It seems like “Ghost in the Shell” was a bigger gamble than the studio was anticipating. The action/sci-fi film starring Scarlett Johansson was released just last week, but Deadline is reporting that the film is projected to lose upwards of $60 million and maybe up to $100 million.
Based on a worldwide projected gross of $200 million, “Ghost in the Shell” is said to be on track to lose $60 million for Paramount and Dreamworks. However, these numbers are based on a reported budget and P&A cost of $250 million. That being said, rumors are circulating that the actual production budget of the film was way more than the reported $110 million, and might have exceeded $180 million, which would drive the total losses up to over $100 million after everything is said and done.
Clearly, this is far from the success that the studios had anticipated. In hindsight, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to the studio. Controversy surrounded the project well before anything was even filmed. When Scarlett Johansson was cast in the leading role, and other white actors surrounded her, fans of the franchise cried foul. The news surrounding the film kept coming back to the “whitewashing” accusations, no matter how much the filmmakers tried to deflect.
On top the controversy, the film just isn’t very good. Currently sitting at a 46% on Rotten Tomatoes, “Ghost In The Shell” was generally disliked by critics, with most talking about how the film is just plain boring. It appears that for all of the film’s fancy special effects and beautiful production design, there just wasn’t much beyond the pretty pictures.
Of course, the studio can spin this news in a number of ways. Talking about how difficult it is to adapt Japanese anime and manga properties, or just blaming the marketing campaign, which had its fair share of snafus. At the end of the day, the truth is that the film just won’t make enough money, and will go down as one of the bigger box office failures of 2017.
“based on a reported budget and P&A cost of $250 million.” –
Seriously ? This is beyond insane that anyone anywhere greenlit the spending of this much money on a project like this. Way way WAY beyond insane.
That’s standard for a project like this.
The production budget is $110 million
This is the first Live Action Adaption movie to get a budget over 25 million…
The problems is they ignored all the bad PR and protesting that started 11 months BEFORE filming began and continued on up until the day of release.
like what? insane spending money on shit like Avengers, Hunger games or what shit people watch nowadays.
Yeah the same went for that crapfest “Passengers” (Also $110 million). Big budget movies need to essentially make back more than twice their budget but nowadays marketing is the real killer. Check out “Tron: Legacy” sometime or “John Carter”. Both I think, budget and marketing combined, were over $400 million each! At least Johanssen didn’t ask for 30% of the box office take like Jennifer Lawrence did. Course in that case, I guess Sony gave it to her as “reparations” for being underpaid on “American Hustle”…I mean she wasn’t if you read the facts like she worked half as many days as everyone else did on set (Everyone else was 45, she was 19). Anyway, sorry, the ridiculous paydays of this industry in general can get pretty loopy. That’s my main point. Fact is, if critics and “journalists” (They aren’t really, they are suppose to be non-bias when making critical analysis) hadn’t of blackballed this film before it’s release every chance they could, the film would have sold guaranteed. They practically guilt-tripped the general audiences that to see it be insensitive even though the original creator and publisher of the manga and the director of the original anime all gave their approval on the film.
Hollywood typically spends the same amount on Publicity and Advertisment as they do the making of the movie.. But that price is never included when they release cost of making movie.
That is why a movie needs to make double it’s budget at the Box Office just to break even..
WHITE GHOST IN THE SHELL of an an audience
SJWs deliberately made this film tank with an orchestrated campaign of hostility over the race issue. The movie is actually better than most Hollywood blockbusters.
I agree. Just like “Iron Fist”, the “journalists” made up their minds about this film long before it came out. What’s funny is someone who knew the manga on one of these articles I’ve seen actually pointed out that the physical machine of Major is white which she chose and that she had a Japanese family from before she became a machine. In fact, the publisher of the original manga actually stated in an article (Here it is: http://kotaku.com/ghost-in-the-shell-publisher-never-imagined-a-japanese-1771992584) that they never imagined Major to be portrayed by a Japanese actress. He even states that they think Johanssen was well cast! So, basically, everyone else who WASN’T Japanese are the only ones who care about this. The director of the original anime was okay with it (So much so he directed the original voice cast to do the Japanese dub of the film!), I saw somewhere the creator of the original manga was okay with it. So not only is this overreacting, they are tanking a film that tries to give more than a crappy live-action remake of a Disney film (“Beauty and the Beast”) and an animated crapfest about a talking baby, starring a guy who has verbally abused his kids unapologetically (But he impersonates Trump on SNL so suddenly he’s a nice guy?). But hey…let’s focus on the fact a frikkin’ cyborg is Caucasian right? That’s the real crime here. LOL
You mean the article of the producer of the original anime movie was written about… Not the Mangaka/Creator?
