Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
February 10, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: He's Just Not That Into You,the star-studded chick flick, earned $27.8 million from 3,175 venues. To what can we attribute its breakout success?
David Mumpower: There is a self-fulfilling prophecy aspect to this, but the early portion of the past two years has seen a couple of chick flicks, Bride Wars and 27 Dresses, do very well. He's Just Not That Into You has outperformed those two debuts ($21.5 million and $23.0 million, respectively) as it should have. While those two titles were relatively gimmicky attempts to sell women on the wedding fantasy with a skosh of bridezilla thrown in, this weekend's number one film is a more elaborate romantic comedy. It tells multiple stories at once, a genre convention best used recently by 2003's Love Actually, and it features a similarly deep and talented cast. I've thought all along that this would be one of the breakout films of the early portion of the year, and I'll be curious to compare its performance this weekend to that of Confessions of a Shopaholic over the Valentine's Day period.
Brandon Scott: I concur with David in large part. I'll be honest - there is no way I would be remotely interested in 95% of rom-coms or a title targeted at women. This one held some intrigue for me, and I figured I would let reviews tell the story. Well, reviews were poor, so I neatly stepped away from interest in seeing this. That being said, the cast is large and respected (reasonably so), and those chick flick cliches were amusing (okay, I only saw #9, but still). The trailer was terrible, though, so am I even answering the question? I think star-power, a best selling book, and hopeful cross-gender appeal meant it did well. Now, as David suggests, what happens with this versus Confessions will be interesting.
Max Braden: I underestimated the box office because of the reasons David mentioned. I thought the varying plotlines lacked a coherent story that would put off moviegoers. I couldn't tell if they were supposed to get together or not. Plus, I don't really remember seeing much of the big name stars: Affleck, Aniston, and Johannson. But the marketing was good and if Paul Blart is an indication, people are in the mood for comedy.
Scott Lumley: It looked moderately funny. it had some decent starpower. The reviews weren't terrible. Jennifer Aniston. Yeah, that sounds like about $27 million to me.
Sean Collier: It also seems that the Oscar bait features have lost steam a bit early. Slumdog is still plugging away, but that's really about it. In the absence of anything from awards season really pulling in the crowds, something had to pick up the slack.
Jason Lee: I think we underestimated how much this topic would resonate with women - the idea that men simply do not make it easy for the opposite sex to understand their intentions and true feelings is one that has been discussed ad nauseum over cartons of ice cream.
To see this topic done with an attractive cast and funny trailer helped make this film a break-out success. Beyond that, I think that women turned this into a "girls night out." My co-worker asked me before she left work on Friday, "So what do you think about He's Just Not That Into You? Sex and the City for 2009?" I scoffed at the time but in retrospect, I think this type of mentality brought the girls out in droves.
Jamie Ruccio: With the success of the Sex in the City movie I think you're seeing a solidifying of the female demographic into a force that not only can sustain a movie (e.g. Titanic even if it was for the "tweener" set) but open one.
Having been "convinced" to go see He's Just Not That Into You over opening weekend because "we" wanted to support this movie so "they'll make more of what 'we' want to see," there is a definite communal aspect to these movies now. The audience, vastly female, collectively shared the same reactions to every scene they were supposed to. They laughed in unison when the scene called for it, they gasped appropriately, etc.
Having opened so well I fully expect to be "convinced" to go see more of these movies.
The big question is how much could this movie have opened to if Kevin James were headlining?
Kim Hollis: Which cast member of He's Just Not That Into You do you believe had the most impact on the movie's box office? For those unfamiliar with the group, it includes Scarlett Johansson, Ben Affleck, Jennifer Aniston, Jennifer Connelly, and Drew Barrymore.
David Mumpower: This is a fun question since so much of the debate about box office is based on the tangible, but it's a bit less demonstrable here. The trailers focus on a couple of the lesser known actors from HBO shows, Ginnifer Goodwin (Big Love) and Kevin Connolly (Entourage), more than anyone else. So, it's difficult to quantify who helps the most. As an example, Scarlett Johansson as a homewrecker may do more harm than good (isn't a flirty woman who looks like her the nightmare scenario for any married woman?), but her presence helps get men to grudgingly agree to go to a chick flick. So, I'm going off the board and just ranking them in terms of how I see their overall box office appeal.
