Weekend Estimates by Disneyville Klady
The dichotomy of covering a movie like Captain America: Civil Wars is that it’s the #5 opening of all time… and the #4 opening of the last year, one of 8 $100m openings in the last 365 days (leaving out the 5/2 Avengers 2 opening).
History Lesson: Before 2005, there were two $100m openings in movie history. None before 2002. In 2005 & 2006, there were two each year. 2007, three. Back to two each in 2008 & 2009. Then, four in 2010 and 2012. Back to two in 2013 & 2014. Last year (2015)… SIX. This year? Four already.
Along with this movement, there was a movement to much more spending. $200 million – $300 million budgets have become the norm in this category. When films like Deadpool or Minions come along, they are the exception to the rule. This is also why Twilight and The Hunger Games were so valuable… because they could be done for much less than the CG events (although they also have a glass ceiling that doesn’t inhibit some of the other franchises).
I do not subscribe to the idea that these mega-movies replace space that would otherwise be used for smaller ($15m – $60m) films. I see them as a new category within the business. Two-thirds of studio releases are still in that “smaller” category. Disney is the only studio that is currently mega-movie dominant with its slate. And it’s going great right now. But look at the franchises they have… Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Disney Animation, and Disney Classics. Other studios can compete with Disney Classics and if Warner Bros could ever get out of its own way, DC could compete with Marvel. But there is no other Star Wars (we’ll see what Jim Cameron delivers with Avatar 2-5). Pixar is in a perfect position of having less pressure to deliver more than one film a year, which is how they built greatness. And Disney Animation, finally firing on all cylinders, has some competition in DreamWorks Animation, but also has the Pixar advantage of being able to stick to (or stop chasing more than) one film a year.
Keep in mind, the three outside franchises cost Disney about $13 billion. That is a huge investment, which has not been paid off in real dollars yet. But it’s going great. Comcast is the only other studio that has made a billion dollar-plus investment in its own growth. Paramount or Fox could have made the deal for Lucasfilm and it would have made sense, library-wise and moving forward. Didn’t. No one was really taking Marvel seriously when Disney made their deal.
Add to this the fact that Disney’s production group spends more than $2 billion a year on production. The norm used to be roughly half of that for an active studio. Very roughly estimated (and not accounting for financial partnerships), Fox and Warner Bros are each in for about $1.2 billion this year. Universal is just under $1 billion. Paramount is around $800 million. Sony is in for less than $700 million.
Picking winners is obviously important. And Disney has built a lot of can’t-miss into their system. But they have made the huge investments and taken the huge risks when no other studio has.
Finally, another big-picture point. Marketing costs have not subsided. The giant films with the giant budgets cost more to make than to sell, even with bigger spends. But a $10 million movie at a major costs – with a full wide release – as much to push out as a $50 million movie. (Genre is an exception, which is why you see so much of it and why Jason Blum is worth his weight in gold.)
Disney has nine franchise movies this year… and three “smaller” films. They already lost big money (relatively) on The Finest Hours. They have two more coming… both dumped into the “iffy zone” of September.
Disney can afford to get out of the middle movie business completely. The only reason for them to stay in is ego and self-amusement. No matter how successful by the standards of those films – and they have not been for years, even with some really good movies – they mean nothing to the bottom line of a company working with the investment numbers they are working with. On the other hand, they can’t be hurt much by these films either.
Everyone else though… they need to be in the same movie business that the industry has been seen the decline of DVD… with the occasional mega-movie landing. They really have no choice. Universal bought DWA and continues to try to figure out how to reboot their monster franchises. And they had success last year and will in the future. But things are not set up for that to be the whole pie. So calm down a little. The sky is still there.
As for the rest of the weekend… meh.
Marvel has the only wide opener. Jungle Book is holding well. The Huntsman is now a dead franchise. Etc.
On the other hand, the indie business, which has been whining a lot lately, has had a pretty good 2016 so far. Aside from the religious films (Miracles from Heaven leads all of them so far with $60 million), there are nine indies over $15 million so far. One is Divergent 3, which bombed domestically, one of five Lionsgate movies in this group. But STX, A24, OpenRoad and Bleecker Street all have solid successes. Neither IFC or Magnolia have had a $1m movie, much less a $15m one. They are in a third category now, thanks to short-window VOD. Searchlight and IFC are the per-screen limited release stars of the weekend. The question, as always, is what comes next.
Filed under “meaningless but kinda fun:” Scarlett Johannson broke Cameron Diaz’s all-time gross record for an actress this weekend. It’s a title that, absent the fantastical concept that an AVATAR sequel trilogy ever gets made and includes Zoe Saldana, she’ll hold indefinitely.
ZOOTOPIA seems to have caught on with fickle Japanese audiences. It rumbled past $950 million worldwide this weekend, and toppled FINDING NEMO’s cume. DESPICABLE ME 2 is in sight, with LION KING potentially in play.
Another distributer (Searchlight? Sony Classics?) could have gotten more theatrical mileage out of “The Family Fang.”
But Starz’s decision to go VOD almost simultaneous w/ theatrical makes further expansion unlikely.
A perfectly watchable film, but as a fan of the Kevin Wilson book I was mildly disappointed.
Lindsay-Abaire does a nice job of streamlining the material, yet it felt rushed somehow.
Or maybe I’ve just been spoiled by all of the high-quality cable mini and limited series of recent vintage (e.g., the sublime “Olive Kitteridge”).
Since a ’70s-era Hal Ashby or Milos Forman wasn’t available, I think it might have worked better as an HBO mini.
good essay. thank you.
