Indiana Jones 5 officially announced

Disney wants a 'Haunted Mansion' show . . . that idea almost sounds purpose-built for Tim Burton.

He's not my favorite horror director. But that would be right up his alley. He has made a career out of delivering scary-looking movies that don't feel too emotionally scary.
 
Disney wants a 'Haunted Mansion' show . . . that idea almost sounds purpose-built for Tim Burton.

He's not my favorite horror director. But that would be right up his alley. He has made a career out of delivering scary-looking movies that don't feel too emotionally scary.
I still thinks it’s beyond hilarious that Tim was an animator, and they ended his contract with him because they felt he wasn’t a good fit. He was just too strange. But look at them now, doing all they can to work with him, lmao.
 
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EXACTLY. Just like releasing Ghostbusters Afterlife for Thanksgiving.
Somebody needs to check the water-supply at the Studios for signs of crazy-juice.
I remember thinking the same thing....and now the next one has been delayed until next March. Another kind of odd time for a big movie.
I guess there hoping the name itself will sell tickets.
 
These toylines only exist for adult collectors. Kids don't care about toys based on their parents childhood heroes.

I believe that the proper term for the contemporary adult collector toy market is “The Manchild Toy Market”; a newly formed phenomenon of the 21st century.

;)

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I can’t even keep up with what thread I am looking at and there are only TWO really active threads (both discussing the same thing)lol.

Maybe there needs to be a: “Hollywood’s current state of failure and the reasons for it” thread. As for the “Indiana Jones 5 Officially announced” thread we need to call it -documented time of death is somewhere in the ballpark of June 30, 2023 and the reasons for waning theater attendance/best month to release a genre movie talk.
 
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I can’t even keep up with what thread I am looking at and there are only TWO really active threads (both discussing the same thing)lol.

Maybe there needs to be a: “Hollywood’s current state of failure and the reasons for it” thread. As for the “Indiana Jones 5 Officially announced” thread we need to call it -documented time of death is somewhere in the ballpark of June 30, 2023 and the reasons for waning theater attendance/best month to release a genre movie talk.
Don't worry as soon as the next film that meets the requirements comes out, there'll be another thread for people to regurgitate the same old stuff they have done in countless previous threads, then those two you mention will die out
 
On a project like Indy5/Disney, the marketing costs alone are higher than the production cost of the first 3 films combined.
Marketing has become somewhat of a scam, where studios pay a fortune to advertise their films on networks and outlets they already own.

Trailers used to be cut internally, but now have become their own little productions, costing millions to "produce".

And present-day marketing departments are bloated with backseat drivers and fake-it-'til-you-make-it experts who outsource their own jobs without upper management knowing about it, because upper management don't even know what those jobs are.

I've been in rooms with large marketing teams and their outsourcers, and 100% of the time it's the outsourcers hustling and pitching and problem-solving a marketing strategy, while the company's marketing team have either escaped to their smart phones, pretending something important came up, or using all of their IQ to nod and smile at anything anyone says.
Needs to be a new emoticon for informative posts as a like doesn't do this post justice. Thank you for the insight
 
Don't worry as soon as the next film that meets the requirements comes out, there'll be another thread for people to regurgitate the same old stuff they have done in countless previous threads, then those two you mention will die out
Don’t get me wrong I thoroughly enjoy the discussions and am not complaining. I was getting caught up on a couple pages and could not remember what thread I was in.
 
Hunting for a kid-birthday present, I noticed that all of the Indy toys that were released before the movie as part of the promotional run-up were pretty aggressively discounted at Target this weekend. Granted, this isn't something I often pay attention to (department store toys) but I was a little surprised to see they were already being given the clearance treatment while the film is still in theaters and before the Blu-Ray and digital download release.

You might be seeing kids are not buying toys, as they prefer to play on their phones. Adults buying toys are very selective.

These toylines only exist for adult collectors. Kids don't care about toys based on their parents childhood heroes.

My young nephews don’t buy any toys, outside of the occasional Lego toy. They are more into buying video games and texting. Lol
Bingo. My daughter likes toys to some degree, but she's never really connected with toys. Like, she has some Barbie dolls she plays with, she has a few of those Star Wars Barbies (Forces of Destiny) that I bought her, some of the Star Wars Mission Fleet toys, and Legos. She had in the past a whole mess of Peppa Pig toys and some Bluey toys, and while she plays with them here or there, she's mostly into playing pretend with a wand and cape and sword and whatnot. Hell, she plays more with her army of stuffed toys/animals than she does with any kind of figure.

Other kids get into Lego or Minecraft, but I think the days of action figures ruling the toy aisles are over. And as has been stated, these toys are primarily for adult collectors, and if they don't show, well...the toys collect dust.

