Monday Morning Quarterback Part I

By BOP Staff

January 7, 2014

As far as you know, I was amazing!

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Edwin Davies: This is a simply stunning result. Back when it opened, I thought Frozen had a decent shot at $250 million after its nearly record-breaking opening weekend, but that it would fade away as the glut of new product flooded the market during Christmas. In actuality, the opposite happened. The new films opened, they pretty much all faded away before the Christmas week was over, and Frozen leveraged its position as the biggest, best family offering to be THE film of Christmas and New Year. This is a beautiful combination of great scheduling and exceptional quality winning the day, and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets close to toppling Despicable Me 2 as the third highest grossing 2013 release.

Felix Quinonez: Simply put, I think this is remarkable. Frozen has already exceeded my wildest expectations and thanks to its great holiday run, it should be able to get more headlines which will in turn keep its momentum going. I don't see it getting as high as Despicable Me 2 but it is a huge hit nonetheless.

Max Braden: Based on my six-year-old niece's rendition at Christmas, the homerun of this movie is the Let it Go song. (For me it was In Summer). I'm still amazed that "this Frozen movie" turned out to be such a juggernaut, but at the same time having seen the movie, not so surprised. I think it lacks some of the giggle factor of other animated blockbusters, and some of the emotional awe of better animated movies, but when you can entertain adults and make kids feel (...big? triumphant? Frozen's princess is one of the least princessy of their lineup, yet she seems to be connecting with kids more powerfully than many of the others) at the same time, you're making money.




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David Mumpower: The last time we evaluated Frozen, we were glowing in our praise of a $93.9 million result over five days, a total that dwarfed even the legendary Thanksgiving run of Toy Story 2 in 1999. What was strange about the conversation at the time was that The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, not Frozen, was the number one movie in North America. From the day before Thanksgiving until Christmas Day, the instant animated classic finished in first place exactly five times out of 29 days. From December 26th until January 6th, a period of 12 days, Frozen has finished in first place eight times. The number two movie over Thanksgiving was the number one movie over Christmas.

Extending this line of thinking a bit, Frozen was the number one movie in North America on eight different days during 2013. We are six days into 2014, and it has already finished first five times. If Frozen maintains the top spot through Thursday, it will already have spent as many days at the top of the charts this year as it did in 2013. That's incomprehensible to me. While some will shrug this off as more indicative of the failures of the Christmas releases than anything positive about Frozen, I disagree with the assertion.

Consider that Catching Fire and Frozen were effectively tied on December 10th, separated by $90,944 worth of box office on that day. At the time, Catching Fire had grossed $340.2 million while Frozen totaled $138.8 million. Fast forward to the close of business yesterday. Catching Fire has reached $407.7 million, and will surpass Iron Man 3 at some point this week to become the top 2013 release in terms of domestic box office. It has earned $67.5 million from December 11th to yesterday. During that same time frame, Frozen has somehow accumulated $159.6 million. I do not possess the ability as a writer to quantify how novel this reversal of fortune is in terms of box office history.

We can talk about the holidays and their inflation of Frozen all we want, but those discussion topics miss the forest for the trees. The continued demand for Frozen, the causality for its old school movie legs, is spectacular quality. A strong argument can be made that Frozen has already become THE family film of this generation. People are discovering it anew each and every day and they are begging their friends to follow suit immediately afterward.


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