Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
April 19, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com

This was the longest televised scoring drought since The 40-Year-Old Virgin.

Did Kick-Ass, you know...live up to its title?

Kim Hollis: Kick-Ass, a Lionsgate comic book adaptation featuring Nicolas Cage, opened to $19.8 million. For a film with a $28 million budget, I think we all agree this is a satisfactory result. Should the film have done better in your estimation?

Josh Spiegel: I think this result is just about in line with my expectations. Anyone who was seriously disappointed about a movie whose only recognizable and bankable actor is Nicolas Cage (in a supporting role), is rated R for violence and language, is based on a graphic novel, and hasn't been widely marketed is a bit off in their guesstimates. I like the movie (though I come from a background of little to no graphic novel reading), but the movie is something akin to a somewhat lighter, satiric version of a superhero movie than Watchmen was. That movie had a huge budget and only got over $100 million overall domestically. Kick-Ass won't make that much, but was budgeted lower, and Lionsgate picked it up post-filming. It's a win all around.

Tim Briody: I'd never heard of Kick-Ass until the movie release was approaching. Nicolas Cage is far from a sure thing and it's a pretty hard R. Making two-thirds of its production cost (itself a minor miracle) opening weekend is a home run.

Matthew Huntley: The studio should be content with its $19 million opening weekend, but they're probably nervous about the road ahead due to the fanboy effect and the mixed reactions from audiences. The movie is enjoyable, yes, but also uneven. That kind of word-of-mouth will likely have most people holding off until Blu-ray/DVD to see it. It will take a while before Kick-Ass shows a healthy profit, especially when you take into account its marketing and promotions costs, but its opening weekend suggests it will get there soon rather than later.

Michael Lynderey: Oh, I'd disagree for sure on us having to have lower expectations for this. In the last year or so, we've seen genre movie after genre movie with potentially meager credentials break out into some very solid box office, especially when backed by glowing reviews - I'm thinking of titles like Inglourious Basterds and especially District 9, a film that didn't even have Nicolas Cage to its name. That said, it may be a little early to draw a verdict on Kick-Ass. If it has some respectable legs, and it just might, it can still end up as a win, if not quite an $100 million earner.

Shalimar Sahota: Given the buzz, and generally positive reviews, I was really hoping it would break out with a $30 million+ opening. This is still a good result, and even with the R-rating, the reviews and word-of-mouth should hopefully allow it to stick around for a while. Hell, it's working for How to Train Your Dragon. Unless of course it just doesn't find an audience (like Matthew Vaughn's well reviewed Stardust), and the film eventually drops out of the top ten next week.

Tom Macy: On paper this is a clear cut success story through and through. But honestly it's a bit below what I was expecting. As some of you have pointed out, the buzz and the reviews suggested a more blockbuster type opening. It is a superhero movie, after all. But playing the Monday morning quarterback - not to be too literal - a lot of that buzz seems to be Snakes on a Plane variety, where the buzz is about the buzz not necessarily the movie. I'm sure this film will turn a decent profit for Lionsgate. But you have to wonder how much all that buzz cost.

David Mumpower: As I had mentioned a few weeks ago, the best comparison film I felt was applicable here was Mystery Men, the 1999 film that got swallowed whole by The Blair Witch Project. Kick-Ass is a similarly subversive spin on the ordinary person/superhero dichotomy (yes, I know that the Mystery Men had powers but they were incompetent with them) and it has opened better than that title, which inflation adjusts to around $15 million. Shalimar has also mentioned a great comparison in Stardust, a wonderful film adaptation that was a box office disaster. As was the case here, the graphic novel is an established property in the comic book industry but it has little overall awareness. The primary difference between these two projects as well as the reason why Kick-Ass is a success is that Stardust cost $70 million to produce while Kick-Ass has a bunch of teen actors who were effectively paid in gruel. This is another win for Lionsgate, the frugal distributor who continues to understand how to create then market risk-averse, medium scale projects.

Reagen Sulewski: The comparison to Inglourious Basterds is an interesting one, but Tarantino is one of those rare directors that adds to an opening weekend. That's not to mention the heavy push Basterds got off Brad Pitt, while Nic Cage was mostly invisible in the ads for Kick-Ass. As well, about halfway through their campaign, they discovered that they were selling the movie based on the wrong character, and even the one they switched to (Hit Girl) had a very limited demographic appeal. So while this isn't best-case scenario, the producers did a lot with what they had.

