The Biggest Flops of 2008

We all know 2008 was a bad year economically. You don't have to look very far or watch the news for very long to see the repercussions of the worst financial and employment market in at least 30 years, and possibly 80 years.

For the most part, movies retained their success seen in previous years. Why is that? It's still a relatively cheap night out, even if you're talking about a family of four hitting a matinee. It's also one of the few things you can't get anywhere else. You don't have to eat out at a restaurant, you can watch the baseball games on TV. But if you wanted to see The Dark Knight, that meant for most of you paying $10 or so to watch it in theaters this summer. Another reason for the success of films overall is that the studios have such specific marketing for them now that they target the people most likely to see that film over another. That can't be the only measuring stick, and in fact, quality was a big factor this year. At least six of the top ten films of the year got great reviews, and the only movie that wasn't critically acclaimed that really even needed good press was Hancock. The others - Indy Jones, Madagascar, and Twilight - all had built-in fan bases, and you could really only argue that Twilight was a bad movie, although I'm not sure I'd go that far. The point is, audiences responded to really good films this year and avoided some junk. But how do we know what's a hit? It's not as easy as just making more money than your movie cost. These are never completely isolated things. A studio or producer could make $40 million on one movie but lose $60 million on another, or a movie with an A-list star and A-list director could have to split a lot of the profits because of contractual incentives, or the marketing could be irresponsibly pricy. A good example of weird movie math came this summer when Jeff Rubinov - whose studio, Warner Bros., is the big winner in 2008 - said that the company was a little disappointed in the performance of Get Smart. Just so we know what we're dealing with here, Get Smart cost about $80 million plus marketing and advertising and all of that stuff, and in the U.S., it made back its money. The movie earned $130 million here at home, plus another $100 million internationally. You'd think an $80 million movie that rang up nearly a quarter of a billion dollars worth of business before DVD and cable kicks in would be a smash. Now, it doesn't work that way for every movie, but it's worth thinking about; how high were the expectations for Get Smart if it fails to meet those expectations at $230 million? Wouldn't expectations be just as high on some of these other films? Some of those figures are easy: Australia is a bomb. It cost at least $130 million and it won't make that much even with the international box office. Considering all the little add-ons, like marketing and distribution costs, Fox spent more on that movie than it can make back. DVD changes those figures significatly, but it's not exactly free to make and promote DVDs, either.

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Box Office - Nic Cage is the 'Bangkok' of the Walk

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. For the weekend of July 18th, the top twelve movies at the American box office were responsible for a quarter-billion dollars of business, led by The Dark Knight's record-shattering debut. Fast forward eight weeks, and the top twelve could only manage $51 million, with the new number one movie making less than $8 million. Bangkok Dangerous, the Asian action remake starring Nicolas Cage squeezed a little blood out of a turnip to stop Tropic Thunder's run at the top. But just barely. Based on the Sunday estimates by Box Office Mojo, Bangkok made $7.8 million this weekend, while Tropic Thunder made $7.5. Because these are estimates and not final figures, there is still a chance Tropic Thunder could win again. If so, it would mark the second straight movie to hold on to number one for a month. The House Bunny came in third place, with just under $6 million, followed closely by The Dark Knight. Don Cheadle's espionage thriller, Traitor, continues its strong performance, with a fifth-place finish. Although it finished out of the top ten, Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona is slowly making money. Another three weeks or so, and it should beat Match Point, at which point it would become Allen's highest grossing film since Hannah and Her Sisters over 20 years ago. The Dark Knight is over $510 million now - $512 to be exact - and with its theater numbers starting to decline, it's becoming obvious that we'll see no miracle final month or six weeks out of the year's biggest film. So, for those of you crossing your fingers that it'll beat Titanic, it's not going to do it in this run. There's talk of IMAX re-releases, and that would certainly pad its stats, but even with that, it would take a while to be within shouting distance of that record.

The worst weekend in how long? Steve Mason at Fantasy Moguls is predicting a $44 million weekend for the top 12 movies in the United States, and you'd have to go back to September 2001 for a weekend that bad. There were other things on people's minds that month, of course. Only one weekend in this decade has failed to hit $40 million with its top 12, and that was in 2000. Both top movies on those weekends, incidentally, starred Keanu Reeves. So what does $44 million mean? It means that Nicolas Cage's new flick, Bangkok Dangerous, is opening with a whimper; the Friday estimate is just over $2 million, so the weekend figure may be in the high sixes or low sevens. Think about that: $2 million on opening day. For the number one movie in the country. I would pin a lot of this on the opening weekend of NFL, which, as everyone knows, is the biggest spectator sport in the country. Combine that with no new movies worth a damn, and you get futility like this. Tropic Thunder will probably be second this weekend, and The Dark Knight should still squeak out a third-place finish, although its $5 million is just a drop in the bucket at this point. By the end of the weekend, the film will be over $510 million, with at least another $15, maybe $20 million to go. We'll have full results tomorrow, though based on the figures so far, it won't be a weekend worth remembering.

