Monday Morning Quarterback Part II
By BOP Staff
February 18, 2015
Jason Barney: I find the breakout success of Kingsman: The Secret Service interesting. It is a fairly expensive project, put together for $81 million. While this alone isn’t crazy expensive for an action adventure film, it is a bit of a risk considering it is being put out there during a usually slow month with a star who has no real action credits on his resume. All of this is academic, though, because this opening is on the high end of everyone’s expectations. Kingsman is going to be a very nice success story.
Also, the counter-programming here ends up being fantastic. Fifty Shades of Grey will certainly grab all of the headlines for being the Valentine’s Day movie of the weekend, but Fox has done something that ended up being very smart. Kingsman played like a date movie. I know it sounds weird considering this is in the action-adventure genre, but plenty of women were perfectly fine going to see Colin Firth on the big screen on Valentine’s Day. Yes, it was the choice of males, but I think Firth’s female following goes seriously underestimated.
For Firth, this will go in the range of his biggest projects and will continue to cement his overall appeal. The guy’s career is populated by smaller projects that do fine, plus occasional hits that garner a lot of attention. He appeared in three films in 2014, none of them opening on more than 2,000 screens. Two of those were less than a thousand screens. His largest success was the King’s Speech, which was wildly successful five years ago. Put together for only $15 million it earned over $400 million worldwide and earned him an Academy Award for best actor. Prior to that his work in Mamma Mia! brought in over $600 worldwide, so the guy has a pretty good track record of success. He has been known as a serious actor but putting his feet into the action genre has worked out for him.
Felix Quinonez: I think this is a great opening. It seemed to me like the movie might be a little too weird for audiences. And even though it's counter programming to 50 Shades I had concerns that Kingsman would suffer because literally EVERYONE was only talking about 50 Shades. I thought it might get lost in the shuffle but I'm glad to see that wasn't the case. I think this opening puts it on a road to profitability and is a win for Matthew Vaughn. And I'm a big fan of his work.
Ryan Kyle: This year has really been feast or famine at the box office. I was expecting a more middling result here, but instead Kingsmen opened up higher than even the most optimistic predictions. If this wasn't in the shadow of Fifty Shades, this would be the box office story of the week. The marketing did an excellent job making this film look appealing and the globe-trotting cast will assure a good overseas run. It looks like two franchises have been launched this Valentine's Day weekend. With no competition next week, it will be interesting to see how well this holds (it could even wind up at #1 if Fifty drops hard enough and none of the new releases break out). Overall, it's been a great year for R-rated films at the box office.
David Mumpower: I've been sold on this one since the first trailer. Whoever had the idea to use blades at the end of leg implants deserves 10% of the profits here. What a genius concept for an action film.
Kim Hollis: It's a terrific result, especially considering that it was trying to play as counter-programming. I think we can chalk the success up to a nifty looking trailer and ads that really focused on the stylish look of the film. It looked cool without looking dumb (i.e. Jupiter Ascending). I can be ambivalent about Matthew Vaughn because of the violence in some of his films, but when he's at the top of his game, I really enjoy his projects. It looks like Kingsman has a little of the good and a little of the bad where he's concerned, but at the least that makes it a really interesting movie.
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