Monday Morning Quarterback
By BOP Staff
May 30, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Going through the motions
Kim Hollis: Almost ten years after Men in Black 2 opened to $52.1 million in three days, Sony returned to these established characters with Men in Black 3. The reunion of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones opened to $54.5 million from Friday-through-Sunday and $69.3 million over the Memorial Day holiday period. It also has earned over $200 million worldwide in its first four days in release. Is this a good enough result for the studio?
Reagen Sulewski: Hey, look! They time traveled back to 2002 and brought back its box office! I doubt anyone's going to get fired over this result, but with the possible $300 million cost to this, there's a few people probably sweating whether this turns a profit or not. When you consider that this is a) a ten-years-later sequel to a film b) nobody really much liked and c) its lead hasn't been in a movie for almost four years, this is a pretty solid result. But that doesn't take into account whether it was a good idea in the first place, and with the overall "meh" response from the public, it's pretty clear that no one has any idea why this is even a thing.
Brett Beach: Hey, the studio was able to "truthfully" tout that it had the best three-day opening weekend of the entire series. I look at this result being problematic in that, unlike a Batman Begins following many years after a Batman and Robin, this isn't so much a reboot or a relaunch (or even the concluding part of a trilogy storyline) as simply another Men In Black film. I think fondly of the first one (when I think of it, which is frequently), but the second film was simply so "meh" that even after watching it again recently, the plot logistics fade from my head within minutes. That film was more expensive than the first (and it grossed a lot less) and this apparently is more expensive than those two combined (and certainly won't gross a lot more, domestic or internationally). The time travel hook may be the only thing that makes this stand out and aside from the 15-year old goodwill vibes and Will Smith's presence, this doesn't have anything in the way of relevance. It isn't, however, Battleship or John Carter, which means at least a little something.
Max Braden: I think that even though Will Smith's mustache looks like it's trying to slide off his face and slink away to the nearest bar, he's still got the name recognition to draw audiences looking for uncomplicated, charming fun. Grampa Simpson didn't ask for this movie, but daggonit, don't tell him not to go see it once it's out. But more than Will Smith, every conversation I've read or heard about MIB3 discussed Josh Brolin's impersonation of Tommy Lee Jones. That's once-in-a-generation casting serendipity, so you kind of have to go see it. (Well, I didn't. I can wait for DVD.) $55 million is a decent summer tentpole opening, acceptable given the star power, and excusable given the lapse of time and lack of demand for the series.
Tim Briody: This really cost $300 million? Yeesh. It's not Battleship, but it's not a huge success either. Once again, we're going to have to trot out the "but look at the foreign grosses!" line to justify its existence, which is getting a little bit tiresome. Of course these movies are going to make a (relative) killing overseas. Men in Black 3 had enough goodwill (and Will Smith drawing power) to not out and out bomb, but it's still another movie to add to the pile in the year of sequels nobody was really asking for.
Bruce Hall: I see how someone dusted off the old Star Trek plot generator for this one. When in doubt, just hit ctrl-F9 for "time travel".
I think this result would be pretty solid were it not for the fact that this movie cost as much as it did to make. Another Men in Black isn't as big a head scratcher as say, a sequel to Ghost Rider, but I also can't tell you the last time I heard someone say in person, in print, on television or online: "When the hell are they gonna make another Men in Black movie?" What I can tell you is that yes, this movie will make its money back and yes, most of it will come from overseas. Does this mean that in the future, studios will try even less hard to make the big films good films? And will they do it because the international audience is (allegedly) less demanding, and will therefore gladly offset your half-ass movie's half-ass domestic opening with a nine figure global haul?
Beats me. I'd have to hit ctrl-F9 for that.
Edwin Davies: This is a result that slips from solid to very mediocre once you consider the costs involved. Since the studio will only take a fraction of the foreign gross home with then, they must have been hoping for a bigger opening - and a bigger domestic run - than this indicates will happen in order to justify the huge expense. Admittedly, in the year of Tim Riggins failing to open any films, this is not as bad a result as it could have been, especially when you consider how badly Men In Black II was received, but this is a case of a film failing to fail, rather than succeeding.
