Weekend Estimates by Klady – Feb 10
Not all that interesting this week. How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days opened to $23.7 million five years and this opening is almost the same. Women still want to see if two bottle blondies can make it work.
First Sunday opened to $17.7 million… so Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins is in line with that too. People still want to see wacky black families.
Hanna Mon Milley dropped… duh… and boo-hoo, Disney will have to live with just $54 million from a $5 million concert movie that they never really meant for theatrical anyway, now the next giant Home Ent release, as it likely beats the December trio to the DVD store.
Juno chugs along, easily the biggest Fox Searchlight film ever… but still likely to come up short of Knocked Up, though a little ahead of Superbad.
There Will Be Blood will pass $30 million, heading to the mid-30s… a milkshake drinking success for Paramount Vantage, even if the film cost about the same as money-losing Babel, The one advantage, financially, being that this film had two months less advertising money to burn while waiting around not to win the Oscar.
No Country For Old Men and Atonement both keep chugging along with excessively-discussed-by-journos $2m-n-Change weekends. Michael Clayton fell off a little this week to $1.6 million as the DVD release started getting touted heavily. Atonement will end up about $10 million past Pride & Prejudice for its nomination reward… which is probably less than it cost them in ads after being nom’ed… though the Oscar profit tends to be foreign & DVD.
And my personal fave… sometime in the next week, The Bucket List will pass Cloverfield as the old guys with bad reviews push past the young guys with overly generous reviews and we are all reminded yet again that old people and women and every bit as powerful as niche plays as geek boys… they just aren’t as easy to suck in on one weekend.
In Bruges on 24 screens had the highest per screen $$$.
Can someone explain why studios don’t re-release movies that get critical acclaim, but don’t do well in the first release? Is there some type of economics about re-releasing a movie a second time in one year. I’m thinking — maybe there’s life for Eastern Promises and some other movies (that are now on DVD).
Also can somebody explain to me — if There Will be blood costs less than $30 to make…how does a star like Daniel Day Lewis get paid? Does he get a flat salary or a cut of the profits?
“The Bucket List will pass Cloverfield as the old guys with bad reviews push past the young guys with overly generous reviews and we are all reminded yet again that old people and women and every bit as powerful as niche plays as geek boys… they just aren’t as easy to suck in on one weekend.” You seem overly fixated on trying to prove some silly point about geeks not mattering. Good for you Heat. Too damn bad that the geeks can still make something like 300 HAPPEN. Which in turn made Watchmen happen. Are the older folks going to get the tent pole pics made? Kinda a doubtful. Thanks for playing. Enjoy these parting gifts as we kick you out the door.
But the geeks didn’t make 300 happen… WB marketing did.
That is the point. The Geeks are a niche. Chasing them as though they were more than that has always been suicide.
“Tentpoles” (an ancient phrase that means nothing in this era… less every day) are made for 4 quadrants or they are idiots greenlighting them.
Under 12s and old people are a lot stronger niches than The Geeks. But yes, broad entertainment often starts with geek materials. But over and over, we see The Geeks come up short… as we do Old People.
I would like to hear Don M’s thought on this, as I would argue that The Geeks had very little to do with the big gross for Transformers. It was the unders and adults who wanted the big thrill ride who propel a number like that. Geeks… maybe 20%. Maybe. That’s not nothin’… but it ain’t the big get either.
I don’t think that Geeks don’t matter. It’s just that they, like the extreme right of America, have been given way too much credit in the media and by some studios. They matter a lot… if you want to gross $20 million.
And even Cloverfield got well past The Geeks on opening weekend… then died the death it deserved when others who paid to see it vomited news of it up to their friends… not on MySpace or in text messages… in real life in real time, just like in decades past.
The geeks had nothing to do with the overall sucess of 300.
For those laughing at the 66% drop of Hannah Montana, remember that 1) it still has a $15,000 per theatre average and 2) it wasn’t even supposed to be on screen. It was a one-week engagement extended at the last minute.
David: You are absolutely right about Transformers. Any movie that does that well has to have four-quadrant appeal. I don’t know why it is so difficult for some people to grasp that self-evident concept.
