The OtherArena

[Bob Morris]

The summer box office race is soon to begin, but figured this would just be a good general thread for the 2012 box office year... especially since we already have our first $300 million franchise released this year.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=weekly&id=hungergames.htm

Hunger Games made it to $315 million in three weeks' time. After its fourth weekend, it's up to $336 million and will likely pass $350 million by this weekend.

Pretty amazing to find a spring release that caught on so well, and one that is already setting a benchmark by which summer releases are likely to be measured.

I don't know if Hunger Games has the legs to reach $400 million, but $375 million could be within its grasp.

[jdw]

Was thinking about doing one of these as well with Hunger Games doing so well and Avengers coming up.

This is telling:

Through 4th Weekend
$343,086,045 Potter 7.2
$336,666,363 Hunger

4th Weekend
$12,445,031 Potter 7.2 (-43.4%)
$21,096,824 Hunger (-36.3%)

Potter 7.2 had just under $40M left in the tank. I think it's safe to say that Hunger has more than $40M left in the tank. There isn't anything directly competative the next two weekends before Avengers hits in the first weekend of May. I think it's going to top that $381M of Potter 7.2, and if it's declines are modest the next two weekends, it has an outside chance at $400M. Summer causes theater counts to shrink sometimes fast, but its beat up all the potential threats so far that might have alternatively kept screens while it lost them. It also might get a little extra push and/or left out longer by the studio if they sniff $400M. A couple of really interesting weeks to watch where it's numbers end up before Avengers hits.

What's also amazing is the it might set a mark that no one tops for the rest of the year.

John

[Bob Morris]

Avengers is likely going to have a good opening weekend number, but will need good word of mouth to have legs -- if its legs can be similar to what the first Iron Man had, it could make a push to challenge Hunger Games. I did mention a while ago that Joss Wheedon as director could be a boost, but we'll see how well it's received.

The Dark Knight Rises is likely to be the summer film that most eyes will be on. The question is whether that can be the phenom that TDK was -- likely a film that should do well opening weekend, but just remains to be seen how good its legs are. What will help is TDKR comes out after most of the "big franchise" films are already released.

Here are some summer releases to keep an eye on:

May 4: Avengers is the only film that jumps out. Hunger Games gets two more weekend to pull in the numbers so, as you mentioned, Hunger Games has plenty of time to make the push to $400 million.

May 11: Dark Shadows is the big one. Hard to judge this one... can a "horror" film do big business? Do people remember enough about the old series to give it a shot? Probably going to need strong reviews and word of mouth to do big business.

May 25: Memorial Day weekend will be headlined by Men In Black 3 (a 3-D movie) and The Chernobyl Diaries. I don't see either of these challenging the Memorial Day box office record.

June 8: Madagascar 3 comes out. It has no chance -- Dreamworks has not gotten a large amount of mileage out of any franchise other than Shrek.

June 15: They're taking that Rock of Ages stage production and moving it to the big screen. Musicals generally don't challenge for summer box office crowns these days, but as I recall, Hairspray (another stage production turned film) did better than expected. Perhaps Rock of Ages becomes the surprise hit of the summer?

June 22: Pixar puts out Brave and Pixar generally does good business with its films. There's not a lot of competition for it on opening weekend, unless one believes Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is going to make waves (but I suspect the latter is going to be a cult film more than anything).

June 29: The second G.I. Joe film comes out. The Transformers franchise did big business, but G.I. Joe didn't do as much for its first release. I can't see Joe approaching Transformers level any time soon.

July 3: The new Spider-Man flick gets the Fourth of July opening. Will be interesting to see how the franchise gets rebooted. In the first launch, the three films all did good business, but IIRC, it was the first one that had the best legs of the three. Given that this is a relaunch, it's hard to judge just how much interest there will be. If it ends up doing the business that the first film of the original franchise does, I'm sure Columbia will be very happy.

July 13: Another Ice Age film. It won't have a chance.

July 20: The Dark Knight Rises -- already covered this. Probably the one film in which the bets will be placed on winning the summer box office crown and the best bet to challenge Hunger Games for top-grossing film of the year.

Aug. 3: The Bourne Legacy and the remake of Total Recall are released. The Bourne series has done good business but, as of late, not to the point that it challenges for the summer crown. I don't think Total Recall will challenge either.

Not much after that which stands out, which bodes well for TDKR to keep doing good business if it's well received.

I'll pick TDKR to win the summer box office crown and challenge Hunger Games.

[Bob Morris]

Adding to what I wrote about the summer releases, focusing on Spidey:

Spidey 1: $403 million
Spidey 2: $373 million
Spidey 3: $336 million

But then there's the opening weekends:

Spidey 1: $114 million (May 3 release)
Spidey 2: $88 million (June 30 early release, July 2 mass release)
Spidey 3: $151 million (May 5 release)

The first Spiderman film only saw a 37-percent drop from its first weekend and its legs were very good. For perspective, when Memorial Day weekend arrived (its fourth weekend), it pulled in $35 million, so it definitely had the mileage that the first Iron Man had.

The second installment got an early release prior to the Fourth of July weekend, so when you add the early release dates, Spidey 2 had grossed $180 million. Sticking with the weekend releases alone (in other words, July 2-4 only) and comparing to the following weekend.

First weekend: $88 million
Second weekend: $45 million

While tougher to compare the two given circumstances, the legs of the second film weren't as strong as the first.

