Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
March 15, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Red Riding Hood, the latest glossed up fairy tale adaptation, opened to $14 million. Do you think this is a better performance than Beastly, or is it just a similar performance from a major studio in Warner Bros (as opposed to CBS Films)?
Matthew Huntley: I'd say it's a worse performance than Beastly, not least because it has bigger names, a bigger budget ($42 million compared to Beastly's $10 million) and because Warner Bros. is a major powerhouse studio compared to CBS. Perhaps Red Riding Hood needed to promote its male leads and the movie's love triangle more in order to attract a greater female viewership (you know, make it as much like Twilight as possible, because obviously the "from the director of Twilight" tag line wasn't enough). As I'll also mention my review, I'm glad this movie didn't open big, because I would hate to think it gives Hollywood justification to start a new trend of adapting every classic fairy tale to the big screen, especially when they're as amateurish as Red Riding Hood.
Brett Beach: If the basis is a comparison to Beastly being from an upstart studio (and maybe the hopes of WB execs that this could conceivably gross even one third of what Twilight did), then this is staggeringly underwhelming. In the context of this weekend, Red Riding Hood is the cheapest of the three budgets by far so I am inclined to cut it a little slack - mainly because Gary Oldman apparently saves the film with a scenery-chewing and completely inappropriate performance - even if it stands to have huge drops after this and finish with not much more than Beastly.
Matt, from what I understand, Hollywood is already feeling justified and has all sorts of delightful fairy tales coming our way soon including two Snow Whites, so all we can hope for is some happily ever afters.
Joshua Pasch: This performance is far more underwhelming than that of Beastly. In fact, though I didn't weigh in for MMQB last week, I'm inclined to say that Beastly's performance was above expectations (given CBS film's track record for having trouble opening a film over $12 million during opening weekend). Meanwhile Red Riding Hood had far greater built-in appeal. It has a more popular/attractive lead, a seasoned vet actor for street credibility, a Twilight association, a big studio behind it, and in my opinion, an inherently cooler story. That all of those advantages led only to a $4 million increase in opening weekend is astonishing.
As for Hollywood's trend of modernizing or remaking classic fairytales, I actually don't mind it one bit. That Beastly and Red Riding Hood are particularly bad attempts at doing so is a fault to those creative teams, not to the premise behind the films. I'll say its even one Hollywoods somewhat more inspired attempts and recycling content that the know is appealing. I'd liken it to the re-imaginings of Shakespeare's plays as modern, often teen, movies; O, 10 Things I Hate About You, and She's The Man all have redeeming qualities - that's all I hope for in the next batch of fairytale re-imaginings.
Edwin Davies: I agree completely with Matthew that, considering the relative star power of the two films and relative size of the studios involved, this result is worse than Beastly's. Amanda Seyfried's coming off the best year of her career, commercially, with Dear John and Letters To Juliet providing her with back-to-back hits that seemed to have turned her into a star, so I would have expected that to help buoy Red Riding Hood at least a little bit. The fatal miscalculation seems to have been making a film aimed at exploiting the lucractive Twilight audience then failing to get across the romantic angle that would actually appeal to that audience. That, and failing to realize that making a werewolf movie out of Red Riding Hood was a really quite terrible idea.
Reagen Sulewski: What's interesting about these results to me (and I'd add I Am Number Four in to the group) is that you simply can't force a trend with today's teens. Studios have attempted to jump on the Twilight bandwagon with significant fervor - "Hey kids, well you like that, then how about this?" but they've almost universally said "meh." It's the same problem that all the various Harry Potter knockoffs have had - teens only want the thing they want, and not anything else. It's the same mistake studios will make trying to capitalize on Hunger Game knockoffs.
David Mumpower: Reagen touches on a key point. Studios have an imperative to create audiences for their various releases. They did this well at the start of the 2000s, but the social media era appears to have them stymied. They are currently paying for the right to market bombs and disappointments, which makes me wonder if we will start to see a re-evaluation of marketing budgets moving forward. Red Riding Hood is not a movie that will be helped by advertising, at least not conventional methodology. To a larger point, a Red Riding Hood movie? Really? Didn't Hoodwinked already cover this ground plenty enough for a quarter century or so?
Apparently we don't mind if Mars takes our moms.
Kim Hollis: Mars Needs Moms delivered one of the worst performances ever for a Disney animated movie, opening to $6.9 million, with a pathetic per location average of $2,218. Are you surprised by how much it bombed? What do you think went wrong?
Matthew Huntley: Judging on the quality of the trailer only (as I've yet to see the movie), I am not surprised by this performance. I know I'm not alone when I say the trailer stunk and was so poorly cut that it made it hard to believe anyone would ever want to see the entire movie. It made it look unattractive, unfunny, unpleasant and just plain loud and obnoxious (especially the fat space man character, who made me shudder). That's where I lay most of the blame - the trailer.
But I'd say the title of the movie was also a problem. Mars Needs Moms doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and when parents/kids have trouble saying the name, they're not going to buy tickets. I think it's safe to say the marketing team for this is in trouble come Monday morning and Disney will be using the same word Kim did: pathetic.
Brett Beach: I am glad to know I wasn't the only one who thought this looked terrible (and it pains me to say that, considering it is based on a book by the inimitable Berke Breathed, whose Bloom County got me through the 80s in one piece). I am always amazed when a film out and out bombs these days, especially because budgets are so high, it seems as if everything has to be a pre-ordained smash. I don't know if I can answer what went wrong but I will answer a question with a question: Can Robert Zemeckis be stopped with his creepy motion capture campaign? Up next: A Yellow Submarine that will be more creepy than trippy.
Kim Hollis: Brett, I think we can all be thankful that Disney seems to have cancelled the Yellow Submarine update/remake today. Honestly, I think audiences respond to the motion capture stuff much the same way you do, Brett. We've seen small level successes, but only Polar Express was ever able to do truly well.
Edwin Davies: I wasn't that surprised initially since it looked awful and tracking suggested that a breakout success was unlikely, so it seemed like our yearly dose of an animated film that opens poorly then disappears (see also: Alpha and Omega). Then I saw how much it cost to make and I was flabbergasted. At least Alpha and Omega only cost $20 million to make, so its relative failure doesn't seem that bad, but for a film that cost $150 million dollars to take less than $7 million in its opening weekend is really spectacular.
The problem seems to be that the film looked really unappealing (based on the trailers) wasn't very good (based on the critical response) and opened at a time when there were already two popular, better animated films out there (though any difference in quality between Mars Needs Moms and Gnomeo and Juliet is probably not that big) so it got shut out.
Reagen Sulewski: Personally, I always find it a little bit of a surprise when a film bombs quite this badly - there's supposed to be adults watching to make sure things don't get this bad. That this particular film bombed isn't that surprising though, as mentioned. Zemeckis' studio's animation hits have all been as a result of 3D and/or a holiday theme, and this really had no connection to anything. Now, for the love of Jeebus - STOP MOCAPPING THINGS!
David Mumpower: My thought all along on this project has been that its mere existence is misguided. The last things mothers want to do when they go to the movie theater is be reminded of their tremendous parenting burden. Movies are supposed to provide escapism, not guilt. Also, I think timing the release of this coincide with Battle: Los Angeles is just plain strange, demographic independence notwithstanding. Finally, I think the biggest issue here is that we all prepare for the impending war with the Martian abductors attempting to corner the market on our most precious natural resource, Earth MILFs.