes.
Avengers (1&2), Transformers (all of them), Iron Man 3, The Dark Knight, the list of highest grossing movies is teeming with comic book adaptations. Hell, I’d argue that even entries like Harry Potter and LOTR movies should be included given their fantasy nature. And hell, if Furious 7 isn’t a superhero movie I’ll eat my hat, and it’s currently 4th on the list of highest grossing movies. The proof is in the pudding, people, audiences are loving it. The point is that though comic/superhero/fantasy movies have had their share of flops, their successes outweigh them several times over. Over 20 of the highest grossing movies have come about since 2010, and yet all I hear are people whinging that “nobody pays to see movies any more!” quoting figures that show attendance being down. Well, the numbers don’t lie, more movies are joining the billion dollar club now than they were 10 years ago, that’s a fact. Perhaps the explanation is that there used to be lots of movies making a decent profit, and now we have 1 big movie making all of the profit, it still doesn’t correlate to this idea that we’re all getting tired of seeing big budget movies and flat-out refusing to see them. Disney has been pumping out princess cartoons for 60 goddamn years and their biggest hit ever came only 2 years ago with Frozen. Another explanation is the rise of international markets, meaning deals like Transformers 4 made with China or Avengers 2 made with South Korea to pander to rising markets. Whatever the weather, there’s no better time to be making superhero movies, so why are we pissing on studios for doing exactly that?
In conclusion, of course this can’t go on forever: sequels can’t keep increasing their profits until we see Avengers 4 making $4 billion at the box office, but as long as studios keep their spending in check, there’s been little evidence to suggest this train is slowing down. Choo choo!