Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
May 3, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: A Nightmare on Elm Street, the last major remaining major horror franchise to be rebooted, opened to $32.9 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?
Josh Spiegel: I think I'm supposed to say that this is a good result, in that the movie cost $30 million to make and made that much (and a bit more) this weekend. Certainly, it's not a flop. That said, the most recent Platinum Dunes remake (Friday the 13th) made just over $40 million in its opening weekend and just under $70 million overall. With Iron Man 2 and the rest of the summer movie season staring Nightmare in the face, I highly doubt this movie is going to make anything more than barely twice its opening weekend take, if that. And, yeah, this was a cheap enough movie and it didn't tank completely. But I'm pretty sure this result could've been better, what with the incessant marketing.
Brett Beach: As Josh noted, it will end up being profitable, but I think that's where the good news ends. The overwhelmingly negative critical response coupled with the deep Friday to Saturday to Sunday drops (indicative of negative word-of-mouth) suggests that this franchise reboot will end up getting the boot next weekend. A week ago I was still thinking about the possibility of a certain luster of quality allowing for a decent hold in the face of Iron Man 2. As someone who was looking forward to this more than most resurrected franchises of the past several years, my excitement has been considerably diminished - I have yet to see it - and it makes me a little sad. Halloween 3 is off the table for the time being, Friday the 13th Part 2 is dead for the time being and my guess is it will be a while before we see another Elm Street. Michael Bay must be stopped! Thank goodness there hasn't been any talk of that The Birds redo for a while.
Kim Hollis: I actually think that when you consider the fact that the awfulness of Friday the 13th actually damaged this one to a large degree, this result is pretty okay. I would have liked to think that it could open near where Jason Voorhees and friends did, but I was weirdly never feeling it for the updated Nightmare. Is there some money left on the table? Probably. Do Michael Bay and Co. care? Not likely. If they did, they would have brought Wes Craven and Robert Englund back. Instead, this is nothing more than a quick, transparent cash grab.
(P.S. I know I framed the question differently, but I'd posit that we still have one major horror franchise left unsullied - Evil Dead. So far, anyway.)
Michael Lynderey: I would say it's about what the studio should have expected, considering the reviews and reception this one ended up getting. I could certainly see a Freddy Krueger reboot really reaching the upper echelon of horror box office, but that would have required the kind of enthusiastic fan and critical reaction that this film just didn't get. So what they're left with is a decent hit, and maybe a sequel down the road. Fair enough. But if I was Platinum Dunes, I'd go to work on coming up with the Freddy Krueger of the 2010s - a new horror franchise that can inspire the same kind of fanbase and longevity that the Elm Street, Halloween, and Friday the 13th films did. And no remake is ever going to do that. Ever. That's just a fact.
Reagen Sulewski: You have to think that producers came into this project knowing that the Friday the 13th scenario was possible, and that they'd still be okay with that, since it's still basically a license to print small amounts of money. We're well into the "let's cut open the goose and get all the eggs!" portion of the horror remake craze, so this isn't a particularly egregious example of this behavior. Part of me wants to hate Michael Bay for yet another reason, in cheapening the idea of horror, but you know, it's not like these franchises didn't cheapen themselves before hand.
Matthew Huntley: I am deeply disappointed by this result simply because the movie was bad and completely unnecessary. An opening in the low 30s for a movie that reportedly cost the same to make unfortunately only guarantees one thing: another remake will be made. (Kim, let's hope it's not The Evil Dead franchise, although I agree with you it's probably not immune to the "remake" bug.) The only bright side to this strong but hardly robust figure is that it will totally collapse next weekend with the onslaught of Iron Man 2. But Warner Bros. must have anticipated this well ahead of time. The movie came, audiences saw, and the studio recouped its money in one fell swoop just as they probably intended. What a vicious and sleazy cycle horror remakes are becoming.
David Mumpower: I understand why everyone's outrage reflex has been triggered. Still, we had a conversation in this very column about two years ago about how we were awaiting the inevitable announcements of Friday the 13th and A Nightmare on Elm Street making their triumphant (?) returns. The good news is that we are past that now and unless you count Scream, a higher class of horror franchise, or Evil Dead, only marginally a horror franchise, we're home free. All of the major properties have been re-introduced; we will of course see sequels to some of them, but this phase has largely passed. It's time for the next big thing in horror and not a moment too soon.
In terms of this particular performance, Reagen is correct that it's found money. This was the one well established horror franchise that had an owner demonstrating some protective instincts regarding the proprerty. We'd only had the one appearance of Freddy Krueger in 15 years, which means the average movie-goer who saw this film over the weekend was six-years-old or younger the last time a standalone Nightmare on Elm Street movie was released. That's an eternity in the movie industry and is in fact roughly the same gap between releases as The Godfather II to The Godfather III and Chinatown to The Two Jakes (anyone remember that train wreck?). For a staple of the horror industry, that type of gap is hard to process. It's a shame they didn't return with a better product.
Jason Lee: For every successful re-start of a franchise (Batman Begins), there's a clunker re-start (Superman Returns). And like Superman Returns, this clunker will end up with enough cash to be profitable, though it won't make any on-the-fence or even modestly-interested fans any more eager to shell out $15 to see its sequel.