Films Opening To $25m – $35m Which Were Written Off On Opening Weekend
| TITLE | DISTRIB | OPEN | TOTAL DOM | REL DATE |
| Hellboy II: The Golden Army | Uni. | $34,539,115 | $75,986,503 | 7/11/08 |
| The Wolfman | Uni. | $31,479,235 | $61,979,680 | 2/12/10 |
| Evan Almighty | Uni. | $31,192,615 | $100,462,298 | 6/22/07 |
| Bruno | Uni. | $30,619,130 | $60,054,530 | 7/10/09 |
| John Carter | BV | $30,180,188 | $73,078,100 | 3/9/12 |
| Dark Shadows | WB | $29,685,274 | $79,727,149 | 5/11/12 |
| Scooby-Doo 2 | WB | $29,438,331 | $84,216,833 | 3/26/04 |
| The Santa Clause 2 | BV | $29,008,696 | $139,236,327 | 11/1/02 |
| Jack the Giant Slayer | WB (NL) | $28,010,000 | $28,010,000 | 3/1/13 |
| Wild Wild West | WB | $27,687,484 | $113,804,681 | 6/30/99 |
| Beowulf | Par. | $27,515,871 | $82,280,579 | 11/16/07 |
| Bedtime Stories | BV | $27,450,296 | $110,101,975 | 12/25/08 |
| Jumper | Fox | $27,354,808 | $80,172,128 | 2/14/08 |
| Hollow Man | Sony | $26,414,386 | $73,209,340 | 8/4/00 |
| The Golden Compass | NL | $25,783,232 | $70,107,728 | 12/7/07 |
| Miami Vice | Uni. | $25,723,815 | $63,450,470 | 7/28/06 |
| The A-Team | Fox | $25,669,455 | $77,222,099 | 6/11/10 |
| V for Vendetta | WB | $25,642,340 | $70,511,035 | 3/17/06 |
| Total Recall (2012) | Sony | $25,577,758 | $58,877,969 | 8/3/12 |
| Battleship | Uni. | $25,534,825 | $65,422,625 | 5/18/12 |
| Public Enemies | Uni. | $25,271,675 | $97,104,620 | 7/1/09 |
| Meet the Robinsons | BV | $25,123,781 | $97,822,171 | 3/30/07 |
| Jack and Jill | Sony | $25,003,575 | $74,158,157 | 11/11/11 |
4 of these, obviously, got to $100m domestic. Only 2 of those were profitable, however.
How many had budgets close to $200m w/o marketing?
Would Santa Clause 2 be one of the profitable ones? Assuming so, since there was a Santa 3.
I don’t quite follow. How would a studio know how big a loss they are taking based on just opening weekend? I know their share of the pie is greatest for the first weekend, but still.
I don’t think he means in the accounting sense – I think he means in the “fuck it, it’s a loser” sense.
Were they expecting Santa Clause 2 to take in 50 million???
Golden Compass, Battleship, John Carter and Beowulf had similar budgets I think.
Bruno had to be viewed as at least performing moderately well after opening weekend. It’s not like the studio dropped 100m on the film and the opening weekend represented an uptick from Borat’s. I remember being somewhat surprised at how well it opened given that those I know were apathetic or even put off by the marketing campaign.
I also think putting Public Enemies on here is unfair. The movie did well domestically and worldwide, and while production costs were high, it was an adult film that was never going to make over 150m.
Clause 2 was certainly one of the profitable ones. If you see the production values onscreen the whole movie (apart from Allen’s salery) must have cost about $32. But all of these were written off because they failed to open the potential of the star (Depp, Sandler, Cohen), franchise, or budget. And I don’t think it is a coincidence that of the 23 titles on the list (and you can probably add many other titles like Scorpion King and Red Dragon in there) only 4 were not based on another source (book, tv show, sequel). Just shows that contrary to the studio’s current business plan throwing a lot of money at an established property is not an automatic win.
Now how about a list about over 40 openers that includes The Village and Green Lantern?
^
Hopefully charts like these’ll help entice statisticians *cough* Nate Silver *cough* to take a deeper look into the studios’ other generally erroneous assumptions.
But isn’t that the point, BoulderKid? If there’s no way “Public Enemies” is going to make $150 million, why is it being made at that price?
Looks like a list of great movies to me.
yeah, two Michael Mann masterpieces on that list. It’s a shame more people don’t see his movies on the big screen.
I’m pretty sure my then bosses at Universal were eager to pay large sums of money ($20M and $15M, respectively) to both Johnny Depp and Christian Bale because they actually DID THINK Public Enemies could cross $150 million.
Hollow Man!! Jesus, I haven’t thought of that movie in years.
Wait, how did Evan Almighty make $100 million again?
And man did The Wolfman die fast. Bad reviews?
Golden Compass was wildly profitable (just not for New Line)
Santa Clause 2 made money
Bruno made money
Public Enemies made money
Beowulf made money
Jumper made money
Bedtime Stories made money
None of these except Compass were “hits” but Professor Douche says these films were not “profitable” and this is once again, false, by 3 times!
Thank you class.
David is a big boy and can defend himself, but I think what he’s trying to say here is — each of these films was, rightly or wrongly, immediately dismissed by industry observers as a “flop” on its opening weekend. Sometimes, that judgment was justified. Other times…
BTW: Wolfman apparently spawned a kinda-sorta sequel that went direct to DVD: Werewolf: The Beast Among Us, starring Stephen Rea and Nia Peeples. Anybody here ever see it?
I’ve seen it Joe. It is (or was) streaming on Netflix.
And?
THE WOLFMAN was a blast in the theatres.
It’s pretty much what you would expect from a low-budget, direct-to-DVD sequel. I like The Wolfman and have a soft spot for werewolf movies, but it’s not really related to that movie in any way and is OK at best.
This is a great chart. But it is now a three day old post on a blog that used to update all day every day. How sad. I miss The Hot BLOG
I do too, Aaron. Trying to figure out how to make it thrive again.