Weekend Estimates by Klady – 11/01/09
Okay… more drama…
In the first 5 days, This Is It blew Hannah/Miley off the map to be the biggest concert film of all time worldwide. Finkebaugh and the others who foolishly bit deeply on the hype around this film – as though this hype was any different than the hype for every other film out there – are still busy trying to sell this as a disappointment.
Do people understand this… because it is not the first time I have brought it up. We are now responding to hype as though it is news and then attacking the news because “we” bought into the hype.
This Is It is now a lock to be the #2 documentary of all time, as it will pass March of The Penguins‘ $127m worldwide in the next few days. Only Fahrenheit 9/11 will stand in the way of it becoming the biggest documentary of all-time, with the $223 million cume likely too big a hurdle to overcome. Even so, when you start looking at DVD sales, much less record sales, this film is pretty much guaranteed to create more revenue than any documentary in history, probably tripling F/911’s DVD sales at minimum.
How very disappointing!
Finkebaugh and others who have given themselves whiplash switching between ecstasy and mockery over the numbers for this film are still trying to cover their own asses. “CON ARTISTS!,” is NIkki’s headline, even though she and everyone else who covers this stuff had to know that an extension was inevitable… just as it was with the Miley Cyrus movie… and in that case, not very successfully. The domestic box office grew only 18.5% from the extension past the first 10 days.
“But it’s not the biggest opening of all-time worldwide!” Waaaaa! “But the concert promoter selling this thing told us that it would have a $250m worldwide first weekend!” Waaaaaaa!
(ADDED 11:27a – A blog commenter smartly pointed out another hypocrisy. Isn’t this a close relation to the winning scam that Paramount ran on Paranormal Activity… claiming that audience demand expanded the release when the theaters were booked months in advance? The big difference… the media felt like they were part of the win there and this time, they feel like suckers for having bought into AIG hype.)
And this is not just a single case. Bruno did about $140m worldwide… which was a lot less than Borat‘s $265m worldwide… but it still covered the $45 million that the movie was purchased for and put $32 million towards the publicity-heavy marketing campaign. A profitable film.
Does anyone talk about The Proposal grossing more and costing significantly less than Inglourious Basterds or Angels & Demons being the #5 worldwide film of the year or Up being touted as the movie that would mark the end of Pixar’s hot run or that Confessions of a Shopaholic outgrossed Julie& julia worldwide?
The media isn’t doing its job covering the box office, even if they are fighting like dogs in heat to get to the numbers FIRST.
And sadly, this is the canary in the media coal mine.
Anyone still pushing the idea of This Is It as a disappointment should be publicly ridiculed. Aggressively. You know, every movie gets greenlit with the hopes of it being a huge success. If studio executives took every producer/salesman on face value, then 99.9% of all movie are a disappointment. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen hoped to get to the billion dollar mark. Disappointing. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs is the highest grossing animated film in history internationally, but didn’t even get to $200 million in America. Disappointing. X-Men Origins: Wolverine grossed $86 million less worldwide than X-Men: The Last Stand and cost about $70 million less. Still… disappointing. And of course, Harry Potter VI started a about 15% faster than any other Potter film but ended up being just the #3 grosser in the series. So very disappointing.
It is still true… hyping up the media sets studios up for harsh press if numbers are not as hyped. But the idea that the media is giving up responsibility for its reporting to publicists… not just accepting information, but choosing not to process the obviously-skewed information with any effort more aggressive than a rewrite of the facts or a little semantic pushback when we are somehow personally disappointed… it’s horrible.
And let’s not pretend it’s innocent. “Projections by the studio were not met” is reporting a fact. “Disappointment” is claiming an emotion that reflects the intent to slap back at the feeling of having been set up for more. Plus, reporting what other studios are saying as though they are impartial observers is another remarkable break in trust with readers.
It is time for journalists – especially on the web, but hardly only online – to stop acting like publicists, so anxious about building audience that we don’t act on our responsibility to readers to report and instead, try to serve them what we think they want. More hype.
