Weekend Estimates by 102 Klady St
22 Jump Street has a terrific opening. 5th best of the summer. But here’s the rub… and I like this stat a lot more than #2 R-rated comedy opening… it is the 7th biggest opening in history for a movie that cost under $100 million to produce. Keep in mind that it is the #108 opening of all time, so 101 and of the 108 biggest openings are for movies that cost in excess of $100 million. So if you want to know why “they” keep making these giant films, there you go. “They” prioritize opening weekend, in a bad habit that accelerated wildly when DVD sell-thru was a massive cash cow and all any studio wanted to do was to get to that Home Entertainment money as soon as possible. The studios, now in that mindset, can’t get the perspective to see that there is more big picture value in longer, perhaps slower theatrical runs. But that is a conversation for another day…
This is Lord & Miller’s 2nd $60m+ opening this year. The two films are the #6 and #7 openings for the year so far… and the only such openers with production budgets under $160 million. That makes Miller & Lord the most valuable human commodities in Hollywood (at least this side of the Avengers 2 crew) right now, as it has often been with comedy filmmakers or comedians, who can deliver big numbers with much lower budgets. This is Eddie Murphy/Carrey/Sandler/Ferrell/Stiller/Apatow at their hottest. The trick now for the guys is to not get to ambitious about budget. Keep the budgets under $80 million without demanding too much coming off the top before real-life profitability, and they will be able to make whatever they want whenever they want for a long time to come.
The opening for How To Train Your Dragon 2, which couldn’t manage 3x its Friday opening, was disappointing… but nonetheless is getting beaten up worse than it deserves. It’s DreamWorks best opening since landing at Fox a couple of years ago. And the sequel suffers from the same problem that got the original off to a slow start… it seems a bit scary for the little kids.
And while some of the parents of under 7s discovered Dragon over time the first time around (4 years ago), many of them are dealing with the issue and the choice for the first time now. And in the Netflix era, the catalog of older movies can be overwhelmed by a ton of options for kids and parents of kids. So the old (10 years old) notion that people who didn’t found something the first time will be primed for the sequel because they will see it at home a million times is not quite as true anymore.
All that said, the film did improve on the first film’s opening and we’ll see where it goes from here.
On the indie side, The Weinsteins are still doing well with The Immigrant, as Open Road is with Chef. But A24 has a strong double dip with The Rover, which leads in per-screen, and Obvious Child, which is doing an even more impressive $7890 per on 18 screens.
Pretty incredible to see a Spider-Man movie limping across the $200M line. Sony really screwed things up. It’s not enough anymore to have good movies that make a ton of money; instead you make mediocre movies that are mostly about building into a (*shudder*) franchise. But audiences can smell a crappy cash-grab after awhile.
Not a bad drop for Edge. It’s the best percentage drop for a live action action film this year so maybe it can still get to a 100m.
The 22 Jump Street opening was predictable. Remember that the first opened to 36m, somewhat surprisingly. A 60m opening for “22” is about the same 80% jump that the Hangover 2 saw over the original.
I’m not its biggest fan, but I enjoyed seeing “Edge” edge out “Fault” in its second weekend (even though the latter’s per-screen average was slightly higher).
It seems inconceivable that “Edge” won’t at least match “Oblivion”‘s domestic cume.
$100-million seems less likely, though, especially in the over-heated summer marketplace w/ a new blockbuster-tentpole-franchise movie (or two) opening every weekend.
But what do I know? I really thought “Draft Day” would outgross “3 Days to Kill,” but it never did.
Maybe $30-million is the new ceiling for Costner movies.
Spiderman still did well overseas, which is what they care about.
Re: Dragon 2, definitely disappointing, but hardly disastrous. I think it just got squeezed from a couple directions – parents think it might be too scary for young kids, and the teens who saw and liked the first one were more interested in 22 Jump Street this time around. The same thing happened in 2011 when Kung Fu Panda 2 opened against The Hangover Part 2. Wonder if DreamWorks is wishing they’d opened this on the 20th, instead.
“It’s not enough anymore to have good movies that make a ton of money; instead you make mediocre movies that are mostly about building into a (*shudder*) franchise.”
Proof that things haven’t changed much:
“Instead of rejecting screenwriting as a necessary evil, Fitzgerald went the other way and embraced it as a new art form, even while recognizing that it was an art frequently embarrassed by the “merchants” more comfortable with mediocrity in their efforts to satisfy the widest possible audience.”
So it was idiots like Ziskin and Arad who killed F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Glad to see “The Signal” flop, not only because it completely wasted a great premise, but because I love the 2008 indie horror “The Signal” and am pissed that a similarly themed pic came along to upend it;)
What’s interesting regarding Dreamworks is there’s obviously pressure from investors to move back to features and a bit away from the numerous TV and streaming series they are into now, hence moving up the “Madagascar” spin-off and plowing ahead with “Mad 4,” “Croods 2” and “Puss 2.” The problem is they are expecting 600+ worldwide for all these titles and the strange results this weekend don’t make that look like a sure bet.
