Friday Estimates by Klady – Potted
Harry Potter is doing…. Harry Potter business. Taa Dah!!!
The reason – again – why all the hysteria and premature projection around box office… all the throwing around of electronic ticket sales numbers as though they mean anything other than how many people bought tickets for a popular movie in a way that is still growing in popularity itself… and the idea that tracking can be taken seriously as a way of guessing how high a film will open in these cases of enormous popularity… all absurd on their face. It’s bad information. And while no one is yet spinning this Potter opening as disappointing, but you can bet that irrelevant comparisons to Transformers 2 will fly.
As I pointed out yesterday, “An $80m 3-day, which is what I think the max is, is still $20 million more in the first 5 days than any Potter yet and the #6 5-day gross of all time.” That is about where we seem to be headed. It’s a great number. It will or will not lead to being the biggest Potter film, though as box office is going these days, probably not. It will likely end up right about Goblet & Phoenix… maybe a little closer to Sorcerer’s Stone. But $290m is about The Potter Domestic Number now.
Flip side, Bruno is now paying for doing the midnight Thursday shows with an 80% Fri-to-Fri drop and the perception that the media is now invested in selling. The weekday numbers were only off about 15%… until Harry Potter ate the movie world. The Potter Effect is real. The Twitter Effect is BS.
As of last night, Bruno was about $4m behind Borat. By the end of the weekend, he’ll be running about $16m behind Borat‘s first 2 weekends. That’s off by a third… but that’s about what I expected from Bruno before numbers started rolling in… an $80m – $90m domestic movie with the possibility of something bigger. So again… to me, similar to Potter. Reporting is good… hyping expectations so you can report disappointment, not so much.
The (500) Days of Summer opening is strong indie stuff, though for me, it points back at the problem discussed yesterday with the Hurt Locker approach. Fox Searchlight has spent a ton for this opening. They are opening on 27 screens, but the machinery of Searchlight has been humming along as though it was an 1800 screen opening. No, they aren’t spending full-out on TV. But they are buying TV. And at a venue like The Grove, here in LA, the “outdoor” placements are pretty much at the same level as Harry Potter. The studio is comfortable that the expansion will catch the box office up with the media spend because they believe in the word of mouth. It is a painful reality of non-wide-release distribution that the risk that Searchlight is taking is what is necessary to create a “grass roots” hit… like the US funding guerillas, the idea is not for anyone to notice that the flair has been paid for.
Good for Searchlight.
One last note… remember the Ice Age 3/Transformers 2 showdown that Tr2 won by miraculously beating the family film 3 days out of the first five by just enough to be #1 for a second weekend. IA3 is now 17 days old… and those 3 days of Tr2 being ahead remain the ONLY days in which Tr2 beat the week-fresher IA3. Hmmmm…
One more last note… today, Public Enemies will become the #2 all-time Michael Mann domestic grosser. Again… what were people expecting? The film even has a shot at Mann’s #1 grosser, Collateral, at $101m domestic.
Not sure what those numbers for “500…” mean (guess it seems decent?), but it might’ve been, I don’t know, a good idea to ADVERTISE THE MOVIE IN THE SLIGHTEST.
I know it’s a pretty limited release and I saw one trailer for it in front of an arthouse movie months back, but I had NO IDEA it was being released this weekend.
wow. The Proposal and Hangover are sticking to the ribs like a good breakfast.
and Bruno is passing through pretty quickly.
Wish PE did a bit more biz.
I saw 500 Days last night and The Hurt Locker today. Both live up to their hype. The crowd at 500 Days roared out loud with laughter. Hurt Locker was an 11:20 AM showing and it was just people all guys, mostly in their 30s and 40s. The movie is well done and definitely is hanging in my thoughts but even with the great reviews I see the audience as pretty narrow. I hope I am wrong.
BTW, not to channel Lex, but Zoey is is adorable in 500 Days. I had a mini-crush on her already but now if it is full blown. I know that the younger indie rock boys all love her already but they will really love her after this film. BTW, I am 48.
DP is right LexG…maybe youre in a smaller market and havent seen the TV?
