Hollywood hopes 3 remaining blockbusters can turn bad year around

Necronomicon

Came across an article today in the paper, about the slump in the box office over the year.

"As the final touches are put to the release campaigns of the three most expensive blockbusters of the year - Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, The Chronicles of Narnia and King Kong, Hollywood is holding its breath.........snip............Nikki Rocco, distribution chief at Universal, which released Doom and is backing King Kong, says: "I've never seen a year like this." They are certainly feeling the pinch at Sony, which recently reported a €50 million third-quarter loss, while Disney is backing on Narnia to turn around a €213 million loss.

Hollywood is hoping to spend its way out of trouble this festive season by releasing its most expenseive movies and spending a fortune on marketing. King Kong is a case in point. The pircture had an initial price tag of €176 million but shot up by €27.2 million last month when Universal agreed to extend the running time by 30 minutes, at the behest of director Peter Jackson. Although Jackson agreed to shoulder much of the extra cost himself through his highly lucrative profit-sharing deal (he receives 20% of the gross) this makes it even harder for the studio to turn in a big profit.

One of the most high-profile flops, The Island, which cost nearly €127 million to make but made just €10.2 million on its opening weekend, was a derivative mish-mash of numerous other sci-fi movies, while mega-flop Stealth was a poor man's Top Gun.

There is no doubt in the mind of John Fithian, the head of the National Association Of Theatre owners in America, what is to blame for the slump: "The primary reason for the slump has been the quality of the movies," he said.
This year's surprise hits have shown a hunger for well-crafted storytelling with strong, identifiable characters--even if those characters are penguins.

There is some hope in America, with Warner Brothers having enjoyed a good year, taking more than a billion dollars at the box office so far thanks to Batman Begins and Charlie And The Chocolate Factory."

I'm surprised War of the Worlds wasn't mentioned anywhere in the article.
Has it been a poor year for movies? Or have piracy and home entertainment contributed to the box-office slump?

Sir Digby Chicken Caesar

I'd go with poor year for movies, they've released some awful crap this year.

TerrorFirmer

Some good stuff too though amongst the bad. I'd day King Kong will make a killing, and for the year past, movies like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Batman Begins, Episode III and a few others have taken in absolute mountains of money. I'm not sure how WotW did but I'm sure it made back it's cost.

The Island I knew would flop, but it was entertaining, whilst Stealth, god knows who an earth is responsible for that absolutely appalling movie, but I am surprised it made more then 1 million back.

I hear Doom is doing extremely poorly? Shame. That said though I heard the Resident Evil movies didn't do particularly well, especially Apocalyspe, yet a third one is on the way so....:v:

Kingp35

I would personally say that it has been a bad year for movies and that piracy doesnt really come into it. I mean I know people who downlaod movies the odd time but they never download new movies because they know that a movie just isnt as good unless you experience it on the big screen.

There has been some smash hit movies but then again so many movies just failed to get peoples attention. Movies like Doom are coming in with a bad reputation because of the previous computer game movies which have been terrible to say the least. No surprise that the likes of The Island didnt do well (although I kind of liked it) and Stealth was just god awful.

I expect the three movies mentioned in that article to make an absolute killing at the box office because all three are rumoured to be great movies. I will be going to see all three anyway as im sure many people will.

Vokes

The Island recouped all its money back at the worldwide box office, so it really wasn't a flop financially.

Bacchus

I don't think it was a particularly bad year for movies. The summer was a bit weak but in January - April there were some great movies out...

Closer, Garden State, Million Dollar Baby, Bullet Boy, The Machinist, The Aviator and Ray to name some off the top of my head.

Although, there have been a lot of box office flops this year (which I'll discuss later), there have still been a lot of quality "high budget' movies..
Sin City, Batman Begins, SW Ep III, WOTW, Serenity and expectations are high for the remaining 3 blockbusters mentioned in the article.

