Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
July 15, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Ben Gruchow: They capitalized on a relevant franchise, utilizing the biggest breakout aspect of that franchise. With Puss in Boots, the parent franchise had seen two consecutive significant declines in domestic gross, with 2010's Shrek Forever After throwing under the original film (and that's without accounting for nine years of ticket-price inflation). The Puss in Boots character had also lost a good amount of his novelty by the time his spinoff was released. Puss in Boots was able to recover and land a decent final multiplier off of a disappointing opening, but it still topped out at 60-odd percent of the lowest domestic grosser in the parent franchise.
Penguins of Madagascar did even worse as a percentage, and I attribute that to its lower built-in audience (with the Madagascar series skewing younger than either the Shreks or the Despicable Mes) and my take is that the penguins as characters were nowhere near as vividly conceived or utilized in their parent franchise as either the Minions or Puss in Boots were in theirs.
Jason Barney: It was released at the right time - there is little competition in the market place - and they struck gold with the concept. Kids are entertained by those jittery little banana-looking things like you wouldn't believe, and I have to admit that when I saw both Despicable Me movies, I was intrigued by them. They are lovable, off the wall characters that added greatly to the success of the original franchise.
Getting their own film in the peak of the summer movie season just equates to Universal cashing in. I never thought there was a risk here.
Matthew Huntley: It's a short answer, but I agree wholeheartedly with Jason. The yellow, thumb-shaped minions just seemed to strike a chord with kids/families alike. Universal heard it and moved forward accordingly. It all seems fairly cut and dry.
For whatever reason, the Penguins of Madagascar and Puss in Boots don't come across as charming or funny and it seems like DreamWorks, compared to Universal, didn't take into consideration that demand for these respective characters just wasn't there, but they proceeded with spin-offs anyway. With Minions, though, the evidence seemed much clearer that the people would respond, and boy, did they ever!
Edwin Davies: In comparing it to the other spinoffs mentioned, I think at least part of it is down to striking while the iron is hot. Puss in Boots would have been a bigger hit if it had come out directly after Shrek 2, which introduced the character and made him an instant highlight of a film that was huge. Plans were discussed even back then for a spinoff, but the film itself came out in 2011 after two subsequent inferior Shrek sequels had diluted the brand and hurt interest in seeing Puss in Boots out on his own. Minions, by contrast, is only the third film in the Despicable Me series, and the previous two films were both very successful and very good, so there's been no opportunity for the franchise to wear out its welcome.
The Penguins of Madagascar film's lack of success is harder to parse, but I think the problem there lies in over-exposure to the characters. They'd already been featured prominently in three Madagascar films and had their own TV series, so the idea of seeing them anchor an adventure didn't seem that interesting. The Minions, as omnipresent as they have been in the last few weeks, have been more or less contained to the Despicable Me films, so seeing them let loose on their own actually has some novelty.
It also probably helps that Minions, being a prequel, is a bit more standalone than Penguins of Madagascar was, and the humor is pretty universal, both of which make it friendly for a broad audience.
Ryan Kyle: It's because if you asked anyone to name a character in the Despicable Me franchise, I'd bet my money that most people would say “Minions" before "Gru." Puss in Boots and the Penguins were secondary characters, while the Minions have been front and center this entire franchise. The teaser trailer for Despicable Me 2 was just Minion antics and didn't even have Gru. This is why the film is behaving more like a sequel than a spin-off.
Max Braden: I'd say it's the basic pratfalls and Three Stooges behavior that appeals easily to kids, but the Penguins have that too. I think it might actually be the non-English-but-still-intelligible gibberish that the Minions speak. That actually helps keep some distance in terms of relatable personality that talking animals might have. The Minions are a little closer to pets - they have personality and you understand them even if they can't speak the same language. I think that may actually make them safer to have a relationship with because they're more archetypes of characters than individuals. That's probably more thought than the concept needs, though.
Ben Gruchow: I think that's a fairly brilliant point, Max. When you mentioned the "non-English-but-still-intelligible gibberish" line, I thought of the Sims franchise and its region-free Simlish. The invention of the Simlish language was one of the reasons why the first Sims game blew up like it did; there was no need to translate anything, so the communication in-game played the same in every country, across every nationality and language. I think something similar happened with Minions: when the characters appeal to people, they appeal on an inherently universal basis.
Kim Hollis: I will say that I think scheduling/timing (other than not releasing it on July 4th) had very little to do with their success. The minions would have killed it on practically any normal weekend. What I do believe is that the Minions are universal (not Universal) in their appeal. Kids like them because, well, they’re kind of like other kids. Adults enjoy them because of their Loony Tunes-like antics. They’re simultaneously a throwback and a novelty, if that makes sense.
Kim Hollis: The Gallows, the latest low-budget horror flick from Blumhouse, debuted with $9.8 million. What do you think of this result?
Ben Gruchow: In one weekend, The Gallows out-grossed the entire worldwide take of The Babadook. By next weekend, it'll have out-grossed It Follows. To paraphrase Abe Simpson, this angries up the blood.
