How ‘Ghostbusters’ Exposed Blatant Media Bias
If that comes as a surprise to you, don’t feel ashamed. You’ve probably been reading press accounts about the film for the past few weeks.
Media bias thrives in both news and entertainment coverage.
The reboot became a cause celebre with journalists. They saw it as a chance for a female-led franchise to reverse decades of Hollywood sexism. They ignored past successes like “The Hunger Games” and “Alien” in their quest for equality.
And they weren’t going to let the truth stand in the way.
Here’s a dash of reality:
As of Aug. 7, Ghostbusters had earned just under $180 million at the global box office, including $117 million domestic. The film still hasn’t opened in a few markets, including France, Japan and Mexico, but box-office experts say it will have trouble getting to $225 million despite a hefty net production budget of $144 million plus a big marketing spend. The studio has said break-even would be $300 million.
The $70 million figure won’t shock anyone following the film’s box office trajectory. Math isn’t tough, despite what a toy once told us.
Media Bias in Real Time
The news still deflates a press narrative that has been building ever since the film project began.
That Trailer Is Great, Really
Critics Love the Movie
Toys Sales Are Soaring
It’s Not a Flop
A Sequel Is on the Way
“Ghostbusters” is a mediocre attempt to bring a dormant brand back to life. It’s far better at illuminating the entrenched media bias in entertainment reporting.
The press originally insisted that anyone sour on the reboot, or the notion of swapping the four characters’ gender, were haters. Sexists.
RELATED: Is Gender Card ‘Ghostbusters’ Only Hope?
Then, some reviewers bent over backward to applaud the film, injecting overt bias into their coverage. Take that, Neanderthal males, they cried from their laptop computers.
Later, some media outlets argued against reason that the film was “not a flop.”
Variety published an exclusive saying the film’s toy sales were “exceeding expectations,” according to Mattel. Did the story have any raw numbers? Did it compare “Ghostbusters” toy sales to previous movie-related merchandise? Did the reporter cast an ounce of skepticism over the claims?
No, no and no.
The story did include this press release style quote from the toy company, complete with an exclamation mark.
The early momentum shows the product is resonating with ‘Ghostbusters’ fans!”
Other media outlets, eager to prop up the film, shared the story with alacrity. Meanwhile, Target started marking down “Ghostbusters” toys before the film even opened.
And now reality hits.
Ignore Those Box Office Receipts
The modest box office returns didn’t dissuade reporters from sharing the news that “Ghostbusters” sequels were on the way. Sony said so. It must be true. Never mind that nothing was officially greenlit, or that it made no sense to approve sequels when the current box office returns were murky at best.
Reporters uncritically shared Sony spin. All to boost the notion that the film was a hit.
Now, THR is reporting some animated “Ghostbusters” spin-offs are in the works, but no news of an official sequel. The “Ghostbusters” brand may be back from the grave, but the film leading the way will cost Sony. Plenty.
None of this means that Hollywood sexism isn’t real. Just watch the eye-opening documentary “That Gal Who Was in That Thing” and see what actresses face in the industry.
It won’t be fixed by a single film or franchise featuring powerful actresses. Studios should consider future movies led by women, assuming the scripts are solid and the talent is first-rate. As should be the case with any movie project.
What’s undeniably real, too, is entertainment media bias.
UPDATE: Want examples of active media cheerleading on behalf of the film? Look no further than Forbes.com:
It breaks my heart to say this, but Ghostbusters is pretty much a bomb.
Or consider Vanity Fair:
It’s been difficult to watch Ghostbusters flail. Although reviewers found themselves divided as to the film’s quality, many still came down on its side—and it’s worrisome to think that Hollywood might take its performance as an omen against female-led movies more generally, particularly action franchises.
It must be good, it Must be.
It did a good job of enforcing the stereotype that women don’t have any ideas of their own so they just copy whatever men do. The idea that there should be all-female action movies like this is absurd. Why? It makes about as much sense as a romantic comedy where all the characters are transformers. Who’s the audience? I don’t really know chic movies too much but I have no interest in seeing an all dude remake of fried green tomatoes or something.
The same thing happened with the Fantastic Four reboot. They changed the race of the Human Torch, and spent months before the film’s release calling their own fans racists for objecting to the change. And of course, the film flopped, because insulting your fans is not good business. Sony should have learned from Fox’s mistake, but SJW’s never learn.
