Monday Morning Quarterback Part I
By BOP Staff
September 10, 2006
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Kim Hollis: The Covenant "won" the weekend with an embarrassingly low total of $9.0 million. Should we read too much into the fact that the number one film is in single digits? What do you think of its performance?
Joel Corcoran: Compared to other movies of the same genre (i.e., pretty young stars in horror movies), The Covenant had a very weak performance.
David Mumpower: The Covenant's performance is about $5 million lower than I was expecting, but that's a splitting of hairs for what was always going to be lesser title. With regards to the overall box office, the period around Labor Day is self-fulfilling prophecy. The releases are terrible, so the box office does terribly. But even by those lowered expectations, this is still pathetic.
Tim Briody: You would think in the era of inflation, the number one film earning less than $10 million would be a thing of the past by now. But never underestimate the apathy of audiences, I guess.
Reagen Sulewski: This is fall, after all. However, I'm pleasantly surprised at how poorly it did. Typically this kind of crap has been breaking out.
Kim Hollis: It was almost exactly what I was expecting. It looked awful, it reviewed awful, and no one was willing to spend money on it when they can just wait for a video release later.
David Mumpower: Reagen and Joel both make a good point. We can look to other sub-standard fare such as the Jeepers Creepers franchise and see that lousy supernatural titles launched in this timeframe have done better. The Covenant threw under that.
One car disassembling and reassembling does not a movie make
Reagen Sulewski: When I saw the trailer for it, it felt like I had stepped in a time machine to 1997.
David Mumpower: I very much liked the special effects in the trailer, particularly the car's disassembling then reassembling. I figured most people would think it was dreck, though.
Tim Briody: That scene right there was probably worth half of its box office this weekend.
Kim Hollis: It's definitely one of those trailers that makes you roll your eyes. I wish Warren Peace could get some better jobs.
Reagen Sulewski: And a better name.
Kim Hollis: Well, that's his Sky High name. I don't know his real one.
David Mumpower: So, you hope that he gets better roles and an identity?
Kim Hollis: He needs to not just be glower guy.
Joel Corcoran: Oh, I'm kind of pleased that it did so poorly, in a schadenfreude kind of way, but I was expecting it to do far better -- at least something on the order of The Faculty (1998) or The Skulls (2000). I'm kind of surprised it earned less than $10 million, though.
We're number one! All others are number two or lower!
David Mumpower: I love that we're just slaughtering the number one film this weekend. That says it all about how gloomy the box office is this frame.
Kim Hollis: Just think what we'll say about the losers.
Joel Corcoran: It's like the entire box office fell off a cliff this week after a pretty decent summer (money-wise, at least).
Reagen Sulewski: Remember when Renny Harlin was like *the* action guy?
David Mumpower: I think only Renny Harlin and -maybe- Geena Davis remember that, Reagen.