Does The Hollywood Reporter Only Employ Idiots?

Who says cost cutting and synergy don't effect the quality of journalistic output. Take a look at what this mook from the Hollywood Reporter did.

I came across this completely useless piece of box office analysis on Yahoo! that originates from The Hollywood Reporter.

Journalist Carl DiOrio tries to put the opening of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in perspective by arguing that its projected opening of more than $150 million may topple the record held by Spiderman 3 of $151.1 million.

There is of course one big problem with this analysis, which DiOrio is at least smart enough to pick up on:

That would put "Skull" on course to surpass the "Spider-Man 3" opening of $151.1 million in May 2007 -- with a big asterisk, given that Spidey reached that level in three days.

Yes, Spiderman 3 did reach that level in 3 days but this isn’t the 1961 Baseball season. It is pretty standard boxoffice practice to compare 5 day grosses with 5 day grosses and opening weekend grosses with opening weekend grosses – not some crazy case of apples, oranges and asterisks.

If DiOrio was some random commentator this could be forgiven but to be a professional journalist and not even take the time to do some of that research stuff – inexcusable.

Oh but wait there is more, it’s not like this is some guy working for the KwaZulu Natal Mercury, which has other topics to focus on – this guy is working for The Hollywood Reporter, which specializes in the film trade.

And the extra research he needed to do to make his article relevant? All he had to do was go to boxofficemojo.com, click all time under the boxoffice tab and then select 5 day openings. Is that all too hard for a professional journalist?

Anyway, here are the real stats that Crystal Skull has to compete with to get into the record books:

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith	$172,802,507
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest	$169,506,744
Spider-Man 3	$169,444,466
Spider-Man 2	$152,411,751
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End	$147,591,127

 

So Indy needs to get more than $172.8 million to become the new 5 day champ, a fete Steve Mason thinks it can accomplish.

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$51M-$60M Weekend for Caspian = Very Disappointing

Saturday reports place Caspian slightly better then earlier reported. With reports ranging from a $18M Friday and a $51M weekend to a $19M Friday and a $60M weekend the film looks like a major disappointment.

Some film suits are going to be having severe heart palpitations for the rest of the weekend and praying for a summer miracle.

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Has Prince Caspian Got Stage Fright?

Early Box Office reports say that the big budget fantasy sequel, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, may be off to a shaky start in the US. It looks as thought the film will only gross around $17.5 million for Friday and possibly a dismal $51M-$56M opening weekend. Is this figure holds (which is sketchy this early) it means Caspian will have fallen far short of the $75M-$80M it was expected to make with ease and even less than the $65.6M opening weekend of the first Narnia film.

With the new Indiana Jones film around the corner and the Summer being far more concentrated than the previous films December release it looks like it will be an uphill struggle for this to out gross the original. The film will probably still do big business internationally.

Iron Man on the other hand is looking to have another good hold and may be able to crack $300M during its run.

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Box Office Expert or Spin Doctor

Do you know who Paul Dergarabedian is? Do you know what his link to Bee Movie is? Do you know if Dreamworks pay him in diamonds? If the answer is no you've found the right article.Bee Movie captured 1^st place at the box office in its second weekend of release after opening in second last weekend to American Gangster. "It's so rare to do what Bee Movie has done," Media by Numbers President Paul Dergarabedian told the Los Angeles Times, attributing the jump to "terrific word of mouth."

This is an interesting statement from Dergarabedian but before I discuss why this is so interesting and unusual let us first learn a little more about Dergarabedian and Media by Numbers.

According to the Media by Numbers website Dergarabedian has been the industries most widely respected and widely quoted expert for nearly 15 years. Media by Numbers goal is to provide in-depth analysis and perspective for everything in the box-office and filmed entertainment industry. According to them, “We don’t just give you data. We help you understand it, use it, learn from it and profit from it.”

