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SanSeb t1_j1vlz45 wrote

Reply to comment by JWells16 in Why still the push for "woke" tv-shows and movies, when almost all of them result in a flop? by [deleted]

The Star Wars franchise did a big nose dive, RoP is being floored by HotD. Surely not a success.
Also not even mentioning the all female ghost busters or Oceans movies.

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OrangeJr36 t1_j1vmbro wrote

Ah yes, the biggest success that Amazon Prime Video has ever had that is well reviewed by professional critics is somehow in trouble.

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Clarksp2 t1_j1vn8kp wrote

While I don’t agree at all with OPs assessment of wokeness in RoP, but I really don’t see where you are saying RoP is Amazon’s biggest success? They’ve spent nearly 800m dollars. Success shouldn’t be only viewed by evaluation of critics (usually paid propaganda at this point) but more on return on investment.

I truly don’t see how this boring series will provide decades long engagement to bring back the billions spent on its development

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1vnn4c wrote

As I understand RoP broke Amazon’s viewership record.

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Clarksp2 t1_j1vpflb wrote

Viewership record doesn’t mean increase in profits? Also, do third parties investigate viewership reporting? If I spent 4 times the amount of budget than any previous project, I would want the world to think that it was more viewed than it was.

Regardless if the viewership stats are true, I still don’t see the correlation to success in terms of profit

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1vryw5 wrote

Okay so because the stats don’t align with what you believe you’re just going to say the stats are fake? RoP is Amazon’s most successful show and has already turned a profit. If you have evidence to the contrary feel free to share.

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Clarksp2 t1_j1wef56 wrote

Lol I read that article after a quick google search myself and nowhere in it states “how they’ve turned profits”

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1wg3h2 wrote

> “It’s just been a powerhouse for us. And, as big of an investment as it’s been, it has more than paid off for us,” Amazon’s Head of Television continued. “So, we’re thrilled. But it’s a great question. I don’t even know what the initial hopes were, but we’ve also grown so significantly as a service, with both this and the NFL, over the fall. We’ve just seen a tremendous surge of new memberships.”

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Clarksp2 t1_j1whh8w wrote

Increase in subscribers while also noting the addition of all Thursday night NFL games as part of that says zero about how RoP has turned them a profit?

So are they saying every single “new” subscriber only subscribed for RoP/NFL, how many new subscribers? These statements sound a lot like the grandiose verbiage Trump would spew “tremendous” “greatest ever” “number 1”

Just give me the actual stats. 465 million spent on the first season. If the subscriber increase has turned profit, that would mean a total of 31 million new subscribers over the course of the 3.5-4months of its release.

One article quoting the show runners saying it’s a hit is far from showing proof of turning a profit

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1wn2cm wrote

Here’s what I have: Amazon head of television saying that it’s profitable and Amazon investing more money into the show to produce more of it.

Here’s what you have:

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Clarksp2 t1_j1woqs5 wrote

Lol one statement from the very person who has a personal stake in it without any factual numbers is not anything.

Ask yourself, if I quadrupled my content budget for just one show, and that show doesn’t do well, do you think I’m going to say so?

They have much more to gain by “claiming” it’s turning a profit than saying it will take years to return the investment.

So good job finding the one statement from the show runner.

Also, not sure how you aren’t seeing my logic. I feel like you don’t even realize that I’ve watched the show, enjoyed it, but was not as exciting as the anticipation of the show was. All I’m saying is that there’s absolutely no way in 3.5 months they have already generated 500m in profit (not just revenue) from “viewership hours and increased subscribers” 31 million monthly subscribers would need to be added just to get return of investment, but there are other intangibles associated with that (ie running costs of the service, increased server capacity/bandwidth,maintenance, customer service, etc) so the real number to profit would need to be somewhere in the 40-45 million subscribers (14.99/month).

And that still assumes that every last subscriber that has been added can be tied to RoP, but in the article you keep quoting, they also talk about the big partnership with the NFL which also contributed to subscriber increase

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1wryue wrote

Here’s what I have: Amazon head of television saying that it’s profitable and Amazon investing more money into the show to produce more of it.

Here’s what you have:

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Clarksp2 t1_j1wtn8r wrote

Cute little keyboard warrior, you are. Until you can show actual financial figures, not just Amazon potentially doubling down on a gamble (all investments are), then all you have is a statement from Amazon who only benefits from exaggerating the reality. I hope it works for them, as I am a big Tolkien fan, but to say it’s a success in my opinion (yes, mine, less biased than the show runners opinion) is a large exaggeration. If you compare the critical and audience reception of the LOTR, this is drastically different, regardless of longer reach that allows more views than the early 2000s.

Either way, happy holidays fellow redditor, I do wish you well

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1wwzu2 wrote

The show runners say it’s successful but some random person on Reddit says nah, based on pure speculation and perhaps the most laughably shallow analysis of profitability I’ve seen. Oh yeah your completely uninformed feelings totally hold more weight.

As far as cute keyboard warrior comment, that’s funny coming from someone arguing with me on a keyboard.

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Clarksp2 t1_j1x296m wrote

I use talk to text on my phone, got ya!

Anywho, you know who also runs a show, and claims success, but it’s all bullshxt? Putin.

My shallow analysis of profitability, eh? What would be your take? In many of my responses I asked questions that weren’t all that rhetorical. How would you equate profitability then, besides that the show runners say so?

