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This is an interesting article on Better Man & it's prospects .. Why Paramount Risked (and Lost) So Much Money on Better Man By Chris Lee In light of the abject and crushing box-office failure of Paramount’s Robbie Williams biographical jukebox musical, Better Man, last weekend, the question around Hollywood was not so much: Why didn’t audiences turn out to see a deliriously artful, $110 million, R-rated pop biopic plotted around a singing, dancing, cocaine-snorting CGI chimpanzee? Industry observers were left scratching their heads, instead asking: Who in their right mind would even think they could make any money whatsoever releasing a deliriously artful, $110 million, R-rated pop biopic plotted around a singing, dancing, cocaine-snorting CGI chimpanzee? (Let alone one that portrays a British superstar practically no one in America has ever heard of.) Over its opening three days in 1,291 North American theaters, Better Man pulled in a dismal $1.2 million. To put that figure in perspective, the movie failed to crack the top ten and was bested by the gossamer-thin, Pamela Anderson–starring art-house indie The Last Showgirl (production budget: $2 million), which debuted in a mere 870 locations yet still managed to pull in $1.5 million. While tracing the career arc, mental-health challenges, and descent into substance abuse of Williams — the former lead singer of the British boy band Take That, a 1990s–’00s tabloid mainstay, and European superstar who was something like the Harry Styles of his day — Better Man transcends mere pop hagiography thanks to the batshit filmmaking audacity of director Michael Gracey (of The Greatest Showman fame). And therein lies Better Man’s second bitterest irony. While flopping commercially, the movie arrives as a critical triumph, currently standing at 89 percent “fresh” on the Tomatometer — way higher than the 2019 Elton John biographical musical Rocketman, the Oscar-winning Bohemian Rhapsody, and the recent Bob Marley biopic One Love — with an even higher audience approval rating (91 percent on the Popcornmeter) in no small part due to its partial fictionalization of Williams’s life story through presenting him as an alcoholic, egomaniac, anthropomorphic chimp. Even more stinging, the film has commercially fizzled across the singer’s native U.K. and Europe, where he remains a top touring act (drawing in $10.5 million internationally, to date). Which leads us to Better Man’s bitterest irony: All anecdotal evidence suggests the movie flopped precisely because the Williams-as-mo-cap-chimp conceit was just too highbrow to put butts in seats. “When I saw the trailer, I thought it was a Planet of the Apes musical,” one industry observer tells me. “People just couldn’t get past the monkey,” adds another studio executive. “It’s too weird. It’s like, What the f***?” In an IP-dominated cinematic era when sequels, spinoffs, and reboots rule the multiplex, Better Man was more than just an original-concept outlier with a nine-figure price tag. “It was so high-concept that people couldn’t grasp it, which made it exponentially tougher to market,” says Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “People say studios are heartless machines that only care about the bottom line. If that were true, you wouldn’t get a movie like Better Man.” In February 2024 — just months removed from the resolution of debilitating twin Hollywood strikes and with the studio-movie supply chain still in shambles — Paramount paid $25 million for North American distribution rights to Better Man, which was independently financed and partially funded by an Australian government incentive program (testament to Williams’s abiding popularity Down Under). Implicit in that move: Studios were facing a decimated release calendar due to production shutdowns and delays at the beginning of last year. And despite the absence of clear-cut “comps” (as previously released films used to estimate a new film’s projected profitability are known), some C-suite honchos, like Paramount CEO Brian Robbins, clearly felt a big swing like Better Man was the best worst option at the time. Its price tag, however, was too high. “The film was independently produced with an est. budget of $110 million,” veteran box-office analyst David A. Gross notes in his industry newsletter, FranchiseRe. “That’s an enormous amount of money for a vision like this. The risk-taking is excellent, but $110m is not realistic for the genre or the musical artist. $25 to $30 million would have made more sense.” Compounding matters, Los Angeles audiences were expected to be among Better Man’s main domestic box-office drivers. But the satirical-anthropo-musical reached screens last weekend just as devastating wildfires were engulfing the city. And while the conflagrations did not result in widespread theater closures, Angelenos stayed away from the movies en masse. But with Paramount yet to open the film in Japan in France, and to use the topically gratuitous metaphor, Better Man’s monkey could still swing (on streaming services if not theatrically). Gracey’s most notable credit, the 2018 P.T. Barnum musical biopic The Greatest Showman, was dead on box-office arrival but slowly and gradually built up steam to become a sleeper hit. “This is my blanket statement for any movie that has great reviews and solid audience scores: Don’t count it out yet,” Dergarabedian says. “We need to give this movie a chance. The Greatest Showman is an example of a film that was somewhat marginalized and disregarded and had legs.” “Here’s the other thing: Movies that play like this that get more attention than box office in theaters wind up doing extraordinarily well on streaming,” he continues. “Because people have heard about them but didn’t necessarily want to go out to see them. I heard about that monkey movie and I want to check it out.” https://www.vulture.com/article/better-man-...much-money.html

