Monday Morning Quarterback
By BOP Staff
October 22, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Matthew Huntley: Just as the movie is a perfect example of an unnecessary horror remake, its box office numbers are perfectly in line with expectations, given the genre, the cast and the time of year. Bottom line: there were no real surprises here and I expect there to be fewer surprises going forward. Carrie will probably lose half of its audience from week to week, be all but gone by the second weekend of November, and earn $40-$45 million in total, which will justify its $30 million budget and probably green-light another horror remake in the near future.
Edwin Davies: This is a bit less than I anticipated owing solely to the strong marketing effort. Sony advertised the hell out of Carrie and really put the word out there, but apparently no one cared to listen. I think it fell into a trap that a lot of horror remakes do; it was a new version of a film that is held up as a classic, which basically means that few of the original fans will show up, but it also relied really heavily on the name recognition of the original without really offering much in the ads to entice newcomers in. Compare that to Evil Dead, which made great efforts to not only appeal to fans of the original but offered plenty of inventive, terrifying gore in the trailers to get non-fans interested. I'm also not sure how strong the Carrie name is, based on the fact that all the other attempts to continue or revive it as a film series, a TV show and even a musical failed pretty spectacularly. I get the feeling that a lot of other Stephen King books have surpassed it in cultural relevance over the years, so the name wasn't strong enough to overcome the general lack of excitement around the film.
Bruce Hall: Evil Dead made it a point to offer a slightly new spin on a familiar classic that (in my opinion, anyway) worked very well for the film. And the trailers (an art form in and of themselves) communicated this effectively and made the remake seem like something worthwhile. This is why I hate referring to remakes as "unnecessary" because I have a hard time identifying what a "necessary" one is. Stories have been getting retold as long as there have been stories; I really don't see it as anything to fear or become upset about. That said, the trailers for Carrie did NOT appear to offer us any new or compelling reasons to rush out and see the reboot. Sure, I like Chloe Grace Moretz. Sure, I like Julianne Moore. But if you're familiar with the original film you already know what happens and how it ends, and the trailers don't bother to hide any of it - so what's new here?
Not much, it appears. But while this result isn't quite as impressive as what we saw for Evil Dead, I think it's solid for a rated R horror remake that generated relatively little enthusiasm and stars as its lead an actress who technically isn't even old enough to watch it. How well the movie stands up over time is a matter of debate, but if any of us are still debating it a year from now, I'd say it passes that test, as well.
Jason Barney: It is not going to be a failure, but I think everyone involved had to be hoping for larger numbers. This was supposed to be one of "the" films going into Halloween, but this opening isn't exactly strong. Carrie is not going to be a bad investment, but I sense there was money left on the table. In the bigger picture, I wonder if this was supposed to be a bit of a tease for any studio that is thinking about picking up Stephen King's Dark Tower series. If Carrie had been wildly successful, people would have said King's name and stories deserve more time on the big screen. In the end the film will do fine, but I think it is a bit below expectations.
Tim Briody: I actually wonder how much of the audience this was aimed at knew this was even a remake, though I guess you could counter that by saying most horror releases are remakes these days. This landed right in the wheelhouse for mid-tier horror, we weren't going to have any sort of Conjuring or Insidious breakout here.
Kim Hollis: While it feels like Carrie fell below expectations, I can't help but think that there wasn't really that much to it that was super appealing to a wider audience. I think fans of the book/original film might have been intrigued if it appeared to offer *anything* different at all, but it seems to be a pretty by-the-book remake of the original film itself. Even if a younger generation wasn't aware of the story from the 1976 film, the trailer gave everything away, so the shock value of the bloodbath at the prom wasn't even something that people could buzz about. I feel like this is a missed opportunity, but honestly I'm a lot more interested in new horror ideas than recycled stuff anyway.
David Mumpower: My overriding thought with Carrie is that the marketplace is so saturated with horror movies. The specialness of October releases is negated by the ubiquity of the product. In addition, the target audience for horror movies has always been the 14-24 year old demo. The people in that age group can watch hundreds of better genre titles on their phones, tablets and computers. So there is an onus on Carrie to differentiate why it is worth the effort. I believe that is a key factor in why it was ordinary performer rather than a breakout hit.
Kim Hollis: Escape Plan, the action flick that teams up senior citizens Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, opened with $9.9 million. What do you think of this result?
Matthew Huntley: Clearly, people didn't see The Expendables and The Expendables 2 because of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, or at least not these two alone. Otherwise, Escape Plan would have opened to at least, at least, double-digit numbers. It goes without saying this will be a huge loss to the production company and distributor (not sure if the two are one and the same, but it's being released by Summit on the domestic side), as the movie cost a hefty $70 million to make.
What's also obvious, and it was evident earlier this year with The Last Stand and Bullet to the Head, is these two action icons have completely lost their pull with movie-going audiences and should now be relegated to cameos, if that. It's sad, but times change. Had this movie come out 20 years ago, it would have opened to three times this amount, and that's in early '90s dollars. Now, though, people aren't asking for Stallone/Schwarzenegger flicks, and the numbers are indicative of that. I like these guys as action stars - and who knows, Escape Plan could be good [I've yet to see it] - but I think it's high time they retire so as not to suffer any more embarrassment.