In any case, Searchlight is sitting on a pile of success, knows when they have a movie everyone loves, and is not afraid to spend aggressively. Conversely, when they have a piece of crap like My Big Fat Greek Ruined Life, they dump it and dont spend.
Anything in the neighborhood of a $30k average on 27 screens is a nice start for a very playable movie. This is Searchlight’s sweet spot time of year, and they are the best in town at working this through Labor Day and making a shitload (box office technical term) of money. Factor in their strong Home Ent dept and their incredible ancillary deals (in particular Pay TV) and you have a very profitable movie at the end of the day.
I see their only challenge is what to do with “Adam” which is right on top of 500 DOS releasing on Wednesday, July 29th. Is that the little festival film that they will bail on to focus on the bigger indie film that will gross?
“Post Grad” in August just doesnt seem to fit…20th Century Fox hand off? Reitman producing? Animation director Jensen? Someone on the lot with a hard on for The Gilmore Girls?
Lex lives in Los Angeles.
The Proposal gets by Terminator this weekend. Didn’t see that coming. And The Hangover will eventually do about double T/Salvations numbers, didn’t see that coming either. I’m with Dave on anyone who wants to spin the H/Potter’s as any kind of a disappointment. Its doing H/Potter business, and for the 6th in the series, that’s fantastic. I actually think it might crawl past 300M though.
As for Bruno, I think your eventual total estimates maybe a bit bullish Dave. With this kind of drop, movies rarely double their opening weekend number, so we maybe looking at about 60M final outcome. While the general public made the easy comparisons to Borat, they should not have been made. Outside of The Birdcage and Philadelphia, what other movies do you guys know that has a gay guy front and center, and worse, this time, unlike Borat, you may have more in common with the victims of his pranks than the main character. 60M is a win.
What do you guys think has been the biggest success/failure of the summer so far? Mine are The Hangover @ 230M/ Terminator @ 123M. A 2nd place combo would be UP @ 277M/ Land of the Lost @ 48M. 3rd would be The Proposal @ 123M/ Pelham 123. 4th is Star Trek @ 252M / Year One 41M.
Re: Bruno:
I think when there’s a movie that’s a sensation on “the coasts” that “the flyover” just doesn’t care about or like (ie, Bruno, or Grindhouse, or even the Soderbergh experimental films of late), at some point L.A.-based industry types and bloggers do the thing where they put their fingers in their ears and yell “LA LA LA!” really loud at any contrary evidence. And steamroll ahead with a certain positive spin, because the movies are a hot ticket here and in N.Y., and it’s THE movie for the cool movie people to like, and no one wants to hear (or specifically, no one here seems to notice or care) that The Other 48 actively HATE IT.
Honestly, I know places like IMDB and Yahoo user reviews are strictly for lowest-common denominator rubes who are functionally illiterate, but survey their takes on “Bruno” and it’s pretty clear: Most of America, or at least most of the paying audience, HATES this fucking movie. WITH A PASSION. The tales of walkouts and the rage-fueled rants from everyday moviegoers are overwhelming. You can excuse the 80% drop with some legit inside baseball semantics about Thursday midnight shows, but to me the story is it’s dropping because it’s making a good portion of its aggressively hostile.
Toward that end, it probably wasn’t the best idea to market it as some innocuous Austin Powers-style family comedy with Paula Abdul during every Fox dance competition show that little kids watch. People see “GUY WITH FUNNY ACCENT” and assume it’s some Pink Panther shtick-fest, same as they did when they dragged their kids to Borat.
Not to sound like Nicol D at all — and I HATE the “Hollywood’s out of touch with the heartland!” argument more than just about anybody…
But once in a while “we on the coasts” act like some “hot ticket” movie is a bigger deal than it is, and look for any excuse to justify its financial disappointment other than the plain, obvious:
No one gives a shit. And in this case, probably no one wants to pay 12 bucks to hear about how we’re all a bunch of hicks and homophobes.
Not to go off-topic, but the “NY & LA vs the rest of the world” thing is a little specious. I’m sure audiences reacted similarly to Bruno in SF, Washington, Seattle, Portland, Austin, etc. I saw it with a large, appreciative, walkout-free audience in Boston.