Movie Review - 'Bangkok Dangerous'

Bangkok Dangerous

Starring Nicolas Cage and Shahkrit Yamnarm
Directed by Danny and Oxide Pang
Rated R

You hear all the time that sex and violence in movies and television has desensitized our society, and dangerously so. We're warned about letting our children play Grand Theft Auto, meanwhile their grandparents sang along as Johnny Cash shot a man in Reno just to watch him die. Sorry, but I don't see much difference. Sex and violence is around us all the time and it always has been, intertwined in a way that it probably shouldn't be. Of course, Jack the Ripper never downloaded porn or watched a slasher movie, so what set him off? On the surface, Bangkok Dangerous brings to mind those images of sex and violence, not separate but rushing together. Bangkok, as you probably know, has one of the world's most liberal sex trades - you want it, you got it. Dangerous, at least when the movie poster shows Nicolas Cage pointing a gun, means violence. Strangely enough, though, this movie didn't have enough of either, or at least not enough of one or the other. Cage plays a hitman named Joe, who, as movie hitmen do, moves from city to city killing high profile targets for untold riches. He lives very well, again, as movie hitmen almost always do. He's called to Bangkok to eliminate four targets and Joe considers in the last job. There's a reason crime movies employ the last job device so frequently: It's an instant character arc. If the criminal gets out of that life, he's reformed, and the screenwriter has therefore done the minimum amount required by the story. Joe tells us the rules of being an effective hitman (although you'd think by blabbing about it, he'd be less effective): 1) Don't ask questions 2) Don't get attached 3) Erase all traces 4) Know when to get out. I wonder, if a hitman is in a house on fire, as Cage is at one point in Bangkok Dangerous, does he go through his checklist before stop, drop, and roll, or would that practical advice trump his rules of engagement? You have to admit, seven steps is a lot to remember. Maybe that's why he makes so much money. The problem with Bangkok Dangerous is that it doesn't just want to be a hitman movie, and it doesn't want to trade in just sex and violence. But it's a violent world we're watching that just so happens to be on assignment in the sex capital of the world. That's what we should be seeing, frankly. Instead, directors Danny and Oxide Pang want this remake of their own 1999 film to incorporate the teacher-student storyline and the lovers in a dangerous time storyline. Perhaps this film would've been fine with one of those, but it snaps under the weight of both.On a final note, I don't understand the way movie studios choose which films they don't want critics to see. Let's keep the argument just about Nic Cage for a minute. In 2006, I struggled through the press screening of Wicker Man, which was among that year's worst films. Anyone could see how awful it was. Last year, I had to see Next on opening day because there was no early screening for that. The movie wasn't great, but it certainly was no disaster. It had some good qualities, at least. This year, Bangkok Dangerous has tried to avoid the scornful gaze of critics. It's misguided, as I pointed out, and it's not terribly polished, but it is not overpoweringly bad. Go figure.

Fearless Forecast - Nic Cage 'Dangerous' Enough

There's not a whole lot to talk about with this weekend's box office - thanks, Bangkok Dangerous - so we're going to take some time to reflect on summer, and in particular, our own predictions we made throughout Hollywood's biggest season. Overall, we did pretty well with our weekly predictions. Our summer overview was not successful at all, but we did that at the very beginning of May and it's harder to project some of that stuff months away. Still: Who would've thought the X-Files sequel would make about $30 million? Or that Prince Caspian would be come up so short? The Dark Knight at half a billion dollars? Nobody thought that.But we had some pretty good success, predicting Sex and The City would beat Indiana Jones in the last weekend in May (that was an unpopular decision). We said Wall-E wouldn't run away with its opening weekend race against Wanted, and that was true. Really, outside of May, which was a tricky month with two unpredictable big releases - Caspian and Speed Racer - our percentage was very high.We cautioned against claims saying The Dark Knight would make $200 million in its opening weekend - we actually suggested it might not break Spider-Man's debut mark, and we weren't too far off in estimating that its opening weekend ceiling would be about $155 (our real number was $147 million, I think). Of course, we also said it would be the fastest movie ever to $300 million before it was released and after it got halfway to the Titanic milestone, I believe we were the first to peg its final tally well into the $500 million range and back that claim up statistically. We pretty much nailed that, at least through mid-October, or so it would appear. We'll see if Warner Bros. decides to put the movie in more theaters for a Halloween last hurrah. And it was a lot of fun breaking down the numbers this summer, but now the sobering truth sets in: The box office is dead for two weeks.It really started two weeks ago, when the big movie was Death Race. That didn't do a lot. Last week was Babylon A.D., a very expensive flop. And while both of those movies had some competition, this week it's all about Nic Cage and Bangkok Dangerous.

Why in the hell is this movie essentially getting a weekend to itself? No other major new releases are out there and the ones still in theaters have all lost steam. It doesn't make any sense to me. Still, I don't expect Bangkok Dangerous to run away with the box office. Limp, maybe. But it won't be running.

This is just more justification for the studios to release a big, big film on Labor Day. It would have cleaned up last weekend and this weekend would have been a cake walk. I think Tropic Thunder would have been the ideal choice here because it's geared at the young male crowd, many of whom would've been stuck on college campuses those two weekends. The Top Five:1 - Bangkok Dangerous ($10 million)2 - Tropic Thunder ($7 million)3 - The Dark Knight ($6 million) 4 - Traitor ($4.5 million) 5 - The House Bunny ($4 million)