Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
June 23, 2008
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Get Smart, the latest cinematic adaptation of an iconic TV series, earned $38.7 million this weekend. Should Warner Bros. be pleased with this result?
Pete Kilmer: I would think so. I think they saw Love Guru for what it was and struck.
Dan Krovich: I think they should be very happy. It's a good start and it should hold well through the summer as people seemed to like it. It even has franchise potential - the direct-to-DVD movie featuring the techs Bruce and Lloyd comes out July 1st.
Joel Corcoran: Definitely happy. Maybe not ecstatic, but anyone at Warner Bros. should be very pleased with this opening. Particularly when Warner Bros. last comedy hit was ... what? The Blue Collar Comedy Tour?
Eric Hughes: Warner Bros. should be pleased. The studio struck while the iron that is Steve Carell was hot - apparently even before his career with The Office took off - and earned half of the film's budget back in just three days. No, its opening weekend wasn't quite as high as Sex and the City's move to the big screen. But whereas Sex ended its HBO run just four years ago, Warner Bros. had to convince the public that the revival of a sitcom from the late '60s is worth seeing.
Shane Jenkins: Yeah, it's always satisfying to know that you've backed the right horse. Mike Myers should have been a formidable opponent, but, like Pete said, Warner sized up the situation, correctly guessed that he didn't have the goods this time, and stood behind Carell. Though I bet there was some second-guessing going on last summer after Evan Almighty turned out to be decidedly mortal.
Matthew Huntley: Yes, the studio should be pleased. Although the opening for Get Smart doesn't set any records, Warner Bros. must be breathing a sigh of relief after suffering so much embarrassment with Speed Racer. Right now, this opening is in line with expectations, and despite its reported $80 million price tag, the future looks promising as it's the only adult comedy out there for the next few weeks, so it should show reasonable legs. For a summer comedy, this is a very worthy beginning.
Jason Lee: Warner should be thanking their lucky stars. We're already in the ninth week of the summer season and their only hit so far has been in the form of Sex and the City, which is basically a lucky "adopted child" from New Line.
James D. Ruccio: Absolutely they should be thrilled. I don't think there is much awareness of the original source material (more's the pity) so this really is a good BO take. I don't think the commericials were particularly strong as well so there were other forces here at work (what they were I don't know). As mentioned before, I think there's potential for a series. I think this also points to the combined star power of the top three leads.
Scott Lumley: I think they should be thrilled. Exactly how often does a TV show made into a movie find ANY success? Thinking back, the only TV shows that had any real success at the box office have been The Simpsons ($183 million) and Star Trek (billions) and possibly the Fugitive ($183 million again), and those are very special cases. If you look at other non-standard shows, say, The Dukes of Hazzard ($80 million), or Starsky and Hutch ($88 million) or... God Help us... Bewitched ($62 million), you can see that it's a perilous slope adapting what was successful on the small screen to the larger one. As a matter of fact, the only riskier theme for any film genre would be the video game genre. And I'm not entirely certain that's even a fair statement as Uwe Boll can claim the majority of those bombs on his resume.
At any rate, the majority of TV-to-film movies are one shots and then gone. From what I'm seeing from Get Smart, there's a very solid chance that we might get a sequel or two. What studio doesn't love a sequel?
Daron Aldridge: They should definitely be pleased, considering the stink of Speed Racer's failure still lingering. With an $80 million budget, almost half has been made back on the first weekend. Three other recent TV adaptations released in the summer season (Bewitched, Dukes of Hazzard, and SWAT) ended up with grosses between 2.67 and 3.13 times their opening weekend. With the same trajectory, Get Smart could land with between $104 and $122 million, which is respectable enough for the very unpredictable business of TV adaptations. Even following the worst case scenario (in every sense of the phrase) of 1998's Avengers gives Get Smart with over $90 million. It's hard to believe it has been a decade since that abomination plagued theaters.
Sean Collier: $38.7 Million may not seem like the biggest opening imaginable, but it's more than respectable in a weekend of comedy overkill. If you count Kung Fu Panda as a comedy, six of the top twelve films this weekend were comedies, making up about $89.3 million in total box office. Moviegoers had plenty of (supposed) laughs to choose from, and Get Smart still finished with $18 million more than Kung Fu Panda at number 3, and a full $25 million more than The Love Guru. The intense marketing campaign might've pushed internal hopes closer to $50 million, but given the circumstances and so-so reviews, Warner Bros. should feel just fine with the result.
