Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
August 20, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The Expendables 2, aka Best Exotic Action Hero Hotel, earned $28.6 million this weekend. What do you think of this performance?
Jason Barney: Not to start off on a negative note, but I find this result disappointing by a number of measures. I will give it credit. It won the weekend with $28.6 million against a crowded field, but that is about as far as I can go. On to the issues I have with this opening. First, it is never great when a sequel opens below the numbers of the original. $28 million vs $36 million a couple of years ago is not the kind of growth you want to see from something that has been labeled a new franchise. Second, this opening really didn't meet my personal expectations. I did think it would do better, surprising and at least exceeding the opening weekend take of the original. Third, everything was really in line for the possibility of a breakout. Last week's openers weren't doing very well. The Bourne Legacy and The Campaign both had fairly high drops, Batman has been holding strong recently, but is no longer in the top three. Of this week's new films it was the only one in the action genre. I just think it should have done better.
Perhaps I am being harsh because I do pull for Stallone to remain relevant. This sort of opening does maintain his status, but it is a far cry from the money he used to take in.
Edwin Davies: This is a fine, if unspectacular result that was pretty much in line with what I expected. We often talk about how the success of a sequel is largely determined by the quality of the original, and the first Expendables wasn't an especially good film. Not that it was trying to be great art, but it promised dumb action fun which it very rarely achieved. (With the one exception of the moment when Terry Crews mows people down with a minigun, which is awesome.) As such, the first film didn't live up to to what its audience hoped for, so the sequel has performed in line with those somewhat lowered expectations. The fact it has retained most of the opening weekend total of its predecessor can probably be put down to the prominence of Schwarzenegger and Willis in the ads, which play up their presence as more than glorified cameos the second time round.
Bruce Hall: These are tough times, so I guess 28.6 million bucks is 28.6 million bucks. But it's significantly off from the first film, and this is despite (by its own modest standards) being superior to the original. Adding more faces to the cast clearly didn't help, so I have to wonder - are people already tiring of the gimmick? Sly is talking about a third one; maybe they'll add Channing Tatum and Taylor Lautner, because that's the only way I see interest in this franchise doing anything but continuing to decline.
Felix Quinonez: This is pretty much what I was expecting. I feel like so much the first movie's appeal was its novelty and that has obviously worn off a bit so I always expected this movie's earnings to decline. But it still held a very good portion of the first movie's opening weekend and with its much better reviews and "A-" cinemascore rating, I think this will have some decent legs. When you add in overseas grosses it should be a hit.
Reagen Sulewski: I might call this slate of films The Weekend Where Everything Went Exactly As It Was Supposed To, More or Less. While I understand why there's a tendency to see this as a disappointment relative to The Expendables 1, there's one thing people are forgetting - that movie was terrible and didn't deserve a sequel. The first movie was built on the novelty of "wouldn't it be awesome if we got all the action stars and put them in one movie?" to which the answer was, "no, it would not." It made enough to justify round two, but a good number of people were already wise to this idea and even the addition of Willis, Schwarzengger and Van Damme didn't really make a difference.
Shalimar Sahota: Well it's good, if not spectacular. Even I thought this would open slightly higher, somewhere between $35 - $40 million. It has me feeling like I've been slightly misled into thinking that The Expendables was well liked and picked up a decent following on DVD/Blu-Ray. I guess what's happened here is that there are some who saw the first film and were content. They simply didn't need a second serving, regardless of who was on the platter. Still, unless it suffers a horrific drop next week I don't think it's in any trouble, and I'm sure overseas grosses will be enough to go ahead with a third film.
Jim Van Nest: I'm with Reagen on this one. Sure, it dropped from the first film, but I'm surprised people expected an increase. The novelty was in the first film. Sure, they added Van Damme and Norris, so that was cool. I think what this really needed was to get Segal in there. Then '80s action movie nerds could finally get the answer to "who would win, Van Damme or Segal?" That might have been the only way to top the original. Should they actually go forward with a third, I would expect it would drop even more.
David Mumpower: Like Shalimar, I expected a higher opening than transpired. Despite this, I agree with most of the comments made today. In hindsight, the one factor involving the opening weekend of The Expendables 2 I disregarded too much was the quality of the first film. I presumed that clever trailers that featured The Terminator and Die Hard actually doing stuff would more than compensate than the mediocrity of The Expendables. In talking with people who did not go see the movie, this is the point they stressed and I feel like an idiot for ignoring it. Why? This happened to be exactly the reason why I didn't watch The Expendables 2 on opening weekend, either. The Expendables was a total letdown for me. I didn't want to get burned twice. This is the same theme BOP has stressed that the quality of the most recent movie directly impacts the opening weekend of the successor. The difference is that we ordinarily say that as a positive. In this particular instance, the quality of The Expendables was a negative.
Max Braden: You all are terrible children of the '80s. This collection of bad asses is the most awesome thing ever and I hope Clint plays one of their dads in the third installment. $28 million is fine, especially since GI Joe 2 didn't make a dime this summer.
The child grows up to be Audrey II.
Kim Hollis: The Odd Life of Timothy Green opened to $10.8 million over the weekend and has accrued $15.1 million over its first five days. What do you think of this result?
Jason Barney: This one has me interested and we may go see it this week. It is nearly the end of the summer movie season and this might be good programming to be out as the kids go back to school. A $40 million budget is not that intimidating for the studio, so this one will have to have a little bit of a run to make the money back. As John Hamann pointed out in the Weekend Wrap-Up, the family audience is the target here. $15 million is probably a little low based on that budget, but if it plays well in the coming days, weekend #2 could be pretty rewarding for Disney.
Felix Quinonez: The odd life of what? Just kidding...sort of. I can't really say I had this movie on my radar but it is a family movie and it should have some legs, plus its budget wasn't huge...so it's not a terrible opening.
Reagen Sulewski: This has all the characteristics of a builder - ostensibly aimed at families, a couple of B-level stars in the cast, a disarming child and a heart-warming/tear-jerking premise which has started receiving a huge ramp up by the masters of this kind of thing, Disney. I don't think there was a blockbuster opening ever planned for this, and that they were counting on word-of-mouth all along.
Max Braden: This surprises me, considering that I saw advertising for it constantly and nearly nothing for ParaNorman, which ends up beating Timothy Green. I saw so many trailers at first I assumed it must have been one of the upcoming fall TV shows. I hadn't put much thought into how big it would open, but it has the kind of vibe of War Horse or Marley & Me, so I figured it would generate a healthy stream of box office money. Maybe it still will. The topic looked to me more like an early spring movie than a late summer one, but I'm out of the demographic on this one.
David Mumpower: Generally speaking, we can project a lot about a movie simply via its scheduling. The fact that this was slotted in the latter portion of August indicates that it's good enough for the summer but just barely so. This result justifies that line of thinking in that it's an okay box office result. This is not a title that will move Disney's bottom line any the way that say Brave or John Carter could. It is a mediocre debut at a point on the release schedule where mediocre performance is to be expected. My lone disappointment here is that the critical reviews are largely negative. I had hoped that The Odd Life of Timothy Green would be a very good film that is too odd in tone to market easily. The good news is that the A- Cinemascore reflects that opening day audiences like the movie better than critics do.