Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
November 24, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Ben Gruchow: The writing was on the wall with the Thursday preview screening figure of $16 million; to have the final entry in a franchise throw under its penultimate entry right off the bat, without being able to factor in word-of-mouth, is a symptom of a huge issue with audience retention. That's in context. Out of context, there's not really any problem with the number. $102 million is a fantastic opening weekend on its own terms for a film that cost somewhere between $150 and $160 million; it'll likely close with about $280 million unless it displays legs, and Lionsgate already paid for this film with the revenue from Part 1. It has to worry about the marketing spend, and that's it.
However (and this is a big however), the numbers in context are significant. Normal audience attrition doesn't explain this; neither does the source material. Mockingjay is a divisive book, and it's probably the least-liked of the series (though not for me), but this still doesn't explain the size of the drop between Part 1 and Part 2, or between Mockingjay and the first two films. The last instance I can think of where the final installment of a massively-popular multi-film series lost this much of its audience in the final installment was the Matrix series, and that's because of a tectonic shift in tone from the earlier entries. The decision to split the films may or may not have been valid from a storytelling standpoint (I'm at more of an impasse on this after seeing Part 2 than I was before), but it almost certainly contributed to this last entry feeling relatively low-stakes to anyone outside of the loyal audience.
Jason Barney: I tend to be in the camp that most of this discussion is academic. Lionsgate spent approximately $250 million on creating the total Mockingjay product. Whatever the marketing and advertising costs were for both films is really the question, but even that misses the mark a bit. It doesn't matter that this is a “weak” opening. Are some going to say that money was left on the table? Yes and I can see the argument, but again, at this point it is such a small piece of the puzzle the “soft” opening doesn't matter.
What is impressive about Mockingjay Part 2 is that Lionsgate has virtually no price tag associated with it. The entire project has already paid for itself. Mockingjay 1 earned $337 million domestically and $755 million worldwide. Think about that.
This opening, and yes, it is below where it could have been, is nothing to be embarrassed about. Mockingjay Part 2 is not in trouble. It is doing fine. It has opened strong enough, it has the Thanksgiving week in front of it where it will take in just as much or more than it opened with, and it has a holiday season with fair to decent holds in front of it.
Is the strategy of taking a book series to the big screen working for studios? Yes. Unquestionably. Is the strategy of halving the last book the most intelligent one? I don't know if I agree with it. It probably depends on the product. All I know is that if there had just been one Mockingjay movie, I don't think its numbers would have been anywhere close to the final numbers offered here. Any side comments about weakness, series fatigue, and questionable decisions on two Mockingjay films are missing the point in my view.
Measure the total of the two Mockingjay films against the a realistic single film result. There is no question in my book. Lionsgate made a good call and made a lot of money.
J. Don Birnam: Although I think it's clear that Lionsgate made the right call, when you add the two totals, I think the drop-off is explained because of the weak source material.
I personally found the third book the weakest of the three, and the two movies based off of it were similarly weak. I actually watched all four movies back to back yesterday (culminating with going to the theater for the fourth one) and it is striking how bad the last ones are compared to the excitement of the first two.
The Hunger Games concept is great and works very well, and she could pull it off for a second time with The Quarter Quell. But she couldn't do it a third time, despite the filmmakers attempt to make it a "hunger games" type hunt in the capitol in the last movie. Without the Hunger Games twist, the movie became a somewhat generic futuristic dictatorship movie.
I think the drop-off from word of mouth is going to be even more stunning, for what it's worth.
Max Braden: Since I don't know the latter source material well or its audience reaction to it, I can't blame the content. For me this result just fits in with a pattern I feel like we've been seeing all year: lack of enthusiasm in movies in general. I know we've had some big ones - Avengers 2, the record opening of Jurassic World, the record pre-sales of Star Wars - but I just didn't sense any buzz or push around this movie or many others this year. Did I miss some advertising for it? I know a huge franchise like this doesn't really need it, but I've been watching TV this season and really can't recall seeing any ads for the movie. In contrast, I saw a lot of ads for Spectre, and not just volume but also a sense that this was going to be the biggest, best Bond yet. There was a ton of advertising for Avengers 2. I neither saw nor felt any of that for Mockingjay 2. And I don't know how the content would affect the numbers this much. Deathly Hallows 2 had the biggest opening of the series by a large margin. Breaking Dawn 2 improved on Breaking Dawn 1. And a week ago it seemed reasonable to expect Mockingjay 2 to match its predecessor in the $125 million opening range. This opening is a nearly 20% drop off from Mockingjay - Part 1. I just think there's some very selective audience interested at work in the movie industry this year.
Hey, has anyone used the headline "Hunger Games Suffers Quarter Quell"? I should totally get credit for that.
Edwin Davies: It's a mixture of form and content. The book of Mockingjay is pretty grim and depressing compared to the first two, so even if it had been presented as a single film, it would still have been a difficult trick to pull off from an adaptation standpoint. Splitting the story in half reinforced the grimness by spreading it out.
