Posted on 12/17/2005 11:10:22 AM PST by dangus
A gross of $11,000 per screen is quite good. If you're an autumn Wide Release, opening on 3500 screens across the country. When a movie opens on only 69 of the nation's largest theaters in a few dozen of the largest cities, with almost all of your target audience within range of those theaters, it's pretty bad.
Brokeback Mountain played in fourteen times more theaters this Friday than last Friday, and made less than four times as much money, only $760,000. It looks like the movie will make considerably less than its $15 million budget before the Academy Awards come out. How many tens of millions of dollars in free promotion, reduced pay and credibility were spent on this film?
King Kong also appears to be a flop. I've seen this movie: Peter Jackson has mastered many movie-making techniques with the Lord of the Rings, and the movie is an amazing spectacle with much positive and true to say about human nature. But Jackson did not learn how to discipline his budgeting or story-telling. His movie is also bloated, over-long, too violent, very horrific and a bit tooo preposterous.
The early part of the movie centers around a movie director too obsessed with his story, prone to overkill, and swindling a movie company out of far more than they would have been willing to spend. Given that actor Jack Black even slightly resembles Peter Jackson, I can't help but to wonder if how consciously auto-biographical the film is. It will make many, many, many times more than Brokeback Mountain, and still become known as a flop. I sincerely hope Peter Jackson learns the right things from the experience; he is very talented, very passionate, and, from the messages of his movies, very decent. King Kong made $14 million last night... It will probably easily pass $100 million, but land short of its $200 million budget. On the other hand, it is precisely the sort of movie that translates well overseas, and does well on DVD. But it will not be the Box Office savior hoped for.
Chronicles of Narnia will apparently need a rebound in the Christmas vacations to be profitable. Except for a literally rushed ending, it's almost perfect, a purely magical delight. But it seems to have very weak legs; it's not surprising since everyone who wanted to see this movie knew they did so a long time ago, and most rushed out to see it immediately. Today's movie markets don't allow for the sort of excellent word of mouth that Narnia is getting.
That word of mouth means probably good DVD sales, and strong anticipation of a sequel, so Narnia's Box Office is by no means a failure... just it'll take some time to become profitable. Narnia sold about $9 million worth of tickets, down over 60% from last Friday.
But there doesn't seem to be any great challenger to Narnia for the Holiday season. The Family Stone opened weak ($4 million), Harry Potter is mostly played out ($1.5 million), as are Walk the Line ($1 million) and Yours Mine and Ours (under $1 million) Syriana also fell hard, too... ($1.6 million).
Don't look for any saviors at the box office next week either... Cheaper by the Dozen 2, Fun with Dick and Jane, The Ringer, and Rumor Has It all open, but none look too strong
They herd sheep and they are gay! Poor sheep, I bet they all run for their lives when they see a shepard approaching!
It's an impossible story to tell accurately in the movies. They're hyping it to be like Shakespeare in Love.
Yeah, and most film reviewers didn't like Star Wars much either when it first came out.
Whatever ...
It's funny to read reviews on when SW first came out and then read a review by the same reviewer 20 years later on how incredible the flim was.
Speaking of film reviewers:
http://www.compfused.com/directlink/1077
(warning: bad language in video, but still damn funny.)
I have to agree with you on this one to a point, I loved the Incredibles. I also enjoyed the Harry Potter movies, I am not a Christian and so the witchcraft thing doesn't bother me, plus I see Harry Potter as fantasy with no relation to reality at all, just fun to watch. I do however have some complaints on how they stray from the books but this is true of most movies made from book stories.
Hello, Hollywood...anyone there with a calculator...?
Oh, no, is some poor blonde headed guy going to be kidnapped by Kong? Imagine the terror when Kong wants to have sex with him!
That is the line that deserves an OSCAR.
Open Range 2 would blow them all out of the water.
Robert Duvall is the best living American actor.
Yeah, probably enough to earn back the initial investment and make a nice pile of cash. $15 million is not a lot of money to squeeze out of worldwide distribution. It's less than Julia Roberts' salary for a movie. Less than the price of many Manhattan luxury apartments. Less than the advertising budgets of most big movies.
Kong was a sympathetic character in the original 1933 version, too. And the Dino DeLaurentis remake.
Brokeback Box Office
Stop trying to shove agendas down our throat and maybe we will pay for movies again someday.
But here's another point for my position: if we don't call them cowboys, that means no more "gay cowboys eating pudding" jokes, and that will take all the fun out of the Brokeback Mountain threads.
"BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Domestic Total as of Dec. 16, 2005: $1,726,000 (Estimate)
Distributor: Focus Features Release Date: December 9, 2005
Running Time: 2 hrs. 14 min. Production Budget: $14 million
MPAA Rating: R Marketing:$7 million"
With that budget compared with their earnings, the producers must really be taking it in the shorts.
*rimshot*
Doesn't the Jewish scumbags now running a totally out of control Hollywood...
Haven't heard that in awhile. Traditions die hard, I guess.
It says Narnia has made $90.3M, BBM has made $1.7M. That's including yesterday, when it opened on a lot more screens and doubled its gross.
BBM isn't going to bomb. Its budget was $20M vs. $150M for Narnia, it's never going to come close to Narnia in its gross (how many large families are going to see BBM?) but no one is expecting it too. All the liberal married women in my office want to see it. Unfortunately it's probably going to win a lot of awards because gays are in with Hollywood and it's a way for Barbra S. and company to say "f@ck you" to Red America.
Its success on the few screens where it is playing means it's going to be released in a lot more places over the next few weeks, until they reach the edge of their market. It's not going to play in rural or exurban America, but it will be within driving distance of most everyone who'd want to see it, which is not where it is now (it's only in a few cities, almost all in the northeast.) Looking at these numbers is like reading the 2 PM exit polls.
I believe that Spielberg just trashed Israel in his latest movie called Munich.
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