Ant-Man 3 is a masterpiece compared to that uber garbage called Eternals.

@NeoLosman said:

Not surprising. The first Ant Man flick was fun enough, nonetheless did anyone really think it was so groundbreaking as to warrant a sequel?

Sequels aren't always based on groundbreaking.

Yes, very often, a new kind of movie comes out, takes the world by storm, and producers and studios flood the zone.

But, sequels are sometimes just about the money:

• Ant-Man, though not groundbreaking, paid $3.99
• Ant-Man and the Wasp paid an even better $4.45 (and this upward trajectory got them apparently a tad giddy)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has stumbled, like it was as drunk as the writers, to $2.35, not even hitting the average $3.63 for all movies in my movie roi database

MCU is a little different though — some installments are bridges towards the completion of some arc, and are thus almost obligatory. That said, it's still incumbent upon the writers to tell a story well and, apparently, it's not easy to do, because we see them miss every now and again.

@DRDMovieMusings said:

But, sequels are sometimes just about the money:

• Ant-Man, though not groundbreaking, paid $3.99
• Ant-Man and the Wasp paid an even better $4.45 (and this upward trajectory got them apparently a tad giddy)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has stumbled, like it was as drunk as the writers, to $2.35, not even hitting the average $3.63 for all movies in my movie roi database

Are you using the Box office/Budget numbers from Wikipedia to calculate the RoI? Or do you use a different site?

The same question about the RoI of John Wick.

@wonder2wonder said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

But, sequels are sometimes just about the money:

• Ant-Man, though not groundbreaking, paid $3.99
• Ant-Man and the Wasp paid an even better $4.45 (and this upward trajectory got them apparently a tad giddy)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has stumbled, like it was as drunk as the writers, to $2.35, not even hitting the average $3.63 for all movies in my movie roi database

Are you using the Box office/Budget numbers from Wikipedia to calculate the ROI? Or do you use a different site?

The same question about the ROI of John Wick.

Good question.

Wikipedia is my regular first option, since it requires sources to which I otherwise might havw been able to find or access.

I used to go to boxofficemojo but Amazon acquired it and pulled the numbers behind their paywall.

Wherever I get numbers, it's an inexact science, there is no single, authoritative, accessible ("free"!) reference site, so I only use these numbers as a general comparative reference, not any assertion of facts that I can't prove.

These numbers give us some way to quantitatively measure and compare audience response, that's all.

Why do you ask?

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@wonder2wonder said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

But, sequels are sometimes just about the money:

• Ant-Man, though not groundbreaking, paid $3.99
• Ant-Man and the Wasp paid an even better $4.45 (and this upward trajectory got them apparently a tad giddy)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has stumbled, like it was as drunk as the writers, to $2.35, not even hitting the average $3.63 for all movies in my movie roi database

Are you using the Box office/Budget numbers from Wikipedia to calculate the RoI? Or do you use a different site?

The same question about the RoI of John Wick.

Good question.

Wikipedia is my regular first option, since it requires sources to which I otherwise might havw been able to find or access.

I used to go to boxofficemojo but Amazon acquired it and pulled the numbers behind their paywall.

Wherever I get numbers, it's an inexact science, there is no single, authoritative, accessible ("free"!) reference site, so I only use these numbers as a general comparative reference, not any assertion of facts that I can't prove.

These numbers give us some way to quantitatively measure and compare audience response, that's all.

Why do you ask?

I was comparing your RoI to the numbers I have, when I use Wikipedia as source. I also checked with https://www.boxofficemojo.com and the Box Office numbers there are about the same.

There are some differences between the RoI numbers, which are probably due to the estimated budget of the sources. So I wanted to know which ones you used.

Below are the comparisons of the numbers for the "Ant-Man" and "John Wick" franchises:

The "Ant-Man" franchise:

"Ant-Man (2015"):

Budget: $130–169.3 million
Box office: $519.3 million

RoI = 307-399%

Paid: $3.07-$3.99

Your number: $3.99 (Budget at $130 million)

This number is as expected.

"Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018)":

Budget: $130–195 million
Box office: $622.7 million

RoI = 319-479%

Paid: $3.19-$4.79

Your number: $4.45

Here you have a different 'paid' number. That could be, if the calculalation was made with the estimated budget at $140 million.

The "John Wick" franchise:

"John Wick (2014)":

Paid: $4.30

Your number: $4.44

Was this calculated with a budget of $19.35 million and a Box Office of $86 million?

"John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)":

Paid: $4.36

Your number: $4.29

This number is all right, as Wikipedia (Box Office $174.3 million) and BoxOfficeMojo (Box Office $171,539,887) differ. Budget is estimated at $40 million.

"John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum (2019)":

Paid: $4.37

Your number: $5.94

Wikipedia (Box Office $327.7 million) and BoxOfficeMojo (Box Office $327,777,335) at an estimated budget of $75 million.

Did you use the estimated budget of $55 million?

So, using the numbers of only Wikipedia, the differences of RoI between the "John Wick" movies is minimal (430%-436%-437%), while your RoI - using a different source - for the third movie jumps to 594%.

@wonder2wonder said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

@wonder2wonder said:

@DRDMovieMusings said:

But, sequels are sometimes just about the money:

• Ant-Man, though not groundbreaking, paid $3.99
• Ant-Man and the Wasp paid an even better $4.45 (and this upward trajectory got them apparently a tad giddy)
• Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania has stumbled, like it was as drunk as the writers, to $2.35, not even hitting the average $3.63 for all movies in my movie roi database

Are you using the Box office/Budget numbers from Wikipedia to calculate the RoI? Or do you use a different site?