That approach worked for other series in the past, but where the final Harry Potter film(s) got away with it by ensuring that the second half would be this big, rousing finale, Mockingjay could not because that's not how its story is structured. Delaying the true finale by a year made Part 1 seem less essential, and the lackluster quality of Part 1 in turn made Part 2 seem less essential still, so the audience drifted away faster than they probably would have if Lionsgate had put out a single film.
David Mumpower: I'm going to explicitly state what others are hinting at. The first two novels in The Hunger Games series engage the reader with a dazzling spin on the nature of celebrity and reality television. Mockingjay takes a sharp turn toward PTSD and the grim realities of war. I'm not joking when I say that I've been fearing the day that my brother, a huge fan of the The Hunger Games movies who has never read the books, saw the resolution.
Without providing spoilers, the subject matter is every bit as grim as the post-9/11 war films that Americans soundly rejected at the box office. The situation is historically unprecedented in that regard. Lionsgate enticed audiences with a sublime introduction to the world of Panem. Then, they turned around and kicked every fan in the junk with Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2. I cannot remember a similar situation since the Matrix sequels.
Kim Hollis: How will you remember the Hunger Games franchise?
Ben Gruchow: I'll remember it as a series that started out with an irresistible hook, and developed into something more uncompromising, more pragmatic, and more challenging with each entry...while still being more accessible, with its vision of the story's world, than most YA genre fiction. When it comes to the books, it'll be a reminder of how a book doesn't need to be gigantically long in order to convey an epic scope. When it comes to the films, I'm going to remember it as a blockbuster series that actually ended up being about something thematically beyond the broad strokes of its story or a vague concept, and one that carried that message all the way to its logical conclusion. It's not the only blockbuster series to do that, nor is it the best of them, but it punched far above its weight class for a series that basically needed to show up and nothing else in order to attract an audience.
J. Don Birnam: Overall it's a great franchise and I was sad in the last few scenes to see it go.
But the biggest thing for me was that the franchise launched the person who is right now the biggest superstar in the world, led her to one and maybe more Oscar wins, and cemented the status of female-driven movies as a forced to be reckoned with at the box office.
The original Hunger Games became the first movie in decades to lead the yearly box office and have a lead female character. That is a stunning statistic in many ways, and could signify the beginning of a real rise in demographic power for females in Hollywood. Voting with dollars, so to speak.
Max Braden: I don't remember if I read the first novel before the first movie or vice versa, but what immediately stuck out at me was that I disliked all the characters. I didn't like how Katniss was a brat to Peeta, I didn't like how he was weak, I didn't like how Haymitch was completely useless in his job, and I didn't like how Snow came across as a one-dimensional Bond villain. I didn't bother reading the other books and only watched the movies as a completionist. But overall I think there are better underdog/rebellion movies out there. The one strong positive memory I will keep from the series is that moment when Katniss is being elevated into the playing field just before the Games begin; the tension and suspense in that moment was great. I suppose one other takeaway of the series is that if it inspires young girls to be more confident in themselves, that's always a good thing. I don't know what sociologists would say about that but with the premiere of Supergirl on TV and its unabashedly feminist themes targeted at a young female audience, that trend seems to have been embraced in TV and film.
Edwin Davies: I'll remember it as the series that made Jennifer Lawrence a household name, two years after I saw her performance in Winter's Bone and hoped that she would go on to big things. In a broader sense, I hope that I'll remember it as a series that proved that films about female characters can earn huge amounts of money, can draw a big audience, and in so doing helped Hollywood to find new stories than the male-centric ones it has always pursued. I don't know if that will happen, given how intractable the industry is when it comes to change and representation, but I really hope that turns out to be true.
David Mumpower: I'll look back on The Hunger Games franchise as a marvelous concept executed perfectly for two films. I'll also remember that Lionsgate made twin mistakes that permanently damaged the brand. They chose to remain faithful to far and away the worst book in the trilogy, and they split a boring 390-page story into two films simply to earn more money. In the process, they damaged the brand to the point that people are going to remember the franchise as fading away when it could have gone out in a blaze of Girl On Fire glory after three films.
Kim Hollis: Do you think that one good Mockingjay film would have made more money than the two so-so films that were released? Even if your answer is no, do you think it was still worth it if it causes the franchise to be maligned?
Ben Gruchow: I figure that a single Mockingjay film would probably hit about $400 million in domestic revenue (it still wouldn't have had IMAX engagements, if it'd come out in 2014). My next thought was basically this: Assuming that a single Mockingjay film would've been budgeted at, say, $180 million - I think this is an appropriate escalation from Catching Fire - and it brought in domestic revenue of $400 million, then two Mockingjay films would have to bring in a combined domestic total of $400 million plus whatever the increase in budget was (in this case, $70 million). Mockingjay Part 2 is going to hit $200 million; anything it earns beyond that would be financial justification for making two films instead of one.
