Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By Kim Hollis
May 18, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Letters to Juliet opened to $13.5 million in 2,968 locations. What should Summit Entertainment take from this result, and are you surprised the film didn't perform a bit more "Sparksian"?
Josh Spiegel: First of all, I wasn't getting a Nicholas Sparks vibe from the trailers; this movie looks too happy to kill off one of the romantic leads in a purportedly tragic way by the end of the final reel. Frankly, compared with Remember Me, this is a pretty solid bit of counterprogramming, though I wonder if it would've done better opening on Mother's Day weekend. Still, Summit should be relatively pleased as they count down the days until the new Twilight movie opens.
Matthew Huntley: Summit should be pleased, but not overjoyed, with this result. Letters reportedly only cost $30 million to produce, and if it makes up nearly half of that budget during its opening weekend, it's safe to say it could cover itself by the end of the month. I think this is exactly what the still-young studio was expecting.
I'm not surprised it didn't open with more "Sparksian" numbers simply because the trailer didn't make it look like such a movie, which tend to be sad, slow and melodramatic. Letters seemed more on the bright (and safe) side of things - completely predictable, with warm photography and and lush locations. With this in mind, it seems perfectly acceptable that it opens more along the lines of Under the Tuscan Sun than Dear John.
Michael Lynderey: I'm not really that surprised that Letters to Juliet didn't open bigger. Dear John itself was, and still is, kind of an anomaly, and most of the potential reasons that one had to break out aren't around this time. That said, I think $13 million is a pretty good score for a leading actress who's really just starting out, and who'll have a lot more chances to prove herself very soon. Letters to Juliet certainly doesn't do any harm to Seyfried, especially if it has some legs - which I suspect it will.
Jason Lee: I am not surprised that this didn't open bigger. For me, every non-Twilight Summit Entertainment release performs just like every other non-Twilight Summit Entertainment Release: in mediocre fashion (see Remember Me, Furry Vengeance and The Ghost Writer this year, for example). Granted, Juliet will out-gross all three of those, but I hold firm to my conviction that until they prove to me that they can break out with a film that doesn't include vampires (or aliens, seeing as how Push somehow ended up with an $80 million gross), I'm always going to err on the lower side of Summit, rather than overestimate one of their films.
Reagen Sulewski: Even though this is about 50% lower than I predicted, I don't really call this a shocking result. It's about in line with other generic teen/young adult romances, but there did always seem like the chance for a breakout, which is why I went higher. Maybe in the hands of a more competent distributor (the comments about Summit are well taken), that breakout would have been more likely, but for the kind of film it is and its budget, this is a solid double to the gap.
Max Braden: It's a fine result relative to cost, but I could imagine Summit might be so used to teen girl box office, and looking at Valentine's Day's massive opening weekend thinking, "What did we miss here?" Maybe if they'd picked Meryl Streep to play the older love interest, and threw in some musical sequences...
These blockbuster bombs don't go off unless you hit them juuuuuuuuuuust right
Kim Hollis: Just Wright, a romantic comedy in the Love & Basketball vein that stars Queen Latifah and Common, opened to $8.3 million with roughly the same per location average as Letters to Juliet. Should Fox Searchlight be pleased with this result?
Josh Spiegel: I'd say yes, but my amount of enthusiasm about this result is pretty much...nothing. From the reviews I've read, Just Wright is about as by-the-numbers as a romantic comedy can get (I'd even read comparisons to it being a movie-of-the-week), so this result could've been a lot worse. If Queen Latifah's satisfied with doing these smaller movies, then all the power to her. Just not something I'll ever be checking out, I guess.
Matthew Huntley: I don't think I'm alone on this when I say there's not much of a catch to seeing Just Wright. Don't get me wrong - I'll give any movie a chance, but did Fox Searchlight really make this one stand out in any way? The marketing was rather bland and I never got a sense of what the conflict was, other than he's a basketball player and she's...I don't know what she is. With this in mind, I guess Fox Searchlight should be pleased with the box-office result because they obviously got people into the theater (and the budget is relatively modest), but I'd be curious to ask the movie's patrons what they thought the movie was about before going (aside from being a standard romantic comedy). I feel like I'm missing something.