I like when people cite the front page headlines.
since they’ve rebooted Spiderman after ten years, isn’t it about time they reboot Harry Potter with a new cast?
They’re doing that spin-off with Alfonso Cuaron.
Cuarón is NOT making that spin-off. He said so himself three weeks ago.
I noticed via Box Office Mojo how similar EOT is performing to The Bourne Idenity. Now yes that was 12 yrs ago and it was a much cheaper movie but it did finish at about 120 million dollars so assuming EOT keeps performing at a similar rate 100 domestic is not out of the question. How well it holds up to Transformers in two weeks will seal the fate. Once again if that budget had been less this would be a much different story.
Here’s a report on that.
Captain America may have beaten lots of powerful enemies, but for some reason, he can’t seem to beat those Lego boys domestically. Every time he gets close, they take in enough to remain at #1. Lol. If estimates hold, he’s just $4K shy.
How is it possible that XMEN is Fox’s first $200 million domestic grosser in 4 and a half years?! (ALVIN 2). I know they’re the go-to studio when it comes to selling product overseas, but good god. It’s hard to believe they’ve been between 5th and 7th in domestic grosses in the past few years. But good on them for adopting a different strategy I suppose?
RE: Cuaron…I knew it was too good to be true:( I’m sure most people are breathing a sigh of relief, but I found Cuaron’s two entries in the fantasy genre so utterly delightful (A LITTLE PRINCESS, POTTER 3) that I was hoping he’d return there after a decade+.
Just saw “Jersey Boys.” All I’ll say is that 1. Glad I took notes. 2. I’m now 100% positive Warner Brothers managed to make the costliest scheduling error in cinema history this summer.
Slotting “Jersey Boys” into the first week of June would have made no difference. The screenings sucked. There was no crossover with “Fault.”
Slotting “Edge” into June 21 would have been huge. It wouldn’t have been “the 4th massive blockbuster in the last 5 weeks.” It would have been “an original blockbuster that avoided the fray,” and would have given the shockingly competition-free “Transformers 4” at least slight competition.
Instead, “Transformers 4” will be the biggest box office hit of the year.
But wasn’t the fear of opening a mere week before a presumed b.o. behemoth like “T4″” why WB scheduled “EOT” when they did?
To give it a little more breathing room.
I’ve got a wacky idea.
Why couldn’t they have waited until early October?
That worked just fine for WB w/ “Gravity” last year.
I just don’t understand studios’ fear of T4 movieman. Unless we’re going with book adaptations, fourthquels never do well domestically. The previous TRANNIES entry saw a $50m drop off, and it wasn’t well liked either (though not hated like T2), which normally would mean another big drop.
Is the addition of Mark Wahlberg+Robot Dinosaurs more frightening than being the 5th super-budget behemoth in 6 weeks? I’m sure Transformers 4″ banking on stuff like the most ridiculous poster I’ve ever seen (A sword-wielding giant robot, riding a fire-breathing robot dinosaur) will work out….partly because it has zero competition. But all the scheduling people saw at the time was “lets take on the May blockbuster clusterfuck” over a fourthquel. A 2 week break from mega-blockbusters would have given “Edge” the room it needed to breathe.
Yes, October would have been good too. Or late April. Regardless, one of the worst scheduling fiascos ever.
Personally, I’m not entirely dreading “T4,” Et.
Maybe it’s because I really liked the previous Bay/Wahlberg collaboration (“Pain & Gain”) and am hoping that lightning strikes twice. (Good luck with that, huh, lol?)
Of course we’re talking about a “Transformers” movie.
The only one of the three I had much use for was the last Tranny which I rather enjoyed as a borderline avant-garde sound/light show. Narratively speaking, they’ve all pretty much been disasters.
Hated Pain and Gain. Maybe hate is too strong a word, but save The Rock, it was one of my worst cinematic experiences last year.
I am looking forward to T4 though, if nothing but because of the annoying parents that were mildly amusing in T1, became gratingly douchish by T3, and are most likely not a factor in this one.
The thing is here we are in June, and no Summer movie has grossed $250m yet. Who’d a thunk it. The last time that happened was ironically with XMen Last Stand back in 2006.
Say what you will about Michael Bay (and no other director has ever scored the #1 spot on my 10-worst list twice like Bay did in 2003 and 2009), but he’s undeniably, unmistakably an “auteur” in the truest, French-iest sense of the word.
That automatically elevates him above an anonymous hack-drone like Brett Ratner who’s currently my choice as the single worst director in 21st century Hollywood.
Ratner’s sub-mediocrity nearly makes me nostalgic for the days of J. Lee Thompson and Ken Annakin, lol.
The only one of the Transformers films I even half-liked was the third one. I have a theory that using 3D on that film actually forced Michael Bay to rein himself in about 15-20%, with the result actually bordering on coherent at times. It’s truly amazing that nobody ever notices that the first Transformers is basically a remake of Joe Dante’ s Small Soldiers without the wit or in-jokes. Kevin Dunn even plays much the same part in both movies for crying out loud.
