Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
May 8, 2013
Kim Hollis: Do you expect similar spikes in popularity as we saw for Iron Man 3 for the Thor and Captain America sequels, or do you think that Iron Man is different/special?
Jay Barney: I highly doubt the other characters and stories will see the numbers Iron Man has been able to garner. Some of it has to do with timing and there is an element that has to do with the surprise success of the first Iron Man way back in 2008. There is no doubt the character is now beloved, and one of the most popular in the Avengers, but the schedule has had a huge benefit to the Iron Man and Marvel films.
I am not trying to minimize the success here, doing so would be stupid. However, studios have been able to carve out the first weekends of May as some of the most lucrative in the schedule. Going all the way back to 2001, the Mummy Returns opened to $68 million. The first weekend of May 2002 it was Spiderman with a $114 million opening. Then X2: X-Men United in 2003 to $85 million…and so on. There have been a few quieter early Mays…but for the most part you have huge blockbusters with amazing openings. Spiderman 3 was huge in 2007 with a $151 million opening. Then Iron Man….a year later Wolverine…..Iron Man 2….Fast Five…all enormous openings. Not to mention Avengers.
I’m sure the sequels to the other movies will do fine. Maybe as the schedule unfolds in future years they will try to plug in a Captain America, Thor, or Hulk into early May.
Bruce Hall: I'm going to go the unscientific route and suggest that numbers aside, there's also something about Robert Downey, Jr in particular that draws fans to Iron Man. Thor was a successful film and Chris Hemsworth is particularly likable as that character. But I'm not sure Thor's world is particularly relatable to most people. I could say the same about Captain America. Tony Stark may or may not be a relatable character to most, but Downey himself is as ideal a fit for the character as Christopher Reeve was for Superman, so much so they even loved him in the bad ones. He's the best thing about these movies, and it's the reason they pay him so much. And I think he's a big part of the reason people turn out.
Edwin Davies: I'm expecting to see a spike for both Thor and Captain America sequels, but I'm not anticipating that either will make much more than $250 million, if that, though I wonder if Thor's November release date, which was so good to the Twilight series, might allow it to play well going into the holiday period. But then again, we're dealing with very different scales here: Iron Man 3's success is especially impressive because it's basically building on what was already a hugely successful couple of films in Iron Man 1 and 2. The best Thor and Captain America will hope for is to go from performing moderately well to being breakout hits. I'm not sure how likely that is, though, since neither original is as widely liked as the original Iron Man (or roundly disliked as Iron Man 2, so there's that) and both wouldn't stand out as the most memorable parts of The Avengers. Those would be The Hulk, Loki (so Thor and Loki teaming up might work in The Dark World's favor) and Iron Man.
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