By the Numbers... Returns!

There's something about Box Office figures that attracts me. Perhaps it's the mathematical side, the predicting side, or just the amazing ways in which the numbers seem to change from film to film. This past weekend saw the biggest Thanksgiving weekend gross for films in the history of the US, with of course New Moon and The Blind Side leading the way with $40million + take. Their being successful doesn't surprise me nor does it really bother me all that much. What it does do though is inspire me to be annoyed by how films so predictably for their audience work time and time again.

I get that there is a flair, and certain enjoyment, to be attained from knowing what you're going to get. As well I wouldn't waste my time arguing the merits of either film. Yet I have to say, people need to get out and see something different for a change! You never really know what you enjoy until you try it all out, and as such people need to stop avoiding "oscar" films just because they don't star your favorite actor/actress. Even then though they're not solo box office appeals, it's something about the stories that are run so heavily through the hollywood machine people just prefer them that way.

Yet after this weekend New Moon will have taken in roughly $473,674,000 worldwide at the box office in it's two week run. While Twihards (or whatever you want to call them) will scream for joy, I want to put this into perspective for film fans.

In order to make event $473,674,000 you would have to combine the worldwide grosses of the following films:
(500) Days of Summer - $46,602,613
Moon - $7,191,615
Precious - $32,461,000
An Education - $5,901,871
The Hurt Locker - $16,107,592
Bright Star - $4,470,363
A Serious Man - $8,183,000
Where the Wild Things Are - $74,842,777
The Informant! - $35,424,896
Sunshine Cleaning - $16,174,377
District 9 - $199,448,079

*all figures as of 11/29/2009

Though guess what? Even with all those films you'd still be roughly $27million short of making the amount Twilight: New Moon has grossed in two weeks... Now I'm not saying all these movies are better than New Moon, or anything of the sort (we all know movie taste is relative). I'm just saying there are SO many movies people don't go watch because they're not the MTV super hype machines. They're a bit edgier, darker, at times more intellectually challenging, than the "safe" confines of something as generic and bland as New Moon. I don't get depressed easily these days, but these numbers sure do take the cake.

Zombieland Takes the Weekend Box Office

I'll admit the only thing more entertaining than reading about the box office winners for a weekend is the awful puns writers come up with for their victory. You could probably put together a blog of just these, they're just so hilariously sad. Well this weekend was a predictable one to say the least, but it is nice to see some lower budget films get some love.

Suprisingly enough this year has been filled with sub $100million budget blockbusters, and a couple huge blockbusters that have failed to make back expenses (G.I. Joe reported $325million production+marketing). I like it when it's this way. Not making money helps keep studios honest, while showing them the value of quality mid-low budget films ($30million range). Studio executives could retire on the success of films like District 9 and The Hangover, and rightly so (regardless of your opinion of their quality as films).

New Openers:
Zombieland - $25,000,000. Solid start for a film with a report $20-25m production budget. You had 25-30 for advertising and you can guarantee this will probably be in the money by week 4 (especially with solid word of mouth).

Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D - $12,500,000. Not technically a new opening but it's no surprise families would flock to see the films that jump started the Pixar craze.

The Invention of Lying - $7,350,000. Despite a heavy marketing campaign Ricky Gervais just doesn't have the box office flair. He benefits from having rather cheap films, good friends to do small roles, and a solid comedic mind... I just can't imagine him ever being that $100m box office smash guy.

Whip It - $4,850,000. With a $15m production budget, and flailing advertisement expenditure, it's a surprise Fox Searchlight did so little with this film, despite its well received nature. I'm not sure this will make all of its money back, but it will try (and shall need some good word of mouth).

Capitalism: A Love Story - $4,850,000. Michael Moore is a polarizing figure, and with the films advertisement and title name I'm not surprised it hasn't excited movie goers to run out and check it out. The advantage of these Documentaries though, they cost comparatively little to market/produce.

A Serious Man - $252,000. Only released to 6 theaters, A Serious Man wins the weekend Average Gross at $42,000 (About $25,000 per more than the nearest competitor).