I think T1 is looked upon favorably because it so hit the mark as to what a Transformers movie was supposed to look like. Say what you will about Bay, but he absolutely delivered the goods in the look, tone, style, and overall childhood wish fulfillment. He totally got it. It wasn’t supposed to be Saving Private Ryan, it’s about a cars that transform into robots and kick the shit out of each other.
And that summer of 2007, it was like a refreshing dose of “originality” in the sea of summer sequels. In May was the clusterfuck of threequels, Spidey, Shrek and Pirates, and they all stunk up the joint. June gave us Ratatouille, the 4th Die Hard, and 2nd Fantastic Four. Transformers was poised to clean up.
Is this all beginning to sound familiar? T1 broke out even when the threequels each made over $300m and a Potter film opened the very next week. Now we have nothing crossing $250m thus far, and T4 has a bona fide movie star front and center and some breathing room. With no summer movie hitting the $250m or the $1B WW mark, I sense a cleaning up at the box office once again.
Does David know how much 22 actually cost? No. He just knows what he has been told and reports it as real. Pathetic
Don – What are you on about today? Are you saying that 22 Jump St cost more than $80 million to produce… because I didn’t report a cost of production, just that it was under $80m.
So, loudmouth, make a specific accusation and I will be happy to investigate whether I have been manipulated by The Man. Otherwise, you are – as usual – just full of shit.
And please, tell us what the number at the bottom of the Transformers 4 budget is, oh master of transparency. Personally, I could not care less. But as you suddenly turned up to obsess on my box office production cost reportage (all but non-existent on recent years) just before “your” movie comes out, maybe you are afraid of the number. Or maybe you just don’t have enough to do. Or your prescription ran out.
is this grudgematch for realz or like dinner theatre, i can never really tell. then again i’ve never seen grown adults openly feud like this about real life (stupid) stuff so i have no way to judge
(don’t most people just say ‘well just fuck right off then’ and that’s that, yeah we don’t like each other, pffft, movin’ on, you guys must get off on it on some level, to keep up this level of ‘you’re a big poopie liar!’, ‘i know you are but what am i, loony-bird!’ sandbox banter. the best is when a cat gets into the sandbox and shats in it, and then the next day the toddlers throw sand-encrusted poop at each other)
I probably shouldn’t give Don the value of a response… but he disappears for a while and I forget to treat him like a mental patient who found a nurse’s iPad. Apologies.
Edge opened where it did for Imax and large screen availability if it opened a week before t4 it would have lost
all its imax screens in week 2.
Imax has already comitted its screens to Equalizer on 9 26 and Dracula in mid October. So it could not have had all of October like Gravity did.
@bj, EDGE lost half of its screens to DRAGON in Week 2 regardless.
DP if you’re seemingly lurking out there at the ready to respond at a moment’s notice any time Mad Murphy posts some smack on here (do you get an alert or something?) why don’t you post some other fucking stuff on your blog in the meantime so at least it’s not so boring?! fwiw. just any movie stuff of interest would do in addition to what you manage to file and the more business-y stuff, it’s good for a while and then fizzle
Leah
The thing is, aside from wishing cancer on already ill people, David preens around citing “journalistic integrity.” He knows I know he has NONE and this is why he engages
uh oh i didn’t intend to get dragged into the sandpit, just trying to snark from the bench like a tired mum watching other people’s kids fight, and thinking, ‘what little shits those people’s kids are”. (or maybe in this instance i’m the sand-encrusted cat shit… if this were the coens i’d be the poop in the sandbox) so that in that spirit i say, now now boys, bump bellies and go take your naps at opposite ends of the class, when you wake up we’ll churn butter
Wish I would have finished eating before I started to read Leahnz’s posts about fecal matter.
sorry joe way to make me sound gross (guess i associate little children/childish behaviour and poop, i blame years of motherhood and dealing with all manner of fecal matter), next time i’ll post one of those warning things — trigger warning, NSFE (see this is what happens when there’s hardly any threads for comment, it all goes to shit!)
Just for the record, Don’s assertion about me wishing cancer on anyone is, simply, a lie.
Leah… I’m not thrilled with my output these days… trying to do too many things… falling to Twitter too easily.
I get notifications when Don posts, because they are often libelous or at the very least, personal, offensive, and stupid. So yes, he has gotten more attention from me lately than the real blog posters. My apologies.
Working on the best combination of ways to make myself more present in here again.
Don you have brought this cancer slur up against DP for years now.
Either put up some proof or shut the fuck up about it.
DP the blog has been more lively, just giving you grief for being sporadic, how dare you be busy and have other stuff rather than doting on this blog all day! mad murphy is a royal pest, i was half-joking about getting an alert but then i thought maybe it actually might be possible given i know you’ve banned him or tried to in the past so that’s kind of hilarious that you actually do get a troll alert