Disney cared more about Dark Phoenix than Fox
Jun 28, 2019 13:13:23 GMT
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Post by Agent of Chaos on Jun 28, 2019 13:13:23 GMT
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I’m tagging everyone that posted in this dumb thread whether agreed with it or not.
imdb2.freeforums.net/thread/173605/disney-sabotage-dark-phoenix
Fox Studios stopped giving a damn about this movie after the Disney merger seemed inevitable and instead focused all their attention on Alita in the hopes of getting a new franchise out of that and please James Cameron.
Rather than risk Alita bombing in a crowded month they gave it the February release date and risked Dark Phoenix bombing in a crowded month. Not only that, they did it after a trailer dropped with a date screaming February 14th, which cased confusion among audiences that saw it.
And Fox Studios did this knowing they had to deal with the merger and make some lay-offs including people on the marketing team. In a time when they should have been focused on marketing the movie. Some marketers were leaving before they got fired. Giving a sense that they just didn’t give a fuck.
The marketing campaign was so abysmal that Dark Phoenix had less aware rates than any other X-films.
The NRG(National Research Group) surveys over a million people. So this movie could have opened up worse than Rocketman if it wasn’t for Disney’s last minute marketing. Disney didn’t have to do that, they likely did because Simon Kinberg is cool with people at Disney and Marvel.
You can found plenty people on social media saying they didn’t know when the movie was coming out or straight up didn’t know there was a new X-Men movie until a week after it came out. There is around a hundred people in the link below. It’s almost laughable.
imgur.com/a/6KU4Ux2
Fox didn’t have to put the movie in June, they could have given it the August date and move New Mutants back, giving Disney more than enough time to push the film. Especially, when they knew that their marketing team was in disarray. They delayed Alita three times and they could done it again but it seems that they just didn’t care about the movie.
I’ll wrap this by saying that the filmmakers are glad that Marvel Studios has the rights.
So not even they are pointing fingers at Disney.
Sources:
www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/we-were-wrong-behind-dark-phoenix-foxs-dismal-x-men-franchise-finale-plans-1216859
www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/inside-hollywoods-disney-fox-freakout
deadline.com/2019/06/dark-phoenix-bombs-at-the-box-office-reasons-why-1202629749/
I’m tagging everyone that posted in this dumb thread whether agreed with it or not.
imdb2.freeforums.net/thread/173605/disney-sabotage-dark-phoenix
Fox Studios stopped giving a damn about this movie after the Disney merger seemed inevitable and instead focused all their attention on Alita in the hopes of getting a new franchise out of that and please James Cameron.
At first, the movie had a release date of Nov. 2, 2018. With more work needed on the movie, it was pushed to Feb. 14, 2019. Then, with marketing already underway, Fox pushedthe release date to June 3, 2019. Initially, the studio messaged that the move was to take advantage of a Chinese release and hopes for a strong global performance.
However, insiders tell THR that the move was to placate James Cameron, Fox’s most important filmmaker, and his concerns for his movie, Alita: Battle Angel. According to one source, Cameron felt Alita would lose horribly when facing a December opening weekend that included Aquaman and Bumblebee, with Mary Poppins Returns opening up two days earlier. He wanted his expensive movie shifted. Stacey Snider, according to this source, obliged, giving Alita the February date and moving Dark Phoenix to June. “Emma, Hutch and Simon begged her not do it,” says this source.
Part of the reasoning was that Dark Phoenix was not designed to be a summer movie, says the Fox insider. In some ways, it was designed to be an anti-Apocalypse, to have less spectacle and scale. Big for off-season, too small for summer, says this person.
However, insiders tell THR that the move was to placate James Cameron, Fox’s most important filmmaker, and his concerns for his movie, Alita: Battle Angel. According to one source, Cameron felt Alita would lose horribly when facing a December opening weekend that included Aquaman and Bumblebee, with Mary Poppins Returns opening up two days earlier. He wanted his expensive movie shifted. Stacey Snider, according to this source, obliged, giving Alita the February date and moving Dark Phoenix to June. “Emma, Hutch and Simon begged her not do it,” says this source.
Part of the reasoning was that Dark Phoenix was not designed to be a summer movie, says the Fox insider. In some ways, it was designed to be an anti-Apocalypse, to have less spectacle and scale. Big for off-season, too small for summer, says this person.
Rather than risk Alita bombing in a crowded month they gave it the February release date and risked Dark Phoenix bombing in a crowded month. Not only that, they did it after a trailer dropped with a date screaming February 14th, which cased confusion among audiences that saw it.
And Fox Studios did this knowing they had to deal with the merger and make some lay-offs including people on the marketing team. In a time when they should have been focused on marketing the movie. Some marketers were leaving before they got fired. Giving a sense that they just didn’t give a fuck.
The situation has had longtime employees on the Fox lot suffering a kind of prolonged trauma since the merger was announced, in December 2017. To hear them tell it, they are being issued mostly vague, Orwellian-lite guidance that outlines dress codes and explains key-card access, but they have been left wanting in terms of business directives. In the middle of February, Fox’s marketing and distribution departments gathered with the filmmakers of Dark Phoenix, the latest X-Meninstallment from producer-director Simon Kinberg, to lay out their plans for the film’s June release. It was a typical meeting. Ad buys were discussed, and the publicity tour for the film’s stars, including Sophie Turner, Jennifer Lawrence, and Jessica Chastain, was laid out. But it was still disconcerting, both because of all the new faces in the room—a handful of high-end consultants have been hired temporarily to fill the jobs recently vacated by long-term employees—and because of the ad hoc approach the Fox marketing team was taking toward the film’s release, four months away.