Edwin Davies: I think the novelty of seeing these guys together has worn pretty thin over the course of the two Expendables movies, as evidenced by the second making less than the first domestically, and the hook of "old guys break out of super jail!" was clearly not as interesting to audiences as "look: we have all the action stars!" On top of that, it's painfully obvious at this point that neither Arnie or Stallone is much a draw anymore (though the latter managed to eke a few hits out of making sequels to his back catalogue) and though the thought of seeing them together in a film would have been huge business 25 years ago, now it just looks kind of tired. (I fully expect to say the exact same things at Christmas when Grudge Match opens since it stands to sully both Rocky and Raging Bull.) Even with foreign grosses, I don't see this one getting close to earning its production budget and marketing back, so no one is walking away from this happy.
Jason Barney: Sadly, this is an awful result. There is no other way to describe it. I wonder if opening this in the middle of summer would have given it a little more pull, but I'm just thinking out loud. The numbers are just horrible. A $70 million investment pulling in pennies on weekend one. It does make you wonder if the box office significance of these two stars is at a low point.
Tim Briody: To steal a joke The Onion used earlier this year: "Escape Plan Poised To Be Biggest Movie of 1992." I think this year has proved that when it comes to washed up action stars, people only care about The Expendables now.
Kim Hollis: There was just nothing about Escape Plan that is appealing to that key younger demographic. Proving the point, 61% of the audience was over 30. The days of the "big action star" appear to be over, and I don't just mean for Arnie and Sly. I can't think of any younger actors (other than Jason Statham, and he's 46) who are making a living appearing in these sorts of films, and I think it would be incredibly challenging for someone to try to break out some of the types of franchises that made these two guys famous. The Fast/Furious Franchise is the only exception to the rule, I think.
David Mumpower: I have been calling this one AARP Prison Break for a while now. And that sums up why I have had low expectations for it ever since January. When the solo projects from these dudes failed, there was no logical reason to expect different behavior from a joint project involving them. The real question I have moving forward is whether The Expendables franchise sees a similar hit now that the novelty of the idea has passed.
Kim Hollis: The Fifth Estate, a movie about Wikileaks featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, opened with just $1.7 million. Why didn't audiences show up for this one?
Matthew Huntley: If anyone is like me, they didn't know what this movie was about or what the title meant going into the weekend (curiosity may have prompted people to look it up). Those two factors alone are enough to kill a movie's business, and that seems to be the case here.
What's interesting is the marketing for The Fifth Estate was rather prolific, and I knew it was coming out this weekend (even thought about seeing it without knowing anything about it), but simply posting ads online and playing commercials is useless unless those ads and commercials are clear and enticing to the audience. Obviously, this wasn't the case. On top of that, the movie had no star power, despite the cast being talented.
Unfortunately, the studio is set to lose a bundle on this because it will likely show no legs and has little international appeal. It'll go down as one of those movies where if someone mentions it at all, the response will be, "Never heard of it."
Edwin Davies: I think Matthew hit the nail on the head in terms of how poorly the ads got across what the film was actually about. I know a little bit about WikiLeaks and a bit about Julian Assange, so I knew enough to get a general sense of what the film might focus on, but I struggled to see what the real conflict or story was about, other than leaking documents and how that may or may not be a bad thing. That ambiguity could be mined to make a fascinating film, and a relevant one given all the talk about invasion of privacy over the last year, but the ads failed to sell the idea that the film was interesting or important. It just looked muddled and confused, with no clear angle on the story for people who don't know much about WikiLeaks or a compelling hook for those who do. The bad reviews were probably the final nail in the coffin, though, since it probably made even the people who might be interested think better, especially when they could rent We Steal Secrets, the documentary on WikiLeaks which covers a lot of the same subject matter in a more thorough manner.
Jason Barney: All of the above. The subject matter does seem to be worthy. You would think there would be some support for a product like this, but you can't get much lower than a $1.7 million opening.
David Mumpower: Over the last few weeks of the United States government shutdown, I have engaged in conversation about the "insider baseball" aspect of politics. Some of the people who speak on the subject the most believe that they live in a bubble that does not reflect anything that an ordinary person wants to discuss. The same is true of journalism, a field that has been brought to screen innumerable times over the years, almost always with the same result. People latch onto certain stories but they simply do not care how the sausage gets made in most instances. Julian Assange is fascinating to me, and I enjoy debating the ethics of WikiLeaks a great deal. I believe that is an important subject that is glossed over too often because people do not understand the details enough. And even *I* had zero interest in the movie version of the story I have obsessively discussed since day one. In short, the marketing team had no chance here. This is a movie nobody wanted.
Kim Hollis: I'd agree that this could have been extremely timely and relevant, but the biggest problem for a theoretical prestige picture like The Fifth Estate is that bad reviews will absolutely kill it. It's not the kind of subject matter that automatically draws audiences into theaters, so if they're lukewarm or bad, people will either wait for video or just not bother at all.