I am not disputing the validity of Media by Numbers mission statement. What I am concerned about is the validity, or intentions, behind Dergarabedian’s Bee Movie statement. Interestingly although Bee Movie has become number one in its second weekend its second weekend drop is worse than previous animated films that opened in early November. Consider the following:

Chicken Little – 21.0% drop

Monsters, Inc. – 27.2% drop

The Incredibles – 28.7% drop

Bee Movie – 32.8% drop

In addition Bee Movie has lower user ratings than each of these films (with the exception of The Internet Movie Database user rating for Chicken Little):

Chicken Little Yahoo User Rating: B- IMDB User Rating: 5.8

Monsters, Inc. Yahoo User Rating: B+ IMDB User Rating: 7.9

The Incredibles Yahoo User Rating: B+ IMDB User Rating: 8.2

Bee Movie Yahoo User Rating: C+ IMDB User Rating: 6.5

In addition Bee Movie’s second weekend drop is less remarkable in light of the Veterans Day weekend meaning more kids would have been out watching movies on Sunday. This is more likely the main factor helping lead Bee Movie to a first place finish rather than word of mouth.

This analysis is interesting for one specific reason. When the media says a film has terrific word of mouth it convinces the public that the people who are watching the film are loving it. However, clearly the yahoo and IMDB user ratings paint a different picture.

It is an interesting explanation from an analyst with over 15 years of experience to give and one has to wonder if Dergarabedian is a credible news source or if he is merely a spin machine being used by certain Hollywood players.

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Planet Terror vs Death Proof

It's the battle of the Grindhouse. Who do you think will win? I'll give you a clue it's not Morgan Freeman.

You have to love the mainstream media for being completely useless. It was big news in April when Grindhouse was released and had a mega-disappointing opening of $11.6 million. The $60-million film only grossed $24 million in ticket sales by the end of its run.

The media was a blaze with speculation as to why the high profile project failed. Generally the blame was pointed at the project being badly marketed. Apparently a large portion of the market didn’t realize that the film was in fact two separate features being played together with fake trailers in between.

The two features being Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof and Robert Rodriquez’s Planet Terror. The media blamed the poor performance on Planet Terror mainly because critics loved Death Proof and many ticket patrons not knowing it was a double bill left after Planet Terror (which screened first). It also seems so did the studio as The Weinstein Co. decided to withdraw Grindhouse from Cannes in favour of a longer cut of the isolated Death Proof.

The poor box-office performance resulted in The Weinstein Co deciding to release the films separately on DVD and internationally. Now we have reached a phase in time where both films have had their separate DVD releases. And the media has done… nothing.

Death Proof has been in release for around 7 weeks and Planet Terror has now completed its 3rd. Yet there is no buzz about what happened with their sales figures. Well lets fill you in.

Planet Terror has convincingly drawn larger numbers than Death Proof in almost every respect. The film that was blamed for the failure of the Grindhouse venture is the more financially successful of the two. Lets look at the numbers.

Here are the first two weeks of DVD sales for Planet Terror and Death Proof:

Death Proof   DVD Week 1 - 367,661 total units sold - $8,242,960 total gross

Planet Terror DVD Week 1 - 424,474 total units sold - $9,741,678 total gross

Death Proof   DVD Week 2 - 479,019 total units sold - $10,803,080 total gross

Planet Terror DVD Week 2 - 561,524 total units sold - $12,886,976 total gross

Thus Planet Terror is about $2 million ahead of Death Proof after they both had two weeks of release. In terms of rentals Death Proof debuted to the tune of $2.87 million while Planet Terror soared past this with $5.77 million in its first week. As it currently stands Death Proof grossed $12.16 million after 7 weeks, while Planet Terror has grossed $14.45 million after just 3 weeks.

Anyway these figures would suggest that Planet Terror is the stronger of the two features. Plus there is this poll on sucksorrules.com that suggests the same thing. I think somebody owes Robert Rodriquez an apology.

Here are the Trailers:

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Saw IV - Seen a Lot

Jigsaw is back and he's making box office analysts look like a bunch of corpses.Box Office analysts have been saying for months that the Saw franchise has burnt out and that Saw IV would have a drastic drop in it’s opening tally. Figures between $18-$22 million were the general estimates going into this weekend.

