Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
April 19, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Scream 4 opened to $18.7 million versus a $40 million production budget. This represents the worst opening since the original, and it will almost certainly wind up with the lowest total for the franchise to date. Do you consider this to be a good enough result? Do you expect Dimension Films to move ahead with their stated plans to make Scream 5 and 6?
Tim Briody: Yes, I'm not really surprised at the result here. The audiences who lapped up Screams 1-3 have long since moved on. Now, it's about the gorno (see: Saw; hey look what I did there) or the just plain freaking scary (see: Paranormal Activity) and the Dead Teenager Movie/The Killer Is One Of Us type of flicks aren't what they used to be. As I stated in the Friday Box Office column, I hope they view it as a reboot (even if it was a storyline continuation) where a bit of box office is sacrificed in order to build the audience back up for the next installment. I don't see a reason for them to not go ahead with Screams 5 and 6.
Josh Spiegel: I think that Dimension may go forward with another Scream film, but it's come to a point where they need to lower the budget. Scream 4 is a lot of things, but it doesn't appeal to younger audiences, because younger audiences don't know or care about the franchise. Teenagers snarking about pop culture is old hat, and the gore in these movies are nowhere near that of the Saw franchise. Honestly, considering the crowd I saw the movie with on Friday night (biggest theater in the multiplex, with over 400 seats, and there may have been...oh, 60 people there), I'm shocked it made this much. Dimension may have made this movie, but they didn't seem to market it much, despite spending too much on it. They might press their luck with a fifth or sixth film.
Bruce Hall: It actually had not occurred to me that the last entry in this franchise was back in 2000. I'm not sure how Scream 4 came to be, but I can tell you that this is a franchise whose target audience was all embryos when the first installment came out in 1996. Just how relevant did they expect it to be? The funniest thing about this to me is that the Scream franchise was originally intended in part to satirize the horror genre. The problem is that you can only goof on something so many times before the volume of your output implies that you wish to be taken seriously. And once that happens, YOU become the joke. As far as I am concerned, the minute you sequelize a satire the fun stops and you become subject to the same criticism you're trying to dish out. Not to mention, this is a franchise that initially borrowed heat from people like Neve Campbell and Jamie Kennedy; people whose reason for being famous evaporated back when Bill Clinton was president. Will they make more of these? They'll probably try at least once, because to give up now would be to give up on a significant cash cow, and that doesn't happen easily in Hollywood. And I have to admit, Jason, Freddy, Leatherface and Mike Meyers have all been declared dead many times, but one great script is all it takes to turn things around. Time will tell.
Edwin Davies: I consider this a pretty solid result for all the reasons stated so far - the time that passed between Scream 3 and 4, which can't help but hurt awareness of the franchise amongst the young people that are its target audience, the sweeping changes that the horror genre has seen in that time, and the fact that most of the original fans of the series have outgrown it whilst not that many new fans have come to replace them - and I would also venture that it is a very good result when we consider just how bad Scream 3 was. Maybe I'm misremembering, but at the time a lot of people were disappointed with the third film, and for me it tarnished the series as a whole. For the series to return after such a long time away and with that much bad blood to overcome, I'd put this as a good start for Craven, Williamson and Dimension to build upon for future installments.
Shalimar Sahota: I would admit to being slightly disappointed. Given how the sequels opened, I was expecting this to reach the $30 million mark, or over $25 million at least. I would have argued that the previous films built up a new fan base, through video/DVD. But from this result it looks like there are so few now who care to see how Scream has progressed. This is ten years too late and reminds me more of the other long overdue sequel, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, which opened similarly last year. I'm sure this will earn its production budget back domestically and show a good enough profit from international grosses to carry on with a fifth film, though I personally think Dimension Films should leave it alone. Still, if they do go ahead, I think they should take Ghostface out of Woodsboro, or maybe they should just go really meta and make Stab.
