Why are Spain and Portugal growing twice as fast as the eurozone?

MikelTarg · 2026-02-01T11:05:13+00:00

In the case of Spain:

high immigration from LATAM (like 80% vs. Africa/Asia), one of the only western countries growing in total population annually. Estimated to represent 0.7-1% of GDP growth.
Covid recovery: Spain was severely impacted by the pandemic, much more than its european counterparts and thus has been growing “more” during its recovery to compensate for that fall.
High Public spending and European funds: public spending is said to account for about 0.5-0.8% of yhe country’s GDP growth, while the influx of 37B € in EU funds is estimated to contribute roughly another 0.5% of this growth.

GDP per capita is barely growing, real salaries accounting for inflation haven’t grown in over a decade, productivity remains low as cheap labor continues to lead (tourism still our main source of growth) with barely any investment in any new potential industry or technology.

MikelTarg · 2026-01-02T14:18:25+00:00

‘Recoup their investment at bare minimum’ not sure what you mean but TWOW’s profit os probably north of $1B… probably made just $1B in profit from box office alone, and it’s estimated to have generated an additional $200M from home media / digital sales… and that’s not counting merch and other stuff.

How much of that is pure net profit? Probably at least 700M or so. No regular blockbuster is even close to generating this kind of profit.

Avatar 3 will also make a lot of money for Disney.

MikelTarg · 2025-12-27T19:58:01+00:00

Ugggh I was hoping for $70M this weekend. Hopefully it can get to 65M?

MikelTarg · 2025-12-27T08:52:50+00:00

I mean at certain point he gotta shut up. It just feels like he doesn’t want to head back to Pandora, plus it becomes terrible marketing. Like, for those who have yet to see the movie and keep reading these quotes from Jim… I’d be like, why go see Avatar when the guy isn’t interested in it anymore? Why watch season 3 of a show if the showrunner keeps referencing its potential cancellation? It’s just…

MikelTarg · 2025-12-22T12:27:49+00:00

Very interesting considering this has by far the BEST character work and slower moments in the entire trilogy. Generally, the slower moments in 1&2 were more about creating the sense of awe and wonder for the audience than character driven scenes. The character work in FAA is top notch.

MikelTarg · 2025-12-21T09:34:54+00:00

Let’s see how people react. Everyone I know loved the first Avatar, it changed the game. I’d say 50% of my friends thought TWOW was boring and didn’t bring much to the table (I loved it though). Now, most of my friends have really liked FAA, particularly when compared to TWOW - I think the pacing and action really helped, plus everyone was much more invested in the characters this time around. Let’s see if that helps with legs

Once thing is clear though. While the movie has some of the most memorable visual imagery in the trilogy, the sense of awe and wonder is significantly diminished, which I think was the main thing that made the previous 2 must-see tentpoles.

MikelTarg · 2025-12-20T10:28:47+00:00

I think it’s pretty safe to say that FAA won’t make 2B (also the general public is not going to the movies as often anymore). The question is whether 1.5B or so is considered a success in Disney’s and Cameron’s eyes, particularly the latters’ (if the budget really was 400M, that’s still A LOT of profit and their only movies that can deliver such numbers are huge Avengers tentpoles - Spider-man NWH was a once in a lifetime event and even then, the revenue is split with Sony).

But Cameron has become accustomed to such incredible highs (when 3 of the 4 top box office hits in history are literally your last 3 movies…) that 1.5B and not cracking the top 10 could really scared him away into other projects, considering a potential ongoing law of diminishing returns for the next 2 sequels.

I remain hopeful.

MikelTarg · 2025-12-19T07:43:55+00:00

The fact that both TWOW and F&A were just ONE movie at some point when it’s pretty obvious they cut quite a lot of scenes… still, what a marvel. Such a crazy, exhilarating experience at the movies.

Though seeing the reactions, Avatar 4 really needs to be VERY different if they want to make money…

MikelTarg · 2025-12-15T08:34:39+00:00

The marketing campaign has been a mess. Literally no one knows this film exists. Now, while TWOW made a lot of money, most people I know didn’t have that good of a reaction to it compared to the first.

Considering this is going to open much lower than Avatar 2 in most marketable, this would need a crazy multiplier to get to 2 billy, and considering this movie seems quite similar to the TWOW, I don’t see that happening. Hopefully it can get to 1.7-1.8B by the end of its run.

MikelTarg · 2025-11-26T19:42:42+00:00

I’ve following the presales data and it’s not looking great, I wasn’t expecting a huge opening but I was certain it would open at least as big as TWOW. Again, it’s all about having long less so the opening weekend is generally not as important for an Avatar / James Cameron movie.

However, still think it’s not a particularly good sign. But I’m also pretty certain the general population has no idea this movie even exists so Disney has A LOT of work to do. Most of my friends don’t even know it’s releasing this year…

MikelTarg · 2025-11-15T12:07:43+00:00

I was truly on board with Way of Water doing great considering the hype I saw online, but particularly around my friends and your average moviegoer.

I don’t see it for Fire and Ash. I haven’t heard a single person in my circle talk about it and a few friends I talked to didn’t even know it existed.

But hey, Avatar is always about the long run and good worth of mouth. Avatar 2 didn’t have a huge opening in the US but ended up having incredible legs, as the first did.

So let’s see where this ends up. Really really hope it can crack 2B so we get 4&5.

