Jophiel wrote:
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
And judging by how poorly all their films have done
The last few films have done better returns than twice their cost. "Relative" to whatever aside, that's good money not doing "poorly". Studios enjoy a solid return on a safe thing which is why we have these huge franchises in the first place. Wolverine-centered X-Men is a safe thing.
I think one big issue here is that there just aren't that many actors out there with the right charisma to really carry an ensemble franchise. Avengers struck gold with Robert Downey Jr. X-Men did to a lesser extent with Hugh Jackman. Both create an outsized role for themselves purely by virtue of being better in their niche than their surrounding actors.
Do you have cites for that? I was just going off box office mojo. It says First class had a budget of $160m, and a global gross of $353 mil. Origins was $150 mil, with gross $373.
The Wolverine DID do better, with a $120m budget bringing in $405 mil.
The last stand had a budget of $210 million, with a worldwide gross of $460m.
But typically speaking, the first two X-men movies were the highest grossing. The first was $75:296 and the second $110:407.
If your goal is to build a franchise, and your first two movies are the only ones with decent returns, you have a problem. Wolverine was something of a recovery, but even their "reboot" attempt performed badly.
X-men had a solid cast. The writing was just mediocre and the direction weak. The second didn't really improve on that, but it definitely added talent. I think Ellen Page has proven that she could have easily carried Kitty Pryde into the spot light if they gave her the chance. The problems got worse with X-2. Then you have the third one, which sucked, and absolutely gutted the cast.