Other Grosses:
Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs - $16,700,00. Still needs another $10-13m weekend from hitting its production budget.

Surrogates - $7,344,000. Will need a miracle it won't get to recoup its $80m production budget back (not to mention advertising).

Fame - $4,754,000. It's over its production budget and will likely make back back all costs though will not be the smash hit they were hoping to sneak in.

The Informant! - $3,800,000. It's over its production budget, but it probably needed a 50m+ solid hit to generate enough buzz prior to entering the oscar film sweep this December.

Love Happens - $2,777,000. I'm quite convinced Jennifer Aniston could do a $15m film on dog parks and it would still make back money from her loyal following.

By the Numbers: 4 Day Weekend

Yeah you guessed it correctly... another week passes... another week of The Final Destination at #1. I don't have much to say about this. With all the insanely negative feedback from both viewers and critics alike, I don't know why people kept flocking to see this at the theater instead of waiting for it on DVD, or better yet TV. Then again if people did what I thought the world would be a far more odd place.

In more exciting news, Inglourious Basterds edged out the Bullock vehicle All About Steve, to take 2nd place over the four day weekend, bringing it's total to $95m, and a guaranteed $100+ payday... and an odds on favorite to take the #1 spot for highest grossing Tarantino film. District 9 held well in the 5th spot with $9.1m (only a 15% drop from last week) and has surpassed the $100m domestic gross mark!

The 3 films opening this week all did marginal, but for the most part will be considered heavy disappointments. All About Steve took the 3rd spot over the 4 day holiday with $14m, but nothing but bad feedback seeks out to possibly be a dud. Following in its footsteps is the Gerard Butler film Gamer, as hollywood continues to try and re-invent 300, Gamer tanks rather hard with a heavy marketing plan, and a high budget they'll probably keep well under wraps, making only $11m over the weekend.

Halloween 2 has already made its money, sadly enough, but seems to be fading off rather quickly falling to $6.8m. The other film opening this weekend, Extract, dropped like a bomb, hitting down with $5.5m, likely to string along the bottom barrel before flaking off into DVD land.

In happier news: Ponyo, (500) Days of Summer, and to a lesser extend The Hurt Locker manage to keep making money, but more importantly they continue to make the same amount, not losing any real percentage from week to week. Giving them good chances of being very profitable, and hopefully even building some DVD hype!

Overall though this weekend was just one Hollywood producers will hope to soon be forgetting... I expect much alcohol to be involved in their coping process. My recommendation: make films people want to see, and they will go see them :).

Where's the Money?

When Monday comes you can expect to hear a loud ugh screaming out from the very depths of Los Angeles. As studio execs moan and groan about how the public never goes to theaters on labor day weekend, they'll need to ask themselves something... did we give them something worth seeing?

The answer. No.

This weekend's box office pathetic showing might just set a new record of low, as the top 4 films will all crawl their way into the 10-12million range. Currently leading the pack are The Final Destination with $3.575m and All About Steve with $3.570m. Following closely are Gamer ($3.3m) and Inglourious Basterds ($3m). Halloween has flopped on back to the 6th spot, with D9 ahead in 5th, and Extract tanking faster than a Jeremy Piven movie in 7th (with only $1.73m).

In the end don't be shocked to see a movie end this weekend with only a $14m gross, or even less for that matter, as Extract, Gamer, and All About Steve will struggle to recoup any expenditures. Now let's be honest, Labor Day weekend is the last true day of summer, and people tend to not go to the theater on those days... but even this is a really sad showing.

Yet there's on truth in it all if you make a movie people really want to go see, it doesn't matter when you release it they will. All About Steve, the continued series of bandwagon films pushing Bradly Cooper and Sandra Bullock, currently holds only a 6% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. While Gamer, the next in a long line of awful Gerard Butler action films following 300, plopped in at only 21% at RT.