No it was the publisher of the original manga, which I put the link up to the article for although for some reason the article is gone now which is strange. I literally read that article this morning, put it on this post, and now it sends to a broken link.
It’s actually in the contract that they have to show support for the movie and publicly support it. Or risk losing all the money there were paid for breach of contract…
The creator of Dragon Ball did the same thing for that terrible movie, and the creator of Street Fighter did for the disaster of a movie for Chun Li..
And anyone with half a brain knew how bad the movie was going to do at the box office.. All you had to do was pay attention to the bad PR and protest that were happening for 11 month BEFORE filming even started and the 6+ months before the release of the movie
You claim to have more than half a brain than act like journalists speak for the entire populace. They do not. This was simply a politically motivated slurring campaign that general audiences who didn’t do their own research for listened to. In the end, this was irresponsible “journalists” projecting their opinion in bias articles.
Guess what.. all Journalists are *projecting their opinion in bias articles*
Even you are projecting your opinion in your bias comments.. So you are a hypocrite…
It was not a *a politically motivated slurring campaign that general audiences who didn’t do their own research for listened to.*
It was people objecting to the white washing in the casting of the film…. Please tell me how that had anything to do with *politically motivated slurring*
It’s a cyborg bro, based on an anime that was made with multinational inspirations, everything from the director admitting he grew up on European culture to taking a JAPANESE setting and yet the city was inspired by Hong Kong. Secondly, you’re a bit of an arrogant little fellow calling me bias when this all started with my giving an article from the creators, from the director, from the Asian audience (Who percentage-wise were the highest group seeing the film) and then you decided to give your two cents. There was no objection, stop whining about something that didn’t happen. No one cared. Check the numbers yourself. Asian audiences actually have made up the bulk of the audience (67% I believe). No true journalists don’t use bias. They make observations based off facts presented to them. And the cold-hard calculated truth, combined with interviews from people of actual Asian culture, is no one thought there was whitewashing and that Johanssen was considered an excellent choice for the role. End of story. You can debate that, you can argue, but I have articles, interviews, and statistics that tell you you are wrong. And that’s not bias, that’s observation. Good day sir!
you posted a link that doesn’t work…. But yea… sure great proof…..
Actually in news reports the Asian audiences made up less then 30%….
There is no such thing as unbiased journalists… To be a *true journalists don’t use bias* would mean having no opinion on anything ever… Every journalist has an opinion on what they are reporting.
*no one thought there was whitewashing* That’s funny considering the Production company themselves admitted that whitewashing hurt the movie at the box office…..
*I have articles, interviews and stats* all you have is 1 link to a non existing news article…. But keep patting yourself on the back and claiming proof and evidence….
IF you are so right… Why is the movie considered a box office failure by everybody including the Production Company themselves?
Here’s a tip….
When you are making a Live Action adaptation of a Anime/Manga
Make a movie with the intent of making it for the fans… Not all the people who have never seen it and never heard of it…
Cause guess what so far Hollywood has struck out every single time they have made a Live Action adaptation based on Anime and Manga…
after losing Hundreds of millions if not billions.. A smart person would go… You know what, we are screwing up and not doing this right….. Maybe we should try something different…….
But no they blame, Sexism, Hard Done by *Fanboys*, Racist, in your words * politically motivated slurring campaign*, They blame everybody and anything else other then themselves.
And Guess what
Fans of the original Manga and Anime (the people who are responsible for the Manga and Anime grossing over 500 million world wide)..
chose to not go see the movie because Hollywood said Screw You, we don’t care about you (the people who are made Ghost In The Shell Manga/Anime the massive hit that it is)
and now Ghost In The Shell Movie it is a Box Office bomb and massive failure.. Expected to lose up to 150+ million…..