For the weekend gross of THE BOONDOCK SAINTS II: ALL SAINTS DAY , Apparition’s estimate number is $462,000. (The number is still bigger than what I had expected)
I’m happy that this film is doing respectably well in a modest theatrical release. Again, congrats to Sony Pictures Worldwide Acquisitions Group / Stage 6, Troy Duffy and other people involved in this film. (Hopefully, we will see more Stage 6’s films receive modest theatrical releases …. and Troy Duffy’s career will be back on track.)
I’m thinking Troy will never be directing a movie that isn’t called “Boondock Saints (insert sequel number here).”
By the way, it is sad to see that “Gentlemen Broncos” becomes another bomb for Fox Searchlight.
“Coco Before Chanel’s” expansion is too slow…it’s barely going to top “Bright Star” when all is said and done.
“Law Abiding Citizen” is the 16th R-rated film of the year to make $50 million plus….highest number of R films to hit that number since 2003. That’s encouraging news.
“Paranormal Activity” will be the first R-rated horror film to hit $100 million domestically since “Hannibal.”
“Astro Boy” is enough of a bomb to almost sink Imagi Anumation.
Surprising hold for “Amelia.”
So when Paranormal Activity hits the $100 million mark, will David eat a pair of shoes?
Can we finally call the SAW series as dead as Jigsaw?
Will this be the end of Lionsgate trotting out a new installment each and every Halloween? Or will they just chalk up the PA ass-kicking as a freak anomaly and proceed with plans for SAW VII (perhaps now with a slashed budget)? Hell, even a dud such as THE STEPFATHER is giving SAW a run for its money.
I think the producers squandered too much fan goodwill on the last couple of films and even if the new is a return to form (as I’ve heard — haven’t seen it) the fans are still giving it a pass.
Funny enough, I saw an ad in a Toronto newspaper this week that declared Law Abiding Citizen as the #1 movie for two weeks in a row.
I wonder what accounts for the regional difference? As far as I know, Canadians aren’t huge Jamie Foxx fans.
Krazy Eyes,
I’m a huge horror fan, and Saw just isn’t my thing so I checked out after 2. That being said, I haven’t ever gotten the impression that the quality of the films has waned that much. I’ll qualify this discussion again by saying that I haven’t seen the films in question but most of the people that say 3, 4, 5 and 6 are awful are people that bemoaned the first one. And there is a large population of people that are offended by the mere suggestion that a 6 year olf franchise can possibly be at a 6th installment.
I never got the impression that the producers ever got down to the “jut put anything on film the audience will come” depths of franchise hell that produced Halloween 5 & 6, Firday the 13th parts 5 and 8, and Nightmare on elm Street 5 and 6.
Saw is just a pure case of diminishing returns. Saw fans have been drinking from the firehose for 6 straight years and they are finally full.
It also seems like to watch a Saw movie at this point, you need to not only have seen the others, but have seen them several times and hopefully made detailed notes and brought them to the theater.
“We are now responding to hype as though it is news and then attacking the news because “we” bought into the hype.”
It’s something we’ve all talked about for nearly a decade. I first noticed it during the run-up to Blair Witch 2, when the idea of a $30 million opening being a possibility caused the film to be rendered a flop when it opened to a reasonable $13 million (why would anyone expect a sequel to a half-loved/half-loathed cult film to open higher than the much anticipated original?). It happened in May 2001, when rival studio execs sold the lie that Pearl Harbor could top $100 million+ in four days, then called the film a flop when it did $75 million.
I’ve always argued that the first five-day gross of Phantom Menace was hurt by no-nothing commentators swearing that every seat would be sold out over opening weekend. Little surprise that many of the casual fans did in fact attend during weekend two, contributing to a mere 20% drop. We saw a similar narrative with This Is It and, I’d argue, similar consequences.
To me, it’s the same game that gets played in politics. For example, the GOP sells a narrative that Kerry or Obama will go up 15 points after the convention. The media bites, they fail to do the math, and then the official story is that the Dems are flopping when they only get a 7 point bounce.