Pete Kilmer: It just goes to show the changing box office landscape of the past 10 years where an $18 million opening is a bit of a failure. I think it's a solid result *if* this results in a new storyline with newer (i.e. cheaper) stars to cut the budget.
Max Braden: Time between franchise entries didn't hurt the remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street, which opened to $32 million at the end of April last year. (Though from the $18 million perspective that looks pretty good, at the time, MMQB was generally unenthusiastic about Nightmare's opening.) Notable to me is that the first three Screams were winter releases, opening at Christmas (Scream 2 debuted against Home Alone III - wow, that was a long time ago.) and Feb 4th for the third entry; mid April feels a little like limbo for this kind of project, but it certainly didn't punish Nightmare as noted above. I saw surprisingly little advertising for Scream 4 up until the very close to release day. I think the death knell there is when your franchise entry is seen as alternate programming to the likely weekend winner...
Brett Beach: To Pete's point, I think that a near $20 million opening for a film is all relative. Yes, that's nearly half the budget. Yes, for a franchise gone for over a decade that figure is respectable. But I would categorize it as disappointing from a personal standpoint of how excited I was for this film to come out and imagining that there were a large number of others who would, at the least, rush out to see this opening weekend, if not day. I don't think it matters whether this is spun as a "reboot" or a new installment, this is disheartening on a personal level for me. (I still haven't seen it, and won't be able to for a couple of weeks, so I am not speaking to quality.) Depending on next weekend's figures, Insidious could end up outgrossing this when all is said and done.
To the final question, consider this - The Weinsteins are making Piranha 3DD when the original made only $25 million. Yes there will be a 5 and 6 (with Wes Craven, I am not sure), and I may even be excited for them.
Jim Van Nest: If 4 makes a profit, I see no reason they won't go ahead with at least Scream 5. Why not, if you're making money...keep pumping them out there. I think the result, though, has a lot to do with the lag between films and the changes in the genre since the last one. Slasher flicks, sadly, seem to be a thing of the past. Sure Nightmare on Elm Street opened strong, but I'd bet that has more to do with Freddy Kruger being an icon of the genre...more so than Ghostface. This kind of makes me sad, because I much prefer the unstoppable maniac killers than the new breed of torture porn killers.
David Mumpower: You are all absolutely right about the performance as well as the fact that as long as Scream 4 is profitable, Scream 5 could/should move forward. In terms of why this movie didn't do better, I think the answer lies in the nature of the franchise. When Scream came out, its self-awareness was a novel plot device in an era sadly lacking in storytelling creativity. Right after that, we had a slew of phenomenal cinema that stood out in this regard, but Scream was a breath of fresh air. Fast forward to today and the Internet has co-opted every element of the premise that made Scream unique. In fact, the delay time in a movie production means that ideas that may be original at the time of principal photography are already outdated by opening weekend. Scream as a franchise has a lot working against it in the social media era. Meanwhile, the less clever slasher films can always meet their mark since the bar is set so low.
Please, Sam Raimi. Don't do it.
Kim Hollis: Are there any remaining horror franchise ready for a reboot/relaunch, or does Scream represent the last of the next generation iterations of terror?
Josh Spiegel: The only horror franchises that will get reboots are the ones that have already been rebooted. What's left? We had a Dawn of the Dead remake, a Halloween remake, a Friday the 13th remake, a Nightmare on Elm Street remake. Oh, here: how about Leprechaun? That hasn't been remade.
Edwin Davies: I'm tempted to view Scream 4 as the nadir of the trend since a reboot of a satire seems to be pushing things too far. Are we going to get a reboot of Scary Movie next? However, we all know that there is a veritable ocean of lesser known horror properties out there for studios to plunder, otherwise we wouldn't have had remakes of The Stepfather and My Bloody Valentine. Personally, I'm looking forward to the gritty reimagining of The Stuff.
