Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
January 21, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Notorious, the biopic of Biggie Smalls, opened to $21.5 million, with a per venue average of $13,126. How did Fox Searchlight accomplish such a remarkable result?
Joel Corcoran: Fox Searchlight didn't have to do much to make this film a hit, though I will give them credit for some brilliant (and understated) marketing. The musical life of Biggie Smalls alone would be compelling enough for a biopic - he was the key figure at the center of East Coast hip-hop - but his role in the East Coast/West Coast feud, his complicated history with Tupac Shakur, and the tragedy of his death lifts his whole life story to an even higher dramatic plane. The Notorious B.I.G. was to hip-hop what Elvis Presley was to rock n' roll. Or Johann Sebastian Bach was to classical music. All Fox Searchlight had to do was make sure the film was decently directed and produced, then release it. Dedicated hip-hop fans, or even people just curious about Biggie Smalls, did the rest.
Brandon Scott: I saw this on a slightly advanced preview on Thursday and was not impressed. The box office result is strong, perhaps surprisingly so, but the movie is butchered and offers only a straightforward narrative of events that even casual hip-hop fans already know about BIG. Anthony Mackie as Tupac is particularly distressing and the movie really paints the West Coast at fault for alot of the "beefing" and Biggie is marked as a patron saint. It is clear that no chances were taken in the making of this film. Cue the soft-lighting! Absurd.
Sean Collier: I'm not sure why a serious look at Biggie's life would be expected, though. Hip-Hop is all about mixing myth with reality, and injecting even more bravado into that - B.I.G.'s life is more about the legend than the reality, anyway. As to how it happened - Diddy is rich because he crafted The Notorious B.I.G. into one of the most compelling characters in pop music history. Anything with his name or face will make money.
Max Braden: This is a flame that has been kept alive the the music industry since his death, in part by the presence of his mother. It's a little surprising that this project hadn't been done until now. I doubt a project on Heath Ledger would do as well, in general because I think tributes to musicians (Ray, Johnny Cash) work better than tributes to fallen actors (Hollywoodland?). But it also makes sense to me that the attention would go to B.I.G more than say Aliyah.
David Mumpower: While everyone is right that a Biggie biopic should have done well, I disagree with the notion that its success is right in line with expectations. Get Rich Or Die Tryin', the only other recent comparison we have for this one, debuted at $12.0 million and wound up with domestic receipts of just under $31 million. Notorious is at $24 million after four days. The difference in scale is again dramatic. Clearly, this story was more impacting than the one about how the dude wound up getting shot about every other year of his life. Bullet wounds are less engaging than fatalities, I guess. That's the lesson I'm taking from Biggie vs. 50 Cent.
Reagen Sulewski: Dying remains one of the most solid career moves a young artist can make.
Kids these days don't know nothin'. Just ask Clint Eastwood.
Kim Hollis: Over 40% of the audience for Notorious was under the age of 25. Smalls died in March of 1997. Why do you think so many moviegoers who were pre-pubescent at the time of his death were so passionate about this movie?
Joel Corcoran: I think movie-goers flocked to Notorious for the same reasons that movie-goers flocked to see Walk the Line about three years ago. Notorious is a movie about one of the towering figures of hip-hop who was one of a handful of artists to define the whole genre. Anyone remotely interested in hip-hop is going to want to see this film, just like anyone remotely interested in country music is going to want to see Walk the Line - even if they were barely in middle school when the real-life events of the movie actually occurred.
You also have to look at the sheer number of current hip-hop and R & B artists who publicly credit Biggie Smalls as an influence. Kanye West produced the soundtrack for Notorious, and some of the biggest names in hip-hop (Jay-Z, Santogold, and Jadakiss, just to name a few) appear on the album. So any college or high school kid who's a fan of their music is going to want to see this movie.
Brandon Scott: Big is widely considered one of the best MCs that has ever lived, which is a HUGE STRETCH by the way. The only reason he gets these props is because he died so young (tragically so). He took a step back on the second album, anyway. Hip hop is huge these days and is the music/voice of our youth (for better or worse). I always say, if Ice Cube would have died after the release of Amerikkka's Most Wanted, there is no question he would be revered among the greatest MCs who ever lived, and if Biggie had lived, who knows? The tragedy is what marks this argument, but Tupac was three times the writer/artist that Biggie was, so at least his iconic status is deserved (again, for better or worse).
Joel Corcoran: I have to disagree. Tupac was a brilliant artist and an icon, and probably had more raw talent than Biggie Smalls, but even had he not died so tragically, Smalls would still be remembered as one of the singular hip-hop artists to ever emerge. Life After Death (his second album) wasn't as good as Ready to Die (his first album), probably because he was severely injured in a car crash in the middle of recording sessions for the album. But it wasn't his talents as a performer that made him such a leading figure in hip-hop, he was at the very center of - and exerted great influence over - the entire genre. I intentionally made the comparison to J. S. Bach because, like Bach, Smalls didn't really invent any new musical styles, he just recombined existing elements better than anyone else at the time. And many of his contemporaries viewed him as incredibly influential.
Ben Farrow: The Bach statement is crazy seriously crazy. Three hundred years from now, will the world will care at all about Biggie Smalls? I give him 1/10 that long - if that - and had film/TV been around more than 50 years, Bach would be bigger than the Beatles.
