Top Film Industry Stories of 2013: #12
'80s action heroes are put out to pasture
By David Mumpower
January 6, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
The younger iteration of mammals is always itching for their time in the spotlight. In order to get there, their elders must cede to the powerful will of youth. In 2013, worldwide movie going audiences unanimously selected the “take them out back and shoot them” approach as a shocking number of aging action heroes were soundly rejected at the box office.
The causality for this year’s unrequested euthanasia of the old guard occurred in August of 2010. The Expendables featured a Who’s Who of the action genre. Perhaps nobody took note at the time, but Jason Statham, Jet Li and others were as important to the project as the creator, Sylvester Stallone. Yes, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger were in the movie. The sticking point is that each of their roles was limited, barely more than a cameo. The amount of credit they were ceded was wildly disproportionate.
The Expendables was a massive hit, of course. It earned $103 million domestically as well as $165.2 million overseas. The project sounds like a huge blockbuster yet the early warning signal was there. The Expendables had a production budget of $80 million. The explanation was simple. The actors who star in the film are not only among the most proven in the industry. They also possess the largest egos. Even if they desperately needed to make a comeback, they did not take smaller salaries.
The project moved forward because all of the names involved were proven commodities overseas. Some of them pre-dated the current ascension of foreign box office, meaning that they could sell tickets outside of North America at a time when few could. The Expendables was a tremendous concept enhanced by the profiles of its cast. Studio analysts paid attention to the $268 million performer. As they deconstructed the project, the washed up stars suddenly seemed like valuable assets. Hollywood loves a comeback, after all.
The Expendables 2 reinforced the belief that everything old was new again. The price tag of the sequel crept up to $100 million. An increased price tag for the second film is business as usual in Hollywood, so nobody flinched at the added expense. When The Expendables 2 grossed roughly $45 million more worldwide than its predecessor, the various actors had regained their stroke in the industry. All of them were quickly tied to new projects. And that is when the bubble burst.
During the third week of January, Arnold Schwarzenegger became the first victim of the fickle public. On paper, his project looked like a winner. The Last Stand placed the former governor of California as the sheriff of a border town squaring off against a drug kingpin. Arnie’s films were never known for their subtlety. Still, the deck was stacked in favor of the project when popular comedian Johnny Knoxville was cast as the wise-cracking sidekick.
A 1980s version of The Last Stand would have performed well at the box office before becoming iconic on home video. The children of the movie goers of the 1980s stifled a yawn in the general direction of the film. Released during the lucrative Martin Luther King holiday, Schwarzenegger’s movie debuted in ninth place. It fell out of the top ten by its fourth day of release and never returned after its first week in theaters. The Last Stand, a movie with a $30 million production budget, grossed only $12 million in North America. It is one of the biggest bombs of Schwarzenegger’s career. Amazingly, he would duplicate the feat a few months later.
Before we discuss that failure, we should return to the subject of Sylvester Stallone. Sly and Arnie were inexorably linked throughout the 1980s as the biggest action stars in the land. The notable aspect of The Expendables franchise was the union of the two actors. Only two weeks after The Last Stand failed, Stallone starred in a project of his own. That title, Bullet to the Head, accomplished only one feat of note. It caused The Last Stand to look like Avatar by comparison.
Bullet to the Head, a movie about an assassin with a grudge, earned $1.7 million on its first day in theaters. Now is a good time to note that the movie came with a price tag of $55 million. Its weekend take of $4.5 million throws under the debuts of Oscar ($5.1 million) and Rhinestone ($5.5 million), the worst bombs of Stallone’s career. And that is before we adjust for ticket price inflation. Bullet to the Head is in discussion for the biggest bomb of 2013, grossing only $13.6 million. Its failure is total.
Seeing such performances is why Hollywood producers develop drug habits and/or alcoholism. Imagine if you watched those two movies flame out, knowing that you had just paid the same two actors to star in a $70 million production later that year. This was exactly the issue Lionsgate employees faced with Escape Plan, an October title that they later claimed cost only $50-ish million. Yes, damage control for the movie started weeks before its release. That is the tell-tale sign of a bomb.
