Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
July 20, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince earned $77.8 million over the weekend and $158 million over five days. How impressed are you by this result?
Josh Spiegel: I think this is a very impressive result. Considering the fact that, as has been pointed out in many places, Harry Potter, as a film franchise, is incredibly frontloaded, taking in just almost $160 million in five days is worth gloating about. I'm not sure that this sixth installment was ever going to reach $200 million in five days, despite the large midnight numbers we got mid-week. Warner Bros. should be thrilled with this, as it's about $20 million more than Order of the Phoenix got in its first five days; also, the international numbers are likely going to double whatever Half-Blood Prince makes in the States. Though it may not be the best ever, these numbers are great.
David Mumpower: Order of the Phoenix, the fifth Potter film, earned $139.7 million over five days with $77.1 million of it coming from the opening weekend. That puts the $77.8 million tally inside the margin, as it were. The fifth film's inflation-adjusted total is around $81 million, but its five day total is around $147 million. What all of this math means is that Half Blood Prince did better and it did so much quicker. There was definitely a rush factor here. Whether that shortens its legs remains to be seen, but an $11 million improvement in ticket sales over its direct predecessor is a success. A 7% bump is solid, and it's not an artificial one since the title isn't available on IMAX yet. Its third weekend sales will be much stronger due to this, but there were a lot of remorseful IMAX employees this past Wednesday. These poor employees had to keep explaining to customers why they had the third week of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen instead of the Potter debut. That's probably about $12-$15 million Warner Bros. couldn't add to the first week sales, which is frustrating to all involved.
Kim Hollis: I think the WB should be pretty pleased with the results so far. We're seeing a bit of a shifting of the audience behavior where they go to see it at midnight sneaks and then immediately on opening day, and I think that the reason for that is that like the stars of the film, the audience has grown up a bit. The people who wouldn't have been able to go to a midnight showing even two years ago are suddenly old enough to make Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince a record-breaker in that category. And given the solid reviews and the fact that IMAX is still on the horizon - with exclusive additional scenes - it should have decent legs, though it may have a slightly rough second weekend drop. It would just be falling in line with other blockbusters if it shows that sort of behavior.
Reagen Sulewski: What gets me about these figures is that we're talking about film series six films deep and eight years from its beginning, and it's never had anything you could realistically call a dip in popularity. It certainly helps that it's one continuous story, but that's a phenomenal achievement any way you slice it.
Jason Lee: I also think that you have to take into account that the grosses for Order of the Phoenix were somewhat enhanced by the fact that its release came a couple of weeks before the release of the seventh book - everyone on the planet was infected with Potter-mania and it definitely helped the gross of the fifth film. The fact that Half-Blood Prince is ahead of Order of the Phoenix by such a margin is really impressive.
Max Braden: Looking at the history of the movie franchise, the first installment was the only one to gross more than $300 million domestically, at $317 million after a $90 million November opening in 2001. Order of the Phoenix got close with a total of $292 million. Given The Half-Blood Prince's five-day opening, I wouldn't be surprised if it goes on to gross over $300 million. As Reagen noted, to be going this strong so long into the series, having kept your original main cast while they've aged significantly, is a huge achievement that isn't solely due to the strength of the novels.
Sean Collier: Jason's point is valid - this film improved over the previous Potter entry, and Harry was ruling the world then and beginning to wane now. Even if evidence of frontloading is present, that's still a success story. As for legs, keep in mind that there isn't much on the horizon. Potter will certainly repeat next weekend against "competition" like G-Force and The Ugly Truth; after that, Funny People is after a different demographic, and then the ready-made flop of GI Joe. Potter could have a long run at the top.
Does absence make the heart grow fonder?
Kim Hollis: Do you believe the two-year gap between the release of the fifth film along with the seventh and final book and the release of Half-Blood Prince helped or hindered its opening week performance?
Josh Spiegel: More than anything, I think that what truly helped out Half-Blood Prince was the unexpected delay Warner Bros. made to its release. It's hard to say what this movie would have done had it come out when it was originally meant to - last Thanksgiving - but there was much more excitement building up to the summer. Obviously, those threats some people made about not even seeing the movie because of its delay were as empty as empty can be. The two-year delay didn't hurt either, but I'm not sure anything hindered this film's performance.
David Mumpower: I'd been on the fence on this subject for some time now, but what I anecdotally observed in theaters combined with the empirical first week data leads me to believe it helped. When Order of the Phoenix came out just before Deathly Hallows was released in bookstores, the end result was a de facto Harry Potter month. That was two years ago this week. In the interim, die hard disciples of the stories have had no outlet for their enthusiasm. A desire to see how the events of arguably the best book in the series play out onscreen no doubt fanned that enthusiasm, as did the absolutely glowing reviews that trickled in. Overall, I do consider this to be a perfect example of absence making the heart grow fonder. Those $22.2 million of midnight sneaks reflect that people missed Harry Potter.
Kim Hollis: I tend to agree that people seemed to have missed Harry and the gang, but I temper that with some reserve. If Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has a rougher-than-expected second weekend drop, it's possible that we're looking at a slightly shrinking audience for the franchise. Even with that said, though, people are going to have more than enough time to catch up before the next one is released in 2010. It's the eighth and final film that I expect to be a doozy.
