Think "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" Was A Box Office Failure?

People who say this film flopped are [frick]ing idiots.

Ugh. This is so misguided.

First, before we even get into the nitty gritty details that this kind of infographic completely leaves out, let's look at this logically...obviously Sony themselves saw a problem with the box office returns to TASM 2. Why else would they be in such a state of flux right now about their future plans for Spidey? Why was TASM 3 pushed off indefinitely, to the point where there is no release date for it anymore? If TASM 2 was such a box office success...then what exactly is Sony reacting to? What are all the other movie sites responding to when they write TASM-related articles and include details about how disappointing the box office totals are? Is EVERYONE just letting their "biases" getting in the way of the facts? Is Sony being unnecessarily paranoid? Highly unlikely.

Secondly, this picture you included doesn't tell the whole story. Not by a lot. Do you know what the production budget was for TASM 2? It's estimated to be at around $200 million. At minimum. With as much CGI as that movie had, it's likely to be MUCH higher. And that's not even taking into account the massive marketing costs. So that eats away at the box office total in a HUGE way. Which means that despite the final totals (which would otherwise be pretty impressive), it didn't make nearly enough money to offset the massive financial backing that this movie received.

Third: it's true this movie owes a lot of its profit to the overseas market. But that doesn't suddenly make the domestic total obsolete. It came in at BARELY over $200 million, and even then it took til the very end of June to accumulate that. That's the lowest domestic total of ANY Spider-Man movie. Ever. The entire franchise has been trending downwards in that department with each successive movie. That's not exactly good news either.

Fourth: Sony executives went on record that they expected this film to make $1 billion. Easy. And it didn't even come close.

Fifth: The overwhelming critical reception to this movie was that it was not good. Rotten Tomatoes doesn't tell the whole story, but it clocked in at 53%. Metacritic (which is MUCH more reliable because only the most respected critic reviews are counted) came in at 53/100. Isn't it safe to say that the bad word of mouth had a discernible impact on the profits?

Is it fair to call this movie a financial flop? Well...probably not. But it's just so misguided to try to say that just because it made more money than Man of Steel, Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars Episode II, and others, that it's somehow better than most people think it is. That's looking at this situation in a vacuum, and that's extremely misleading.

It may not be a flop, but it wasn't even close to being a raging success either. No matter how you want to slice it, the movie was a massive disappointment: in terms of quality, and in box office returns.

Besides, box office totals have NEVER been evidence of a movie's quality. Otherwise, the Transformers movies wouldn't have made over $1 billion each. Or the last Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Or Avatar. Or Star Wars Episode I. Or countless other movies that made tons of money.

@Dingbat Yeah that's probably fair. It's important not to over-exaggerate in either direction. It wasn't a complete disaster like Transcendence or anything like that...but it wasn't even close to being a raging success like Guardians of the Galaxy is (even if that movie has made less money so far) either. Logically though, it's closer to being a disaster than it is to being a success. It's pretty disappointing.

It still is the lowest-grossing Spider-Man movie. Guess which one it was before this one was released? It was TASM.

It's kinda ironic how Sony didn't want to work with Raimi anymore when Spider-Man 3 was and still is the highest-grossing Spider-Man movie. Especially since both TASMs have grossed less than any previous Spidey movie. And they got the advantage of 3D.

And both TASMs suck. Especially TASM 2.

I guess whoever wrote this article (and some of these comments) don't understand the movie industry. A movie is a box office failure if it does not make back it's cost. So yes a movie that makes $700m is a box office failure because it is known that they can and should get near or clear 1 billion.

The bottom line is it cost $435m to make and market, it had a total revenue of $710m, Half ($355 million) goes to the theaters, meaning it lost Sony $80m. As companies are not in the business to lose money, Sony knew how much it needed ahead of time to be a success, as it did to reach that number it is a failure, period.