"Obviously, I disagree with your reasoning that losing money for the studio equals audience rejection."
Of course it's rejection if the movie loses money, specifically, it was potential-audience rejection, i.e., it was the people who didn't buy tickets and therefore weren't in the audience who caused MGM to lose money.
There was enough rejection that MGM lost over a million dollars on it, which wasn't chicken feed in 1939, therefore not a trivial amount of rejection.
"You wrote "what ailed people in 1939", as if people then didn't go out to see it"
No, it's as if not enough people went out to see it for it to make a profit, which is exactly what happened. Ticket sales were not commensurate with its quality, so what ailed people in 1939?
"It's more accurate to say that it was a fairly popular movie with audiences at the time, but it still lost because it was incredibly expensive to make."
It's perfectly accurate to say what I said, i.e., that it was a box office bomb, because that's exactly what it was. Also, its budget was about a million dollars less than Gone with the Wind's budget.
"People tend to overstate how badly it failed, even when you point out that it compared pretty well with other movies at the time. Kind of interesting. I think it makes for a better story if audiences didn't go for it in 1939 in peoples' minds."
I stated correctly how badly it failed, i.e., to the tune of $1,145,000. A commercial product's success or failure is determined by its profitability.
"It really doesn't make sense to judge how popular a movie was with audiences by how profitable it was or wasn't."
Yes, it does, because the more a movie costs to make the more money it should make. If that doesn't happen, something has gone wrong. In hindsight we know that the movie is good enough to have attracted the biggest viewership in movie history, so the something that went wrong obviously wasn't with the movie, so it was with the potential audience. Again, what ailed people in 1939?
"Drums Alogn the Mohawk made 500,000 less than Oz that year and came in sixth."
It was tenth. Goodbye, Mr. Chips was sixth.
"It probably did make a profit."
It almost certainly didn't. Its budget was over $2 million and its domestic gross was $1,558,000, so unless it did unbelievably well overseas (extremely unlikely that it did well enough to make up for that much of a loss when you factor in the additional costs of e.g., marketing and distribution), it was a bomb.
"Does it make sense to describe Drums as a popular movie that year but Oz not, even though quite a few more people went to see Oz?"
Something can be popular but not as popular as would be expected given its quality, i.e., underrated. On the other hand, I think Gone with the Wind is overrated. I watched it recently for the first time, and I thought it was pretty good, but I definitely don't see what makes it the highest grossing movie of all time (adjusted for inflation).
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jriley555 (7905)
25 days ago
You are being very defensive here. It wasn't a 'bomb', it just didn't do well on the balance sheet.
Good thread and interesting topic, though.
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MaximRecoil (4515)
25 days ago
"You are being very defensive here."
He falsely said that "calling it a bomb is a little misleading." Refuting a false assertion isn't being "defensive."
"It wasn't a 'bomb'"
Yes, it absolutely was, by definition.
"it just didn't do well on the balance sheet."
That's what a box office bomb is, i.e., a movie that loses a lot of money. The Wizard of Oz is even mentioned in the box office bomb Wikipedia article, as an example of a movie that was a bomb in its initial release but made a recovery - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Box-office_bomb#Recovery
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jriley555 (7905)
25 days ago
I don't think most of us consider a high-grossing movie that lost money a bomb - the assessment is mainly for the audience & critics to make - the audience isn't in a profit position anyway, they are assessing a film for its quality. A box office bomb means purely and explicitly that folks didn't come to see it, not how much money was pumped into its production.
That said, as I said originally, a lot LOT of excellent films are box office bombs objectively.
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Zarkoff (1550)
25 days ago
That's pretty much what I was getting at. I don't want to argue over what a bomb is or isn't though.
My point was more about how the movie tends to be described like audiences back then didn't appreciate the movie at all, it was a total failure. The reality was more like it was pretty popular, but it needed to be a mega hit to make money.
The Shining is another one. I sometimes see that one described as a bomb or a huge failure when it actually made a little bit of money, I believe.
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jriley555 (7905)
25 days ago
He's just being obstinate, or pedantic. Its cool. Everyone is entitled to their crabbed opinion. ;)
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MaximRecoil (4515)
25 days ago
"I don't think most of us consider a high-grossing movie that lost money a bomb"
If it lost a lot of money then it's a bomb by definition. $1,145,000 was a lot of money to lose in 1939. That's more than the entire budget of Dodge City, which had a budget of $1,061,000 and was the seventh highest grossing movie in 1939.
"A box office bomb means purely and explicitly that folks didn't come to see it, not how much money was pumped into its production."
It means that the movie lost a lot of money; that's all it means.
Transformers: The Last Knight grossed $605.4 million worldwide, which means an awful lot of people went to see it, but you'll find it on lists of the biggest box office bombs ever, because it lost about $100 million. It was the 16th highest grossing movie of 2017 (out of over 700 movie releases that year).
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Zarkoff (1550)
25 days ago
My point was that people tend to overstate how badly it did with audiences. You wrote "what ailed people in 1939, anyway?" People talk like the movie was a complete dud when it was released, but it actually sold more tickets than every movie but four of them.
It was considered worthy of a rerelease in '49, and it was a fairly successful rerelease.
IMO, the stories that make it seem like audiences weren't interested in it at all until decades later when this reversal happened are exaggerating. The truth is a more nuanced.
Was it a bomb? I tend to think a bomb really has to fall flat at the box office, but I'm not going to argue with the definition of a bomb.
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MaximRecoil (4515)
25 days ago
"You wrote "what ailed people in 1939, anyway?""
