Some films doing better outside of the U.S. than others?

Ghostbusters Discussion General Ghostbusters Discussion
1

Any theories on why GB2 and GB2016 performed so much better overseas than the other movies in the franchise?

2

For GBII, I think it’s because the cartoon was released later so it was a natural/shorter jump since it was a fresher for us? Does that make any sense?

Also probably different release dates.

For GB2016: way less political for us and way less internet fights during the build up because of that, is my best guess?

3

It’s our arthouse European sensibilities in effect, mate. :cool: See also Alien 3 doing great business everywhere but America.

4

USA: June 16, 1989

UK: December 1st, 1989

So nearly 6 months difference there (even longer in other parts of Europe). So it was effectively a Xmas film instead of a “summer blockbuster”.

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It was over here, yeah. I have to remind myself of that whenever anyone complains about their releasing a film about New Years in the Summer - we got it at a contextually appropriate time!

6

To repost what I said in the other thread:

I don’t really think I can speculate usefully on Ghostbusters II. The box office landscape of 1989 and 2024 are so different they might as well be different planets. The closest I would get to a theory is that Ghostbusters was one of those massive cultural lightning bolts, like Batman would be when Ghostbusters II was opening, and in a pre-internet age, culture traveled slowly. Perhaps the international market got to ride the hype of the original more closely in those places – I have no idea when that first movie would’ve been getting VHS tape releases and/or airing on television overseas, but maybe it worked out in the sequel’s favor.

As for the 2016 movie, my main memory is that they actively promoted it in other countries in a way they haven’t appeared to do for Afterlife or Frozen Empire. One may think of that as a defensive choice, but my sense is that the global push in 2016 was more aggressive on the part of people marketing that movie, as it was far more expensive and Sony marketed it like a tentpole. I remember seeing pics of Feig and McCarthy at a gigantic-looking Japanese premiere, holding up little signs on sticks with the logo on it. Box office reports for Frozen Empire say the series is viewed as being domestically-driven, so FWIW, II and 2016 are considered the outliers, not the others.