I wonder if they will try to remake Animal House, as Animal House gets busted by the diversity committee. They actually did something like that with PCU, except they wisely made the movie sympathetic to the Animal house frat, adn the SJW’s the villains, where these bozos would probably remake it with with a bunch of feminist SJW rants, and try and make the SJW’s the good guys.
With different actresses and a different director/screenwriter and a lot less grrlpower attitude this might just have worked.
(Seriously guys, don’t go out of your way to piss of your core audience.)
Maybe we’ll get a better approach in twenty years, if somebody dares to touch this hot potato again.
I’ve got a great idea, guys.
Okay, what we’re going to do is we are going to take one of the most beloved 80’s hits of all time, okay? One with a large, dedicated fanbase that has been anxiously awaiting a sequel for about 20 years now, right? But instead of making a sequel, we are going to completely remake it – only this time, we are going to focus heavily on identity politics rather than making a fun, scifi comedy.
Oh, and to help market it, we are going to have the director give interviews in which he will denigrate the existing fanbase of the franchise as being nothing more than a steaming heap of subhuman, misogynistic garbage.
We are going to make some serious bank.
LOLZ! (^_^)
Hey, why not? It worked so well for Paul Feig and company, right? (~_^)
um ,,,mean girls
Reading some of these articles has been hilarious and yet disturbing at the same time. Hilarious in how idiotic they are but disturbing in that it seems some of these outlets think they can just create their own narrative and blow a bunch sunshine up people’s butts. The best are the ones that pretend like all a film has to do in order to be a success is for the gross to exceed the production budget. Forget that theaters/distributors get about half the gross, that Sony spent a fortune (reportedly over 100 million) in advertising, or the idea that Paul Feig himself said the film would need to make 500 million in order to be successful. I’m not sure if they’re just ignorant of all of this (though you’d think they’d do a little research before writing an article declaring the film a success) or if they really are just trying to create their own narrative.
As of today Ghostbusters has made $181,513,623, not counting toy sales or any thing other than box office numbers. It’s production costs were $144,000,000. They have made about $40,000,000 on the movie in just a few weeks.
To put the opening week numbers in perspective, Star Trek Beyond had a cost of $189,000,000. In its first week it made $59.6 million and was called a hit. That is a 30% return in the first weekend.
Ghostbusters made $46,000,000 the first week of a $144,000,000 budget. That is a 32% return in the first week.
Not only did it make money – unlike this article suggested – it made
more money than what everyone considered a hit when compared this way.
Not a flop, not even close.
But hey, why let things like facts get in the way when you can have sexism and non-sense to get you through the day.
.
Then why is it set to lose 70 million?
Star Trek Beyond isn’t doing well, people are talking about how it isn’t doing well. But it isn’t quite as far into its run as the Ghostbusters.
http://screenrant.com/star-trek-beyond-box-office-success-failure/
If Sony wants to make another one, they can, that’s freedom of expression and we’re all for it. But the same rules will apply-
name calling didn’t force me to watch the first one, and it won’t make me watch a sequel either
I guess the solution is to make males go to reeducation camps and show them Ghostbusters 2 until the camp guards need to prop their eyes open with toothpicks. The customer is always wrong.
I didn’t even give a shit about the original Ghostbusters, and now I’m sexist.
Why are they just incapable of writing original female-led franchises?
While they’re desperate to just ride on the success of male-led franchises, they’ll continue to fail. People don’t want crappy gender swaps on their beloved memories.
I find it highly amusing that the SJWs were all in a huff about people disliking the switch to female leads, but nary a word on the fact that the three white leads are the scientists and the black lead is the subway worker.
” it’s worrisome to think that Hollywood might take its performance as an omen against female-led movies ”
.
What’s ironic is that the SJWs think that it was the all female lead that sank this. Liberals are always determined to learn exactly the wrong things from reality.
Women aren’t funny, unless you are trying to fuck her.
When people talk about movies with strong female leads, why everyone forgets Kill Bill? Both parts? Or is Tarantino just a no no thing for feminists?
Yes, Lara Croft and Alien also did well with female leads.
Agreed. Producers at Sony (and those like them) spend more time looking at flowcharts and bar graphs for gender demographics and target audiences than actually looking at a coherent script with good characters. As per usual in Hollywood, the story is given the least amount of consideration (although it literally is the foundation of the film).
Underworld, Resident Evil etc etc, The terrible question that is being avoided by the feminist crowd is “If female lead films do fine, Why don’t Feminist films do as well?”
Who knows, Love. Selective memory, perhaps?
I’m guessing that’s the most likely answer.