Craig's MovieBlog

Spinning The Box Office Results

The fact is this.  If you compare opening weekends here in the US, Pirates of the Caribbean 3 made less money in 4 days ($142 million) than Spider-Man 3 did in 3 days ($151 million). 

So, how does Disney respond to having the 5th best weekend of all time?  With class all the way...

Part 1:  We had an international strategy all along.  Who cares about domestic numbers?

Mark Zoradi, president of Walt Disney Studios marketing and distribution told the NY Times, "We had such an international cast, we had a story that wasn't landlocked to North America, so this was the absolute perfect movie to open on global basis. That was the strategy."

Part 2:  We don't care about opening weekend grosses anyway.  (Yeah, right...)

Chris LeRoy, Buena Vista's senior vice president general sales manager said, "I don't like to put too much emphasis on what the opening weekend means."

Part 3:  I mean... it was actually more important to us to break the (ever heralded) Memorial Day weekend record.

LeRoy, "What we wanted to accomplish was to break the Memorial Day weekend record and we're very pleased with that."

Part 4:  Spider-Man 3 had it easier than we did due to less competition.

LeRoy again, "Spider-Man 3 had a wide open playing field and, though the market expanded to a spectacular degree [this weekend], there was just more competition."

Part 5:  Remind everyone how big the previous film was.

And finally, from LeRoy, "I think it was hard to expect it to top No. 2 [Dead Man's Chest]. Market conditions change so much from one movie to the other."

What a steaming crock of PR hooey.  You made $156.1 million in four days (if you include the Thursday night previews).  That is an insane amount of money.  Own it.

So That Happened...

This weekend, as Shrek 3 became the 3rd biggest opening ever, and according to Dreamworks/Paramount, the biggest animated film of all time (I'm not so sure about that - did they see the acting in Spider-Man 3?), it also became the 8th film to make over $100 million in its opening weekend.  For what it's worth, I'm sure this list will have 10 films by the end of the summer after Pirates 3 and Harry Potter 5.

Here are the current top box office openings of all time, according to Box Office Mojo:

Spider-Man 3	$151,116,516
Pirates of the Caribbean 2	$135,634,554
Shrek the Third	$122,000,000
Spider-Man	$114,844,116
Star Wars - Episode III	$108,435,841
Shrek 2	$108,037,878
X-Men: The Last Stand	$102,750,665
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire	$102,685,961

Looking at these films in a vacuum makes it hard to comprehend how huge they are.  Try and remember that most films don't make this much money if you add up their entire domestic, international, DVD/Video/Cable runs.  Try to remember that Batman changed the world when it had the first ever opening of $40 million way back in 1989.  Spidey 3 made almost 4 times that amount.  Inflation and rising ticket prices do NOT make up the difference.

I can't help but feel as is this is the Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire era of blockbuster movie openings, and I'm already numb to their impact.  I would love for someone with more time and smarter than I am to try and figure out who are the dealers, what is the steroid, who are the owners, and who are the players (all metaphorically, of course).  I'm ready for a Brady Anderson or Luis Gonzales to hit 50 home runs, but in the cinematic world.  Basically, when will a Rob Schneider/Andy Dick film open to $100 million?  Because at that point, I will be done at this restaurant, and I'm asking for my check.

I just have a few rhetorical questions:

• How has it become "boring" for a film to break $100 million on its opening weekend? 
• How in the world has it become commonplace for a film to open on over 4,000 screens? 
• And really, how in the world did X-Men 3 only make $234 million in its entire theatrical run after making $102 million in its first 3 days?!?!?  Fox should be embarrassed.

My one real question is: how did this all come to pass?  Who did the math to figure out the secret formula that would stack the deck completely in the favor of the tentpole films?  How did the stars align so that audiences, filmmakers, theater owners, and studios all arrived on the same page?  I can't even get my kids to follow me in the mall, much less even begin to understand how to align millions of people and organizations so that those gigantic numbers end up on the chart above.