Jennifer Connelly is an amazing actress whose name as the headline on the marquee leads to box office on the level of Dark Water. She's not a draw and finishes last out of this group. Scarlett Johansson, while one of the most talented actresses in the world today, isn't a draw yet, either. The *most* successful of her last four movies earned a whopping $26.8 million. She'll get there some day with the right projects and this is a good start, but she's clearly fourth among this batch. Ben Affleck's career has gotten past the Gigli disaster for the most part, yet his most successful recent film, Smokin' Aces, only did a few million more than Johansson's. Also, it's a stretch to say that film's box office is directly attributable to him. He hasn't a decent scale hit since Paycheck made $53.8 million back in 2003. He's proven he can be a draw, but it's been a while.
To my mind, the debate comes down to Barrymore vs. Aniston. The latter actress has had three of her last five major films make north of $85 million with none falling under $36 million. That's impressive. Meanwhile, Barrymore has 5 $100+ million movies on her resume, three of which she may legitimately claim were based a lot upon her appeal. And the most noteworthy scene of a fourth, Scream, is great because of her. She has been a relatively unheralded draw for a long time now, but she has suffered a couple of relatively epic bombs over the past five years with Duplex and Lucky You. Fever Pitch and Music & Lyrics (a personal favorite of mine) both did about best case scenario box office, but I still think that as of this moment, Jennifer Aniston is the biggest draw of the (impressive) group.
Brandon Scott: It's due to Justin Long, clearly. Honestly, this is not attributable to one person, it's the group as a whole that got people in seats. I would think it would come down to Affleck, Aniston and Barrymore, though, as the most influential. Kevin Connolly, I mean geez, can the guy be any more of a wuss? He's such a boy, even though he's in his 30s, I think. It'd be nice to recognize him as more of a man. (Cheap shot, I know, but deserved.) I think Aniston is indeed the hottest actress on the list with Drew having the history in this genre. A possible stripping from Johannson doesn't hurt either, though I suspect we will get jipped on the T and A.
Scott Lumley: The cast does look strong, but the critical component has to be Aniston. People still have warm fuzzy memories of her as Rachel on Friends and she lives on the cover of every tabloid due to the Brangelina nonsense that a huge chunk of America seems to be obsessed with. When you're that much in the public eye, and it's not for being arrested, that's going to have an impact on your box office results.
Sean Collier: Barrymore is a close second, but it's Aniston. She seemed to absorb the star power of the other five Friends almost completely.
Tim Briody: And how come the one person in the entire cast that I had never heard of before got to host Saturday Night Live?
Jason Lee: I'd say it's due to Barrymore. I barely saw any of Aniston in the commercials that I caught on TV. Barrymore has the ending "gag" in the film's first trailer and is involved in one of the better lines on the commercials that I saw ("MySpace is the new booty call.").
Reagen Sulewski: I think both Barrymore and Aniston bring different, crucial things to this cast. Barrymore is the bubbly, comedic presence, and Aniston is the "movie star" who makes it an event.
Jamie Ruccio: I think if anything it was the ensemble nature of the cast that may have been the draw as well as the subject matter. I think you can throw out the individual box office histories of each actor as being complete non-factors. I think it's much greater than the sum of its parts.
The other thing that I think is overlooked is that this movie is based on a very popular book and, so I am told, on a catch phrase in an episode of "Sex in the City". Two of the writers who wrote for the show went on to write the book so there was a following there.
Then again, the individual draw of Aniston may have helped given that she just finished press, it feels like for, Marley and Me.
I disagree with David slightly in that I don't think the nightmare scenario of seeing Johansson as a homewrecker or Bradley Cooper (and his mutantly big smile) as a two-timer would have thrown off the potential success. People love to hate characters and the hissing that went on during the showing I saw was evidence of that.
Neil Gaiman fans are a mighty and powerful force.