Kim Hollis: I think it's an okay result considering that no one really seemed to want to see this movie. No, it's probably not exactly what the studio was hoping for, but I think the numbers could have been a heck of a lot worse. Audiences seem to be fairly discerning these days, so you really have to work to get them in theaters. Men in Black 3 had only one compelling reason for people to see the film - Josh Brolin as Tommy Lee Jones - and to turn that into more than $50 million is a slight win.
I think horror movies have taught us all a valuable lesson - never travel abroad.
Kim Hollis: Chernobyl Diaries, the new horror concept from Paranormal Activity's creator Oren Peli, opened to $8 million over the three-day portion of the weekend and $9.4 million including the holiday. Like Paranormal Activity and its sequels, the budget was kept low at $1 million. What do you think of this result?
Reagen Sulewski: At that budget level, it's pretty much pure profit (though of course there's P&A, which would dwarf that figure). The revolution in film making continues to make it easier for people to make professional looking films on the cheap, but it would be nice if some of these projects actually amounted to something in terms of quality. I suppose this is a bit of an artifact of the fact that horror audiences seem to be quite undiscriminating. From that perspective, studios are just chasing the money.
Brett Beach: Will this prove to be Oren Peli's "Dead Silence"? Consider that it was only a million behind MIB3 in mdnight grosses, and that that 90 minute stretch may have been its highwater mark. Word-of-mouth is toxic. As inexpensive as this was, his name was being touted as the closest thing akin to a draw-in for the horror crowd. More projects like this that seem to be cash grabs (or things best left for the straight-to-DVD route) can only help to tarnish his reputation.
Max Braden: For $1 million, I'm not going to complain about anything that actually earns money in theaters. Since the Paranormal Activity coattails aren't very long, I think something in the sub-ten-million range was to be expected. I would have scheduled it for mid-August when summer is waning and the high-school/college age target audience is getting anxious for upcoming school, but I don't know that changing the release date would have pulled in anything significantly above this result.
Tim Briody: I'd wager that very few people who've seen all the Paranormal Activity movies knows who Oren Peli is. This is just Horror Movie of the Week that benefited from a holiday weekend and the market not being saturated with the genre, which happens from time to time. As long as they're cheap and profitable, the cycle won't ever change.
Bruce Hall: I'm going to kind of echo a point Tim made and say that I kind of doubt the average guy on the street could tell Oren Peli from Orrin Hatch. It's okay, though, because for a film like this one, all you need is a killer hook. A movie opened this weekend about a group of attractive white people who book a vacation to Chernobyl and get slaughtered by demons or...something. It's a great hook and even if the movie sucks (did anyone walk into this with high expectations?), it's enough to convince some kid to take his girlfriend to a matinee and hope she gets scared enough to let him put his arm around her. A half million of his peers do the same thing and Tuesday evening, Oren Peli is buying another house. The dollar amounts aren't impressive but the profit margins are. It's a rapid return formula that's been a staple of the horror genre for a long time.
Edwin Davies: This is a pretty good result considering the budget. Even if legs prove to be nonexistent - and, considering that the film pretty much collapsed over the course of its first weekend anyway (its take on Monday was less than half of its Friday numbers whereas every other film on top 10 either saw hardly any decline or took more money on Monday than they did on Friday), that seems a given at this point - Chernobyl Diaries will make a tidy little profit. However, when you consider that this film managed to do that without actually being a decent film, it makes me wonder how much better it could gave done if it had been good, or even merely okay. The bar is often set pretty low for horror films, so any film that manages to have an ounce of quality to it tends to shine pretty brightly.
Kim Hollis: While the numbers are theoretically fine compared to budget, I think this is a pretty blah result. The trailer was kind of fun and I say that as someone who doesn't really like horror films. It seems like better marketing could have gotten a higher take, even with the ultimately toxic word-of-mouth. After it's released on home video, Chernobyl Diaries will be a nice little moneymaker, though, and I guess that's all that producers of these quick-hit horror movies are looking for.
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