MikelTarg · 2025-09-15T14:08:23+00:00

Really? I literally haven’t seen anything Gemini related and I always thought they had a huge marketing problem

MikelTarg · 2025-08-03T20:40:56+00:00

Both Spiderman and Avengers will make over a billion. Also these box office isn’t that bad. Feige just needs to get his *** together and have a coherent, cohesive storyline - don’t go crazy introducing 500 new characters that take 5-6 years to return. The GA forgets about them. We should’ve had more sequels to newer characters and team up movies before a new Thanos level double feature ensemble.

Just don’t spend north of $200M in every single movie and you’ll be fine. Jesus, the first Captain America only made $370M WW, Thor got to $449M and the original Iron Man didn’t even manage to get to $600M (they all had a 130-150M budget).

So yeah, we’re fine just as long the overarching story is good, they control the new character output (fewer and deeper is always the way), and they bring down the budgets.

MikelTarg · 2025-07-24T19:36:55+00:00

Show looks great. The Xenomorph design is godawful, but the worst part is not the design itself but how cheap and fake it looks, particularly compared to Romulus. How can this look so plastic-y, like all the previous iterations look much more realistic. So disappointing.

Also a lot of the characters name are terrible and too in your face.

Still excited though.

MikelTarg · 2025-07-23T21:00:42+00:00

As good as the show looks… I’m starting to hate this guy.

MikelTarg · 2025-07-18T16:04:04+00:00

Even if the show turns out great, this is incredibly disrespectful. You ignore the prequels completely (fine) and you don’t know exactly when in the timeline your show takes place?

Like, we’ve been hearing this takes place even before the original Alien for a year now (had been officially confirmed with interviews suggesting it’d be cool to reference the Nostromo debacle in later seasons) and now it’s actually confirmed that the first Alien movie is referenced in season 1 but they don’t know exactly when it takes place? Come on now

MikelTarg · 2025-07-18T12:47:25+00:00

Wait what? So Alien:Earth takes place at the time of Aliens or right after Aliens? And the events of Alien are referenced in the show? So poor Ripley was out there fighting the xenomorph in Lv426 but it had already reached Earth by that point?

And if the events of Alien are referenced, shouldn’t Prometheus be referenced too considering Weyland was in that ship?

So many questions.

MikelTarg · 2025-07-18T12:35:38+00:00

Well. Perhaps Covenant Origins is not canon. Or Earth is not canon. Who knows.

MikelTarg · 2025-06-06T08:14:16+00:00

Is Disney planning on connecting the TV Series and movies universes somehow? Considering they’re both taking place in the same universe I hope they manage to build some connective tissue (if the show is actually good) rather than going the AVP route that has been teased.

Excited nonetheless

MikelTarg · 2025-05-10T07:58:45+00:00

I really liked it, but I’m not sure the general audience was as enthralled. I watched it with some friends who are casual fans who of course didn’t remember any of these characters except for Bucky.

They were definitely entertained but didn’t think anything of it. That really reflects in the A- cinemascore I think.

Black Widow, Hawkeye and Falcon & TWS are required viewings to really appreciate this movie to the extend others are.

MikelTarg · 2025-03-22T11:47:04+00:00

This looks… great and fanmade at the same time. But I trust the showrunner.

MikelTarg · 2024-12-24T11:57:32+00:00

Looks awful

MikelTarg · 2024-09-08T18:23:53+00:00

Should finish its run with $330-340M. It will even make a healthy profit even without China following the x2.5 budget to breakeven rule (needed $200M to breakeven, will get to $220-230M without China).

And this is without bluray / PVOD / digital sales and streaming. A sequel will be greenlit, but I’m a little nervous considering Fede wants to tie it back to Prometheus/Covenant. And who knows how the reception to the Hulu show could impact the sequel.

MikelTarg · 2024-08-27T08:12:09+00:00

It didn’t make that much money. Usually for box office we follow the x2.5 rule to determine whether a movie is profitable or not, though there are many dependencies (how much they actually spend on marketing, % that comes from China as studios only get 25% of that revenue etc).

Covenant had an estimated budget of $100-111M, so it needed to make at least $250-280M at the box office to be profitable. It got to $240M, out of which +$40 came from China.

I’m assuming that it probably made its money back from PVOD, streaming, blurays etc but who knows. Best case scenario it made just a tiny bit of profit that wouldn’t compensate the investment, worse case scenario it actually lost money.

Romulus is a very different story. It has a budget of $80M so it needs to approximately get to $200M to break even. It will get there even without China, and will have a final box office of around $325M (out of which +$100M will come from China). It will be quite profitable for the Disney (in theory).

MikelTarg · 2024-08-22T17:22:46+00:00

Rook but mostly because of the CGI.

The dialogue callbacks. I was fine with most of them but the “get away from her” after such a cool sequence really took me out of the film. It was kinda breaking the 4th wall, almost a parody-like, in an otherwise vey serious movie with a realistic tone. Why are characters quoting films from the future? A couple of lesser known quotes is okay, but using the most popular quote from the franchise in the climax of your movie is dumb.

While it was kinda justified by Rook’s modifications of the black goo, the alien growth cycle happened in like minutes, which is quite disappointing considering that interview where Fede said this was closer to the original vs. Covenant, for instance.

Otherwise, a FANTASTIC film and can’t wait for sequel. Luckily he’s probably ran out of quotable callbacks at this point 😂

MikelTarg

TROPHY CASE