The problem is that, especially after Titanic, box office punditry became a mainstream sport, not just the cult game played by insiders and film nerds like us. And when basically educated guesses (at best) become taken as serious mathematics, then there are serious consequences for the films in play. It happened to Dreamworks, when business analysts couldn’t understand why Madagascar hadn’t performed like Shrek 2. It happened when Charlie’s Angels was inexplicably expected to open to $70 million. And it will happen to each and every new Marvel film because people who don’t get it will expect every said Marvel film to perform like Iron Man.
And yes, Saw VI was the second-best of the series, behind Saw II. And I’ve always said that, even with the low-water Saw V and Saw IV, the filmmakers really were trying to make a real movie with plot, characters, and a winding narrative.
Having said all of that, it appears that Finke is the only one calling the performance a failure. So far, Entertainment Weekly and Box Office Prophets are acknowledging that it was a rock-solid debut while HitFlix is basically saying that it’s only a disappointment relative to certain expectations.
David: Why do you think so many folks are ignoring or dismissing the success of The Proposal? I’m not going to make a case for it being any kind of great movie, but I found it lightly amusing and well worth the price of a matinee ticket. And, obviously, a lot of other folks enjoyed it as well. But, damn, some folks were writing it off before it even opened, claiming that it would prove Sandra Bullock was no longer a major box-office draw. What gives here? Has Bullock turned into one of those stars (like Matthew McConaughey and Hugh Grant) some people actively root against?
“Does anyone talk about The Proposal grossing more and costing significantly less than Inglourious Basterds?”
Maybe, maybe not, but can we please talk about why there are “For Your Consideration” ads for Betty White on this blog. Is Disney really spending money on those? What a joke.
Not that anyone wants to hear more from me on SAW, but, yes, 4 and 5 were easily the worst of the series, and 4 in particular smacked of bending over backwards to create retroactive continuity that would allow for a sequel, after 3 pretty conclusively ended the storyline.
Five pissed everybody off by claiming “You won’t believe how it ends!” and then offering a non-ending with multiple cliffhangers.
Six at least mostly wrapped up the new storylines, and made them make a little more sense. I would like that to be it. Much as a Saw 3-D would look cool, and I might check it out for the visuals, that shouldn’t be enough to justify it. But it sounds like they’re going ahead; last time we brought this up, a couple of people here said they had connections to the production.
Business-wise, it has at last been proven that Saw is not indestructible on Halloween, and that’s probably more of an issue for Lionsgate than any narrative point or fanboy quibbles.
With few exceptions, Sandra Bullock movies have always had very long and strong legs. Her opening weekends were never boffo (Proposal was her first opening over $17 million), but the movies played for awhile and earned their money the old fashioned way. So, for me, The Proposal just performed like a normal Bullock picture, with a more ‘modern’ opening weekend ($31 million) to affect the figures accordingly. For me, the only (mild) surprise was the size of the opening weekend. After that, it just played like a stereotypical Bullock commercial venture.
Non-endings are the constant problem with horror movies. The last jump scare is the most hacky ending to any horror movie. I hope the guy who made Hills Have Eyes happens to read this. Dear guy, you suck. You had a pretty great horror movie, but oh wait…the last shot showed the story isn’t over, but we’re not going to actually get to SEE what happens after that!
Fuck you, horror hacks.
Say what you will about Scream, but the most shocking part about that movie was that it had a real ending and the story was wrapped up. I kept waiting for a last shot of a mask in the woods or some bullshit, but for once someone involved in a horror pic had some fucking taste. Obviously, they made two sequels after that but that’s fine…just give me a real ending to the movie I paid for, then if you want to do a sequel, I’m sure it’s easy enough to come up with something.
Just saw the DVD of Night of the Creeps as well…and the real ending to that is miles more interesting that the shitty theatrical ending the studio made them tack on.
Where’s the proof that Paranormal Activity was booked into 2000+ theaters “months” ago? I’d like to see it, since I don’t for a second believe that’s true.
