Monday Morning Quarterback Part IV
By BOP Staff
January 10, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Bruce Hall: Aside from wondering what kind of CGI they used to make Billy Crystal look so young, I don't have a lot to say about this one. It's a pretty conventional family film - snarky kids vs. out of touch grandparents who are unaware of things like answering machines and airline security! Har har! Let the obvious, lukewarm hilarity commence! Am I wrong, or could this movie could have been released at any time in the last ten years - using the same two leads? That said, people love Billy Crystal and Bette Midler, and this is the sort of bland, inoffensive fare both can pull off in their sleep. Plus, Parental Guidance has pretty much had the family demographic all to itself since it dropped on Christmas Day.
This is a good enough result at a tough time of year to all but guarantee a sequel, so...just prepare yourselves.
Felix Quinonez: I think anytime a movie grosses double its budget in less than two weeks, it's in very good shape. Clearly there is a market for bland, inoffensive comedies and this seemed to benefit not only from the holidays but the under-performance of The Guilt Trip. But seriously, this looks like it should be a made-for-TV movie and could finish with over $80 million domestically. Mind=boggled.
Max Braden: It's a head-scratcher all around. Did someone go down a call list and get past Steve Martin before getting the roles filled? Or was this a back-burner pact, where Billy said, "Okay Bette, if, in 25 years, you're not making movies, and I'm not making movies, let's make a movie together." Can there be a sequel starring Danny DeVito and Lily Tomlin? That there's any audience still alive who would leave the house to push the box office this high is amazing.
Brett Ballard-Beach: I honestly thought that The Guilt Trip would trip beat this. And even with diminishing returns of 3D re-releases, I believed that Monsters, Inc. would beat this (but not by much) and that Billy Crystal would be 0 for 2 to end his 2012. Now it's on tap to be one of his highest grossing non-animated films ever. With 10 years away from the big screen for him, that's a pretty solid return. It wound up as the Cheaper by the Dozen 2 of this holiday season. On a side note, it is set in (and did a few days of second unit shooting in) the dirtiest city in America (aka, Fresno, CA), where I spent the holidays with my wife's extended family. Thank god for Zyrtec. And that no rugrats whacked me in the balls with a bat and made me vomit on them.
Edwin Davies: I'm a little perplexed by this turn of events, though nowhere near as much as I would be had the film come out any other time than Christmas. I think it benefited from being the third or fourth choice for people at a time of year when they actually have time to see all the films available. For families who have already seen The Hobbit, whose kids are too young to see Django or don't care for the singing in Les Miserables, it provided a bland, agreeable alternative. Had this been released at any other time of the year, I am convinced that it would have been slaughtered.
David Mumpower: Edwin touches upon the key to all of this. Parental Guidance became the de facto non-animated holiday movie this year in the same way that Fockers have behaved in the past. It seems like we have a surprise like this every couple of years. Does anybody remember The Family Man? It earned $75.6 million over the holidays in 2000 in the same manner. Billy Crystal doing his greatest hits of cranky comedy may not be appealing to most of us but it is a great compromise choice for a lot of folks.
Kim Hollis: Jack Reacher (no Ghost Protocol) earned another $9.2 million this weekend, giving it a running total of $64.7 million. What are your thoughts on the latest Tom Cruise action film?
Felix Quinonez: If you compare it to something like Ghost Protocol, of course it seems like a disappointment but after closer inspection I think we can agree that it's performing just fine. Its relatively modest budget ($60 million) means that the bar is set a lot lower. It should end its run with close to $90 million domestically, making it a modest hit. And once the overseas money is added in no one will be complaining.
Jay Barney: It shows that Tom Cruise is still a draw. The budget of $60 million has been surpassed, so the film will be making money from here on out. He had a bit of a rough patch with some of the movies he decided to star in a few years ago, but I think an important measure of a star's drawing power is how much money do their films bring in versus money spent. This one will be bringing in money from here on out and last year's Ghost Protocol was a great success. Cruise may not be what he once was, but he is still making quality films.
Bruce Hall: I have one thing to say to all the Jack Reacher fanboys out there who threatened suicide when Tom Cruise was first cast in this role.
You're welcome. Tonally, Jack Reacher is closer to The Last Action Hero than it is The Bourne Identity, which remains our generation's action benchmark. Many people find Tom Cruise distracting, but like it or not, he's one of the few movie stars who can still put butts in seats. To have cast the Dolph Lundgren type fans clamored for might have made the movie an out and out joke (no offense, Mr. Lundgren, sir).
Cruise's smallish frame and brassy tenor may not seem a fit for the character, but his presence was the difference between Jack Reacher being the modest success that it is, and the complete non-entity it could have been without him. Could other actors have played this character and been successful? Channing Tatum and Tom Hardy come to mind, but Tatum is too young a gun and come on, does this material really require Tom Hardy? Tom Cruise gets it done, just like he's been getting it done his whole career.
You're welcome.
Brett Ballard-Beach: Has Tom Cruise found his new Tony Scott? (Actually, I'm not even sure what that means but it's a nice lead-in.) He and Christopher McQuarrie sound like they might have a solid partnership going forth and a decent hit off a modest-sized budget. Cruise is at the age where they aren't all going to be $200 million hits and this helps keep him in the (positive) public eye. With cast members from Duvall to Herzog, it sounds like the only thing it's missing is Sarah Silverman talking trash in a parking lot and getting punched in the face (Or does it have that too?).
And Bruce... there are Jack Reacher fanboys? They can say that name with a straight face? More power to 'em.
