Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
April 30, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jay Barney: If I thought it was notable last weekend that Oblivion’s opening was fine but not spectacular, the same can be said for this week’s Pain & Gain. There is, however, one substantial difference between Pain & Gain and Oblivion - the production budget. Oblivion, while doing great business overseas, is looking more and more like it won’t match its budget domestically. Pain & Gain is not going to have any such problem with this opening.
The film was only made for $26 million, so Paramount is in a position of making money after only the first weekend. Regardless of openings, theater counts, or word-of-mouth, any studio would love to be in the position that Paramount is in. They squeezed in this flick, made relatively cheaply, right before the box office frenzy begins next weekend. The big movies are about to start grabbing screens left and right, so Paramount has to be happy.
I think the numbers for Pain & Gain, like Universal’s attempt at expanding the length of the summer box office last weekend, just could have been higher. Our own Reagen Sulewski predicted an opening over $30 million, so I think there is a sense of some money being left on the table. That said, any film that makes money has done something right. Films that are successful after their first weekend in theaters are the envy of any studio.
Max Braden: Maybe it could have been higher - you might think, "It's the Rock, and he's more pumped than ever! It's The Fighter's Mark Walhberg!" and it actually reunites them briefly from The Other Guys. But The Other Guys had that $35 million opening because it was more of a straight up comedy with broader appeal. It's harder to describe Pain & Gain that way, because although it's clear it's supposed to be funny, it still takes itself more seriously than a regular comedy. It's a niche for muscle heads, so you have to expect the box office to be lower. $20 million is satisfactory for this, I think.
Edwin Davies: This is about what I expected going into the weekend based on a number of factors, chief of which being the fact that this is the first non-Transformers film Michael Bay has made since 2005 when The Island flopped hard. He's proven to be a very successful film-maker when working with big special effects, Will Smith, Jerry Bruckheimer or some combination of those three, none of which really applied to Pain & Gain. Couple that with a dark story (seriously, look up the original articles that the film is based on...it's some pretty messed up shit) and a pair of stars who tend not to be big draws in small films (just look at what Broken City and Snitch did earlier this year to demonstrate that) and you've got a recipe for modest success at best. Then again, the outlay was very modest to begin with, and no one is going to walk away too mad about this result.
David Mumpower: I think Edwin has touched upon the fascinating aspect of this story. Major studios rarely do sub-$30 million movies these days unless they are horror or niche. Pain & Gain was made as a thank you for Michael Bay earning over $2.6 billion with Transformers. What has been forgotten in that time frame is the disaster that was The Island, a $126 million project that earned $90 million less domestically. Bay is no sure thing at the box office, even when he has stars in his films.
What was smart about Pain & Gain is that Paramount Pictures did not give Bay a blank check. Instead, he was required to be frugal with the production budget. It is for this reason that we are discussing the weekend performance as strong. Pain & Gain cost $31 million to produce with $5 million of that offset by tax incentives. Given the star power of Wahlberg and The Rock, the film was a safe bet to earn a profit. It has accomplished this feat. Whether the story needed to be told is a different matter. As Edwin mentioned, this is a shockingly grisly feature that is NOT for everyone. If you are considering watching it, consider yourself warned. There are aspects of the story that would make Eli Roth flinch.
Kim Hollis: I guess I was expecting more from Pain & Gain, though I'm having a difficult time quantifying the reason why. It's not like this had any sort of wide-ranging appeal, I guess. I love The Rock and so do lots of people, but I think he's kind of frightening-looking in this movie. Same goes for Wahlberg. I think I'd agree that only a certain sort of person will be drawn to the film.
Kim Hollis: The Big Wedding, a romantic comedy starring an entire host of well-known performers, managed only $7.6 million this weekend. Why didn't audiences respond?
Jay Barney: Whatever enthusiasm moviegoers showed for Pain & Gain was not there for The Big Wedding. This was not a film that I had much interest in seeing from the start, but the negative ratings at Rotten Tomatoes, the awful first weekend, and the impending rush of summer flicks is going to make this a totally forgettable endeavor. It is sad, too, because there are some names associated with this product, but the quality just was not there.
You have to think Lionsgate believed they had some amount of counter-programming for the early summer season. Oblivion last weekend. Pain & Gain this weekend. Iron Man 3 next weekend. Why not put a romantic comedy on screens against those films with a notable cast and put the word “wedding” in the title? It has been attempted in the past, and sometimes worked, in these pre-summer weeks. The Five-Year Engagement was on the schedule last year, even though that was not very well received. It was a little bit further into May, but Bridesmaids was a hit in 2011. In 2010 it was Date Night. This was supposed to be the option against all of the action films of summer, but it will be gone quickly. One wonders if Gatsby will fill that role in a couple of weeks.
Brett Ballard-Beach: Looking at Justin Zackham's meager filmography (and his writing credit for The Bucket List), I honestly don't know what convinced all these actors - including four Academy Award winners - to sign on. One wag noted that it kinda seemed like License to Wed... only worse. Maybe the elder cast members wanted a chance to get raunchy and the younger ones wanted to work with the elders. For consideration's sake, ponder that this is going to make less than half of what the Patrick Dempsey May 2008 film Made of Honor did, a film that opened opposite the first Iron Man. The Big Wedding won't even have that bit of "what was the counterprogramming" trivia to keep its memory alive.
Max Braden: Just look at the title, it's like they overreached and underreached at the same time. This isn't just any wedding movie, it's a BIG wedding. But it's not a Big Fat GREEK wedding... But you know what would have helped this movie triple its money? "Tyler Perry's Big Wedding." Otherwise if you're going to sell a wedding movie, apparently you're going to have to get raunchy like Bridesmaids. I saw no advertising for this. Looking at it now, I don't have much interest in seeing it other than catching it eventually on DVD.
Edwin Davies: I only saw one trailer for this film, but that trailer was pretty telling about why this didn't do well. It honestly looked like it had been assembled from clips of other bad rom-coms to save money. When Robin Williams appeared as a priest I found myself thinking, "Didn't this movie come out six years ago?" and the rest of the movie looked painfully generic. There was not one thing in it which hadn't been seen in a dozen other similar family/wedding/relationship comedies, and I can't imagine many people getting all that enthusiastic for it even before the reviews and word-of-mouth started saying how toxic it is.
David Mumpower: My first thought when this project was announced was how to differentiate it from Our Family Wedding, which was a Fox Searchlight release that earned only $7.6 million on opening weekend. The America Ferrera film wound up with about $20 million. I guess my answer is that The Big Wedding did not distinguish itself in any identifiable manner, grossing the same opening weekend total. Some of these titles feel like they are done only for the syndication money on female-skewing cable channels such as Lifetime and Oxygen. Nobody is ever going to go, "Can we please please please go see The Big Wedding on opening night?" And the world is a better place for that.
Kim Hollis: I believe I said this same thing the last time a poorly-received, crappy-looking rom-com underperformed, and I'll say it again. There was a time when you could throw out any old garbage, put some big stars in it, and market it to women, and they'd turn out in decent numbers. That time is past. Movies like The Big Wedding feel so cynical and manipulative, and I suppose that is exactly what they are. People are sensing when that's the case.