Is there any scenario where Dragonball Evolution could have made money?

[WittyUsername]

No, this isn’t a “should there be another live action Dragon Ball” thread. I’m simply asking this question as a hypothetical. DBE was not only trashed by critics, but it was clearly a movie that Fox had no faith in. It had a measly $30 million budget, and Fox only did the bare minimum of marketing for it, which resulted in the movie opening at an absolutely abysmal eight place at the box office. They was clearly much more focused on promoting X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

The question is, could the movie have at least made a decent amount of money if Fox actually gave a damn? As in, if they actually bothered to try and sell the movie, and maybe put more money into it, do you think it could’ve done well enough to get a sequel, or was interest simply not there to begin with?

[MasenkoHA]

I doubt it. Even with the next to none existent marketing for it, it was pretty common knowledge that the movie was going to be very unfaithful to the original story. And Dragon Ball Z was still relatively recent in the US that were no room for a theoretical "new generation of fans who didn't grow up with the original." The audience this movie was ostensibly meant for (teenage boys) would have at the very least remembered watching the series on Toonami a few years back.

[jjgp1112]

Just keep in mind that Fox giving a damn also means a significantly different movie that would've drawn more interest anyway

[WittyUsername]

Just keep in mind that Fox giving a damn also means a significantly different movie that would've drawn more interest anyway

That’s why I mentioned putting more money into it. If Fox actually cared about the movie, it definitely would’ve cost more than $30 million.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

If Fox gave Evolution a bigger budget and put in the effort to make it faithful? Sure. I think interest would have been much greater and the movie would have made more money at the Box Office. Its failure was to be expected because of how the movie turned out in the end.

[TheGreatness25]

I think Dragon Ball Evolution would have failed any way you slice it because it was an absolutely awful movie. Forget the fact that it was selling itself on one of the most iconic anime/manga properties of all time and wasn't even remotely faithful to it--it was just a bad movie. There wasn't a single good, redeeming thing about this and the only reason that I actually finished watching it instead of turning it off after five minutes, is because it did bear the Dragon Ball name.

If the studio put more money into it through promotion, then the studio would just lose more money.

I totally understand why Fox was much more interested in promoting X-Men Origins:Wolverine because that was an established successful franchise and the movie itself was much, much better than DBE. Besides the fact that I never understood the criticism for it (yeah, his claws looked bad... please see Ōzaru from DBE), X-Men Origins: Wolverine was just leagues ahead of DBE.

I kind of feel like Fox was taken for a ride. Like, someone told them, "Oh, no! This is like the most popular franchise in the world! And this is the story! Trust me! It'll be a huge hit!" And Fox, having never seen anything related to Dragon Ball except its profits, looked at the script dumbfounded and said, "I mean... I guess... if you say so."

[MrSatan2099]

This is a really interesting topic to me, I remember following it's box office numbers pretty closely at the time.

For starters, it was a wide release but not a mega wide release. It dropped on about 2,100 screens in the US. By comparison both Wolverine and Transformers 2, two of the biggest films that summer, opened on more than 4,000 screens. Now that's pretty common when a studio doesn't have much faith in a project but it still means fewer people had an opportunity to see it. I personally recall that my local theater was not showing it and I had to go two towns over. For further comparison Super Hero dropped on about 3,000 screens in the US earlier this year.

How could it have made money? Well it may have been slightly profitable actually. One generally accepted metric for profitability on a typical film is that it needs to make double it's production budget during it's theatrical run. (I'm aware that's a highly debated generalization for some people and it's more commonly accepted that a film needs to triple it's production budget to be profitable today, but it was 2009, and in this instance of a low budget film with practically no marketing I feel the double budget rule is likely accurate) The studio is only going to get a percentage of ticket sales (a higher percentage in North America than overseas), there's the cost of marketing the film, and the mechanical cost of distributing the film. So with a budget of $30 million and a box office haul of about $56 world wide, it was probably a wash for Fox. Consider the home video sales, tv licensing, merchandise percentages, eventually streaming, obviously it's not much but Fox probably did ultimately profit from the film. Obviously there's some conjecture there, and we'll never really know because movie studios don't have a habit of transparency when it comes to those kinds of figures.

