Monday Morning Quarterback Part III
By BOP Staff
August 1, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Let's set the over/under on the next movie featuring Batman characters (careful not to do any spoilers) at five years. Would you take the over or under? Why?
Bruce Hall: I'm not a gambler, so I have actually have no idea what that means. I will say that the lure of the Dollar will override the logical conclusion to let the franchise cool off for a bit. We've got Superman coming up, as well as a slew of sequels including The X-Men, Iron Man, Thor and Wolverine. If superhero films continue to do big business, we will see more of the Dark Knight sooner rather than later.
And for the sake of argument, I highly doubt doubt it's going to take five years.
Felix Quinonez: I agree with Bruce that the lure of dollars will be too compelling for Warner Bros. to leave this franchise dormant. I'll definitely take the under. (I'll also admit that I had no idea what you were asking until I read the other responses).
Samuel Hoelker: If the events of the past ten days have shown anything, it's that WB is excellent with compassionate PR that paints them in a positive light. I think they'll take their time with a reboot (relatively speaking, of course. Late 2010s is now "taking their time"), and they'd be foolish to rush it or make it lackluster or unnecessary (not that I'm referring to any other reboot of the summer...). My guess is something in 2018 or 2019, with many years of hype before it.
Edwin Davies: If they choose to try to continue with the Nolan universe but without Nolan, which could feasibly happen with the right creative people in place, then I could see them doing a sequel or spin-off within the next five years very easily, especially since I think that people will have generally positive feelings towards the way in which the series concludes, so they might be happy to see more. (As opposed to, say, the way in which Elektra crashed and burned after the world expressed its complete ambivalence towards Daredevil.) If they are going to completely reboot, I think that Warner Bros. will take at least seven or eight years. The lure of money is strong, but WB has proven to be very shrewd with this franchise (The Joel Schumacher Years notwithstanding) and will realize that rushing into things too quickly might turn people off (cf. Amazing Spider-Man, The) and ultimately make them LESS money than if they take their time over it. In situations like this there's a temptation to strike whilst the iron is hot, but that's a good way to get burned.
Jim Van Nest: I'm going to go against the grain on this one and take the "Over." Unless Nolan backs off and decides to do one more, I don't think we'll see Batman in a film anytime soon. I mean, really, who wants to try to follow up this trilogy? There was eight years between Batman properties before Begins and Batman and Robin sucked hard!
Reagen Sulewski: I'll take Over as well. First you've got to find someone who wants to take over the project, let them find a vision or story line, and then they've got to develop it, script it, cast etc. etc. Particularly if we're talking a straight reboot of Batman, which I think we've seen people would view as too quick a turnaround. A Nightwing movie - well maybe. That's at least a little further down the road already.
David Mumpower: I believe some of you are over-thinking this. There was nobody clamoring for another Spider-Man movie yet we received one only five years after Spider-Man 3. The reason why is simple. These Tentpole films comprise a staggering portion of a studio's box office for a given year. Warner Bros. has redeemed the Batman franchise thanks to the brilliance of Christopher Nolan. They are not going to leave the shiny sports car in the garage for an extended period of time. This is particularly true in light of what Marvel recently accomplished with The Avengers.
The goal for DC Comics moving forward is to combine their most beloved characters (well, Batman plus less popular ones) in a Justice League project. In order to facilitate this, they will need for Zack Snyder's Superman movie to be good. Assuming this happens, Wonder Woman is probably next and once those two have proven themselves (assuming this happens), DC transitions to a movie that combines the Superfriends in a battle against the Legion of Doom. I hear the sound of inevitability on this, whether the idea passes the laugh test or not. Batman is the linchpin character in the process, which means that with or without Nolan's participation, I do not see the Dark Knight being mothballed indefinitely. I'm taking the under or, at worst, a push. I would be shocked if Batman or at the very least Nightwing did not have another movie by the end of summer 2017.
Kim Hollis: I think that right around five years is about right. I'd love to see them go the Batman Beyond route (it would be a fresh take on the story), but David is likely right that after the success of The Avengers, DC is clamoring to get the Justice League on the big screen. That's too bad, because I do think it's the wrong approach, particularly since no other DC property besides Batman has proven to be any good.
Just...ugh.
Kim Hollis: The Watch, the latest Ben Stiller/Vince Vaughn/Jonah Hill comedy, earned $12.8 million in its opening weekend. What do you think of this result?
Bruce Hall: How long do you think it'll take for Fox to blame this on the Olympics? This is a $55 million comedy starring three very well liked stars, pulling in an extremely putrid $12.8 million opening weekend. That's a pretty solid level of rejection if you ask me, and it sort of makes the big name change seem irrelevant, doesn't it? This is a crash and burn on takeoff, plain and simple. Now, let us never speak of it again.