Shalimar Sahota: Most of the more popular horror films have already been ruined, so as Edwin says, it's more about the "lesser known horror properties." So you've got those 1980s horror franchises, such as House, The Howling, Ghoulies, Critters. Also a fourth Evil Dead film is often talked about, and recently Mr. Campbell did say (probably in jest), "We are remaking Evil Dead." There have been a few clever ideas, though, in regards to prequels, and I think it'll be interesting to see how The Thing prequel turns out as well as Ridley Scott's Prometheus, set in the Alien universe. I can see that Poltergeist is already up for a remake, so maybe it won't be long before studios go into total sacrilegious mode and remake the likes of Jaws, in 3D.
Pete Kilmer: There are plenty of movies to remake/reboot but I agree that we've hit that level where the majority of them are going to be C and D level films that will get remade.
Max Braden: To be honest, the first thought that popped into my head was "1950s radioactive monsters... oh! oh! Godzilla!" which is awful, but I am liking the recent monster/alien trend of District 9, Monsters, Skyline, Battle LA, and the upcoming Super 8. So the more I think seriously about it the more I think a non-cheesy (and non-popcorn Broderick version), more terrifying Godzilla would be worth doing, and now I'm bummed that probably nobody will touch it.
Jim Van Nest: Unless they wanted to go really old school and try rebooting Dracula or Frankenstein...again. I'm thinking Max's suggestion of the '50s monster movies might be the only thing left. I suppose someone could get the bright idea to remake something like Jaws...but I'm pretty sure that would not go over well.
David Mumpower: With regards to Max’s point about Godzilla, we’re going to see a quicker remake of The Three Musketeers, last attempted in 2001, than we would Godzilla, which was from 1998. The ideas I think we’re likely to see mined are The Stand, The Kingdom and Red Riding. Sequelitis drives the industry. What each of these potential horror titles possesses is the ability to spread the stories out over three or four films. That’s the end-all, be-all for the genre these days. Circling back to Scream 4, this is also why the attempt was made even though everyone involved inevitably accepted the entire production as a cash grab.
This movie title so doesn't sound like what it actually is.
Kim Hollis: The Conspirator, the latest project from Hollywood living legend Robert Redford, finished in a surprise 11th place with $3.5 million in only 707 exhibitions. How impressed are you by this result? Do you think it is the default early season awards contender?
Josh Spiegel: I would be surprised if this is an awards contender; in terms of default status, Jane Eyre hasn't made that much since it opened, but it's prime awards bait and has gotten better reviews than The Conspirator did. Had this movie been somewhere near #5 on the list, I could see there being some kind of discussion about this movie, but I doubt it.
Bruce Hall: I was this close to checking out The Conspirator this weekend, until I saw the synopsis. My first thought was "Mary Surrat? Spoiler alert...death by hanging. This just in: President McKinley is also dead. Where's the story?"
Okay, I jest. It's hard to believe so many people remain skeptical about the alleged conspiracy to kill JFK, since the conspiracy to kill Lincoln was quite real, and would be beyond belief had it not actually happened. It's a major event in American history that hasn't been explored enough on film, so it's good to see The Conspirator in theaters. But while this weekend's box office is an admirable result, and Robert Redford will always carry weight on Planet Oscar, I agree that this is probably not a financial or critical breakthrough significant enough to generate a major award buzz.
Max Braden: I love historicals, and with this being set in DC, it was perfectly targeted at someone like me. Yet I saw the trailer and thought "Isn't this being released seven months early?" It didn't even occur to me until now that the the timing was perfect with the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. $3.5 million is okay, but will probably just be a flash in the pan; I think it might have earned more as an Oscar season platform release.
David Mumpower: Bruce touches on the primary reason it could get sustained awards season awareness. Anything with the Robert Redford stamp on it merits consideration. What I find odd about the entire production is how little awareness there was prior to opening weekend yet audiences found the film anyway. That’s how much respect his name carries in terms of branding. It’s entirely possible he’s ready to enter his Clint Eastwood phase of late career directing triumphs.