Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
June 16, 2015
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Edwin Davies: I've been thinking about this a lot since the Friday grosses started coming in and suggested that basically everyone - including Universal, though they may have just been playing coy - underestimated Jurassic World by a frankly historic amount. The best explanation I can come up with is that the original Jurassic Park is to Millennials what Star Wars was to Gen X-ers. It was this huge adventure that instilled a love of movies in a whole generation of kids, many of whom passed their affection for the film on to their own children, as evidenced by the fact that 55% of tickets were sold to people under the age of 25.
If you want to take the connection even deeper: Star Wars was released in 1977 and Return of the Jedi was released in 1983, leaving a gap of 22 years and 16 years, respectively, between those films and The Phantom Menace. Jurassic Park, meanwhile, was released in 1993 and Jurassic Park III was released in 2001, leaving a gap of 22 years and 14 years, respectively, between those two films and Jurassic World. In both cases, the franchises went dormant for more than a decade, during which time younger audiences were able to discover the films on TV and home media, creating a huge demand for new stories. This wasn't just the result of nostalgic 30 and 40-somethings trying to relive their childhoods, but of people across a huge age range expressing their enthusiasm for this series.
So there was this huge cross-generational appeal to the film (something which had already been demonstrated by the 3D re-release a couple of years ago, which grossed $45 million despite offering basically nothing new) which was supplemented by casting Chris Pratt as the co-lead of the film. At the time that he was cast, in early 2014, Guardians of the Galaxy hadn't happened yet, so they had no idea that he would be such a star at this point, but the goodwill generated from that film probably made audiences see him as an indicator of quality, or at least of a good time at the movies. I think that a Jurassic Park sequel probably could have done well regardless of the star, but Pratt has proved himself to be a pretty charismatic and charming guy, so he probably added multiple millions onto the opening.
Jason Barney: My thought process all along was that Jurassic World would open solid but not strong, and basically be a bit of a disappointment over the long run. That started to change Thursday night and Friday, but I still thought it was going to be an "okay" opening for one of the tentpole films of summer. Honestly, I thought we were heading somewhere in the $75 million range. Well, I was wrong.
This explosive opening is one of the most surprising in years and easily will be the story going forward. To beat most people's tracking estimates by nearly $100 million is nuts. Chris Pratt has a lot to do with this, but this franchise has a lot of goodwill behind it as well.
Felix Quinonez: I really have no explanation for this. Even when I take into account the consideration all of the nostalgia factor, the very successful marketing and Chris Pratt I still wouldn't have put it much higher than $100 million. I guess it was just a perfect storm that created a juggernaut.
Ben Gruchow: I was shocked when the Friday numbers and weekend estimate rolled in; given hindsight, though, it makes more and more sense. I think three main things are responsible for the degree to which the movie exceeded expectations.
One, the timing. The market ended up being markedly more primed for a movie like Jurassic World than it should've been, owing to a surprisingly weak May at the box office. Age of Ultron opened to big numbers but relative audience indifference. Mad Max: Fury Road was a fantastic film, but it was also an R-rated sequel to an R-rated franchise. With the collapse of Tomorrowland, there hasn't really been a go-to family-friendly option in over a month.
Two, the marketing campaign. The trailers, starting with the very first one, were solid in the moment and read as exceptional in how well they package the film. This also goes for the truly brilliant JurassicWorld.com website; I have no idea empirically how many people it swayed in the movie's favor, but it went a long way toward doing the trick for me. Universal's marketing department conducted a master class in conveying tone, incident, and focus inside of a couple of minutes, and the campaign was absolutely solid without being groundbreaking in any way. It looked like fun. Breezy, undemanding fun, and that's something this season's tentpoles had mostly lacked.
Three (this is possibly the fuzziest of the three reasons, but it's the one that I believe had a critical effect on the size of the opening): Jurassic World is more or less standalone. Yes, there've been three movies in the series thus far, and thanks to this opening we can look forward to a sequel in three to four years...but the last film in this series was 14 years ago, and the franchise in general was fairly spotty by that point (one good film, two mediocre ones). In the space between 2001 and 2015, we've had a gigantic onslaught of multi-film and would-be multi-film franchises, where you can't hope to understand one without seeing the others (Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games, The Hobbit, X-Men, all 328 films and TV series in the Marvel Cinematic Universe). You could go into Jurassic World cold, without boning up on the earlier films or catching up on a TV show or reading a book. I think that acted as an enticement to those people who are already exhausted from keeping track of which installment of which story is coming out when.
I think this last one will also have a beneficial impact on the movie's legs after this weekend. Initially, with the $204 million estimate, the movie's day-to-day percentage decline had me thinking that this might crater next weekend. With the official numbers in at $208.8 million, the day-to-day numbers and percentage decline are almost identical to the first Avengers, and we had a record second weekend then. Then again, the Avengers movies had Dark Shadows and Hot Pursuit to deal with, not a triumvirate of movies that're scoring above 80% with critics, one of which is the first Pixar original in three years.
Bruce Hall: Well, it's been a hell of a year for Universal. The R-rated Fifty Shades of Grey proved that withering reviews are no match for Oprah's blessing, and easily made far more money than it probably should have. Furious 7 was a poignant and stupendously profitable send off for Paul Walker, and up to now was Universal's big performer for the year. And then Jurassic World came stumbling in and like a drunk Roman emperor, just utterly had its way with everything in the room.
