April 26, 2024
Box Office
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
I think people here have been more charitable than not is because we REALLY want a hit. We REALLY want to see Hollywood succeed this summer so that this silly “slump” business is squelched. Certainly that’s what I want.
But I see a progression in your argument, Poland, that gets you off the hook if the “slump” continues: you now believe that audiences are aware of shortened delivery windows and, therefore, will not be seeing as many movies this year. So the slump is real then, in your opinion?
All things considered, I think this is still an OK number. Mediocre might be appropriate, but even that feels a little harsh. MI2 had the sequel heat. First sequels always have heat, 2nd sequels have less heat. Mi2 also had good promos going for it, with Limp Bizkit re-do of classic MI theme. Also had geek appeal of John Woo, and the “new Bond” thing was hot at the time.
Mi3 is missing out on those aspects, plus it probably is hurt a bit by the general negative buzz that Cruise’s War of the World’s publicity campaign brought him. He didn’t go that angle this time around, did a conventional campaign, but the over the type hype on this film in addition to the negative WOTW hype probably kept some people away. In all, if you told Paramount a month ago MI3 would make $150 mill. domestic and $350 mill. worldwide, they’d take it. Not a massive hit, but not a loser either.
The “progression” of my argument is nearly a decade old.
As I keep writing, the theatrical life of movies – and thus, the final gross – has been getting shorter for years by the choice of the studios. That is and has been a problem.
The notion of a slump is that there is an industry-wide malaise. That is NOT the case. There is an annual drop of about 2% that is being caused by the DVD, other entertainment competition (at lower price points), and the shortened window.
This weekend, compared to last year, will likely be up about 20%. (This will go virtually unreported.) The summer will likely be up significantly as well. But that’s not the story.
There are some of you in here who seem a lot more concerned about me getting away with something than with the actual discussion. The uptick this year – as in every idiotic “Can Superman save Hollywood?” story – is no more a story than the downtick last year. The industry is not a business of a week or a month or even a year. It is like a ship… moves slowly, but powerfully and turns slowly… but once you start turning it, it’s hard to stop the turn.
The year is up so far and will continue to be up… but the real issue is, what is happening with the ship?
It’s all about expectations, both realistic and insane.
And again, you miss my point… it’s not about people seeing fewer movies. It’s about movies that get multiple theatrical viewings – even in DVDWorld – being shorted. The industry has been leaving millions and then ten million and now tens of millions on the theatrical table every year and that is not new news. But the amount is getting higher. In the meanwhile, DVD sellthrough is dropping like a stone as we reach maturity/saturation.
That is why the biggest discussion is not Mission: Impossible 3, but Ice Age 2. M:I3 means almost nothing, except at Paramount. But Ice Age 2 not getting to three times opening is a serious landmark.
Dave, is it really a landmark? or just a single situation? It would mean more if you were referring to a bunch of CG movies that missed the 3x. Maybe Ice Age 2 performed like a sequel, which is these days a big open and a steeper drop off than the original. Or is this steeper drop off highly unique in the world of kids movies?
But as openings, generally speaking, get bigger wouldn’t you expect the multiple of the opening to change, as well?
I mean, the original Ice Age grossed 3.7 times its opening gross, but the opening gross was $20 million lower than it was for Ice Age 2.
One could probably argue that money isn’t being left on the table, it’s just being collected earlier in the cycle than it used to be collected, changing the multiple of the opening weekend take, but not changing the total theatrical audience.
I obviously don’t know the answer, but I think a counter-argument to the one you’re making can be made (hopefully by someone smarter than I am) even without going so far as to advocate going all the way to day-and-date.
And just so we’re all clear, that annual 2% drop DP speaks of (unclear what that 2% is from – profits? Ticket sales? Attendance?) is a bad thing, right?
Not a particularly bad thing, J-Mc… as long as the DVD market remains strong…
And good point, Martin.
Well, I consider it to be a bad thing regardless of the DVD market, because I think movies are better seen (a) in a collective space, and (b) not on one’s own TV, which breeds bad viewing habits – inability to pay attention and notice detail because you can always scan backwards if you missed something, rudeness in theaters because you’re used to chatting at home, etc.
