2019 Box Office Busts

[Username taken]

What does patching mean?

I’m video game parley, it’s when a game is released with bugs and other issues and has downloads (patches) released by the developers to correct them. It’s become a pretty shitty practice nowadays as it’s being used to cover up unfinished or utterly broken games.

It’s nigh unheard of to see this technique applied to film. It just underscores the scale of the failure that Cats is.

[babyblob]

I’m video game parley, it’s when a game is released with bugs and other issues and has downloads (patches) released by the developers to correct them. It’s become a pretty shitty practice nowadays as it’s being used to cover up unfinished or utterly broken games.

It’s nigh unheard of to see this technique applied to film. It just underscores the scale of the failure that Cats is.

Thanks for the knowledge.

[Kintor]

Hasbro has also done some crappy things to anger fans like the haslab mess.

Seeing as how you have a Transformers avatar I though you might be more appreciative of the connection between merchandise sales and having a good movie/TV show to adverstise them. It doesn't matter what Hasbro did to cut costs if nobody was going to buy the Star Wars toys anyway. Because the Disney movies utterly failed to provide any new characters or vehicles that would make good toys, Disney's Star Wars are so devoid of that creative spark it kills people's imagination. That's why Hasbro lost so many employees and that's why Toys R Us hastened to bankruptcy, they were relying on Disney to sell Star Wars toys for them and that just didn't happen.

[Username taken]

Seeing as how you have a Transformers avatar I though you might be more appreciative of the connection between merchandise sales and having a good movie/TV show to adverstise them. It doesn't matter what Hasbro did to cut costs if nobody was going to buy the Star Wars toys anyway. Because the Disney movies utterly failed to provide any new characters or vehicles that would make good toys, Disney's Star Wars are so devoid of that creative spark it kills people's imagination. That's why Hasbro lost so many employees and that's why Toys R Us hastened to bankruptcy, they were relying on Disney to sell Star Wars toys for them and that just didn't happen.

Toys R us had been declaring losses years before the new Star Wars trilogy.

Like I said earlier, it was taken over and saddled with massive debt in 2005. And signed an online deal with Amazon in 2005 which meant they had zero online presence. Add in the fact that toys don’t sell as much before and you can easily see why the company collapsed.

You can’t connect Star Wars to Toys R Us collapse because they don’t chronologically line up.

[Kintor]

Toys R us had been declaring losses years before the new Star Wars trilogy.

You can’t connect Star Wars to Toys R Us collapse because they don’t chronologically line up.

Toys R Us has been dealing with that leveraged debt ever since the early 2000s, they knew how to handle it with smart investments in popular toy lines supported by advertising. Star Wars was supposed to be one of those smart investments, as it had been for decades. Yet as Disney's Star Wars proved to be so unpopular, especially amongst children, Toy R Us was left with literal tons of unsold merchandise. These losses on the Star Wars toys quickly made bankruptcy an inevitability. If not for Disney's mistakes with Star Wars it's safe to say that Toys R Us would still be here.

[Username taken]

Toys R Us has been dealing with that leveraged debt ever since the early 2000s, they knew how to handle it with smart investments in popular toy lines supported by advertising. Star Wars was supposed to be one of those smart investments, as it had been for decades. Yet as Disney's Star Wars proved to be so unpopular, especially amongst children, Toy R Us was left with literal tons of unsold merchandise. These losses on the Star Wars toys quickly made bankruptcy an inevitability. If not for Disney's mistakes with Star Wars it's safe to say that Toys R Us would still be here.

No, Toys R Us hadn’t a clue how handle smart investments.

The company signed an online distribution deal with Amazon meaning they had no online presence at all. Imagine wanting to buy a toy from Toys R Us online and being re-directed to Amazon’s webpage. And considering brick and mortar stores are closing faster than ever, it was a suicide run.

Star Wars toys generated $700 million in 2015 and were the third highest selling toys in 2017 and that’s not including LEGO Star Wars that was 10th that year (this is even with the divise reception of the Last Jedi). All this obviously couldn’t be enough for a company in massive debt that was dropped on them in 2005 and couldn’t properly manage because they were declaring losses since 2013. And in the fact that toy sales aren’t what they used to be (outside of Barbie female toy sales have cratered) and you have a recipe for disaster.

Point is, Toys R Us was a badly managed company that made stupid decisions in a rapidly changing industry. Online retailing has grown massively and for the company to not have a proper presence there given their unique circumstances was beyond silly.

[Killerbee911]

Seeing as how you have a Transformers avatar I though you might be more appreciative of the connection between merchandise sales and having a good movie/TV show to adverstise them. It doesn't matter what Hasbro did to cut costs if nobody was going to buy the Star Wars toys anyway. Because the Disney movies utterly failed to provide any new characters or vehicles that would make good toys, Disney's Star Wars are so devoid of that creative spark it kills people's imagination. That's why Hasbro lost so many employees and that's why Toys R Us hastened to bankruptcy, they were relying on Disney to sell Star Wars toys for them and that just didn't happen.

