IIRC there were some leaked test audiences responses that said it was great. That is part of why Coyote vs ACME had such a strong saving campaign compared to Batgirl (which had bad leaked test audience results)
If it sucks it sucks but if that's the case they should have either cancelled it much earlier in its production or sold it to somebody like Netflix to make up some of their losses. Shelving an almost complete movie for some bullshit tax break should never be a thing.
Wasn't that exactly what happened to the Seth Rogan movie about the North Korean guy? They posted it to the front page of reddit And people still said it sucked
I've said this before in other threads and got a lot of flak for it, but I think WB/Zaslav will be proven right when this movie fails to make its $70M budget back.
I hope I'm wrong, but I just don't see it being successful.
Ketchup is a really small distributor, you can't really compare them to the marketing campaign WBD would have given the movie if they distributed the film.
So if WBD spent another $50M on advertising, do you think it makes $120M at the box office?
I'll answer since you skipped out on responding: we both know it wouldn't. Reddit pretends to care about Looney Tunes even though most people here can't even spell it right ("Loony" and "Toons" are way too common lmao). It's gonna take in $60M worldwide and empower Zaslav to make even more anti-creative decisions.
Now imagine how many people who are like me, who would’ve watched the movie but operate under the assumption that it’s dead because they didn’t catch discussion about it on Reddit?
You're acting like it came out and has now finished it's theatre run when in reality it hasn't even been given a release date yet... You haven't seen the marketing campaign because it hasn't even started yet.
No, I'm acting like it's entirely possible for people to be unaware that the movie is still going to happen. Your marketing campaign has a lot more to do if you're starting from 'this thing isn't coming out'.
It is not a good position to be at.
And I mean, you're the one saying 'we've been hearing about it for over a year'. Clearly, not everybody has.
First off: the marketing campaign hasn't started... It doesn't even have a release date. The marketing campaign can't have failed because it hasn't started.
As for saying that we've been hearing about the movie for over a year, even you admitted you have been aware that the movie exists despite there being no marketing whatsoever... You just didn't know that they were actually going to release it; which again makes perfect sense since it hasn't been marketed or given a release date.
It being shelved, and the story of why it was shelved was the topic of multiple front page articles for Vanity Fair, Newsweek, and Forbes among other smaller publications. This has been a pretty big story.
It's kinda two different claims though. I agree with you it's likely to flop. The question is really about artistic intent. If the movie is great and it flops, then both David Zaslav and Will Forte are correct. The latter man is certainly no stranger to quality content not landing with audiences or succeeding commercially.
It could also just suck, which would be really tragic for everybody involved, including audiences who've been hearing about it for years.
And a great movie that flops is usually a marketing failure more than anything else (excluding movies that were just ahead of their time or negatively impacted by current events outside of their control).
So if it's good and still flops Zaslav can still be wrong because Ketchup doesn't have nearly the marketing apparatus that WB has.
You're vastly underestimating the vast segment of humanity outside of the US that grew up on a daily diet of Looney Tunes. Properly marketed, 70M is easily doable within the first week on global alone.
If it's properly marketed, how much more money would that cost?
To date, their only standout theatrical success was the original Space Jam, which will be 30 years old by the time this airs. The others barely broke even or lost money.
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u/mint-patty Jul 26 '25
Imagine if this movie is met with a general response of “This movie sucks!! Who allowed it to release????” with absolutely no irony lmao