[Golden King]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aoi Kurenai

It's been interesting reading the difference of opinion on this movie's performance between the forums (not just PR centric ones) and industry websites. The industry is pretty happy with the results and feel it could launch a series while forums are a lot more analytical in their pessimism.

The big thing to note is that the production budget of the movie has already been completely recouped by Lionsgate. The studio operates in such a manner that it often sales off the foreign distribution rights for the movies they make, and Power Rangers is no different. In the end, Power Rangers only cost Lionsgate 25% of the budget plus the advertising budget.

The movie opened to 18.6 million overseas and even though Lionsgate gets very little of that money, it's still not super fantastic. Lionsgate was able to avoid a loss by having foreign distributors help foot the bill, if this movie continues to operate at a loss for those distributors, it's less likely they'll want to participate in any kind of sequel. When you get into that situation, you run into the reality of needing this movie to do very well in the US because a success here means they can go forward with a sequel and be fairly confident of not having a loss on their hands.

Also keep in mind that the movie still hasn't opened in five major territories - South Korea, Japan, France, Spain, and China. There's currently no scheduled release date for China, but I have to think it could follow in Pacific Rim's footsteps and do decent business over there. Japan's take on the movie is going to be fascinating to watch. Will it be seen as the ultimate potential of what Sentai, a major part of Japanese pop culture, can become, or will it be seen as a another typical Hollywood movie?

For now, the movie is definitely overperforming in the states, making $10 million more than the studio's predictions, but because of the way Lionsgate operates, this movie has to either A) Find a way to be a huge success in those big overseas markets or B) Manage to have strong legs and bring in more than it's currently expected to gross. At the moment estimates for the movie's final take are $100 million and I would wager a guess that a $150 million US take could be seen as a huge success. Unfortunately, unless it can hold onto its audience strongly, I'm not sure that happens. Its one big advantage is that it's the only big budget boy centric movie on the market for a while.

Long story short, the movie will make money. In fact, by next week, I'm confident the rest of the advertising budget will be covered. The question going forward will be, is the movie going to make enough money to justify a sequel? There are a ton of factors to keep in mind, not least of which is Lionsgate hurting for a new franchise and if they see potential to do something better with a sequel, that could justify it for them. But, again, this also depends of the foreign market vs how well it does in the US.

Question: how much does merchandise play into a sequel?