The summer hasn't been without it's fair share of quality smaller (ie. not blockbuster) movies either...
Crash, Cinderella Man (which didn't do great in America but did better over our side of the pond), The Aristocrats, The Descent, Saw II (best horror/thriller since Saw), Wallace and Gromit. I'm also looking forward to Jarhead and The Constant Gardener

There have also been a lot of nearly very good movies such as Constantine, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Four, The Island, Land Of The Dead, Hitchhikers Guide, 40 year old Virgin

Then theres the bad ...
Red Eye, Electra, Hitch, Be Cool, Zorro (haven't seen but it looks awful), Bewitched, Dukes Of Hazzard etc etc.

The article is right when it said audiences are looking for smarter, more character driven films which shows when you look at the blockbusters of the year (which is where the slump in ticket sales really shows).

Movies like Alexander, Fantastic Four, Stealth, The Island and the recently released Brothers Grimm all had big buggets but audiences couldn't relate to any of the characters which resulted in bad word of mouth and poor sales. Even Kingdom of Heaven didn't do very well (although I liked it). People are becoming bored of special effects and hollywood needs to learn how to use them properly and not at the expence of the story been told. Look at Spiderman 1 & 2, The Incredibles and LOTR, they are crammed full of special effects but they never feel out of place or imposing. Those movies had an amazing story with fun characters that people could identify with. That is the type of audience hollywood needs to target. Hollywood is still making some great movies, it's just putting too much faith in the special effects packed blockbusters which audiences are weary of. Maybe the movie industry needed this kick up the arse and next year we'll have better quality movies.... like Transformers!!!! Wooo!!!

Sorry for the ramble. hope it makes sense.

Blisterman

My two favourite movies of the year so far were Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the 40 Year old virgin, which weren't exactly blockbusters.
I didn't see SWE3, Batman Begins, The Island, Stealth (I've never even heard of that.).
I'll probably see King Kong, but I've no interest in Chronicles of Narnia or Harry Potter.

rahim

I can't wait to see King Kong. Narnia looks good, i'll probably go to see it but i can't really think of any other films during the year that i was waiting to see, apart from Batman Begins. It hasn't been a great year for Hollywood (in terms of memerable movies) and i think the "we'll make it flashy and that'll sell" method is the reason.

missingtime

Jonathan Ross was talkin about this a few weeks ago. One of the reasons put forward was that the ticket prices are going up.
I believe that the studios are putting out too many pg13 movies to try and boost sales. But this is having an effect on the type of movie that they are putting out.
I read somewhere that Scarlett Johnansen was willing to do a topless scene for The Island but the director wanted to keep the family rating to get more money.

projectmayhem

forget hollywood loosing money, movie fans are loosing more in that there's nothing stimulating being released.

saado

I actually think that it's a combination of piracy and bad movies, not in the sense that piracy is the contributing factor here.More that people who, in the past, would have gone to see a movie, even a crap one, tend to just download it instead, and go see the big ones that they want to see in the cinema. That, or they're like me, and will tend to wait for the DVDs, and with the current trend of releasing substandard dvd packages, then not releasing the ones that "real" movie fans will buy for months, it can really impact on the immediate outlook from a money pov.

ObeyGiant

saado wrote:

then not releasing the ones that "real" movie fans will buy for months

*cough*sincity*cough*

segadreamcast

Kingp35 wrote:

Movies like Doom are coming in with a bad reputation because of the previous computer game movies which have been terrible to say the least.

Well there's that, and it's just crap in its own right too. Not absolute crap...but 4/10 kind of below-mediocre crap. So crap-ish I suppose.

Anyway, yeah, it has been an awful year for movies and - to be honest - I can't see these three bailing Hollywood out! This is the first year in ages that nobody has been talking about what's coming out - I keep hearing the odd person saying 'I'm looking forward to Narnia' but - is it just me - or does it feel like there's no 'momentum' behind that movie?

Same issue with King Kong - I think it'll be big, but not as huge as the studio's are clearly hoping.

Finally, each movie in the Harry Potter series has grossed less than the first - the trend is clearly downward (albeit, on a slooooow scale) for the series:

3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) $968,600,000
8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) $866,300,000
15. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) $789,458,727

Personally, I'd say it'll begin to level out with this HP movie though - as it is remarkably better than the other 3.


EDIT: Whoever said War of the Worlds was a 'flop', try biggest movie of the year (I was surprised too):
33. War of the Worlds (2005) $529,300,000