Monday Morning Quarterback
By BOP Staff
October 16, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Tyler Perry is back in the highlife again as Tyler Perry's Why Did I Get Married? earned an estimated $21.4 million this weekend. Did you expect this result or did you think Tyler Perry's Daddy's Little Girls indicated his appeal was slipping?
Joel Corcoran: The performance was a bit better than I expected, which I think is a good thing. He obviously is able to tap into a vein of the cultural zeitgeist that few other directors and producers have been able to find. I don't think Daddy's Little Girls was an indication Perry's personal appeal was slipping, it was just poorly marketed. The focus in the title and advertising was on the "little girls," but the movie itself was rated PG-13 - not exactly "fun for the whole family." Why Did I Get Married? returns to the style of the Madea movies - a movie about family and personal struggles with adult themes that appeals more to teenagers and adults, rather than kids.
Reagen Sulewski: I've been baffled by the appeal of Tyler Perry's movies from the very beginning, so this is just another data point for that column. I had thought that most of it was based on the actual Madea character, and maybe it was at the beginning, but he seems to be moving beyond that now.
David Mumpower: The most unexpected aspect of this entire phenomenon is that the key seems to be the presence of Tyler Perry himself. Daddy's Little Girls didn't feature him as an actor; even though he wrote and directed it, his lack of on-screen appearance alienated the audience who normally supports him. In Why Did I get Married, he's in front of the camera as well as behind it. That seems to matter for reasons passing understanding. Also, Janet Jackson is now three for three in movies. Poetic Justice's $27.5 million back in 1993 was a *huge* surprise at the time. Nutty Professor II: The Klumps earned $123.3 million, and now there is this hit. Someone should release Fame: The TV Series on DVD and see if the streak continues.
The Game Plan is not loosely based on the life of Tom Brady in spite of what you may have heard.
Kim Hollis: The Game Plan fell only 34% to $11.0 million this weekend, giving it a running total of $59.4 million. Do you consider this to be a hit, and if so, to what do you attribute its success?
Joel Corcoran: I think it's definitely a hit. Not only is it one of the better-performing movies released this fall, it should end up as one of the top 30 movies released in 2007. And with a little luck, it could end up as one of the top five grossing PG-rated movies released this year. The film's success rests squarely on the studio's efforts, particularly marketing. Buena Vista has been making and selling family-friendly "shaggy dog" movies like this one since ... well, they made The Shaggy Dog almost 50 years ago. The Game Plan is just the inverse of The Shaggy Dog storyline. Rather than putting Dad into a chaotic situation he doesn't understand and make him struggle on his own, they took a rugged individualist living a loose, chaotic life and thrust him into the contraints of Fatherhood (with a capital 'F'). Hilarity ensues, families flock to see this feel-good movie, lather, rinse, repeat. Buena Vista can throw out these movies and score just as easily as Tom Brady throws TD passes against the Cowboys. It's just what they do.
Pete Kilmer: I think it's a huge hit and a lot of the reasoning for that is the promotion machine known as The Rock. From his WWE days when he was starting to become a huge star he learned a huge lesson there from Vince McMahon...promote, promote, promote. Need to generate ticket sales for a WWE PPV...send the Rock. Need to generate sales for house shows...put The Rock on the phone to the local radio stations. He was there for every signing, promotion and personal appearance that would help generate ticket sales along with dvd sales and cd record sales. When he was approached by Disney to do some cross-promotion on the TV network he jumped at the chance for a week or so Disney TV was The Rock network as he guest starred on a ton of shows. Rock knows how to promote and if the team behind a project want it to succeed you can't do worse than send The Rock out to shill it. Plus the other factor is that The Rock knew he had to have a hit with this film to prove that his salary for the films are justified.
David Mumpower: Obviously, this is a clear cut hit. Disney has figured out a way to recycle a recent hit in The Pacifier, which earned $113 million, without doing a sequel per se. They swapped out Vin Diesel for The Rock (an upgrade, by the way), and it allowed for a better brand of family storytelling. Duane Johnson is more multifaceted than Diesel, whom I also like, because he can swap out from tough guy to humorist in the blink of an eye. This was a smart project, and its success has seemed like a foregone conclusion since its announcement.
People like George Clooney. Is this still news to anyone outside of Fox News?
Kim Hollis: Michael Clayton platformed to 2,511 sites while grossing an estimated $11 million. What are we to take from this result?
Reagen Sulewski: I think it's really tough to sell thrillers where no one gets shot in the trailer these days. I think this is an okay result for a movie that's one long slow burn, even with Clooney in the lead. It's the kind of film that's going to have to build based on quality, which I think it will be able to do.
David Mumpower: What I take from this is that it's a better performance than The Insider ($6.7 million), a better weekend than Good Night, and Good Luck ever had, and a total on a par with Syriana's $11.7 million. The question with this title is less about how it does in its first week of wide release but rather how well it holds up from here. The glowing reviews help (it's 90% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes), but is this a title for mainstream audiences? I'm just not sure. I hope so.