Felix Quinonez: I'm trying to find some sort of silver lining to this but I just can't see it. And I actually read its budget was $70 million, which just makes this performance even worse. This is definitely a disappointment in my book, especially when you look at the actors involved.
Edwin Davies: This is just the culmination of a run of bad luck for The Watch. Bruce alluded to the fact that the name of the film was changed from Neighborhood Watch following the Trayvon Martin shooting, and whilst it's easy to dismiss as a silly marketing ploy, I think it was that which doomed the film. I can only speak for myself, but I was generally unaware of The Watch prior to the news that its name had been changed following the Martin incident, at which point the first thing I associated it with was precisely that, and I imagine that it must have been the case for a lot of other people. By attempting to distance the film from something that was completely unrelated to it, the studio actually created a much stronger association than existed before, which meant that for people who had been unaware of the film prior to this - which I think would be a fair amount of people since the marketing campaign for the film hadn't really kicked into gear at that point - their first exposure to it was in relation to a controversial incident that played out in the national media.
Once the trailers started coming out and it became apparent that there didn't appear to be any strong jokes in the trailer, which is pretty much the most basic thing required to sell a comedy, the fate of the film was sealed. Even with three big names (and Richard Ayoade, star of The IT Crowd and writer-director of the brilliant coming of age comedy Submarine, which I would really recommend people check out on Netflix) it could not overcome the combination of unrelated tragedy and terrible, laugh-free promotional materials.
Reagen Sulewski: Despite what I said in the Batman comments, I doubt the connection with Trayvon Martin was still there - it doesn't share any similarities with the incident and the trial has gotten off into so many other avenues that the neighborhood watch part of it is kind of lost in the mists of time. The problem with this one was just that it plain wasn't funny. No one can murder a joke like Ben Stiller. He's back to Mystery Men territory with this.
David Mumpower: The reason why I disagree with Reagen here is not whether consumers distinguish the differences between The Watch and the Trayvon Martin shooting. Instead, the issue is that Fox lost its taste for The Watch when this occurred. The entire advertising campaign was fundamentally altered by that incident, and Fox never showed any passion for plan B. Reagen is absolutely right that the largest issue with The Watch was quality, but that would not have impacted its opening weekend box office the way that a lack of strong commercials could have. For the past five months, The Watch has been largely abandoned. It was a doomed project the moment the media picked up the Martin tragedy.
We will dance until we win the war!
Kim Hollis: Step Up Revolution, the fourth film in the Step Up franchise(?), opened to $11.7 million. Is this more or less stepping up than you were expecting?
Bruce Hall: The last installment grossed about four million more over the same period so I'd have to call this a sign that the franchise (I use the term loosely) has lost a...step? I don't know what this means for the future of the series but I'll bet there will be more, either at a lower budget or direct to video. My suggestion is Step Up 2 Tha Grave, featuring zombie dancers versus androgynous looking vampire dancers. I guess that kind of rules out the traditional "forbidden love" subplot, but I think Summit needs to get on that train while it's still got gravy. $40 million opening, guaranteed.
Tim Briody: It's about where it should have come in, Step Up 3D earned a few million extra from when the 3D hook was new, but it's no longer special because everything is in 3D now. I'm sure we'll see at least one more theatrical release before the series finally goes direct to DVD, where it belongs.
Felix Quinonez: It's about in line with what I was expecting but about $11.8 million more than I was hoping it would make.
Edwin Davies: It's about in line with my expectations relating to the way in which the series has performed in the past. They've been steadily declining since the first Step Up (which opened to $20.6 million, whilst the first two sequels opened to $18.9 million and $15.8 million) and even the addition of 3D when it was still a novelty rather than an annoyance didn't do much to reverse that pattern for the previous film. Going on the previous films, Revolution will probably make back most (though probably not all) of its $33 million budget domestically, with whatever profits coming from overseas and home media somewhere down the line. Going forward, I imagine that Summit will probably produce more of these films since they can't take that long to make and are a tidy little earner, but they'll probably have to scale back from even that modest budget for any future instalments, assuming that they don't make Step Up the American Pie of dance movies and just make endless Direct-to-DVD sequels.
Reagen Sulewski: Personally, I blame the 1% for keeping down their revolutionary message. Dance our way to equality, people!
David Mumpower: Step Up Revolution is one of those projects historians will look back upon and attempt to chronicle how it came to be. I cannot help them any in this regard because I am quite mystified myself. There have been four of these movies despite the fact that these are the worst acted films of the 2000s that in no way involve Uwe Boll. Are people truly this desperate to see new dance steps that they keep going? Well, at least they had kept going until this most recent project, which definitely feels like a franchise killer to me. This is a shame because Step Up Five by Five is a title that needs to happen. Also, how many times does a person have to Step Up before they reach the top of the stairs?