Craig's MovieBlog

Snakes on a Plane: A Disaster Film in So Many Ways

I want to dissect how badly Snakes on a Plane did this weekend, and while it may end up being slightly profitable, I want to make it super clear that this performed way, way under expectations, and was nowhere near what New Line thought they'd end up with. 

The ugly details:

• It made $13.8 million this weekend, good enough for the 47th best opener of the year.  Well, at least it beat Take the Lead and She's the Man.
• Some are saying that the R rating hurt it, and while it may have made more money as a PG-13 movie, it didn't even reach the potential for that MPAA classification.  Snakes on a Plane was crushed by all of these other R rated films from 2006: Inside Man ($28.95 million), Underworld: Evolution ($26.86), Miami Vice ($25.72), V for Vendetta ($25.64), Silent Hill ($20.15), Hostel ($19.55), Final Destination 3 ($19.17), The Omen ($16.03), The Hills Have Eyes ($15.71).  Mind you, none of these made $100 million, and in fact, the average end total is only $58.4 million.  Not good company to keep, and it fell behind all of them.
• Some are also saying that the fact that it was marketed as a horror film hurt it, instead of an action-adventure film.  Also, potentially true, but I see quite a few horror films in the list above.  Seriously now... Snakes on a Plane couldn't beat Final Destination 3?  With the awareness that Snakes had?  That's just kind of sad.
• Snakes had a $3,883 per screen average.  To put that it context... no screw that.  That is flat out awful, especially for a film that topped the box office for the weekend.  No film all year at #1 had an average that small, and you have to go back to last year to find a film that dipped below $4,000 (The Fog), but that movie (another R-rated horror film) still had a better average than Snakes, because they were smart enough to release it on fewer than 3000 screens.  No, you would actually have to go all the way back to September 5th, 2003 for the opening of Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, before you found an average as bad as Snakes had.  And again, the studio (Paramount) was cognizant enough of their film's shortcomings, so that they only released it on 2000 screens.
• Snakes opened on a whopping 3555 screens.  Not only is that huge (and hugely expensive), but the average opening on that number of screens is $39.3 million, and it's exactly the same number of screens as the film everyone is holding up as the poster boy for the "flop of 2006" People on an Upside Down Sinking Boat (aka Poseidon).  In fact, since in the last 7 years, 18 films have opened similarly, and Snakes is number 17.  That is poor return on investment.  They're looking at $40 million tops, domestic box office.  Oh, and Poseidon beat Snakes by about $10 million, or 38%.

Movies opening between 3505 and 3605 screens since 1999

Title	Opening Weekend Total	Screens	Per Screen Average	Opening Date	Year
1. The Matrix: Reloaded	$91,774,413	3603	$25,471.67	5/16/2003	2003
2. Fantastic Four	$56,061,504	3602	$15,563.99	7/8/2005	2005
3. Men in Black II	$52,148,751	3557	$14,660.88	7/5/2002	2002
4. Van Helsing	$51,748,040	3575	$14,474.98	5/7/2004	2004
5. King Kong	$50,130,145	3568	$14,049.93	12/16/2005	2005
6. Scary Movie 3	$48,113,770	3505	$13,727.18	10/24/2003	2003
7. Meet the Fockers	$46,120,980	3518	$13,110.00	12/24/2004	2004
8. Hitch	$43,142,214	3575	$12,067.75	2/11/2005	2005
9. Shrek	$42,347,760	3587	$11,805.90	5/18/2001	2001
10. Anger Management	$42,220,847	3551	$11,889.85	4/11/2003	2003
11. Scary Movie 4	$40,222,875	3602	$11,166.82	4/14/2006	2006
12. 50 First Dates	$39,852,237	3591	$11,097.81	2/13/2004	2004
13. Monster House	$22,217,226	3553	$6,253.09	7/21/2006	2006
14. Poseidon	$22,155,410	3555	$6,232.18	5/12/2006	2006
15. Just Like Heaven	$16,408,718	3508	$4,677.51	9/16/2005	2005
16. The Legend of Zorro	$16,328,506	3520	$4,638.78	10/28/2005	2005
17. Snakes on a Plane	$13,806,311	3555	$3,883.63	8/18/2006	2006
18. Herbie: Fully Loaded	$12,709,221	3521	$3,609.55	6/24/2005	2005

Interesting Priorities - Alan Horn and Warner Bros.

