Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
March 26, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Edwin Davies: It's a bit less than I would have expected, given that the first film was so warmly received and did pretty well considering how moribund the Muppets name had become prior to its release. I think that the ads this time around weren't quite as funny as the ones for the first film were, and the idea of the Muppets engaging in a caper is a little harder to sell than the "getting the band back together" plot of the first one, but the key thing that held it back, I feel, is the human element. Jason Segel isn't exactly the biggest draw, but he's one of the stars of a successful long-running TV show and established a certain amount of credibility with audience by writing the script for the first one, and Amy Adams had existing Disney musical form from starring in Enchanted. I think they brought a lot of charm and recognition for audiences who might not be too familiar with The Muppets, who on their own probably aren't that appealing outside of nostalgia. Swapping them out for Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey and Ty Burrell, whatever their other merits, probably didn't help the appeal of the film overall.
Brett Ballard-Beach: There is one important thing to bring up when discussing the grosses of the Muppets movies: the first one in 1979 did phenomenally well, grossing $65 million ($216 million adjusted for inflation!) slowly and surely. It did so well in fact that I don't think there is any point in measuring the success/failure of any of the other films against that benchmark. The 2011 reboot did respectably ($88 million) by playing on the nostalgia, but nowhere near as successful as say a Star Trek (2009) to Star Trek (1979) comparison All of the others wind up somewhere in the broad spectrum of decent (The Great Muppet Caper did $34 million in 1981 dollars) to terrible (Muppets from Space did $16 million in 1999 dollars). Muppets Most Wanted will be disappointing at worst. Was it perhaps handicapped by the phenomenal The Lego Movie and the moderate success of Mr. Peabody & Sherman? Maybe, but the truth may be a little more discomfiting: the Muppets have a breakout smash every 30+ years. Somehow I don't think Disney will be pulling a Star Wars/Marvel year-a-movie philosophy with the universe of Kermit, Piggy, and Fozzie. It ain't easy makin' green.
Jason Barney: This is a pretty bad opening and there are a couple of reasons why. First, it can't help but be compared against the recent success of the 2011 movie, and the positive response to that film may have set the bar a little high. Second, on some level I think people saw the Jason Segel and Amy Adams version because they were curious to see if a group of puppets could compete in the market of animation. It had been so long, many fans thought the product was gone. That pushed interest, to a certain extent. Now its three years later, and puppets are being brought out to compete against animation again? Don't get me wrong, I think Disney or whoever else can do this, but the creative direction they decided to go also limited interest. My son is still young enough where this is something we could have seen this weekend, but we didn't even consider it.
If you look at the numbers, this is a terrible opening. A $50 million budget isn't that high, but this opening is extremely low.
Felix Quinonez: I think this result disproves the idea that the Muppets brand had been reignited with the previous film. Although the 2011 movie was by no means a smash, it still did very well. But I think that had more to do with the fact that the movie itself looked interesting, got great reviews, and played to the nostalgia factor. Of course a lot of people took that to mean that now any Muppets movie would make a lot of money. Obviously that's not the case. The movies still have to hook the audiences and the fact is Muppets most Wanted did not look interesting at all. It looked like something that could (should) have gone straight to DVD and audiences ignored it.
Kim Hollis: I think it's interesting that Brett brings up the original film's smash success, because The Muppets followed by Muppets Most Wanted really reminds me a lot of The Muppet Movie followed by The Great Muppet Caper. Both The Muppet Movie and The Muppets played on those unique qualities that make the Muppets special to audiences, complete with whimsical story lines, fun cameos (it might not seem that impressive now, but Steve Martin, Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Mel Brooks would have appealed to adults in much the same way that Jason Segel and Amy Adams were draws a couple of years ago) and delightful soundtracks. The Great Muppet Caper and Muppets Most Wanted are both capers where a muppet is wrongfully accused of a crime. Way back in the late '70s and early '80s, I was a lot less interested in Great Muppet Caper than The Muppet Movie, and the same thing happened with The Muppets and Muppets Most Wanted. I think that sense was universal across potential film viewers. It's not the end of the world, though. Disney will make money off merchandise and home video.