In fact if you add up The Final Destination, All About Steve, Halloween 2, and Gamer's RT rating you get only 76%, that's a C. While Inglourious Basterds at 88%, and District 9 at 89% both sit nicely well above the combined efforts of all 4 of those films. Not to mention they all have similar total budgets so it's not that reason. The reason is just simple: you make crappy films enough people will catch on... sometimes.

In the end I'm not upset about this weekend. Everyone knew this weekend was just an awful weekend, nothing new coming out worth running to see, probably a bunch of films that would have been equally successful with direct to dvd releases... maybe.

Weekend Actuals In

Well the box office weekend actual numbers are in, and as suspected everyone estimated a little bit high. On average the top 3 films estimated about +$1million more than they actually grossed over the weekend. The main three films did surprisingly well for a non-holiday Sunday considering more often than not on these days films tend to dip heavily. While this was the case for Halloween2 and Final Destination, Inglourious Basterds seems to be getting good word of mouth doing almost as well on Sunday as it did on Friday! A very rare occurrence.

The weekend results also put District 9 and Basterds in the shoe-in category for the $100million mark. This would be a major success for the low budget D9, while Basterds will continue to need high international gross to see a heavy return on the Production+Marketing for the film.

G.I. Joe is slowly crawling to the finish line. With a current worldwide total of $256.2 million the movie is deadly close to seeing a return on the $175million production budget, and close to $150million marketing, reported. (LATimes). When DVD sales, and other forms of media come in to play I think they'll make a profit. Though a sequel is all but expected, maybe this time they can learn what the word budget really means (did they really think this movie was a $800million maker?).

Either way, top 5 films of the weekend actuals (As reported by BoxOfficeMojo.com):

1. The Final Destination - $27,408,309
2. Inglourious Basterds - $19,303,653
3. Halloween 2 - $16,349,565
4. District 9 - $10,270,435
5. G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra - $7,715,572


Till then.

Weekend Box Office Outlook

The Final Destination may just be this weekends only destination it seems as movie goers are flocking to the film. The movie has totaled an estimated $10.9 million friday, and is on track for a $28-30million weekend. The movie has received lots of negative buzz from its goers though so odds are this weekend will be the only FD weekend of note. The other big horror film opening nationwide lies in Halloween 2, which seems on track for a $20mill weekend, but just like FD has found negative opinions flocking to the web. Ironically the defense used in favor of both FD and H2 is its gore factor... that's sort of like justifying a $10 meal by saying it had flavor, duh.

The other big film this weekend, Inglorious Basterds, seems to not have grabbed a big followup audience, and seems on track for a $17mill weekend, a +50% drop from last week. This won't appease the Weinstein gods who are in dire need of a $150m+ hit in order to account for recent box office flops. So you can imagine them sitting around praying for a big international hit to account for their needs. District 9 will also likely see another $10million squeaker, bringing this low budget gem to a solid $100+m international gross ($93ish in the US).

Stay tuned for a box office breakdown this monday after all the info is in :).

*Update: Inglorious Soars with big Saturday to take the #2 spot (estimated) and a $20m weekend(don't be surprised to see that come down to $18m tomorrow), while H2 fizzes quickly on saturday/sunday, and Final Destination takes the top spot with $28.3m weekend.

By The Numbers: Hayao Miyazaki

In this weeks installment of by the numbers we'll have a look at Miyazaki's latest film, Ponyo. The international success recently received its US release, and has been quietly doing comparitively well here in the US. Among the most surprising aspects might be that Ponyo is that it has almost doubled the revenue of Miyazaki's 2005 Howl's Moving Castle (which made $4.7m in the US) it only 2 weeks of release.

Even Miyazaki's Oscar winning masterpiece Spirited Away only made $10.05m in the US. Ponyo after only two weeks currently sits at $8.13m made! Now the movie has already made $183m abroad so it's no big deal what it makes here in the US, but it may just have enough umph to create some buzz if he does decide to do another film. When it comes to Anime films Miyazaki is probably the only real modern auteur, and has been about as influential as they come when it comes to the modern fantasy.

