Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
March 4, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: It is a pretty big surprise, and doubly so considering most of the money it earned was made in 2015. And that Guardians of the Galaxy was a such a big surprise. I still think Guardians is the story of 2014, though. Reflecting back on 2014 is a bit interesting considering the numbers a year ago felt somewhat depressed compared to the hot box office pace over the last decade.
American Sniper deserves a lot of credit, though. It has earned a lot of money and is still going. There is no doubt it is a very significant story.
Matthew Huntley: It is, indeed, a surprise, and I also agree with Jason that's it's impressive. However, I also think it's a disappointment because I don't think it's as good a film as the other top earners. Still, I'm glad it's helped fuel 2015's box-office past 2014.
Felix Quinonez: I think it's an amazing box office performance. Before American Sniper came out, I wasn't even expecting it to make over $100 million domestically. It's a relatively inexpensive movie with a very touchy subject matter from a director who hasn't had a hit in a while and it's going to outgross a Hunger Games movie and a Marvel studios summer blockbuster. I doubt anyone saw this coming.
Michael Lynderey: The race for biggest movie of 2014 has to be the most volatile in ages. First, we had The LEGO Movie and Captain America: The Winter Soldier really break out in the first half of the year, and it wasn't clear for a long time which would be the bigger film (Captain America ended up winning, $259 million to $257 million). As summer progressed, movie after movie opened decently but failed to get any momentum at the box office - Spider-Man, Godzilla, Transformers, the Apes and their Planet, and so on. Nothing could top the Captain.
For the historical record: since at least 1980, the biggest movie released from January to April of any given year has never outgrossed the biggest movie released from May to August of that year. But up until Guardians of the Galaxy came out August 1st and beat Captain America 2, it looked like that streak would fall. Another streak did fall, though: since at least 1980, again, the biggest movie of the summer was never one released in August. Not once. The other three months could claim their share of summer's biggest, but not August. Guardians of the Galaxy changed all that when it won summer 2014 (yes, I know the film technically had Thursday screenings on July 31st. But I believe it's officially an August 1st release).
I will note that, by summer's end, the year's two biggest films were both Marvel titles.
Coming into the last four months of 2014, it looked like Guardians of the Galaxy (which had petered out - if not quite Peter Parkered out - at right over $330 million) would face two challengers: The Hunger Games and the Hobbit, which was the last one in the series and would possibly get a bump from that fact. Everyone expected Hunger Games to take the crown in a cakewalk, but it wasn't so easy. Adding to the suspense, Mockingjay opened considerably lower than the other two films, and it was looking for a long time like it wouldn't overtake Guardians (Hobbit opened okay and took itself out of the race fairly early on). Then, through holiday legs, Hunger Games made just just enough to beat Guardians - $336 million to $333 million. So it was settled then, right?
Apparently Bradley Cooper, the real draw in Guardians of the Galaxy, thought it wasn't. In just about every year of the last 15 or so, since the release of The Phantom Menace started the Decade of the Fanboy (later to become the Century of the Fanboy), someone could reasonably have guessed what the year's biggest movie would be. I don't think anyone could have possibly guessed the answer for 2014. It's impossible, and it's the biggest box office shock probably since I started following the box office when I was 13 years old, in 1999. It's bigger than Blart (no, not in terms of actual weight, of course), bigger than My Big Fat Greek Wedding, and so much bigger than Avatar that you half-way expect American Sniper to have been directed by James Cameron (of course, if it had been, it would have crossed $750 million).
And consider this bizarre notion: if you were following the race for biggest movie of 2014, you needn't have really started paying attention until January 2015. Kudos to American Sniper.
Kim Hollis: I don't know if there are enough superlatives to heap upon American Sniper's performance, because it has exceeded every possible expectation that any reasonable person could have had for it. If there is a single person who says they saw this box office result coming, they are the biggest liars ever. Like Matt, I'm not a fan of the film (at all), and I do think it's pretty fascinating that it has managed to be so polarizing even as it became such a massive blockbuster. It is the biggest story of 2015 even if it's a 2014 film, and I'm not sure that anything can beat it with regards to interest and intrigue - not even Avengers or Star Wars.
Ryan Kyle: American Sniper is a force of nature that is not meant to be understood. I can't for the life of me wrap my head around why this film made so much money. This is not a knock against the film's quality (I quite enjoyed it), but towards the question why this movie excelled to unprecedented heights compared to why other war movies starring Hollywood hunks debuted DOA. It's an interesting #1 film of the year that I'm sure will be looked back upon many years from now as an indicator for the American political climate in 2014.
Edwin Davies: I'll echo everyone else and say that this is surprising. So much seemed to be arrayed against American Sniper in terms of potential success. War movies have been fairly unpopular in recent years; Clint Eastwood's had a bad run at the box office since Gran Torino; the R rating tends to limit the audiences for films in general, and dramas in particular. It clearly struck a nerve with a pretty broad range of audiences initially, which is why it got so many people into theaters in its opening weekend, and the controversy surrounding it since then has probably fueled its continued success: it became such a talking point that people felt they had to see it, in a way that wasn't the case with the The Winter Soldier or Mockingjay.
Kim Hollis: Now that we're two months into 2015, what do you think about the year in box office/film so far?
Jason Barney: I think it is very interesting. I will be interested to see where the final numbers come out for this last weekend, because up until the middle of February we were approaching record territory for the start of a year. American Sniper, Fifty Shades of Gray, Kingsman: Secret Service, SpongeBob....and all of the lesser films. It is an odd mix of box office success that has inched its way into the record books.
It is impressive when box office numbers are so large, especially against the perception that 2014 was an off year.
Michael Lynderey: A couple of weird movies seem to have made a lot of money for no particular reason. And I don't even mean American Sniper, which I long ago have stopped trying to understand and now simply accept as a force of nature for which no explanation could exist, so there's no point trying to find one.
Otherwise, things haven't been that unexpected - Fifty Shades is the biggest movie of the year but isn't going to touch $200 million, Taken 3 didn't cross $100 million, Wedding Ringer was okay, and a few of the genre movies didn't do so well, not unexpectedly (Blackhat, Seventh Son, Jupiter Ascending, etc.). It's really SpongeBob and Sniper that have changed the atmosphere, with the latter becoming the biggest movie of 2014, something that I would rationally assume no one was expecting (anyone?).
Ryan Kyle: The film quality so far this year has been better than the average January/February dumping ground fare, but the box office levels have been extraordinary. It's been a very "feast or famine" climate at the box office, with films opening gigantically or barely registering. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into the summer, which should smash some records with the seemingly stacked line-up of hit after hit. March is a month that has a lot of interesting films scheduled so it will be fun to see if audiences are going to continue to buy tickets in droves for more untested fare like Chappie and Home and to see if more safe bets like Get Hard, Insurgent, and Cinderella get the opening weekend boosts this year's February releases have. April seems arguably weak, although Furious 7 should prop things up until the summer blockbusters.
David Mumpower: What I take from the marvelous first two months of 2015 is that it really is the quality of the movies. I felt like we were having to explain every box office disappointment last year by starting with, "If they'd made a better movie..." That's the problem with all of these sequels and reboots that are developed to cater to the foreign markets. They simply don't entice consumers. Say what you will about 50 Shades of Grey and American Sniper but they are both original stories. Sniper is unapologetically jingoistic and Grey is shamelessly sexual. Similarly, Kingsman is a new variation on an old idea as well. North American consumers are speaking with their wallets about how important fresh premises are. Anybody reading this in a production office right now should take note.