For the first time since 2011, no comic book film made more than $700 million worldwide in a single year. At $597 million, Superman performed admirably. At $415 million, Captain America: Brave New World debuted. These aren’t failures by any traditional standards; they’re just not the billion-dollar hits that the genre consistently generated for more than ten years. Studios are still trying to figure out exactly what to do about the shift in the machinery. A whole generation of viewers were taught by the Marvel Cinematic Universe to anticipate connected storytelling presented on a regular schedule—many movies and television series…
Author: Sam Allcock
Press releases write themselves when a movie opens at $150 million domestically. Records are broken, franchises are extended, and stars are verified as attractions, according to headlines. First-weekend reactions are all over social media. The stock of the studio rises. Everyone who works on the production had a pleasant Monday morning. Mondays are different in the accounting department. The studio does not make $150 million from a $150 million domestic premiere. The theater chains, who are exhibitors, get their share first. In North America, studios usually keep between 50% and 55% of ticket sales; as the weeks go by and…
The projected value of Charlize Theron’s endorsement deal with Dior is $55 million. According to reports, Julia Roberts and Lancôme have a $20 million partnership. These figures, which represent what a large luxury company is ready to pay for a face that customers identify with a certain set of values, aesthetics, and goals, are not out of the ordinary at the top of the celebrity endorsement market. The relationship appears to be one of adoration. It is a contract in legal terms. Termination provisions are also included in contracts. A morality clause is included in every significant endorsement agreement. Although…
Watching Stephen Colbert record a speech from his bathtub at home was actually consoling during the hardest months of the outbreak. In a disorganized living room, Jimmy Fallon played the guitar. James Corden used whatever area he had to do anything. For those who had very little normal left, the shows’ continuity—familiar faces, familiar formats, and the tacit promise that the evening would conclude with some sort of normal—meant something. The shows were scrappy and weird, but they persisted. That flexibility is genuine. A crisis that shut down live entertainment, interfered with supply chains, and drastically changed how people spend…
Dystopian science fiction frequently depicts a particular type of sky: low cloud cover, a blue-grey light that originates somewhere other than the sun, and rain-slicked surfaces that catch neon reflections from unreadable signs. It feels a little off, a little different from any city you’ve ever visited, which makes it seem futuristic. However, it’s a city you’ve visited or may visit. Vancouver is the location. The damp hallways of Altered Carbon, the never-ending rain of Blade Runner 2049, and the glass-and-steel settings that have become the standard for anything set in a technologically sophisticated but morally dubious future are examples…
In 1999, The Blair Witch Project made around $250 million at the movie office while costing only $60,000 to produce. Even now, it’s still hard to properly comprehend that figure. The reason the movie was successful was not because it had any production merit, but rather because it left viewers wondering for a few uncomfortable days whether what they were seeing was real. The result was that ambiguity. It was only three actors in the woods with a camera. Somewhere around the middle of the 2010s, found footage horror went out of style. The shaky camera became a byword for…
There is a particular scene in a brand’s marketing video where the narration becomes quieter, the music becomes softer, and a representative of the company’s communications department describes, with obvious emotion, the challenges the business encountered in its early years. The founders were outsiders. They were turned down by the industry. The establishment had little faith in what they were constructing. And now, because they know what it’s like to be ignored, they are here for you, the customer. One of the most dependable models in modern brand storytelling is the villain origin tale. Its framework is straight out of…
There are parts of the internet where the narrative spreads with a level of specificity that makes you want to believe it. A Software Defined Radio receiver assembled from spare parts, a rogue technologist, a stack of abandoned pagers purchased from a government surplus auction, and—somehow—a song that no one had heard of rising through the Billboard Hot 100 due to the sheer stubbornness of comprehending how outdated RF networks operate. It’s a compelling tale. It’s also untrue. A pager-based Billboard hack did not exist. If you understand enough about early pager protocols to follow the argument, but not enough…
Before you get to a freeway, you will pass the same section of small-lot dealerships twelve times while driving through rural Mississippi or the outer parishes of Louisiana. signs that are painted by hand. Between light poles are flags. rows of mid-teen-dollar old automobiles and pickups. Nearly majority of them provide on-site financing. Furthermore, very few buyers of those vehicles have any other practical choice. For many years, the “buy here, pay here” concept has served as a last alternative for borrowers who are turned down by traditional lenders. The process is straightforward: the dealership serves as both a seller…
Bryan Johnson takes over a hundred supplements, eats a precisely calibrated vegan diet, wakes up at the same time every day, adheres to a protocol created by over thirty doctors, and undergoes routine blood draws, ultrasounds, and biological marker tests to determine whether his body is aging at the rate he is paying to stop. In just one year, he has spent over $2 million on this. He asserts that his chronological age is far older than his biological age. He makes the data publicly available. The majority of individuals have the same reaction when they learn about Johnson: this…