Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
November 20, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 opened to $141.1 million. It had a global take of $341 million. What do you think of this result?
Jason Barney: Not much. It is at least impressive any time a film opens to such a large number, but there is not much going on beyond the studio getting every cent it can out of the franchise and the fans who enjoyed the books. Even though this is the eighth largest opening ever for a film, you just can't be too impressed by those numbers any more. Ticket price inflation is a larger factor than the number of people going to see the film, but I shouldn't be too negative. Summit has made a lot of money off from this product, and it is nice to see stories told in novels getting this much attention. Against a budget of $120 million and the foreign gross taken in so far, this is only going to be a money maker. Reviews won't matter much.
Just a comment on the type of people who may be going to see this film...As a "date" several years ago I asked my girlfriend if she wanted to go see the first of the Twilight flicks. She had a twinkle in her eye; she thought it was cute. Problem was, I think I enjoyed the film more than she did, but both of us thought it was pretty soft. I have offered to take her to the others and she shrugged. She didn't want to go. Same thing happened this year.
The younger demographic will pay to see this, but the numbers will drop fairly drastically.
Edwin Davies: Ho hum, really. If anything, this is less than I was expecting given all the talk of a "finale bump" a la Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings. My main takeaway from this final entry in the Twilight franchise is that it found its audience and that audience didn't grow or shrink any great amount over the last four years, which is something, I guess. Apart from the first film, which obviously had to lay the ground work, each of the films has opened to pretty much the same amount (weird mid-week release patterns notwithstanding) and finished within spitting distance of each other. I assume the same thing will happen this time around, given that there was no additional increase from 3D (which aesthetically I guess I'm thankful for, since I can't stand 3D). Summit got their hands on a hot property, set themselves a very low bar quality wise and managed to clear it routinely, never alienating the audience whilst also never expanding it because the films themselves are awful. It's tempting to characterize splitting the final film in two as something of a con since they're getting twice their money for the same product, but really the whole franchise has been that, so why start getting mad about that now?
Felix Quinonez: I don't think anyone will argue that this is a huge number and everyone involved should be celebrating. But I can't help but feel that it's a bit disappointing. I was really expecting a bump because it's the final one. I was expecting a number closer to Harry Potter 8 and that it would beat The Hunger Games easily.
On the other hand it's already kicking ass overseas and tracking better than BD pt. 1. So maybe we will see that finale bump overseas. Either way I look forward to never having to write or think about these movies again.
Matthew Huntley: I agree with Jay and Edwin on this - there are no real surprises here. We all knew Breaking Dawn Part 2 would win the weekend and open huge, but from here on out, it will probably start seeing serious drop-offs and be all but gone by the time Bilbo and company find their way back into theaters on December 14th. That's not to say Part 2's numbers aren't impressive, and there is something to be said for this franchise's consistency, but by this point, I feel like we've been down this road before (just a year ago, in fact), and so there's not much else to say. The Twilight series will definitely be one for the box-office record books, but it's no classic when it comes to content, style, presentation, etc. and I think it will become just a fading memory until the next tween drama comes along.
Reagen Sulewski: As much as I've enjoyed using the series as a punching bag for quality reasons over these last few years, there was no reason the franchise had to make it this far or be quite this successful. The first film could have killed it on the vine, and the producers were smart enough to realize that Catherine Hardwicke didn't quite have what it took to make a giant franchise action film. While the films didn't necessarily get any better objectively (they were still working with the awful source material) they certainly looked more the part of giant tentpole films. So it's a triumph of brand management if anything. Yay for our culture!
Jim Van Nest: I lean more toward Reagen's side on this one. I think that's a damn impressive number. I know we like to bag on it here because it's Twilight and all, but given our opinions of it, shouldn't that make its continued success even more impressive? Sure, it threw under the Potter finale, but what do you expect? Potter appeals to all ages, Twilight not so much. I think the personal opinions of the series itself are clouding some of the opinions of its success.
Max Braden: For the punching bag that the series has been to a lot of media critics, the Twilight series has three of the top ten biggest opening weekends of all time. And if you consider the iconic series movies that it now supersedes in that regard - Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Transformers, Toy Story, X-Men, and to an extent Harry Potter and Spider-Man - that's impressive. And to convince people to keep paying for an unimpressive series like Twilight? That's more impressive.
David Mumpower: I think we have become too jaded as analysts if $140 million openings lose their excitement. I understand that people believe franchises should debut to larger totals as they reach the finish line. Twilight had an uphill battle in this regard due to the fact that it faces more audience erosion than most franchises. Some of their viewers have grown up and moved on to other passions. This has flatlined the growth of the franchise in a fascinating manner. The erosion has been largely counterbalanced by ticket price inflation. So the overall impact is a zero sum game.
I mean, there is mathematical purity to what Breaking Dawn Part 1 and 2 managed in terms of box office. The former debuted to $71.6 million, fell 44% to $40.0 million then dropped 34% to $26.5 million. The latter debuted to $71.2 million, fell 42% to $41.4 million then dropped 31% to $28.5 million. Now, there is shaky accounting all over the place when we add logic to these numbers. Part 2 slightly edged Part 1 in midnight sneaks yet wound up with less money overall on Friday. This is indicative of front-loading. Somehow, the movie earned $3.4 million more on Saturday and Sunday, something I highly doubt, but ignoring all of that, there was only $4.7 million worth of opening weekend variation between New Moon and the Breaking Dawn titles. In its own way, this is very impressive even if we would have been shocked in November of 2009 to learn that the franchise had peaked with New Moon.
With regards to the overseas numbers, they are sublime. Consider that after only a weekend in global release, Breaking Dawn Part 2 has already garnered almost 50% of the box office of the previous top grossing title in the franchise. Breaking Dawn Part 1 is the current franchise leader with $712 million. Breaking Dawn Part 2 may beat that by the end of the year.
Kim Hollis: When you consider that the audience - which is mostly youthful and therefore mercurial in nature - has stayed with this series all the way to the end with very little variation, you have to admire the consistency. With the quality of the films in question, I find it most impressive that the fans of this series really have been loyal. That we're even talking about it in the same conversation with Harry Potter tells you everything you need to know, I think.