Now is it worth the production of a feature film for what likely amounted to a few hundred thousand dollars? Probably not, but the amount of money that it did make is fascinating. Battle of God's made less money worldwide, Resurrection F only made slightly more. Taking inflation into account over the last 13 years Evolution actually wasn't too far off from Super Hero's worldwide box office haul.

You do have Broly, where thanks to a combination of the character's extreme popularity and the timing of it following up a very successful television series made it hughly successful. But again considering inflation, Evolution and Broly aren't necessarily in two completely different categories.

Let's put aside the conversation about budgets because obviously the animated films have much smaller production budgets and have been much more profitable.

So if box office return is the true indicator of theatrical audience, is it fair to say that there may just be a cap on the audience for Dragon Ball in a theatrical setting? Broly and Super Hero might be the best Dragon Ball can do at the US Box Office, and no matter how much money you spend on a movie it just may not have the theatrical audience to reach Marvel or Star Wars levels of success. You can't spend $150 million on a film that makes $75 million, and that's ok. Dragon Ball's bread and butter has always been merchandise and video games. I know it seems like that would translate right over, but consider than if you sell a million video games at $50 a piece you're going to be profiting way more than if you sold a million movie tickets for $10 a piece.

So to get back to the question, could it have made more money? I really don't think so. Maybe now, but definitely not in 2009. Sure Fox could have spent $100 million dollars on it, and it might have made a little more money, but it probably wouldn't have been profitable. Honestly the only scenario where it could have made much money is if the budget had somehow been lower.

Was it just dumb luck that Fox didn't lose a fortune? Maybe, but big studios spend a ton of time and money on market research. I can see a scenario where it became obvious the film didn't have a chance and they cut the effects/reshoot budget down to nothing. Not trying to insinuate that there were major reshoots planned or anything, but all effects based films have reshoots, even if it's not necessarily to alter the story.

Long winded I know, but these are the kinds of things I sometimes lay awake at night and think about.

[TheGreatness25]

That was an incredible analysis, MrSatan2099!

From what I see, it's not just the box office, but home video sales as well. Using the-numbers.com, it looks like Evolution blew Battle of Gods out of the water on worldwide box office sales, but there is no information on how well the home release did for Battle of Gods. Furthermore, per this site, "Resurrection F" did better in worldwide box office by a small amount, but pulled in over 4x more money from home video releases. The Broly movie pulled in more than double the money through worldwide box office and over 5x more than DBE through home video sales.

Again, this information is through that one particular website. But, I think my point is that DBE also suffered in home video sales.

Personality, if I were a Fox exec and I was presented with the script for DBE and X-Men, I know where I'd allocate my budget.

[NitroEX]

Since the brand wasn't strong enough It would've needed to attach itself to a recognizable star to draw attention, and that wasn't happening without a good director on board. All of that would have inflated the budget and made it unprofitable regardless of how good the film was, because as MrSatan2099 mentioned, the audience wasn't just there. Dragon Ball also requires a lot of CGI which Dragon Ball Evolution even cheaped out on.

Sadly there was no saving it. Especially not at a time when the fanbase was still primarily children and the franchise was significantly below the public perception of Pokemon (which was the only anime property that cracked into the mainstream profits at the time besides Studio Ghibli).

The marketing was poor too, I remember mostly hearing about it through word of mouth and closed internet discussions. Barely anyone knew about it until it became a meme later on. I kind of wish it had stayed in obscurity because it only diminished the brand and cemented the fact that they should never try again.

[Peach]

I think if they had listened to all the changes producer Stephen Chow suggested and cast an Asian man as Goku, it could have succeeded.

James Wong can be a competent director. He directed Final Destination and The One. Stephen Chow is talented as well. They had a lot of great performers in the movie... James Marsters, Chow Yung Fat, Emmy Rossum.