Edwin Davies: This is a pretty solid result for a pretty solid thriller. The film itself is unlikely to go down as a classic of the genre, but it's a very well put together detective story with an engaging central performance from Cruise which probably benefited more from his presence than from the popularity of the books, considering how vocal some people have been about his casting. Without the franchise appeal of Mission: Impossible, it was never going to top Cruise's last Christmas outing, but it proves that people like to see him in these kinds of films (as opposed to awful, awful musicals).
David Mumpower: This is almost a duplication of Valkyrie. I am not as bullish on the film as the rest of you as I believe there is some money left on the table here. An army cop action hero is a brilliant idea for a franchise. What we are witnessing is not a franchise launch of note, which makes this a modest hit one-off film rather than a viable platform launch.
Kim Hollis: This Is 40, the not-quite sequel to Knocked Up, grossed $8.4 million this weekend and has a running total of $54.3 million. In your estimation, is this a good enough result for a $35 million production?
Felix Quinonez: I think when you just compare its performance to its budget This Is 40 is doing exceptionally well. Once it closes with around $70 million domestically it will have doubled its budget, which is great news. But once you take into account the fact that this has had a pretty big marketing push, its relationship to Knocked Up, and the fact that Judd Apatow is in a serious need of a hit, this seems a bit disappointing. The movie is certainly not a bomb but no one's career will be (re)ignited by it either.
Jay Barney: I'd have to say this is great news for Universal and it continues a small trend of success that takes the stink off from the early summer box office. Universal's biggest hit of the year was Ted, which did make them a lot of money. They spent $50 million and brought home over four times that much. Les Miserables is doing great, but aside from Ted, their track record has been close to just treading water during the second half of 2012. The Lorax was a hit for them, but that was all the way back in March. Snow White and the Huntsman had to rely on foreign receipts for it to be profitable. The Bourne Legacy was a bit of a letdown. Battleship bombed big time.
For This Is 40 to potentially earn $70 million against a budget of $35 million... that is great news for Universal.
Bruce Hall: The elephant in the room whenever this movie is discussed is that so many people secretly expected it to have made a lot more money by now. Sure, we'll probably pack it in somewhere in the $70 million range. But in the elevated world of Judd Apatow, that puts us somewhere between The Cable Guy and Anchorman. I happen to like those movies, but considering the energy that was put into marketing this film do you really think that's what Universal was shooting for?
In and of itself, this is a good result, and nobody should be ashamed of it. But I still think there will be whispers...
Max Braden: I agree with Bruce - I'd heard so much good buzz about this movie I would have expected it to be the $100 million movie by now.
Brett Ballard-Beach: I thought this would be the How Do You Know of 2012 (and once again starring Paul Rudd). It looked like Judd Apatow's take on Blake Edward's That's Life! (if you were born in the '90s or later look it up), and that wasn't going to sell any tickets. Rudd is wearing a fucking Ween shirt in the poster! I wanted to see it because I am both fascinated and devastated by Apatow's increasingly insular navel-gazing and I thought it would wow me over with its uncompromising bluntness about something related to the American entertainment industry... or by encompassing a trainwreck of tonal deafness. I disagree that there was money left on the table. I think anything that this has pulled in has been in spite of its premise. But I must say, where have all the "This Is Zero Dark Forty" jokes been? (Seth Rogen and Paul Rudd are the only two men in the world who can bring down the biggest terrorist leader of all time... if they can get over their mid-life crisis and their excessive bong hits.)
Edwin Davies: This is a more than good enough result for a $35 million budget, but only so-so for a Judd Apatow film. It's a big step up from Funny People, which earned less and cost more than This Is 40, but it's also a big step down from the highs of his first two directorial efforts, both of which earned over $100 million. Then again, he's had relatively few hits as either a director or producer since the salad days of 2007-08, so this probably comes out as an uptick for him at the end of the day. But, much like Parental Guidance, I get the feeling that this one was propped up by the festive period and would have struggled if it had come out in the summer like Funny People did.
David Mumpower: At the end of the day, this is a movie that stars Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann. Its target audience is not the sweet spot of Hollywood, even during the holidays. So we have a pair of recognizable faces in a movie that appeals to people outside the primary revenue demographic for the industry. The popularity of the movie can be directly attributed to the concept, which is basically, "How did we come to this point in our lives?" You know what people don't want from movies? Introspection. I'm surprised it earned this much.
Kim Hollis: The Guilt Trip, the movie where Seth Rogen officially gave up, earned $4.4 million this weekend and has a running total of $31.1 million. Is this more, less, or about what you expected?
Felix Quinonez: I never thought this movie's box-office performance was going to be legendary but I didn't expect it to be this bad. I mean Parental Guidance is $21 million ahead and that came out a week later. The holiday season has been good to many movies but there had to be one that received coal in its stocking and that's The Guilt Trip.
Bruce Hall: Seth Rogen, Chevy Chase. Chevy Chase, Seth Rogen. I think at least one of you can learn something from the other.
Brett Ballard-Beach: La Streisand's fans didn't show up. Rogen's fans didn't show up. It looked like the perfect milquetoasty holiday fare to while away 90 minutes and pull in $60 million or so. Maybe somebody should have hit somebody in the crotch and been vomited upon?
Edwin Davies: This seemed like such a weird mix-up to me, castingwise. How many of Barbra Streisand's fans will want to go and see a movie starring Seth Rogen, and how many of Seth Rogen's fans know who Barbra Streisand is? It seemed like a really uninspired, tossed together effort from the casting, the premise and the not-funny-enough trailers. Had it been a better film, it might have been able to overcome some of those issues, but it's lack of quality just compounded them all. There's also an argument to be made that it was basically competing against This Is 40, but the two are so different in tone that it probably wasn't much of a factor in the first place.
David Mumpower: I resent the existence of this movie and I'm glad it failed.