Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

April 5, 2010

The shirt makes a good point.

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Josh Spiegel: Actually, I was mostly pointing out that this film has the guy from Avatar, Liam Neeson, and Ralph Fiennes. Granted, no box office firestarters, but not Gerard Butler (who, at the time, was not well-known) and....Gerard Butler.

Reagen Sulewski: I have a feeling that original Clash of the Titans awareness cuts out at around mid-20s. It's not something that held up well at all with the onset of CGI. With this version, it's is a little better than I expected for the opening weekend, but that's with the built in discount for all the bad buzz it had coming into its debut. Just about no one had anything nice to say about it, so are we that starved for action? I suppose so.

Matt Huntley: I don't think Warner Bros. was expecting Alice in Wonderland-type numbers (did anyone, even Disney, expect those kind of numbers from Alice?), but with a domestic debut in the lower 60s and an international debut in the mid-40s, it's a safe bet Warner Bros. will show a profit from TITANS. To answer Kim's original question, then: yes, this is good news for the studio. But because it's not a huge debut, it's not exactly great news. The film cost a lot to make and will likely collapse by 58-60% next weekend (I saw the film and the word-of-mouth alone might crush it). All in all, I think it will tap out at around $140 million domestically and $300-350 million worldwide. Warner Bros. is probably happy enough with this result since it's an April release and expectations didn't seem all that high, but I bet they were hoping to steal the "biggest April opening" crown away from Universal and Fast & Furious. That seemed like a huge feat to begin with due to the latter's built-in audience and higher star power.




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Jim Van Nest: I feel like an echo here, but I'm with David. Other than "Release the Kraken"...this film has no resemblance to the schlocky Clash I grew up with. It's been so long and movies and effects have come so far, I have trouble thinking of this one as even related to the other. As for the Alice In Wonderland comparisons, I just don't think you can make those. I love me some Liam Neeson, but he ain't even close to Johnny Depp in terms of box office draw. My thought is that if you take Johnny Depp out of Alice, you don't have a $100 million opener. So expecting Clash to hit those lofty numbers, simply because it's in 3D, might be a little unfair. It still blows me away that we've become so used to these huge tent-pole openings that some are suggesting that $64 million in three days is potentially a loss for WB.

David Mumpower: To be fair, I don't think anyone is suggesting this is a loss. Given the $125 million budget plus marketing costs, it simply won't be as big of a winner as it could have been if a great movie had been delivered. Despite this, I have to say that if anyone had tried to convince me upon the inception of this project that we'd be looking at an opening weekend of this scale, I would have sent them a link to a YouTube video of Nancy Reagan's Just Say No commercial. All credit here goes to the special effects team, which is a fitting tribute to the original and the legendary work of Ray Harryhausen.


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