I’m not saying the urban/rural divide isn’t real, or that people who went to see it in Alabama necessarily knew what they were getting into, but give us rubes in the 2nd tier cities a little credit.
I was pleasantly surprised by “Half-Blood Prince” since I thought Yates’ previous “Potter” entry was the weakest link in the series.
Watching Radcliffe, Watson, et al age before our eyes kind of reminds me of Apted’s great “Up” series. Nice.
Too bad about “Bruno,” although I can’t say that I didn’t see it coming.
Does anyone really think “500 Days” has a shot at “Juno,” or even “L.M. Sunshine” grosses? Seriously. It’s a fairly conventional rom-com for the most part (too cutesy by half and Deschanel is starting to grate on me: sorry gang), but I loved the bittersweet, didn’t-see-it-coming wrap-up. And it was nice to see the always-outstanding Gordon-Levitt in a movie where the only suffering he endured was of the romantic kind.
It’s kind of interesting to see how everyone now seems to be on the same page I was a few weeks back when I expressed serious doubts about “Hurt Locker” making much of a commercial dent beyond big city arthouses (an opinion I was roundly castigated for btw). Yes, it’s a terrific film and may very well be an awards season contender in several major categories. But trying to sell an “Iraq movie” to the masses without any major stars–hell, WITH major stars–really is a Sisyphean task, isn’t it? (And for what it’s worth, HBO’s “Generation Kill” was actually the more impressive achievement.)
What’s with the sudden rash of “limited” sneak previews? “The Proposal” and “Ugly Truth” were both sneaked in so few markets that they bypassed NE Ohio entirely. Not fair!
Is Homecoming really only showing at two theaters? It opened here in Louisville, KY yesterday and I will probably see it later tonight.
Scratch that, it’s getting poor reviews. And IMDB says it’s playing at three theaters, not two. But still…. Louisville, KY? Why are we being punished with this? (ha)
Quite by chance, I discovered that the Director’s Cut of WATCHMEN is playing at the Chinese. No ads of any kind that I saw. Anyway, they had a fairly good turnout for the noon show today, and I must say the film is a marked improvement; the story plays far more smoothly and the characters’ motivations are much clearer…though Doc M is still a bore and the extra bloodshed adds zilch.
Which makes me wonder why they bothered to force the shorter cut in the first place. Once you’re past 2 1/2 hours, the night is shot anyway, so what’s another 20 or 25 minutes? Yes, most movies are too long, but that’s not the case here, and methinks if WB had led with this version, the reaction, both critically and at the BO, would’ve been rather more positive.
point well taken Cadavra–if you are going to do something do it right and damn the torpedos (within reason re. time).
I would like to see that, as Watchmen ‘as is’ was the greatest disappointment of my year, but yes the take on the violence versus the print was a bad lowest common denominator for the makers to take.
Living in the Northeast, even though a smaller market, I’ve been seeing ads for (500) DAYS so much that I thought it was going wide. From reading the release plan, it doesn’t look like it will be coming my way at all.
And that I think is another problem.
Why advertise a little film like this so much, and open it so slowly? By the time it finally goes wide, audiences may have forgotten. The cast makes the rounds week one, and by week six, when it goes wide, there have been twenty new films opened, and it is kind of forgotten.
Take FROST / NIXON. This was all over the news last year. But when it finally opened wide, it was largely forgotten. In my area, it only played two weeks. It opened closer to the DVD release than the original release when the cast and Ron Howard made the talk show rounds.
Don’t look now, but The Proposal is heading towards $150 million, The Hangover is heading towards $250 million, Up still has a shot at $300 million, Transformers still has a shot at $400 million, and Ice Age now has a shot at $200 million – you get a sense the studios are going to nudge these films towards their respective milestones.
One thing noted from last week’s blogs was The Proposal – why should Ryan Reynolds get the lions share of credit for this movie? No doubt he was appealing and starting now, he is quite a bit more bankable, but has he ever been in a success on this level????
