Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
August 27, 2013
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Brett Ballard-Beach: It may make more than The Host or Beautiful Creatures when all is said and done, but being king of the also-rans in the failed supernatural teen romance franchise launcher sweepstakes of 2013 isn't much of a consolation prize, I would imagine. From what I gathered, at least one problem was that all the advertising was spent on having to explain to the uninformed masses what the hell this was all about rather than showing them a money shot that might just have gotten the non-fanbase into the theater seats.
Bruce Hall: I agree. This movie had to suffer the same indignity that befell Beautiful Creatures, which was having to explain the fun out of it to get non fans to see what it was, and once they did they were as likely to dismiss it as a Twilight knockoff as anything else. It looks like it's outperforming that movie, though. So the good news is this is a $60 million movie that should recoup its cost by the time its international run is eventually completed. The bad news is it doesn't look like there's exactly overwhelming interest in the series. These kinds of films are always front loaded, so go ahead and wave goodbye to City of Bones now, before it disappears over that slippery slope. And while I inherently dislike the idea of giving up on a series right out of the gate, I wonder that kind it international numbers it'll have to draw to guarantee the series continues?
Edwin Davies: It's a pretty terrible result considering that a lot of the recent advertising seemed to be geared towards selling the idea that the film was part of some big cultural phenomenon, showing scenes of fans going crazy for the cast in malls and such. That struck me as a little desperate since it seemed that the studio had given up on trying to explain what the film was about - something which I never really got from the trailers anyway - to saying, "These people are excited about this, why aren't you?!" I think that level of presumption seemed to really sink the movie for non-fans. Unlike Twilight, which did a good job of selling its conceit in an accessible way, the people behind Mortal Instruments: City of Bones seemed to assume that people would know what it was and just show up, in the process forgetting to make a movie that looked interesting to people. Even the subtitle suggests a degree of arrogance on their part by straight out saying this is the first one, we're going to make a bunch of these whether you have heard of them or not.
I imagine that things will work out once international numbers come in, besides which they are due to start shooting the sequel in about three weeks, so unless the studio want to completely cut their losses and cancel that one, I think we'll see at least one more of these films. Well, one more of these will exist, but whether or not anyone sees it is another matter entirely.
Jason Barney: The Mortal Instruments is a project that screams of having a lot of darts to throw at a target and hoping that one of them hits the bull’s eye. Having $14 million in the bank at the end of the first weekend is not great, especially against that $60 million budget. I can’t imagine this one is going to catch on much overseas, but I could be wrong. The studio needs to learn from what has happened here. If a film cannot open strong in late August, against fairly weak competition, they deserve to lose money.
Kim Hollis: I agree that this is a pretty rotten result, because like Edwin, I was noticing how the marketing was focusing on the rabid fan base. I think the real problem that a lot of these Twilight wannabes face is that the Twilight books crossed demographics. Not only did teenagers like them, but you had a large number of adult women who were totally into it as well. You're not seeing that same sort of multi-generational appeal with any of the other attempts to recapture the magic, and the box office is only middling at best as a result.
David Mumpower: While we are throwing out the Twilight comparisons, there is one other aspect to consider. After five movies, the Twilight audience could be tired of the gothic concepts cynically being force-fed to the teen girl demographic. Combined with the aging into adulthood of Twilight fans, there is a lot of ways this potential audience has splintered. Now I thought Mortal Instruments looked pretty good, especially compared to the other movie we are mentioning, Beautiful Creatures. Still, I agree with Brett that there was no money shot that would turn consumers from possible customers into certain ones. That is the end-all be-all in movie marketing. Mortal Instruments did not get it done.
Kim Hollis: The World's End, the final film in the Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg/Nick Frost Cornetto Trilogy (which began with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz), earned $8.8 million over the weekend from 1,549 locations. What do you think about this result?
Brett Ballard-Beach: Edgar Wright's films to date seem to have a very definite box office upper end that no amount of good reviews can remedy. They become self-fulfilling cult hits, and have long lives afterwards, but cracking the $35 million dollar domestic total mark in the theaters seems to remain out of reach (this will most likely wind up between Hot Fuzz's $23 million and Scott Pilgrim's $31 million) Still, this had the best per screen average of any movie in wide release and was in half as many screens as The Mortal Instruments, which it made almost as much as.
Bruce Hall: I think we're looking at what will be the highest grossing of all the so called Cornetto Trilogy, but it'll be a similar kind of "niche" result. But I think Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg are extremely talented writers. Their best days are still ahead of them, and it's profitable, well regarded films like these that'll help build long term interest in their brand of comedy.
Edwin Davies: This is a very solid result considering that the film cost only $20 million to make and had made most of that back before it had even opened in the States. Despite their richly deserved reputation as comedy masters, Wright and Pegg's films are not really geared towards a wide audience - The World's End, in particular, is kind of parochial in its Englishness and its focus on the encroaching danger of chain pubs - but a select one of people who dig their sense of humour. The audience has grown over time, but there is still a limit to the number of people who would be willing to take a chance on a British film about a pub crawl, even one with science fiction elements. As a fan, it would have been nice to see the film make over $10 million or finish in the top three, but I'm much happier to see the film, which is great.
Jason Barney: World’s End isn’t lighting the world on fire, but it is going to make money and that is the baseline for success in today’s film world. It has some things going for it, which should make its run at the box office successful. First, its status among the films from this creative team has given it some support. Such a well reviewed film is going to garner at least some interest, so the weak competition should allow World’s End to become an option for some people who otherwise would not have seen it. Finally, with international money already coming in this is already a success.
Kim Hollis: It performed exactly as expected. Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg/Nick Frost have a consistent, loyal audience that has really not expanded a lot in the years since Shaun of the Dead first graced screens. The films are all fantastic and seem to find a better audience on home video than in theaters. Nonetheless, The World's End is already a moneymaker, because anything it made in North America was going to be gravy anyway. It hurts my heart that I haven't seen it yet.