Here’s a tip…stop upvoting your own comments, it implies you’re worried no one else will. LOL Here’s another tip, $500 million worldwide is nothing and no way would you have gotten all of them to see it. There were always going to be people who would have disagreed with the film no matter what. Third, you’re now officially talking out of the wrong hole as it was expected to lose $60 million, not $150 million. This only shows you don’t actually read anything and are simply an arrogant little bias whiner who was mad he didn’t get a story made exactly how he wanted. Your true colors have been shown little man. 🙂 Thank you for making it easier. The simple fact you didn’t even know the actual box office loss implies someone who really doesn’t like to leave their mother’s basement. Oh and since you don’t read the news, “Ghost in the Shell” topped the international box office this weekend, going from $76 million to $124 million at the box office. It outdid the recent crapfest “Passengers” in China with $21 million (As opposed to $18 million). That garbage went on to make $300 million on the same budget of $110 million that GITS had. Stop reading bias articles and start reading actual numbers okay? We’re done here. This was a courtesy piece of advice.
I don’t care if people like my comments or not…. 500+ million world wide for a anime is pretty impressive…
It’s expected to lose 60 million not including the 60+ million it cost them over 11 months of filming delays…..
Maybe you should start reading facts and actual numbers… and over the last couple of days there has been release of info stating the cost of making the movie is around 180$ not 110$
You don’t seem to understand how contract agreements works. Paramount bought the rights FROM the creators which means they made stipulations too. Which means they clearly didn’t care enough when they signed it over. That Dragonball film didn’t take anything from it’s source material correctly. Terrible comparison. Ghost in the Shell borrowed whole sequences from the manga and anime, adapting directly from GITS source materials and didn’t add anything. In fact, there is a backstory showing that Major was designed to look Caucasian even though she had a Japanese background before she became a cyborg. Do your research please.
As for the background story..
Kenji Kamiyama had a difficult time identifying her and could not understand her motives Due to this, he created a background story…
That would be a director who did that… not the Creator Masamune Shirow
Does not change the fact it was part of the GITS continuity that people so keep comparing the live-action film to. You’re just going on tangents now.
You keep claiming the Creator did this or said that…. But not once have your produced anything of proof.. except a dead link….
and now your claim is *just going on tangents*
Sounds like somebody’s feelings are hurt and is becoming triggered
Actually, correction. Major wasn’t specifically written as Caucasian looking but she was definitely not interpreted as Japanese either. With blue eyes, whiter skin, and Oshii claiming he was inspired by European culture growing up, the mindset was clearly to not tag Major as any one culture. However, this does beg the question, is the use of a white-looking actress to imply an intentionally multinational cast? Because the cast was hugely multinational and the original story was written as such.
Its called the Default Human Being Effect..
If you draw a stick figure, most Caucasians will assume that it is a white man. Because to them that is the Default Human Being. For them to think it is a woman you would have to add a dress or long hair; for Asian, you would have to add slanted eyes; for black, you would add kinky hair or brown skin. Etc.
To Japanese the Default Human Being is Japanese! So they feel no need to make their characters “look Asian”…
It’s only when the characters have exaggerated Western figures or speak goofy Japanese that viewers are clued in that they are looking at a non-Japanese character.
