Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
February 2, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: My initial reaction was negative. When I did my first bit of research I thought the budget numbers were a little high for an opening well below $50 million. The overall budget here is in that $145 range, which isn't crazy expensive, but I think I was swayed by the constant lower totals with each new film. They keep getting smaller... err... at least in the United States, that is.
Digging a little deeper, we learn that this is the exact type of film the creators have pushed for an international release. While the American market is going to be prime here, the overseas dollars continue to be a larger and larger part of the equation. So I'd say my perspective has changed a good deal. While $41 million isn't hot for a film with this cost in the US, those dollars are only one piece of a much larger puzzle.
Taking into account everything involved, DreamWorks has done what they needed to do - have a solid opening in North America and watch the money come in from the rest of the world.
Ryan Kyle: $41 million is a great result for KFP3 when you look further into the numbers. The previous animated high for a January release was The Nut Job at $19.4 million, so that record is squashed, and it is tied neck-and-neck for the best January opening of all-time with Ride Along, so for this time of year, it's a pretty great start. While it's $6.7 million short of KFP2's opening (which was $13 million short of the original), that also bowed in the summer, when Fridays were stronger, and on Memorial day weekend, which would have given it an inflated Sunday. With no competition until the first weekend of March with Zootopia, KFP3 should hit the $165 million watermark the last film grossed. Unlike Shrek, KFP never really became a heavy-hitter, but North America is a very small piece of the pie for this film as the sequel's domestic gross only counted for 25% of its worldwide tally. I suspect that percentage will be even smaller this go-around.
Felix Quinonez: I think this is a respectable opening weekend for Kung Fu Panda 3. It does show a continued slide on the domestic front but as it has already been stated, that is only one piece of the puzzle. Also, the fact that it was able to open very close to the previous entry with a January release date versus a Memorial Day weekend release date shouldn't be ignored. When you add in the fact that it got a strong "A" Cinemascore and has no competition for a month, KP3 should be able to at least match its budget domestically. And the real money will come from overseas. I think when all is said and done KP3 will see a profit just from its theatrical run and hopefully we won't have to wait another four years for the next entry.
Kim Hollis: There's a lot at play here. The January release seems oddly timed until you realize that it's targeted to the Chinese market during the Chinese New Year, the busiest movie-going time of year in that country. According to Variety, the fact that KPF3 is a co-production of DreamWorks Animation and Oriental DreamWorks allows it to be considered a local Chinese film, which means the distributor retains significantly more of the box office receipts than it would for a movie produced "outside of China." For KFP3, they even did a dub for the film that matches the animated characters' mouths to the Chinese voices giving them life. The big goal hear was to make money in China, and while the domestic revenue is also nice, it was never the primary goal.
Kim Hollis: The Finest Hours, another boat catastrophe movie, debuted with $10.3 million. What do you think of this result?
Jason Barney: It is not good. I like Chris Pine and I think he has a fine career in front of him, but even his rising star couldn't give this a little bit of a heartbeat. Not that January is full of hit movies, etc., but The Finest Hours is dead in the water after its first weekend. Opening in fourth to just $10 million against a budget of $80 million? The math doesn't work out. This will lose screens quickly and fall out of the top 10 soon.
Ryan Kyle: Outside of The Perfect Storm, the shipwreck disaster movie really hasn't found much success. $10.3 million against a $80 million budget (including inflated ticket prices from IMAX and 3D locations) is very concerning, especially for a film without a giant star to bring in the foreign coin. I saw the movie and was surprised how enjoyable it was given the lackluster trailers, however, like Westerns (we will get to that later), seafaring expeditions just isn't a genre that audiences care for much anymore.
Felix Quinonez: I don't think this is nearly good enough of an opening and I don't see any reason why its fortunes would turn around. And unlike KFP3, this won't have the benefit of being lifted by foreign audiences. I don't think it's a monumental disaster but the studio will definitely take a hit on it.
Ben Gruchow: I read somewhere else that Disney is in the odd position of having two of their last three films be financial disappointments relative to expectations (this and The Good Dinosaur) with that one massive success more or less shielding them from any perception of real financial loss. I don't know how relevant that really is, considering that most of the films that have opened on either side of Force Awakens have thrown slightly to moderately under their expectations, and there haven't really been any big movies that have really broken out above their expectations; The Revenant comes the closest.
What this says to me is that Disney knew this was going to be a weaker entry on their slate no matter what, and they positioned it more or less directly in between their two bigger offerings on the slate: TFA five weeks ago, Zootopia five weeks from now. They figured this would probably give it maximum capability to generate revenue while minimum opportunity to cannibalize the audience for either of their other two. They were more or less correct in all of these, and The Finest Hours was positioned and marketed in a way that indicated that - like several films from this month - the studio just didn't really care what happened to it one way or the other.
Kim Hollis: It's a pretty lackluster result, if utterly unsurprising. I wonder if The Perfect Storm is the only one of these that really worked because that money shot in trailers is only impactful the first time. There just wasn't anything here that looked interesting.