The Twelve Days of Box Office: Requiem
By David Mumpower
January 23, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The obvious topic of conversation is The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The fourth Middle Earth film was the focus of several columns during The Twelve Days of Box Office. When we evaluate its performance, there is an unmistakable conclusion. After years of anticipation for the project, the actual release of The Hobbit was oddly anticlimactic. Other titles debuting during the same timeframe such as Les Miserables and Django Unchained garnered more headlines. The average consumer may not even recognize that the Peter Jackson title easily out-grossed all other December releases.
The how of the box office attainment process is the focus of today’s analysis. Perhaps no movie in recent memory should have been more frontloaded than The Hobbit. There were nine years of pent-up demand created by historic popularity of The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy. The opening weekend reflected this, at least somewhat. The Hobbit debuted to the largest total for a Middle Earth release, $84.6 million. I consider the total disappointing but I also believe that the tragic events of Newtown, Connecticut in combination with the previous shooting in Aurora, Colorado impacted the performance at least somewhat.
As I type this column, The Hobbit has a current domestic total of $289.1 million. This box office income is the equivalent of a couple of other 2012 releases, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 and Skyfall. Their current domestic takes are $290.8 million and $301.1 million, respectively. Since the former film debuted to $141.1 million and grossed $175.7 million during its first seven days, it fails as an analog. That is simply too much frontloading to be useful for this evaluation.
Instead, let’s use Skyfall as a comparison. Skyfall’s opening weekend was $90.6 million, similar to The Hobbit. During its first seven days in theaters, Skyfall grossed $119.8 million domestically. Again, the total is slightly larger to The Hobbit but the scale is similar.
Before we go further, let’s address the obvious aspect of the conversation. Relative to expectations, Skyfall is the much stronger performer than The Hobbit. The return to Middle Earth is probably going to wind up as the worst domestic earner for the franchise to date, a mortal lock with regards to ticket sales. Skyfall is the most popular Bond movie of all time…by 78% and counting. Whichever title winds up earning more money is irrelevant. Skyfall is the box office triumph of the two blockbusters.
Keeping the above in mind, I would again stress that as of this moment, Skyfall has earned more domestic revenue than The Hobbit. Theoretically, Skyfall’s box office pace must be better than that of The Hobbit. After all, the James Bond movie earned more on opening weekend as well as slightly more after their respective first weeks in theaters.
This is where the majesty of the Twelve Days of Box Office comes into play. A movie with stronger legs should start to display them immediately. Skyfall did so by earning $125.8 million over its next 17 days in theaters. That is a pace of $7.4 million a day. Because I am sure the thought has popped in your head, yes, Skyfall earned some of this revenue during the notoriously grim post-Thanksgiving box office period.
Do not obsess on that aspect because Skyfall earned much more during Thanksgiving week itself, which is one of the most lucrative periods on the annual box office calendar. In fact, during the Wednesday-through-Friday portion of Skyfall’s second full week, it grossed 15% more than the previous week. Skyfall’s first month of box office was solid across the board.
Contrast the data above to The Hobbit. During that movie’s first seven days, it grossed $113.2 million. Over the following 17 days, the domestic total was $150.7 million. The amount is 20% more than Skyfall managed during the same timeframe despite the fact that the latest Bond thriller had higher demand overall. The Hobbit also had a better pace during those next 17 days, grossing an average of $8.9 million a day. Without the holiday season’s box office inflation, there is no logical explanation as to how a movie that opened lower and claimed less overall demand somehow did better during the same key box office stretch.
Looking at the situation from a different perspective, Skyfall’s take for days eight through 24 was (again) $125.8 million against a first week tally of $119.8 million. So the amounts are similar with only a $6 million (i.e. 5%) difference. The Hobbit’s situation is dramatically different. It was less popular at the start with $113.2 million then spiked with an increase of $37.5 million after the first week. Its days eight through 24 represent a 33% increase from the first seven. This notable skew is late December box office inflation in action. Movies in release all receive this artificial boost in appeal as consumers have the ample free time to catch a flick.
There will be a second part to this analysis in a few days that will include more titles. Before then, I want to examine the Skyfall/The Hobbit comparison from one other angle to demonstrate the impact of the skew for the Twelve Days of Box Office. The key aspect is again weekly performance. This time, I will not lump in the totals.
Skyfall’s totals for its first six weeks in theaters are as follows. We already know about the $119.8 million in week one. The total for week two is $65.8 million, and this amount includes the Thanksgiving inflation. Even with that boost, there is still a 45% drop during the second full week. In week three, Skyfall declined 34% to $43.4 million. The cause for this is the Thanksgiving weekend skew.
The weekdays were down a massive 68%, dropping from $24.7 million to $7.9 million. Even though these particular numbers are from Thanksgiving, they reinforce the premise of how much holidays will boost a project’s box office. In week four, the total was $21.6 million, a 63% drop. After this, normalcy was established in later weeks. The fifth week for Skyfall saw revenue of $14.7 million, a modest 32% decline. The numbers for week six were $9.7 million, a 34% decline.
Before we get to The Hobbit, I want to illuminate one other aspect of The Twelve Days of Box Office. Conveniently, the seventh and eighth weeks of Skyfall occurred during this timeframe. In week seven, Skyfall grossed $9.9 million. This is an increase of 2% from the previous week. Week eight’s tally, the New Year’s period, was $8.7 million, only a million less than the total two weeks before. The absence of box office depreciation is a perfect embodiment of the principle of holiday box office inflation.
Circling back to The Hobbit, its second week of box office was $76.6 million, a 32% drop from the previous total of $113.2 million. In week three, the total was $56.6 million, a 26% decline. Neither of those totals appears particularly impressive at the surface level. Once we introduce the fourth and fifth weeks into the equation, the story changes.
The Hobbit’s fourth week is the first one without holiday inflation as a factor. The total for this frame is only $22.8 million, a 60% decline. More importantly, this total represents vanishing revenue in the amount of roughly $34 million. It is the difference between a healthy movie and a dying one. The instant the holidays were over, The Hobbit began to struggle.
By the fifth week, The Hobbit’s weekly earnings had dropped to $11.9 million. With this latest 48% drop, it is effectively done at the domestic box office. What happened to change the situation? The lucrative holiday period ended. In the process, The Hobbit’s take was no longer artificially inflated.
Summarizing the data, The Hobbit experienced modest declines of 32% and 26% during the holiday period. Once that timeframe ended, the box office demand died quickly with 60% and 48% drops in January. The Hobbit suffered the fate of diminished demand from its predecessors. Its release during the Twelve Days of Box Office is all that saved it from performing similarly to other 2012 reboots such as The Bourne Legacy and The Amazing Spider-Man.
Contrast The Hobbit’s data to that of Skyfall. The latest Bond movie’s weekly drops were fairly consistent at 45%, 34%, 63%, 32% and 34%. The single outlier was due to the unique nature of the third week of box office. This dramatic drop happened due to the holiday inflation of Thanksgiving while the fourth week occurred during the dead period of early December. After Skyfall reached the holidays, its box office actually maintained the same relative level for three consecutive weeks.
This data is the blueprint example of how a rising tide can lift all boats. Skyfall has more overall demand than The Hobbit yet when comparing weekly performance, the Middle Earth movie looks better for the first month. The late December box office period is so lucrative that even the most frontloaded movie can appear to be a solid performer. Conversely, any November release that hangs around long enough to maintain a strong theater presence during late December also benefits.