People still want to go out to dinner, even though they can buy a pre-cooked dinner from the supermarket and eat it in front of the tv. There will always be a specific percentage of a movies life that will be enjoyed in a social gather, and another specific percentage that will be enjoyed in a home theater. There’s not much excitement in a giant release going straight to your tv-screens, that’s called a TV-movie. Theatrical is still the best way to make a big footprint in the culture, and will continue to do so for a long time, particularly with over-population, people living in smaller apartments, etc. This idea that everyone will have a giant home theater in their big ass living rooms in 20 years is ridiculous. The distribution between theatrical and home will change slightly back and forth over the decades as technologies between the 2 compete, but significant shifts in viewing habits are not very likely.
RDP – History tells us that the shorter the window, the shorter the multiple.
The shortening window both encourages people to wait for Home Entertainment and discourages them from going to see many films at the theaters. And the deal disributors have with theaters discourages theaters from holding films for more than four – six weeks, even if they are doing good business.
It is not unlike a pricing question for a new product. It’s not what price sells the most of the item… it’s what price makes the most profit. One of the reasons, for instance, that Gilette’s new Fusion razor is more expensive than the Mach III is that Gillette wants to establish the super premium market with the Fusion without immediately cannibalizing the Mach III. If enough people go to the Fusion in spite of price, nbot only will it signal that Gillette can shift everyone to the new product, but that they can maintain a higher price point, even though the Fusion costs almost exactly as much to produce as the Mach III.
The perceived quality increase of the DVD and the choice to make it a sell through business expanded the film market significantly. And that broke the six month window. There are people who just want Home Entertainment and people with a strong preference for theatrical. But the battle is for people who waffle in the middle, choosing film by film and week by week. Just a few years ago, they would have M:I3 as an option in the second week of June in their major multiplex. This year, they will not. And as a result, the gross will be tens of millions lower than it might have been,
The problem with that theory, Martin, is that it presumes that exhbitors can roll with the punches. They can not.
And if day-n-date occurs, everyone watching seems to agree that theaters will be hurt badly. If the exhibitors lose 20% of their business, I can pretty well assure you that we, the audience, will lose 60% of the screens. And thus, for many films we will not have the theatrical option anymore. And that will shift viewing habits.
Add to that fact that I think that you will not see a big future for exhibition with a significantly higher price point and it is a recipe for a deconstruction of the entire financial infrastructure of the industry… and yes, J Mc, some would say that this is a consumation devoitly to be wished.
I’m sorry but someone has to pipe up about Poland’s unchecked, plainly wrong dissection of “Ice Age: The Meltdown.” Just look at the actual numbers:
Ice Age I: $382,687,405 gross worldwide, 77% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ice Age II: The Meltdown: $566,921,615 gross worldwide (so far), 58% on Rotten Tomatoes (not even close to as “well reviewed as the original, if not better”). It is currently the top-grossing theatrical release of 2006 _by a mile_ both domestically and internationally.
That means the sequel, despite unmistakably worse reviews than the original, is a mega-monster smash hit. To paint it as any kind of disappointment because it may not gross domestically three times its unexpectedly huge opening is poorly spun nonsense.
While, at a glance, the opening figure might be dissapointing, one must remember that Tom Cruise is one of the biggest stars on the planet for a very specific reason – his films open well, but not HUGE, but their usual quality propels them to long-term success (and long-term success makes theatres much happier than flash in the pan quick kill blockbusters).
On average, a Tom Cruise vehicle opens to about $25 million and does $101-120 million total in the US. His five biggest 3-day openings are War Of The Worlds ($64 million – 3 days), MI2 ($59 million), MI1 ($45 million), Interview With The Vampire ($36 million), and Minority Report ($35 million). Everything after that, including his nearly dozen (give or take) other $100 million+ grossers have opened to $25 million or under.
Point being, Cruise movies have legs. Just like Tom Hanks (only 2 $30 million 3-days: Saving Private Ryan and Catch Me If You Can), Bruce Willis (only 2 $30 million 3-days – Armageddon and Unbreakable), and Harrison Ford (only 30 million+ 3-day – Air Force One), he is a star in the age right before HUGE opening weekends. Their movies never opened huge, but still they made huge profits because they were often good and they played for a long time.
Cruise still has the hallmark of quality.* Even critical mixed-receptions like The Last Samurai, Minority Report, Vanilla Sky, and War Of The Worlds grossed about 4x the opening figures. Cruise’s movies have never had the biggest opening weekends, but they almost always have legs and high final tallies.