Kim Hollis: Coraline, the stop motion animated film from Focus Features, opened to a surprising $16.8 million. To what do you attribute its success?
David Mumpower: This is the most novel release of 2009 to date and arguably the most visually stimulating animated family film since The Nightmare Before Christmas or at least The Corpse Bride. In addition, this is the rare 3-D film wherein the usage of the technology feels seamless rather than a gimmick for the sake of being gimmicky. While I think all of this is a big factor, the subtle aspect of this that drives box office revenue is that actual price of 3-D movies tickets. The average ticket price at the end of 2008 was $7.12, and we're even a bit beyond that since most movie chains raised ticket prices to adjust for the economic collapse (which is a counter-intuitive business practice, I realize). The average 3-D movie ticket is over 50% higher. The last two times I've gone to see one, I paid $19 for a pair of tickets for a matinee ($9.50 a piece) and $26 for an evening show ($13 a piece). Getting an average of only $10 per ticket sold means that box office is automatically going to be 50% higher as well for all 3-D tickets sold. Bringing that back to Coraline, it was exhibited in 1,004 3-D venues and 1,294 ordinary theaters. 44% of its tickets got that 50% bump, meaning it got an overall spike of 22% if you do the math. That bit of sleight of hand turns a $13.4 million opening into a $16.3 million opening.
Brandon Scott: Is this a success? I don't know what the budget is for it. I am surprised by the figure and happy to see that reviews seem overwhelmingly positive. I feel that the stop-motion aspect is gimmicky. I have never seen the lauded Nightmare Before Christmas as animation in any form as it is not my thing. I'm glad to see it did well, though, and would venture to guess that its uniqueness in terms of rarity of use of this "technology" helps in addition to what David said about the use of 3-D.
David Mumpower: Coraline's budget is a source of quite a bit of speculation. Some sources indicate it's as low as $35 million, but it was greenlighted with a production budget of $75 million. The next film that comes in with over half of its budget unspent will be the first, and we all know this. So, I'm inclined to think the truth lies somewhere in the middle.
Max Braden: Was this book actually read to children? I'm thinking the audience skewed a little older.
David Mumpower: I don't have the splits for the film yet but anecdotally, our audience was almost exclusively families with children.
Kim Hollis: I would certainly call it a children's book, but Gaiman fans tend to read all of his stuff regardless of intended age target. I think we sometimes forget that kids like to be thrilled and scared. Goosebumps was a huge series and as a child, I was sort of obsessed with movie monsters like the Werewolf, Dracula and especially the Creature from the Black Lagoon. And I think we can all agree that Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory is creepy. I saw it in the theater way back in the 1970s (I'm old) and I loved it then and still do. I think Coraline - both the book and the movie - work on a similar level for a variety of ages. It's up to parents to decide if their child can handle it.
Scott Lumley: I noticed trailers in my area were strongly pushing the Nightmare Before Christmas connection, but to the best of my knowledge, Tim Burton is not involved directly with this film. If there are some people in his production company involved with this film, then by all means they were wise to invoke it. I know that any reference at all to Tim Burton seems to generate a lot of goodwill in segments of the movie going public. Exactly how much of a bump this film got from the Nightmare association is up for debate, but I really do feel there was some smart marketing for Coraline in that regard.
Kim Hollis: The Nightmare Before Christmas connection is not Tim Burton. The connection is that they share the same director, Henry Selick. It seems to be a pretty common misconception that Burton directed The Nightmare Before Christmas, and it's seeping over to Coraline now. Poor Henry.
Jason Lee: I'd like to point out, though, that neither David nor Reagan called for an opening higher than $10.4 mil (in their February and weekend forecast, respectively). A $13.4 opening and even a 3-D inflated $16.8 mil opening is a big win for Focus Features.
Incidentally, I have my fingers crossed that the 2010 Oscar noms for Best Animated feature will be a combination of Stop Motion (Coraline), hand-drawn animation (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea by the genius Hayao Miyazaki) and Up (by Pixar).
Kim Hollis: Jason, if that happens, I might be the happiest girl ever.