It could have been a charming, yet different take on Dragon Ball. Sadly they were only interested in the brand of Stephen Chow and not the changes he suggested. Why they didn't listen to his changes, I don't know. He's considered one of the greatest modern kung fu film directors. He has directed and produced some great films on tighter budgets.

This film had some seriously talented people in it, they used practical effects, and built some impressive sets. Fox should have stepped in and made James Wong listen to Stephen Chow and asked Stephen Chow to be more involved in this film. Fox horribly mismanaged this film.

[Dragon Ball Ireland]

Since the brand wasn't strong enough It would've needed to attach itself to a recognizable star to draw attention, and that wasn't happening without a good director on board.

I'd say James Marsters was relatively well known, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a huge hit in the 90s. I'm not sure what other stars could have helped the movie. Maybe James Earl Jones as Shenron? Although good actors can be wasted in bad movies, so it's probably for the best the rest of the cast weren't household names.

[Saiya6Cit]

Up to this date, I haven't finished watching that movie.

But I would say in an scenario in which the cast is different.

[Koitsukai]

The only scenario I can think of is one with a different director - the dude said he never watched DB, IIRC- and different writers. With another screenplay, probably anything could've been possible.

To be fair, I think if it was based on a Z story, even if it had the same budget and director, and it deviate as much from the original story, aliens invading Earth and killing everybody until a local returned, would probably have made more money than DBE.

Once I knew the story was about Daimao's assault, I knew I wasn't going to be excited about it. A pre-revival DB movie without Super Saiyans or the "current" cast seemed unappealing to me.

[NitroEX]

I'd say James Marsters was relatively well known, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a huge hit in the 90s. I'm not sure what other stars could have helped the movie. Maybe James Earl Jones as Shenron? Although good actors can be wasted in bad movies, so it's probably for the best the rest of the cast weren't household names.

James Marsters was a prominent television actor, but that's not on the same level as a prominent movie star who can essentially get films financed just by attaching their name to it. Marsters was looking for his big break with Evolution but didn't find it. It probably did more harm to his perception in the business by being attached to such a stinker, but as he once revealed, it was sold to him as a bigger movie than it ended up being.

[MrSatan2099]

That was an incredible analysis, MrSatan2099!

Thank you very much, I really appreciate that! I'm always happy to talk about the movie business. I actually don't hate Evolution either. In fact it's actually been long enough to be nostalgic for that period. Dragon Ball, X-Men, Transformers, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Watchmen, even Street Fighter Legend of Chun-Li (DB Fans should feel thankful Evolution didn't turn out that bad.) 2009 was a great time to be a pop culture junkie!

[TheGreatness25]

That was an incredible analysis, MrSatan2099!

Thank you very much, I really appreciate that! I'm always happy to talk about the movie business. I actually don't hate Evolution either. In fact it's actually been long enough to be nostalgic for that period. Dragon Ball, X-Men, Transformers, Star Trek, G.I. Joe, Watchmen, even Street Fighter Legend of Chun-Li (DB Fans should feel thankful Evolution didn't turn out that bad.) 2009 was a great time to be a pop culture junkie!

I don't know--I really despised Dragon Ball Evolution and won't watch it if it's on while I'm channel surfing. Seeing it once was enough for me lol I remember really liking the GI Joe movies. Watchmen was "meh" to me. Never saw Street Fighter: Legend of Chun-li, but the 1994 movie is the perfect cheese lol And I liked most of the X-Men movies (only didn't like Last Stand and didn't see Dark Phoenix yet, but I liked Wolverine even though I'm like the only one lol)

[FoolsGil]

If they actually tried, I'd like to believe word of mouth would have brought more than enough fans to make more than triple their budget.

[Anonymous Friend]

Just like for any film, or anything else, it needed to be entertaining. It needed to be so good, it's good ... or, be so bad , it's good.

For a production that was mostly created to keep the license at Fox, it sure did have a bunch of solid people attached to it.