Jason Lee: I was entirely expecting this film to come under both Order of the Phoenix and Goblet of Fire so for it to possibly top $300 mil and become the #2 grossing film in the series (that is, until Deathly Hallows Part I comes out) I think this is phenomenal.
Scott Lumley: I doubt that it was planned, but once again this very, very weird summer seems to have helped Potter quite a bit as well. We've had so many surefire blockbusters fail to meet expectations this year that it seemed like people started looking to the next Harry Potter film in desperation.
Reagen Sulewski: That this is even a question is another data point supporting how unusual this film series is. About the only other film series we've come to expect one film per year is Saw. Two years between Potter films and people are reaching for the methadone.
Big and Bigger
Kim Hollis: With two films remaining in the franchise, what are your expectations for the box office of parts one and two of the Deathly Hallows?
Josh Spiegel: I would not be surprised if we see a similar box office performance from, at the very least, Part One of The Deathly Hallows. As a huge fan of the books and a fan of the movies (not huge, but I do get excited to see them), I cannot wait until Thanksgiving 2010 to see what the filmmakers have come up with. The second part should also see some pretty similar performance, unless the general consensus is that the first part isn't up to snuff. The truly die-hard fans of these books may not be happy with the changes the filmmakers come up with, but none of these movies have been too unpopular, so we may be looking at a few Harry Potter movies with close to $300 million.
Kim Hollis: I touched upon this a bit in the previous topic. I believe that Deathly Hallows Part One will probably behave fairly similarly to Half-Blood Prince, though it is going to impacted a touch by a different release date which will affect audience behavior. The weekend totals should be better in that regard. But for the final film in the series, I think we're looking at a juggernaut. The series is coming to a close, which will make it much more of an event film than it has been to this date - and I'm not saying the previous entries haven't been event films.
David Mumpower: I think that the two film finale will be a fascinating box office study. Will Deathly Hallows Part One play out like the middle film in a trilogy or will sustained momentum from the word of mouth of Half Blood Prince drive its box office even higher? If it's a disappointment (and I cannot rule out this possibility since the first half of the book was heavily criticized for being methodical and depressing), will this be another Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End where the final film's luster is damaged by lingering complaints about its predecessor? I don't believe The Matrix Revolutions is a possibility, but I can't rule out the At World's End scenario. My gut instinct, however, is that the final two Potter films are upwardly mobile. Both of them will be in IMAX from day one, ticket prices in that format will be even higher and there will be more of them across the country, and people will want to see how the story ends. I have to believe that Half Blood Prince is the first of three consecutive $300 million movies for the franchise and it wouldn't shock me if the final film (what's the name going to be for this anyway? Harry Potter and the Battle of Hogwarts?) makes $400 million domestically and becomes the second most successful film ever in terms of worldwide box office.
Tim Briody: I hinted in the Friday Box Office column that at this rate of growth and fanboy rush, the Deathly Hallows films, especially the second one, will seriously threaten and perhaps beat The Dark Knight's opening.
Jason Lee: I agree with Tim, Deathly Hallows Part II will be the biggest film of its summer and will certainly threaten for the biggest opening weekend of all time. The other thing that I want to throw out there is the possibility of the book audience growing substantially before the first Deathly Hallows film comes out. I've heard from no fewer than three people, who have watched all the movies but not read all of the books, that are intending on finishing the book series before seeing Deathly Hallows in theatres. I think the knowledge that the film series is coming to a close will help spur book sales of Deathly Hallows and create an even larger anticipation factor for the last two movies.
David Mumpower: I guess this is probably a topic for another day, but I wonder if Iron Man 2 can take a run at that number for The Dark Knight. The first film's word-of-mouth should spike it the same way we saw with Batman Begins...but it doesn't have a Joker.
Scott Lumley: I think the first film is going to open slightly stronger than the average for Harry Potter, but I really feel part two is going to get a result similar to the Return of the King. It's going to be a must-see film and I think that's going to spike the numbers hard. I don't know if it will be a Dark Knight-sized spike, but it'll be big.
David, I don't have that kind of vibe for Iron Man 2. Now if we were talking about 2012 and the Avengers film, then I'd think we had a serious candidate for a run at the Dark Knight.
David Mumpower: The reason I said Iron Man 2 instead of The Avengers is that the latter film won't be out before the Harry Potter franchise has finished. I'm also less sanguine about its prospects at the moment since it's still largely an unknown. The Hulk has been largely met with cries of mediocrity thus far while Captain America and Thor are wildly speculative propositions at the moment. What is certain is that Iron Man was one of the most successful releases of the decade in combined terms of box office, critical reception and word-of-mouth. Its video market measurements are also off the charts. In terms of that idea that a prior film's quality buys the opening weekend of the next film, it's in that Pirates of The Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl area. If the trailers are good enough, I absolutely believe it can get into that Spider-Man/Batman range.
Reagen Sulewski: Let's not forget that it's a huge asset that pretty much the entire audience for the Potter films already knows the ending. In the case of some of these other film series, there were big letdowns as they got to the end. At World's End was a bloated mess, for example. Here, it's already written and accepted. Now, they could still screw it up, but much more likely is the Lord of the Rings scenario, where it's (mostly) as in the text, people know it and like it and make it the highest grossing of the series.