Amph The Box Office Thread

Also, aren't we coming up on the 100th anniversary of the actual event?

Yes. Cameron has a reputation for putting the movie before the tech, whereas Lucas has the opposite rep.

 

Guess we'll have to agree to disagree on that one

 

Well, it looks like pent up demand for The Phantom Menace utterly exhausted itself in the first weekend. The movie collapsed on its second Friday to eighth place and looks headed into a dismal weekend that will only be mitigated slightly by the holiday Monday. The question now I think is whether perhaps Lucas should spare himself the trouble, expense, and perhaps also humiliation of a theatrical 3D re-release for Attack of the Clones, the least popular of all the Star Wars movies.

 

Likeability is subjective, sure, but I was thinking of "popularity" in terms of box office potential. If TPM has a $22 million opening weekend then drops 70% in its second weekend, AOTC is likely to open even weaker and drop at least as much. If the main point is selling 3D Blu-Rays, then I think Lucas may decide to avoid the theatrical rerelease entirely and the marketing costs that go with it.

 

The full numbers

Despite all the hype for "The Artist" not much of a draw at the box office.

 

I'm not that suprised, most people are too ignorant and un-cultured to appreciate a black-and-white silent film. It's the same reason the Swedish Girl With a Dragon Tattoo didn't do that well in the US or UK, few people wanted to see a subtitled movie.
I heard a lot of people in England (mainly in the north) kept coming out of The Artist or complaining about the lack of sound This is the mass cinema audience now, they don't watch high quality movies so much. That is why Michael Bay does so well with his noise explosion movies

Since when was it the least popular? Most people I know consider TPM to be the weakest movie of the series and rightly so. Clones will rake in the dough compared to TPM I would think, it has far more scenes that would benefit from 3D and kids will all tune in to see Yoda bounce around the walls. It may have crappy acting, but so does TPM.

TPM was never going to do that well, it has very little going for it except the Podrace (which wasn't done well in 3D), the space/ground battle and the Darth Maul fight. The rest is slow and generally not overly interesting and 3D does nothing to enhance it (except the depth of the city on Coruscant).

 

Which is why Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon bombed.

... Oh wait.

No, I'd chalk it up more to people not being into the Oscar bait niche. Also, I should point out that The Artist actually did better this weekend than last weekend.

 

Girl With the Dragon Tattoo didn't bomb either, it just didn't do very well compared to english language movies. It made over its budget back so arguably it was a success. But expecting most people to see a movie that isn't in english or one with almost no diaglogue these days is clearly too much. I guarantee you that The King's Speech would not have been half as popular as it was were in not in English, subtitles just put off a lot of people (probably because they can't read and watch at the same time for some reason)

There are very few foreign language movies that do very well in the english-speaking west (and by very well I mean holding their own against movies made in hollywood) however good they are, because not that many people are willing to give them a chance. If they did, more often than not they might actually like them.

 

It did really well playing at my theater. We are a 16 plex. With so many new movies coming out it left us after 2 solid weeks. Every movie that came out in the past two or three weeks we have gotten two prints so there just wasn't room for it.

 

My sister theater here in Salt Lake City plays a new Bollywood movie every week. The market is there for sure. They just don't rake it in like the Hollywood blockbusters do. They tend to cater to the art house stuff though and we are more like a general movie theater. It's nice to the have the contrast in town. They play other foreign stuff too. I think it's all about repetition, if you are consistently bringing in the art house product you will get the audience for it if marketed correctly.

 

I don't think Lucas really thinks in the same terms as a lot of people on the internet. He sees the Star Wars franchise from a broad overview and everything feeds into the whole brand name. Keep Star Wars in front of the public, year after year, generation after generation. Lucasfilm makes far more money from video games and merchandising than it ever did from the theatrical film releases. I read one time that a single Lucas Arts game title generated 400 million dollars in revenue for the company.

The Phantom Menace 3 D is just one more way to do that, keeping it alive. It keeps people talking and thinking about Star Wars, in addition to earning a few bucks. By the time it's all added up, TPM is going to be the first Star Wars film to pass the billion dollar mark at the box office. It's currently at 995 million and it's 11th place on the world wide list. If it earns just 7 million more dollars, it re-enters the top 10 and it passes up Nolan's the Dark Knight.

 

Yes, I think that sums it up pretty well. It's mostly about feeding the Star Wars brand, and it may be worth re-releasing AOTC into theaters as a loss leader just to keep momentum going on the licensing empire.

I do think it's wishful thinking though to believe that AOTC re-release will do better at the box office than TPM.

 

I don't see why it wouldn't if it's a better movie (though not a lot better). The longer the re-releases go on the more they are likely to make as the movies will get better as they go on (except Jedi, which IMO is not as good as Empire).

The pods were 3D but for some reason the terrain was not, that was a mistake for me. With the views from the cockpit you want to see rocks and other objects on the track stand out and look like they're rushing towards you, all we got were super-imposed vehicles on a flat terrain.