Point being, lets not panic if MI3 only does $45-55 million. It’s not a huge number, but trouble only sets in if it drops by more than 40% next weekend. $50 million x 4 = $200 million, which would make it his third-biggest hit ever. That would be a terrific domestic number that would guarantee decent profits once the other avenues come in.
Although, for what its worth, I agree whole-heartedly about Poland’s post about just how stupid the short window is. Last summer, I remember being stunned how many of my friends had opted to see Batman Begins for the first time in the third, fourth, fifth weekend of major release. That seemed so atypical for a major summer release, and yet it was the key to the film’s survival. If anything, one could argue that BB’s (relatively) soft opening actually helped the final gross as it meant that people saw it slower and thus the terrific word of mouth lasted all summer rather than just for a few weeks.
Scott Mendelson
* – Ironically (minor spoiler contained), despite my defense of Cruise and the numbers, I personally didn’t care for MI3, but we’ll see what the public thinks. I thought the first two were stronger films. The second I like better than most people, as the action scenes are lyrical, the whole thing is big and romantic (in and eng-lit sense), and it feels like the ‘ultimate’ John Woo film, as if he’s retiring his schtick. I found this one to be way too frentic and over-editied, with too much of the best stuff directly cribbed from Alias. I did like the genuine bond between Hunt and Luther, with the subtext that they were both tired of the violence and bloodshed around them. I would argue that apparently IMF and CTU both use the same temp agency, perhaps ‘Moles R Us’?
ROTC, I agree with your general assertion about Ice Age’s box office success, however I think you might be overstating it. Yes, Ice Age 1 did 19% better on Rotten Tomatoes than Ice Age 2. But is that significant? I’m not going to bother looking at Cream of the Crop, but the general concensus on Ice Age 2 has been that its about as good as the original, amongst most Major critics. Rotten Tomatoes is not the be all and end all of Quality/Critic Concensus discussions. More important is what the major critics, like Ebert, etc. have to say, and they generally said IA2 was about as good.
Secondly, I already made my point about IA2 doing sequel business, which is fine. But domestically it has done GOOD, but not spectacular. Your $500 plus number is representative of mostly foreign box office, which is outstanding, but irrelevant to what Poland was talking about.
I actually think the slump becoming an uncontested fact (which we will all know is the case the day DP goes “I cannot deny it any longer and there are no mititating factors – the slump is real”) and even getting worse would in the end be a good thing.
Because it would cause real shake-ups at the studios and they would be forced to take chances again, realizing that the creative model they follow is self-defeating: if you keep giving the audience exactly what it has enjoyed in the past, they will eventually get bored and move on. The relationship between the film-going public is exactly like any real relationship – no matter how great it starts out (be that because of interests/love/sex) if things don’t change it becomes stale. It’s like what someone said about Halle Berry’s ex stepping out on her: “You show me the hottest, best looking, sexiest woman and I guarantee I can find someone who is tired of fucking her.”
I’m tired of slogging through summer after summer of mediocre popcorn movies, tired of waiting for the studios & producers to turn it around. It’s bad enough that they don’t make high end, Oscar-worthy films anymore so we end up with Academy Awards like this year with decent-to-good but not excellent films like CRASH and BROKEBACK battling it out like two dwarfs at the NBA first round draft.
But summer is supposed to be what Hollywood does best. Perhaps a genuine freefall in box office to scare the shit outta them is what is truly needed, much like it took 9/11 to make most Americans take terrorism seriously. Because while the public still wants to see good films, they don’t give a flying fuck if the studios/execs now in existence provide them. Perhaps someone else needs to.
Martin, I think that in most statistical models a 19% difference is not just significant — it’s a fairly enormous gap. (FYI: On RT, the “Cream of the Crop” numbers between the two movies were close to identical.)
You also said, “Your $500 plus number is representative of mostly foreign box office, which is outstanding, but irrelevant to what Poland was talking about.” As I understood it, what Poland was talking about was that the gross for “Ice Age: The Meltdown” is “the most significant number of the week for the industry,” i.e., the movie’s gross is a glaring disappointment because it has not tripled its domestic opening weekend numbers, a revenue slowdown that apparently shouldn’t have occurred given the movie’s alleged positive reviews. Well, almost every point Poland makes there is demonstrably wrong. The reviews were shown to be much worse than he stated, so it’s reasonable to deduce that the word of mouth ought to have followed suit, and therefore a box-office slowdown could have been expected. Yet despite that likelihood, the movie is a smash hit, doing better business than the original on every box office front (not just international but domestic as well).
