Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
March 17, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Edwin Davies: This is a fantastic result all around. It validates Disney's strategy of remaking/reimagining its old animated films for modern audiences, showing that Maleficent wasn't a fluke driven by Angelina Jolie's star power, while setting things up nicely for the Beauty and the Beast remake due out next year and also reaffirming the strength of the Disney brand. Unlike Maleficent and Oz the Great and Powerful, Cinderella didn't have the benefit of being headlined by a huge star or being associated with a famous director (Kenneth Branagh's had some success behind the camera but his involvement isn't a guarantee of success, as Jack Ryan proved), so for it to open in the same range as those two is very impressive. Success bred success in this case.
Obviously attaching the Frozen short to the film helped increase the numbers somewhat - I wouldn't be surprised if it added as much as $10 million to the opening - but even taking that into account the film looked very appealing and got great reviews. Clearly Disney have learned from the one-two punch of Frozen and Maleficent that you can make a lot of money by making films aimed at a young female audience and are pressing their advantage as cinema's primary purveyors of princess tales. They also seemed to have learned how to rein the budget in, since Cinderella cost roughly half what Maleficent, Oz, and Alice cost, so it should have covered its production costs before its second week in theaters has even started. If it shows the sort of legs that its predecessor did, it'll be another hugely popular venture for Disney.
Jason Barney: I’m shocked by the total of the opening here. Frankly, I didn’t see it coming at all, and kudos to Disney for being able to pull this off. I guess part of my apathy for this live action version of Cinderella was based on a couple of different things. First, Disney decided to greenlight the project with no huge names front lining the effort. Lily James and and Richard Madden may be recognizable in some circles, but their presence wasn’t a draw. Also, I guess I fell into the ho-hum crowd because I assumed, incorrectly, that people would not want to go out and see a story there are already differing versions of.
I thought Cinderella would fall prey to the box office softness of the last few weeks. It started in late February, the weekend that Hot Tub Time Machine 2 came out, and we really have been in a bit of a slump or holding pattern ever since. Focus and Chappie weren’t grabbing people’s attention and I thought Cinderella would come out of the gate somewhere in the $50 million range.
Boy was I wrong. Give all the credit to Disney. They took one of the sweetheart stories of childhood, one that everyone is familiar with, and they have done well with it. This opening is exceptionally strong and Disney is going to be really happy with earnings when all is said and done. With a $95 million budget and this opening, it won’t take very long for marketing costs to be out of the way. And that is just on the domestic front. It's already playing very well overseas, too.
Bruce Hall: While I certainly see this as a fantastic result, I have trouble characterizing Cinderella as the stroke of genius many are calling it. Recycling old stories for new generations has more or less been the whole point of storytelling since the dawn of time. So I'm not sure I understand all the breathless admiration over Disney remaking a story that was already a remake of something that technically wasn't theirs to begin with. And one of the reasons Disney originally began making animated adaptations of classic fairy tales was that there really was no way to make the films they envisioned as live action features. Now that the technology exists, it only stands to reason that they do so now.
The only part of this that I view as brilliant is to ramp back the production budget and focus on the story. When I look back at recent live action adaptations like Maleficent, Alice in Wonderland and Oz the Great and Powerful, I see films that were financially successful, critically underwhelming, and astoundingly expensive. I've never understood why these movies have to cost $200 million, especially when very little of that money seems to have been used as incentive to produce a decent story. And how can you not nail the story when your source material has existed for longer than any of us have been alive?
Cinderella is not just a natural extension of Disney's existing catalog; it is proof that a visually absorbing, narratively compelling film can be made for far less than the cost of a pair of surplus WWII battleships. Good word-of-mouth should ensure that Cinderella becomes one of the most interesting early success stories of 2015. Disney plans to generate at least a pair of live action features per year using this model, and if this is any indication, their brand revitalization should continue to be a success.
Max Braden: I was one - of a minority, it looks like - who thought this would open much lower than it did. Aside from Thor, which had a whole franchise to help sell it, Kenneth Branagh hasn't directed any movies that opened to much more than $50 million. Sure, this movie featured a Disney princess, but it's live action (vs. the more kid-friendly animation of Frozen and the visual effects of Maleficent or Alice in Wonderland), not a musical, not featuring actors who would be the strongest draw for kids and teens. To me, this looked like a movie that would appeal to Jane Austen fans and I expected a closer box office to that genre. I still wonder if the kids who flocked to Frozen went to see Cinderella; maybe high school teen girls thinking about prom joined couples out on dates? This is a strong result and demonstrates that the power of Disney princesses is showing no signs of waning.
Kim Hollis: I wasn't surprised by this result (I actually had forecast it at $75 million so it even came in under my estimate), but I still think it's a terrific result. We continue to see movies like Cinderella (and Maleficent, and Frozen) thoroughly appealing to the female demographic. This is an audience that is so under-served, and that has proven to be very weary of your standard Nicholas Sparks-style romances and romantic comedies. If you go to the Disney Store (or Disney World), you're going to see oodles of adorable girls dressed as princesses. At last, we had a movie that mothers and daughters could enjoy together, and it was beautiful and enjoyable to boot. No, it does not offer a new take on the story. Not at all. But it's as comfortable as a glass slipper and delightful escapist fun. I'd definitely agree that Frozen Fever contributed to the film's success.
David Mumpower: I always viewed Cinderella as a de facto sequel to Maleficent in addition to being a live action reboot of the beloved animated cartoon. It also features Frozen Fever, which is why I've jokingly been referring to Cinderella as Frozen 1.5. Look at those three marketing assets for the film. Now, try to think of how many films released over the past 12 months had this much going for them. Can you name 10? Five? The nondescript nature of the ads is the only explanation for this one opening to less than Maleficent. Yes, that film had Angelina Jolie cast in a perfect role while Cinderella was starless, but it's Disney remaking Disney. I agree with Kim that the shock here is that Cinderella didn't earn even more.