“We know when we are dropping a trailer, but we are nowhere near where we should be at this time,” said one marketing exec who was at the meeting. “It’s frightening. I would be mad if I were a filmmaker.”
“What’s not normal is the elephant in the room, which is that most people there are not going to be the people that are still in the job when the movie opens,” added another attendee.
“Nobody has come around and said, ‘This is what’s going on.’ Why can’t they just tell us that there is no place for us? Why can’t they let anyone know?” said the marketing exec. “We are not leaving because we didn’t make money for the company or we did a bad job. We are leaving because of pure capitalism.”
“We know when we are dropping a trailer, but we are nowhere near where we should be at this time,” said one marketing exec who was at the meeting. “It’s frightening. I would be mad if I were a filmmaker.”
“What’s not normal is the elephant in the room, which is that most people there are not going to be the people that are still in the job when the movie opens,” added another attendee.
“Nobody has come around and said, ‘This is what’s going on.’ Why can’t they just tell us that there is no place for us? Why can’t they let anyone know?” said the marketing exec. “We are not leaving because we didn’t make money for the company or we did a bad job. We are leaving because of pure capitalism.”
The marketing campaign was so abysmal that Dark Phoenix had less aware rates than any other X-films.
At the time, preparations for the Disney-Fox acquisition were in full swing. Marketing and publicity and distribution execs were either being forced out or had one eye on the door. “The campaign was muddled,” says a former Fox executive. “Was this the final X-Men movie? Was it about a character going back? This movie just got lost.”
An NRG tracking poll taken in May showed that Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios’ rival superhero franchise, was rated higher than Dark Phoenix as a choice for moviegoers — and that’s after Endgame had been playing in theaters for five weeks already. “Definite awareness never got a score over 75 on tracking,” says one insider. “An X-Men movie had never been below 90.”
“When definite awareness of Rocketman is higher than an X-Men movie, you know you’re in strange territory,” says another insider.
An NRG tracking poll taken in May showed that Avengers: Endgame, Marvel Studios’ rival superhero franchise, was rated higher than Dark Phoenix as a choice for moviegoers — and that’s after Endgame had been playing in theaters for five weeks already. “Definite awareness never got a score over 75 on tracking,” says one insider. “An X-Men movie had never been below 90.”
“When definite awareness of Rocketman is higher than an X-Men movie, you know you’re in strange territory,” says another insider.
The NRG(National Research Group) surveys over a million people. So this movie could have opened up worse than Rocketman if it wasn’t for Disney’s last minute marketing. Disney didn’t have to do that, they likely did because Simon Kinberg is cool with people at Disney and Marvel.
This leads us to the mishap of Fox marketing. With the Disney-Fox merger looming, we understand they’ve been a mess, distracted, with a revolving door of execs. We heard this around the time that Alita came out, that the filmmakers were dealing with different people in different marketing meetings. Some folks inform us that ever since Marc Weinstock left Fox as the head of domestic marketing in November 2016 (he’s now over at Paramount), the studio has been challenged to event-ize their slate (i.e. War of the Planet of the Apes, Alita, Dark Phoenix, and even Widows, which played well with audiences. However, give credit where credit is due — Bohemian Rhapsody was a magnificent swan song for the studio).
I understand in meetings, some marketing execs didn’t even realize the release date changes on Dark Phoenix, and weren’t cognizant of the fact that the film was opening up against another franchise this weekend (i.e. Secret Life of Pets 2). Says one source, “They never brought it up in meetings that we were on the same date.” Another bashed the marketing materials: “Sophie Turner is a beautiful actress, and they never showed that in any of the marketing materials. Instead, they made her look like a zombie.”
Once the merger happened, there was little for Disney to do. Materials were already up at CinemaCon at the beginning of April days after the merger. We hear Disney tried to push Dark Phoenix through its vertical integration, i.e. Disney Channel, but they didn’t have enough time and were inheriting a film that already had bad buzz with its reshoots and release date changes.
I understand in meetings, some marketing execs didn’t even realize the release date changes on Dark Phoenix, and weren’t cognizant of the fact that the film was opening up against another franchise this weekend (i.e. Secret Life of Pets 2). Says one source, “They never brought it up in meetings that we were on the same date.” Another bashed the marketing materials: “Sophie Turner is a beautiful actress, and they never showed that in any of the marketing materials. Instead, they made her look like a zombie.”
Once the merger happened, there was little for Disney to do. Materials were already up at CinemaCon at the beginning of April days after the merger. We hear Disney tried to push Dark Phoenix through its vertical integration, i.e. Disney Channel, but they didn’t have enough time and were inheriting a film that already had bad buzz with its reshoots and release date changes.
You can found plenty people on social media saying they didn’t know when the movie was coming out or straight up didn’t know there was a new X-Men movie until a week after it came out. There is around a hundred people in the link below. It’s almost laughable.
imgur.com/a/6KU4Ux2
Fox didn’t have to put the movie in June, they could have given it the August date and move New Mutants back, giving Disney more than enough time to push the film. Especially, when they knew that their marketing team was in disarray. They delayed Alita three times and they could done it again but it seems that they just didn’t care about the movie.
I’ll wrap this by saying that the filmmakers are glad that Marvel Studios has the rights.
Meanwhile, one former Fox executive notes, “If the merger didn’t happen, some of these people would be worried about their jobs. If the merger didn’t happen, people would be clamoring for Fox to do what Sony did with Spider-Man and ask for Marvel’s help.”
So not even they are pointing fingers at Disney.
Sources:
www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-vision/we-were-wrong-behind-dark-phoenix-foxs-dismal-x-men-franchise-finale-plans-1216859
www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/inside-hollywoods-disney-fox-freakout
deadline.com/2019/06/dark-phoenix-bombs-at-the-box-office-reasons-why-1202629749/