I have no idea if this is actually a smart tactic, but if you are a collector, maybe snap up some of those bargain basement priced Indy toys and stick 'em in a vault somewhere. If they aren't selling well, then the bulk will be trashed and now your "poorly received" toy is a "rare collector's item." Or something. I dunno. Maybe just collect stuff if you think it's cool.
I don't think kids have ever been as much into miniature-type toy lines (as opposed to costume-type toys) when the setting of the show is old. Star Wars had futuristic spaceships and robots and stuff. With Indy you just have a guy with a bullwhip and some generic henchmen. I don't see Indy toys being very thrilling to kids unless they had an ancient temple playset or something with booby traps and stuff.
Au contraire! Some of my favorite toys EVER were the Star Wars Micro Collection from the early 80s. I still wish I'd gotten a Snowspeeder and Millennium Falcon and the other half of the Death Star playset. I had the whole Bespin and Hoth lines (except for the tripod gunner that you had to mail away for).
Indiana Jones as a toyline has a long history of flops. As popular as the character and films are with Gen X, the toys just never sold all that well, with adult collectors only getting into the vintage Kenner line decades after the fact. Add in the mixed reception of Indy 5 at the box office and that's the reason you're seeing product heavily discounted. I'm of the opinion that even kids of the 1980's would have responded better to role play toys rather than action figures of Indy.
Yeah, the Kenner toys were eclipsed by their own Star Wars line. I tend to think that the reason was that Star Wars was a lot more family friendly than Indy was, and the prime target market for Indy was a little too old for action figures.
I think most people just don't care to go to the movies anymore. Okay, your movie theater may be packed at times, but that doesn't mean all are anymore. And as far as movies that they advertise as "must see in the theater", oh baloney, I can do without it. I remember here on this forum when Maverick came out 'you have to see this in a theater, you have to see this in a theater, you HAVE to see this in a theater, you HAVE to see this in a theater!!!'.....Well, guess what, I didn't see it in a theater, I watched it at home and I am just fine with that. Personally, unless I am on a date I will never step foot into another theater for as long as I live. They could be showing actual footage of the return of ****** and I'd still just wait to stream it.

yeah... cramped bus-station style seats with a conspicuously sticky floor, $20 popcorn to watch 30 minutes worth of perfectly-well-color corrected and perfectly framed commercials only for the feature to start and find the projection or sound is just "off" or maybe that's just the glare from the person two rows down constantly checking their phone. Meanwhile, a perfectly respectable Dolby Digital / Dolby Vision experience can be had within the comfort of your own home.

Though, I live in a cultural desert, we don't have any of the chain theaters with premium seating, visuals, sound and full menu of food. That might alter the calculus but only a little. Not to mention my teenagers watch full series on their phones, so they could care less about a giant screen.

For me and my family, when COVID hit we basically stopped going to the theater except for films we really cared about. There weren't any more "bored on Saturday morning let's just go see a movie" days. So when something came out that we really felt deserved seeing in a theater, we masked up and went.

Nowadays we're still in the same habit, just without masks.

Hell, we didn't even make it to Guardians of the Galaxy this year because we just couldn't muster the drive to make it a priority.

I know everyone isn't in the same boat, but I do wonder if overall theater attendance is still down post-plague.

Lately films that I'm only passingly interested in barely even get a chance when they hit streaming.

I'm in pretty much the same boat. We went to see MI:7, and that's our first trip to a theater in a year. We're planning on seeing Oppenheimer and Dune, and that's it for the year. It has to be a pretty compelling movie event to bring us out. Otherwise, that's what streaming is for. You don't even have to wait that long anymore. I just caught the latest Transformers movie on Paramount+. I watched it because in the 90's I was a Beast Wars fan. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered; the Transformers movies are incredibly dumb, though the robot fights are fun.
Your experiences all pretty much mirror my own. I was an infrequent theater-goer before the pandemic. I'd go maybe 2-3 times a year at most, and that was usually only for big spectacle movies. Star Wars trilogy films, most of the Marvel movies, etc. By about 2019, though, I was going far less frequently, including skipping Marvel films. When I went, I pretty much only went to one theater: Studio Movie Grill about a 20-ish min drive from my house in West Philly. The tickets were pricy, but (1) you could order dinner to eat while you watched, and (2) the higher price pretty much kept out the riff raff. Plus the seats were way more comfortable because they had to incorporate space for eating. IF I were to go back to a theater, that's where it'd be.

But then the pandemic hit.

