Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
September 10, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Brett Ballard-Beach: Some general pithy thoughts...
Until Labor Day weekend, the last weekend of the summer box office, the two biggest hits of the year were still from February (The LEGO Movie) and April (Captain America: Winter Soldier).
Until Guardians of the Galaxy rode in, this summer threatened to be the first since 2000 where no film cracked $250 million.
With Pixar sitting the summer out, animated films took a big hit. Last summer Monsters University and Despicable Me 2 alone combined for over $550 million. This summer Dragon 2 underperformed and Planes 2 did about what it was expected and together they made $220 million.
As an example of the flameout that can happen on subpar (not even bad) word-of-mouth for $100 millions-plus-budgeted tentpoles: not one but two films (Amazing Spider Man 2 and Godzilla) opened above $90 million and barely squeaked past $200 million domestic.
AngJo and ScarJo brought antiheroes to the multiplex for kids (Maleficent) and adults (Lucy) and were rewarded with the biggest respective hits either actress has ever anchored solo. I haven't seen Maleficent but I give Lucy all the huzzahs I can: It may be the most genre-Cuisinarted batshit concoction Luc Besson has ever assembled - no small feat - but by keeping it lean (82 minutes without credits) he never lets it get bogged down in extraneous subplots. It's "his" Gravity, I guess. By the end, I was bawling, especially when ScarJo's Lucy meets... well, I don't want to spoil that. The beginning though sets it up beautifully and the metaphor may be the most poignant I've seen this year. Plus Damon Albarn sings the closing credits song.
Michael Bay directed a hit (Transformers: Age of Extinction) that underperformed domestically and produced another (The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot) that over-performed domestically, and the final dollar gap between them in gross will be a lot smaller than anyone making a bet could have figured back in May.
With Boyhood, Richard Linklater has the third biggest grossing hit of his 25 year, 16 film career ($20 million and counting) with a film playing at only a quarter of the venues of his two biggest: School of Rock and Bad News Bears.
Also from the indie world, Chef and Begin Again combined for nearly $50 million from audiences looking for more storytelling and fewer explosions.
And Snowpiercer made money in both theaters and VOD to the tune of nearly $10 million, from just about the only foreign acquisition the Weinsteins have ever gotten their hands on and not been allowed to hack and edit to make it "easier to understand" for Americans. However Bong Joon-ho won that battle, my hat's off to him.
Summation: Looking at the trees in the forest, there were numerous individual films that were worth seeing this summer. Looking at the big picture, this may have been the shittiest summer for moviegoing in my adult life. No momentum ever built up. Audiences were tired of a lot (but not all) sequels. Comparatively speaking, unique plots and ideas seemed to sell better than the same old tired tired, but that's a blanket statement as a lesson, and Hollywood doesn't do either.
Jason Barney: Hands down the biggest story of the summer is Guardians of the Galaxy. This could be the story of the year, and its performance will likely be talked about for a long, long time.
I cannot stress enough the expectations factor with this project. The number of people who said that they had another John Carter situation or Lone Ranger bomb on their hands was very high. Now people are talking about this as the story of the summer, the story of 2014, and people will remember this for years. Disney has made a franchise out of a project almost everyone scorned from the beginning.
Edwin Davies: Relative to expectations, I feel that Lucy and Maleficent have to be considered two of the biggest winners of the summer. Both had things in their favor prior to release (both were headlined by huge stars, Lucy had the international appeal of Luc Besson and Maleficent had the might of Disney behind it), but even after they had surprisingly strong opening weekends, there was a sense that the ceiling for their success was still low compared to some of the more established franchises. That both continued to hold well over weeks and months, eclipsing films that many expected to overshadow them, says volumes about both how well they performed and how bad the rest of the summer was.
It's obvious, but Guardians of the Galaxy also ranks pretty highly. Many, myself included, assumed that it would be a fairly modest performer, and that the best it could hope for without an overt link to the Avengers films, would be a final performance similar to those of the first Thor and Captain America films. That it not only bettered those films, but also their sequels, and now looks likely to finish near to or higher than the first two Iron Man films is quite something.
In terms of failures and disappointments, I feel like you could lump pretty much everything else in to that category. Guardians was the only summer blockbuster that had even a remote chance of earning $300 million before the season was over, while most of the films that opened at a similar level or better flamed out rapidly (even ones like X-Men: Days of Future Past which were really well received). The biggest story of the summer, ultimately, might be the failure of the studios to come up with films that resonate with audiences, or that years of shitty blockbusters have made audiences a little more suspect, revealing the flaw of the huge opening weekend model.
David Mumpower: David Mumpower: Something I chronicled in a Daily Box Office column that still fascinates me is how few bombs there have been this summer. The whole is worse than the sum of the parts in this regard. Over 85% of the movies since the first weekend of May are either already profitable or close enough that they will eventually finish in the black. The problem is not the lackluster performance of most films inasmuch as it's the opportunity cost of lost revenue that was left on the table due to many inferior products.
The aggravating part is that the unimaginative sequels that dominated so much of the summer were largely unaffected. Branding mattered more this season than it has for years now. That statement is especially true overseas, where consumers seem focused on the comfortable, known characters rather than new ones for the most part.
One other thing I will remember about this summer for a long time is the befuddling performance of How to Train Your Dragon 2. We have a standard behavior we have tracked for years, and a part of that involves the improvement of successors to beloved films. This project proved to be an anomaly, and I feel like we as a group have spent more hours trying to determine the how and why of that than we have on almost any other project this summer, Guardians of the Galaxy excluded. I just don't get why that film underachieved, and I don't think I ever will.
Kim Hollis: With the NFL returning this weekend, who do you have in the Super Bowl?
Bruce Hall: Broncos/Seahawks rematch, although if it were played today the result would likely be the same as in February.
The difference is that Seattle looks like a championship team out of the gate. The Broncos had trouble closing out an inferior Colts team, but the Broncos are clearly a different team than last year. They're more talented, but had a lot of roster turnover. They're already the best team in the AFC, it'll just take them a few games to look like they are.
Or maybe it'll be San Diego and Tampa Bay in the Ugly Jersey Bowl. Who knows?
Jason Barney: I’ll take Patriots vs Seahawks.
Reagen Sulewski: I think Denver over New Orleans.
Tim Briody: While there's a couple of solid contenders in the NFC, I really like how much of a roll Seattle is on right now. And in the AFC, the only team that looks any good is Denver. A rematch would be the first in 20 years but that's what I see right now, with Seattle winning again.
John Hamann: You have to ask? Seattle vs someone with Seattle winning! Maybe v Miami?
David Mumpower: What I enjoy about this exercise is that we discover where various BOP staff members ever grew up or live now. Nobody ever picks a couple of teams that they don’t root for. On a not even a little bit unrelated note, I predict Denver versus Atlanta with Peyton Manning’s team winning followed by him riding off into the sunset.
Kim Hollis: I think I'll go with Philadelphia vs. Cincinnati.