Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
April 23, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: To the complete shock of a Canadian named Reagen, Think Like a Man debuted to $33.76 million, and thereby became the unlikely trivia answer as the movie that knocked The Hunger Games out of first place. How did Screen Gems pull off such a stellar result for a $12 million production?
David Mumpower: First and foremost, the ads were hysterical. Since the first time I watched the trailer several months ago, I have laughed every time I hear "That is a *short* skirt." Sometimes a distributor catches a break when they release the perfect movie right as an actor is ascending in popularity. We witnessed this with Adam Sandler in The Waterboy, Mike Myers with the original Wayne's World and even all the way back when people were first discovering Eddie Murphy with Trading Places/48 Hours. Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain was a wildly lucrative property relative to its sub-$1 million budget. That film has also absolutely wrecked home video relative to expectations. Hart is a hilarious human being who has evolved beyond the gradual discovery phase into a known commodity, and the Think Like a Man commercials cleverly emphasized his presence in a cast of ~15 known actors. The most recent batch of Kevin Hart quotes about Kevin Hart's performance are the types of jokes that could smack of desperation for say The Three Stooges. With Think Like a Man, they felt pitch perfect. I fully expected this to break out a bit yet even I am taken aback by a $33 million debut. That's a massive number for non-sequel comedy.
Matthew Huntley: Most analysts predicted Think Like A Man would open somewhere between $17-$24 million, so this is definitely a (pleasant) surprise all around and gave the industry a healthy boost from last weekend. What's interesting is that even if TLAM opened on the low end of expectations, it still would have covered its negative costs in a single weekend (instead of a single day like it did on Friday).
The overall success of the movie is not that shocking to me, however, since Screen Gems had nothing but positives going into the weekend: 1) Popular source material; 2) Built-in African American audience, particularly women; 3) Built-in female audience (I know Caucasian women who have read Steve Harvey's book, too, and so it probably has a universal appeal to females in general [and maybe males as well - I can't say for sure since I haven't read it]); 4) Catchy title; 5) Attractive and relatively well-known cast. All these factors make up the recipe for a hit movie and TLAM is now just that, so not a huge surprise. I bet studio execs are already looking into similar books that can be adapted/filmed rather inexpensively for another chance to cash in.
Edwin Davies: I think that David is bang on when he talks about the ascendancy of Kevin Hart playing a big part in the film's success. Had this film been released before Laugh At My Pain, it probably would have done okay, but the extent to which that film broke Hart to a wider audience probably paid dividends for this film, and the prevalence of Hart in the marketing suggests that the studio knew it.
Also, to bring up the wildly successful elephant in the room, the seeming decline in Tyler Perry's popularity may have, in a roundabout way, helped to make Think Like A Man a success. Perry has had huge success by playing to a predominantly African-American audience that has been under-served by Hollywood, but after years of only really getting Perry products, maybe the chance to see something a bit different helped propel Think Like A Man to these heights.
David Mumpower: Along those lines but taking demographics out of the equation, Think Like a Man performed like New Year's Eve had been projected but utterly failed to do, at least domestically. For that matter, $33 million is almost Grown Ups territory. Sandler's buddy film opened to $40.5 million. Think Like a Man bests four out of his five most recent opening weekends (Jack and Jill, Just Go With It, Funny People and Bedtime Stories).
Bruce Hall: "It's kind of like a Tyler Perry movie, but good."
That seems to be the consensus armchair analysis in my part of the world. In my opinion, Tyler Perry's relatively slow decline is similar to the relatively epic decline associated with M. Night Shyamalan (spelled it right on the first try, thank you). I say all the time that "formula works," but if that's what you're going to rely on to keep people coming back, you're going to have to be a particularly shrewd storyteller with consistently fresh ideas.
Go ahead, insert your own punchline.
Being something of mutt myself, I've never been very plugged in to the appeal of ethno-centric media. But to my eyes, it seems as though ever since Spike Lee started buying his own hype and John Singleton went mainstream, Tyler Perry has been the go to guy for African American presence in popular cinema. And while his message is an admirable one, the execution is by now far more stale than whatever that is coming from my refrigerator. When people want more of something, finding a better product at about the same price means everything. When I started college, my idea of exotic beer was Heineken. Imagine my joy when I discovered the true expanse of sudsy goodness the world had to offer became known to me.
Great trailers, popular source material, good talent, excellent word-of-mouth and positive reviews are helping Think Like a Man give the box office a little extra juice this weekend. And perhaps, one can hope, a shot in the arm to a genre that's needed one for a very long time.