There were people in my life with various medical conditions to where, even if I was going to not worry about my own safety (I did, though), I just didn't want to risk going to the theater. I did other risky things, but they were for much more important purposes. Stuff that needed to be done, not just stuff for my own entertainment. Plus, because I knew I'd be masked and I wasn't going to take my mask off for any reason, I knew it wouldn't make sense to go to my favorite theater if I wasn't going to actually eat dinner there. And the prospect of going to a "normal" theater and sitting amongst people texting and surfing their phones? Just so I can see a bigger picture with louder sound? Nah. Hard pass.

I actually loved the whole "We're releasing it immediately to streaming" model, but I know that the entire industry is still geared around a theater release. I was happy, though, to pay full price for both Shang Chi and Black Widow, because I wanted to encourage more of that practice. The notion of "You have to see this in a theater"? No, no I don't. I really, really don't. I have a nice 54" plasma TV. One of the last of the old Panasonic plasmas. I have surround sound at home. I can pause and go take a leak. I already paid for the beer, and it was cheaper than what I'd get at the theater. And frankly....your movie isn't special enough to warrant me going to the theater. Sorry, it just isn't. You've got big sploshuns? Rah rah. I don't care. You've got IMAX? Meh. Last IMAX movie I saw was on a planetarium screen for Inception and to this day I have no idea who was shooting at whom because the screen was too goddamn big. I'll pass. You've got 16:4503 anamorphicatronicstereophinic quadravision at 409 FPS? Nope. Still don't care about your gimmicks. Avatar in 3D gave me a headache anyway. Plus it probably just looks like videotape anyway and not like a proper movie.

I have a hard time these days thinking of what would actually get me back to the theaters and honestly...it's a tough call. It'd probably have to be something I connect with emotionally, AND where I wasn't remotely concerned that it couldn't live up to what I want it to be, AND where I actually think that the theater experience would be so much better than the home one I've crafted for myself...and that's hard to come up with. The only other thing I can think of is going to a film that I genuinely want to support...but even then I'd rather just buy it on streaming for the same price I'd pay for tickets.

And maybe there are more folks like me than studios thought.
Slightly off topic, but not really. The Disney hits just keep NOT coming...

https://startefacts.com/news/5-main-reasons-why-150m-haunted-mansion-bombed-at-the-box-office_a132

I cannot figure out why they thought it was a great idea to release Haunted Mansion in July. This would have done so much better if they released it around Halloween. :unsure:
They have a history of this. See also: Hocus Pocus. Perennial Halloween fav amongst Millennials, but it premiered in June or July. It's just bonkers to me. RELEASE YOUR SPOOKY THEMED MOVIES DURING SPOOKY SEASON, YOU KNUCKLEHEADS.
 
Au contraire! Some of my favorite toys EVER were the Star Wars Micro Collection from the early 80s. I still wish I'd gotten a Snowspeeder and Millennium Falcon and the other half of the Death Star playset. I had the whole Bespin and Hoth lines (except for the tripod gunner that you had to mail away for).

I didn't literally mean 'micro' series toys, I meant toy-scaled stuff in general. The standard 3.75" figures & vehicles & playsets.

Something like Star Wars, or He-Man (another monstrous toy-seller in its day) . . . these shows featured teams of good guy & villain characters. There were at least a couple of opposite-sex characters. So there were many figures to collect and multiple kids could play with them together at the same time. There were interesting robots & vehicles & locations for more toy options.

With 'Indy' there was one good guy doing basically all the action. (Marion was lovable & feisty but she was either offscreen or kidnapped for most of the movie. And she was only in the 1st movie.) The bad guys were mostly generic henchmen and they were different with each adventure. Everybody was wearing boring (by kid standards) dusty brown clothes. Indy was James-Bond-inspired but he didn't have JB's tech gadgets. The franchise just didn't lend itself to toys like some others do.


They have a history of this. See also: Hocus Pocus. Perennial Halloween fav amongst Millennials, but it premiered in June or July. It's just bonkers to me. RELEASE YOUR SPOOKY THEMED MOVIES DURING SPOOKY SEASON, YOU KNUCKLEHEADS.

I'm sure they have experts who are highly paid to determine optimal release dates . . . and then a group of even higher-paid people are probably ignoring their input to make short-sighted decisions based on fiscal quarter cutoffs and stuff. You can't fix incompetent.
 
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Star Wars as a toy worked because it built the universe out with the vehicles, action figures and playsets. You basically had the whole galaxy in your hands as a kid. That's not to say that a plastic lightsaber didn't accompany kids on their adventures through the woods (pretending it was Endor) but I attribute a lot of the success of that toyline to the world building aspect. Indiana Jones takes place in our world. While the story took place in the 1930's, kids had some real world equivalent and the setting takes less of a priority during playtime in the Indy world. Kids just wanted to have a whip and hat and swing on vines etc. They would have likely responded better to getting an Indy role play set of hat, whip, pistol, and some sort of treasure.
 
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