“I don’t think that Geeks don’t matter. It’s just that they, like the extreme right of America, have been given way too much credit in the media and by some studios. They matter a lot… if you want to gross $20 million.”
They matter in one respect…they are the ones producing and greenlighting the movies. They’re also the ones promoting the movies in the media. Geeks like J.J. Abrams and Don Murphy get the movies made and the geeks who write for the L.A. Times and Entertainment Weekly are the ones wapping about it.
Every time a “geezer” film does big biz, everyone scratches their heads (or other parts) and mutters something about “non-recurring phenomenon.” It just never occurs to them that we’re the ones with all the spare time and disposable cash…and that we LIKE seeing movies in theatres. But no, they’ll keep churning out fart comedies and torture porn and live-action comic books, while we sit home watching TCM and DVDs, waiting for the next “grown-up” film to slip through the cracks.
re: Wrecktum’s last comment:
…and that’s precisely why western civilization has gone to hell in a hand basket.
Because the geeks have inherited the earth?
Who went to see The Hottie and the Nottie? I want to meet you and put my foot up your arse. Wait, some of you here might enjoy that…
Whoa, are we calling The Bucket List a ‘grown-up’ film? Just because there’s a different flavor of pandering going on doesn’t mean that it’s a worthy film experience.
Money losing Babel? Estimated production cost = $25 million, Worldwide box office = $135,330,163. Even given the cost of prints, advertising, oscar campaigning it is hard to believe it didn’t make money. And lets not forget other revenue streams.
Poland only considers international boxoffice when it suits his argument. Otherwise, he focuses exclusively on domestic tallies.
Jesus, a movie actually went to a theatrical release and managed to make all of 55 bucks per screen. Damn. Guess those anime fans are too used to downloading their episodes for free…
Actually Matro, One Piece had a very limited release because the DVD comes out in a week or two. Seriously, do a little research before you knock the One Piece fans.
That aside; Wrec the early word of mouth and all of the internet advertizing had something to do with the geeks. It’s like everyone wants to ignore how that movie made 70 million dollars last March. Was it all four quads work? Or maybe it was the geeks hyping it endlessly for months working to get everyone going? Again, you can see it one way, and I can see it another way. Yet my way seems to represent more truth than your way.
Nevertheless… I ask… who doesnt love making 20 million dollars on opening weekend for a small genre film? Huh? Anyone? Oh yeah Joe; it’s not denial. It’s a simple fact that geeks are a wordy lot, and I have no idea why people do not accept it.
I can’t believe they put One Piece on 97 screens.
Geeks did not bring that movie to 70 million. If geeks could make hits out of movies, then where’s the 70 mil for Shawn of the Dead, Equilibrium, or heck, even There Will Be Blood? 300 had awesome trailers and commercials and they hyped that movie up. I’m sure geeks helped, but they ddn’t make that movie a hit.
speaking of geeks, Return of the King is on Turner Classic Movies right now and I can’t turn it off. I wonder, with the proliferation of digital projectors, could they do geek oriented rereleases on the tenth anniversary. Say December 2011 they release fellowship digitally to theatres for a week, Two Towers for one week the next and Return of the King for one week the third week. Advertise it as a special limited tenth anniversary engagement. I’d love to see all these films in the theatre with a crowd. while still great at home, the enthusiasm and breathtaken quality of the crowd adds that little something extra to experiencing these.
Fwiw, I think Paramount would rake in the cash if they released Raiders, Temple and Last Crusade three weeks, two weeks, and one week before Indiana Jones 4 this May.
I presume the reason revivals of this sort are so rarely done is the cost of shipping prints for a national engagement, but would that be substantially reduced if it were a digital release? enough to make it financially feasible?
Movie; you do know what’s coming next year in 3-D? Fun times all-around because THAT’S MOTHERFUCKIN POD-RACING!
Outside of that, who wants to sit through that much walking in a film again? They were okay for their time. Yet matter very little these days. We will at least get those on Blu-Ray on 2011. That’s the only guarantee for those flicks.
since I don’t have much interest in watching the bastardized versions in 3d I’m less excited about that. if it even happens, doesn’t lucas want like 7000+ screens equipped with 3d before he’ll release the sextology in 3d?