Basically what you are saying is companies who sell multiple products went all in one product stupidly and paid the price, your assessment isn't completely wrong But are trying put to full blame Star War sucking for Toy R US not being able to sell dolls to girls, Games to adults,and variety of toys to teen boys. Toy R US shouldn't be taken down by thing one sucking it means they were sucking in mutliple areas. You are blaming Hasbro sucking on Star Wars and not them figuring out how to sell GI Joe,Transformers, Power Rangers and My little pony to the masses. No dude GI Joe and Transformer movies(and cartoons) sucking have Hasbro having to depend on outside companies for it success.

If both those companies are highly dependent on Star Wars sales as live or die it means they were already struggling. Toy R us was struggling like all retail stories Sears, JC Penny, Radio Shack,etc are all struggling in the Amazon you can order it online era. Hasbro is struggling in the kids have video games,cell phone games and tablets era and don't play with as much toys. They are inherent problems for these businesses beyond one set of toys underperforming they taught was going to big.

[Username taken]

Basically what you are saying is companies who sell multiple products went all in one product stupidly and paid the price, your assessment isn't completely wrong But are trying put to full blame Star War sucking for Toy R US not being able to sell dolls to girls, Games to adults,and variety of toys to teen boys. Toy R US shouldn't be taken down by thing one sucking it means they were sucking in mutliple areas. You are blaming Hasbro sucking on Star Wars and not them figuring out how to GI Joe,Transformers, Power Rangers and My little pony. No dude GI Joe and Transformer movies(and cartoons) sucking have Hasbro having to depend on outside companies for it success.

If both those companies are highly dependent on Star Wars it means they were already struggling. Toy R us was struggling like all retail stories Sears, JC Penny, Radio Shack,etc are all struggling in the Amazon you can order it online era. Hasbro is struggling in the kids have video games,cell phone games and tablets era and don't play with as much toys. They are inherent problems for these businesses beyond one set of toys underperforming they taught was going to big.

Exactly.

Toys R Us were billions in debt, if they leveraged their survival on Star Wars (which they aren’t the sole distributor) then they made a fatal business error.

All this being said, I would argue that retail stores closing are actually negatively impacting toys sales and not the other way round.. Outside of kids toys stores as you rightly mentioned, most large brick and mortar stores are struggling and lots of them have closed down their stores. This comes as online retailing is now bigger than ever.

[Kintor]

Exactly.

Toys R Us were billions in debt, if they leveraged their survival on Star Wars (which they aren’t the sole distributor) then they made a fatal business error.

All this being said, I would argue that retail stores closing are actually negatively impacting toys sales and not the other way round.. Outside of kids toys stores as you rightly mentioned, most large brick and mortar stores are struggling and lots of them have closed down their stores. This comes as online retailing is now bigger than ever.

Star Wars was a brand that could single handedly save whole industries. By itself Star Wars saved Hollywood from self-destruction in the 70s and George Lucas more or less invented the modern merchandise driven blockbuster. Kenner rose from obscurity to become one of the biggest toy manufacturers on Earth on the back of their Star Wars toy line. Random House likewise become a major book publisher thanks to the Star Wars EU in the 90s. So yeah, it's quite reasonable for the likes of Toys R Us and Hasbro to rely on Star Wars merchandise to remain profitable, everyone in 2015 was doing the same thing - Disney even approved Star Wars branded oranges for god's sake. The bankruptcy of Toys R Us and all the other companies hurt by Star Wars mechandise sitting on shelves is entirely Disney's fault, they drove Star Wars into the ground and now not even TROS can sell merchandise.

[Username taken]

Star Wars was a brand that could single handedly save whole industries. By itself Star Wars saved Hollywood from self-destruction in the 70s and George Lucas more or less invented the modern merchandise driven blockbuster. Kenner rose from obscurity to become one of the biggest toy manufacturers on Earth on the back of their Star Wars toy line. Random House likewise become a major book publisher thanks to the Star Wars EU in the 90s. So yeah, it's quite reasonable for the likes of Toys R Us and Hasbro to rely on Star Wars merchandise to remain profitable, everyone in 2015 was doing the same thing - Disney even approved Star Wars branded oranges for god's sake. The bankruptcy of Toys R Us and all the other companies hurt by Star Wars mechandise sitting on shelves is entirely Disney's fault, they drove Star Wars into the ground and now not even TROS can sell merchandise.

Well, i agree to disagree.

This isn’t the 70s or 90s and there are other competing merchandising brands out there. Not to mention what happens in other industries isn’t at all comparable to what happened to Toys R Us. Again, Star Wars generated $700m from merchandise in 2015, how on Earth can that save a company that’s billions in debt and making losses when they might only receive a fraction of said merchandise revenue?

Marvel, Spider-man, Batman, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Ben 10 and even Barbie are all equally massive toys franchise. Why not concentrate on them in the long term? Marvel today is BIGGER than Star Wars at the box office, so hanging your hat and what isn’t exactly the biggest movie franchise in the world is an absolutely inane strategy. It’s so ridiculous that I doubt even Toys R Us did this and I haven’t seen anything to support they adopted this strategy.