It's no secret that Warner Bros. is having a bad year (Poseidon, The Ant Bully, Lady in the Water, and overall disappointment about Superman Returns), but they've done a decent job hedging their bets by getting partners to invest heavily in some of their leading losers (I'm talking about you Legendary Pictures and Virtual Studios - why are you doing this again?  Remind me.)

But what I love the most about this piece is the quote from Warner Bros. President Alan Horn:

"The price of failure is high," Horn said. "It's not just the financial cost. It's reading about it in the newspaper."

I love it.  It's not just that he's losing hundreds of millions of dollars (of other people's money), but also top of mind for him is that he has to read about it in the press.  Oh well, at least he knows the impact of having a good PR team.

Summer Box Office Analysis

David Poland over at MCN does an incredible job of looking at expectations for the next few weeks of summer movies.

I will say, however, that while I absolutely love his work and this piece, I think he's a bit misguided about the way the press covered Mission: Impossible 3 and its so-called failure at its box office opening.

He's positioning it as the beginning of the press wanting to talk about the "slump" again, when he proves that so far, there's no slump at all (7 straight up weekends compared to last year).  And if Poseidon dies this weekend, then David is absolutely right - the slump stories will explode again.

However, the real reason for the stories this week about M:I-3 is simple:

• Fact: Once-perfect Tom Cruise went bonkers in public. 
• Question: Would that affect his clout at the box office? 

That is the only question that anyone in the press wanted answered this past weekend.  If M:I-3 did well, they all would have written about how his private life didn't affect his movie life.  Instead, it fell about $10-$20 million short of expectations, so they all wrote the opposite.

Anyway, read David's piece.  It's fantastic.

Poseidon Sinks: Early Reviews

It's not like we didn't see this coming, but now it's official.  Poseidon will be a disaster in more ways than one.

Roger Ebert says so:

An odd and unexpected word kept nudging its way into my mind as I sat watching Poseidon. That word was perfunctory. I hoped that other words would replace it. I knew I was not enjoying the movie, but I hoped it would improve or, lacking that, discover an interesting way to fail. But no.

Anne Thompson says so:

After my pal Pam and I came out of Poseidon the other night, we were doubled up with laughter. We made fun of the gurgling demise of one of the main characters. We made comments like, "the dialogue in this movie makes Jim Cameron look like a genius." Fans of Titanic have NOTHING to worry about.

Warner Bros. the studio that made Poseidon, says so:

Warner Bros. is nervous about Poseidon, which opens this Friday. In Slate, a senior Warners executive concedes to Kim Masters, "We're all pretty much aware that 'disaster film' will take on a whole new meaning on Friday."

Jeffrey Wells Looks Forward to the Summer

In this week's piece, he's surprisingly optimistic about the big films coming out this summer, rather than the normal huge studio dreck that normally accompanies June, July, and August.

Here, he riffs on (and offers alternatives to) Mission: Impossible III, Poseidon, The DaVinci Code, X-Men: The Last Stand, The Break-Up, Cars, Nacho Libre, Superman Returns, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, The Lady in the Water, Miami Vice, Flags of our Fathers, Apocalypto, World Trade Center, and Snakes on a Plane.

Poseidon Trailer

Didn't we just see an absolutely awful version of Poseidon on NBC like last week?  Oh, wait, this one has Kurt Russell in it.  That makes it SO much classier.  :)

And by the way, how many movies is Wolfgang Petersen going to make about a giant wave?