Boiled down, it’s just plain nutty, ass-backward spin to argue that the phenomenal box-office success of a financially surpassing sequel — especially one that has gotten worse reviews than its predecessor — is somehow an example of how the shortened theatrical window has been detrimental to theatrical profits.
Clarification: When I said “FYI: On RT, the “Cream of the Crop” numbers between the two movies were close to identical,” I meant the “Cream of the Crop” percentages were identical to the general percentages for each respective film, not that they were identical to each other. In other words, in both the general and “Cream of the Crop” lists, “Ice Age I” got nearly the same percentage of better reviews over “Ice Age II.”
When talking about the slump how come nobody ever mentions how damn high the ticket prices are? I mean I’m in college right now and I know a lot of people who have to be pretty damn sure they’ll like the movie before plunking down what is about $10, $20 if you are on a date, to go sit in a theater. That is with the knowledge that in say 3 months I can OWN the movie for $15 first week at Wal-mart. Most of the younger guys I go to school with would rather look on bit torrent and get a grainy POS copy of the movie. I have nieces and nephews and as much as I love them I can’t afford to take all three of them to the movies because, since they’ll want popcorn, drinks, etc., it’s almost $50. Why put myself through that when I can just buy the movie for them in a couple months? Until they start looking at ticket prices as a legitimate part of this equation things will keep getting worse. I could personall give a damn about someone on their cellphone but if I’m paying $10 a ticket I’ll be a bit more prickly about things.
I believe Doogal had smaller multiplier than Ice Age will have. I know it didn’t open super-wide, but 2000 theaters is still considered a wide release by most definitions.
Boy, do I have to agree with dfresca! Not only can you buy the dvd for $20 you can wait 6 months or so for them to come even more! In Canada here at Futureshop, they’ve reduced “Dukes of Hazzard”, “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and other Warner titles for $8.99 CAD! I was so choked that I bought “Batman Begins” for $21 the day it came out (impulse buy?) and now it too is $9. By my logic if I hold off on seeing “Poseiden”, I’ll own it in a year for $9.
IMO, MI 3 was still a theatre movie and worth the $11. Worth owning the DVD? Prob. not.
sorry that first line should have read “..save even more!
I don’t care what point David’s trying to make here. You should NEVER EVER compare Ice Age 2 and Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in any kind of statistical analysis. It’s like comparing the population growth of New York City and some crummy New Jersey commute city (Not quite the right analogy, but you get the idea). Ice Age 2: 180 million dollars with a budget of 80 million plus P&A was reasonably large. In the end, I think Fox is reasonably happy. Spirits Within: 32 million gross with a 130 million budget. Considered an unmitigated disaster. Apples and oranges.
*sigh*
I was saying what tfresca just said last summer. It’s the very reason for the near complete disappearance of the $100mil grosser. Barely any films grossed between $80mil and $150mil (rounded numbers, i can’t be fugged getting the actual numbers).
People my age (i’m 20) can’t afford to go to the movies every weekend to see the big blockbuster.
On to MI3, I doubt it’ll make $50mil considering titles like Bourne Supremacy and Mr & Mrs Smith made more on Friday than MI3 and just scraped past the $50mil barrier. I really honestly think that they fucked up their advertising of this film. Seriously, they either focused the entire thing on TOM CRUISE who most people have decided is a loon and had Tom Cruise appear EVERYWHERE. OR they decided to market it on the supporting actors in the film. WOW! MI3 stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman!!! That’ll get the young hipsters in to see it, right? He just won an Oscar for a movie that grossed $30mil! WOW! He’s like Jack Nicholson in Batman!!! *groan* Keri Russell, Michelle Monaghan, Jonathan Rhys Myers, Maggie Q, Ving Rhames? NONE are box-office players (despite most of them being nice enough actors and appearing in a spattering of great movies). So for young people who were sick of seeing Tom’s mug they didn’t have anyone else to watch, really. And, er, maybe it was wrong of them to hire JJ Abrams.
ROTC – You are exactly the case of missing the real story.
Yes, Ice Age 2 is a great financial success for Fox. But there are lessons to learn from both the hits and the flops. It’s not just addition and subtraction.
Thinking inside the box is what’s dangerous and what keeps the industry in stasis. Four losing releases tense a studio up then the big hit makes everything okay and then start the cycle again. But that is not good business. It is business as usual.
