Box-Office Wrap-Up: Aug. 28 – Aug. 30, 2009
COMMENTS
The Final Destination takes the crown in all three dimensions.
And the winner is… Final Destination's big 3-D opening. Alert commenter Athar was a cume $2.4m off – so I think he's getting the prize (though you can feel free to check my math, it's early, and the coffee is still brewing). I was pleased to see Inglourious Basterds fell less than 50 percent. The people have spoken, and they like Tarantino's style. Let's break it down.
#1 movie predicted correctly: 5 Weeks In A Row
Wowsers. Clearly the 3-D helped, it's already in the top 20 of overall 3-D cume, though 17 of the top 20 have come in this decade. The fascinating thing to see here will be the bleed off. Can it possibly hold off the all but certain "60 percent" second weekend horror dip?
Result: 28.3 million (My rank: #1, $9m off)
Most of us had Basterds falling below $20m, but clearly it has a bit of staying power. It's already cracked $100m worldwide cume, you'd have to think Kill Bill Vol. 1's $181m is attainable. However, the production budget was $70m, so it could end up being merely a stay of execution for The Weinstein Company.
Result: 20.0 million (My rank: #3, $2.8m off)
3. Halloween II
It almost doesn't matter what it makes because the formula remains: $50m domestically and then a couple million DVDs. They keep the budget low (sheep's blood is cheap) and then rinse and repeat. The real question is why no one ever tries anything innovative within the genre. It's all sequels, remakes, and re-imaginings. What about an original story with a touch of crossover appeal? Just throwing ideas out here.
Result: 17.4 million (My rank: #2, $.1m off)
4. District 9
It will be interesting to see Peter Jackson pivot to Lovely Bones publicity in a few weeks. All of a sudden the Lord of the Rings and cool-aliens-guy is going to be talking about spirits and grief. I'm not saying it won't work – I'm just saying you have to appreciate his range.
Result: 10.7 million (My rank: #4, $0.6m off)
$250m worldwide. But Paramount is learning a hard lesson about shooting for the under 25 male audience. It doesn't always translate into anything more than them.
Result: 8.0 million (My rank: #6, $1.6m off)
It was in 7th Friday night but it made up a little ground on Time Traveler's Wife. Still, at only $65m on a budget of $40m they are going to need a big Academy Award push out of Streep to recoup on DVD.
Result: 7.4 million (My rank: #, $m off)
My seven call was Taking Woodstock. Similar math to Julie & Julia here: $50m in tickets sold on a near $40m budget. Ever wonder why there's not much in the way of counterprogramming? Look at #6 and #7 and then put yourself inside a studio exec's suit.
Result: 6.7 million (My rank: #8, $1.2m off)
8. Shorts
Has anyone seen a budget on this title? Because it has been a disaster financially.
Result: 4.8 million (My rank: #9, $1.7m off)
It's only at 50 percent on Rotten Tomatoes – it's hard to figure where the audience was going to come from here. Didn't have the theaters or the buzz, clearly Ang Lee's appearance on Colbert wasn't nearly enough.
Result: 3.7 million (My rank: #, $m off)
10. G-Force
Toldja! Sorry, went all Finke on you for a moment there.
Result: 2.8 million (My rank: #10, $0.2m off)
So what did we learn this weekend? That people are warming to Tarantino? That FD3 had a better reputation than the 2007 version of Halloween? That we can expect cheap horrors and occasional Streep-led Oscar programming? Discuss and enlighten, your comments are always welcome.
Links from Other Sites You May Like
Showing 18 Comments
~ PLEASE NOTE ~
If, in any way, your comment is an attack on the author of this post or a previous commenter, your comment will be deleted without question.
Add a New Comment |
DON'T WANT YOUR COMMENT DELETED?
Click to Read Our Commenting Rules & Guidelines
Click to Read Our Commenting Rules & Guidelines
Want an avatar for your comments? Click here to sign up with Gravatar.
