Monday Morning Quarterback
By BOP Staff
March 18, 2007
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: 300 was dominant once again this weekend, earning $31.2 million. Should we focus on the ten day total of $127.5 million or its 56% drop?
Tim Briody: There's not much to say about the decline, other than anyone who wasn't expecting at least 50% qualifies as insane.
David Mumpower: As I said in the Weekend Wrap-Up, I consider a focus on the 56% drop. Also, if we take last weekend's Thursday sneaks out of the question, its decline falls right in the 50% range. For an opening of this stature, that's quite good.
Kim Hollis: It would only have been a surprise if 300's drop had been better than 50%, really.
Tim Briody: Oddly, there's always a small audience that thinks "this set a record, I'd better see what the fuss is about" that slightly tempers these big drops.
Reagen Sulewski: In the larger perspective, it's headed towards $175 million, so this is a pretty tremendous result by any means.
David Mumpower: 300 is the number one film of 2007 to date and it's about to blow past Borat ($128.5 million) and The Departed ($132.1 million) in terms of recent box office successes. It's going to pass the biggest action film in recent memory, Casino Royale ($167.0 million), too. Over the past eight months, the only two movies it isn't certain to beat are Night at the Museum and Happy Feet. That's splendid.
Tim Briody: It's the middle of March and we have 3 $100 million films already. This is also stunning.
Kim Hollis: And one that is oh so close.
Tim Briody: Eddie Murphy would trade it all for the Best Supporting Actor Oscar, Kim.
David Mumpower: I haven't done the research yet, but I can't ever recall having five $75+ million films after eleven weeks of box office to start a year. We're averaging a blockbuster every other week.
People have been waiting for middle-aged biker buddy films and flaming motorcycle heroes for ages!
Kim Hollis: What's the cause of all this unprecedented early year box office success?
David Mumpower: I back-handedly answered that a moment ago. There hasn't been much out there in terms of exciting movies since last summer. Borat was exciting and consumers generally agreed that Casino Royale delivered. We had one comedy that was a stunning achievement in Night at the Museum, and we had a good family film in Happy Feet. That's only four great options for consumers in eight months. None of the other major end-of-year awards contenders were mainstream, either.
Tim Briody: Or, in a sentence: movies have come out that people want to see.
Kim Hollis: I'm a little bit taken aback, though, that "movies people want to see" include Wild Hogs, Norbit and Ghost Rider.
David Mumpower: First of all, Tim, never interfere with my verbosity! Second of all, I see it as even more than that. The DVD releases over that period were no great shakes, either. Sales and rentals flatlined in the second half of the year, so potential consumers were nothing short of desperate for decent new options.
Reagen Sulewski: Of course, aside from 300, you couldn't drag me in to any of these early year blockbusters with a threat or a promise.
Kim Hollis: Right, Reagen. The only 2007 movie I've seen in theaters has been Breach (I wasn't even interested in 300, frankly).
Reagen Sulewski: "One groom? Two grooms? Oh, my medication."
Kim Hollis: Yeah, DVD options were definitely the pits in the first quarter. It looks like we're finally going to start to pick up this week.
Tim Briody: Well, two of the heavy hitters from last fall that you mentioned, Borat and Casino Royale, have just come out on DVD. Will that impact current box office?
David Mumpower: That's an interesting question. They certainly have not so far, particularly considering that 300 would share that demographic with them. The more subtle effect of offering home video consumers fall-back options would be interesting to track, however.
Reagen Sulewski: I'm not sure I buy that totally. We've had direct attempts to submarine releases with DVDs before, a la Shrek and Monsters, Inc. As much as the theater experience has declined, there's still a priority on going out for the big demos.
Kim Hollis: And with just a ridiculous over-saturation of movies next weekend, we'll either see one or two stick or all of them fail miserably.
David Mumpower: That is why I said it would be a gradual effect, Reagen. What we saw over the past six months was the worst batch of home video options since DVD's rise. It's a subtle build-up rather than immediately impacting.
Kim Hollis: Are we all agreeing that there's nothing special going on here? It's mainly a case of movies that customers want to see?
Tim Briody: Despite questionable quality, as Reagen pointed out, yes.
David Mumpower: From a box office perspective, something very special is going on. In terms of the why, I think we all agree that there are an unusual amount of populist releases thus far in 2007. And we're not even to May, yet.
Reagen Sulewski: Unless the summer films fall on their faces, we're heading for a potential record year.