I do think that a single-film Mockingjay entry would be tighter and faster-paced, but in the light of just how big the drop was for this weekend, I don't really think that it would have been any better received by critics or by audiences. When Part 1 was about to be released, there was a TV spot or something like it that gave the tagline “The Games Are Over.” Inaccurate, really, depending on what you lump under the umbrella of a game in the final book, but I digress; that TV spot and that marketing pitch constituted the beginning of the drop-off in attendance. No matter whether it was one part or two, Mockingjay does not have an actual Games event, and I think we're seeing how much of an audience held that as the biggest factor. Again, I don't really think it can be down to an assessment that the book was less well-liked among readers of the series, because the final entry in the Twilight series was even less well-received, and it produced a two-part adaptation with almost identical grosses. The lack of a Games event, I think, turned off a big segment of the movie-going population that neither read nor cared about the individual reception of the book series entries.
I don't know if I'd apply the word “maligned” to the series, in either book or film form. “Victim of audience fatigue,” yes. At the end of the day, we're still looking at a series that, when considering and comparing the first film, second film, and both parts of a two-part finale - we're seeing ticket sales comparable to the Harry Potter series. That'd be a moot point if the story and films weren't also good, but they are, and I think the Hunger Games series is going to survive the irritation of a studio-mandated split. Fatigue will pass, as long as the market isn't continually saturated with new installments of the same product.
Jason Barney: I think a single Mockingjay film would have been BIG but I can't see that it would have been as large as what Lionsgate decided to move forward with. For a single Mockingjay film to match what looks like the two separate entries will total.....those would be ALL TIME numbers. I don't think it would have been possible.
Max Braden: I agree with Ben, I think the math justifies two movies in any case. Deathly Hallows, Breaking Dawn, Mockingjay, Divergent: Allegiant/Ascendant - the split approach seems to be particular to the young adult genre. I blame the rise of Peter Jackson's kitchen-sink approach to moviemaking for a tendency to stick everything in and string everything out. I wonder if there's a psychological impact on audiences when they know the source material has been split into two film segments. There's no real reason why a film series needs to be a trilogy or even stick to the chapter boundaries of a book. Even if the producers felt compelled to split the finale into two for financial and content reasons, I don't think that decision will be the primary focus of a summary assessment on the series as a whole. The Hunger Games series should at least come out smelling better than Divergent, and I think that the failure of Mockingjay 2 to meet expectations is an even more unfortunate omen for Allegiant coming next.
Edwin Davies: I struggle to imagine a scenario where a single Mockingjay even gets close to what the split version will ultimately manage. We saw with the almost identical domestic ticket sales for the first two films that the series found its ceiling pretty early on, and while a single finale may have seen an uptick, particularly over opening weekend, we're talking about moving from $425 million to $450 million. Those are still massive numbers, of course, but Mockingjay (single) would have had to move up into Jurassic World money to equal what Mockingjay (split) will end up with, and I don't think that enough time had elapsed for the audiences to grow to that extent. As others have said, this was the right call from a business standpoint.
However, a single Mockingjay would have probably made for a better movie, and assuming that it made over $400 million (which I think it absolutely would have), then the trilogy would have the prestige of having three installments earn more than that threshold, an achievement which almost no franchise has managed. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars both would qualify if we take inflation into account, which would put the trilogy in rarefied air. Instead, its legacy is undercut somewhat by the fact that it petered out after the second film. Even if "petered out" in this instance represents totals that most YA film series can only dream of.
David Mumpower: Edwin touches on the aspect that interests me the most. The math is undeniable that two movies earn more than one, no matter how quickly Mockingjay Part 2 flames out...and I think we all agree it's facing a free fall. The larger issue, however, is that the damage to the brand will cause people to remember the four films less fondly than would have occurred with three tight, high-quality outings. I still think the story arc of Mockingjay would've been a tough sell even as one film. It wouldn't have been the functional impossibility that Part 2 faced in light of the tragic events in Paris the previous week, though. The moment in the final film where they reference refugees needing sanctuary, well, it felt like my entire audience gasped at the timing of that.
The financing supports the shameless commercialism in the short term. I question its viability over the long term, though. I feel like a fondly remembered franchise such as The Lord of the Rings sustains value over time. Conversely, a project like The Hobbit ruins the reputation of everything that precedes it. That's precisely what has transpired with Mockingjay.
Reagen Sulewski: While I think it's clear that one Mockingjay film would be better quality-wise than either one of the ones we got, it's also abundantly clear that there's no way it could earn the close to $2 billion that both of them will together. Whether the added production costs of two films makes the difference there is probably a decision for the bean counters, but another aspect that hasn't been covered very much is that it extends Lionsgate's time with a franchise through one more year of financial disclosures, and keeps the stock price pumped for longer. That's a sad aspect when we're discussing the artistic merits of a decision, but it's one that was likely removed completely from the hands of anyone making the film.