And you thought Michael Scott was having financial troubles.
Kim Hollis: If we include Get Smart as a likely $100 million earner, Steve Carell has quietly accumulated six $100 million movies on his resume since 2003. Is it time to think of him as a box office draw or has he been lucky rather than good for the most part?
Tim Briody: I'm a big fan, but it's kind of a loaded question as in one of those films, he was far from the main draw, two were animated and a third was Evan Almighty. Only The 40-Year Old Virgin crossing $100 million could be attributed to his presence. He's picture perfect casting for Get Smart so that certainly helped a great deal, too.
Dan Krovich: Carell has definitely become pretty reliable. Though I don't usually count actors as much of a draw for animated movies, he has also done well with smaller movies as he was the biggest draw in Little Miss Sunshine and Dan in Real Life, and they grossed $59 million and $47 million respectively even though neither one was ever on over 2,000 screens.
Joel Corcoran: That's a tough question to answer, but I don't think Steve Carell himself as an actor is what brings people into his movies. Personally, I couldn't come up with a good way to describe a "Steve Carell movie," but I could very easily define a "Will Ferrell movie" or an "Adam Sandler movie." In Carrell's case, the movies don't seem to be vehicles for his particular talents or styles of comedy, it's more like he's very good at picking good projects that he can readily adapt to.
Jason Lee: Yeah, and Ewan McGregor has three $300 million films. To me, Carell's accomplishments have been the result of the project and not the person.
Eric Hughes: I'm in agreement with Joel in that Steve Carell knows how to pick good projects. But I think because of that, we in effect know what we're getting with a "Steve Carell movie." Though here it works a bit different than say Will Ferrell, who seems to play the same loud-mouthed, obnoxious character over and over again, but in a different environment. With Steve, you just know you're getting something "good," whether its comedy that is smart (The 40-Year Old Virgin), subtle (Dan in Real Life), or more physical (Get Smart).
Max Braden: With Get Smart and adding in The Office, he's found success with pretty much the same character - ambitious lovable loser meets suburban dad, maybe a cross between Cliff Clavin and Steve Martin's characters. His style is more approachable than the noisy wind up toys that are Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, and Jack Black. If he can repeat it and sell it to millions, he stands to be as successful as McDonald's.
Matthew Huntley: I'd label Steve Carell a moderate box office draw who happens to get lucky most of the time. People genuinely like Carell because of his everyday and humble qualities, but I don't think they're seeing his movies because he's in them. However, while it may be the franchises and appealing concepts that initially draw people into his movies, I think Carell is the reason they leave happy. He's becoming a familiar, reliable face, which is more than most actors could hope for, but I don't think he's the next Jim Carrey...not yet, anyway.
Reagen Sulewski: If anything, I think Carell is a little underrated. He's a funny man who can actually act, and provides depth that's missing in a lot of other broad comedic performances (Mike Myers is wondering what that buzzing noise is right now). So he's able to do the shtick, but he's not just doing shtick, and I think that goes a long way.
Scott Lumley: He's Jim Carrey without all the pretensions. Carell seems to have a real solid grip on who he is and what he does and I've seen very very few detours on his resume off into 'Egoland'. He's been happily married for quite some time and believe it or not, having a wife to tell you 'get a grip' can save you from quite a few disasters. I really do think we've yet to see the best of Carell. I'm fairly certain that someone's going to come along with the right script and the right director and Steve will literally kill people. They'll laugh themselves to death. He'll have the first film in history with a mega gross and a body count.
Daron Aldridge: Obviously, Steve Carell has a great agent and gets him to consider the right scripts and projects. As a huge fan, it pains me to say that it just seems to be fortuitous choices and not a testament to his drawing power for all those $100 million earners. I don't think that the success of Horton, Over the Hedge, and Bruce Almighty can really be attributed to him. That would be like also giving Jennifer Aniston credit for Bruce's tally. But that being said, Carell was the sole draw of Dan in Real Life and it also quietly made nearly $50 million against a $25 million budget. People seemed to want to see him even in low-key, average looking films.