Do some research please
You say do your research and yet I told you that Japanese audience members were interviewed and most of them said they thought Scarlett Johanssen was a better fit than an Asian actress, one even making the joke that if an Asian had been cast, it would have been a J-Pop singer. But for someone who claims to know the manga, you are aware that the entire point of Ghost in the Shell is complexity of identity right? Not to simply bound a character by the way they look but who they truly are. That was the whole point. And regardless of the fact I told you everyone EXCEPT Asians had a problem with this just didn’t seem to get through your dense skull the first time but you wanted to rant so go ahead. 🙂
You claim this…. you claim that… you claim more of this and that…
Yet have provided no evidence or proof…. Your personal opinion and claims is not evidence…
Perhaps you should deliver an article yourself. My dead link was bad luck but you haven’t offered anything. Not one link. Mindless jabs at my evidence, which I told you to look up yourself. I’m not your nanny little boy. There is a specific Variety article saying GITS would lose $60 million (At most $100 million, nothing near your $150 sum). This was after the international success it had this weekend (Which I noticed you ignored that fact or the comparison to similar films). Knitpicking what I’m saying doesn’t make you smart little boy. Nor does acting like the production company “admitting” that whitewashing hurt the box office wasn’t simply to settle “journalists”. You know some crappy journalists man. Most have an opinion but don’t intercede it even with contradictory facts. Ghost in the Shell beat out similarly budgeted films like “Passengers” (Which at the beginning was declared a flop until international box office saved it) at the China box office. That film went on to $300 million. Yet the article says the film will still fail even with evidence indicating that international numbers will help the film. I’m not going to bother responding to your other childish comments. You’re wrong and frankly a little ignorant. Completely devoid of understanding modern political motivations supersceding non-bias writing. But cut your hypocrisy please in the future. I gave numbers you can research yourself. Be an adult. Can’t do all the work for you. LOL Now please stop commenting or I’ll report you for harassing. You literally wrote four comments simply saying “You have no evidence and looks like someone’s feelings are hurt”. A pathetic troll response by someone with nothing to say back. Trolls don’t have feelings and therefore cannot hurt feelings because they lack the wit to genuinely stab at someone. That’s just an internet fact son. Good day. Don’t respond back.
In any case, my point stands. No one actually involved in various “Ghost in the Shell” properties had a problem with this, some even praised the decisions made. And most of the people who have seen this film seem to genuinely like it so not sure why this movie had to get trashed for some point the people behind the original property didn’t even care about.
Nobody who has been paid millions of dollars for the rights to make the live action movie has an issue…. They say what ever Hollywood demands of them…. You would do the same thing as them in the same situation…
Yeah no. I understand just agreeing with them by Oshii and the original voice cast went out of the way to do the Japanese dub for the live-action film. James Cameron signing off on “Terminator: Genisys”. That was paid for. This was audience members, the creators, and everyone in between saying they didn’t care. You overestimate how many people can be bought.
Hollywood made this film tank. By ignoring all the warning signs and the bad PR that started 11 MONTHS BEFORE filming even started.
SJWs would have gone out in force to support it (like Beauty and The Beast) for support of a Femal Actress.
How is it hostility and wrong to expect and demand Hollywood cast Asian Actor/Actress for Asian roles?
Dont miss the forest for the trees,
hollywood sjw’s MADE this movie
There are no non-liberals in new york or hollywood
Its just a matter of their own arrogance and hypocrisy biting them on their own axxes
Again
Remember that time they lost the election?
They never thought that was possible either
As a matter of fact they’re still runnning around blaming it on russians, fake news, misogyny and everybody else other then themselves
“these numbers are based on a reported budget and P&A cost of $250 million”
Just wondering – what’s P&A cost?
“Prints & Advertising”. Basically marketing.
Production Companies normally spend as much on Publicity and Advertising as they do on the making of the movie. But never include that info when they say how much the movie cost to make..
Normally a movie needs to make double it’s budget as the Box Office to break even.
I loved the movie and I’m going to see it again.
Haven’t seen but I’m sorry but people don’t want to just keep handing money to these greedy companies. Who in turn give us crap for movies now a days..Im sure these movie companies will continue to do it though and hope they draw us back in for the next crap show. $15-20 for a ticket,$5-10 to rent it later, $20-30 to buy it on dvd and thats per person..Give us better quality and your movies won’t bust.
*Talking about how difficult it is to adapt Japanese anime and manga properties*
It’s not that hard follow a couple simple rules (which Hollywood has failed to do)
1) Give it a decent budget (100 million or more, not 25 million or less)
2) Hire director(s) who are fans of Anime if not the original source material not a nobody (Wachowskis, James Cameron)
3) Don’t white wash the hiring of main cast
4) Don’t ignore/change up to 75% of the original source material
And very important
5) Make a movie for the fans that have spent over a billion world wide on the Anime and Manga, (Not a movie trying to get people who have never heard of it to go see it)
Ghost In The Shell followed Rule 1 and all previous live actions have failed to follow any of those…