When Escape Plan debuted on October 18, its domestic box office tally was $3.4 million. For Stallone, that was double his previous 2013 release yet still disastrous. Its opening weekend result was $9.9 million. Scarily, Escape Plan was also frontloaded. North American audiences only attended to the tune of $24.9 million. On the plus side, its overseas revenue of $78.6 million meant that it was the “best” performer of the three yet it still exited theaters way in the red on the ledger sheet since so much less of overseas revenue is recouped by the distributor. The three movies starring Stallone and Schwarzenegger cost $155 million to produce. They provided a return of $50.5 million in North America.
Had only these two stars failed, the story would be that Stallone and Schwarzenegger should have quit while they were ahead with The Expendables franchise. Alas, there is more. Bruce Willis, another member of The Expendables team, also went back to the well once too often. The project in question was another Die Hard release, this one entitled A Good Day to Die Hard.
Fox ponied up $92 million for what seemed like a sure thing on paper. After all, the least successful of the four previous Die Hard movies grossed $81.4 million domestically. Amusingly, that title was the original Die Hard, which became legendary on home video. Also, its inflation-adjusted box office total is $160 million. The Die Hard franchise has always been rock solid.
A Good Day to Die Hard ended that winning streak. The follow-up to Live Free Or Die Hard, a $134.5 million winner, followed the same mold. One of the McClane children mentioned in the first film is now all grown up, which is reasonable since that movie was released in 1988. Papa John the Invincible must head to Mother Russia to save him. Apparently, taking the Die Hard franchise out of the country is a bad move. A Good Day to Die Hard was a disaster from the start. Fox advertised it obsessively, which is rarely a good sign.
What became clear almost immediately is that Fox knew they had a clunker. The opening weekend of A Good Day to Die Hard reflected an instant 24% decline in the brand. And the situation would get worse from there. The fourth Die Hard movie opened to $33.4 million on its way to a final domestic result of $134.5 million. A Good Day to Die Hard certainly seemed disappointing when it started with $24.8 million. The worst was yet to come.
Die Hard 5 was frontloaded in a way that had never been the case with any previous title in the franchise. Its atrocious quality caused it to flame out quickly at the box office, ending with only $67.3 million domestically. While the overseas revenue remained solid, A Good Day to Die Hard is clearly the worst performer in the history of the franchise. It earned barely half of Live Free Or Die Hard domestically as well as $60 million less than Die Hard: With a Vengeance managed worldwide. And the latter film was released 18 years ago. For the first time ever, a Die Hard project failed as consumers once again shunned an aging action hero.
The news was not any better for Bruce Willis a few months later. His other “safe” project for 2013 was another sequel, Red 2. The follow-up to the surprise 2010 hit was given a production budget of $84 million. The expectation was that it would match if not surpass the $196 million earned by Red. Obviously, that did not happen. Red 2 failed to meet even the most realistic of expectations, grossing $53.3 million domestically. That total represents less than 60% of Red’s $90.4 million tally. Globally, Red 2 finished with $137.2 million, almost $60 million short of the first film.
Bruce Willis tried to play it safe in 2013 with a pair of no-brainer sequels. Both of them failed as audiences put him out to pasture. Had G.I. Joe not been delayed into 2013, Willis would have suffered the worst year of his career. And let’s be honest that G.I. Joe’s success was primarily due to the presence of Channing Tatum and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, the new breed of action stars, rather than Willis.
Every new year starts with the philosophy of out with the old, in with the new. When the New Year’s Eve ball dropped at the beginning of 2013, studios went against the popular adage. Instead, they tried to force feed consumers with the greatest hits of the 1980s. The end result is that audiences found Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis every bit as fresh as Duran Duran, Tiffany and New Kids on the Block. A recent Ridley Scott movie proclaimed that a king has his reign then he dies. In the case of the aging action movie heroes, all of those bullets they inexplicably dodged 30 years ago finally hit them all at once.