Personally, I lost interest in Jurassic Park approximately two decades ago, but the rest of the world not only was dying for an extinct giant lizard fix, but has also forgiven (or better yet forgotten) the abomination that was Jurassic Park 3. People young and old flocked to Jurassic World in droves, attracted either by nostalgia, or because blue and sepia tinted movies are all the rage these days.
And for anyone who was on the fence about it, there was the currently very white-hot Mr. Pratt. It was a multi-pronged strategy that cast a wide net and apparently, caught all the fish.
Oddly, I felt largely unaffected by the marketing campaign for Jurassic World. It turned me off with all that washed out looking CGI and the suggestion that the only thing wrong with previous Jurassic Park movies up to this point was the lack of overkill.
And although it's not exactly a bold statement to say that I really like Chris Pratt, it takes considerably more stones to suggest that I'd occasionally like to see something without him.
But clearly, I am again in the minority. I have yet to see Jurassic World, but the consensus so far suggests that this time around they addressed the issue of "brilliant looking film with a story dumber than my neighbor's Cocker Spaniel." It's a stunning success.
And now, a new and unending stream of Jurassic Park sequels.
Michael Lynderey: Who said it was possible? I don't think it is possible, though clearly it's what Jurassic World has gone and done. The film has somehow positioned itself as almost certainly the biggest movie of the summer, and possibly even the year. Is there really any chance that Jurassic World doesn't make $500 million domestic or close to it? It'll almost certainly pass Avengers 2 (which itself will finish at around $455 million), and it could even make $600 million and squeeze its way into the top four movies of all time. Now, if you asked anyone at any point during the last three years, they all would have predicted Avengers 2 would easily win the summer and (obviously) have the season's highest opening weekend, to boot. Jurassic World has just proven every prediction wrong on at least one of those questions.
I think the box office has been playing this game of bait-and-switch on us since roughly last summer. Witness how Guardians of the Galaxy somehow won summer 2014 after every plausible candidate collapsed before its release, while American Sniper won the year right after Hunger Games 3 just barely edged out Guardians. Jurassic World is more of the same trickery. It is a film that single-handedly turns box office forecasting and analysis into a failed and unneeded trade.
The Phantom Menace comparison is probably the best one, although the Jurassic Park films never inspired the kind of devoted fandom that the Star Wars movies did. The characters, universe, and mythology of Star Wars are so entrenched into the culture of this planet that they have inspired countless spin-offs on every platform possible, and even their own religion! Jurassic Park, while an adventure beloved by many, doesn't have anywhere near the level of hold on our popular culture (and its two sequels probably haven't been re-watched all that often, the way all of the original Star Wars trilogy has been).
So there's nothing that can be said about this opening that will ever quite do it justice. Saying it's shocking, amazing, unbelievable, impossibly unpredictable, and out-of-this-world, is redundant. Saying all of those things over and over again until you're out of breath is even more redundant, but also entirely accurate and necessary. Jurassic World is the movie of the summer.
Ryan Kyle: This is a phenomenal result that needs some distance to analyze. It was a perfect storm of everything gone right. Much like the previous Star Wars references before, this is a franchise that while dormant, still proved to be a monster, with viewings constantly on TV and a theme park ride that has been a staple at Universal Studios. The franchise has always remained alive even without new content. The marketing team also did a brilliant job and the fact that they titled the film Jurassic World instead of Jurassic Park IV upped the stakes and made the movie stand-alone, having everyone feel welcome to see it no matter how green to the franchise. This is one of those rare, yet true, four quadrant films that appeals to everyone, making this a real outing.
Kim Hollis: In my wildest dreams, I never would have imagined this was going to claim the opening weekend record. I felt like the audience had expanded and figured that tracking had it low, but I could never have predicted just how low. Edwin is on to something when he talks about Jurassic World being a multigenerational option. It makes sense that parents who loved Jurassic Park might be taking their kids to a dinosaur movie for the first time. I also agree that Chris Pratt elevated the box office by many millions. His part in the promotion of the film was definitely a driving factor, because he entertained people even as he did so.
David Mumpower: There's a cyclical aspect to what transpired. Even though it was a terrible, horrible, awful, Uwe Boll-ish kind of movie, The Lost World broke the opening weekend record by a whopping $20 million in 1997. That was 37 percent more than any film had ever managed in a weekend previously. It was also the second film in the franchise to break the record. Jurassic Park upended Batman Returns but then was surpassed by Batman Forever, which was in turn destroyed by The Lost World. While nobody thinks about it that way now, the dinosaur franchise was right there with Batman right up until people realized the movies were lousy.
Fast forward 18 years, and there's enough distance from the disastrous second film and just okay third film to perform a clean reboot. Jurassic World managed exactly this by selling the promise of the fruition of Steven Spielberg's vision: an actual theme park with live dinosaurs. We know from our box office history that people find that prospect tantalizing. The shock is exactly how well they responded, and as much as I'd like to mock the tracking here, it's not like BOP was any better with our estimate. Like American Sniper, this is one that everybody missed horribly, and that means we should all try to figure out exactly why that's happening more in an age where more information than ever is available. In the interim, let's celebrate that rarest of rare moments in box office coverage. The greatest record in the game just got broken after The Avengers stood as champion for over three years.