Monday Morning Quarterback Part III
By BOP Staff
March 28, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com

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Kim Hollis: Admission, the comedy featuring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, opened with just $6.1 million. What went wrong here?

Brett Ballard-Beach: Two great, comic, subversive talents in a ... sincere, grown-up, conventional romance... set in the world of college admissions. If Focus felt they could have nurtured this into a minor hit, they would have started small. They seemed to know the reviews would be divided, and word-of-mouth wouldn't help, and they opted to get what they could while they could.

Felix Quinonez: I honestly think what went wrong was the fact that the movie just didn't look good and the reviews were terrible. Audiences like both Fey and Rudd but neither is a big enough draw to get people to see a movie just because they're in it. It's a shame, too, because they seem like a genuinely good pairing.

Bruce Hall: Tina Fey is brilliant. And Paul Rudd is like Kurt Russell - our primitive civilization is not yet advanced enough to fully perceive his greatness.

However, the trailer I saw for for Admission was really confusing, regardless of the number of Grammy nominated hits they crammed into the soundtrack. Wait...she's an admissions officer? For Princeton? I was a C student, so I always assumed that place was fictional, like Arkham Asylum.

So, like most female leads in romantic comedies she's an odd duck who throws herself into her job to compensate for being alone...but then Paul Rudd...is...some kind of...farmer? And wait, some kid might be Tina Fey's son, and...so she...wait...what? Is this about the kid, or about Fey and Rudd's characters falling in love at the end of the second act?

So let's recap: If I'm over 35 I should want to see this because Tina Fey and Paul Rudd and Lily Tomlin are in it. If I'm under 35, I will want to see this because I heard Of Monsters and Men were on the soundtrack.

Sounds like $6 million to me.

Edwin Davies: Bruce nails one of the major problems the film faced: its marketing was all over the place. The "I think he's your son" aspect didn't feature at all in the early ads for the film, which were otherwise fairly bland but not unappealing, which suggests to me that someone got cold feet and started trying to cobble together ads that emphasized the aspect of the film that was actually pretty unique, despite having spent months advertising the film as a bland, cookie-cutter romcom in a slightly offbeat setting. I think that probably hurt the film a bit by making it unclear what it was about, and sticking to just one aspect would probably have made it an easier sell to a broader audience. It still probably wouldn't have been able to overcome the reviews or the fact that neither of the two leads is a particularly strong draw on their own, but it might have done a teensy bit better, at least. Anyway, the film didn't cost all that much to make, and since the marketing push seemed to mostly involved getting Fey and Rudd to plea with people to see it, this won't go down as too big of a failure.

Jay Barney: Again, it is sad when we can define a movie that does not lose money as a success, but Admission is not going to cost anybody any money. I agree the numbers are much lower than anyone would have expected or hoped, and the potential for much higher grosses should have been on the table, but not every film can be a smashing success. This one will make back its $13 million budget and be a footnote in the career of Fey and Rudd. Will it be disappointing. Yes? Will the end result be awful? No.

Max Braden: I love Tina Fey, I think she's hilarious in 30 Rock, but in movies like this where she's more restrained, she doesn't ring true. Date Night was similar. I also started to hear unusually negative rumbles about a plotline not really evident in the trailer. Ironically, it made me think, "Didn't they just do that recently, in The Switch?" Have Jason Bateman and Paul Rudd done a movie together yet? I'd prefer that.

David Mumpower: I couldn't shake the notion that Admission felt like a very special episode of well, any comedy/soap opera ever made. Beyond that issue, my expectations were already low because Focus Features rarely distributes major wide releases. Jason is correct that it will earn back its budget, but Admission has been relegated to a title that will earn most of its attention on home video.

Kim Hollis: After debuting with $87,667 per location in three theaters last weekend, Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers expanded to 1,104 sites and made $4.9 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?

Brett Ballard-Beach: As I noted elsewhere, Harmony Korine is in the multiplexes and the top 10, please adjust your Apocalypse watches accordingly. For a $2 million film that a brand-new distributor probably hoped would break out, but was in no way sure on, using social media and word-of-mouth to sell this film as successfully as they have has to be viewed as a win. I was thinking and hoping that this might pull a little closer to $10 million, and God knows what the second weekend will be like (I truly don't know if further expansion is called for), but let the latest Disney channel starlets to go R, soak up the accolades and debauchery for just a few more minutes.

Felix Quinonez: I think it's a solid expansion but it's not really that impressive. I think there was some curiosity because of the Disney starlets but I don't really see this having strong legs. But then again it's already made back its budget and gathered some attention for the distributor and its stars so every one involved should be pleased.

Edwin Davies: Considering Harmony Korine's back catalogue (his last film was shot on VHS and about people who have sex with garbage. That's a real film. That exists!) this is...kind of mindblowing, really. It's a deliberately provocative film which seems to divide people into the...I'm going to say 5% who enjoy it and 95% who don't know what the hell it is, but the distributors managed to ride the wave of controversy, hype and praise/damnation pretty expertly. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge breakout success, and wouldn't be surprised if it leaves theaters with less than $10 million in total, but for something that cost next to nothing - especially considering the actors involved - and got plenty of attention for everyone involved, this is a resounding success.

Max Braden: You have to wonder how much of that was young girls living vicariously through the girls on screen vs. dirty old men ogling the young girls on screen. I think it's a big win for Korine, Hudgens, and Gomez, because even if they didn't have a lot of eyeballs on the movie, they can still use high concentration number to claim a strong interest in their product. I think it positions them really well to lobby for future indie films and mainstream material at the same time.

David Mumpower: Everyone has touched upon the aspect of this that few of the people who watched Spring Breakers realized. A nutjob director (and I almost say that as a compliment) has just earned a spot in the top 10 at the box office. This is the best small scale example that sex sells that you will EVER see. I cannot shake the feeling that Korine is laughing at all of the people who watched Spring Breakers in theaters. It's like when the bad guy gets away with the crime in the end. He's the vulgar, erratic Keyser Soze of movie directors.