Really glad to see Basterds falling just 47%. I was really afraid it would go down the road of Watchmen and Funny People – two recent cases when the final film was very different from what all the previews promised, and payed for it with 65% second weekend drop. Great to see people coming to the theater and not going "WTF?" but really digging what they're watching, even if it's not what they thought it was gonna be. Now it looks like the final gross of $125M is a safe bet, maybe even all the way to $140M… but we'll see.
Don't care about TFD, I'm sure it will drop off quickly, with 55-60% fall next weekend, and then Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs getting the most part of 3-D screens. And if we remember that Halloween only made $58 million by the end of its run with $26 million in the opening weekend, I'm sure H2 isn't gonna make it to $40M, let alone $50. Well, the budget is $15m anyway, so who cares.
Pleased to see most of other films have decent drops, as they all grossed more than I predicted, and most of them deserve it. The only dissapointment was Woodstock, don't care that much about the movie, but it looks like it deserves much better than $4 million opening on a $30 million budget.
Final destination blew. inglourious basterds was awesome
The Final Destination won big. next week will fall big to. Halloween 2 is dead, it was murdered by Final Destination. Inglorious Basterds will have more dollars coming out internationally so it could finish with a good result. 1 week ago I said that The Final Destination should win with $28M. Unfortunely, i chance my prediction to $20.2M on past Thrusday. That will not happen again.
Next week Gamer will win with $17M – 4 day prediction ($15M on 3 days).
By the way, I just thought about next week. Clearly Final Destination will fall at least 55%, which will result in about $12,5M weekend. Gamer may do good (like $15M 3-day), but it also has a good chance of making less then $12-13 million. And then we have Basterds, which have great WOM, and will face both its third weekend and the holiday weekend, which will allow it to drop like 30-35%. So… wouldn't it be really great to actually have QT to come out on top on again with $13-14 million? IMO, that'd be just awesome.
Damn, and I was pretty close, too. I got the order right, you've got to give me that. But my cume deviation for the top three was close to $5mil.
Next weekend: Labor Day weekend! Three wide releases that will all bomb (too bad about "Extract," I really like Mike Judge, but the advance reviews aren't kind). And when all the new releases provide no competition (like this week, where, although the two new releases did well, they were firmly in the horror genre and left every single other audience out in the cold), it means smaller drops all around! Also, it's Labor Day weekend, so Sunday drops will be even smaller, and Friday & Saturday slightly bigger: so, even smaller drops all around!
Except for TFD and HII. They will handle the Labor Day weekend about the same way "Twilight" handled its Thanksgiving 2nd weekend: with 60%+ drops, despite the advantage. Thought TFD might manage to hold 55%, actually, HII will drop at least 65%, I'm betting you. Did you see it's Saturday drop? 27%! When "Bruno," "Watchmen," and "Year One" posted such a drop on their first Saturday, they ended up with appalling drops. So actually, HII may drop closer to 70% than 65%.
Meanwhile, all other movies will repeat their great holds. "Julia & Julia" may have a single digits drop, "Time Traveler's Wife" 10-25%, D9 15-25%, IB 15-30%, GI Joe 10-30%.
Oh, and "The Hangover" will get one more weekend in wide release and perhaps even see a percentage increase. If you'll go over to BOM, you'll see that it finally passed "There's Something About Mary" adjusted for inflation. You'll appreciation that, Laremy, since you like comparing adjusted numbers (personally, I don't).
Oh, and about Weinstein's execution being stayed: Please stay it until November, so that they can probably advertise "Nine"! I can't effing wait for that movie! In fact, I'd take another 5 more years of drawn-out Weinstein bungles just for that film to be a hit (because if it is, then Weinstein will be around for a little while longer).
@Nick: Completely agreed about Watchmen/Funny People/Basterds, surprised and glad about that impressive drop. 70% drop, my ass, nice one Finke.
I'm actually not a fan of slasher/horror much, but my bud and his girlfriend dragged some of us to FD4 and I only came for the appeal of the 3D (and a free ticket). It was a typical predictable, formulaic, mind-numbing horror film but was worth seeing in 3D for the hilarious gory 3D CGI sequences (and Shantel VanSanten too). I'm thinking it will have a less than standard horror drop because of the 3D.
