Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
November 27, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com

What did you do for *your* Thanksgiving holiday?

Santa's gonna bring all you haters a lump of coal.

Kim Hollis: Rise of the Guardians earned $32.3 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: The tracking for the opening had it coming in at around $40 million, and as was mentioned in the Weekend Wrap-Up, the studio was expecting around $35 million. $32.3 million is okay, but you have to think that executives are wondering why this one did not pull in a larger audience. Competition was tough, but you would think that the major kids movie of the holiday season would be a bit more of a draw. Still, numbers were not that far off, but I don't think the creative team is going to like being in a position of hoping for strong holds over the next few weeks. I do think the film will do fine. I took my son to see it and he loved it, and I was pretty impressed with what they put together.

I can't help thinking that the numbers should have been higher, though, especially against that $145 million dollar budget. Perhaps I am measuring this against the success of Wreck-It Ralph, which opened to nearly $50 million a month ago and is about to match its budget. Rise of the Guardians will need some very strong holds as we get closer to Christmas.

Bruce Hall: I'm going to call this a straight up disappointment. The five-day opening for Rise of the Guardians is less than the three-day opening for any DreamWorks feature released since 2006. Attendance seems to have been flat over the weekend, and it looks even worse when you contrast this with Wreck-it-Ralph, which pulled in $23 million over the same five day period - in its third week of release. This suggests that one film is getting good word-of-mouth, and one perhaps is not. Still, Guardians should find a pair of holiday legs under it, at least until The Hobbit drops on December 14th, but it doesn't look good. It's a long shot to make back that massive budget, let alone break $100 million.

Which makes the real question whether or not the other books in the series will eventually make their way to the big screen, or will the film franchise just kind of quietly go away, like the Chronicles or Narnia and The Golden Compass?

Matthew Huntley: I'm in full agreement with Bruce on this, because even if Guardians was to show the same kind of legs as, say, The Polar Express (which is a big IF by the way), it won't break even any time soon, not when you take into account the theaters' share and the prints/advertising costs. A $32 million opening is simply not enough and there's unfortunately no way to spin this into good news. And I don't think the film's themes are as prolific worldwide as they are here so that it could gain ground internationally. On the plus side, I've heard good things about it and with any luck it will break through the century mark so that it can at least save face.

Felix Quinonez: This seems like a definite disappointment. Even if it had made its five-day total in the three-day portion of the long weekend I would say Rise of the Guardians underwhelmed. An animated movie like this should shine during Thanksgiving weekend. But unfortunately with such a weekend as strong as this, there's bound to be a movie that gets the shaft and maybe that's what happened with Rise of the Guardians.

Reagen Sulewski: Count me in the "salvageable disappointment" category. Even though the salad days for animated films are over, and you can't guarantee a hit every time out, $32 million in five days for any animated film, particularly one that's been promoted as strongly as this one, is unquestionably an underperformance. I think one crucial aspect here is that it was marketed as action-adventure rather than comedy, and that's always a tougher sell to families - some who might find that too much for their kids, and some who are just conditioned to seeing these films as comedies (which isn't to say there wasn't humor in the ads, it just wasn't the focus). If there are decent legs, though - seeing as how it's the main family focus for the next month, and there's not another single animated film out the rest of this year, it seems plausible - it could make it to Christmas in okay shape and add around $40 million over the holidays. But if DreamWorks had eyes on a new kid's franchise, that's been dashed rather definitively.

Kim Hollis: I agree that this result has to be viewed as primarily disappointing. Even though the studio tried to temper expectations, they still threw under. I actually think that the look of this film was kind of weird (on top of the action focus that Reagen mentioned), and I expect that put some people off. I guess people like their imaginary icons a little more cute and cuddly.

Max Braden: It's a significant improvement from the last animated movie that Hugh Jackman voiced (Flushed Away opened to $18 million in November of 2006). I'm usually wary of how-it's-made movie trailer advertising - the type that show all the actors in the recording booth - because it says they don't have much of a story to sell. In this case I think they were lucky to get over $30 million, and the reason they did get that much was probably because they showed Jackman et al. To me the CGI also looked sub-par.