The third film, in terms of its legs, was the worst by far.

So the relaunch of Spidey really needs the legs of the first film to have a shot at the summer box office crown. The problem is, after two weekends have passed, Dark Knight Rises hit the screens, so I can't see the new Spidey threatening for the crown.

[Jeremy Billones]

Joss Whedon's name has 0 affect on box office. (He has his core fans --
the 'ComiCon $15M' as one blogger put it -- but that won't move the
needle.)

Avengers is going to stand or fall on its own.

[jdw]

I forgot that The Dark Knight Rises is out this year. That has potential to be huge... though I think everything came together well for the last one, including a Villian who really hit home with the fans. This one might have a tougher time in that regards. Still... it's a lock for $300M, and if it doesn't suck should get to $350M because the opening will be so strong.

I think the item with Whedon isn't so much his Name, but if he brings some of his re-watch-ablity characteristics that were in Buffy (for Buffy Fans) and Firefly (for Firefly fans). These things move from just plain Blockbusters to Phenoms due to a chunk of folks feeling the need / desire to watch them a second time. Joss has a track record of getting a chunk of fans to check out his stuff a second time.

Avengers and Comic Book World are perhaps a different beast, and to become a phenom (at this level of blockbuster that means $400M+), he's going to need to get a heck of a lot more folks to rewatch than what he got for his prior "successes".

I think where it stands or falls on it's own is whether it's "good" to the mass of fans. Iron Man 1, Spidey 1, TDK... those were "good" to "great" to the masses. One can argue whether they were truly good/great, but relative to Comic Book Movies that don't hit those levels, they were really well received by movie goers.

John

[Bob Morris]

John pretty much summed up what I feel about Joss' impact on Avengers would be -- whether his directorial ability improves the quality of the film so that it gets that strong buzz it will need to have legs.

Kind of like how J.J. Abrams did a heck of a job with directing the Star Trek relaunch. Granted, that wasn't the only thing that helped, nor was it the top thing, but without good directing, I don't think the Star Trek relaunch would have done as well as it did.

[corrado]

I seriously cant see "Dark Knight Rises" topping its predecessor at the box office. Its going to be hard to top the Heath ledger Joker performance and the curiousity factor of Ledger. Not to mention the unsung TwoFace as well. I dont see Bane in that group. Theres already flak due to his voice in the teaser/prologue. Still it should be at the top of the summer box office at least.

As for the rest of the movies this summer, "Avengers" will be #2. It looks to be getting strong positive buzz and I cant see something like that tank. Battleship will be the biggest tank of the summer, no pun intended.

I would guess the sleeper movie being "Prometheus" out June 8th. The supposed prequel to "Alien" is going to have a lot of people talking.

Also dont forget the Christmas movie season with perhaps "The Hobbit" leading the list. I think that'll be top 3 box office this year.

[Regan]

[jdw]

Hunger games got knocked off #1, but still raked $14M. Here's the comp with Potter 7.2 that I mentioned above, brought forward:

Through 4th Weekend
$357,337,355 Potter 7.2
$356,900,000 Hunger

4th Weekend
$7,251,414 Potter 7.2 (-41.7%)
$14,500,000 Hunger (-31.3%)

It's going to pass Potter 7.2 this weekend. It's been losing the weekdays: Potter 7.2 was a summer film and had those Summer Weekdays where kids could go see it. But Hunger is killing it on weekends.

Potter 7.2 still had about $24M left in the tank at this point. It's hard to think that Hunger doesn't have a good deal more than that left. It probably is going to be close to $10M again next weekend, probably in the $9M range.

It still has a shot at crawling past $400M. I think $390M is a total lock at this point, and quite comfortably. This is a true phenom. Clearly the studio didn't think it would be this big or it would have been out sometime in the summer or winter.

John

[jdw]

Mojo's summer forecast:

Summer 2012 Foreign Forecast

Not a perfect guide to the US forecast, but an interesting read.

John

[jdw]

Mojo's domestic forecast:

Summer 2012 Domestic Forecast

He has Batman #1, and has adjusted his thinking on The Avengers given the growing buzz (both in terms of quality and also overseas $$$). After that the only Blockbuster "locks" are Spidey-Reset and Brave (Pixar).

I wonder if Dark Shadows would have been better off moved to another month rather than May. Depp+Burton hit a home run with Alice in March, while Charlie was mid-July after most of the blockbusters were out. Late July / Early Aug would be tough because TDKR is late July and likely to eat up all the money at that point. Instead, perhaps it would have been better for either the Apr 6–8 or Apr 13–15 weekends in the wake of Hunger Games. The trailers / promos for Dark Shadows are quite good, and give off the vibe of Depp as doing Barnabas Collins almost as a vampire Jack Sparrow. While that might not be the way he is in the movie, the trailers/promos could suck Pirates fans into seeing Depp playing another one of those funny / wacky over-the-top characters.

John

[Rian]

Dark Shadows is going to tank, looks absolutely stupid. Never been a big Tim Burton fan either.

[jdw]

Burton fan or not, Alice and Charlie did silly business. Sweeney didn't do great business, but it was a far harder sell.

John

[jdw]

'Avengers' Scores Highest Superhero Midnight Opening Ever

Well short of the Potter and Twilight numbers, but above TDK.

John