Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
August 23, 2010
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Vampires Suck, a film whose title we at BOP strongly support, finished in second place with $12.2 million for the weekend and $18.6 million since its Wednesday opening. A lot of the recent spoof films have been DOA. Do you think this reinvigorates the format or do you see it as more of a blah result?
Josh Spiegel: I think the charitable way to say it is that this movie could have - and should have, BOP-approved title or not - done a lot worse. Making nearly its entire budget back in five days is nothing to sniff at, even if the budget was low. I'd managed to avoid any ads for this movie, hearing about its existence only from a couple of websites and the unsurprisingly negative reviews. I don't think it reinvigorates the format; the only kind of movie to do that would do well and actually be, you know, funny.
Bruce Hall: Blah. This movie had the benefit of some very soft competition this weekend, not to mention (and let's factor this in a distant second) the inevitable Twilight backlash. The snake oil salesmen turned film maker duo of Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer no doubt will have another modest success on their hands, which means they will continue to be allowed to make movies. If it’s any consolation to anyone, they ARE better than Uwe Boll - if only just a little. We can mock these films critically all we want but the sad fact is that what we have here is the cinematic equivalent of the dollar-a-scoop Chinese restaurant. You put forth minimal effort, carefully tailor your product for a narrow demographic (high strung businessmen with little time to care what they eat, or in this case bored teenagers still coming to grips with being freshmen), and if you make just enough money to keep the doors open you can consider yourself a success.
Meanwhile, there remains a curious lack of stray animals in the neighborhood. You get what you pay for. Now let us never speak of this again.
Matthew Huntley: We're all hoping for blah, because we definitely don't want to see this format reinvigorated, and by "this format," I mean the Friedberg-Seltzer one. It'd be great if the spoof format itself could see a resurgence and make its way back up to the standard of Airplane!/Naked Gun, but I'm not sure that kind of creativity exists in Hollywood any more.
Unfortunately, successful movies (i.e. Twilight) have a price and this is the worst kind. And the title just adds insult to injury, because Friedberg/Seltzer have practically supplied critics the ammo to rip apart their movie (how many reviews do you think featured the line, "Vampires Suck sucks" or "Vampires Suck: they sure do")? Since these guys have already laughed their way to the bank, I agree with Bruce: let's just slay the Vampires talk (wah wah) and move on. Otherwise, the terrible filmmakers win.
Brett Beach: As sad as it makes me to consider, if this had opened on Friday instead of Wednesday, it most likely would have had enough to open on the top spot. I don't think it reinvigorates the format nor is it a blah result. It simply validates Friedberg/Seltzer's existence and allows them to make the same kind of film indefinitely with a similar budget. Setting Disaster Movie aside (which was from a different studio), their three previous movies finished in the near $40 million to near $50 million range and this will most likely get there as well. I can accept that there is an audience for this (even I got suckered the first time around with Date Movie. I mean c'mon, with Alyson Hannigan, Jennifer Coolidge, and Fred Willard in the cast, I had hopes), but three things really get me down:
1) Can Fox at least put some good money into the advertising budget for posters that don't look like Photoshop Wrecks?
2) These guys don't even have to promote their movies. Are they afraid to confront the masses (at least Uwe Boll makes statements)? I have done Google searches for Friedberg/Seltzer Interviews and the only hits are for mocks and (wait for it) spoofs. I can also only find two photos of them. Do they even exist?
3) If Friedberg/Seltzer had/have final cut on their films, would anyone be able to tell?
I wish we could quit talking about them, but in this case, that won't make them go away.
Jim Van Nest: I don't see how this can do anything but kinda reinvigorate the genre. They've been releasing these pieces of crap for years now with little to no success. This relatively successful result will likely cause a glut of these in the next couple years. Of course, the genre will go right back to having no box office impact whatsoever. This result can only be attributed to the Twilight backlash.