I hope Gamer has what it takes to take the crown next week / IB has another great drop.
PS – Did someone hack Box Office Mojo's site, or is it just me? At the moment, the layout is mixed with jumbled nonsensical coding and it's impossible to navigate.
@Kris D: if me on Mozzila Firefox i can enter on Box Office mojo, with Internet explorer is a normal site, with no codes in the layout. Strange.
Labor day weekend: Gamer will be first, Inglorious Basterds second and The Final Destination will finish in 3.
In "if me on Mozzila Firefox i can enter on Box Office mojo" – "can" is a wrong word, the real world is "can´t". Sorry double coment.
Damn, that's the third weekend in a row that the #1 movie has blown away expectations. Will the pattern continue into September?
Anyways, Labor Day next weekend. I expect it will be close- All About Steve, Gamer or Inglourious Basterds could all take the crown. I'm expecting it to be All About Steve- the ladies haven't had anything to see for a long while, because pretty much all of the recent releases have been gory, masculine, hard-core rated-R movies. So All About Steve will definitely benefit from its PG-13 rating and women appeal. And besides, Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper are both coming off huge hits, so that has to work in its favor. Gamer should do pretty well too, taking into account its kid-friendly PG-13 rating. Extract (sadly) probably won't do much business at the B.O., but it'll definitely gain a cult following on DVD. Early predictions (3-Day)-
1. All About Steve- $15 million
2. Inglourious Basterds- $14 million
3. The Final Destination- $12 million
4. Gamer- $12 million
5. District 9- $9 million
@Bustray: On the absolute contrary, Gamer is a hard-R, just read the MPAA rating.
"Rated R for frenetic sequences of strong brutal violence throughout, sexual content, nudity and language."
Expect more "Crank" violence. Still should have a decent shot at #1.
@Eli: Damn, you're right. My bad. Geez, then next week we have Sorority Row, then Jennifer's Body, then Jennifer's Body, than Pandorum… it all gets a bit monotonous.
I had a feeling that 'Halloween II' would not be in first place, simply becuase of the bad reputation. But when i saw it, i was very disappointed and i'm glad that 'Halloween 3d' is getting a new director. Maybe this could help it?
next weekend looks slow.
Laremy: G.I. Joe, "$250m worldwide. But Paramount is learning a hard lesson about shooting for the under 25 male audience. It doesn't always translate into anything more than them."
I don't understand what you're trying to say. I think the only thing Paramount might have learned is to try and not to spend $170 in production. Naw, they haven't learned anything.
@Patricia: They definitely haven't learned that. But my point is to shoot for a broader audience. T-Formers 2 was bad – but it had a little badness for everyone.
Just a one thing I wanted to point out- "Julie & Julia" will do fine. It'll probably end with a total of $85-90 million or over twice its budget. It seems like a film that'll play well overseas too. Even with marketing and such, this'll make a profit before it hits DVD.
Also, doesn't next week look like a snoozefest? "Gamer" looks terrible, which is a shame since the "Crank" movies had a great in-your-face style that stood out from all the generic actioners in theaters. "All About Steve" just looks empty- more of a thing rather than a movie. "Extract" does look funny and regardless, even if it's bad, a bad Mike Judge film will surely make me laugh harder than most other films in theaters right now.
Oh and can't wait until 9-9-09.
The Weekend Actuals are in… My predictions for the Final Destination is actually within 1 mil now. Even Basterds i am off by just 200k while i also nailed District 9… Sadly Halloween2 was off by a bigger margin. So Laremy, am i still eligible??
Wow! Looking at the totals on Boxofficemojo.com, do you see how many films, despite the big box office, have yet to make back their money? Even the newest Harry Potter hasn't gone the distance yet. It's no wonder financing in Hollywood is shakey. But when you look at the budgets to begin with, it's astounding anyone does.
Just a quick addendum, a further perusal of the box office totals shows why so many rom/coms are being made.