Sandra Bullock opened the film, it’s right in her wheelhouse and with the age-oriented matchup for the film, I can imagine few other actresses being able to deliver such a successful outcome: Julia Roberts, Tina Fey, maybe Nicole Kidman, and maybe Meg Ryan. That’s really about it, give the woman some credit.
As for Ryan Reynolds, hey, I really like the guy and he was very well cast, but seriously, how many actors (within his age range) could have maybe filled this role and brought similar success? It’s a much longer list:
Ashton Kutcher
Jason Segal
Seth Rogan
Tobey Maquire
Paul Walker
Chris Pine (now, yes)
Sean William Scott
John Krascinski
Dane Cook (sad, but true)
Jake Gyllenhaal
Leonard DiCaprio (I could see it)
I could probably rattle off more, but there is no doubt there is an excess of pseudo-bankable actors in Hollywood between the age of 25 and 35. Give Ryan Reynolds some credit, but what Sandra Bullock brings to the table with regards to box office is just much more rare.
I have been reading this blog for almost a year now and never commented, but it’s just so sloppy. How often does Leonard (and especially Dave) get things wrong.
I mean, not just their opinions 😉 but also facts… and Dave loves to point out how “off” Nikki is in her reporting.
Hey Dave– take a look at the Box Office Chart– hate to burst your bubble, we know how much you disliked “The Hangover” (and crowd pleasing movies in general) but the cume for “The Hangover” is 230 million currently. Not 203.
I know, a typo, I’m sure. But you guys just run such a sloppy (and might I add visually unappealing blog) — come on, get it together.
I made a comment on here a couple weeks ago, jokingly, that Ryan Reynolds was the reason The Proposal made so much bank. Then a bunch of commenters went and agreed with me. I think it’s a ridiculous idea to think that anything but Sandy B her hot “any-guy” is what got the girls in the seats dragging along their BFs. I honestly don’t think Reynolds is well known or well liked enough to have had much impact at all on the box office, except for that group of frat boy Van Wilder fans. Yes, Reynolds is going to get a big boost from this film, and with the role has probably endeared himself to the cute rom-com crowd, but opening the film? He was non-factor.
Reynolds is cool but if this would’ve had DANE COOK, as Geoff (awesomely) suggests, I would have seen it twice in theaters instead of zero times.
It would be at 260 now.
Up has no shot at 300 mil, sadly.
Considering everyone and their mom seems to love Bullock and Reynolds (they have a likeability that somehow transcends their mediocre acting I’ll admit) it’s not a surprise this is one of the top rom-coms ever.
What’s stunning is the worldwide number for Ice Age 3. This film absolutely sucks, and the second one wasn’t very good either. But like Angels & Demons, the International community is lapping it up.
I think this addresses two issues
1) The international community has less sophisticated taste overall than the United States when it comes to taste. Look at the films that have grossed 200 million worldwide this year. These are the ones that have the majority of their gross internationally:
T2, Ice Age 3, Angels and Demons, Night at the Museum 2, Wolverine, Term 4, Fast and Furious
Domestically:
Star Trek, Monsters v. Aliens, Up, The Hangover, Taken.
Clearly there is a difference in quality. Farther down the list people can point to Miyazaki’s latest as an example of international sophistication, and Paul Blart as evidence of base American tastes, but when it comes to the big films, Americans seem to pick better.
2. DP is right about Fox being able to turn big bucks off of absolutely shit films. Ice Age 3 is massive. However, I think at the same time theyve managed to kill off or stall francises like XMen and Night of the Museum this summer. They’ve had a relatively strong year, but I maintain their lineup from here on out is absolute dog crap. They better pray Cameron pulls through…
In a movie like The Proposal, I think it’s condescending to say that just any guy opposite Bullock is a non-factor because women are going to the movie just to see Bullock. If you took a poll of the female commenters here, you’d probably find that picking the right leading man is an equally crucial element in the making of a romantic comedy. It really isn’t the same as throwing any old POA into a movie like Transformers 2 or Crank.
