Summer Box Office Recap

Written by Kirk Baird

The Avengers was the crown jewel of the summer movie season, while some big-budget flops such as Dark Shadows and Battleship took a toll on the overall box office. But the biggest losers this summer were the film studios, which watched ticket sales continue to slide. Attendance, according to Hollywood.com, dropped about 4 percent to 533 million overall, the lowest number in nearly two decades. Just since 2002, total ticket sales are down 100 million.

Just as alarming: box-office receipts also were down 2.84 percent — about $4.3 billion — from the same May to Labor Day period from 2011.

Of course, higher ticket prices and upcharges for 3D and IMAX help mask this serious problem in the industry: patrons are coming to the movies less often.

Marvel’s The Avengers got summer off to a massive bang with a $1.5 billion worldwide total haul, $620 million of which was from the domestic box office, according to boxofficemojo.com. The runner-up box-office king was The Dark Knight Rises, with $433 million domestically and more than a billion dollars worldwide. Rounding out the superhero triumvirate was The Amazing Spider-Man, which was also the third-highest grossing film this summer at $260 million domestically and $735 million worldwide.

On the flip side of these successes was Dark Shadows, which earned less than $80 million domestically for the Tim Burton-Johnny Depp supernatural dark comedy that cost $150 million to produce, and Battleship, which grossed only $65 million domestically for the $209 million film based on the Hasbro board game.

It was the foreign box office to the rescue, however, pushing both films to a profit with $236 million and $302 million total worldwide receipts, respectively.

The foreign box office also helped Men in Black 3 generate nearly $625 million worldwide and Snow White and the Huntsman earn $394 million around the globe. Not every film needed help from abroad, though.

The raunchy R-rated comedy smash Ted, about a teddy bear come to life, grossed $216 million domestically, more than four times the costs of the film. Even better was Magic Mike. The comedy-drama directed by Steven Soderbergh and starring Channing Tatum as a Tampa stripper — the film was based on the actor’s real-life experiences — earned nearly $114 million in North America, or more than 16 times its $7 million production cost.

Small-budget films also found big audiences this summer.

The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel earned $131 million worldwide on a budget of $10 million. And Wes Anderson’s Moonrise Kingdom grossed nearly $60 million worldwide on a budget of $16 million.

And while no production budget was available, certainly the conservative documentary 2016: Obama’s America exceeded industry expectations with more than $20 million so far at the domestic box office after an opening haul of $31,000 in mid-July in one theater in Houston.

Channing Tatum is Box Office Magic

Written by Kirk Baird

Before a recent screening of Magic Mike, the male stripper movie starring Channing Tatum and directed by Steven Soderbergh, another film critic wondered aloud to me just how successful the movie would be. I told him I thought it would be quite successful based on two themes: female audiences and Tatum.

The weekend box-office performance of Magic Mike returns proved me right, with the R-rated comedy-drama easily outperforming expectations and opening with a nearly $40 million haul. Considering Magic Mike was produced with a budget of only $7 million, that’s a profit four times over. And thus a lesson is learned: Never underestimate the female audience and never underestimate the appeal of Tatum.

It was young female moviegoers who helped make James Cameron’s Titanic the biggest film of all time for more than a decade before Cameron’s Avatar in 2009 took the title away. It’s a lot of the same crowd who struck again with Magic Mike, which drew a 70% female audience. And their reason for flocking to the theaters? Channing Tatum. The former stripper whose life inspired Magic Mike is now a major player in Hollywood. Tatum has a total gross so far of nearly $921 million in combined movie ticket sales at the North American box office. That’s more than action-film star Jason Statham, more than comic-actor Paul Rudd, and about $100 million shy of equaling his Magic Mike costar Matthew McConaughey, who’s been around about a decade longer.

2012 has been a very good year for Tatum. The romantic drama The Vow made $125 million, and the comedy 21 Jump Street made $138 million. His January action-thriller Haywire, also directed by Soderbergh, did underperform, however, with less than $20 million, but it was also budgeted at $30 million, so the losses weren’t significant. Tatum was supposed to appear in the new G.I. Joe movie, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, which was scheduled for a June release. In fact, Tatum’s character, Captain Duke Hauser, was killed off early in the film. The rumor has it that test audiences didn’t like his early exit, and that the film is being retooled, in part so Hauser lives to appease Tatum fans.

Based on the success of Magic Mike this weekend, that’s a financially wise decision.

Is There Any Stopping The Avengers?

Written by Kirk Baird

Is there any stopping The Avengers? Earth’s Mightiest Heroes joined forces onscreen and set box-office records, including the honor to be first film to debut with a $200-million-plus opening weekend. (Its $207.4 million haul bested previous record holder Harry Potter and theDeathly Hallows: Part 2 and its $169.2 million in 2011.).

This weekend marked its third-straight at the top of the box office, as it continues to fend off some big-budgeted competition including Dark Shadows and most recently Battleship.

The Avengers’ reign as moviegoers’ top pick will come to an end at some point, perhaps as soon as this weekend with the next challenger, Men in Back III. The sci-fi comedy reunites Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones as Agent J and Agent K, respectively. The story features Agent J time traveling to the 1960s to prevent the assassination of a younger Agent K (played by Josh Brolin) and changing history.

And speaking of time travel … it’s been a decade since Men in Black Part II underwhelmed critics, audiences, and the box office, though it did ultimately earn Sony studios a profit. Part II opened in July 2002 with a $52 million haul. Not bad until you consider the first Men in Black opened with nearly the same amount, in 500 less theaters, and at 1997 ticket prices. For the record: The Avengers made $55 million in its third weekend, which makes it formidable competition this weekend as well.

If Men in Black III fails to take down the team of Marvel superheroes, next up to dethrone the king would be Snow White and the Huntsman, starring Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth (who plays Thor the God of Thunder in The Avengers), and Kristen Stewart. The trailers look promising for this dark and CGI-intense adaptation of the classic fairytale. It’s also the second Snow White big-screen reinvention this year, following on the heels of Mirror Mirror, a dark comedy starring Julia Roberts, Nathan Lane, Armie Hammer, and Lily Collins (daughter of singer-songwriter-drummer Phil Collins). Mirror Mirror opened March 30 and grossed only $18.13 million its first weekend, on its way to less than $70 million. With an estimated budget of $85 million, Mirror Mirror only made a profit through the foreign box-office and yielded nearly $98 million.

But any victory by either of these two summer film newcomers would be short lived, given the increasing build-up to the June 8 opening of Prometheus.  

What do you think?