Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
November 11, 2014
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Jason Barney: This is a very solid opening for a kids' film that has virtually no built-in presence. It will have no direct competition for a couple of weeks until Penguins of Madagascar shows up in theaters, and who knows how much the Thanksgiving break will bring. I know it is early and Rotten Tomatoes ratings can fluctuate a bit, but Big Hero 6 stands a chance of being a bit of an event film all on its own. Word-of-mouth is going to be awesome, as the RT rating is creating quite the buzz at 89% fresh. A product like this creates mystery, which will add to the buzz.
Disney appears to have become the “go to” studio for kid’s entertainment during the holidays, as the last couple of years they seem to get their end-of-year animated line-up spot on. Other studios can’t claim the success Mouse House has as the weather gets colder. In 2012 it was Wreck-It Ralph. Paramount did okay with Rise of the Guardians, but Disney’s product was just better. Last year it was Frozen. The only other kids competition that I can recall was Free Birds from Relativity and that didn’t go too well. On the flip side, Frozen became a smash hit. I think you have to go all the way back to 2011 to when Disney didn’t have an animated entry in the fall/winter slate and even then the Muppets was a quiet success. Even 2010’s Tangled took in almost $600 million worldwide. Anyway, you get the point. Disney does okay during the holiday season.
Finally, this continues to be evidence that Disney’s purchase of Marvel maybe a watershed moment for the studio and perhaps the movie industry. The success of the early superhero movies is well documented. Guardians of the Galaxy is still the story of the year. Now, Disney has turned Big Hero 6 into a money maker. They are turning the comic book printed page into a money printing machine.
Matthew Huntley: I definitely agree with Jason's statement that a movie like Big Hero 6 creates mystery, because until this past week, I barely knew it even existed (don't ask me where I've been, because I'm not too sure), and now that it's opened with such high numbers and strong buzz, it's got me more than curious. So using myself as an example, and the fact that I now want to see just to feel like I'm in the know, I think this will be another leggy run for a Disney animated film and will no doubt cover its $165 million budget, though it may be a while before it's completely in the black.
Despite my wanting to see it, though, I don't think the non-Pixar animation wing of Disney makes the best films. I know I'm in the minority on this, but I didn't think Frozen was all that great, and in fact, I found it rather obnoxious, so I hope that if Big Hero 6 does make a similar fortune, it will be justified by its story and not simply because it's most high-profile family picture in the marketplace.
Felix Quinonez: I think this is a great result, even when you consider its big budget. The release date was great, the reviews (and word-of-mouth) are very strong so I am confident that it will hold very well in the coming weeks. I think it will definitely top $200 million domestically and do even better overseas. Disney can add another hit to its recent resurgence.
Edwin Davies: The key thing for me in assessing the top two films this weekend is something John Hamann mentioned in the Weekend Wrap-up. This result would be impressive if Big Hero 6 has opened on any other weekend, but it's hugely impressive when you consider that it was fighting for screens with Interstellar and neither film really lost out. If Big Hero 6 or Interstellar had the weekend to themselves, either one could have probably added another $5-10 million to their opening gross (Big Hero 6 would have probably benefited more because it would have had IMAX screens to play with) but coming out now, with the holiday season still ahead, means that they could open big and theoretically hold very well in the weeks ahead. So I'd say that this is a very good opening weekend for Big Hero 6, both because of the reasons that have already been mentioned and the fact it had to share space with another behemoth, but it'll likely set up another great and lengthy run for Disney.
Bruce Hall: On the one hand, I can agree with Big Hero 6 being a pleasant surprise by virtue of its lack of hype. I have kids and have no clue what it is, and this is coming from a guy who knows way too much about the iCarly universe than he should.
When I saw the BH6 trailer ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy, I felt like much of the audience was in the same boat. But the rest of them laughed, because either they'd heard of it before, or because giant balloon people are inherently funny.
Whatever the case I think the film was helped by the fact that the last notable kids' release opened some weeks ago, so I think there was room for this to be successful. I don't see Big Hero 6 and Interstellar cannibalizing a lot of audience from each other, so as far as I'm concerned BH6 had the weekend more or less to itself.
And it will next weekend as well, unless you consider Kirk Cameron a threat. Good word-of-mouth should translate into a good second frame. Word of a sequel should come within weeks. All is well at the Mouse House this morning.
Reagen Sulewski: I commented a bit about this in my forecast, but it's perhaps a bit strange that we're remarking at how well Disney has done to create a new property out of something unknown - isn't that the way it's supposed to work? It's a real sea change from how things used to be in that everything has to be proven in some other media first before being made into a film. If we think about some of the millstone coming up - would Ghostbusters or Back to the Future even get made today in the current film environment?
Now, with as much money riding in the budgets of these films as there are, I understand why they're so risk averse in Hollywood, and it seems weird to be championing this as some sea change when they're just looking at something that just isn't already hugely popular to begin with. But maybe that's my point - we have become so addicted to adaptation that we're not intimately familiar with qualified as innovation. Now, Interstellar really counts for that this weekend, but I see Big Hero 6 lumped in with that too, but it's worth thinking about our attitudes towards film. This is to say nothing of the actual quality of the film, which looks to be a pure expression of cinematic joy.
Max Braden: I think the slight surprise with Big Hero 6's numbers comes not just from being a new property, but that the story was somewhat obscured (as was WALL-E's plot in its advertising). It's clear from the advertising that there's a strong relationship between the boy and his creation, which is a big draw, but they didn't really advertise where that was going. The key point for me is that both the winners this weekend banked on their basic premise and hoped that audiences would come see what happens. That may be the way it should be with story entertainment, but it's somewhat of a risky move when the opening weekend number is key to financial success and doesn't give enough time for buzz to spread among friends to encourage "just see it, trust me."
David Mumpower: The one way that I disagree with all of you - and cannot believe a couple of you saw little advertising - is that the marketing represented a Disney attempt to barter their animated popularity for an unknown property. I actually felt that Big Hero 6 was much better reflected by its commercials that the other two recent releases mentioned, Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph. The Frozen ads were a direct rip-off of the Ice Age nut shenanigans while Wreck-It Ralph masterfully disguised the entire story arc. Starting with the teaser, Big Hero 6 plainly identified what it is, a buddy movie about a lonely boy and his robot. And the dizzying visuals that enhance the movie from its opening frame to the post-credits gag have been on full display for over a year now. I've been making San Fransokyo jokes for the body of 2014.
If anything, the surprise here is that Big Hero 6 did not open bigger because it's got all of the perfect moving parts for a mega-blockbuster. It's a superhero tale from Marvel with a lovable toy now on sale at your local Disney Store, and it has gags straight out of the Michelin Man endgame of Ghostbusters. The movie has everything from a marketing perspective.
Kim Hollis: David, I was also going to comment that I was surprised people were saying they didn't know much about Big Hero 6. I just don't know how that's possible. I've seen the trailer a ton of times, and I've seen plenty of ads as well. Then again, I do watch a lot of Phineas and Ferb and Gravity Falls, so maybe I'm just watching the right channels (i.e. Disney). Anyway, Disney should be very pleased with this result and I see the film carrying through the next month and a half in a big way. If you look at it at face value, it appears to be more heavily targeted to boys, but Baymax is sweet enough that girls should find plenty to love as well. It should cross over nicely - more so than Wreck-It Ralph did.