People have to get off the “big pile of money” arguments and start looking at the reality… there are a lot of layers to this business and lost opportunity in any part of it is a loss… even if a particular film is a financial hit overall. The same is also true… success on one area is still success, even if another area is a failure.
The old equation was that American box office drove all other markets, theatrical and ancillary (which Home Entertainment used to be), in an absolute way. That is not the case anymore. Each market has highs and lows that can be manipulated separately. There are still correlations. And I would argue that the initial wave of hype for theatrical is ridden through all other delivery modes. But as you make the point in your argument, ROTC, the film can be even more successful internationally and still be a massive success.
That all said, the shorter the window, the lower the average multiple. The lower the average multiple, the more people argue that the window should be shortened further.
For all of Ice Age 2’s success, Fox would have been thrilled to have another $50 million or $100 million domestic. This is the same reason why Pixar decided, after the great success of The Incredibles, not to release films in November anymore… it’s not that you can’t make a lot of money… there is just more money in the kids marketplace in the summer. $260 million domestic and $370m more in the rest of the world is A LOT of money. But it was $230 million less worldwide than Finding Nemo and $290 million less than Shrek 2.
Get it?
And again, Joe S… not saying Fox should be unhappy. And no comparing the two movies. They just happen to be, by no intent of my own, the two lowest multiples in major release CG Animation history.
Hey abba_70s, those dvds were at best buy canada, 2 for $16 too… so a little cheaper. I bought American Dad season 1 from Future Shop for $20. Cheap cheap dvd’s. I used to buy previously viewed dvds from blockbuster or rogers, but prices drop fast on new dvds, I don’t buy previously viewed now.
Can’t stand Tom Cruise anymore. Him and Sharon Stone. Tom as a smalltime rancher or outlaw in “3:10 to Yuma” in 2007 or a pilot in ww2 in “The Few” in 2008? Ha! I hope he plays the rancher… he’d have a nice accent for that I s’ppose.
I’ll maybe wait for DVD for MI3.
What I’m REALLY waiting for is The Da Vinci Code and X3.
….But that’s kind of a useless stat, isn’t it? I mean, if a movie grosses $100 million over one weekend and only grosses, say, $270 mil, is that a disappointment, based on the multiplyer? I suppose it would depend on the movie. I appreciate you looking deeper into the boring, complicated business stuff than any of us would ever care to, but sometimes
I get what you’re saying. But I honestly don’t see how Ice Age 2 could’ve squeezed more money out of B.O. than they have. Maybe tweaking the release date by a week or two could’ve done something, but honestly, they would’ve taken some bruisings if they tweaked it too much, because the market is so oversaturated with CG animated movies at the moment (ESPECIALLY ones featuring animals).
I’m not sure how enlarging the window to video would’ve helped either. About the only thing that could’ve gotten the movie 50-100 million more is being a better movie. Or at least giving us people who didn’t give a damn about the first one a reason to watch it. Wooly Mammoths trying to get it on voiced by Ray Ramano and Queen Latifah ain’t gonna’ do it. It’s not Shrek and it’s not Disney. I think they got all the juice they could’ve out of it.
It’s not that your point isn’t valid. It’s just more valid to flagpole movies like Superman which ARE probably going to lose $100 million or more in theatrical gross due to the frontloaded gross mentality and shortened windows than something like Ice Age 2, which is a sequel to a moderately popular movie that tracked better with 20-somethings more than an average animated movie but didn’t really set the world on fire.
I didn’t finish the sentence in the first paragraph. Whopsie! I mean to finish it with “sometimes there’s looking too deep at things.”
Is there any taking account for Cinco de Mayo? The young male demographic could have been attracted to partying and bar specials.
On the other hand, Ice Age 2 is still in the Top 10 after 6 weeks and will probably stay there next week, too. That’s not bad IMO for any film these days. So it’s a bit more frontloaded than normal animated movies, but that probably should be expected with a sequel, especially one that targetted more than just the family audience. That $70 million is still pretty astounding and close to one of the top animated openings of all time.
BO Mojo is reporting $48 mil. OUCH! At this point the only thing it’s got going for it is it’s actually good. Maybe word of mouth will help, most likely not though.
Yes, that’s got to be considered a disappointment. Let the spinning begin!!
