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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

More Bad Box Office Spinage

The LACMA story got me looking over some of the LA Times and I ran into a story by Ben Fritz about Monsters vs Aliens “underperforming overseas.”
Interesting.
But misleading.
Fritz found a stat that is accurate. DreamWorks Animation has had a great run of films going more overseas than domestically. And sometimes, it’s crazily out of proportion. Do you know how much Madagascar 2 made overseas, having made $180 million here? $422 million flippin’ dollars. Better than 3.3x more. Massive.
Kung Fu Panda did $420 million overseas and “just” $215 million here.
But here is a key variable that Fritz didn’t consider. The release date.
Because of piracy, animation now opens, for the most part, day-n-date or within a couple of weeks worldwide. Monsters vs Aliens is the domestic champ for an animated spring opening. That’s good.
But moving onto the foreign box office, aside from the Ice Age films, poor Monsters vs Aliens is the highest spring-release overseas animated grosser in history with $177 million. More than Dr. Seuss’ Horton Hears a Who! or Robots or Meet The Robinsons or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s three different studios trying the spring and not matching DWA on this film. There is only one other spring animated release to gross as much as $50 million, The Road To Eldorado… and it also did less overseas than in the US, in spite of the involvement of Ken Branagh and Elton John.
Even Fox decided to move Ice Age 3 to the summer. And sure enough, less than a month into its worldwide release, the film is already the highest grosser of the series with another $50 million (or more) in theatrical gross to come… a little behind at this point domestically and a bit ahead in foreign over Ice Age 2‘s complete run.
Fritz is right and smart to argue that the 3D run domestically may have inflated US grosses to create the unusual US over Foreign ratio. But the notion that AvM underperformed overseas is not too reasonable, given the release date.
The real question for Katzenberg that may/should come up is, “Why are you still releasing animated movies in the spring?”
The answer may be that MvA did so well here. It may be that there is too much competition from Disney/Pixar and others in the summer and November. It may be that the studio is obliged to deliver spring content in the Paramount distribution deal (there are March releases scheduled for 2010 and 2012). And maybe a sequel to MvA will pop like Ice Age did ($206m to $456m international from the first to the second film).
But this kind of question is why all Pixar releases are now summer releases. There is just more money out there in other release periods.
And the stock analysts – including the one who brought this “worry” for DWA up – remain a bunch of bloody idiots. How can a bunch of smart people who have nothing to do but to analyze a narrow industry sector be so wrong so often? It truly boggles the mind.

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8 Responses to “More Bad Box Office Spinage”

  1. Direwolf says:

    Good stuff, DP. That is why I read this blog from a business perspective. The problem here is that analysts built there original models for MvA assuming intl greater than domestic. Thus the intl gross is a disappointment.
    Worth noting is that Katzenberg has publicly stated that he was disappointed in the intl gross as well and could not explain why MvA lagged so much in some markets. That is a paraphrase of the 1Q09 conference call (I have not listened to today’s call). So it is not just analysts who made this mistake (though I will admit we often extrapolate without thinking :-)).

  2. gradystiles says:

    $422 million is 2.3X $180 million, not 3.3.

  3. Wrecktum says:

    “Because of piracy, animation now opens, for the most part, day-n-date or within a couple of weeks worldwide.”
    Interesting. I’ll give you a dollar for every Disney or Pixer animated movies that have opened day-and-date worldwide.

  4. IOIOIOI says:

    That would give me about 3 dollars.

  5. EthanG says:

    I do realize I criticize 20th Century Fox all the time…but my question is…when does this studio pull out domestically to concentrate on the foreign market first and foremost? It hasnt hit 190 mil domestic for a movie in a long time and just won’t.
    Fox is clearly struggling at home…Night at Museum has prolly been killed by losses. The prospect of an Ice Age 4 will prolly sit poorly domestically but will be greenlit due to overseas interest. Wolverine and the X men series…still alive but worrisome trends..

  6. Is a possible reason for disappointing international numbers (in relation to other Dreamworks animated titles) because 3D hasn’t been rolled out anywhere nearly as much as it has in the US? I can’t speak for Europe or Asia, but not every cinema here has it.
    Pixar movies never open day and date around the majority of the world. School holidays and such.
    In regards to what Ethan said, if they make any more Ice Age movies it’ll be just like those Land Before Time movies, won’t it?

  7. LexG says:

    HOLY SHIT AM I FUCKED UP:
    1/2 BOTTLE OF VODKA, 1/3 BOTTLE OF BEAM, 11 BEERS, PUNCHING MYSELF IN THE FACE LIKE TYLER FUCKING DURDEN, GOOD IDEA.
    MIGHT KNOCK A TOOTH LOOSE LATER, I PARTY HARDER THAN ANY OF YOU LIMPS.
    FUCK YOU WORLD.
    YOU KILLED YOUR GOD.
    AND I *AM* GOD.

  8. transmogrifier says:

    I wish David would write about movies again, rather than either:
    (a) how some other blogger or journalist is totally wrong
    (b) how anything that some other blogger or journalist happened to get right was totally predictable and never in doubt, and thus not even with writing about in the first place
    You used to be a great critic, Mr. Poland. Now you are a sanctimonious self-appointed Keeper of the Gate of Truth of Industry Reporting, and it is dull, tiring and repetitious. You’re obsession with Finke is a little scary.

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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