Reagen Sulewski: These times when a small film does exactly as it's supposed to are the hardest ones to write about. Ultimately what we're left with is a couple of minor stars and a production that didn't screw anything up shepherding an unremarkable-looking film to the finish line. Good job, I guess.
Max Braden: I never even saw any advertising for this movie, so that's eight million more than I would have expected.
David Mumpower: This answer is in no way box office related, but Love & Basketball and Brown Sugar are two of my favorite movies of the 2000s. I have always viewed Just Wright as a movie made especially for people like me who love those two films. Anyone else who goes to see them is just a happy bonus for the studio. Also, I am surprised by how good an actor Common is. He’s started to remind me of David Bowie as that rare musician who may have missed his calling as a thespian.
Iron Man, all jets ablaze, he fights and smite'n with repulsor rays!
Kim Hollis: Iron Man 2 fell 59% to $53 million. It has earned $212.2 million in ten days. Does this change your opinion about its long-term performance? Also, when the summer is over, what do you expect the pecking order to be between Shrek Forever After, Toy Story 3 and Iron Man 2?
Josh Spiegel: This just proves that word-of-mouth isn't the same as the A grade from Cinemascore (or that we just should ignore the latter). It seems more obvious now that Iron Man 2 (despite being better than the major critical consensus said it was) is going to perform like a typical blockbuster, but still make plenty of money. My guess as to the pecking order of the three films is that Shrek Forever After (or Shrek: The Final Chapter, or Shrek: Makin' More and More Money, or whatever they're calling it today) will gross the lowest, followed by Iron Man 2, followed by Toy Story 3, which I still believe is the highest-grossing movie of this year. I'd also not discount Inception as a high grosser, but among these three, Buzz Lightyear and Woody the cowboy should be the tops.
Matthew Huntley: This doesn't really change a lot. A 59% drop for a high-profile sequel actually seems pretty good these days (remember, The Dark Knight fell 53% during its sophomore stint), and in the coming weeks, along with a boost from Memorial Day weekend, the declines should stabilize a bit. I still think Iron Man 2 2 will earn over $300 million domestically, but not by as much as I originally thought (a $330 million finish seems likely).
When all is said and done, I'd still put Iron Man 2 on top, followed by Toy Story 3 and then Shrek Forever After. But it should be noted Iron Man 2 had the luxury of less competition to start out with. Had Toy Story opened first, I would crown it the victor. Shrek still remains a wild card, but if its quality is anything like its ads suggest, it's in trouble.
Michael Lynderey: As of last weekend, I'd suspected that Iron Man 2 wouldn't exactly have great legs, so I'm not at all surprised. This is still a mega-hit, no doubt, it's just not the kind of film that grabs hold of a year and doesn't let go - the race for biggest movie of 2010 is now officially wide open, and that's where Shrek and Toy Story come in. Well, not Shrek, I don't think - $300 million isn't necessarily a lock in this case. Toy Story 3 is really the one to watch - that's the film that could possibly beat out Alice in Wonderland, which appears to have become the new benchmark to beat this year. Who woulda thought?
Jason Lee: I was expecting a good bit of disenchantment from this film, simply by the fact that the first one was so much wittier, enjoyable and FUN. The drop is totally understandable. I think it'll stagger across the $300 mil mark, but ultimately get passed up by Toy Story 3. As for Shrek, I think it falls short of $300 million.
Reagen Sulewski: Josh, there's a separate factor from word-of-mouth at these higher levels of box office, specifically, audience size. It may just be that Iron Man maximized the audience for an Iron Man film the first time around, so when it comes to the sequel, there's nowhere else for it to go. So maybe everyone who saw Iron Man 2 liked it, but they had no one else to tell to see it other than those people who already had.
It does look now that it's going to struggle to reach the $300 million mark, which is perhaps a bit disappointing, but that should be tempered with thoughts that this is a franchise that most would have likely pegged in the $200 million bracket prior to the first one's release. They're playing with a lot of house money here.