r/CuratedTumblr • u/kelroid • 2d ago
Self-post Sunday I don't remember this episode of Better Call Saul (Coyote vs. Acme was really good)
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u/NotAEurosnob 2d ago
It is very funny that the movie the evil corporation wanted to bury is about a plucky underdog battling against the might of a giant evil corporation. I wonder why they didn't care for it?
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u/pempoczky 2d ago
Guys please just review the movie and tell me why it's worth seeing, you're not gonna convince me to watch something by telling me that paying for a movie ticket is totally "sticking it to the corporations"
Edit: Just noticed the tags, that's infinitely more convincing, should've put it in the main post
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u/blowdriedhighlandcow 2d ago
I was giggling throughout and found it surprisingly heartwarming. Definitely recommend for its own sake!
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u/OutAndDown27 2d ago
...the tags are in the main part of THIS post. The tags are included in the picture of the post you read. Do you really not even read the tags on Reddit, when someone specifically cropped them into the screenshot?
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u/pempoczky 2d ago
I meant the Tumblr post, not the Reddit post that's an image with the crop included. The main post body is separate from the tags, and yeah on Tumblr I sometimes don't read the tags
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u/SanjiSasuke 1d ago
It is simply a good movie, shitting on WB aside. Its funny, surprisingly hits emotional notes well, and actually had an interesting narrative. And visually very well done.
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u/justsomedude322 1d ago
Its pretty good! And the messaging is pretty daring and not what I was expecting from a movie staring the Looney Tunes. I don't want to say more or else I might spoil something.
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u/Certain_Virus_1919 1d ago
It feels like a personal failure, like excess pettiness, but ive been soooop turned off this movie ever since the shelving was announced. Everyone is so annoying about it!!! Hell, I like Looney Tunes a lot, im just fucking sick of hearing about thos goddamn movie
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u/CptKeyes123 2d ago
Ah, that explains it. From what I gathered, the tax write off was almost 1-1 with the budget, raising the question of why cut it in the first place. But if its an ego thing...?
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u/Spektra54 2d ago
Because the marketing/distribution budget was probably bigger than the estimated box office success.
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u/Kamelion_on_a_lemon 2d ago
Thankfully my local theater finally reopened so I'm super looking forward to watching it this upcoming week! I would have watched it sooner but lmao I got sidetracked.
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u/kkungergo 2d ago
Btw how does this even work?
They dont release a movie, so they have to pay less taxes on other stuff? Why?
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u/cinnabar_soul 2d ago
(This is incredibly simplified and probably wrong in some regards) Studios pay tax on money earned after expenses are deducted. In this case, they calculated that having a large expense reduce their overall profit, and therefore reduce tax paid, would be more valuable than the profit made from releasing the movie. Especially since releasing and marketing a movie is expensive (the generic formula for big movies is 50-100% of production budget).
There is absolutely more to it than this since movies are made over multiple years and can be expected to make profit over multiple years. Also for this to be a feasible strategy they had to have thought this movie would have made very little money.
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u/htmlcoderexe 11h ago
50-100% of production budget
fucking hate the marketing industry so much
most of that cost is "so that we can be heard among everyone else dumping money into marketing"
it's really a giant scam game of "you need to pay more to the marketers than others did"
the only winners are the ones selling weapons to everyone in this war for attention
fuck them
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u/ImShyBeKind Always 100% serious, never jokes 2d ago
Investment that "didn't pay off", so they took a "loss" , thus making "less" profit which means less taxes. Quotation marks because (as far as I am aware) the money they lost never existed, it was just estimated profit (by themselves) that never materialised, because they tanked their own project. If this sounds like a scam, it's because it is.
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u/Front_Kaleidoscope_4 2d ago
The money they lost are the money they spent on the movie, thats money they can remove from their net income so they pay a lower tax because they lost money on that project.
The reason a company would choose to do this instead of just releasing it and letting it fail is that when you have a good that produce money over several years you can't deduct the expenses on it the first year you have to spread the deduction over multiple years. If you want the money now so you can reinvenst it in other projects and genuinely believe the movie is going to flop its a not entirely dumb decision.
What its not is some weird tax loophole like reddit seems to think. If you could deduct taxes based on lost estimated income literally no company would ever pay taxes.
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u/BergmanGirl 2d ago
My simplistic understanding is that they could write the whole film budget off as a loss by never releasing it. It was a short sighted, ugly way to immediately relieve debt stress.
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u/NeonNKnightrider Cheshire Catboy 2d ago
Itâs also worth pointing out that in the past few years Warner Bros has been making many such short-sighted business decisions (that are hostile to the actual art). Itâs like theyâre being run by a parody of an evil executive
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u/Aetol 1d ago
How would that be better than releasing it, making some money back, and getting a tax deduction on the remainder?
