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.

Click to read more ...

Oscar Announces Potential Visual Effects Nominees

One of the more hotly contested Oscar races this year will be for Best Visual Effects. The reason it's going to be on the radar more this year than in previous years is because it's not a token for giant summer blockbusters the way it normally is.

True, The Dark Knight could still win, and Iron Man had some fanstic visuals. But the real frontrunner, at least in my mind, will be The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Visually speaking, this movie couldn't have been made 15 years ago, and maybe not even ten years ago. Button relies so much on the effects and make-up to create a believable place to start that it would completely fall apart without it.The other point in its favor is precisely that it isn't The Dark Knight or Iron Man or The Incredible Hulk or Hancock, which would win the award for most unnecessary effects, hands down. Because the effects in Button are not just used to create monsters or explosions but to create something lifelike, the Academy might see it as the greater accomplishment.AMPAS has released its short list of potential nominees in that category, and conspicuous by its absence is Wanted. Remember, this isn't the actual list, just the nominating pool. From here, it will be chopped to seven and those seven will be shrunken to three final nominees.

Australia
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
Cloverfield
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The Dark Knight
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Hancock
Hellboy II: The Golden Army
The Incredible Hulk
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Iron Man
Journey to the Center of the Earth
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
Quantum of Solace
The Spiderwick Chronicles

Click to read more ...

Box Office - 'Indiana Jones' Whips Up $126 Million in Four Days

Because it's an otherwise boring holiday weekend, the big story is the box office performance of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. We've been updating you daily on its estimated total, and while we were off-base after Thursday's $25 million opening, we corrected ourselves and the course of the film after seeing Friday's $31 million estimate.

In fact, yesterday we indicated that Indy would probably make around $34 million on Saturday, another $31 million on Sunday and $22.5 million on Monday, giving us a five-day total of $143 million. Now the actual estimates are in from Box Office Mojo, and we were a little low, but nothing close to the discrepancies over the past few weeks. With $37 million on Saturday and $34 million on Sunday, Indiana Jones has passed the $125 million mark in four days, and while it won't break any records and will, in fact, probably fall a little short of expectations on opening weekend and possibly its entire run, we are looking at a $145 - $152 million weekend. Indy would need a little more than $23 million on Monday to cross the sesquicentennial mark (and for the record, I spelled that right the first time...although it was a guess), which would give it a fair chance to overtake Iron Man in June to become the year's top dog at the box office. 

Click to read more ...

A Less Than Regal Opening Day for 'Prince Caspian'

For the third consecutive weekend, the box office will prove to be a tough beast to tame. While lots of analysts expected Iron Man to christen summer with a huge take, not too many guessed $100 million-plus. And while it became obvious in the days before its release that Speed Racer would struggle, even the lowest estimates were around $10 million more than the film wound up making in its debut.

And for Prince Caspian, the second film in The Chronicles of Narnia, you were likely to find projections of $80 - $95 million; in other words, it would have a strong weekend but not Iron Man strong. And everyone was wrong...again. Caspian opened with an anemic $19 million on Friday, according to Box Office Mojo, meaning anything over $65 million is out of the question this weekend, which in turn means that the film won't be pushing $150 million by the end of next week, which should mean the film will probably fall close to a hundred million short of the domestic total of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Click to read more ...

Box Office - 'Iron Man' Earns $50 Million More

Adhering to conventional wisdom, Iron Man repeated as the number one film in the country this weekend, adding a cool $50 million to its stack of money, according to estimates published at Box Office Mojo. The big weekend puts Iron Man less than a week away from $200 million, and makes it the top grossing film of 2008, a title that probably won't last but another month.

What about Speed Racer? We chronicled its Friday doldrums, but the high-speed Wachowski movie rebounded nicely on Saturday and Sunday, at least by its own standard. It still didn't make anywhere near what Warner Bros. would be comfortable with, but it only lost 10% of its audience Saturday to Sunday, where most films will see at least a 20% dropoff on day three. The still-sluggish Speed Racer did manage a second place finish, overcoming What Happens in Vegas... with Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher.

Click to read more ...