Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
February 20, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Brett Ballard-Beach: It's spectacular! It looks marginally better than Hoodwinked but it was the only new family fare in about eight weeks, so it is one of those "success by default" stories that The Weinstein Company is occasionally able to churn out. I expect a Hood vs Evil-esque sequel about five years after the last person has stopped caring.
Bruce Hall: The fact that we're even discussing this film probably makes it a success. Talk about a project that had virtually no marketing behind it. And critics have not been kind. But it's true that we haven't had a new family film in about two months, so for a lot of people who have to entertain kids on this long weekend, Escape From Planet Earth just might be the ticket. This wasn't an exorbitantly expensive film, so while I don't expect it to have legs past this week, it may well earn enough to be profitable.
Matthew Huntley: Wait, this movie actually opened over the weekend?! You could have fooled me because, like Bruce, its marketing didn't register with me at all (I remember a trailer for it when I saw Wreck-It-Ralph, but that's about it). With that said, its performance is decent and it will likely show good legs by default, so I'd call it a small victory.
Felix Quinonez: I honestly had no clue what this movie was until Friday and have still not seen any previews. I just googled it and saw that it had a $40 million budget and they CLEARLY didn't spend much on marketing so it should do fine. Not exactly a smash but it should at least make its budget back.
Jay Barney: I don't think this is a bad opening at all. The $40 million budget number has me scared a little that this one may have to work a bit, but a $16 million opening for this type of movie is okay. There is a chance, with some kids having vacation over the next couple of weeks, that this might have decent holds. By the time people read this mid-week it will already have made back half of the budget, but it might be a little too optimistic to predict this to make 100% of the amount spent on it. My son saw it. He said he liked it. That is the target audience, and there isn't much competition for kids attention right now.
Edwin Davies: I'm very impressed by this result considering that I didn't know it was something that existed until the day before it opened. Seeing what others have said, I don't think that I was alone in this. Obviously the film is going to struggle a bit to make back its budget, but for something that basically no one seemed to have heard of to make $16 million over the course of a weekend is a success albeit a muted one. The Weinsteins will probably be very happy with this one since they won't have completely lost their shirts on it, unlike with that Hoodwinked sequel that people seemed to forget about even as they were watching it.
David Mumpower: Unlike several of you, I had seen several ads for it. Based on their quality, I had presumed this opening would be on a par with flops such as Planet 51 and Alpha and Omega. There was absolutely nothing compelling in these commercials. I am absolutely stunned by the opening weekend performance of this movie. Who saw this and thought, "Now there is a movie I have to take my kids to see!"? It boggles my mind.
Kim Hollis: Beautiful Creatures, Warner Bros' attempt at starting a Twilight-esque franchise of their own, made only $7.6 million from Friday-to-Sunday and $10.1 million since debuting on Thursday. What went wrong here?
Brett Ballard-Beach: This is the rare film that I couldn't even bring myself to read a synopsis of in the months prior to its release. Now that I have, I am still befuddled. Richard LaGravanese has a lot of goodwill built up over 20 years as far as I am concerned. The fact that he wanted to adapt and direct this stands for something in my book, but not enough I fear to make me want to slog through it. It sounds like a Twilight ripoff with Academy Award caliber supporting players hamming it up. As for what went wrong? It looked like a Twilight ripoff and it had the misfortune to go up against a stronger than expected Safe Haven and a still-strong Warm Bodies.
Bruce Hall: Aside from teens perhaps being brighter than everyone thinks, it's hard to say. You can count me a little out of the loop here - a few weeks ago I had to Google up on the Caster Chronicles because I kept wondering why anyone would remake that Rachel Weisz film. It looks like four books in under four years, right in the midst of the Twilight craze. I'm not accusing anyone of anything but there are enough superficial similarities to suggest someone might be jumping on the latest entertainment fad. There's nothing wrong with that, unless you're a cynical teenager who's still smarting from the end of the Twilight "Saga". Many reviews have Beautiful Creatures pegged as a disappointing and derivative experience (at best). When I was a teen I was willing to accept a great deal of media condescension, but if I perceived something to be a blatantly inferior rip off of something I was emotionally invested in, I'd have avoided it at all costs. And it wouldn't take much convincing to get my friends to do the same. This is a damning result, and while it's not quite Narnia or Golden Compass-sized, it might be enough to kill the franchise in the cradle.
Shalimar Sahota: It just looks like a blatant cash in on supernatural hokum involving lovey teenagers and I imagine some teenagers spotted this themselves? The little advertising I did see for this just looked really bad. I guess this doesn't bode well for The Mortal Instruments over the summer.
Matthew Huntley: When I first saw the trailer for Beautiful Creatures, it didn't make much of an impact on me (and not just because I'm not the target demographic), nor to other members of the audience as far as I could tell. It made the movie seem disorderly, silly and just plain inconsequential. If my reactions happened to be shared among most moviegoers, it makes sense the film would crash and burn. It now seems relegated to oblivion, never to be heard or spoken of again. That's probably not what Warner Bros.' wanted for their $50-million movie.
Felix Quinonez: I'm reluctant to call audiences smart but sometimes people can tell when a studio is putting out a blatant cash grab and I think this was the case with this. I think the studio tried too hard to position this as the next Twilight that it just came off as derivative and the reviews didnt help much.
Edwin Davies: Firstly, I am shocked - shocked! - that Jeremy Irons isn't big with the kids these days. Am I so out of touch? No. It's the children who are wrong.
Secondly, I think it was pretty apparent from the trailers that this was an attempt to cash in on the Twilight phenomenon, but rather than giving it a funny, offbeat twist as Warm Bodies did, they just seemed to have made a slightly glum looking film about...witches or something? I think the studio overestimated how popular the books are, but more crucially they failed to put the central concept across strongly enough to make people want to learn more about the characters and their world. It all seemed quite vague. Say what you will about Twilight, at least that series put across its gimmick in a way which was concise and easy to grasp.
Max Braden: I didn't think the quality looked poor, or that the writing was cheap, but I thought the advertising did have a major flaw. I couldn't tell who was who or what the point was. Are they good? Is everyone supernatural? Is this a civil war or external clash? Twilight was at least clear about the vampires vs. warewolves central premise.
David Mumpower: With the other areas of discussion well covered, I want to focus on what I find important. That is my lingering dissatisfaction with what transpired here. I do not exaggerate when I say that the first time I saw the Beautiful Creatures trailer, I was sitting in a movie theater. I started laughing so hard that I really thought I was going to have to get up and walk out until I could compose myself. I am sexually aroused by the awfulness of these ads. My frustration stems from the fact that the reviews for Beautiful Creatures are nowhere near as atrocious as I had anticipated. They are like 50/50 positive/negative. I wanted a good old fashioned beatdown. I was looking for critics to grab their torches and pitchforks and burn some innocent establishments to the ground. I have been given no satisfaction in this. Beautiful Creatures was falsely advertised. I was promised one of the worst movies in recent memory. Instead, they delivered a mediocre one. This is simply unacceptable.