Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
October 22, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Edwin Davies: I think this is fine given the modest budget and the unusual subject matter, but I was expecting it to do a touch better considering that it's the first CG animated film to come out since Planes: Fire and Rescue back in July. Coming out after The Boxtrolls and Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day may have lessened its impact since family audiences now have a variety of options to choose from. That might have tempered the opening weekend, but it probably means that it will have do well in the weeks ahead as families get around to seeing it, and it's Dios de los Muertos setting should give it a strong appeal in Latin American countries. Like Fury, I consider this to be a decent start but find the prospects for the film in the weeks ahead much more promising.
Jason Barney: I think this opening is just fine. It could've opened higher, but it is not as though this was a children's franchise with built in fan support. Sometimes I am surprised when films like this don't open higher, as I continue to feel the animated and family friendly market is under explored. This by no means takes away from a successful start for Book of Life. $17 million is a great number against that budget of only $50 million. I would expect the holds to be pretty good over the next couple of weeks and it will surpass its budget well before it leaves theaters.
Felix Quinonez: I think it's just fine. It's by no means a smash but I didn't really expect it to be. Given the fact that it didn't have a built in franchise audience and it looked kind of weird, it would have been unfair to expect it to break out. But because it has a low enough budget it should be a modest hit.
Reagen Sulewski: It's interesting that we're getting to the point where "alternative animation" is becoming a thing, and a viable one at that. Hopefully no one was looking on this to challenge Pixar in any respect, but we're getting some consistent results for the off the beaten path animated films, whereas previously they might have had a $5 million opening and been begging an Animated Feature nomination as a consolation. This is what breaking out of the animation ghetto looks like.
David Mumpower: On a personal level, I am disappointed by the result, because I thought the movie demonstrated a rare degree of animation creativity. Its look is refreshing in an industry that has become inundated with sameness. I suspect that the issue is the fact that nobody really knows what the movie is about, and the advertising certainly would not have educated anyone on the subject. I consider this one in a huge miss in terms of the opportunity cost of having an engaging product that nobody knew how to sell.
Kim Hollis: It's about what I expected. The film looked amazing stylistically, but I suspect it was just a touch bit too weird for a wider audience than it received. Once international receipts and home video are rolled into the totals, the studio should be very pleased with what Guillermo del Toro and team accomplished here.
Max Braden: That's equal to the opening for The Boxtrolls just three weeks ago. I see one as slightly darker, one as slightly brighter, both somewhat of an acquired taste for animation style, which explains why they both landed the same opening. To me that says there's a market for "interesting animation," even if it's not the blockbuster style that tops box office charts.
Kim Hollis: The Nicholas Sparks weeper The Best of Me debuted to $10 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?
Edwin Davies: It's the worst opening of any film based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, so right off the bat the film is notable for all the wrong reasons. It's particularly bad when you factor in that it shot under the opening weekends of Message in a Bottle and A Walk to Remember, which came out in 1999 and 2002, respectively. I don't feel that that is enough to make a judgement about Sparks' brand, especially since just last year saw the release of Safe Haven, one of the best performing films to be based on one of his novels, so it seems to me that the problem here was more to do with the quality and the marketing. James Marsden and Michelle Monaghan are both very good actors, but neither are huge names, and the dual-timelines made the ads for this seem pretty silly (every article I've read about the film, and I mean every single one, has pointed out that Luke Bracey and James Marsden look nothing alike, which makes the idea that they're playing the same character at different ages look completely ridiculous). And while most Sparks films tend to get bad reviews, this one got particularly awful ones, so that might have kept some of his fair weather fans away until they heard what the word-of-mouth was.
Jason Barney: I should start off by saying that I have never read a Nicholas Sparks novel, nor have I ever seen an adaptation of any of the books. That said, even if this is the type of product I am going to shy away from, the movie is going to make money. This one was made for $26 million, so it is not going to have to work very hard to surpass that mark. I am willing to bet a lot of people selected something else BESIDES The Best of Me specifically because of its content....and the film still got decent attention. It will likely fall out of the top 10 during Halloween weekend, but because it didn't take much to make, it won't take long for it to be successful.
Matthew Huntley: This was about in line with my expectations, although I wonder why the studio chose to release such a maudlin romance in the middle of October instead of around, say, late January/early February when films of this nature tend to flourish. Perhaps they wanted to avoid competition with the upcoming Fifty Shades of Grey?
In any event, I agree with Jason that The Best of Me's opening guarantees it will eventually turn a profit given its relatively low cost and we'll definitely see other Sparks weepers realized on film in the future, although they just might not be released at this time of the year going forward.
Edwin's point about the actors not looking anything alike made me laugh because I think that's been a universal criticism of it ever since the trailers. It seems so obvious a mistake.
Felix Quinonez: Even with its low budget it seems kind of low. I don't think this movie will have any sort of legs and will be a distant memory soon enough. And even if it does match its production budget, it still has advertising costs to meet. Because of this, I think in a best case scenario it will manage to break even. And I think usually the goal is to make money rather than just break even.
Reagen Sulewski: For awhile, "Nicolas Sparks" was white person for "Tyler Perry", wherein there was a maddeningly large and inexplicable audience for these manipulative, ridiculously plotted weepies, but that spell finally seems to have been broken. Or maybe it's just that James Marsden is seriously cursed and really is the modern-day Ralph Bellamy. Now, it is the worst reviewed of Sparks' adaptations, so I'd say it's a good bet that there is at least some relative sensitivity to quality for its audience (i.e. these are *all* bad movies, but even then there are some limits). Now as mentioned, these are quite cheap to produce and almost impossible to lose money on, so the pipeline won't stop here. But once people get out of the habit of seeing every one of these glorified Hallmark movies, the next ones actually have to succeed on their own merits. Good luck with that.
David Mumpower: I for one look forward to the next Nicholas Sparks movie, Kill the Protagonist. It will be just like all the others, and nobody will understand why any self-respecting person goes to see it.
Kim Hollis: While on one hand I think this is a pretty sub-par result, I guess since the budget was low that no one's going to be too upset about it. The marketing was really weird and even off-putting. I'd say that maybe the low box office for this one means that the Nicholas Sparks slaughter (seriously, he kills more characters than George R.R. Martin) will come to an end, but that's not going to happen, I fear.