Sony's Ghostbusters: Afterlife comes to an electronic sell-through (ie - "price to buy VOD") this morning after a relatively successful theatrical release. "Legacy Sequel", directed by Jason Reitman (son of Ghostbusters director Evan Reitman and who directed Juno, Young Adult and The Front Runner), and written by Gil Cannon (the man who wrote Monster House), with $44 in November was opened. million before ending up with $122 million in unadjusted household gross. However, it made "only" $61.3 million overseas, making it a worldwide profit of currently $184.7 million. That's not bad on a Covid curve (+15% domestic low puts $140 million), but it's still below the $126 million domestic / $229 million global Ghostbusters: Answer the Call from the summer of 2016. While Afterlife only cost $75 million to answer the call at $144 million, the results arguably show that not all American pop culture nostalgia translates overseas.
Ghostbusters: Answer the Call was, of course, Paul Feig and Katie Dippold's remake of Ghostbusters, which released in the summer of 2016 amid a ridiculous amount of online handwriting on its gender-swapped cast. You don't need to be reminded of the outcry and real-world discourse (even as then-GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump said it), or how the four female sketch comedians in the NYC-set paranormal comedy The mere notion of being cast (as opposed to the original which featured four male sketch comedians) inevitably became evidence that online trolls and SEO-driven media could influence online discourse and thus make any given Media-driven narrative about the film. However, the film still grossed $126 million from its $46 million debut, which was A) 61% more than Adam Sandler's like-minded Pixel last summer and B) any straight-forward feature comedy released that year. was more than Alas, it only made $100 million overseas.
So, five years later, Ghostbusters: Afterlife gave fans their own Force Awakens. Starring McKenna Grace, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Paul Rudd, the sequel, 30 years later, ignored the 2016 remake (which is understandable, since it's not set in the same continuity) and a comic coming-of-age adventure. The offering portrayed the events of the first Ghostbusters as a kind of generational pop mythology. I'd argue that the film worked well enough on its own terms (Grace is awesome, Rudd is charming and Coon benefits from the film's desire to go raw with family arrangements) as a third act fan fodder-fest. escape from. This worked for fans of Ghostbusters and for those who just wanted a fun (and present-day) riff on Stranger Things or Super 8. However, even with similar "course improvements" to The Incredible Hulk (after Hulk) and Man of Steel (later). Superman Returns), Ghostbusters: Afterlife just made $61 million overseas.
Unlike Jurassic World, the Kristen Wiig/Melissa McCarthy/Leslie Jones/Kate McKinnon comedy would have had a worldwide budget of $229 million on a budget closer to McCarthy's Spy ($235 million on a $65 million budget in the summer of 2015). Had the film performed as expected for fantasy franchise flicks, we would have grossed $371 million worldwide. That would be at least the equivalent of Batman Begins ($371 million) and Star Trek ($385 million). Ghostbusters IP is exclusively American pop culture, or at least someone has a "fantasy saga of my childhood" nostalgia for it. Not unlike Solo ($214 million domestic but just $394 million worldwide), North American film audiences showed respectable numbers, while foreign audiences did not. When Sony doubled down on IP (bringing it on to Evan's son, making a respectable remake of Ghostbusters, emphasizing iconography, etc.), overseas earnings, Covid aside, plummeted.
Some of that slowdown was due to Covid variables (even though Venom 2, James Bond 25 and Halloween Kills were doing just fine worldwide), but Afterlife still earned 66% of its box office in North America alone. Of. This is in stark contrast to the traditional theatrical performance for a fantasy franchise flick. In addition, it grossed 40% less overseas than the previous Ghostbusters film, indicating that some foreign interest was in the idea of a big-budget sci-fi comedy starring McCarthy and other famous comic actresses, allegiance to I.P. was opposite. , Sony applied the right lessons from Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (which seemed appealing to those not interested in the brand). Unlike Man of Steel or the Incredible Hulk, which made 180-degree course-corrections but only made similar earnings on a similar budget, Ghostbusters: Afterlife was made cheap enough to be a hit with similar results.
He was smart enough to spend only $75 million on Tom Rothman and friend Ghostbusters: The Afterlife meant that even in non-Covid times, he was likely to account for the possibility that audiences outside of North America would see the sequel to Ghostbusters legacy. won't care. Cared about the Han Solo origin story or the LeBron James Space Jam sequel (A New Legacy earned $92 million overseas versus $140 million in 1996 for Space Jam). Ghostbusters made $229 million domestically and $53 million overseas in 1984, while Ghostbusters II made $112 million/$103 million in 1989. Jokes about expanding international scope aside ("The Spengler kids are going to South Korea!"), the theoretical sequel shouldn't be so expensive it can't be ignored again outside of North America. Because the very funny Afterlife proved what a very funny answer to the call: Foreign audiences don't care about Ghostbusters.