Almost $10 million is a fairly decent opening weekend; it's on the high end for a found-footage horror film around now. I fully expect it to crater next weekend and be off the face of the earth in three.
Jason Barney: Despite the reviews and how quickly it will evaporate, it is a success. A film like this being made for less than a million? Opening to over $10 million? Most studios wish they could find that kind of success with bigger franchise type movies. It will drop big time in the next couple of weeks and be gone by August. There is no doubt about the profit, though.
Matthew Huntley: What Ben and Jason said. This is your typical "low-budget, found footage movie that covers-its-entire-production-costs-in-a-single-weekend" story. We've heard it before; we'll hear it again. Good for the movie and the marketplace, but probably not the best movie-going experience, as these tend not to be of the highest quality.
Edwin Davies: This is another fine result for Blumhouse who have shown a pretty much unerring knack for turning low-budgets into moderate grosses. Though they're operating on a much lower level to most companies, I think their current run of profitable hits is hugely impressive in the way that they have managed to find an under-served audience and managed to make a pretty decent profit off of it.
Ryan Kyle: I am really shocked by this result since the film looked absolutely terrible and the R-rating blocks out the more gullible teens that fall for this kind of crap. However, made for pennies and hitting what seems to be the average ceiling for a Blumhouse flick, I would call this opening a success even though the film will struggle to reach $20 million total.
Michael Lynderey: The highest-grossing horror film this year is still Insidious Chapter 3, at $51 million, if we don't count Jurassic World (which has taken in a bit more than Insidious). So it's not been a particularly strong year for the genre, and The Gallows is the kind of middling product that just marks time between horror films. There's another one in a few weeks, The Vatican Tapes, but I don't think the genre will break out to bigger numbers until October, when we get more interesting fare like Crimson Peak and Goosebumps. I think it would be good for horror films to move away from the shaky-cam exorcism scenario. It's time for a new trend to get here.
Max Braden: It may not last, but it goes to show that the feature film format in media will always have some success selling cheap thrills.
Kim Hollis: The Ryan Reynolds sci-fi thriller Self/less opened to just $5.4 million. What was the problem here?
Ben Gruchow: The movie's marketing let it down immensely. The trailer depicted a universe that was relatively complex and ambiguous, but it failed to complement that with any real hook, either visually or narratively. There was no payoff and no real tension displayed, and the release date was pushed back twice. The only thing that could've really turned things around for the movie leading up to release was positive critical or audience buzz, and it got neither of those things. Finally, the trailers and marketing buried literally the only thing about the movie that might've made it interesting for the cinema enthusiast: the director was Tarsem Singh, who's generally always been consistent in delivering on the visual aspect of his films. Then again: Self/less didn't look distinctive to begin with, and what prospective audiences were left with was a visually dull sci-fi film with a faintly interesting concept and a poisonous critical reaction. That failed to even rouse my interest, and I know and love Singh's aesthetic.
Matthew Huntley: I go to the movies often, but I actually never saw a trailer for Self/Less until just now, when I looked it up on YouTube. So to piggyback on Ben's response, I think the issue here was not only the ineffective marketing but also the relatively quiet marketing. With this in mind, the idea that Focus would throw the movie into the marketplace in the middle of July almost makes it seem like they wanted it to fail. It probably just should have gone to VOD/DVD/Blu-ray right away to save on prints and advertising costs, since viewer interest and awareness were just too low for a theatrical release to make much of an impact and ensure profitability. And with a nearly $30 million production budget (and probably $50 million advertising budget), profitability is anyway a stretch for this one. It's a shame, too, given the past projects of the director and cast. Who knows, maybe it's good, and I'll have to see it to judge it; I just better hurry because it likely won't be around long.
Ryan Kyle: I agree with the consensus above and chalk it up to a lack of good marketing or any marketing at all. Tarsem is a pretty visionary director so the fact that they went with a shot of Ben Kingsley and Ryan Reynolds as the poster instead of one of his awe-inspiring visuals is the first mistake. Self/less was bumped from a release date in February to April to this weekend, so it is obvious that the studio didn't know what to do with it or have much care for it. This was originally a FilmDistrict acquisition, but after being bought out by Focus Features, it seems as if this was one they just wanted to burn off rather than cultivate. The opening weekend take is a failure, but it's probably a sigh of relief for the studio that this ugly stepchild film came and went without much notice.
Michael Lynderey: Woman in Gold did pretty well, but Ryan Reynolds will have to wait for Deadpool to make his comeback. He's got a lot riding on that film. Tarsem is interesting because his last two films, visually splendid but critically unliked Immortals and Mirror Mirror, actually didn't do too badly at the box office (especially Immortals). This one didn't really stand a chance in what's getting to be a crowded summer for sci-fi movies.
Max Braden: This movie reminds me of Limitless, one of Robert De Niro's phone-it-in-for-the-money movies. In that movie the younger costar was Bradley Cooper, who was riding high after The Hangover and The A-Team, so it opened at $18 million. Ryan Reynolds I think is pretty well liked but just hasn't delivered a hit like Cooper has, and so he has no strong audience backing his movies at the theater. In both cases, though, the movies feature a gimmicky sci-fi premise and not much else.