Yes, and that pertains to the movie losing so much money. In that post the only thing I talked about was its financial loss, and that's the only thing the excerpt I quoted talked about too.
Yes, the movie had a high budget, but not outrageously so. Like I said, Gone with the Wind's budget was a million dollars higher. The movie has demonstrated over the past 85 years that it's one of the most beloved movies of all time, yet during its initial release not enough people bought tickets for it to even come close to making a profit. So what ailed people in 1939, anyway?
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Zarkoff (1550)
25 days ago
No, you also implied people back then didn't really appreciate the movie, especially in your first reply to me.
It cost less than GWTW, but that movie might have been the most expensive movie ever made at the time. Like I said, the fact that Oz came in fifth that year and still lost a decent amount of money tells you it was a pretty big budget for the time.
I'm going to leave it at that. Agree to disagree I guess.
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MaximRecoil (4515)
25 days ago
"No, you also implied people back then didn't really appreciate the movie, especially in your first reply to me."
"Didn't really appreciate the movie" is overly broad and I never said nor implied any such thing. In all of my replies to you I've talked about the ticket sales relative to the quality of the movie, including my first reply to you, which was about money too, with the gist of it being in my last sentence:
"[...] for whatever reason, it didn't get a number of ticket sales in 1939 that was commensurate with its quality, resulting in a big loss of money."
"It cost less than GWTW"
It cost a lot less (a million dollars was a lot back then).
"but that movie might have been the most expensive movie ever made at the time."
Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925) was the most expensive movie ever made at the time, and it wasn't even a "talkie," nor was it in color, and it was released 14 years before The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind. The first movie that definitely had a bigger budget than Ben-Hur was Duel in the Sun (1946).
"Like I said, the fact that Oz came in fifth that year and still lost a decent amount of money tells you it was a pretty big budget for the time."
Yes, it was a pretty big budget for the time, but like I said, not an outrageously big budget.
On the American Film Institute's list of "The 100 Greatest American Films Of All Time - https://www.afi.com/afis-100-years-100-movies-10th-anniversary-edition/ - they have Gone with the Wind at number 6 and The Wizard of Oz at number 10. However, Gone with the Wind grossed $18 million domestically in its first release The Wizard of Oz only grossed about $2 million.
No other movie from 1939 is in the top 10 on that list; the next highest one being Mr. Smith Goes to Washington at number 26, which grossed about 75% more than The Wizard of Oz did, which brings me back to:
"[...] for whatever reason, it didn't get a number of ticket sales in 1939 that was commensurate with its quality, resulting in a big loss of money."
Being the 5th highest grossing movie of 1939 isn't impressive for a movie of its caliber, especially when the highest grossing movie of 1939 grossed about 9 times as much, without being anywhere near 9 times better nor even anywhere near 9 times more expensive to make.
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Zarkoff (1550)
25 days ago
You are very obstinate. LOL
Gone cost about 4 million, so after adjusting for inflation, Ben Hur has it beat. So correction, it was nearly the most expensive movie ever made. Gone with the Wind was a phenomenon. It made 5-6 times the second place movie. Comparing it to GWTW doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Just about any movie from that time would not be able to come close to it's success.
I'm not going to argue with you over the budget of Oz. It was the fifth highest grossing movie of the year, like I said, yet it lost about a million, as you've constantly been pointing out. It had a pretty big budget.
What it comes down to is that selling about the fifth most tickets that year, it found an audience. It was a fairly popular film in terms of people going to see it, even if it did lose money. It got a rerelease ten years later, so there was still an audience for it then.
That's it. I'm done with this thread.
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MaximRecoil (4515)
24 days ago
"Gone cost about 4 million, so after adjusting for inflation, Ben Hur has it beat."
I'm going by the Wikipedia article which puts Gone with the Wind's budget at $3.85 million and Ben-Hur's at $4 million, so according to that, Ben-Hur had a bigger budget even before adjusting for inflation.
"So correction, it was nearly the most expensive movie ever made."
Yes, and The Wizard of Oz had a budget of about $2.8 million, about a million dollars less than Gone with the Wind's budget and about $1.2 million less than Ben-Hur's budget.
"Gone with the Wind was a phenomenon. It made 5-6 times the second place movie. Comparing it to GWTW doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Just about any movie from that time would not be able to come close to it's success."
It makes sense because it's pertinent to my question: "What ailed people in 1939, anyway?" Not only did they underrate The Wizard of Oz but they also overrated Gone with the Wind (in hindsight, based on the status of those movies now).
"What it comes down to is that selling about the fifth most tickets that year, it found an audience. It was a fairly popular film in terms of people going to see it, even if it did lose money. It got a rerelease ten years later, so there was still an audience for it then."
And that re-release was the first piece of evidence that something ailed people in 1939. Their ailment seemed to be clearing up by 1949, since it grossed about 75% of what it did during its first domestic release despite being a 10-year-old movie.
The ticket sales for the first release indicate that the people back then only considered TWOZ to be the fifth best movie of 1939 (behind Jesse James and Babes in Arms even, neither of which are even on the AFI's Top 100 movies list at all), which is a big difference compared to being one of the greatest movies of all time, which it's now widely considered to be.
It's hard to believe that The Wizard of Oz was bested at the box office by Babes in Arms of all movies, which has a 6.3-star rating on IMDb with only 2,870 votes, i.e., a mostly forgotten movie. It's never even been released on Blu-ray. And Jesse James' status these days isn't all that much higher (7 stars on IMDb with 5,021 votes). At least it got a Blu-ray release.
That brings me back to my original question, "What ailed people in 1939, anyway?"
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