Not that girls don’t have their own POA tastes (oh how I hear about how hot Hugh Jackman looks in a wifebeater in “Wolverine”), but the male POA has to have something going for him in addition to the abs and the biceps and the pecs.
So all this talk of THE PROPOSAL: What does this mean for fellow America’s Sweetheart Reese Witherspoon’s upcoming (and vaguely similar) romcom, with an untested male lead?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Z6E0DdvzR0&NR=1
Geoff: “Sandra Bullock opened the film, it’s right in her wheelhouse and with the age-oriented matchup for the film, I can imagine few other actresses being able to deliver such a successful outcome: Julia Roberts, Tina Fey, maybe Nicole Kidman, and maybe Meg Ryan. That’s really about it, give the woman some credit.”
Uh No! Nicole Kidman is considered borderline box office poison these days. After riding Tom Cruise figuratively and literally up the actors ladder, she still is yet to have a solid hit that gives her top billing. She’s no Sandra Bullock at the box office.
As for Tina Fey. Love the gal. But isn’t it a little early in her film career to be granting her this kind of status. Let her get a few films under her belt and then we’ll see. I have no doubt that she can be a creative powerhouse in the hollywood industry, but somehow I don’t get the rom/com feel from Tina Fey.
The Harry Potter lasting power is going to be an interesting thing to track. Because while critics are pretty much going crazy for it, the actual “Potter” fanboys and girls are underwhelmed. I’ve spoken to and read the reactions of many hardcore fans of the series, and nobody is blown away, and a lot are outright pissed.
Personally, it was my favorite book of the series, and my least favorite film entry since Columbus had the reins.
So, as I promised last week, today I saw Bruno. Not bad. Better than Borat which I thought was very overrated. Pretty much what I expected in that it is actually not an scathing indictment of homophobia and is instead a more scathing indictment of what it takes to be a celebrity and be in the entertainment industry. It does feel more staged than Borat, but that did not bother me. It actually made me like it more in a way and took the edge off.
It is underperforming because the makers of the film, it’s supporters and Universal have tried to position it as a franchise summer tent pole. I keep reading people comparing it to Chuck and Larry. Why? Just because of the subject matter. The two couldn’t be further apart.
Sandler’s film was a mainstream comedy and the fact that there were so many shots of Biel in her underwear and catsuit was no coincidence. Sandler knows his audience and played to them. Bruno and Borat are not mainstream fare.
This is not a question of Blue or Red state. It is a question being extreme comedy in the Jackass or Tom Green sense. Most blue staters do not even go for this. I cannot see the average Obama supporter going for Bruno. Bruno should not have been a major summer “event” film and instead should have been rolled out in September when univerity students are back in school. Cohen could have appeared at a few college campuses during Frosh week and students could have organized events around it.
A 60 million grossing Bruno X-treme comedy college set film would have been seen as a smash underground hit.
A 60 million grossing Bruno as a mainstream date comedy trying to appeal to the Sandler or Apatow crowd (with all the marketing budget that implies) will now be seen as a flop for the SBC franchise.
Again, it is not a bad film. It is not a great film. But it was definitely marketed to the wrong demo and represented in the wrong way.
And yes…Sandra Bullock deserves mucho credit for The Proposal. Why she hasn’t been making more films like this in the past few years is beyond me.
Transformers 2 is going to end up with over 900 mill. worldwide, not too shabby. And Bruno will end up with over 200 million, how is that in any way a disappointment? 60 or 70 mill domestic might not be borat numbers, but still good money, and even better internationl.
In the long run, no one will lose money on Bruno. It is perceived as a massive bust though.
Also, congrats to Michael Mann for chugging on with PE. Go 100 million Go!
The perception on Bruno and PE is IMO about equal, good numbers, but expected to be bigger. Bruno will make a shitload more profit than PE though.
On a long enough timeline…I think PE will be more profitable. Much has been written about how much it cost to aquire rights to the Bruno character (42 million I believe) plus marketing and Cohen’s fees. It may look cheap…but that’s deceptive. According to Box Office Mojo it is also a loooong way from 200 million.
PE will also have a much longer shelf life through TV screenings and such. Bruno will also date much more quickly.