Yeah, nice write-up this weekend.
I third it. That’s some quality analysis, David.
Can we officially stop pretending Chris Hemsworth is a thing unless he’s smacking people with a giant hammer?
Spidey was an insurance policy to beat BvS, and it paid off. Remove that Sony deal and Civil War is not reaching these numbers.
In retrospect, it’s easy to say “of course they would top BvS”, but anytime before the Spidey announcement, no way. Batman and Superman in concept, for the first time, was bigger than anything Avengers. The enhancement of Wonder Woman was supposed to offset Spidey, and could have, if BvS was something more than a montage of DC’s Greatest Hits.
Like Winter Soldier, CW is vastly overrated, but I also think that’s due to the morose taste BvS left. Marvel is heavy like Empire was; soap opera melodrama. No matter how hard the Russo’s try to Nolan-intellectualize, once you take every major incident and run it through the Bad Robot “it’s all connected” format machine, you’re not producing a new kind of “episodic” or “serialized” narrative. You’re producing the world’s most expensive male soap opera. That also explains why they’re so perfect for Marvel. TV guys doing Big TV.
The most interesting thing about Marvel is they’re never going to bomb outright. They’ll never have a Batman & Robin, but they are facing the law of diminishing returns. Remember, Civil War was not supposed to be Cap3. It was it’s own Avengers movie. Then it became Cap 3 and IM4, then only Cap3. So the return on IM4 has more risk than reward because RDJ commands too much in salary and creative control. I think it’s the same reason we don’t see a Cap4 slated. Evans would need a new deal and they literally turned a Cap/Falcon team-up into King-Size Annual for Cap3. WTF do you do now for a Cap4? How much does that cost?
Very sharp analysis Martin – you nailed the issue with these Russo Marvel films and it’s not they’re poor quality overall, it’s that they can’t reach beyond “Big TV.” The Russos will never approach Nolan, even with how pretentious he can be sometimes.
However, Warners/DC should have cut Snyder off by this point – his problem is not that he’s “Big TV” but pretty much “incomplete Cinema” and he’s WAY too enamored with the material to push it through to being a cohesive movie.
As this point, I think the master of all comic book cinema is and will remain Bryan Singer for the foreseeable future – yes Superman Returns was a sludge but what he has done with the X Men films over the past 15 years has been damn impressive!
And yeah Cap 4 is not happening anytime soon and if it does, it will NOT be focused on Cap anyways…..I gather I’m in the extreme minority here considering all of the gushing praise, but I feel like they made his character much more unlikable with this film….they have removed his soul as much as Snyder has done to Superman, even though Superman is still pretty sympathetic. SPOILER ALERT I was “Team Iron Man” all the way in this film and it was nice to FINALLY not see Tony Stark go through the exact same arc that he did through five previous films again and again….he’s been humbled but he hasn’t lost his wit, really nice job by Downey this time around. And Evans did what he could with Cap, but the character just came off as a complete asshole this time around even though the marketing and the screenplay tried to stack the deck in his favor – ANY sensible person fighting the good fight would have let go of “Bucky” from the getgo especially after he once again tried to go on a killing spree.
If Disney/Marvel went and announced a new “stand-alone” Captain America film tomorrow just featuring him teaming up with Bucky and maybe the Falcon, nobody would give a shit – pretty much all of the most entertaining moments in Civil War (except for that one moment in the car) had NOTHING to do with them.
Great analysis, David. I enjoyed ‘Captain America: Civil War’ a lot. And being objective, ‘The Dark Knight’ is probably the best movie based on a comics superhero ever made. But I’m experiencing some fatigue with all this discussions among geeks about whoose movies are better, DC or Marvel? In truth, TV is more challenging and entertaining than movies right now. Living in South America, TV and music are offering better entertainment without sacrificing quality than tentpole movies. Just read what Alan Moore said about comic books movies in a link I saw on Movie City News homepage. Hard not to agree with him.
@Geoff
” you nailed the issue with these Russo Marvel films and it’s not they’re poor quality overall, it’s that they can’t reach beyond “Big TV.” The Russos will never approach Nolan, even with how pretentious he can be sometimes.
However, Warners/DC should have cut Snyder off by this point – his problem is not that he’s “Big TV” but pretty much “incomplete Cinema” and he’s WAY too enamored with the material to push it through to being a cohesive movie.”
I’ve seen the Russos/Nolan comparisons pop up more, not sure why. Their styles are nothing similar. The attempt at headier topics is par for the course with any of these movies (we all agree it’s been a good thing that these films aren’t all just campy “comic book movies”, right?) Nolan is a world’s different/better filmmaker but I’ll say this, the Russos structure action much better than Nolan does. Nolan’s set ups are good but the payoffs are usually meh. We can keep caling them “TV guys” but between the airport sequence and just about everything in WS, I prefer seeing a tentpole from them vs Michael Bay.
I think you are seeing Snyder cut off with the elevation of Affleck. I would not be surprised if in a few years we find out Affleck directed most of JS.
The goofiness of Mother’s Day Weekend falling on this date really manifested itself in the actuals today, just like in 2010. Turns out the Garry Marshall movie surged by a ridiculous 33%, CAP predictably did less than the estimate (though not as far off as IRON MAN 2), and JUNGLE BOOK, ZOOTOPIA, et al held much better than expected. JUNGLE BOOK had the 3rd-best fourth weekend of a movie this decade, behind FORCE AWAKENS and JW.
Interesting take Geoff. I found Tony to still be Tony, and thought Steve was still the rational one.
And a stand alone with just Cap, Falcon & Bucky would put me in a seat.