The numbers and the timing just don’t add up to conclude that Star Wars toys ALONE led to Toys R Us collapse. The raw facts just don’t support it.

[Username taken]

So, TROS is forecast to have the second biggest Xmas day of all time behind the Force Awakens.

https://deadline.com/2019/12/star-wa...se-1202816735/

It seems to be catching up and holding better than the Last Jedi. That’s why one needs to wait before declaring a movie is a disappointment.

I think I’ll go back on what I said before because I think this movie might hit a billion before or around December 31st.

[Kintor]

This isn’t the 70s or 90s and there are other competing merchandising brands out there. Not to mention what happens in other industries isn’t at all comparable to what happened to Toys R Us. Again, Star Wars generated $700m from merchandise in 2015, how on Earth can that save a company that’s billions in debt and making losses when they might only receive a fraction of said merchandise revenue?

Under George Lucas Star Wars was a brand that remained always popular for decades. That's why Disney paid 4 billion dollars for it. Yet the merchandise sales since 2015 fell off a cliff and never recovered. Now most companies don't even want to touch Star Wars and refuse to waste their money investing in more merchandise that won't sell. You should've noticed already, there's only a small fraction of Star Wars merchandise and shelf-space this Christmas compared to 2015. At this point Star Wars might as well not exist given the small presence it has at retail

So, TROS is forecast to have the second biggest Xmas day of all time behind the Force Awakens.

You're putting a very slanted take on this, trying to find the postive when none is reasonable. TROS opened well below TLJ and even now is still underpreforming. TROS will make less money at the Box Office, making it the weakest of Disney's trilogy. Even getting over the line to 1 billion remains unlikely at this point, a true failure on Disney's part.

[Killerbee911]

. So yeah, it's quite reasonable for the likes of Toys R Us and Hasbro to rely on Star Wars merchandise to remain profitable, everyone in 2015 was doing the same thing - Disney even approved Star Wars branded oranges for god's sake. The bankruptcy of Toys R Us and all the other companies hurt by Star Wars mechandise sitting on shelves is entirely Disney's fault, they drove Star Wars into the ground and now not even TROS can sell merchandise.

Nope that is fiction and you are literally seeing the results of that fiction. You are saying companies who have the ability control their own destiny being successful at selling their own products aren't blame for going all in Star Wars a product they can't control. Yes it makes sense to expect that Star Wars products is going to do a lot of businesses for you but good companies have their own things being success to offset failures of other companies. You are saying Hasbro instead of heavy depending on Transformers, Gi Joe, Power Rangers,Dungeon and Dragons,Nerf, My Little ponies which they can control it is good idea to depend on Star Wars to carry their company. That is bad businesses even if it is the reality of the market.

You can't blame Star Wars when Transformers movie( from okay to bust) Battleship movie(Bust) Power Ranger movie(Bust) Gi Joe movies(Bust) Jem and the Holograms(Bust), They had the power to put out movies that would help their business and they failed at it. So much so they have to depend on Star Wars to save them because their own stuff can't sustain them .You are basic saying to ignore that they failed to make their franchises sustainable so they could sell their own products and have to worry if Star wars fail.

So, TROS is forecast to have the second biggest Xmas day of all time behind the Force Awakens.

https://deadline.com/2019/12/star-wa...se-1202816735/

It seems to be catching up and holding better than the Last Jedi. That’s why one needs to wait before declaring a movie is a disappointment.

I think I’ll go back on what I said before because I think this movie might hit a billion before or around December 31st.

I didn't understand how people could watch the state of box office couldn't see that Star Wars was going to do well. It is not TROS is amazing there is nothing to compete against it. Heck after Bad Boys 3 in Jan, There is still nothing around until Harley Quinn in Feb 7. I mean people don't understand that Disney can bully theaters into not so great agreements to show their movies in percentage of theaters in theater and keep their movies around for certain amount of time. Star Wars is going to have the max amount of Theater screens for a long time. The combo of movies getting out of the way, Star Wars having a huge fanbase and movie theaters having to show Star Wars guarantee a certain amount of success.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Toys R Us was a dying company by the 2000s. The company tried a costly makeover spurred on by competition from Wal-Mart and Target.

The internet also kicked dirt on them. Toys R Us was very late to establishing a site. Amazon hit big and Walmart has pushed their website as well now in stores. The same issue hurt Sears/Kmart as well.

Bain Capital really destroyed Toys R Us. They bought the company in 2005 and borrowed 80% with interest . They kept kicking a can down the street each year as there was no way they ever could pay the debt off. The bill finally came due in 2018.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/theweek...sts-ate-toys-r

Toys R Us was in long term trouble way before Disney's Star Wars toys didn't sell big in 2015. They were going down eventually.

[Killerbee911]

You're putting a very slanted take on this, trying to find the postive when none is reasonable. TROS opened well below TLJ and even now is still underpreforming. TROS will make less money at the Box Office, making it the weakest of Disney's trilogy. Even getting over the line to 1 billion remains unlikely at this point, a true failure on Disney's part.

You can't be serious the movie already cross 500 million worldwide. It is going to walk out of first week somewhere between 600 and 700 million world wide. Probably higher