Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
February 15, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Should I buy an island? Yes, I should buy an island. Maybe two.

They missed their best window to sponsor The Amazing Race by *that* much

Kim Hollis: Gnomeo and Juliet, Miramax's effort at mashing up Toy Story-esque characters with Shakespeare, earned $25.4 million this weekend. What do you think of this result?

Josh Spiegel: I wish it was lower. This movie sounds so insanely terrible (and, based on some of the reviews, actively mocks Shakespeare) that I wanted it to fail. It's going to do pretty well, I guess, but if it had made under $20 million, I'd be smiling. My guess is that the number's so high because kids haven't had anything to watch in theaters for a month or so.

Edwin Davies: I still have trouble believing that this film exists, so its performance is frankly mindboggling to me. I seriously cannot fathom how any one could see the trailer and decide that they had to go and see it, unless some awful mishap had occurred at their local theater in which the prints of every other available film were destroyed, leaving Gnomeo and Juliet as their only option. And even then, they could just go and throw pennies on a railway track or something. It'd probably be a lot cheaper. I expect that the success of the film is solely down to a lack of options for kids, specifically young boys, since I don't know how many would be aching to watch Justin Bieber in 3D, which creates a bizarre scenario in which Gnomeo and Juliet is the more masculine alternative.

Matthew Huntley: I am actually impressed by this result because I didn't think this movie stood a fighting chance going into the weekend. There are rumors it's been sitting on the shelf for quite some time, but obviously Disney/Miramax chose a fortuitous time to release it and earned back some of their investment.

The movie does look cheesy and its tag lines ("A little adventure goes a lawn way") make you want to roll your eyes, but I could imagine kids getting excited about it, especially those between five-to-12 years of age. To a kid, it's bright, cheerful and colorful, so what's not to like? There's almost no possibility it will have the same adult cross-over appeal like Toy Story or How to Train Your Dragon, but when parents take their kids to the movies, they also have to buy a ticket, so I wouldn't be surprised if this one inched its way up to $100 million.

Shalimar Sahota: A low budget computer animation that's getting by on as much funniness as you can get out of garden gnomes. It's a surprising result. I will say that when I viewed the trailer at a packed cinema there were actually a lot of laughs. Given the title, it was probably the most romantic option on Valentine's Weekend. Also (mis?)using some celebrity voice talent to its advantage (Elton John, Ozzy Osbourne, Hulk Hogan (!), Dolly Parton) could have had a helping hand.

Brett Beach: I shudder a little to think that this is the type of film I am going to be taking my 13-month-old to (by default) in the not too distant future. The title didn't make me laugh, the trailer didn't make me laugh. Intriguing mashup of celebrity voices aside, I am at a loss to explain the mid-$20 million opening here. Depending on holds, it's going to get a lot closer to $100 million that I would have expected. I know the default is "there hasn't been anything new for kids in several weeks" but what chords were struck to get parents to pay extra for the 3D? Is it the Elton John soundtrack? Is he that powerful?!

David Mumpower: So, we're all coming to the same conclusion individually. Given the product Miramax had, this is a triumphant result. In lesser hands, this release could have been buried in a manner that resulted in absolutely middling to little box office a la Alpha and Omega, Planet 51 or Astro Boy, the nightmare scenario. Instead, they picked the correct weekend to fill a recent void in quality animated titles. I also think we should mention that the Justin Bieber movie presents at least some direct demographic competition as pre-teen girls are a strong audience for animated fare. So, Gnomeo and Juliet's debut is even more impressive when we factor in extenuating circumstances on top of the quality concerns regarding the movie itself. Nobody was saying six months ago that this would be a $25 million debut. Kudos to Miramax for pulling a rabbit out of their hat.

Channing Tatum's abs

Kim Hollis: The Eagle, a Roman Empire era soldier's tale starring Channing Tatum, opened to $8.6 million against a $20 million production budget. Is this a good enough result for a relatively cheap film starring Tatum and directed by the same guy who made The Last King of Scotland?

Josh Spiegel: Since the budget was so low (lower than I'd have thought), Focus is probably not sweating the opening weekend. With overseas sales, I see the film topping its production costs by quite a bit. The movie failed because there was barely any marketing, and what marketing there was didn't make the movie seem like anything special. Do I need to see Channing Tatum in a sword-and-sandals epic? Does anyone?

Edwin Davies: Considering that Centurion, a by all accounts better film directed by Neil Marshall (The Descent) and starring Michael Fassbender (Inglourious Basterds) told a pretty similar story last year and didn't even make $8 million worldwide, this is a pretty solid opening. I don't think it's a particularly bad result in terms of the talent involved, either, since none of Kevin Macdonald's films have topped £40 million at the domestic box office, so this doesn't represent a significant drop for him. As for Tatum, he is something of a paradox in the movie world; he's a name actor who has headlined several hit films, yet most moviegoers would struggle to pick him out of a line-up. That a film starring him hasn't exactly set the world alight is neither good or bad for him, it just further demonstrates that he has failed to create a persona for himself (except for perhaps as a blandly handsome beefcake) that people can identify with.

