Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
December 4, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: Killing Them Softly opened to $6.8 million. What do you think of this result?
Jason Barney: It is not great. Pitt is a huge name, and you would think a film with him headlining would do a little better. Admittedly the screen count was on the low side, but I don't think many people were looking for this product and even fewer went to see it. The end result won't be awful, it did only cost $15 million to make, but this will end up being a disappointment.
Another way to look at it, even with the 73% Fresh at RT, it was the only new film this weekend and it didn't get much of an audience. Almost as many people went to see Red Dawn, one of the weaker films in the top 10. That is not a good news for Killing Them Softly.
Edwin Davies: I'd say that this is a case of a studio trying to take advantage of the slow weekend after Thanksgiving and discovering why no one releases films over this weekend. It's a really bad frame, and you'd need a pretty strong or distinctive film to break out. Unfortunately, everything that makes Killing Them Softly an interesting movie - such as the way it equates the actions of its characters with the decision to bail out the banks in 2008 - is exactly the sort of thing that is impossible to put across in a trailer and will probably prevent the film from connecting with a big audience. If Sullivan's Travels has taught us nothing else, it's that people tend not to be so interested in social commentary, even if it's dressed up as a crime film. So without that angle, the film had to be advertised as a stylish but pretty standard genre exercise. It's a shame, really, because Andrew Dominik has now directly three good to great films in a row, and he deserves to be a bigger name than he is.
That aside, this isn't the worst result in the world. The film cost relatively little, which is probably why the Weinsteins felt confident releasing it on such a quiet weekend; it's a pretty low risk proposition. It should make its budget back before it leaves theaters and cinephiles will discover it on DVD. This is pretty much a wash.
Felix Quinonez: I never thought this was going to break out but at the very least I expected it to get to double digits. Brad Pitt is a huge star so there is really no denying that this is a major disappointment. I guess the one silver lining is that it has a very small budget.
Matthew Huntley: I think it's safe to say we were all expecting bigger numbers than $7 million (I would have predicted $13 million at the start of the weekend) for Killing Them Softly, especially since its reviews were so strong. I'm admittedly at a loss why the studio chose the weekend after Thanksgiving to release it though, especially when the track record for this time of year is so poor when it comes to new openers (leftovers typically repeat). It's also troubling that the exit polls for Softly were a pitiful "F." I've yet to see it, but a friend of mine tells me it's mostly dialogue (as opposed to action), which I don't know why would necessarily be a bad thing, but it seems most people were expecting the genre exercise Edwin mentioned but instead got something different (and probably better - just not to them). If it's as good as the critics allude to, then this is a shame indeed.
Shalimar Sahota: Disappointing, but taking into account the low budget, I don't see this winding up as a huge loss. Viewing the trailer I see it as more of an appealing black comedy, but I imagine many saw it as a predictable "gangsters collecting cash" flick. Therefore, it didn't matter who was in it or how good the reviews were. Apart from Pitt, there didn't seem to be a strong enough pull here. Or it was just way too dark for most tastes. Or after the election, people did not want to pay to go see a movie that happened to have a political message, which might explain the CinemaScore from audiences who feel like they got something completely different to what they were expecting.
Reagen Sulewski: I have a feeling that even as good as this film reportedly is and The Assassination of Jesse James was, Brad Pitt will not be returning Andrew Dominik's phone calls anytime soon. You can blame the weekend somewhat, but that doesn't turn an otherwise decent movie in a $7 million opening film. The other story here is that seven years later, the Weinsteins are still having trouble selling their films that have commercial appeal and big name stars. They've still got juice at the Oscars, but not at the box office.
No, really. These are movies.
Kim Hollis: The Collection, the surprise sequel to the 2009 horror film The Collector (no, really), opened this weekend with $3.1 million. Say...something about The Collection.
Jason Barney: It took $10 million to make this film, so it won't have far to go to make the budget back. However, this opening is barely one third of that total. The original had passed into the gray matter of my movie memory, which I think is probably pretty in line with many people. Maybe LD Distribution was trying to grab onto the momentum of other horror franchises, but this one will be gone from most theaters by next weekend. It wasn't even in the top 10 by Sunday afternoon.
Edwin Davies: And here I was thinking that the Red Dawn remake was the least necessary film of 2012 when The Collection comes along and steals that crown from atop its head. Poor Red Dawn, it can't do anything right.
This isn't a great result, even by the very low standards the film has set for itself. After all, this shot under the opening weekend of the first film, and I have to assume that enough people saw that one to necessitate a sequel, right? You'd expect the fans would show up in slightly better numbers. As with Killing Them Softly, this might be a case of the terrible weekend deflating attendance, but I can't imagine that The Collection would have done much better released in a different time frame. Considering how badly horror films drop off, I can't imagine The Collection making even its meager budget bad before it becomes as forgotten as the first film.
Felix Quinonez: I don't understand who greenlit a sequel in the first place. This reminds me of Atlas Shrugged, no one cared about the first movie, so just move on. It's like they're completely oblivious to audience reaction. And as bad as The Collector was, this opened even lower and will probably flame out even more quickly. But I guess that still doesn't rule out a threequel.
Matthew Huntley: "The Collector"? "The Collection"? Anyone else notice a garbage theme with the titles of these two films? Does the theme represent the quality?
I had totally forgotten about the original (it helps that I never saw it), but I can't imagine it did well enough to warrant a sequel. Does it even have any of the same characters? Here's another question: if there was a third film in the franchise, what would it be called? "The Collected"?
Kim Hollis: I actually have a friend who saw this movie. Really. He had no idea that it was a sequel. He didn't even seem to be sure why he went to see it. Anyway, this will definitely throw under its budget, but I'm sure that ancillary revenues render it profitable enough.