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Sure to be another box office boon for Neon! They make A24 look like Disney

Parasite looks to be a breakthrough box office hit on the minimum scale of foreign films. If the heads at Neon marketed that right it should be able to gross more than $10 million at the box office.

Let's hope. That's certainly one of their wiser pickups. But even when they have a masterpiece like Vox Lux on their hands, they have no idea how to market these things

In fairness, as much as I liked it, VOX LUX was a profoundly unmarketable film, especially since it didn’t even have very enthusiastic critical support behind it. All they really had was “Natalie Portman is in it!” which is basically what they went with.

Probably a bad idea to release it at year-end, though.

Yeah, that wasn't close to being a Awards player, baffling decision from Neon. That is the type of indie you picked up in the fall and release theatrically in the spring/summer. Not even a huge bankable movie star like Natalie Portman could have brought viewers to watch a misery porn tale on the pitfalls of pop stardom.

Brian C wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 8:44 pm

mfunk9786 wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 8:34 pm But even when they have a masterpiece like Vox Lux on their hands, they have no idea how to market these things

In fairness, as much as I liked it, VOX LUX was a profoundly unmarketable film, especially since it didn’t even have very enthusiastic critical support behind it. All they really had was “Natalie Portman is in it!” which is basically what they went with.

Probably a bad idea to release it at year-end, though.

It may have been a tough film to market, but if I remember correctly the numbers were absolutely terrible and should've been higher even just for Portman's name or a film seemingly about the "rise and fall of a pop star." If anything, I would have suspected more seats to be filled by a lack of marketing tailored to the actual merits of the film, even if the result would be a low cinemascore, but most people I recommended the film to had not been deterred by reviews, they had simply never heard of the film at all (and you don't forget a title like that!). My most depressing theatrical moment of last year was dragging my partner to an opening Friday night screening for my second viewing of the film at a popular theatre, only to find it completely empty.

And I wasn't just being pithy - A24 is stellar at marketing these smaller films in a way that can easily scrape up $10+ mil at the box office... Neon not so much

Is that really true? According to Box Office Mojo, A24 has released a grand total of 12 movies ever that have hit $10 million. They only scraped up just over $1 million for Villaneuve's Enemy, which seems like a decent comp for Vox Lux in terms of a big star in a difficult film.

EDIT: Jesus, I feel like Dave Poland now.

Julia Ducournau is gonna be very disappointed if she gets Google Alerts

Brian C wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:19 pm A24 has released a grand total of 12 movies ever that have hit $10 million.

Only two for Neon, though, and one was a documentary that never opened wide but hung around for a while in arthouses (Three Identical Strangers) - in third place is Apollo 11, another doc that opened on IMAX and pulled in 9 mil. Then after that nothing cracked 5 million, just bomb after bomb after bomb

I, Tonya made over $50 million

Pulled in through the star power of Margot Robbie, Oscar buzz and general nineties nostalgia.

domino harvey wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:44 pm I, Tonya made over $50 million

Also A24 has been around longer and has released significantly more films. According to BOM last year A24 released 12 films while Neon has released 11 films before this year.

Jack Kubrick wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:49 pmPulled in through the star power of Margot Robbie, Oscar buzz and general nineties nostalgia.

OK, I see where this is going:

Box office failure = bad marketing
Box office success = due to factors other than marketing

Sound about right?

domino harvey wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 9:44 pm I, Tonya made over $50 million

Yeah, that was the #1 I didn't name, but that still doesn't change anything re: their preponderance of box office failures below that high water mark. Some of them (Vox Lux, The Beach Bum) are among my favorite films of recent years so I certainly hope they can right the ship, but I can't help but be a bit miffed that so many of their festival pickups seem to disappear into thin air

Oh, and it turns out this studio's name is supposed to be all caps, which is very annoying!

mfunk9786 wrote: Tue Sep 10, 2019 10:01 pm... but I can't help but be a bit miffed that so many of their festival pickups seem to disappear into thin air

I take your point, but this seems like it's been the state of American indie distribution since as long as I've been going to movies. It's a rough business. Indie distributors come and go - it's hard to think of many offhand that've been around longer than a decade or so that aren't studio dependents. Kino, Magnolia, Strand ... but their hit/miss ratios are hardly something to envy.

A24's had a decent run, to be sure, but it's not like they haven't left a trail of duds in their wake, too. It's just how it is. The ones that are easily marketable go to the dependents and the true indies are left to try to make what they can out of the rest.

Oh, and it turns out this studio's name is supposed to be all caps, which is very annoying!

Yeah, I'm not doing that.

I'm on record with how superficial and horribly judgmental I felt Vox Lux was, but there's no question it was marketed poorly and should not have bombed the way it did. At the same time it's hard enough to release films like this in today's climate and I'm sure the budget just wasn't there. What disappoints me is there is remarkably little outside the box thinking.

Parasite is the best platform release since La La Land, which proves that Neon do know how to market their films, they're just very inconsistent about it.