Bruce Hall: Not quite great, but it isn't as though the guy has much to lose just yet plus the thing will almost certainly make a profit. It is still early in Tatum's career and as has been mentioned, he is still defining himself. Beats me what he's ultimately going to be, but as far as his long term career I doubt this is a movie anyone will be talking about in any way when it's all over.

Matthew Huntley: This is a decent enough result given the bland title, the bland talent and the bland marketing. I doubt the movie will end up making much more than three-quarters of its budget back domestically, but I agree it will pick up more overseas and perhaps make enough to be considered a success, however mild.

I still don't think we've seen Channing Tatum really act yet and I hesitate to even call him an actor. He's just someone who's on-screen who looks out of place. Until he can really embody a character, he's just some stiff who doesn't seem to know what he's doing.

Brett Beach: To respond first to Kim's questions, yes and yes, although I will be curious to see if Scotland's $17.5 million final gross beats out The Eagle's ultimate tally. It's gonna be close, I think! In (minor) defense of Channing Tatum, he was quite good in Dino Montiel's A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, a film I very much enjoyed and would recommend. I know he got some good notices as well in Fighting, by the same director so maybe he just needs a director who knows how to separate him from the wallpaper and pyrotechnics.

David Mumpower: More than anything else, I think we've apparently run out of good movie titles.

"Perfect."

Kim Hollis: Is there a stranger film that earned $100 million domestically than Black Swan? If so, what would be your nominee?

Reagen Sulewski: Vanilla Sky comes close, but then you had Tom Cruise pre-couch jump to sell it.

Tony Kollath: Easy explanation: Girls kissing=$$$$$$$.

Edwin Davies: To this day it still surprises me that Fahrenheit 9/11 made $119 million. Given the subject matter and the fact that Michael Moore is such a divisive figure, it seemed at the time like the sort of film that, like Bowling For Columbine, would do well for a documentary but not much beyond that.

Wait...Does this mean that "angry fat guy who dresses terribly" is an idea that is equally as likely to make money as "hot girls kissing"?

Reagen Sulewski: It would explain Paul Blart.

Brett Beach: Looking at the list of 478 does make it seem like there hasn't been anything as potentially off-putting as Black Swan that has cracked the nine-digit mark. However, taking "strange" to mean both surprising, as well as a film that you wouldn't necessarily think would get mainstream approval domestically, I would vote for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon at $128 million. 10 years later, it still has the lead over the next two closest high-grossing foreign language films (Life is Beautiful and Hero) by over $70 million. It's the Titanic of arthouse crossover films. Yes it was acclaimed and became an Oscar winner, but that certainly doesn't directly translate into a smash hit. If there is enough action, Americans will read those subtitles. I also think the previously mentioned Vanilla Sky and Fahrenheit 9/11 are good picks as well.

Edwin Davies: If we adjust for inflation and look reasonably far back, 2001: A Space Odyssey enters the conversation as a very strong contender for strangest film to earn over $100 million (in fact its total of $56.7 million in 1968 is somewhere in the region of $350 million(!) in 2011 dollars). As out there as Black Swan is, at least it has a fairly conventional narrative to hang its more extravagant aspects on. 2001 has nothing like that; it was freaky and revolutionary in 1968 and it's still a bizarre cinematic experience forty years later, even though so many films and film-makers have used its ideas and techniques to make more conventionally mainstream films.

However, I'd say that, in terms of the broader cultural context in which the two were released, Black Swan stands out more because there isn't the same sort of cultural, intellectual and chemical revolution happening that would make people gravitate to it the way that people (okay, hippies) did with 2001. I'm not sure anyone has come out of Black Swan and genuinely thought that it was a film made for them or their cultural subset.

Jerry Simpson: I'd add that if we count box office ticket price inflation over time, Fantasia is a pretty weird picture. It was animated, it has no story (it's actually a collection of vignettes), and it is dramatic, obscure and mostly classical music. Even Fantasia 2000 is pretty odd.

David Mumpower: In terms of films that are hard to define, District 9 would be in the discussion. Since it's a science-fiction movie with an excellent premise, however, I don't think its popularity is anywhere near as surprising. Comic book adaptations, animated and science fiction flicks are supposed to be weird. Without spoiling the ending for the three people who don't know it by now, I could see an argument for The Village. Shyamalan had become a brand by that point, though, so it's similar to Cruise with Vanilla Sky. This rules out the inexplicable aspects of The Last Airbender as well. What about American Beauty? One of its stories hangs on the audience watching a paper bag for a full minute. How about Pulp Fiction? I mean, the gimp alone...