Vivid imagination and designs are what have been at the core of every Miyazaki film, not to mention a nack for story telling, especially when it comes to coming of age stories. And yet here in the US we've held a firm back towards Miyazaki, and his long term partnership with Disney.

Ponyo received one of the few theaters. Even at its peak, during the oscar season, Miyazaki's Spirited Away was only ever at 714 theaters. This is in sharp contrast to fantasy films such as Shorts which was released this past week to 3,105 theaters. Shorts also managed ,with such a huge release push, to do less per theater than Ponyo did in its 2nd week, whose advertisements were mostly put on Disney, and Disney affiliates. Ponyo averaged $2617 over 927 theaters, the most in Miyazaki's history, while shorts only did $2065 over 3105, and it was a primary release!

Perhaps it is fear that beyond Miyazaki's core fanbase, there exists little interest in his work, but when his films, even one of his lesser ones like Ponyo, can produce so much I think it wouldn't kill Disney to put a little bit more effort into it. The sad thing is though Ponyo may be Miyazaki's last film. If that is the case then perhaps we will never truely know what potential his movies had in the american markets, but there's no argument... internationally he's the anime king.

Recent Miyazaki International Figures:

Ponyo: $183.95m

Howl's Moving Castle: $230.47m

Spirited Away: $264.87m

Princess Mononoke: $157m

The numbers don't lie, the guy is huge in Japan (almost 75% of the international gross is from there on average), and the rest of the world needs to recognize it. Then again, who knows, it may be that he's a one market kind of film maker.

By the Numbers

There's a lot in this world when it comes to film that's open for debate, that's why I love it so. Of course not everyone understands that, but hey, it's their loss for not finding it so enjoyable. The only thing not open for debate? The numbers. When push comes to shove they always tell you exactly how well a movie did... but within those numbers lies something greater... the really bad decisions Hollywood, and movie goers alike, have made. For instance did you know that Paul Blart: Mall Cop made more money during its theatrical run than Milk, The Wrestler, The Visitor, and Doubt COMBINED. The reason that's noteworthy is because they were all made for relatively the same price range ($5-$30million).

Of course that's not a judgment on either way, as you could look at it on one hand as being an indictment of the studios for not being able to capitalize on such low budget/quality films, or the audience for their recent distaste towards Dramas. This series, By the Numbers, will be a collection of trivia facts/curious things about the $ side of Hollywood. Most of this info will come from Box Office Mojo, a box office tracking website that I find very helpful. As a note when I do these I will always go off of the Worldwide gross to date, I always find it ignorant and stupid when people value a film solely on its production in a single market. If that were the case then just about every French, Italian, and Japanese film of the 50s,60s, and 70s are unprofitable because they weren't released in America. Anyways, no more ranting.


This weeks installment: Transformers, Revenge of the Fallen.
Production Budget: $200million
Worldwide Gross to Date: $825,282,355
Profit (excluding promotion): 625,282,355.

Things of note.

For the production budget listed you could make the following films.
Slumdog Millionaire ($15m)
The Hangover ($35m)
300 ($65m)
Knocked Up ($30m)
Juno ($7.5m)
Superbad ($20m)
Taken ($25m)

You'd still have $2.5million left over and these would be your numbers.
Production Budgets Sum: $197.5million
Worldwide Gross to Date: $2,080,091,530
Profit to Date: $1,882,591,530

Now I know that's a very selective, and elitist, list, but hey with that list you get several fan favorites, several classics, and a multi-oscar winner. Lets face it, Transformers 2 will never be anything more than a fan favorite... even if it tries really hard it'll be forgotten by the same people who call it legendary. Why? Because that's the way it really works. We all like to think these huge big budget films are where the money is at, but it's not. The real money, the long term still cashing in 50 years later money, is in the films of quality.

When Hitchcock released Vertigo it was a box office flop, only made $7million. Though even now it's a must have for any Hitchcock fan, sold on any film website, and often argued as one of his great films. Why? Quality... not quantity. You can throw all the money in the world at a film, but if the quality isn't there... the return money won't be either.

This has been By the Numbers... over and out.