Weekend Estimates by “And The Box Office Goes To” Klady
Last year on Oscar weekend, there were no Best Picture nominees in the Top 10 and the only movie with a major contender in the Top 1o was Crazy Heart, which Searchlight expanded that weekend to 1274 screens and rode all the talk about Bridges locked win for Best Actor.
This year, The King’s Speech and True Grit are still in the Top 10, heading to $300m domestic between them. If you eliminate the high end of these two 10-nominee years and Lord of the Rings from the equation, you have to go back to Gladiator and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to match this kind of domestic box office success in the race.
In that year, 2000, four of the five nominees were $100m domestic grossers. This year, there are five, but again, there are 10 nominees. So that 2000 year is still, in my eye, the most remarkable box office year ever for Oscar. And it even included one spring and one early summer release.
Drive Angry 3D is the box office story of most interest this weekend. The opening is in the bottom half of Summit’s 23 film history as a distributor, less than an estimated $100k better than Sorority Row… or as it will surely be known in Nic Cage’s world, “Sorority F***ing Row.” With the back-to-back vampire-free success of Letters to Juliet and Red, Summit seemed ready to move up the ladder. This is a setback.
Of course, WB can’t be too thrilled with Hall Pass either. The opening is right around where The Farrellys have been stuck with their last two films, neither of which is seen as a hit. It seems that much of the gross-out humor of the film was not advertised. A redband trailer – which is much better at establishing characters and would have made me consider seeing the film – went out Wednesday. Too late.
Paramount’s Justin Beiber “more footage”s stunt seemed to work and the film held unusually well.
Wow…the box office disaster continues.
“Cedar Rapids” needs to expand more quickly….
“Just Go With It” might actually give studios pause before throwing tens of millions at Sandler to go on vacation to exotic places and call it a movie.
how’d the oscar shorts do? Live Action shorts at the landmark yesterday, and animated at the Nuart on Thursday were both at at least 80% capacity.
I know this is the first year for the Oscar short docs to have their own program, but how have they done overall? Is shorts intl and magnolia going to do the doc shorts again next year? The academy still considers the doc shorts the most unworthy category, not deigning to offer LA residents a Samuel Goldwyn public screening as they do for the other shorts. Although they do screen the Doc Shorts in NYC and DC, iirc.
“Just Go With It might actually give studios pause before throwing tens of millions at Sandler to go on vacation to exotic places and call it a movie.”
Because studios don’t like $100 million movies?
I’m not sure what really happened with DRIVE ANGRY. They built up some pre-release buzz with the early trailers, which played well, but Summit seems to have dropped the ball in the homestretch, particularly in terms of publicity and awareness (maybe because it was a negative pickup), and let it open (or sneak out) totally under the radar. I am the biggest Nicolas Cage fan in the world and have been psyched for the movie for months and yet somehow I didn’t even realize it was actually opening this past Friday. Not arrogant enough to assume I’m representative of the whole country, but wondering how many other people who would have been inclined to see it may have been similarly unaware of its release date.
After reading some of the (surprisingly) enthusiastic reviews, I wonder if Summit might have done better to screen Drive Angry for critics?
They didn’t screen DRIVE ANGRY for critics? Wow, that backfired.
I know I say this alot, but studios really need to stop withholding press screenings for movies that are actually good, or at the very least deliver on their respective promises. General moviegoers are always hesitant to spend first-run theater ticket prices on something that is basically being advertised as ‘so bad/junky, that it’s good’. Critics reassuring the general populace that Drive Angry was a real movie with genuine entertainment value would have undoubtedly helped. Same with Snakes on a Plane, Quarantine, and MacGruber. At the end of the day, most people think that a film that is being hidden from the press is an unqualified disaster. If that’s not the case, you’re only hurting yourself by hiding it.
“Because studios don’t like $100 million movies?”
Did Universal love “Robin Hood?” Did WB love “Terminator 4?”
Did Disney love “A Christmas Carol?” Did WB love “Watchmen?”
$100 million on an $80 million production budget is a misfire DP. (the film is performing meh internationally so far so $150 ww seems tops)
How cool is it that “Black Swan” has cracked the top 30 worldwide for 2010 (ahead of Valentine’s Day and Percy Jackson)???
No Adam Sandler movie should be made with the expectation that the worldwide gross will be over $150 million.
But throwing tens of millions at Sandler? Any studio would be happy to do that. 8 tens of millions? Just stupid.
Sandler generally ends up somewhere between 125-150, depending on who else is in the picture (GROWN-UPS, with a sorta all-star cast, hit 160). JUST GO WITH IT will barely cross the nine-figure mark. Dare I say it? Did Aniston pull down the numbers?
And yet all Sandler comedies for many years have cost 80m to make, and almost always gross between 100-140m domestic. The bottom line must therefore be acceptable to the studio. He’s always in demand as far as I can see.
JUST GO WITH IT and DRIVE ANGRY are not good titles.
Drive Angry is catchy as hell and suits the star the premise and the one sheet perfectly
But it gives no indication of any supernatural element. That’s a major selling point completely left out.
Damn! Hey, IO: Did you know the Human Torch got snuffed?
http://shelf-life.ew.com/2011/02/26/fantastic-four-588-the-torch/
Hmmm. IO must still be in mourning over this.