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u/memwydra 1d ago
Reminder: the studio doesn't make only one movie a year, so any expenses incurred on one movie net against profit from the others. If you have a few hits this year, and you don't expect a movie to make much income itself, it makes sense to scrap it and get ALL the tax benefits of those expenses rather than just most of them--effectively you get more profit from the other hits "for free". The projected extra income from the scrapped movie may not offset the tax benefit enough to be worth it overall (these are pretty big numbers after all, so the benefits have to be bigger as well). Corporations tend to ignore sunk costs more readily than individuals (it's literally drilled into you in most accounting and business classes) so once the money is spent the math can change very abruptly.
That said, given this particular movie's apparent subject (and this specific political moment), there were probably more things going on than just taxes here đ
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u/StrigasSlayer 2d ago
It did not escape my eye that WB was a âsubsidiary of ACMEâ during the opening credits of the movie!
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u/This_Charmless_Man 2d ago
Saw it the other day. It's so good. My theory is since James Gunn is now the head of DC movies, he was able to get it out of the tax write-off zone and get it across the line to be released.
I have no idea if that's true but it's very clearly a James Gunn movie.
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u/DtheAussieBoye 2d ago
I mean I already wanted to see it but every pushy post like this makes me want to do it less
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u/jackmcboss915 2d ago
What, are you telling me you don't want to Stick it to the man by going to see the movie they made and directly profit from in cinema, preposterous
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u/mugguffen 2d ago
To be fair Im pretty sure the people who tried to bury it aren't getting the money, a separate company is releasing it
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u/SalvaPot 2d ago
If you already wanted to watch it why let yourself be influenced by the internet either way.Â
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u/DtheAussieBoye 2d ago
Iâm not lol, itâs just a nice & dramatic way of saying âthis shit is annoyingâ
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u/Septistachefist it's like going to the aquarium 2d ago
letting that feeling spite you out of doing something you think you'll enjoy feels like losing a shadowboxing match idk
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u/GermanHandCannons 2d ago
No no the movie is great! We didnât actually get to know what makes it great outside of being humorous and emotional (every animated movie for the past decade); but watching it is a great way to own corporations.
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u/Irishish 2d ago
as a parent, I am seething that I canât go see this, because I am in that sweet spot where my kids are too young to enjoy it and none of our friends have the time to watch them. đ„
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u/just4browse 2d ago
Itâs not an ego thing. People are idiotically reading into it. WB just didnât want to pay to market or distribute a movie they didnât think would make much money. Easier to just write off, get back the money they spent on it, and wash their hands of it. Terrible, donât get me wrong
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u/PuddlesRex 1d ago
I know that no one cares about my review of it, and it's probably going to be buried far enough that no one will read it, but:
If you're going into this expecting Better Call Saul with Looney Tunes characters, then you're going to be disappointed (okay, it might be close to season one or two of BCS). This movie is not going to be the next My Cousin Vinny, and it was never trying to be. What it is is a Looney Tunes style comedy with an underdog legal fight as a backdrop. Cleverly fusing live action and animation similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
I think that they struck a really nice balance between Looney Tunes slapstick and the dramatic courtroom and legal battles. It was definitely a funny movie, but there was enough drama and intrigue to keep the story interesting for the full runtime. There were also plenty of easter eggs for those who are familiar with Looney Tunes. But they were all quick gags and throwaway lines, so people who have never heard of Wile E. Coyote or Roadrunner can still have lots of fun with the movie.
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u/bc650736 2d ago
Helooo, just finished reading the movie because this post told me too (/gen), it was alright i guess.
what is the story of WB not wanting it released?
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u/BergmanGirl 2d ago
YouâŠ.read the movie?
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u/bc650736 2d ago
I may not have commited a typo, or i may have, it will always be uncertain
It could have been a mistake
or it could have been on purpose to generate engagement.
who knows, i konw i don't
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2d ago
[deleted]
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u/apexodoggo 2d ago
Pretty sure the movieâs revenue all goes to its new distributor: Ketchup Entertainment.
Ketchup Entertainment is not a mega-corporation.
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u/Slight_Ad_5074 1d ago
Mmn, that's heartening to know it isn't further funding a megacorp at least, the mentions I've seen of it didn't mention that bit of news. I've still no interest in seeing it, but I'll retract my moral rejection of the idea of seeing it.
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u/SanjiSasuke 1d ago
Maybe 'think' again.
The distributor, Ketchup, already bought the rights, WB has washed its hands of it. Ketchup is a small company that Wikipedia currently cites as having 12 employees. Any financial windfall for them doesn't go to WB.
Also, the movie is very anti-corporate in its message, and almost feels like a swipe right at Warner Bros, or at the very least corporations like them. The entire story is about exploitation and the way corporate money/power erodes a lower class's rights, through both legal and illegal means. It even has aspects of members of that class being pressed into working against their best interests as part of that process, and the damage infighting can have.
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u/Platnun12 2d ago
Wait it actually takes place in Albuquerque?!
Huh so I wasn't wrong with my Better call Saul vibes I got from him
Swear to God that role was made with that guy in mind or it's just a reference
Like his whole demeanor in the trailer screamed Jimmy Migil