 

Wanderlust opened at an estimated 8th place last night. I had no idea Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston were so unpopular. The trailers didn't look that terrible, the reviews were much better than The Vow.

The Phantom Menace continued its re-release plummet, looks set to drop another 65% to $2 million or so for its third weekend. I guess it won't break $40 million domestically. As noted above, it clears The Dark Knight barely to claim the tenth spot on the global all time leader board, a position it won't keep through the summer.

Assuming Lucas goes ahead with theatrical 3D re-releases for the last two prequel films, if re-release box office mirrors original box office, we could expect to see something like

$78-85 million worldwide for TPM
$48-55 million worldwide for AOTC
$60-65 million worldwide for RotS

 

I don't see how that logic follows, surely the better movies will get more people watching them.



Lucas took a risk in releasing the weakest movie first, once the originals come around then demand to see them will rise.

 

My logic is box office logic, which can't be argued against or reasoned with.

But I haven't made any argument about the box office potential of the OT. I imagine the ANH 3D re-release box office will mirror the box office of the 1997 re-release, which made $138 million domestically.

In 2017 ANH will be 40 years old! If it were me, given the TPM re-release box office, I would cancel the last two films of the PT and re-release ANH in 2017.

 

Yes, but while I don't know what the TV ad campaigns have been like, I've been seeing ads for The Vow everywhere. Posters on buses, sidebar ads on websites, buzz online, etc. I never even heard of Wanderlust until yesterday.

 

I agree that's what I would do too. The anniversary is the best time to re-release ANH, perhaps in 3D and regular format.

But I don't think cancelling the PT run is needed. ROTS is a popular movie with fans and should make good money, AOTC has far more 3D potential than TPM and is a better movie which I think more kids will watch (mainly for Yoda). As I said Lucas took a risk releasing the weakest movie first, I doubt he realistically expected it to do that well given the reputation it has and the fact 3D adds little to it. The better movies will attract more people, so long as Lucas breaks even I think he'll be hapy to keep on going with the 3D releases (any idea how much converting TPM actually cost?).

Box Office is not always an accurate reflection. Clones & ROTS made less money than TPM not because they were worse movies, but because TPM put a lot of people off having anything to do with the other Prequels given the hype tha surrounded it and the huge disappointment so many had watching it. A a result many didn't go to see AOTC and then more went to see ROTS after hearing more positive things about it (but fewer than had seen TPM).
Many people use Avatar's immense Box Office takings to argue it is the most popular movie ever, but they overlook the fact it had inflated 3D ticket prices compared to Titanic and that inflation adjusted Gone With the Wind still made more money.

 

The fact is that by relative Star Wars standards, AoTC was a box office flop. You can hypothesize about why that was the case, sure, but it's just one hypothesis. By estimated U.S. tickets sold, Phantom Menace is right behind Return of the Jedi as the fourth most popular film. TPM sold 50% more tickets than Revenge of the Sith, which is a distance fifth in the saga. Attack of the Clones only sold a tenth fewer tickets than Revenge of the Sith. Revenge of the Sith benefited more from ticket price inflation than from audience forgiveness and good word of mouth.

I think the real answer is that on a Star Wars scale both AoTC and RotS are equally unpopular relative to general movie audiences, with RotS a marginally better performer. On an absolute scale, neither of them sold the level of tickets that would make any top studio ever consider a theatrical re-release of the movies. It would be like doing a theatric re-release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen a decade from now.

TPM is the only PT movie with a box office history that makes a theatrical re-release look feasible. And it hasn't done incredibly well. Because it's a very marginal case.

Yes, because they are making a somewhat more sophisticated box office argument than just dollar grosses. It's a recognition that we need a metric to compare movie performance over long periods of time where ticket price inflation factors in.

 

I think you read too much into Box Office figures. There are lots of cult movies that didn't exactly do well on original release but because of gaining new popularity on video/DVD might do better if re-released now.

Phantom Menance did poorly this time around because it isn't very good and few people felt obliged to pay out for a 3D version of a film they don't like a whole lot. As many like the other movies better, logic argues they are more likely to pay out to see them instead.

ROTS made nearly $850million worldwide, that's hardly a failure, I can see it going over the $1billion mark when re-released even though it has more ground to make up than TPM (which made over $900million) did, simply because it is a better movie and more people are likely to go and watch it.
Obviously AOTC made a lot less than either of the other 2 prequels doing only around $650million. That isn't to say it won't do better next time as it might well have grown on people over time so they appreciate more now and it has a lot that will look good in 3D. It may well make less money than TPM but I very much doubt it, it has too much in its favour.

 

I don't trust box office figures just as I usually don't trust critic reviews. The amount of money spent by consumers doesn't determine quality of a project, it merely reflects present popularity. I don't wish SW any ill with the 3D re-releases but as it does nothing for me due to my eyes not really perceiving much difference from a 2D version I won't be in the theater for any of them.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if RotS does the best out of the PT and ESB out of the OT because these *seem* to be the most popular of the saga.