AMELIA only dropped 25%. Could this mean that (gasp) people like it?
But then ALL ABOUT STEVE had to be truly terrible. Somehow the studio couldn’t sell the male and female leads of the two hottest comedies of the summer in a movie together and spark some box office magic. Talk about running hot and cold. From her best performance to one of her worst.
Additionally I remember sometime ago when boxofficemojo used to post percentages of accuracy of box office predictions. I don’t see that anymore. The hype has indeed become the news and that’s because as is so often pointed out on this blog, nobody knows shit. The HANGOVER was supposed to be another male oriented comedy that topped out at 80M. THE PROPOSAL was supposed to do what Sandra’s movies traditionally do. UP was supposed to continue the ‘decline’ of Pixars success. Nobody knows shit.
And for the record Dave, more to prove your point, Harry Potter VI is the second highest grossing in the series, the only one since the first to cross the $300M mark. Coincidentally its the one I like the least, but then that tells you what I know.
Also Dave, I knew you were somewhat rough with those who announced the box office death of WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE after that 2nd weekend drop. Now that it has dropped 64%in its 3rd weekend after dropping 57% last weekend, it may not recoup its production budget domestically. (Depending on what figure you believe. Some say $75m, others say $100M.)
Do you think this was a scheduling mistake, maybe should have been released after Halloween and closer to Christmas? MARLEY & ME used this effectively.
Or a budgeting mistake i.e should’ve kept the cost below $50M.
Was this also a victim of the media hype of expectations, even though my judgment of the reporting of this was that this film was something of a wild card. (No pun intended)
Conversely, LAW ABIDING CITIZEN is holding up very well. After BLART and TAKEN, its proven to be a mini crowd please with pretty good holds after being written off by virtually everyone in the business. Another one of those ‘nobody knows shit’ moments.
The “Demand It” marketing thing is clever since it taps into that ‘you are part of the pheomenom’ vibe. It won’t extend to other movies. They’ll try it. But it’s tough to get the lightning back into the bottle. It’d be nice if there was a way people could get behind movies and have them brought to their local theater. Oh wait, they do:
People ‘demand’ with their wallets. If the movie makes money, it will expand anyway. So the whole theory is kind of funny. A way of repackaging the rollout as if it has a human component.
Did anyone here actually see This is It?
Anghus, I saw it. It was pretty good, but a movie wall-to-wall with Michael Jackson hits would be hard-pressed to not be good.
And no, I haven’t seen Moonwalker, but I’m guessing it managed that feat.
Box office mojo lists it as $100 mill budget. Anyone else see a similarity between the Phantom Menace and Wild Things posters?
http://www.cyber-cinema.com/starwars/episode1_adv.jpg
http://www.impawards.com/2009/posters/where_the_wild_things_are_ver3.jpg
I could just be imagining it though because of the landscape.
Anghus… what you’re saying kind of makes sense on a macro level, but not for an individual person. If a movie that I want to see hasn’t expanded yet to my market, I can’t vote with my wallet. And if it has expanded to my market, I’ll buy a ticket, but I don’t really care if it expands anywhere else. No?
I was one of those nerds there on Tuesday night at an IMAX theater (mainly because it was the rare ‘big movie’ that I could see early in the convenience of my local theater at a late-enough showing that I could put my daughter to bed prior to showtime).
http://scottalanmendelson.blogspot.com/2009/10/review-this-is-it-imax-experience-2009.html
a_loco, Moonwalker is very awful. Joe Pesci turning into a giant evil robot or some such didn’t destroy the “Smooth Criminal” stuff, but really… “Leave Me Alone” merged into a story about Jackson letting a bunch of kids follow him around Neverland and… something something. Ugh, terrible. The video game was by far better because it, quite literally, had nothing to do with the movie (or, that’s how I remember it being.)
Cadavra, since it’s screen count was upped by 250 and it’s debut last week was hardly anything to rave about, I think it’s week-to-week drop is hardly a sign of people liking it, but merely not having anything else to go to in that sort of “it looks prestigious, so it must be good” but for people who don’t want to actually seek out something like A Serious Man.
