By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

20 Weeks of Summer: Was The Summer DISASTER Actually A Win? (Part 1: Disney/Fox/Paramount)

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Twenty-four movies.

That is the direct output of the wide-release movies from the six major distributors this last summer.

Do you want to think about this summer based on numbers or do you want to get all emotional about it? Because if you think facts matter, start with the fact that there were 33 wide-release movies from the 6 major distributors last summer (2013).

If all you are basing your reports of a summer disaster on is one specific, not very rich stat, you probably don’t care.

How about this? The average wide release studio (or Dependent) movie released this summer grossed— and this is just domestic, where the overall box office was down 13% from last year’s mass stat… international is up—earned an average of $22 million more at the box office this summer than last summer.

WAIT! How is this possible? Hollywood is BURNING!!!!

Let’s look at it studio by studio:

Disney (Buena Vista) – The studio released five films this summer and four last summer. They had the #1 domestic movie of the summer both summers. Last year, Iron Man 3 was #1 worldwide for the summer. This year, Maleficent is #2 worldwide and the domestic #1, Guardians of the Galaxy, is at #7 and likely to get to #6 or #5 by the time it plays out worldwide.

Maleficent – $230m – $754m
Guardians of the Galaxy – $314m – $632m
The Hundred-Foot Journey $51m – $52m
Million Dollar Arm – $36.5m – $37m
Planes: Fire & Rescue – $58m – $96m

$1,571m worldwide

The Lone Ranger – $89m – $261m
Planes – $90m – $220m
Monsters University – $268m – $744m
Iron Man 3 – $409m – $1215m

$2,440m worldwide

That’s a $869 million shortfall from last summer. Disney must be in a panic, right?

Well, let’s put aside the fact that two of the movies this summer have yet to have a major international release and that Guardians still has a few big markets coming. Say that’s good for $150m. Still… $719 million off… scary, right? That’s 29%! Far worse than the beloved overall domestic summer gross figure. Disney must be in free fall. People must be getting fired left and right, right?

Uh, no.

Here’s the deal. None of the five releases this summer are likely, when all is said and done, to lose money. Maleficent has a similar profit profile to Monsters University and perhaps even has the same value in resurrecting an aging brand. Planes, which launched a strong new marketing brand, was also highly profitable last year. Not so much this year… but the brand value is extended without taking a loss. 100 Foot and Million Dollar will be modestly profitable. Lone Ranger took—though the only reporting was on the projected loss, not the actual writedown—a $160m loss for the studio, it seems.

So Summer 2014 is, it seems, up about $80 million on Summer 2013 at this point. (Yes, very rough numbers.)

Comes down to IM 3 vs Guardians.

And IM3 will probably gross about $500 million more than Guardians when all is said and done. $121 million of that was in China… and there may be a similar haul for Guardians there too… so no need for an immediate asterisk-off. Figure about $250 million more in revenue back to Marvel/Disney. Then, consider how much more Iron Man 3 cost Disney than Guardians did. Publicly confirmed figures say IM3 cost $30 million more to make than Guardians. And how much more backend did Robert Downey, Jr. get on IM3 than anyone could have negotiated for Guardians? Not to mention that IM3 seems to be the end of Downey in that suit, except in team-ups while Guardians took a pretty much nonexistent title and made a franchise out of it. How do you value that?

One more factor. Marvel/Disney stuck another Marvel franchise, Captain America, a month ahead of the traditional summer launch of May 1 and had a summer opening result. It is not a summer movie. But if you look at it from Disney’s perspective, it kinda is. And with it at the back of the mind, it actually dips this summer into being a slightly better summer than last for Disney… even though they were off 29% by every major outlet’s favorite front page stat.

Moving on to…

Fox – The Century City studio wide-released 5 films this summers, 1 less than Big Fox last summer and 2 less if you include Searchlight, which didn’t get past 525 screens with anything this summer.

Domestically, Fox’s grosses were up 33% over last summer ($818m vs $617m), even with fewer films released. Worldwide was even more dramatic, up 61% from last summer.

Let’s Be Cops – $77m – $101m
The Fault in Our Stars – $125m – $301m
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes – $207m – $681m
X-Men: Days of Future Past – 234m – $746m
How to Train Your Dragon 2 – $176m – $609m

$2,438m worldwide

The Internship – $45m – $94m
Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters – $69m – $200m
Turbo – $83m – $283m
Epic – $108m – $268m
The Wolverine – $133m – $415m
The Heat – $160m – $230m
The Way, Way Back – $22m – $23m

$1,513m worldwide

Three of the five wide releases from the studio this summer did better than any film the studio released last summer.

It is true that Apes 2 and the new X-Men are, respectively, one of the most expensive and probably the single most expensive film made by the studio without a large percentage of the cost coming from outside the studio. But the $250m-plus box office improvement over last summer’s most expensive film, The Wolverine, more than makes up for that in either case.

Even on DreamWorks Animation, which is self-funded and distributes through Fox, the Fox revenue this summer doubled.

Last summer, The Internship lost money, Percy Jackson 2 was borderline, as was Epic.

This summer, Fault was way more profitable than last summer’s Heat, and both Apes and X did their jobs and made money.

Still looking for a studio with a disastrous summer…

Paramount – They only released two films last summer. Three this summer.

Hercules – $72m – $219m
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – $185m – $333m
Transformers: Age of Extinction – $245m – $1081m

$1,633m worldwide

World War Z – $202m – $540m
Star Trek Into Darkness – $229m – $467m

$1,007 worldwide

World War Z was last summer’s most expensive film. But a brilliant, aggressive push by Paramount may have gotten it to black ink. Close call. I don’t know enough to be sure either way. But with $540 million worldwide, there is a reasonable sense that they can make a sequel and build on that without reshooting an entire act of the film this time.

Star Trek Into Darkness was another soft hit last summer. They admit a $190m budget this time and wordlwide gross increased about $80 million… in other words, the way things are going, flat. They found a new glass ceiling on this franchise, it seems.

This summer, Hercules stiffed… though it isn’t clear how much money Paramount had tied up in the film. So the studio had a clear loser that they didn’t suffer last summer.

But Transformers: Age of Extinction, even with the Chinese $300m in asterisk gross, generated (very roughly) approximately $450 million in rentals coming back to Paramount… more than any other movie this summer and roughly double either Paramount movie last summer. And T4 certainly cost less than WWZ and may be closer than acknowledged to the Trek 2 budget.

And also from producer Michael Bay, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles has overperformed expectations with $333m to date and given more energy to what was already a very strong merchandising line.

So even with the Hercules smack, Paramount was stronger this summer than last.

That’s three studios that have all had summers certainly equal to and really, better than last summer.

Still waiting for The End of Hollywood as we know it…

Part II: The Other 3 Major Studios

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One Response to “20 Weeks of Summer: Was The Summer DISASTER Actually A Win? (Part 1: Disney/Fox/Paramount)”

  1. Joe Gillis says:

    I think the reason this summer was a disaster has nothing to do with the numbers – it has to do with the fact that people who love movies are frustrated with the fact that the majority of these films are garbage. They are machine-made products, with no personal stamp, that make no attempt to say anything meaningful other than “LOOK HOW MUCH WE CAN BLOW UP!!!!”

    Know the reason why The Fault in Our Stars was such a smash? It was about people. Actual, real people. Who don’t have superpowers and millions of dollars and access to high-tech weapons. The studios need to stop boring us to death with their CG-crapfests. It just gives us more incentive to stay at home and watch TV.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon