Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
January 25, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Legion, the Screen Gems release about apocalyptic angels, opened to $17.5 million. What do you think of this result?
Josh Spiegel: I think Screen Gems should be thrilled. Of course, I'm saying that with a bit of a bite, as I had to unfortunately suffer through the film this weekend, and it doesn't deserve even half of that take. Obviously, the studio was able to use the apocalyptic cliche to its advantage by making it somewhat about religion, while still putting an emphasis on the bloody action that would follow. Considering that it faced down Avatar, Legion got lucky.
Tom Macy: At first I though it a bit ho-hum, afterall the similarly toned Book of Eli - albeit starring Denzel - earned $30 million last weekend. But that was before I saw Legion's budget of $26 million. Book of Eli cost $80 million. So this is a solid win for Screen Gems. Plus, the theatrical release of Legion is probably just an extended commercial for the DVD release, which I imagine will be even more lucrative.
Shalimar Sahota: I see it as neither great, nor awful. Kind of an expected result for a Screen Gems release in January. I imagine they were expecting a box office #1 with this too, but this is no ordinary month of January.
George Rose: It's definitely a step up after Pandorum for Denis Quaid and more than I expected it to make after the surprise success of last week's The Book of Eli. A few months ago I saw the trailer for Legion and was pretty excited. The story and action seemed appealing enough, and it stars Willa Holland from the fourth season of The O.C. This may not be important to most but every character became my best friend during that final season, mainly because the death of Mischa Barton's character revived that show to its early first-season glory. I never thought I'd see Willa again and now here she is in a Hollywood hit! $18 million is a good result, all things considered, and is more than enough to help put my little Willa on the map. It probably could have made $25 million if it opened a little further away from Eli, maybe as counter-programming to the onslaught of rom-coms around Valentine's Day, but asking for that from the Hollywood Gods would be a waste of my time. They never listen to me anyway and would likely do the opposite just to spite me for asking. The fact that Avatar is still at #1 is proof of that.
Michael Lynderey: That Legion number is an excellent B-movie opener, and the studio should be pretty happy. I'm not surprised that this one's doing better than Daybreakers - the Legion trailer looked a little livelier, if not quite as quality-driven, and so you've got that extra million on Friday over Daybreakers right there. In general, January is one of the top three months for horror (along with August and October); January 2009 had four horror films, and they all did pretty well, so when you scale that number down to two, what's left is probably going to reap the benefits by default alone - and that's exactly what Legion did.
Reagen Sulewski: I'm honestly kind of shocked at this, as this seemed like someone's idea of a joke premise for movie, with painfully awful looking effects. I suppose it had the benefit of never having been done before, as "religious-themed action gross-out" is a really narrow genre, but you would think audiences had some semblance of taste. Every clip of this I've seen inspired unintentional laughter. In other words, they did pretty good to get this much, which would have won the weekend were it not for the phenomenon of Avatar.
David Mumpower: What impresses me about this result is that it's the third release in this vein in January. In order to succeed in a situation like that, a title has to give potential consumers confidence that it brings something new and different to the table. Legion accomplished that through some unique visuals cleverly highlighted in the ads.
Max Braden: I think about $15 million of that was just because of the monster granny in the trailer.
Jason Lee: I think Max is right. Just imagine how much money The Proposal would have made if Betty White had taken a bite out of Ryan Reynolds' neck.
Fairies are not the new vampires.
Kim Hollis: Tooth Fairy, Fox's attempt to punish society, opened to $14 million. Why couldn't audiences handle the tooth?
Shalimar Sahota: Because Fox failed to hand out anesthetic with each ticket, making the experience so painful that critics hated it (currently 15% at Rotten Tomatoes), and audiences learned to stay away from it. However, there's not much for kids to choose from in the coming weeks, so they're likely to want to put their parents through torture.
George Rose: I think Fox's audience is finally getting tired of being treated like idiots. I loved Alvin and the Chipmunks like a crack fiend when I was a kid and had tons of their merchandising. It was that sort of devotion that led me as an adult to excuse the monster success of the first movie, which is basically a giant middle finger pointed at anyone with a brain. I figured the world had learned. I mean, after all, we did manange to evolve from apes. How could we not take the first Alvin movie as a learning lesson and evolve into beings that knew not to trust Fox's films targeted at the younger demographics? Well, because the words Squeakquel and Chipettes do magic for marketing. I hope they profited big time off of it because audiences don't seem to be happy being duped twice and they'll need that money to recoup this loss. Hmmm, maybe the Hollywood Gods are starting to listen to my prayers in 2010. It's about time.
Josh Spiegel: Well, The Rock - sorry, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson...or is it just Dwayne Johnson now? - has always been a modest draw to the box office, but not a consistently solid performer. The fact that the movie looked terrible (even if it's got Julie Andrews and Office co-creator Stephen Merchant) doesn't turn kids away, but maybe kids, like Johnson's character, don't really care or believe in the tooth fairy. Or, maybe they realize that this movie is the Santa Clause all over again (in more ways than one, considering that the third film's director was this movie's helmer). Whatever the case, I feel like this movie's tepid performance is all because of a solid lack of interest.
Reagen Sulewski: It's hard to believe that people didn't see what a terrible idea this film was from the get-go. It feels like they grabbed two random ideas (Rock as hockey player, and Tooth Fairy as punishment) and slammed them together without realizing how silly these seem. I can see what the initial reasoning might have been, considering his success in The Game Plan, but you don't always have to go with your first idea. Johnson really needs The Other Guys to have a little more testosterone in it if he wants to not pigeonhole himself out of a career.
Michael Lynderey: Tooth Fairy may well be that rare breed of film that features a ridiculous-looking idea that you think will never catch on with audiences - and then really goes ahead and doesn't catch on with audiences! Considering how good January usually is for this type of release, I'm actually a bit surprised that the children's movie arena has so few spectators this month - Chipmunks has slowed down, while Spy Next Door and the Tooth picture never took off. I think Avatar is still taking away a decent chunk of this movie's potential audience, and the reviews and frankly somewhat bizarre premise aren't helping drag those viewers back from 3D central.
Max Braden: I hadn't really put my finger on it when I saw the trailers, but discussing it now points out a difference between it and the Game Plan. The Game Plan featured the kid in the trailer. The Tooth Fairy featured Rock mugging in various scenes. From a kid's perspective it may have looked silly enough, but where's the connection with them, really? Had this been even more widely advertised we may have had a generation of kids expecting the tooth fairy to deliver skates under their pillows.
Jason Lee: The concept for this film was so utterly ludicrous. It reminds me of White Chicks in that you watch ten seconds of footage from the film and you wonder why no person along the way (gaffer, writer, key grip, director, caterer, etc.) didn't call a halt to the production and question the sanity of all involved.
Tom Macy: I'm surprised (and delighted) that audiences didn't shell out cash to further taint the current youth's perception of Julie Andrews. I want to say this didn't make any money because it looked like garbage but sadly I can't give audiences that much credit. After The Game Plan - with one of the worst trailers I can remember, watching it was as enjoyable as someone slowly scratching their hands over a balloon - argh my head hurts just thinking about it - opening to $22 million on it way to $90 million I thought this one would perform similarly. Plus everyone had all that money they saved by not seeing The Spy Next Door. Maybe The Rock is relying on this kiddie stuff a little too much. Audiences may be dumb, but that doesn't mean they don't get bored.
David Mumpower: I guess what we're all saying here is that none of us believed in the Tooth Fairy.