Bruno’s graphic nature will limit where it can be sold in ancillary.
On a long enough time line, I’s say PE will be more profitable.
Hate to say it, but Asmithy has a point: It’s it now 12:03 a.m. 7/19 Houston time — and the inaccurate figures for The Hangover are still up there. David, what’s the deal? Why aren’t the accurate numbers up there? The next time you bitch about anyone else’s inaccuracy, well…
Don’t forget the Bruno tourism package that would have cost a pretty penny.
Oy, Ethan, shut the bloody hell up.
Firstly, Taken was edited for you guys so you got a piss weak PG-13 version.
Secondly, er, Up has barely been released in many major international markets yet. Unless you think it’s international gross of under $50m is somehow all it’s gonna make.
Thirdly, don’t sell your country short, Ethan. Transformers 2 grosses are only out by about $40mil.
Fourthly(?), Considering America has, what? 300 million people? And there are SIX BILLION on the planet, I think there’s always a good chance that these sort of big blockbuster movies are going to attract a sizably larger of audience members from outside your country.
Fifthly(?), International is the only place a “star” actually matters (unless it’s Will Smith, he matters everywhere) so people like Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale and Tom Hanks can actually sell tickets.
Sixthly (i really am making up these words, right? Spell check doesn’t seem to think so), It has been proven time and time again that American comedies can be really tricky sells overseas. Whether it be stuff that is “lost in translation” and humour being very subjective, a movie like The Hangover (with it’s non-stars and non-publicity trail) was always going to struggle. It’s been a huge hit here in Australia, but not so much in France.
Seventh (and lastly), the list of classic international titles that have made more money internationally is very very long. The list of shitty movies that have made more in America is also very very long.
Kam, very true. The reality is that films that don’t require audiences to understand the spoken language per se, like a Transformers 2 or an Up, that just play visually, are always going to do better than a film like The Hangover which is highly reliant on its dialogue for you to either get it or not get it. I’m not saying that “simple is what sells to simple audiences”, it’s just a language barrier that takes certain films out of the running for big box office. Even countries that speak a variation of English often miss out on the subtleties (if you can call them that) in a film like Hangover. You’ll find that often the biggest international films are the ones that you can basically watch with the sound off and still get what they’re going for.
One of the international franchises that has always baffled me is the ASTERIX ET OBELIX series. They look as dumb as a bag of hammers (I can’t even put my finger on their U.S. equivalent – the EPIC/SCARY/DANCE/DISASTER MOVIE garbage perhaps?) and get next to no release in the states – DVD included. Yet, France, arbiter of taste and arrogance, eats them up. Baffling.
@Moviezzz: “Frost/Nixon” was Oscar Bait. “(500) Days of Summer” is a summer arthouse pic with potential to go mainstream.
Up is the only movie on either of Ethan’s list worth a damn and it hasn’t opened in the UK, France, Italy, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Australia and Brazil, which between them brought in about $180 million for Wall-E. Japan is the #2 market on the planet (after the U.S.) and they’re usually one of the last to get Disney/Pixar movies (Up comes out in December there). It’s way too early to begin drawing any conclusions here.
One of the international franchises that has always baffled me is the ASTERIX ET OBELIX series. They look as dumb as a bag of hammers (I can’t even put my finger on their U.S. equivalent – the EPIC/SCARY/DANCE/DISASTER MOVIE garbage perhaps?) and get next to no release in the states – DVD included. Yet, France, arbiter of taste and arrogance, eats them up. Baffling.
It’s a franchise that’s been consistently popular for half a century and is known to every man, woman and child in a huge swath of continental Europe (and to a lesser extent the UK, where it isn’t very popular but there’s at least some awareness). It’s not a huge mystery.
Martin, exactly. And as has been proven before, what’s funny to one country is not necessarily funny to another. Kids, however, are pretty much all the same and will all like Pixar and Ice Age, etc. Teenagers will all like (or, at least will go see it) Transformers 2 and so on.
You just need to look at the list of American sitcoms starring stand up comedians that have flopped outside of the US to know that.