Max Braden: I think outside Batman, Superman, and Spiderman, every other comic book is an unknown property to most audiences and the pedigree factor becomes pretty much moot. While Kick Ass had the novelty factor of kids as superheros, it could have also been a hindrance in that the kid market was boxed out by the R rating. To open at nearly $20 million is impressive, and that it was able to takee the number one spot for the weekend is even more so.

Eric Hughes: I think we'd all be a little surprised at how unaware people seemingly were about the movie. Tim may say that he hadn't heard of it until the release date was approaching, yet I can do him one better by saying that I ran into a number of friends who had not a clue what Kick-Ass was until Saturday afternoon. In my view, that's a failure, as you'd expect younger demos (I'm 23) to carry the movie's opening weekend. Personally, I'd be very interested to look at an age breakdown of the people who went to see Kick-Ass this weekend. If it skews old, then I'd expect Lionsgate to make a push to capture the youngsters who were MIA up until a few days ago.

Maybe we should rename ourselves the Self-Fulfilling Prophets…or, hm. Maybe not.

Kim Hollis: With regards to the performance of Kick-Ass, was it a self-fulfilling prophecy that it was identified as a low-budget B-movie going in?

Josh Spiegel: I must have missed that identification. I assumed (rightly) that Kick-Ass was a parody/satire of Spider-Man and its ilk and, low budget aside (by the way, I never thought the movie looked that cheap), a violent riff on superheroes. If this movie was identified as a B movie, that's just wrong. What made this movie not perform better was its rating, and the lack of mass marketing. I saw no ads for this movie anywhere on TV or in print; I knew it was coming out thanks to the Interwebs, but the appeal wasn't as widespread.

Matthew Huntley: I missed that identification, too, and I agree with Josh that it didn't look or feel like a B-movie. For such a low budget film, the cinematography, stunts and special effects were professionally executed and I was impressed with its overall appearance, especially the deeply saturated colors. I would label the film as gritty compared to other superhero movies (namely Spider-Man), but I don't think it looks cheap or B'sh. In regards to its performance, I would say Josh hit the nail on the head: the R-rating and the under-exposure on TV prevented it from really breaking through.

Michael Lynderey: I can't really say who identified it as what, but when I first heard of the making of this film, I wasn't sure if it was even intended to be a wide theatrical release (i.e. Woody Harrelson's potentially similar title, Defendor). But in the last few months, it's certainly done an A-class job of positioning itself not only as a mainstream film, but one worthy of considerable attention. So I wouldn't say perceptions about B-movies had any effect on the box office here.

Tom Macy: I thought the marketing a was pretty solid. I recall TV spots, posters, etc. Maybe they're pushing it harder in NYC. I never got the B-movie label. Though there was clearly an element of camp. I suppose it's foolish to expect an R-rated movie with no built-in audience of big names to open bigger, but I thought it was going to be a District 9 a situation where a cool looking movie resonates with the public. I'm chalking it up to the sound of fury of Internet chatter that signifies you know what.

Reagen Sulewski: With regards to super-hero movies, audiences have come to expect a lot of FX-driven action now, and just sparing amounts of comedy. I think the lack of the former and the excess of the latter is what kept the audience of this one strictly to the hard-core. This could potentially move the needle for future independent projects like this though.

Max Braden: I would not have described it that way from the trailers, but I also wouldn't have described it as mainstream either. Kick-Ass by Kevin Smith would have been a low budget B movie.

David Mumpower: Max's argument is an issue of perception versus reality in that the director Kick-Ass, Matthew Vaughn, made his reputation working on low budget Guy Ritchie films and his own directorial debut, Layer Cake, earned less than $3 million domestically. His only "big" studio film to date is the aforementioned Stardust, which bombed. So, he's looking way up at Kevin Smith's career.

In terms of the specific question, I'm surprised so many people saw this as something other than a B-movie. It's a cast comprised of unknown teens and their costumes are intentionally low budget to play up the faux-superhero theme. This was not a glossy take on super-heroism and a specific choice was made to focus on the amateur hour themes. I do view that as self-fulfilling prophecy, which is why I was never that high on the movie. It's a low budget breadwinner, a sort of movie arbitrage. My concern here is whether Scott Pilgrim vs. The World will be viewed in a similar fashion upon its release. Along those lines, the comic book idea that Kick-Ass mimics, Runaways, needs to aim higher in order to avoid the same fate, desired mediocrity. On a side note, I'm not assuming legs for this film as I see it going one of two ways. It's either going to tap into the zeitgeist or it's going to be this generation of kids' indoctrination into a Battle Royale-flavored world, one they find rather uncomfortable. There isn't a lot of in-between here in my estimation.