But now Jigsaw has blown those figures out of the water with a $14 million Friday and early estimates of $33.3 million for the weekend. That puts it in place to possibly take the Saw crown away from Saw III, which had a $33.6 million opening last year.

I am not surprised at all by this result; I have been expecting a mammoth weekend for a while now. The tracking that came in this week was the only thing that caused some doubt in my mind. Now lets sum up why analysts thought Saw IV was going to disappoint and why they were wrong.

Torture Porn is Dead:

The horror genre got an upsurge in 2004 from the original Saw when it began a trend that is now known as torture porn (this can be debated torture porn is not necessarily new, also other films can be argued as the starting point). The trend resulted in three Saw movies, Hostel and The Hills Have Eyes, which were all hits. This year, however, a number of torture porn releases failed to impress. This included the massive drops from franchise heavy weights Hostel 2 and The Hills Have Eyes 2.

There definitely is a lack of interest in the genre but the Saw films are in a different league from the other torture films. Firstly, even the first Saw ($55m) was far more successful than the nearest torture porn rivals (Hostel - $47m, Hills - $41m). In addition these two films achieved impressive grosses from other means. Hostel (which was crap) was marketed under the Quinton Tarantino name and many teenagers mistook Hills as the movie adaptation of MTV’s The Hills (this is probably not true). Thus torture porn is dead and probably never even reached the heights that it was hyped up to. Saw on the other hand is a well-established franchise that makes it stand out from the genre as a whole.

The Series has been Descending in Quality:

Many argue that the first Saw was unbelievably original and since then the franchise has been relying on increasing the gore/torture factor while becoming more and more of a sixth day violation.

For me Saw was never that original, ever heard of a little Fincher film called Seven? And in terms of Saw fans they are almost split down the middle over which is better, Saw or Saw II. There are even some who champion Saw III. The most important thing to remember is that the franchise has progressed and developed a complex protagonist who many view as the greatest villain of the new millennium. Jigsaw kicks ass and each movie has done a good job of adding to the character making any Saw film with Tobin Bell a must see.

Position, Position, Position:

The film has marked off the Halloween weekend as it’s designated landing point for the last four years. There is no better time for a horror film to launch and the Saw franchise has become a Halloween tradition.

Plus each film has been release a year apart making it hard for another franchise to some in and block it from the weekend, while at the same time keeping interest high.

Saw IV though will probably have bigger drops than the previous sequels. I'm looking for a finish just north of $75 million. I will have to see it before I comment on the possible success of Saw V.

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Video Game Destroys the Box Office

Tired of merely killing Aliens, the space marines of Halo 3 set their sights on the film industry, claiming poor Ben Stiller as their first casualty.

According to Studio Briefing the release of Halo 3 may have been the cause of the recent low box office earnings. Here is the original segment:

Some industry analysts are blaming the release of the videogame Halo 3 for the current dive in movie ticket sales. Advertising Age has observed that over the Oct. 5 weekend, after Halo 3 had sold $300 million worth of copies, the box office was down 27 percent below the same weekend last year -- the worst performance for an October weekend since 1999. Over the same weekend, The Heartbreak Kid, which some box-office gurus had predicted would make up to $30 million, brought in only $14 million. "The audience on this game is the 18-to-34 demographic, similar to what you'd see in cinemas," Mike Hickey, an analyst at Denver research firm Janco Partners, told AdAge, adding that the box-office slide "could last for several weeks.

This is just going by official sales and isn't taking into consideration all the pirate copies of the game that are bound to have spread. In any case this means that film distributors will now also have to take high profile game releases into consideration. The poor performing R-rated Heartbreak Kid was essentially released when a large chunk of it's target audience were glued to their computer. Big oops DreamWorks.

Since games tend to consume a lot more time then major sporting events this means that distributors are going to have a whole new bunch of challenges on their hands. Possibly having to forecast a games potential impact in weeks before claiming a release date.

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