$2 Billion or Bust

I asked this in the comments section of one of your recent posts, but I wanted to get your direct opinion on the topic.

So BvS make lot of money and Suicide Squad is looking to make quite a bit of bank as well, but of course it won’t be enough to make up for the massive amount of spending everyone did to make it all happen. I get the fundamental principle of big films need bigger budgets and marketing allowances in order to make bigger returns, but it seems to me like this thought process has gotten out of control. Now if a Big Movie doesn’t make an ungodly amount of holy shit money and breaks all-time records, the studio takes a hit and it’s deemed a failure or underachiever.

Why the all-or-nothing mentality? Why take such a risk? Isn’t there a way to make these films without gambling all your chips on every toss? What am I missing here?

​Spielberg has been saying for a while now that the superhero industry is going to collapse the same way cowboy movies did. Especially when both Marvel and Fox are fighting for a piece of pie with the same "universe" of characters and releasing movies within weeks of each other. I mean, geez, this year alone we had Deadpool, X-Men, Captain America, Dr. Strange upcoming, plus Batman/Superman AND Suicide Squad. That’s a lot of content for one audience. ​The BvS thing is particularly strange to me because there was no history of either franchise making the kind of money that the studio was expecting out it. Like, Batman made a billion per movie and Superman made 700-800 million for Man of Steel, so it’s like they thought that adding them together would mean 1.8 billion or something. I dunno, I don’t have any more insight than you, it mystifies me as well.