Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
April 23, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Edwin Davies: They did a savvy job of snapping up a book that is very popular and gearing the film towards the faithful. Also, they set the film apart from most Christian films by casting real actors (okay, they're all second-tier at best, but it says a lot that the likes of Thomas Haden Church and Margo Martindale are several letter grades higher than the Z-list talents and amateurs that usually appear in these sorts of films) and hiring people who can actually make a film. It cost a good deal more than God's Not Dead, but it also looked a lot better and seemed more like a real movie.
That difference in budget is the main reason why I don't think this is as impressive as God's Not Dead, which has done very well for a film that cost so little and didn't have a major studio backing it, but more impressive than Son of God, which had already aired on TV and was basically found money. Noah doesn't really seem to fit with the others since it wasn't trying so hard to appeal to a religious audience, and made choices that might have alienated them in the pursuit of artistic satisfaction, which is the exact opposite of what the other three films have done. I think that the success of Heaven is for Real might be more significant than any of them, though, since it's a clear example of a big studio successfully tapping into the audience that independent faith-targeted companies have been catering to in recent years, and will probably lead to other studios following a similar route.
Brett Ballard-Beach: I think the success of each, as well as audience satisfaction with (including Noah, although it also stands as an exception, for the reasons Edwin noted) has led to a cumulative effect. The films have also been positioned just far enough apart, and are distinct enough that they haven't cannibalized one another. Heaven Is for Real is the perfect example of when to open a film mid-week, in this case both to get word-of-mouth for the weekend and because its target audience would be primed for and might have the available time and desire to catch it early.
I understand David's cheeky remarks re: Kinnear and the utter failure of Rake, but I also think that - although he has never been and will never be one who is an "opener" - he has a wheelhouse of roles such as this, or the father in The Last Song, where he can play an average, decent, hardworking American individual, without descending into cliché or sameness, as well as any of his peers. Any interest I have in seeing this I am willing to attribute to him. (His great performance in Flash of Genius bought him a long line of cred with me.) As for the ranking in terms of performance: I am still blown away that Son of God, with its mostly repurposed from TV storytelling, made over $50 million. Heaven had the greatest chance to break out even if the others before it had not done as well.
David Mumpower: The problem with having so many similarly themed titles excel in such a short period of time is that we run out of new avenues to explain the sameness of the results. After the success of Son of God, several of us mentioned that we anticipated a similar pattern of behavior for the other upcoming titles. As such, we would be hypocritical to act surprised with the release of each one. Heaven Is for Real was provided the most studio support while Son of God had the support of a Hollywood power couple. After the latter film excelled in theatrical release, the popularity of the former title was presumed. The shock would be if it had become the first of the four films to disappoint.
In terms of ranking the performances, I believe a solid argument can and has been made in the replies above. I will counter by noting that we are still in the business of determining revenue gains predicated upon investment. Son of God was free-rolling because it was simply an edited version of a mini-series. Even so, there was a financial outlay of $22 million that triggered a return of $67 million in global revenue, roughly 88% of which came from the more lucrative North American side. Heaven Is for Real is at $34.5 million after in a week in North American theaters; its production budget is $12 million. Before its theatrical run is finished, it will be a much larger winner than Son of God, even if more work was required in making the movie.
Noah is actually the worst of the four at the moment, garnering $300 million against a $125 million outlay. If more than 35% of its revenue were domestic, I would place it higher on the list. If its overseas revenue winds up significantly higher than the current amount of $200 million, I will re-evaluate. Until then, the clear winner in my estimation is God’s Not Dead, which was made for a song ($2 million) yet somehow managed to almost a factor of 25 more in box office revenue. That performance places it on the list of all-time greatest cinematic returns on investment.
Kim Hollis: I’d agree that at this point, there’s really nothing surprising about this result. The surprise will be when (if?) a faith-based movie fails. At that point, we’ll be analyzing what went wrong and why, and the answers may not be that easy to come by. I do believe that the audience for these films has been energized and empowered by knowing that they are being catered to in theaters and for the foreseeable future, I would expect that they’ll continue to support and reward people and productions who seem to be of a like mind.
With regards to the ranking of the performances, I’d agree that Noah is clearly on the bottom, though I do hesitate to even include it amongst these other films. It is neither directly nor intentionally meant to target people of faith. Son of God was preaching to the already converted, so it didn’t have nearly as much work to do to get the audience interested. Heaven Is for Real had the benefit of studio support as well as some bigger and more recognizable names, so I put it just a bit below God’s Not Dead (whose biggest star was Kevin Sorbo) in terms of impressiveness. With that said, I think it’s pretty remarkable that both of these films have been powerful performers in theaters. Studios really should continue this sort of micro-targeting, because it’s obviously paying dividends. Additionally, with digital advertising, it’s easy to market the product to precisely the right audience.
