One Month Out Part II
By BOP Staff
May 13, 2010
Jim Van Nest: One word - Records. Toy Story 3 will set several records, I think. It should easily be the biggest movie of the year. What else is there to be said that hasn't been covered on this site in some form? Pixar is money and Toy Story is their signature franchise.
Jonah Hex - Because it's debuting against the Toys, it won't even enjoy the benefit of an inflated opening weekend. This one will die right out of the gate.
David Mumpower: Toy Story 3 offers the most complexity of any potential blockbuster release this summer. We’re talking about a potential $100+ million opening weekend from Pixar, a studio that has never exceeded $70.5 million for an opening weekend. When Jason says that we have never seen a Pixar movie that opened like a mammoth blockbuster, however, he’s not quite right even though he does specify the terms he considers to qualify. No, Pixar hasn’t had a $70 million debut since 2004, but upon its release in 1999, Toy Story 2 trampled any numbers of the box office records of the day with an $80.2 million Thanksgiving five-day performance. It was “special”, which is that most nebulous of terms used to quantify the biggest properties from the lesser ones.
Movies like WALL-E and Up are ones that BOP loves (they won the last two Best Picture awards at The Calvins, after all), but Toy Story is the franchise that defines Pixar in the minds of most consumers. If we inflation-adjust that $80.2 million total into 2010 ticket pricing, it represents $118.9 million. Yes, that’s a five-day sum and yes, it reflects holiday inflation. Those are on the con side; the pro side is that the number I’m quoting is before we factor in 3-D ticket price inflation. So, there is a lot going on here. As such, I fully understand why people think this should be Pixar’s biggest debut to date but not a mammoth one. Shrek has been historically the property that opens huge, which is a sad indictment on pop culture.
Will Pixar rise above its recent pattern and finally reach $100 million on opening weekend? I’ve thought about this a lot, finally settling upon yes as my answer. I agree with Jason that it’s probably not going to be enough to surpass Shrek’s animation record for largest debut, though. I would absolutely love to be wrong about this, though. In fact, nobody will be hoping that it takes a run at The Dark Knight more than I am. Unfortunately, what I want doesn’t line up with what I am expecting.
As for Jonah Hex, I am forcibly reminded of The Spirit. Yes, this DC property will (probably) do better in its opening weekend than that one managed during its theatrical run, $19.8 million, but I have a hard time seeing it making even as much as $75 million. It just seems like a mistake in every sense of the word. I admire the daring involved in picking *this* character to be the next comic book movie. I do not, however, like anything else about it.
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