We Own the Night? Doesn't that sound like a Sting album?
Kim Hollis: We Own the Night opened to an estimated $11 million. Is this result better or worse than you expected?
Joel Corcoran: I'm disappointed, actually, though obviously not as disappointed as Joaquin Phoenix. The whole vibe of the film seemed to me like a poor man's version of The Departed, so I wasn't expecting a whole lot from it, but at the same time, I was hoping for something closer to a $15-20 million opening.
Reagen Sulewski: Contrasting with what I just said about Michael Clayton - people do get shot in the trailer of this and they still couldn't sell it that well. Both Wahlberg and Phoenix have had much better results than this before, so it has to be considered a disappointment for the type of movie it is. The biggest problem for me was that it looked like such a retread of other movies, very specifically The Departed. And as much as we talk about reviews not mattering for box office, the mediocre reviews for this kept it from breaking out. They just couldn't generate hype for it.
David Mumpower: This is a much lower performance than I had expected a few months ago. As release approached, I still thought it might do well on opening weekend, but the failures of The Brave One and Death Sentence were early warning signals. It angled to be a clone of The Departed but the tone of star power driven vigilantes was unmistakable in the trailer. That's a premise being rejected by mainstream audiences at the moment. So, being the third title of that ilk in two months is equal parts poor timing and bad planning from Sony. It should have been moved away from the copycat releases near it.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age is false advertising.
Kim Hollis: Elizabeth: The Golden Age opened to $6.2 million from 2,001 sites. What do you think of the opening, and more importantly, how concerned are you by the resounding critical rejection to the sequel of one of the best movies of the 1990s.
Joel Corcoran: Barely $6 million is abysmal, and I'm disheartened to say the least, both by the box office performance and the critics' slams. Elizabeth still remains one of my all-time favorite movies, and this movie already seems to be a flop.
Reagen Sulewski: The way things are going, this might end up on the Caddyshack 2 list. It seems pretty clear that Shekhar Kapur didn't really understand what people liked about his first movie. The opening weekend isn't so bad in the scheme of things - it was never going to open huge - but the fact that it's going to be "one and done" is.
David Mumpower: The news here is grim. Long-time readers of BOP (and its predecessor) are aware of the fact that our staff loved the movie, Elizabeth. We were championing it as one of the most cerebral movies of the '90s even before the Academy gave it so much love. A Best Picture nominee along with six other nominations says it all about how strong the quality of the original was. The news that 74% of critics dislike its successor is soul-crushing. There was almost a decade to plan a quality sequel. This turn of events is demoralizing.
Needs more hair gel.
Kim Hollis: Ben Stiller's latest comedy, The Heartbreak Kid, fell 47% to $7.4 million. It has a running total of $26 million. How surprised are you that the reunion of the There's Something About Mary Team has underachieved?
Reagen Sulewski: I'm really surprised at this - not the second weekend drop so much as that's SOP, but that it stumbled out of the gate. In retrospect, it wasn't just Stiller that sold Mary, as much as it was Cameron Diaz launching into the stratosphere with that film. Here, they never seemed sure if they wanted Michelle Monaghan or Malin Akerman to play that role, and it cost them.
David Mumpower: I don't agree with Reagen that the key to the first film was Cameron Diaz. I believe There's Something About Mary was a phenomenon that still stands as one of the most unique box office behavioral patterns of all time. The cause for that title's legs isn't complicated, though. The movie is one of the funniest in cinema history. THAT was the key to its success. All of the chest thumping in the world about the reunion of the There's Something About Mary team doesn't matter if the trailers look actively unfunny, which is sadly the case here. Had there been any bit that offered the promise of "frank and beans/we've got a bleeder" or the now legendary hair gel bit, this would have been huge. Instead, the premise here always struck me as a bit mean, one that plays on the natural insecurities of all newlywed couples. I'm not sure who the target audience is for this. Is it lifelong bachelors who are closeted homosexuals? Women who like the idea of stealing grooms during their honeymoons? People who like their comedy as toothless as CBS' Monday night lineup?
Zombies, sheriffs, terrorists and Dane Cook. Which is scariest?
Kim Hollis: Out of The Kingdom ($40 million running total), Good Luck Chuck ($32.8 million), 3:10 to Yuma ($51.4 million) and Resident Evil: Extinction ($48.1 million), which one do you think has been most impressive? Which is least impressive?
Pete Kilmer: I think 3:10 to Yuma is the impressive number for a 'dead' genre movie. I really thought The Kingdom would have had more a punch at the box office myself.
David Mumpower: I'm depressed that Good Luck Chuck managed that much, given how atrocious the movie is. Resident Evil: Extinction is a title that has impressed me with its box office, given the fact that it's the third title in the franchise. It's going to be the top earner in the franchise to date, which is always impressive for a three-quel. I do agree with Pete that 3:10 to Yuma is the most impressive, though. The western is such a tough sell in this day and age that when we see a success story like this or Open Range, it stands out that much more.