Golden Globe Nominations 2006

My notes on the nominations:

• Bobby?  Really?  Gosh, I wonder if Sharon Stone will finally show up at the Golden Globes this year...
• Leo vs. Leo in Best Actor and Clint vs. Clint in Best Director.  I guess that means Ryan Gosling doesn't get to bring Rachel McAdams to the party, and Bill Condon doesn't get a nomination for Dreamgirls.  Neither does Paul Greengrass for United 93.
• Look at the films nominated for Best Actress (Drama): Volver, Notes on a Scandal, Sherrybaby, The Queen, and Little Children.  Wow - are any of those playing anywhere in this country other than the coasts?  The combined box office take of those films is: $29.3 million, and $24.7 of that comes from The Queen.
• United 93 seems to have lost some momentum here, but the Hollywood Foreign Press likes to nominate stars... and the film had none - unlike Bobby.
• The real surprises to me are Babel racking up the most (7) nods, Mark Wahlberg and Thank You For Smoking getting noticed (deservedly), Notes on a Scandal getting 3, and going back to the Jack Sparrow well for a second time.
• Oh, and on the TV side, Alec Baldwin got nominated for his work on 30 Rock (perfect) but Studio 60 got zippo.  That's gotta hurt NBC, since they air the Golden Globes.  And I did not see a nomination for Dexter's Michael C. Hall coming...
• Best line from David Poland: "Harvey got his meaningless Bobby nomination. Thank God Roger Friedman will have somewhere to sit at the awards."

Best Picture (Drama)

• Babel
• Bobby
• The Departed
• Little Children
• The Queen

Best Actor (Drama)

• Leonardo DiCaprio - Blood Diamond
• Leonardo DiCaprio - The Departed
• Peter O'Toole - Venus
• Will Smith - The Pursuit of Happyness
• Forest Whitaker - The Last King of Scotland

Best Actress (Drama)

• Penelope Cruz - Volver
• Judi Dench - Notes on a Scandal
• Maggie Gyllenhall - Sherrybaby
• Helen Mirren - The Queen
• Kate Winslet - Little Children

Best Picture (Musical or Comedy)

• Borat
• The Devil Wears Prada
• Dreamgirls
• Little Miss Sunshine
• Thank You For Smoking

Best Actress (Musical or Comedy)

• Annette Bening - Running with Scissors
• Toni Collette - Little Miss Sunshine
• Beyonce Knowles - Dreamgirls
• Meryl Streep - The Devil Wears Prada
• Rene Zellweger - Miss Potter

Best Actor (Musical or Comedy)

• Sasha Baron Cohen - Borat
• Johnny Depp - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
• Aaron Eckhart - Thank You for Smoking
• Chiwetel Ejiofor - Kinky Boots
• Will Ferrell - Stranger Than Fiction

Best Supporting Actor

• Ben Affleck - Hollywoodland
• Eddie Murphy - Dreamgirls
• Jack Nicholson - The Departed
• Brad Pitt - Babel
• Mark Wahlberg - The Departed

Best Supporting Actress

• Adriana Barraza - Babel
• Kate Blanchett - Notes on a Scandal
• Emily Blunt - The Devil Wears Prada
• Jennifer Hudson - Dreamgirls
• Rinko Kikuchi - Babel

Best Director

• Clint Eastwood - Flags of Our Fathers
• Clint Eastwood - Letters from Iwo Jima
• Stephen Frears - The Queen
• Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu - Babel
• Martin Scorsese - The Departed

Best Screenplay

• Babel
• Little Children
• Notes on a Scandal
• The Departed
• The Queen

New Deja Vu Trailer

Deja Vu is exactly the kind of movie that I pump my expectations way too high for: mystery, time travel... and so few films do it right.  12 Monkeys comes to mind as one of the good ones, but I'm worried that Tony Scott isn't going to be able to pull it off.  At least Terry Rossio (one of the writers of Shrek and Pirates of the Caribbean) is on board.

What was the point of this post again?  Oh yeah... the new trailer.

Chump Change... For Now

I know some of this is old, but I kept it around because it stuck with me.  I also think that this post will make me seem like a technophobe, but I'm nothing of the sort.  I truly believe that in the next 20 years, we'll be downloading all our content - movies, video games, tv, music, and experiencing it however we want: on any device or on any screen in the house.

Having said all that, I think Bob Iger is full of crap in this news/press release.

Look, I give him credit.  He sealed the deal with Jobs and Pixar when Eisner couldn't get it done.  He had the first network to put their shows on iTunes, and everyone else followed suit.  And now, he's got the first movie studio to put their films on iTunes as well.

However, he tells us in the release that Disney sold 125,000 movies through iTunes in their opening week, generating $1 million.

I guess we're all supposed to just sit back and think that's good (and it might be), but there's no way for us to know.  Was that within their expectation?  Is that new business, or business that would have been a DVD or movie ticket anyway?  How much money does Disney get here vs. Apple?  This is certainly good news for Apple, as it's new business for them (assuming the operating costs of running a movie download service aren't for some reason incredibly higher than running their music download service), but it's not remotely clear what this means for Disney.  There's no context, nothing to compare it to, just the word of an executive...

