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Big Fat WinnerJohn Hamann's Weekend Wrap-UpFebruary 10, 2002
After several weeks of smaller, leaner budgeted films being released, Hollywood sent out two very large films this weekend against the opening of the 2002 Winter Olympic Games. Both were in trouble from the start, with or without the Olympics. Collateral Damage, from Warner Bros., was bumped back to February after the 9/11 attacks, and it never escaped rumblings about film quality. The other dud this week is MGM’s Rollerball and no matter what marketing tactics the studio tried, audiences could smell this turkey coming. What box office analysts didn’t see coming was another teen flick surprising at the box office; this time it’s Universal’s Big Fat Liar.
Arnold is back on top this weekend with Collateral Damage, after a long box office drought. The big guy’s last release, The Sixth Day, opened to fourth spot with only $13.02 million in November 2000. End of Days, released in November ‘99, had to settle for third behind Toy Story 2 and the second weekend of The World is Not Enough. The pressure wasn’t really on Arnold’s shoulders this weekend, as his next film is Terminator 3, which will surely vault him back to the top of the box office heap.
Did the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics affect Friday night box office? For holdovers, the answer was clearly yes as the average drop-off was 42.4%. But, we must remember that a few of the flicks in release (A Walk To Remember, A Beautiful Mind, I Am Sam) are geared to the demographic that catches the opening ceremonies of the Olympics (older females). On the other hand, the openers were targeted at older males, so should have missed the effect somewhat. Anyway, be sure that MGM and Warner Bros. will surely blame the Olympics for slow numbers over the weekend. David Parker covers the topic in his Saturday update column. Read it by clicking here.
Collateral Damage is the number one film this weekend, grossing $15.18 million from 2,824 screens. The terrorist film with the Colombian plot had a venue average of $5,375. This is a fair opening for Arnold. Audiences can be fickle with the big Austrian, as the opening weekend gross has always been affected by the perceived quality of the Arnold film. Having been in the business for so long skews the numbers somewhat so have a look at the chart below with Arnold’s openings adjusted for inflation.
Universal Films spent a lot of time in 2001 marketing films with big built-in audiences (JP3, American Pie 2), so it’s nice to see them having two excellent ‘below the radar’ releases with Big Fat Liar and Brotherhood of the Wolf. Brotherhood has excelled in limited release over the past several weekends, and has now built a gross of over $9 million.
The opening weekend of BFL has made me reconsider the box office prospects of next week’s teen flick, Crossroads, from Britney Spears and Tamra Davis. For weeks I’ve felt this title would be ignored, but now I’m really starting to wonder. You can guarantee that kids have now seen the trailer or other theatre marketing for this film, due to the large grosses of Snow Dogs, A Walk To Remember, and now BFL. If that marketing has worked, Crossroads could be the sleeper hit of the early year.
In third this weekend is Rollerball, the MGM title that had to fight bad word of mouth since John McTiernan had the bad judgment to show his film to the unfortunate Harry Knowles. Rollerball still managed to gross an unspectacular $9.02 million this weekend from 2,762 screens, for a venue average of $3,267. MGM is only on the hook for about a third of the studio-reported cost of $60 million, but the marketing cost is what we don’t see.
Even with a strong tie in to last weekend’s Superbowl, MGM still put up a horrible marketing campaign for this film, and then seemed to give up during the final week of promotion. So many mistakes were made leading up to the release of this film. First, MGM decided to make Rollerball more teen-friendly than the original cut of the film, cutting it down from a hard R rating to PG-13. A better idea would have been to make this film R rated and then sell it like that a la Swordfish. The Travolta flick made no bones about its rating, and even made a selling point of Halle Berry’s exposure in the film. The second mistake was moving this film out of its proposed summer release date. This past summer, quality didn’t matter at all, folks traded their brains for movie tickets and the resulting effect was that films opened large and then died. In February, if a film has been dumped, it dies. Audiences seem to be able to smell a rotting corpse in the winter months. Lastly, why did McTiernan show the film to Knowles? If he liked it, it wouldn’t have helped gross of the film, but if he hated it, word is destined to spread. Re-cutting your film based on one man’s opinion is ludicrous. It would be interesting to see if the first cut would fare any better with critics than the current version. Currently at Rottentomatoes.com, Rollerball received two positive reviews out of 54.