Edwin Davies: I think it reinvigorates the genre briefly, but only until the next one comes out. Aside from Friedberg/Seltzer, these kind of broad, terrible and slapdash parodies don't tend to have that much traction, and they've been declining in popularity fairly steadily since the heights - and I do use that word cautiously - of the first Scary Movie. Unless their next film has as massive and divisive a target as Twilight to focus on I think they'll struggle, since the backlash against that franchise is the only reason I can see why this film did more business than Disaster Movie. Clearly there are a lot of people out there whose desire to see Twilight being mocked hasn't been sated by the millions of people online doing just that. (I'd like to think the reason why it didn't make more money is that there is a hugely overlap between people who don't like Twilight and people who don't like Friedberg and Seltzer.)
Reagen Sulewski: This is a pretty low standard for "reinvigorating" that you guys have. I view this as more of a one-off: Seltzberg made the wise decision of focusing on just one series that is ripe for backlash, coasting on that presumed hostility towards Twilight movies. And still they only got $12 million out of it. Congratulations for reading the tea leaves, guys, but without a second target, this momentum isn't going to last.
Where's the Lil'?
Kim Hollis: Lottery Ticket, the Bow Wow comedy, earned $10.6 million and had a per venue average of $5,399 (the best in the top ten). What are your thoughts on this performance?
Josh Spiegel: Lottery Ticket clearly did well with the target audience - having the highest per venue average isn't too shabby. That said, I wonder how well it could have done with more theaters. The ceiling for this movie - a Tyler Perry-esque neighborhood comedy without a Madea character - was probably not much higher than the result. Though I've seen neither, it looks like I'd have been happier with this doing better business than Vampires Suck, but the entire list of new releases just cause so much malaise in me that I imagine they did the same with most audiences.
Bruce Hall: On the one hand, such a narrow release might seem smart, with this being the somewhat less than enlightening fare that it is. But I it feels like they might have been a little gun shy on that front, so I am with Josh in wondering what might have been with a somewhat wider release. Needless to say, there is a very specific target audience for this movie, but that well is going to run dry pretty quickly and I can’t help but think that they might have capitalized on that better, the competition being what it was this weekend. At any rate, it served as a decent litmus test for (The Artist Formerly Known As Li’l) Bow Wow’s appeal, and he looks poised to be a relative long term success, all things considered. I guess you’d have to call this a win of sorts, but I wouldn't waste any champagne on it.
Matthew Huntley: Given the lack of buzz and low theater count, the expectations for Lottery Ticket were obviously low (as we all know), but I was glad to see the movie overcome soft predictions and earn back roughly two-thirds of its production budget. I haven't seen the movie yet, and I doubt it's anything special, but its box office performance at least offers hope that small, niche-audience films can still succeed in a crowded marketplace. Plus, and maybe this is because I'm so turned off by Vampires Suck, the movie seems high-spirited, as if there was some care put into it (at least as far as a dumb comedy goes). Warner Bros. should be pleased with the result, and even though the movie will likely struggle to make more than $30 million, it will find extra life on DVD/Blu-ray/cable. For a late-summer entry, that's not bad.
Brett Beach: The per screen average says it all. As others have noted, if this had opened at more theaters, it might have competed for the top spot. With summer winding down it could have a decently small drop-off next weekend and get a little boost from Labor Day. My thoughts from the trailer I saw was that it looked like a kinder, gentler Friday, and would be worth a Redbox rental or Netflix stream down the line. (On a side note: I can't handle that Mr. Cube has already graduated to playing Grumpy Old Man, even if it is with lots of makeup.)
Jim Van Nest: Considering the screen count, I'd have to say this is a win. You have to wonder, though, what would the screen count (and ultimate opening weekend take) have been is this film was "Tyler Perry Presents Lottery Ticket"?
Reagen Sulewski: I think it's missing the point slightly to say that the per screen average means this film was under utilized. That's not that great an average even if it was the best of the week, and it likely would plummet if you started expanding it into marginal markets. Think back to a few years ago to films like Barbershop, which were opening to $20 million. There appears to just as much a dearth of stars in black cinema as there is in Hollywood in general, that is, until Isaiah Mustafa breaks through.