@1890107548990337214

KNUTSFORD CITY LIMITS Gosh !, this is a while ago :) 62bcK70KNF8?si=4DyHAlqPCPrSPZpPp Meaning of Knutsford City Limits by Robbie Williams https://www.songtell.com/robbie-williams/kn...ord-city-limits

:lol:

He gave in too soon :lol: @1889963983152812193

@1889950325303550009 Available now , head on over - https://robbiewilliamsrewind.com/special-be...-jenny-griffin/ Special – Better Man Crew Interviews – Jenny Griffin Assistant Choreographer (Dancer & Dance Captain)

@1889947691842413052

It is beautiful Laura :wub: uA0tlrJ7ZR8?si=Bmwn42Qb8qmkP1a6 Video thanks to mariellehelico

You are indeed sensational Robbie . Have a very Happy Birthday :party2: _qd_RnYF6Xo?si=PVJbpF8-sVwewGE3

That's cool. ..

39TNBG19hds?si=t8OzSDsz1eMk3G2i

YlylnbjOGjE?si=SkDIaueW_3oEbkIZ Video thanks to Chez Moi

Singing For The Lonely :heart: :heart: :heart:

Bill Bria @billbria · 29m Hell yeah! :lol:

I purchased it yesterday Frogec, Looking forward to watching it again & finding all the references

Yes, Nice award that :)

I'LL TAKE THAT! Robbie Williams rakes in eye-watering £75m sum from tour with eight-figure pay cheque and HUGE charity donation revealed The star splashed out on an early birthday present for himself this week Mary Gallagher, Senior Digital Showbiz Reporter Published: 10:50, 12 Feb 2025Updated: 13:47, 12 Feb 2025 ROBBIE Williams raked in an astonishing £75.2m from his monster world tour, new figures have revealed. The former Take That icon turned over a whopping £1.4 million a week as the cash poured into his coffers. And he paid himself £22m from his riches – with an incredible £250,000 going on charitable donations. Robbie crisscrossed the world in his XXV Tour from October 2022 to December 2023, celebrating 25 years as a solo artist. And now he’s reaping the rewards. Accounts just filed for his You Are Not Famous Ltd firm show that for the 12 months to the end of December 2023, he turned over £75.2m – compared with £30.7m in the previous year. And his profit was around £42m. The annual accounts show he has cash reserves of £18m and cars worth £151,000. They also disclose that £3.4m of his income came from the UK, £55.3m from the rest of the Europe and £16.3m from other parts of the word. It's no wonder he's got the touring bug, and is set to hit the road again this year. The Stoke-born star, 50, will play Edinburgh, Manchester, Bath, London and Dublin for the home leg of his Robbie Williams Live 2025 series of gigs. From May, he'll also head to Europe, visiting arenas in Ireland, Sweden, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Finland, Denmark and France. The tour comes hot on the heels of his critically acclaimed Better Man biopic. The film, headed up by The Greatest Showman director Michael Gracey, has been nominated for an Oscar and a Bafta as well as a Golden Globe. And this week Robbie has been celebrating by splashing the cash. He bought Eric Morecambe's glasses and pipe because he has always seen the iconic comedian as an "uncle of sorts". The singer said he cried "happy, childlike tears" after submitting the top bid last month with a final offer of £20,000. This far exceeded the £2,000 to £4,000 estimate. In an Instagram post featuring photos of Williams using the glasses and pipe, he said he treated himself to the items ahead of his 51st birthday tomorrow, February 13. The Angels singer recalled appointing Mike, a member of his team who handles his digital presence, to be "chief bidder" as he was in Los Angeles about to board a plane as the auction got under way. "As it happens, I got to watch the lot being auctioned live. My iPhone and Mike's iPhone acting like walkie-talkies," he wrote. "'What should I do Ayd's?' I nervously kept asking my wife. 'Keep bidding' Ayda says with the steely determination of someone bursting through an electronics store door on Black Friday. "'Keep going Mike' I say. This vignette of conversation would repeat itself several times over the next 10 minutes." Once he won the bidding war, Williams said he cried "happy, childlike tears". "You see, I guess we all need friends-we-never-meet from off the telly. Eric has always been mine. An uncle of sorts," he wrote. https://www.thesun.ie/tvandshowbiz/14704926...cheque-charity/

He's having one of those days :lol:

I love all these videos, so interesting how they create these movies. So many videos to catch up on ;)

I very much doubt we will ever find out the final figures ..

UNDERGROUND MACHINE I was reminded of this great song when looking through Twitter tonight KwK0MSbW_SQ?si=4qsTm3h-O99N6Zv6 Video thanks to Clare703

X5MYX6nJT_o?si=7Lws9UHScgfT5wt5 Video thanks to NFS goes pop

Rock DJ .. 'Sing When You're Winning' | "Sing what, I haven't got any lyrics?" pYl99099bDk?si=NbnwYRQ6iONE8fVT