Why I Hate Trending: Episode 488
“The Saturday decline for “Bruno” is the second biggest in modern history for a movie that didn’t open on a holiday weekend, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com, behind only the hugely anticipated “Twilight.”
It’s difficult to discern whether audiences’ dislike for “Bruno” stemmed…”
LA Times
Whoa there, cowboy.
If this is the analysis that indicates that Bruno is disliked, then Twilight is disliked, right?
I’m not even saying that Bruno is NOT disliked (though I think the drama about its Saturday drop is wildly overblown). I’m just saying, how do smart people who actually have the facts in front of them disregard them so easily to make a point that, it seems, they decided to make before they started writing?
And everyone following that ill-logic is just as guilty, if not more.
This is exactly the fight I get into all the time. Shortly, someone will start writing a comment about how I am defending the movie because I liked it or some such spin on what I am saying. But that is utterly irrelevant. The numbers are the numbers. If Twilight is a big hit, how does one use a stat about it as a way of condemning another movie? It’s insane on its face… even if the negativity turns out to be right.
Joe Leydon used to ask in here, “If early numbers turn out to be right, why are you so upset about them?” And the answer remains the same… because they are very often not right. And the impact of a bad number can be felt beyond its life. Now we have multiple outlets guessing at numbers on Friday afternoons, based on east coast matinees. The Wrap even wrote a whole piece that hinged on east coast matinees being the last time that movie marketing mattered in a movie’s life. (Moronic.)
This is all premature box office ejaculation.
It starts with the bastardization of tracking into a guessing tool for weekend box office… which is not and never was its intent. It is extends to extrapolation based on less and less actual information, sites desperate for attention and, in the most successful at getting that attention – Nikki via her career-making Drudge links – just rewrites the history as the facts change through the weekend. In this case, it went from “could hit $50m,” to “will hit $40m” to “could hit $40m,” to “‘BRUNO’ IST BIG: $30.4M Weekend Opener>” Uh huh.
Bruno – which may or may not make 3x opening, but which is guaranteed to be a more profitable movie than $400m worldwide grossers like Star Trek or Terminator Salvation – had its “downfall” set by hyperactive full-weekend projections based, first, on the Thursday midnight screenings, then Friday matinees, then more complete Friday estimates, then Saturday estimates, then CinemaScore (oy!) ratings, and finally, weekend estimates… which were $4 million higher than Borat, but which are still being portrayed as a disaster… even before we know what the weekdays, much less the all-important second weekend looks like.
Month after month after month, we see exceptions to the rules as well as ongoing shifts in our rote expectations of how box office will evolve after the first weekend. As I have noted before, we are seeing more films opening well but doing less than 2.5x opening than ever in history.
But we have all become so caught up in pretending we know the facts before we get them that the news is no longer the news… it is the tonal interpretation of news based on our pre-existing bias and, often, ignorance.
Like I say, Bruno could end up being a $60m domestic movie. Not likely. But shit happens. But aren’t journalists in the business of waiting for the news to happen anymore? Don’t we have a responsibility not to be reckless about how we cover our beats?
More and more, the “journalism” in this medium becomes about placement. The electronic ticket sellers are out there selling “news” based on, but not acknowledging, their narrow swath. Paul Degarebedian, now working for the ever-desperate Hollywood.com, is out selling himself as an expert (which overwhelms his actual expertise at times). Screen International is considering who to sue first when they get “scooped” by their own information, repurposed by other sites without acknowledgment. Corporate publicists are placing “news.” Studios are placing “news.” Freelancers who come up with implausible, but well-written theories are selling “news.” And a variety of alleged journalists are out there selling themselves in the guise of having some kind of insight into “news,” when they just have some more gossip to throw out there.
Whatever happened to actual news?
No one cares. It takes to long to happen.
Blech.
Twilight had the second worst opening-day to weekend multiplier on record (1.9x), but it actually ended up kinda/sorta having legs and making it to $191 million (by far the highest grossing of the three November 60 million+ openers). After the weekend plunge, I would have expected a fast flame out, but it didn’t happen. Maybe Twilight is the outlier movie when judging the final results of such Friday to Saturday plunges (like Shrek 2 is the ‘that doesn’t count’ when predicting five-day openings), but it sure as hell shouldn’t be the example. On a bright note, Brandon Gray finally made a list of worst weekend multipliers, so I no longer have to do the math on my own!
Amen, DP.
I am constantly baffled by the complete lack of understanding of movie economics on the part of ostensibly “major” entertainment reporters. Name one other industry where the beat reporters covering said industry are in total thrall to p.r. flacks, whose job it is to trumpet meaningless spin and misleading stats replete with fudged figures, and then blindly regurgitate same without one iota of scrutiny. How long would a WSJ reporter who got the story wrong so many times last at his/her job?
You hit the nail on the head: bottom line, Bruno is going to wind up being more profitable for all concerned than just about any movie released this summer, save for possibly “The Hangover.” MRC is in the black already, and Universal will be in the black by the end of the week. Every studio in town would give eye teeth to have more “dissapointments” like that on its slate.
Also, David, you forgot to note that I also used to ask in here: “Well, what the hell is so wrong with water-boarding? I mean, it’s ok if the right people are water-boarded, right?”
“Name one other industry where the beat reporters covering said industry are in total thrall to p.r. flacks, whose job it is to trumpet meaningless spin and misleading stats replete with fudged figures, and then blindly regurgitate same without one iota of scrutiny.”
Reporting in the financial industry pretty much works this way.
I think that’s the scariest thing about knowing how poorly the film business is covered is realizing that other areas of the paper must be similarly problematic and you don’t know if you aren’t in that area.
David: You have no idea. Or maybe you’re happier not having any idea. I worked at a paper once where the head of the freakin’ editorial department was a casual anti-Semite. God as my witness: When I apporached him once about doing an op-ed piece about my visit to Auschwitz, the dude told me that he was tired of op-ed pieces like that, but if I wanted to write a piece questioning whether the Holocaust really happened… I know: I should have said something. But I must confess: There are times when even I am left literally speechless when confronted with such arrant assholishness.
And, of course, there was the theater critic who had never heard of a play called Titus Andronicus until I referred to it in a conversation…