Kim Hollis: A Haunted House 2, the sequel no one was asking for, debuted with $8.8 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?
Edwin Davies: That some people really didn't have anything better to do than pay to see this, not even eat chocolate and/or get high? This release smacks of a lack of effort from everyone involved, from the filmmakers who slapped together a cheap sequel to an already slapdash "original", through to a marketing department who put almost no effort into differentiating it from the first one. This result feels in keeping with that, since it made less than half of what the first one did, and will sink like a stone next week, but it cost so little that it doesn't matter what happens to the film going forward. It's already depressingly profitable, in that any profit it makes is spitting in the eye of people who care about or put effort into making films.
Brett Ballard-Beach: It's playing out exactly like Scary Movie 2 - just about as critically reviled and opening at over 50% less (albeit on a much, much smaller scale gross-wise and a much, much larger scale grossout-wise.) What this means, of course, is that we can expect three more of these in the next decade. I will give Marlon this due: I don't know many other actors whose career could realistically encompass Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood (loved it back in '96, btw) Requiem for a Dream, White Chicks, G.I. Joe: The Hunt for Cobra, and this. That is a testament to… something
Felix Quinonez: I think that the fact that it opened to half as much as the first one speaks volumes. The first one is held in very low regard by audiences and this one will probably fade even quicker and be forgotten about by summer. But it doesn't even matter because the budget is so low that it will still make money and I wouldn't be surprised if they actually make a third one.
Max Braden: The first one was easily among the five worst movies I saw that year, if not dead last. $9 million is shockingly high for anything related to it. Maybe these were lazy purchases when the preferred movie was sold out? I suppose that like Bad Grandpa, some audiences want to just check out and gamble on a glimpsing a surprise.
David Mumpower: As I said at the time, A Haunted House was vastly inferior to Scary Movie 5, its satirical cohort early last year. The fact that A Haunted House received a lightning-fast sequel while Scary Movie 5 bombed is mystifying to me. I watched about 160 movies last year; A Haunted House was the one of the three worst I saw. The fact that anybody attended opening weekend for the sequel is indicative of how desperate people are to watch a satire on occasion. What percentage of these “comedies” are even 30% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes? Since The Naked Gun series ended, there have been at least a dozen such films, and they have been universally atrocious.
Kim Hollis: Bears, a nature documentary from Disney, debuted with $4.8 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?
Edwin Davies: This feels like it's in keeping with the way that the Disneynature brand has been going since it peaked with the first film, Earth, back in 2009. The subsequent films trended downwards before rebounding significantly with Chimpanzee, because apes are cute, and this feels like a return to the norm since Bears doesn't have as strong a story as Chimpanzee or the promise of grandeur that Earth had as selling points. It does demonstrate that a documentary about bears that doesn't end with a man being mauled to death is a surer path to success, so Werner Herzog is probably kicking himself right now.
Jay Barney: I am the first person to criticize how Disney spends its money. However, I must applaud them for putting projects like these out there. For all of the moaning we do about the company performing a money grab when they put something like Planes out after the Cars films, planning to develop Star Wars films every couple of years, or buying the rights to this or that franchise, they do put a little effort into these quieter... nicer projects.
That said, the opening for Bears has to be seen as a little bit of a disappointment. Bears' $4.7 million is the lowest of the Disneynature projects thus far. Not that these have huge openings, but it will need to have some pretty good daily holds for it to approach the $15 million for African Cats or the $19 million of Oceans.
Another reason why this is a mild disappointment is it didn't even open in the top 10. It’s hard to get any sort of exposure when a new entry into the market loses out to films that have been playing for weeks. I guess I expected it to do a little better.
Felix Quinonez: To me all of these Disney nature docs feel like something I could watch on TV. Because of this I'm always surprised to see that people actually pay to see this in theaters. I think that any money they make off of these is gravy so the result is totally fine. But the fact that this is the lowest opening shows that maybe people are wising up.
Max Braden: When I was a kid, my favorite school days were when we all assembled in the gym to watch Disney nature films. Or maybe it was just one time and I so enjoyed seeing that bear tumble down the side of the snowy mountain that my mind has tricked me into believing that it was a regular occurrence. We may have also seen nature shorts in front of movies at the theater on Saturday mornings. But as much as I enjoyed them I don't recall ever feeling an urge to go to the theater to see a nature doc. Now that we have Animal Planet and National Geographic channels and streaming docs online, there seems to be even less of an urgency to go see nature docs in theaters. You really have to sex them up (Rated G style) with charm like March of the Penguins to make them stand out from the available material on TV.
David Mumpower: The only bear I care about is El Oso Blanco, the White Bear humans call Evan Gattis.