Sean Collier: Not to devolve into an argument about Biggie's musical merits, but Joel has it right. B.I.G.'s place in history is well-deserved, and hip-hop would be completely different without him. Furthermore, his analysis for the patterns and themes of rap music were advanced almost unfathomably beyond his age and experience; look deeply into his lyrics, and there's more experimentation with the rap persona and dismantling of the urban gangster archetype than any other rapper has achieved, before or after Wallace's death. As to the popularity among young audiences, Biggie's legend is very much alive and well, and still very prominent in the minds of new hip-hop fans. Let's also not discount the fact that this is the first prominent biopic of a rapper (8 Mile doesn't count); that alone would draw in urban crowds.
Jim Van Nest: Getting back on topic as to why kids who were pre-teens when Biggie died flocked to this movie, I honestly think it's the fact that it's not like he ever went away, really. Same with Tupac. How many records have been released posthumously? How many songs have been written about them? You know, John Lennon was shot and aside from the album that was scheduled for release around the time of his death, we didn't hear anything from him for over 15 years until those lost tapes surfaced and we got "new" Beatles songs. In the case of Biggie...he never really went away, as fas as radio and clubs are concerned. I think that has a lot to do with the success of his biopic with the younger crowd.
Daron Aldridge: Hip-hop is much more mainstream today than ever before and therefore, more accessible. Two of this week's top five Billboard singles are rap (T.I. and Kanye West) and lil Wayne's most recent album was the top selling of 2008. I think that the subject matter of the rap world is what appealed to the younger audience, who may not be familiar with Smalls. Incidentally, my local top 40 station does play Biggie's "Mo' Money, Mo' Problems" among others quite regularly, so he is not completely foreign to them.
David Mumpower: As a white Tennessean, I have absolutely nothing of value to add to a discussion about the integrity and impact of various mid-90s hip hop artists. For that matter, I couldn't even do it for country musicians. I'm limited in scope to Soundgarden discussions and since they don't have a biopic in the offing (hook me up, Hollywood producers!), I'm out of luck. What I can say for certain is that musical "generations" generally only span a six to ten year period. The most fascinating era for a teenager other than his own is the one directly before it, thereby allowing a teen to say that theirs is clearly the superior form of music. Since I was in the hair band era and the one that came after it was a group of people who didn't bathe or sing on key, I'm one of the few people who is actually right about this sort of thing. But I digress. While I find the idea that most of the people who just made Notorious a hit were watching Barney videos while he was banging Lil Kim fascinating, it's not -that- surprising.
The dogs are probably more polite than most society members
Kim Hollis: Hotel for Dogs, the latest canine family outing, was the weekend's fourth hit with $17.7 million over three days. Should DreamWorks be pleased with this result, or should they feel like their friends at Dogster have let them down relative to Marley & Me and Beverly Hills Chihuahua?
Joel Corcoran: DreamWorks has to be pleased that the third "dog movie" in four months - and the second one in the past three weeks - earned anything at all. Beverly Hills Chihuahua opened on October 3rd and earned $29.3 million; Marley & Me opened Christmas Day to $36.4 million; and the fact that Hotel for Dogs opened to even half of what the two previous films did is astounding, really. This film had everything going against it: opening in January, opening on a holiday weekend before the Presidential Inauguration, unabashedly marketed as a fluffy kids movie, and no real star power (with the exception of Don Cheadle ... but who's going to go see Don Cheadle in a Nickelodeon movie?). And I don't think I saw a single ad anywhere for this film. Honestly, I just don't get it...
Scott Lumley: If I've learned anything about box office results recently, it's this. Any time a cute dog is a centerpiece in a film, that same film will do about 200% more business than it actually should. I call it the "Awwww...look at the puppy!" effect. I've also learned that pandas can be surprisingly good at Kung Fu, but that doesn't really relate to box office theory.
Brandon Scott: Joel, did you say Cheadle was in this? I had no idea. I love the guy immensely...but I still won't see this. It's a pretty good result in a crowded marketplace. Remember that this figure could have easily held the #1 slot in a normal January weekend. This was a surprisingly powerful box office weekend. Historic, I believe.
Joel Corcoran: I had to look it up myself, but yes, Don Cheadle is in the film (playing "Bernie"). And I agree -- it's an astounding performance. But for the life of me, I can't figure out a single reason for why Hotel for Dogs made more than $10 million, other than we must be hitting a "dogs are the new black" era of film-making.
Daron Aldridge: I am amazed that Joel said he didn't see any ads for this because I saw them quite regularly for months. Therefore, I think that DreamWorks has to be a bit disappointed. I think that someone might be in the doghouse for this one (Wheee!!!!). It will possibly recoup its $75 million budget, which sounds astoundingly high, but they pushed this thing hard in hopes of duplicating Beverly Hills Chihuahua and it didn't.
David Mumpower: That reported budget for Hotel for Dogs is one that made me do a full-fledged triple take. If not for that, I would be thinking this is a solid hit. At a cost of $75 million prior to the advertising phase, this title is going to be lucky to be at a break-even point by the time it leaves theaters. Budgets like this for films this slight are why DreamWorks is having to ask Steven Spielberg to pay for his own films right now. It's the very definition of bad business. Did they accidentally give Emma Roberts Julia's salary or something?
Max Braden: Marley and Me benefited from the couples on a date demographic, while BHC targetted the under 10 crowd. Hotel For Dogs looks like it was aimed a little in between, so $17 million is a good result.
Tim Briody: Really? That much? The opening figure is suddenly not so great in my eyes. It better hope for uber-kid legs over the next couple of weeks.
Kim Hollis: Yeah, I think this has to be disappointing. MLK Jr. weekend is pretty darned family-friendly if you think about it. I always kind of suspected that this would be the least of the dog movies.