Are those An Education numbers disappointing (there’s that word again)?
Anyway, all good points raised, Dave! The Confessions/Julie & Julia thing though seems less surprising to someone who’s not in America since a lot of people internationally don’t know who Julia Child is and don’t have that instant recognition.
Moonwalker was the first theatrical movie I ever walked out of. The only ones since then, aside from festival films, have been LEGENDS OF THE FALL and CIDER HOUSE RULES.
As much as I personally despise the use of “expectations” and “disappointments” in terms of evaluations, you can’t completely dissociate the movie from the marketing and PR around it. Context matters in how we perceive stuff – to try and ignore it is just madness.
Where we should be concentrating the effort is making sure that the projections and expectations are appropriate – call studio flacks on their bullshit, or draw attention to projects that are being undersold. The health of the industry relies on people being able to make accurate predictions – if there’s a disconnect between what people actually believe and the hype, then that should be the function of industry reporting to fix that. Not deriding people saying it’s “disappointing”, but deriding the people who put the unrealistic expectations in the first place.
Headlines FROM THE FUTURE:
“‘New Moon’ Disappoints After Failure to Match Hot Blog Poster’s $800 Million Prediction”
New Moon will beat 800$ worldwide, like Ice Age 3.
Kami, I had not noticed that AMELIA added screens. Even so, it’s still a decent hold.
@EthanG: “Coco Before Chanel” is from Sony Pictures Classics, which (1) insists on its own distribution and (2) hates mainstream megaplexes.
@Kami: “An Education” is also from SPC — that pic has yet to expand to NYC suburbs because of “Amelia”. Halloween also comes into play.
So, I just took ten teens…and, evidently, inspired approx 15 other folks to see “This Is It” (no school tomorrow for us), and everyone loved it!
Yes, even diluted-strength Michael Jackson makes it clear that he is a once-in-a-generation musical genius (iconography came later), not only an amazing vocalist, but also composer, producer, and dancer. There is no one present-day who even comes close.
Separate the strange behavior of the last 20 years if you can, and revel in Beat It, Human Nature, Got to be Startin’ Something, Thriller, etc. Some pre-recorded vocal tracks that sound great, some truly live stuff that sounds better than one would expect, fluid and graceful movement (Billie Jean!), ROCKING chick guitarist!!
Bit of a glimpse into the whole production scheme, and Jackson’s vision at the center. Eff people pissing on Kenny Ortega…looks like he had to manage an eccentric and mercurial talent in the middle of a three-ring circus, and I think he did the best he could with what he had.
The whole enterprise initially struck me as ghoulish, but watching all the young kids dancing in their seats, singing Smooth Criminal, well, it was worth it…
Yeah, we all (except maybe one) bought into the hype. But “This Is It” is still disappointing. When you have to quote the internation number instead of the domestic numbers, it’s a spin job. If it wasn’t a disappointment, why did the studios and you, David, have to quote the international number to justify your arguments. $21M is a disappointment for such an unprecedented film. Why wasn’t the domestic take of $21M used in the headlines, like how it’s usually done? Because it’s a disappointing number. It needed padding. A lot of it – $80M worth of it. Sure, the studio will still make money on it, but they, like most of us, were expecting more.
Bruno is a disappointment – and a huge one. When your follow-up film, made in the same vein as your previous blockbuster, only made about a third of its predecessor, it’s not just a disappointment, it might even be called a bomb.
Nikki Finke is wrong most of time when it comes analyzing box office numbers, but this time she’s right.
I have no desire to see an MJ rehearsal doc. Not even an MJ 3-D IMAX Concert. But obviously people do. So 30 million plus for a music star doc is fantastic. And it will make three times that on other platforms. How did RATTLE AND HUM do? Why do I care?
you don’t care, christian. you are getting very sleepy……….when you wake up you will have no memory of this conversation and feel refreshed!