David Mumpower: I generally despise the term "television actor" because I believe that television has evolved into the superior storytelling medium in the streaming media era. Despite feeling this way, I still believe that swapping out Jason Segel and Amy Adams for Tina Fey and Ty Burrell is a casting decision that relegates the sequel to second tier status. If the production team itself identifies a Muppets movie was as the lesser product, why should consumers feel otherwise? And that is only half of the problem. The other issue is that Muppets Most Wanted was released less than two and a half years after The Muppets. Disney wanted the box office (and ancillary toy sales revenue) from another Muppets movie. They did not take the appropriate amount of time to create an exceptional story, something the last movie had. In every way possible, this sequel felt needless and derivative. It was a cynical creation involving characters who are the opposite of cynical. Simply stated, Disney did not protect their brand, a rarity for them.
Kim Hollis: God's Not Dead, a faith-based film from Pure Flix Entertainment, took fourth place with $9.2 million and a per-screen average of almost $12,000. How did this movie break out?
Edwin Davies: We know that faith-based releases benefit from grassroots campaigns and from churches telling their congregations to see the film. Considering how little marketing there was for this in traditional venues - case in point: there's a couple of theaters near me showing it yet I hadn't heard a single thing about the film until I saw it mentioned in the Weekend Forecast - it seems that this approach worked once again, as did the presence of a cast member of Duck Dynasty, which is apparently a reason to see a film now, rather than to cast every copy of it into the sea. It probably most benefited from its proximity to Son of God in the release schedule, which fired up the under-served audience and made them more likely to seek out other similar titles. Whenever a film that targets a specific demographic does well, it seems to raise awareness of similar titles and, while it doesn't guarantee success in the long term, it certainly seems to lead to spikes in the immediate aftermath.
Brett Ballard-Beach: I concur with Edwin's analysis,particularly the fortuitous (or well-scheduled) timing of this coming on the heels of Son of God and just before Noah (even though I understand there are some who may think it heretical of me to lump the latter in with the two former). And yes perhaps the Hercules vs. Duck Dynasty showdown looked like a promising grudge match. There is also the title, which is like the most concise studio pitch ever, and sounds like a promise of salvation, a threat of decimation, the sequel to Paul Is Dead and/or a lost blaxploitation flick from the '70s. Taken all together, that helped this open to a better figure than either Courageous or Fireproof - the two highest grossers of this subset outside of The Passion of the Christ and Son of God - and should get to a final at least as high.
Max Braden: I wonder if there was just a small catalyst in Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "Cosmos" series currently showing on Fox on Sunday nights. It's displayed an anti-church slant that has made me wonder if the devout were looking for a way to counter balance it.
Kim Hollis: I've seen some of my more devout friends talking up the film via social channels, so I had a feeling this was a film that would find some significant success. This type of film reaches out to a very specific audience and not much marketing is required to get positive results. With Facebook at play, it is easier than ever for the distributors of these types of projects to find not just prospective movie goers, but advocates.
David Mumpower: During the years I have spent running this site, one of the most surprising revelations, especially in the early days, was the obsession some faith-based organizations had with the infiltration of Hollywood. That was their word, not mine. There is a belief that cinema is one of the strongest methods for indoctrinating people into a religious philosophy, and I include atheism in that.
For years now, we have received media requests from places who want to pick our staff's collective brain. What they have to know are the best ways to spread the message of faith via major motion pictures. The uphill battle they have faced is that the feature film distribution system is rigged toward major corporate conglomerates.
Exhibitors have been reluctant to alter their model enough to provide opportunities to films they expect to be preachy. That philosophy has changed over the past couple of years as the cable-ization of cinema that we have been tracking has led to more of these small scale triumphs. It is better for an exhibitor to direct a small percentage of their theaters to niche films than to cede 500 more venues to a title that is not going to have sellouts with the play dates it already has. Simply stated, the performance of God's Not Dead is the latest example of effective direct targeting of a product with otherwise neglected consumers who covet the product. The best part from the distributor perspective is that a lot of customers are the ones who showed up en masse for The Passion of the Christ but nothing else in the interim. Their irregular presence in a movie theater is the equivalent of found money because they are effectively new clients.