By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Twilight Games
I can’t blame Summit for playing some subtle games to try to keep the Twilight story where they want it going into next week.
As I have written before, it doesn’t really matter. My guess would be that this film, in spite of better notices, will do a little less than the last, perhaps as much as 10%. Still… spectacular.
So I had to laugh when I saw, after Eclipse failed to match New Moon’s 3-day or 5-day domestically – not very far off – they are now selling the idea that their worldwide open (which is 5 days, not 3, like New Moon) is $261.2m… up from $258.8m from last November’s mammoth launch.
Oy.
Is the media this callow… that we need to be led by the nose to SUCCESS, when the success is obvious, even if there isn’t a new record every single time?
Twilight already made its Transformers leap… last November. I’m going to go out on a limb – not really – and predict that Eclipse and the last two films of the series will all gross between $650 million and $750 million worldwide (unless 3D adds a third to the number in future films). I don’t care how big or small they open, in how many theaters, how long girls wait on sidewalks, whether fake weddings take place, if a single person from the series ever opens any other movie… 50 to 60 million people are committed to see every one of these films. Some of them will see it multiple times. A few will stop bothering. A few will be dragged along.
So relax, Summit. You have a about a billion and a half in profits coming in over the next two years with your blue chip franchise. There is no question about that. The only real question is, how will you spend your bounty?
David, it’s not the media as much as it’s aspect of the media that look for any reason to slag this franchise, and Summit are seemingly trying to get ahead of any slagging by presenting their own numbers.
Good post…btw while it doesn’t really mean much in reality, Summit Entertainment will likely pass Universal in 2010 box office gross for at least a few days (before Despicable Me). When is the last time a mid-major had a higher studio gross than one of the majors halfway through a calendar year????
I think this stat obviously says more about Universal and Twilight than Summit …but it is a badge of honor for a mid-major studio this late in the year nonetheless.
They should be spending their bounty on a marketing department that can successfully sell their mid-budget releases.
I know, easier said than done.
A_Loco beat me to it. You can play with the numbers all you want, but Twilight is a studio’s ultimate fantasy: top-tier tentpole grosses for mid-budget prices. But if Summit can’t figure out how to open anything non-Twilight, they just become a future MGM, dying in the vine and occasionally saved by a Bond film every few years. But unless Summit can become a real studio and/or re-purpose the Twilight franchise after the current series is over (rebooting, a TV series version, etc), than they are dead in the water in about three years.
Speaking of the Twlight series, a man in New Zealand saw “Eclipse” and then died of embarrassment.