Return of the King is still on, damn these movies are as fine filmmaking as has ever come around. For all the tiny flaws and frustrations of adaptations any individual may occasionally come across the films are by and large perfect. Fellowshihp is still far and away my favorite though. King is probably my least favorite if only because I miss the scouring of the shire so much, which is one of my single favorite passages of the book–thematically completes the entire journey and quest of the book, because the macguffin of the ring is gone and now the hobbits have to take what they have discovered in themselves to restore their homeland, which was not safe from the depradations of war, they are now able to overcome the evils within themselves and their countrymen (rather than the more tangible evil of physical monsters they have faced in their other journeys) and return justice and peace for a ‘good life’ they’ve earned. I sort of feel that Return of the King the film is a lot like the Aeneid missing it’s final Book (because Virgil died without writing it) and there’s some thematic element that is missing and never completed. Of course it could just feel incomplete because there are five second slugs of black separating each of the final six sequences. Oy.
I’m amazed, sort of, that 27 Dresses has made over $65 millions. It’s coming out in Thailand on the 14th. Has anyone in here seen it? Katherine Heigl can certainly draw a crowd, thanks to Knocked Up of course.
1. Two Towers
2. Fellowship
3. Return
That’s how I view them. But, the first time I saw Return of the King was in a movie marathon at the cinema that included all three LOTR movies so I was a bit cranky at about the half way mark of it.
Nice to see Atonement should overtake Michael Clayton soon. Not sure if anyone cares, but Atonement has made $10mil here in Aus (equivelent to $100mil in the US) compared to Michael Clayton‘s $3mil.
Also, here in Australia movies aimed at older audiences routinely stick around in cinemas for a very long time. As It Is In Heaven is still in cinemas after roughly 70 weeks and made it into the top 10 one year after release. Crazy. Movies like Ladies in Lavender, Mrs Henderson Presents, My House in Umbria – basically anything with a British Dame – make a few mil in the time other movies have been released in the cinema and DVD. Of course, it helps that Icon Films (Mel Gibson’s distribution/production company) sort of specialises in releasing those movies.
“The Bucket List will pass Cloverfield as the old guys with bad reviews push past the young guys with overly generous reviews”
Riiiiight, because Cloverfield was the one with Jack Nicolson & Morgan Freeman and not some paid-to-play talent.
How Bucket List had worse CGI on twice the budget of Cloverfield would be a mystery, if I hadn’t just pointed out why above.
I think Bucket List shows that people have both underestimated and overestimated the Seniors audience. They figured that because they’re not there for Eternal Sunshine or There Will Be Blood, they won’t be there for median crap. Untrue! Older audiences can show every bit the terrible taste that the teens do, just in very different ways.
“No Country …” and “Atonement” have run out of gas. The UA East Hampton and the Montclair arthouse both dropped “Atonement” last week.
Chicago48: A number of theater chains — Regal especially — will not play a movie once it comes out on DVD. Hence no re-release of “Eastern Promises” and a brief re-release for “Michael Clayton”.
No they haven’t. No Country lost screens this last weekend, but still grossed more than it did the previous weekend. Atonement is dropping faster but its declines are still not large.
Of course, they should be sneered at because they’re just money-grubbing Oscar-chasers, right?
“No Country” keeps making $2 mil a weekend. How the hell is that running out of gas?
Maybe it’s in smaller markets that didn’t get the original release last fall.
BTW, I slightly misread the theater drops on “Atonement”. It’s still playing in Montclair and — thanks to Vince Vaughn — returns to UA in the Hamptons this week.
Wellywood Rrrrr… if you believe that Babel cost $25 million, I have a no interest loan and a really big piece of land to sell you.
And not really fair, Wreck. We discussed Babel’s worldwide numbers last year, repeatedly.
Most of the time, when talking new movies, there is no worldwide number. When there is one, I almost always quote it when offering numbers… certainly more than ANY other box office writer I have read.