Actually, we do have something to compare it to: the box office.  Let's call out the week's worst (and most heavily derided) new performer: All the King's Men.  It made $3.6 million this weekend - more than 3 times that amazing iTunes download number.  I mean, Buena Vista's own Invincible is in its 5th week at the box office, and it still made $2.5 million.  Pirates of the Caribbean 2 farted a million bucks during it's opening weekend.  It made $135.6 million in 72 hours - an average of $1,883,813 per hour.  That million bucks (or less) from iTunes, and their projected $50 million (or less) for the year will have absolutely no impact on Buena Vista's bottom line for years to come.

I mention all this today, because David Card wrote today that TV and film programmers should treat new platforms as "relatively small revenue streams whose primary value is promotion."

Again, I don't think it will always be this way, but let's be careful when and where we toot our own horns, shall we?

Lesson #1 - Don't Write a Screenplay for an Animated Blockbuster

Whoa - did you know that writers of animated films get absolutely nothing when it comes to their films being sold to TV, video, and DVD?  The LA Times enlightens us...

"Writers of live-action features get royalties when their work is repackaged and sold. But writers of animation don't. Their 'ancillary profit participation,' as it's known, is paid in multiples of zero."

That seems a bit criminal when you consider that 3 of the top 7 box office films of the year so far are animated movies (Cars, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Over the Hedge).

Though they claim not to have ditched animation, Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, whose credits include Aladdin and The Road to El Dorado, haven't written an animation screenplay since Shrek, in 2001, for which they earned an Oscar nomination. And who can blame them? Their script for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, which has just broken into the top 10-grossing films of all time, is likely to net them each at least an extra $1 million when the film explodes onto the video market. That money never would have materialized if they had written, say, Shrek the Third instead.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - Fastest Grossing Movie Ever (So Far)

After four weeks, your box office champion of all time is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest.  To be clear, I'm saying that POTC: DMC has made more money after 4 weeks than any other movie had made after 4 weeks.

1. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $358,485,761 ($20.6 million week 4 total)
2. Shrek 2 - $353,333,317 ($23.3 milion)
3. Spider-Man - $333,641,492 ($28.5 million)
4. Revenge of the Sith - $332,109,171 ($14.9 million)
5. Spider-Man 2 - $328,468,763 ($15.0 million)

Note that POTC: DMC is currently the 11th biggest grossing film of all time, about $12 million behind Mel "I am not an anti-Semite" Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.  I find it somewhat ironic that by this weekend, that film will be out of the top 10.

More Pirates of the Caribbean 2 Box Office

Here is some more Pirates 2 data for ya:

• Third best 2nd weekend ever with $62.3 million (but was the highest grosser at the time with $258.3 milion).
• If this had been Pirates' opening weekend, it would have been the 31st biggest opening ever, more than the openings of The Two Towers, Cars, Signs, MI-2, etc.
• Best 10 day opening ever.
• Tied with Spider-Man 2 and Revenge of the Sith for the fastest to $200 million (8 days).

Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Biggest Opening Weekend Ever

I’d go into more detail, but I’ve got a spotty internet connection in an airport lounge in Heathrow, UK on my way to South Africa.  However, respect must be paid.

$132,000,000.  Biggest. Opening. Ever.  Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man's Chest

That’s insane.  Completely and utterly insane.  As Box Office Prophets put it, “we are through the looking glass.”

It’s really a testament to great marketing, and moreso, a true love for the first film, and an obvious enormous thirst for more Jack Sparrow adventures.  Remember, opening weekend numbers don’t say anything about movie quality…

I don’t have all my data at my fingertips, nor time, nor a good internet connection, so I’ll leave it to others to do the deep analysis.  However, my favorite stats so far are here, put together by BOP:

• On its own, a $54.8 million weekend (which Pirates 2 did in one day) would be the 42nd largest opening and 46th largest weekend total ever recorded.
• This one-day total surpasses the entire weekend performance of last frame's $209 million-budgeted Superman Returns by almost $2.5 million.

Having said that, Spider-Man is gone, even Aquaman has been vanquished.  Long live Jack Sparrow.

Biggest Single Day Ever - Pirates of the Caribbean 2

Biggest.  Day.  Ever.

$55,000,000

Superman Returns Box Office

I don't know why I still feel the need to defend this movie, but I guess I'm just looking for some fairness in reporting more than anything else.

Only 6 movies have ever broken $50 million on July 4th weekend, and Superman Returns did it with $52.6 million (and it didn't even star Will Smith, like most of the others on this list), coming in 3rd place.  I'm not sure if people just wanted to see Warner Bros. lose due to the over $300 million they spent on making and marketing this thing, but it's definitely not the bomb that people are making it out to be.  Competition is about to get brutal, however, with Pirates 2 about to come out.