We had a weird feeling this one was going to do well.
Kim Hollis: The biggest new opener of the weekend is Premonition, which finishes in third place with $18 million. What's the cause for this success?
David Mumpower: People realize the guy playing her husband is Doom from Fantastic Four, and they want to see him repeatedly die.
Reagen Sulewski: I'm a bit surprised at this one. Sandra Bullock has been mired in the mid-teens for some time, and the ads didn't look that compelling. Maybe The Lake House primed the pump for her fans to see her in more temporal weirdness.
David Mumpower: All joking aside, I was surprised that the marketing made it seem so similar to her last movie, considering that it was a mediocre performer ($52 million domestically). I guess that consumers saw a differentiation I missed.
Tim Briody: I was stunned when I found out that this would be her biggest opening weekend ever.
David Mumpower: Tim, I fact-checked you on that because I was so certain that couldn't be right. It blows my mind that she's never had a bigger opening than $18.0 million.
Kim Hollis: Like David mentioned in the wrap, it had that kind of Ashley Judd thing going for it. Rather than being romantic like Lake House, it was more a thriller. I guess other women like that sort of thing.
Reagen Sulewski: I very nearly called it the reverse Double Jeopardy in my Weekend Forecast. I should have gone with that instinct.
Tim Briody: I triple-checked and I still couldn't believe it!
David Mumpower: Note: Miss Congeniality 2 opened bigger than Miss Congeniality and Speed 2 opened bigger than Speed...there's a trivia question that would trip up anybody in North America.
You know what would be scary? A Lamb Chop movie.
Kim Hollis: Dead Silence made $7.8 million this weekend. Is this just the number we should expect from disposable horror films or should Universal be pleased with the result?
Reagen Sulewski: For a movie with as silly a premise as this one, they should be thankful for every dollar they get.
Tim Briody: So apparently the Saw guys had only one good idea in them.
David Mumpower: Reagen's right. Something is fundamentally wrong with the process if any given horror film is good for roughly this sort of performance. Cineplexes should have a theater area designated "Generic Horror Movie" to save movie on the specifics. The who and why doesn't seem to matter any. Consumers think, "People die! Woohoo!" It's that simple.
Kim Hollis: I think they were kind of hoping that people remembered Magic and its super-scariness. Problem is, their primary audience is waaaaaay too young for that. They were indeed lucky to get people to throw away money on this one.
David Mumpower: My idea for a horror film is for a mass murderer to methodically slay all of the low budget horror movie makers in Hollywood. You could do a dozen sequels and never run out of fresh bodies.
Tim Briody: David, Lionsgate is on line two and they'd like to offer you several wheelbarrows full of money.
Kim Hollis: There's something about the psychology of the teenage mind that really likes scary, gory movies. I know I was that way at that age. I can barely stand them now (though I still like the ones I enjoyed at the time).
Reagen Sulewski: it's not even the gore that's the problem. It's the total lack of discrimination.
David Mumpower: April Fool's Day is the only horror movie that stands out for me from when I was a teenager, and that was solely because it had a twist.
Kim Hollis: Nightmare on Elm Street, Evil Dead, Halloween and The Shining all stand out as movies I'd watch over and over again as a teen (granted, we're talking about some pretty big names of cinema in charge of each one, but still).
Chris Rock's confusion leads to movie-goer apathy
Kim Hollis: Chris Rock's film, I Think I Love My Wife, managed only $5.7 million. Why doesn't everybody love Chris?
Reagen Sulewski: That's a bit of a gut shot for Rock. But then, the next ad I see for it will be the first.
Tim Briody: I appreciate what he was trying, but unfortunately, it just didn't look very funny.
David Mumpower: I agree with both of you. It wasn't advertised much and the spots were all over the place. Was it to be a statement on the fun of potentially cheating or a celebration of monogamy? They seemed to think Rock would overcome the lack of focus, but reviews emphatically state that he couldn't.
Kim Hollis: I love Rock (and Gina Torres and Kerry Washington), but this movie never looked like anything we couldn't get in one of his comedy routines.
Reagen Sulewski: I think he's in a bit of a transition period career wise, trying to figure out where goes next. I think he covets Steve Martin's career, frankly.
Reagen Sulewski: Yeah, Kim, some of this looked ripped from his standup.
Kim Hollis: Or perhaps it was the presence of Stephen A. Smith in the film that kept people away.
David Mumpower: His agent should have stolen him Martin Lawrence's spot in Tim Allen's biker gang.