I quickly brought about a rough estimate of subscribers needed to have a return on investment. Which is usually what most people call “profit”

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HardDriveAndWingMan t1_j1xbc95 wrote

You know who assumes bullshit just because it was said by someone who may have a vague motive to lie? Covid deniers. Election deniers. Most conspiracists. I’m not a fan of that way of thinking.

If I have a $468 billion dollar company and I wanted to know if something bundled within that service was profiting my company, I would probably first look at how popular it is. If something bundled in my $468 billion dollar company was the most popular thing in that company, and I spent less than half of 1 billion on it, I would say it’s probably profitable.

Then again I don’t really know. I know that people with more information than I have have said it’s profitable, and no one has shown otherwise. Least of all you.

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TurrPhennirPhan t1_j1vrx4q wrote

Gotta say, that’s a weird metric. Yeah, they spent a lot of time and money on it.

Like, I recently made like $30 spending an hour writing an article on how Bossk might be a cannibal. Amazon “only” made hundreds of millions from RoP.

Which is the bigger success? The multimillion dollar fantasy project that still made millions, or the 650 words I farted out about a space lizard eating other space lizards that costed me all of a slow period at work?

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twodickhenry t1_j1vnhzq wrote

Didn’t it gross billions?

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Clarksp2 t1_j1voo7f wrote

How does 1 season of streaming gross billions? If that’s the case, good for them. (Did they sell the rights to other services, can you buy/rent physical copies of it? Or do they just measure the increase in monthly subscribers and attribute it solely to RoP?) But just because it had the biggest budget of any prime original, and the largest marketing allocation to boot, doesn’t mean it’s the biggest success.

Personal opinion : success of movie/television should be measured on its overall return on investment.

Non Amazon example would be Deadpool, budget less than 80m with overall revenue close to or exceeding a billion dollars.

In terms of spending a billion to make 1.2 billion, isn’t a success at just a 20% ROI compared to the 1000% ROI other well scripted, lower budget originals can bring

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twodickhenry t1_j1vv5e2 wrote

I was going off other comments when I asked that, but since you didn’t know I dug a little and it has indeed turned a profit, according to the show runners. It’s also the most-watched first-season show amazon has produced.

I don’t think anyone thinks it was great, but my point was that if you’re going by the ROI, it appears it was successful.

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Clarksp2 t1_j1wep3y wrote

Lol how has it turned a profit though? I keep seeing this same article shared. If I spent a billion dollars, I’d probably also want my investors to not feel slighted so would ultimately say “massive success, worth every penny” but saying it without showing it are two different things entirely

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Ttthhasdf t1_j1vmdoa wrote

I haven't watched house of dragons but aren't there black characters and female characters?

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jankyspankybank t1_j1vn0fy wrote

Yes, in fact early in the show the female leads mother dies from child birth in a gruesome way as a commentary on how women are valued in that society.

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lt_dan_zsu t1_j1vp0px wrote

Yes, his contrasting example is hilarious because they also race swapped characters lmao.

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TurrPhennirPhan t1_j1vqqyz wrote

The black characters were also white in the book.

The anti-“woke” crowd did, in fact, lose their collective shit over that.

Meanwhile, the Velaryons are probably the one family you could portray as black without breaking established lore and Steve Toussaint crushes it as Lord Corlys.

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JWells16 t1_j1vn0xy wrote

I’m not debating that Star Wars nosedived with Rise of the Skywalker; however, the last three Star Wars movies grossed billions of dollars. Likewise, RoP didn’t have as many viewers as HotD, but that was kind of to be expected. HBO has a much better track record making shows than Amazon. That being said, RoP is Amazon’s biggest show ever and also grossed over a billion dollars.

As you said, there are better examples of “wokeness” failing, but you went with examples that made billions of dollars, and their problems weren’t even with being “woke.” They were simply bad writing. You referenced HotD as a success, yet it could be argued that they were “woke” casting black Velaryons.

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SanSeb t1_j1vq02p wrote

Well, yeah that was probably expressed in a wrong manner. They were making money that's true, but let's say the expectation of the success was probably a bit higher. Just look at the new trilogy which is mostly regarded as bad now, doesn't have the merchandise sales as expected, etc. So the hype basically died down, besides some "classic" series like Mandalorian bringing back a bit of the former feeling.
RoP was hoping to get the old lotr crowd on board but also being criticized a lot and could have been much better based on the expectations.

So in that sense they maybe didn't flop, but weren't successful because the focus was on shoehorning in some characters instead writing good stories.

HotD at least tried to make a bit of sense with the recasting, while RoP as mentioned just placed tokens in every culture without explaining any further. I would have wanted for them to introduce these new people and races properly into the world. Maybe take the Haradrim who are a arabic-esque group but that obviously wouldn't be relevant for the American market. Here is has to be a black person to check that diversity box. But here we in the rest of the world don't really care. Do it right or not at all. And just placing a random black person into a medieval setting is just weird. Especially when these characters get no proper backstory. I think that's no real inclusion and I don't understand how people here see this criticism as racism instead of being vocal for these minorities to being protrayed with a little bit more respect.

But as said somewhere else in this thread, people don't even care and just want to insult.

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ayylmao95 t1_j1vmrkh wrote

Yes, you are certainly the authority on all of this, I'm sure. Your opinion is shared by everyone in the world, without fail!

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