Felix Quinonez: No matter how you look at this, $33 million is a great number. That's higher than even most wildly optimistic numbers. But I'm not sure how much I would really attribute it to Kevin Hart. I'm sure having him in the movie didn't hurt but I'm not ready to label him a star yet. I think the fact is that a lot of times studios ignore this target audience and when something comes out that does well, we're all surprised. But the fact is the audience is there, which Tyler Perry has proven again and again. Even Tyler Perry's so called decline really only affects his more "serious" movies like For Colored Girls and Good deeds. I think a lot of the success has to do with the fact that they went after an audience that is not often catered to and the marketing was very targeted.
Reagen Sulewski: In the immortal words of another of our writers, "Who would have thought a white Canadian would be out of touch with the movie preferences of African-Americans?"
Tim Briody: I posited that maybe the target audience was glad this wasn't "Tyler Perry's Think Like a Man." Trying to go back and find something aimed squarely at the African-American market that wasn't from Perry Inc. was actually kind of difficult. He's monopolized the demographic with his play adaptations for years now. (Though if this was "Tyler Perry's Madea's Thinks Like a Man," all bets would be off.)
Max Braden: I agree that I think its strength was that it contrasts with Tyler Perry rather than mimics his material. After years of taking dates to sweetly safe heavy-on-the-dates, light-on-the-comedy, the guys finally got a movie about boys being boys. And unlike Perry's nebulous "it's about relationships" plots, Think Like a Man had a stronger hook in the use of the self-help book as a weapon in the war between the sexes.
Get to know him. He's gonna be around.
Kim Hollis: What portion of the opening weekend success of Think Like a Man do you credit to Kevin Hart? Are you ready to describe him as a star?
David Mumpower: I am convinced that opening weekends of comedies are defined by two elements, the name recognition of various cast members and the amount of humor in the trailers. Think Like a Man is comprised of a lot of fine actors, most of whom I like a great deal (I watched the Night Stalker television reboot solely because of Gabrielle Union, for God's sake). The commercials for the movie completely hinge on whether Kevin Hart makes people laugh...and consumers just voted with their wallets that he does. What I can say definitively is that Kevin Hart's per-film salary spiked after this weekend's scintillating box office results. There have been repeated efforts to inflict the Jimmy Fallons and Dane Cooks of the comedy realm on consumers, but this is the first populist ascension since Dave Chappelle, who didn't want to be that famous and shunned the spotlight. Assuming Hart wants the work, he'll have his pick of comedies for the next several years. Is he a star whose name people know? Not quite yet. He took a strong step in that direction with Think Like a Man, though. And thank God for that. I am sick and tired of people from The Office and various SNL rejects getting rammed down my throat.
Edwin Davies: I think that he played a pretty big role but I would hesitate to describe him as a star just yet. There are other factors at play here - the large cast and the popular source material - that would have made the film successful to an extent anyway, and I don't think Hart would have been able to open a film based solely on his name prior to this film. However, this is the perfect platform for him to launch to stardom from, and I think that his next project could push him over the top. To borrow an example from William Goldman, Think Like A Man is to Kevin Hart what 10 was to Dudley Moore: the film that paved the way for him to become a star in his own right.
Matthew Huntley: David, your line about people from The Office and various SNL rejects getting rammed down your throat made me laugh, because I feel the same way. Just sayin'...
And since Kevin Hart IS poised to get a lot more feature film offers after Think Like A Man's performance, let's hope he chooses some worthy projects and not just run-of-the-mill fluff. Hart seems like a smart, observant comedian and his future films should possess similar qualities.
I agree with David, though, that while Hart's inclusion probably played a role, it was a combination of many factors that led to TLAM's success, mostly, as David pointed out, the fact that the trailer/ads made people laugh. Even so, Hart's presence isn't something we should undermine. His performance documentary, Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain, was very successful and put him on the radar. Now that he's been in an all-star comedy, he just needs a solo project to officially solidify him as a bankable celebrity.
Felix Quinonez: I totally agree that Kevin Hart was a factor in making this movie a success. But I think he was only one of the factors. I think the whole ensemble cast thing is a draw unto itself. I really believe that people enjoy going to movies that have a lot of names they recognize. Even if none of the actors are draws themselves, you put them together and they will attract audiences. Plus I don't think we should ignore the marketing on this one, I think they did a great job going after the people they were targeting. But I do think this will definitely help Kevin Hart get more roles and perhaps because of this, he will get the role that actually does make him a star.