MGM had a hit this same weekend last year with Hannibal, and started a good year for the studio. Rollerball starts 2002 off on a bad foot, and with MGM releasing twice as many films in 2002 than they did in 2001, I’m sure they are hoping the trend doesn’t continue. Next week MGM gives its own Rollerball some competition with Bruce Willis’ Hart’s War.
For Sony, Black Hawk Down is quickly becoming one of the highlights for the studio over the past few years. With a total of $86.7 million, BHD has become the third highest grossing Sony movie since they released Charlie’s Angels back in November 2000. Since then, only the aforementioned film and America’s Sweethearts have grossed more than BHD. Sadly, in that time period, Sony has released 28 films.
Fifth this week went to the flick that won’t die, Snow Dogs. After spending the last three weeks near the top of the charts, Snow Dogs lost 34% of its audience from last weekend, and grossed $6.73 million from 2454 screens, for a venue average of $2,730. The total gross for the Buena Vista release stands at $59.5 million after four weeks of release. Snow Dogs should get to $80 million. With a cost of $33 million, that should mean milkbones for all.
Sixth, seventh and eighth were very close between three films, The Count of Monte Cristo, A Walk To Remember and A Beautiful Mind. Sixth went to The Count with $6.33 million from 2,199 screens. The Buena Vista flick had a budget of $35 million, and now has a gross of $32.2 million, which looks like a wash for the film domestically, with international and home video revenues still to come.
Seventh went to A Beautiful Mind, the other Universal flick in the top ten. ABM grossed another $5.84 million this weekend, and has found the perfect path leading up to the Oscars. ABM now has a total of $112.8 million, after dropping 31%.
A Walk To Remember dropped a whopping five spots and landed in eighth this week. The profitable Warner Bros. release grossed $5.77 million this weekend from 2,311 screens, surprisingly off 109 screens from last week. The teen tearjerker dropped 35%, and brought its total gross to $30.53 million. Look for the Mandy Moore flick to end up with about $35 million, an excellent dividend on an investment of $9 million for Warner Bros.
Ninth went to The Mothman Prophecies, from Sony Releasing. Mothman grossed $4.9 million in its third weekend of release, down 33% from last weekend, when it grossed $7.36 million. The Richard Gere flick has now grossed $28.03 million.
Tenth went to I Am Sam, which grossed $4.53 million from 1450 screens, down 28% from last week. The New Line flick has now grossed $23.75 million.
The Lord of the Rings spent its last weekend in the top 12 this weekend, at least until Oscars or a new final reel is added. The blockbuster could only manage $3.65 million, down 36% from last weekend. With Oscars to come its still too early to say where LOTR will end up in terms of final box office, but for now its total stands at $271.45 million.
Twelfth went to a limited release film this weekend, Monsters Ball, starring a bevy of stars, including Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry. The arthouse flick got off to a very strong start, grossing $2.3 million. Playing in 341 venues, Monsters Ball had a monster screen average of $6,745.
The top 12 grossed a not so great $83.85 million this weekend, and the Olympics will surely be blamed instead of a lack of quality movies being released. Compared to last year, when the mighty Hannibal grossed $58 million in its opening weekend, the top 12 was down 22.39% Compared to last week, box office was up 6.71%.
Next week, things heat up at the box office for real, as an animated film, a ridiculous comedy and three big star projects open. Denzel Washington finally brings John Q to theatres, Britney Spears gives us Crossroads, and Bruce Willis is in Hart’s War. The Peter Pan sequel Return to Neverland also opens, along with Super Troopers, which just might be stupid enough to be good.
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