Monday Morning Quarterback Part III
By BOP Staff
August 1, 2012
We will dance until we win the war!
Kim Hollis: Step Up Revolution, the fourth film in the Step Up franchise(?), opened to $11.7 million. Is this more or less stepping up than you were expecting?
Bruce Hall: The last installment grossed about four million more over the same period so I'd have to call this a sign that the franchise (I use the term loosely) has lost a...step? I don't know what this means for the future of the series but I'll bet there will be more, either at a lower budget or direct to video. My suggestion is Step Up 2 Tha Grave, featuring zombie dancers versus androgynous looking vampire dancers. I guess that kind of rules out the traditional "forbidden love" subplot, but I think Summit needs to get on that train while it's still got gravy. $40 million opening, guaranteed.
Tim Briody: It's about where it should have come in, Step Up 3D earned a few million extra from when the 3D hook was new, but it's no longer special because everything is in 3D now. I'm sure we'll see at least one more theatrical release before the series finally goes direct to DVD, where it belongs.
Felix Quinonez: It's about in line with what I was expecting but about $11.8 million more than I was hoping it would make.
Edwin Davies: It's about in line with my expectations relating to the way in which the series has performed in the past. They've been steadily declining since the first Step Up (which opened to $20.6 million, whilst the first two sequels opened to $18.9 million and $15.8 million) and even the addition of 3D when it was still a novelty rather than an annoyance didn't do much to reverse that pattern for the previous film. Going on the previous films, Revolution will probably make back most (though probably not all) of its $33 million budget domestically, with whatever profits coming from overseas and home media somewhere down the line. Going forward, I imagine that Summit will probably produce more of these films since they can't take that long to make and are a tidy little earner, but they'll probably have to scale back from even that modest budget for any future instalments, assuming that they don't make Step Up the American Pie of dance movies and just make endless Direct-to-DVD sequels.
Reagen Sulewski: Personally, I blame the 1% for keeping down their revolutionary message. Dance our way to equality, people!
David Mumpower: Step Up Revolution is one of those projects historians will look back upon and attempt to chronicle how it came to be. I cannot help them any in this regard because I am quite mystified myself. There have been four of these movies despite the fact that these are the worst acted films of the 2000s that in no way involve Uwe Boll. Are people truly this desperate to see new dance steps that they keep going? Well, at least they had kept going until this most recent project, which definitely feels like a franchise killer to me. This is a shame because Step Up Five by Five is a title that needs to happen. Also, how many times does a person have to Step Up before they reach the top of the stairs?
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