On the flipside, people are GUSHING about how amazing the box office performance was for The Devil Wears Prada, and yet it was only the 15th best of this year, beaten by such HUGE hits (not) as Big Momma's House 2 and Inside Man, neither of which ended up breaking $100 million.  In fact, Superman Returns' initial 5 day total ($84.7 million) almost outgrossed Inside Man's entire domestic take ($88.4 million).  Plus, Prada will have much tougher competition than Momma and Inside Man had, with Pirates 2 and My Super Ex-Girlfriend about to come out.

So, great counter-marketing on Fox's behalf, but please everyone... get a grip.

David Poland at the Summer Halftime Report

Read it and learn something:

In the last five years, the "worst" performance by a top summer film domestically was Finding Nemo's $340 million. Neither of our current leaders, X-Men: The Last Stand and The Da Vinci Code, appears ready to come within $100 million of that number.

So now, it's up to Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Superman Returns to lead the way. But don't get too dependent on those two titles alone. Films that open in the next two months, combined with holdover from the first two months, are still about $2 billion away from an average summer.

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 - David Poland Loves It

David loved it... which may mean a lot (or nothing at all) because he's been panning everything all summer:

"Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is easily the best studio confection of the year... kicking ass, taking names, and reminding us all of the joy that going to a big summer movie is supposed to inspire in us."

"...sitting back in that theater, watching some old friends going through the paces, louder, faster, and funnier, is an unmitigated pleasure."

"...Pirates 2 turns the sluggish summer on its head and makes me optimistic about enjoying summer movies - well, some summer movies - again."

The Value of a Good Publicist: Connie Chung and Britney Spears

Did we learn nothing from Tom Cruise's various meltdowns after firing his publicist?  Look, it's okay to be completely nuts, smell bad, sleep with sheep, act like an egomaniac, whatever... that's why you have managers and PR people to keep your image intact. That way, your project won't tank like Mission: Impossible 3 did. 

(...and yes, at just $130 million domestically, it did tank.  It cost $150 million just to make, not including marketing, didn't come close to the M:I2 total, and is already way behind Da Vinci, X-Men 3, Ice Age, with Cars, Pirates 2, Superman and others to pass it shortly.  Sure, it's over $300 worldwide, but it's still behind M:I2 , and what percentage of that do you think is going directly to Tom's manpurse?)

Well, Connie Chung and Britney Spears apparently decided to give "their people" some time off last week, because they dropped some stunners. 

Enjoy the video of Connie closing her latest failure on MSNBC, then read on to find out why Britney was such a mess during Matt Lauer.

From Page Six:

"Neither of her publicists, Leslie Sloane Zelnick or Nanci Ryder, showed up," said our source. Spears insisted on doing her own hair and makeup - a regrettable decision. Web sites derided her hair as a "rat's nest" and, when she started crying during the interview, one of her fake eyelashes fell off. "When [the NBC crew] got there, they thought they had the wrong day . . . During the interview, no one was there to rein things in," we're told... Reps tried to control the damage on Friday. "They asked NBC not to release footage to places like E!," said a source. Asked why Spears was on her own for the interview, Sloane Zelnick said, "Britney is a grown-up and makes her own decisions."

Pirates of the Caribbean 2 is Tracking HUGE

Over at Deadline Hollywood Daily - Nikki Finke says that the latest tracking data for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 "is as big as any film in history."

That's fantastic.  I'm sure the film will be great (same writers, directors, cast, and a deliriously funny Johnny Depp) and the opening will be ginormous. 

However she goes onto say, "Either there's a gross error, or the Magic Kingdom has Titanic on its hands..."

Now that's just silly hyperbole.  It may well open to $100 million, and it may make more than the original's massive $305.4 million.  Just remember than Titanic almost doubled that number.  So to be clear, the first film broke $300 million, which just 21 films have ever done, and she thinks that this sequel will double it?  Even the incredibly huge Shrek 2 still fell over $160 million short of Titanic. 

Titanic broke $15 million for 15 straight weeks and was number 1 on the charts during that entire run (through January, February, and March, so it had no competition).

Can you name the last film that made more than $15 million in it's 15th week out?  No?  That's right, because it has never happened before.  The next best is a measly $6 million, and that shouldn't even count because Sideways wasn't in wide-release until that very 15th week.  Show me another movie that was still playing on over 3200 screens four months after it was released.

Nothing comes close.

Look, I'm really looking forward to the movie, but the Titanic comparison is just silly.

So, um... good luck with that.