Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
March 25, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Edwin Davies: This is a good or disappointing result depending entirely on what you're comparing it to. A lot of people seemed to be billing Divergent as the next Hunger Games, which was ridiculous because no one thought The Hunger Games was going to be as big as it was, or at least the next Twilight, both of which it fell short of by some distance. However, in comparison to prospective YA franchises like Beautiful Creatures, Mortal Instruments and Vampire Academy, it's a resounding success, since it almost grossed more on opening weekend than all those films managed in their entire domestic runs. Clearly, Lionsgate fell into the former camp since they were pretty bullish in their expectations, giving the film a budget higher than those granted to the first Hunger Games and Twilight installments, and putting the sequels into production before the first had even been released. That's a level of confidence and/or arrogance that has only partially been justified by this result, which is by no means disastrous, but doesn't suggest that the second and third films will break out in any major way.
In trying to figure out why Divergent didn't make a huge impact, I think the key factor was how badly the marketing put across the premise (not to mention the deeper problem that the books themselves aren't easy to explain/make sense of) to the unconverted. The audience that showed up this weekend was predominately the audience that already existed for the books, whereas both Twilight and The Hunger Games managed to have a much broader appeal because they had both name recognition and premises that were easy to put across to anyone who didn't know what a Katniss Everdeen was. "Girl falls in love with a vampire" and "Girl has to fight for her life in a vicious contest" are the sort of high-concept ideas that the late Don Simpson would have killed for, whereas "people are divided up by their personality traits, and some of them have different personality traits and that's bad, and also Kate Winslet is there" isn't that compelling to people who don't already have a vested interest in the source material.
Jason Barney: I am going to stand back a bit and not join the "Uh-oh" crowd. Plenty of venues are reporting that this didn't meet expectations. Even Lionsgate was promoting a larger opening. Everyone involved should be happy this project has been this successful, and celebrate they might have something to grow in the future. For me, the budgeting is the primary equation of whether or not Divergent can be considered a successful product. An opening of $55 million is excellent for a story no one is really aware of, and when compared to some of the other teen novel attempts lately, this weekend is outstanding. Especially against a budget of $85 million.
Book to movie efforts are not easy, and the recent history of mega success that everyone talks about clouds the picture a bit. Not every novel to movie franchise can be Harry Potter, Twilight, or Hunger Games. Just looking at some of the other recent efforts puts things more into perspective. The second Percy Jackson book came out on film last August and that opened to a mere $23 million against a large $90 million budget. International grosses helped out a lot. Mortal Instruments was a flop, $60 million reported budget with a $14 million opening. Even Ender's Game can go into the discussion....a $100 million dollar budget with barely that much in total worldwide box office. Need I remind everyone Vampire Academy which was just released a few weeks ago - and earned about as much as I have in pocket change right now.
My point is this: bringing a story from the printed page to the big screen and making it successful is very difficult. Using Harry Potter, Twilight, or Hunger Games as a comparison ends immediately. A lot of established products don't even do as well Divergent will. Its opening is fine...good even.
Felix Quinonez: I think the opening weekend itself is good. It's not great but I don't think that it's the disaster or even disappointment that it's already being labeled. As much as every one wants to believe that the YA adaptations are the new gold mine, the failures outnumber the successes. But when you judge Divergent on its own merits rather than making unrealistic comparisons, I believe that it did quite well for itself.
The real problem I see is the scheduling. Next week it has competition from Noah and the following week brings us Captain America. And when you add in the fact that the opening weekend is already being labeled a "disappointment" I don't see Divergent having strong legs so it will fade pretty quickly and have to rely on overseas grosses to really justify its already greenlit sequels.
Kim Hollis: I would agree that it's a fine result, probably even good. It's all too easy for people to get caught up in huge expectations for these films to make the same kind of money that The Hunger Games, Twilight and Harry Potter have earned, all while failing to acknowledge that we've had exactly three franchises in the last decade or so that have managed such heights. Considering that this film didn't have the cross-demographic appeal that the three of those possessed, $55 million might even be labeled exceptional. I think it's going to fall big time in its second weekend, but that should be expected of a movie that had nothing but devoted fans rushing out to see it (and poor reviews, to boot). Competition won't be the reason for its decline, though.
David Mumpower: This conversation obviously involves a great deal of nuance. Edwin's exceptional reply aptly reflects the veracity of conflicting points of view. Scott Mendelson, probably my favorite box office writer who doesn't write for BOP, wrote an entire column about why people should keep perspective regarding this performance relative to previous would-be Twilight clone flops. John Hamann felt exactly the opposite and said as much in his Weekend Wrap-Up. I see both sides of the conversation for just the reasons mentioned above.
The reality is that cinematic adaptations of popular literary works are now and always have been a dicey proposition. We all know the list of recent failures, each of which we have harshly evaluated during previous iterations of Monday Morning Quarterback. I have probably been the harshest critic of all to the point where I accepted the fact that a certain movie studio vice president was never going to contact me again because of (accurate) comments I made regarding the franchise potential of Percy Jackson. I understand the person's frustration with our negativity yet the performance of the two movies released has demonstrated that all of our concerns were well founded. Frankly, even the smartest people in the industry struggle to find the perfect story concept that translates to the realm of film. If anything, we should appreciate The Hunger Games all the more for its achievement in avoiding these horrors.
Divergent is not a failure. That in and of itself is a success. The bar is so low that simply not bombing does qualify as a moral victory, at the very least. Divergent will prove to be one of the ten most popular original concept releases of the year, a velvet roped divider that few people are desperate to cross yet an important one. That is the particularly good news.
The problems with Divergent are myriad. The most pressing issue is its critical reception. Only 40% of Rotten Tomatoes evaluators enjoyed the movie. That metric is in sharp contrast to its A Cinemascore. I believe that the current IMDb score of 7.6 is the analytic that tells the story. Simply stated, the people who loved Divergent as a book breathlessly anticipated the film. Their loyalty was rewarded with a satisfying outing.
Meanwhile, those of us who have not read the book (I fully intended to do so but have not as of yet) were provided little positive reinforcement for buying movie tickets. The exhaustive amount of table setting performed to establish later franchise titles negates any true enjoyment of Divergent itself. People feel like they were invited to a delicious dinner but were forced to leave after the soup and salad portion of the meal, which took 145 minutes to serve.
In this regard, I believe that Divergent is an odd, unlikely companion to The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in terms of cautionary tales about would-be franchises. Narnia had one strong selling point, which happened to be the built-in branding of the first title. The other six novels are obscure. After the first film, the Narnia franchise had nowhere to go but down. Divergent is the inverse in that there is a tremendous story ahead according to every fan of the novels who has passionately described their quality. Unfortunately, the first film provides little incentive for those of us who have not read the books to continue watching the movies. "Sit through the first one and we promise the sequels will be better" does not qualify as a great tagline yet it is appropriate for Divergent.
Given the above, what I have to say about the opening weekend of Divergent is that we are discussing similar box office (albeit fewer tickets sold) as Wanted. That is a movie that did not merit a sequel, and I question whether Divergent does either, at least given what has transpired thus far. Since we already know that one is forthcoming, my current expectation is that Insurgent (or whatever it is called) follows the path of Narnia and Percy Jackson. At best, it will match the box office of its predecessor. At worst, it barely attains half of whatever Divergent manages. The failing here is in rewarding viewers with a high quality first film. I think the "disappointing"/"satisfactory" opening weekend box office reflects a failure to achieve this all-important feat.