THANKS for this!

Another possible issue is time. At the time I crunched my numbers, reporting on budget was x... at a later time, a newer report on budget would set it at y, but I hadn't gotten around to seeing that update.

There appears to be no duty to report actual real numbers. My database would be much bigger if all numbers were available for all movies, but there are so many movies for which I simply can't find reputable numbers.

Another issue is profit formulas are a whole lot of gymnastics. Articles discussing how profits are calculated are labyrinthine! That's why I tried to find a simple, basic ratio with the fewest variables, to get down to some standardized metric for this. I'm not an insider, don't have access to the real truth, so I depend on second hand sources and reporting, and I always knew that would never make this an exact science.

That said, I regularly update my numbers whenever I'm inclined to check a movie's Wikipedia page or read some article that talks about it. I infrequently set numbers and decree that's all there is to it forever and ever amen, especially for any movie released within the last 3 years.

For these two movies, I'll declare what all my numbers currently are and also see where Wikipedia puts them now.

I'll get to it later today, please stay tuned!

@wonder2wonder said:

Okay, I've updated from the latest Wikipedia numbers, which is closer to what you have :-)

Check this out - you see all the instances wherein the budget is not a single number but a range? (eg Ant-Man and the Wasp with "$130 - $195 million"?

1) it shows that getting a firm number can sometimes be like pulling teeth

2) what method should I apply?

a) take the first/lowest number? b) take the last/highest number? c) take the average of the two?

Whichever method I choose will not be the perfectly right one, but I also ought to be consistent. To-date, I've fluctuated, depending on how I feel about how the number came to be:

• sometimes, that range indicates the reporter guesstimated that the budget "just couldn't be that low", so people look at other similar movies and massage the guess
• sometimes, that number is a report from some reporter who was sitting in a restaurant and overheard a producer on a phone yelling at the director, "I approved $20 million, now you want $30? I'm not giving you a nickel over $24 for this, you can beg, borrow or steal your way to the other 6."
• sometimes, it's the producer wanting to keep costs close to their chest to help their position in negotiating with distribution, so they don't mind the street thinking the movie cost $30 million, and if it really cost only $24, they can keep more of the gravy for themselves.

While not quite in the same vein, did you follow that lawsuit that Scarlett Johansson hit Disney with? She was ticked off because the contract they wrote put her pay for Black Widow on box office revenue, then they dual-distributed the movie in theatres and on-line concurrently, and the online revenues were not a part of her pay stream. They knew they were going to do this, but didn't acknowledge it in her contract, and the streaming depressed the box office performance, hence she felt she was duped. The point here is, they love to shell-game all these numbers so very few people outside their innermost circles know exactly what is happening...least of all, some dude like me sitting in front of my computer somewhere far away from Hollywood or any connection to it.

At the end of the day, because I have no special knowledge of any of these numbers, I'm not married nor emotionally invested in any of them. The entire notion of "wiki" or that we are editors here on TMDb is that this is both an iterative, and a collaborative, effort - I welcome, I solicit, feedback/corrections/new information from others who share this interest with me in the process of trueing towards ever-better numbers - THANK YOU!

@DRDMovieMusings You're doing a great job!

I enjoy reading your posts on RoI and they give me extra information. All numbers I have are considered as estimates and interesting enough to give an idea about the performance of a movie.

Of course I understand that these numbers rely on the sources and who supplies them. Too many 'people' variables, so I keep it simple for myself and only use Wikipedia, unless the discrepancies with other reliable sources are too big to ignore. Then I'll have to take another look.

@wonder2wonder said:

@DRDMovieMusings You're doing a great job!

I enjoy reading your posts on RoI and they give me extra information. All numbers I have are considered as estimates and interesting enough to give an idea about the performance of a movie.

Of course I understand that these numbers rely on the sources and who supplies them. Too many 'people' variables, so I keep it simple for myself and only use Wikipedia, unless the discrepancies with other reliable sources are too big to ignore. Then I'll have to take another look.

A few additional notes about movie numbers:

1) They lend themselves to a little more objectivity and a little less subjectivity — which means, less to argue/fight about on these discussion boards! Gives me/us something to talk about other than the just the current trend in divisive politics that tend to rhetoric, ad hominem and all the rest of it (of course, a movie's performance does intersect with politics more often than most may be comfortable...but at least we have some numbers to bring into those conversations!)

2) most articles about movies talk only about revenues, but it quickly became apparent that revenue, on its own, could only tell a narrow picture. $10 million in box office means...what? For a movie with a budget of $25 million it means a totally different thing than for a movie with a budget of $3 million, right?!

3) we're losing the opportunity to talk about this, in its current state, as streaming comes on stream. Streaming doesn't have box office any more...but that does mean they're a little more forthcoming with budget — take a look at the movies that released only on streaming platforms, how they put that budget right out there (Coming 2 America, The Irishman), knowing we have NO CLUE how to derive profitability from "viewing" in any meaningfully accurate way). I mean, LOOK at the gymnastics required to GUESS at how The Irishman performed financially - egad!

So, as much as we can talk about how the movie industry got up to this point with budget, revenue and profit/loss, there's some fun to be had :-)