Monday Morning Quarterback

By BOP Staff

March 15, 2010

This is the type of celebration you have when you make a shot with .1 seconds left.

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This is not Bourne 4? Aw, I don't want to go, then.

Kim Hollis: Green Zone, the re-teaming of the Bourne star/director combo of Matt Damon and Paul Greengrass, opened to $14.3 million. Should Universal be satisfied with this type of result from a war film?

Michael Lynderey: $14 million may not be bad for a war film (Green Zone will outgross The Hurt Locker by Thursday), but for a title that was apparently given a $100 million budget by Universal, it's definitely on the not-so-good side. I always thought this one bore a striking resemblance to Body of Lies - the premise, the familiar actor-director combinations, the two hour runtime - and now, the box office, too. Green Zone did come in with the legacy of the Bourne films behind it, something that makes it a heavier disappointment than Body of Lies, but not much more of a surprise in terms of underperforming.

Shalimar Sahota: It's a slight disappointment given the credentials involved. Michael mentioned a resemblence to Body of Lies, and to me it looks quite familar to The Kingdom. Body of Lies finished just short of $40 million, with The Kingdom ending with $47 million. I imagine Green Zone will end up somewhere in between.

Reagen Sulewski: For this director and actor combination, given the push they gave it in ads, it's pretty close to a worst-case scenario. If any film about the Iraq War was going to hit, it should have been this one, but it seems pretty clear at this point that none of these films will for a long, long time, if ever. It's just not a subject audiences are willing to tackle.




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David Mumpower: This is barely half of what I expected it to make on opening weekend. I had presumed the combination of The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum writer and director combined with all of the recent buzz about The Hurt Locker would be enough to overcome the obstacle of being a Gulf War film. Instead, that obstacle proved far too extreme to overcome, making this a financial disaster for the reason Michael Lynderey suggested. We're looking at a $40 million North American result for a movie that cost $100 million to produce. Ouch.

Kim Hollis: It basically looked like a de facto Bourne sequel, so I'm not really sure why people didn't turn out for it. I didn't really think the Iraq angle was even played up all that much in the ads. Given how much this thing cost, Universal has to be thinking that it's time to stay away from Iraq-based films for awhile (they were also the studio behind the Kingdom).

Jason Lee: The film's use of the Iraqi war aside, the combination of Damon and Greengrass should have been able to conjure up a mid $20 million opening easy. This isn't "The Hurt Locker 2: The Sunnis and Kurds Fight Back." I was really surprised by the lack of interest on this title.


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