I think it is unfortunate so many are taking the MI3 gross achance to kick Cruise. Yes, he has perhaps brought a lot of this on himself, but on the other hand with regards to overall quality of films he is one of the few top tier stars who has a good eye for material and rarely cranks out complete duds.
With respect to closing theatrical windows; is it not also a valid point that from a studios POV, the shorter the window between DVD and theatrical the less they have to spend on marketing for the DVD release and they can capitalize on the theatrical campaigns?
When King Kong was released there were still Kong theatrical posters in many bus shelters I passed and the film was still in the public conciousness. Same with the overlap release of the KILL BILL DVD and KILL BILL 2 theatrical.
Hence while they may lose 10 or 20 million in a shortened theatrical window, they make up for this by not spending as much on the DVD marketing and people who may have seen the film for 10 bucks in the theatre late in its run will just buy the DVD for 20 bucks instead.
I regret that fewer people see the need to see films in theatrical vs DVD, but I agree that it is a much bigger issue than just one or two things.
48 mil… for a movie with that kind of weight on its shoulders it’s damn near catastrophic. I think RoyBatty brought up a good point yesterday… audiences are truly sequeled/adapted/remaked out. Why does every meal have to be from McDonalds? As Carmela Soprano would say: “It’s a pretty tired menu.”
I’m running to the Arclight to check it out. Will give you the full report in a bit.
March has been the traditional Blue Sky opening date, and it has done well to capitalize not only on Easter/Spring vacations, but also the lack of competition. But this year has been different. We’re getting a new CG animation every month, and Ice Age 2 was closely followed by The Wild which will be followed this month by Over the Hedge. The natural course for these films are shortened by reduced shelf space.
The word of mouth may be pretty good, but it will be competing with pre-release word of mouth, which was not particularly good. So the good and the bad will mix and the film may get to $150-175. Not a loser, not a major hit.
Palmtree, not sure if the competition is the problem. If the DVD release was pushed back twice as long as it is now, and releases were held in theaters twice as long, they could generate word of mouth and both The Wild and Ice Age 2 would get viewed by perhaps the same audience members. Now its a choice of one or the other, so to some extent, it’s money left on the table.
I think Monday’s number is going to be a huge indicator if word of mouth will help. If Mon is $5 or $6, then that bodes well…that being said, this has to make at least $200 mil to not be looked at as a dissapointment. The worldwide numbers might be able to help spin on Monday morning though.
Yeah, but as Nicol pointed out, you’re losing steam for the DVD release by keeping it out so long.
The multiplier of 3 applied to CG movies of the past because they were relatively unique events. Take that uniqueness away and it’s got to have an impact. When Cars comes out, will families still be clamoring to see Over the Hedge much less Ice Age?
Agreed, Cars will not be one of Pixar’s bigger hits (people don’t like racecar movies, lots of CG/kids competition, uniqueness and excitement of CG/kids less than it was in the past, etc.). I think the multiplier will defintely be less on these movies for a variety of factors. However, I do not think that a shortened release window is automatically better for overall profits. It may charge up DVD sales a bit since a flash release doesn’t allow everyone to see a movie in theaters. But the idea that Ice Age 2 released 6 months from now will have less marketing heat and thus do less money compared to 3 months from now is a real stretch. The double-marketing whammy was I think a good thing for profits. Cutting it down to a single theatrical marketing that spreads to home vid is not necessarily a good marketing strategy, just a cheaper one.
More from Mojo: “Art School Confidential” opens limited with a per-theater average almost equal to “M:I3”. Swell!
Was thinking about “Hoot” but now I will just say no. Print ads for “Hoot” carry a “Seal of Approval” from the Parents Television Council. The kiss of death!
Reports are that MI:III made $70 mil overseas which is not bad. I think thats where the film will do most of it’s damage, but is $500 mil worldwide good enough??
Yes, $500 m is good enough.
I doubt it’ll make $500mil. Can MI3 make 70% of it’s total gross outside of America?
I wonder what would’ve happened to Ice Age 2 if it opened to numbers that most people figured it would’ve, which were slightly above the numbers for the original. Would it have experienced better legs but ended up in the same place?
I was on an Australian DVD retail website (like Bestbuy or something) and Ice Age 2 had been out for one week at that stage and it’s dvd release was already being advertised as Coming Soon! I was sort of shocked. No cover art or release date or special features, but it’s still there.
http://www.ezydvd.com.au/