David Mumpower: What always troubled me about Rise of the Guardians is that in trying to be this meta-holiday film, it could not be directly tethered to any specific one. Even the Thanksgiving release reinforces the ambiguity of the project. There is an Easter and a Christmas-related character as well as a vaguely wintry one. So there is not a specific reason to launch this premise over this particular holiday save for the fact that Thanksgiving is, you know, exceptional for box office. The problem is that with The Hobbit on deck, 3D venues are not available in December to the degree that they are right now. The choices were either to hope for the best at Christmas, push back until Easter or grab all the money they can this week then pray that international receipts and home video revenue justify a sequel. In hindsight, this should have been a summer 2012 release.

I want to get an orange cat and name it Richard Parker.

Kim Hollis: Life of Pi, the adaptation of the Yann Martel novel, earned $30.5 million over the five-day Thanksgiving holiday weekend. What do you think of this result?

Jason Barney: I'm pretty surprised, as this was not a film I would have considered going to see prior to this opening, but now I am intrigued. Tracking was way off for this one. It is rare a film doubles the predicted opening, but Life of Pi managed to do just that. I will be curious to see if the holds during the week days are strong. If we reach the the mid point in the week and the numbers continue to sizzle, the buzz for this project could give it a great second weekend. Nothing will repeat what Avatar did, but the 3D aspect of the film appears to be part of the draw.

Matthew Huntley: Piggybacking on Jay's comment, I too have heard the 3D is a draw for Life of Pi, but it's really the story and overall experience that should be the film's primary attractions. I saw it in 2D and it was amazing. It's hard to recall a film that gave such a fresh perspective on the power of the movies and life in general. If the movie had as much hype as other studio tent poles this season (Skyfall, Twilight), I'd say a $30 million opening is disappointing, but since a lot of people, like Jay attested to, weren't sure what to make of it, I'm apt to call it solid. It's going to need a lot of legs to cover its $120 million budget, but I think word-of-mouth will help it get there. And I think Pi's appeal overseas could be significant. I hope this turns into "the little movie (with a big budget) that could," because it deserves to do well in my opinion.

Bruce Hall: I think this is vindication for a film initially perceived as everything from "bloated vanity project" to "misguided boondoggle" and everything not nice in between. In reality it turns out that Life of Pi is a pretty remarkable film, and has been getting excellent word-of-mouth - even from people who didn't care for it. I'm tempted to compare this result to what we saw happen with Cloud Atlas - another artistically polarizing film that was also based on an acclaimed novel. The difference is, Life of Pi seems to have resonated somewhat more with mainstream audiences, if not entirely so. After five days of release, it's managed to earn significantly more than Cloud Atlas has after nearly a month. That isn't meant to be a scientific comparison, rather my point is that two films with similar strengths and weaknesses have provided us with some interesting parallel analysis, and it would seem that many find Life of Pi to be a stronger experience.

That's not to say that it doesn't face a significant uphill climb to make back its rather ample budget. But the film seems to have succeeded so well on an artistic level that regardless of how you personally feel about it, you're going to see it on a lot of top ten lists come the end of the year.

Felix Quinonez: I think this is a great result. It might not be earth shattering and the movie still has a LONG way to go until it breaks even but it definitely helped in the perception department. Now that it has over-performed, I think more people will be championing the movie and rooting for it to succeed. Had it underwhelmed, it would have been written off by many and the negative press may have dissuaded people who were on the fence about seeing it.

Reagen Sulewski: This is the film that has most effectively marketed itself with 3D since Avatar, if you think about it. There is virtually nothing else to this film that people can hook on to - "So it's an Indian dude, on a boat for two hours?" "Well, there's a tiger." "That makes even *less* sense!" - so what could uninitiated audiences really be finding in this? Now, there's a sizable initiated audience, since this book was freaking everywhere ten years ago, so it's got some headspace with the public. If we're going to continue to compare this to Cloud Atlas, they might have been better served to wait five or six years to make that film.

Kim Hollis: I think that the debut weekend is pretty spectacular given that it really is tough to know what to make of this film. The book was a bit more universal of a success internationally than Cloud Atlas was, but they are both comparable in that it's possible to think of each of them as unfilmable. And yet, here we are talking about both adaptations within about a month's time. I think that the difference for Life of Pi is going to be the fact that it's got the 3D hook to continue to draw in audiences who just love to see a movie that looks good, but also its positive word-of-mouth and awards potential. Because of its solid opening weekend performance, the story can be painted in a very positive way, and perception is really everything.

Max Braden: I don't really understand the criticism about there being very little to the story, it's not much different than Cast Away in that aspect. This is an easy, family-friendly holiday option at the movies. $30 million makes sense to me.