And this is why we can't have nice things
By
Agonus,
Posted on: 2010-09-03 14:51 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
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Ebil nom nom-ing yetithing of doom?
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Yeti?
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Tales of Judgment. Also here, instead of that other place.
good luck D.B.B.
Edgar Wright has a fairly successful cult following here in the US even though his previous movies never had a wide release or great box office revenues. Both Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz were fun and quirky takes of two genre mainstays, zombie horror and buddy cop movies. But they were both very English humor.
But this is his first film based on an adaption of another work, a quirky comic book about a slacker's pursuit of the girl of his dreams, couched in Japanese video game metaphors. It's set in Canada so it's not too culturally different than the US.
I think the execs simply misread why his previous films didn't break out here until after they came out on TV and DVD (they were too British) and hoped that they could translate his following into box office upfront as well as DVD sales later. So they went with a very wide release but lost the gamble, partially because I think they didn't get the movie. So they panic and let theater owners an out at two weeks rather than three or four.
At least the film seems to be holding it's own at a per theater basis at the theaters that kept it.
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Someone had PM'd me earlier in the day asking to change. I don't understand it, but they were nice enough.|
Originally Posted by Lastjustice
Thank you for changing it in anycase.
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| As my friend said, (which others have said about The watchmen) Scott Pilgrim probably would done better as a Mini series than a full length film. I agree you can't do it both ways most times. I'm sure was some way of getting more money out of this...but that probably won't be the lesson taken as someone will be burnt by this ordeal. |
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Originally Posted by BafflingBeerMan
I said elsewhere that perhaps it would have worked better as an hour-long series on HBO, where it would air weekly for 7 straight weeks, with each episode ending with an Ex battle.
Even if each actual battle was 15 minutes long, you'd still get about 40 or so minutes to spend on the characters and that might help the audience to connect with them more. |
If he was willing to do it as a TV series, no problem, but I'm not sure that was the case.
It could have also gotten more viewership, because of the shut-in fans who don't necessarily enjoy getting out to the theaters. They may have just torrented it a day or two later though (unfortunately what I would have had to do if it ended up on HBO).
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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Adult Swim produced an animated one-off episode, voiced by the film's stars, that suggested the comic series would have worked just fine on TV. Edgar Wright had the harder task of compressing a six-chapter graphic novel series into a single live-action dramatic piece.
In any case, Wright's directorial career isn't likely to be derailed by this, thanks to the largely favorable reviews and the praise of such heavy-hitter directors as Quentin Tarantino. Nevertheless, his forthcoming adaptation of Ant-Man had better be a demonstrable success. Michael Cera, however, desperately needs to reaffirm his box office credibility. |
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Originally Posted by Veritech
pity that, the yeti was indeed a thing of multicolored awesome.
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
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But I do need something better. Maybe one of you guys can help me. GIANT IMAGE ALERT.
I need that shrunk down to signature size. I only have MS Paint available to me at work, and opening it in that causes it to lose the transparent background and replacing it with an ugly white thing. Can anyone help? There is a Yeti-sized hole in my heart/signature at the moment.
Edit: NEVER MIND!
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
Hmm. Test?
Edit: I guess the board software auto-resizes it.
Still slightly too big, but I can handle if everyone else can (which is the real worry, apparently. 
)
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
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Today's NY Times presented a case study of how Kick-*** managed to generate a solid profit in ticket sales and then DVD purchases/rentals after moderate critical reception and a disappointing opening weekend. (Their reporter mentions SPvtW but essentially forgets all the lessons in the article when considering its future.)|
Originally Posted by UnSub
You can make the same argument for "Kick-***", which has done much better business than "SPvsW". Nerd lead, niche comic, not-quite-mainstream director.
I can't point at all the factors that separate the two films, but I do think "Kick-***" had a much clearer marketing campaign, whereas "SPvsW" made the film look like an indie romcom. Plus "Kick-***" has much better foreign takings (although yes, it has been out longer). |
edit: I recalled the reviews for Kick-*** being worse than the aggregate sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic suggest - perhaps the reviewers I read regularly didn't like it as much - and, if anything, aren't that much less favorable that those for SPvtW.
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You mean the one that's way more faithful to the original story that Roald Dahl wrote? The one that was considered a box office hit compared to that gross derivation of the original story made in 1971 that was initially considered a box office flop and which Dahl was very disappointed with and hated the changes so much that he refused to allow the sequel book to be made into a movie? The one where, when Tim Burton went to visit the author's former house to get an idea of what the guy was like and immediately recognized it as Charlie Bucket's house, Liccy Dahl declared that, finally, somebody got it! That version?
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Originally Posted by Mandu
...Kind of like Willy Wonka (The Gene Wilder movie, not that blasphemous travesty with Johnny Depp doing a bad Michael Jackson impression)...
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Technically speaking, that's true. But an analysis of the box office numbers suggests that SP is dropping off of screens too quickly, and probably because its per-theater averages, while fairly stable, are also lower that the theater operators want. Looking at Kick-***, as soon as the per-theater numbers dropped below about $3000, the number of screens plummeted which held the per-theater numbers stable, while dropping overall revenue proportionately. Jonah Hex had the misfortune to *open* under $3k per theater, which caused it to be dropped from screens almost immediately. Scott Pilgrim held its screens for two weeks, and Kick *** for about three weeks with only a small drop in week three.|
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Today's NY Times presented a case study of how Kick-*** managed to generate a solid profit in ticket sales and then DVD purchases/rentals after moderate critical reception and a disappointing opening weekend. (Their reporter mentions SPvtW but essentially forgets all the lessons in the article when considering its future.)
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That seems to be the trend. Coraline, a movie I mentioned earlier, seems to have held its screens for five weeks, and started to lose them when its weekly theater number dropped below $3k.
In any case, if the pattern holds true, theater operators will continue to replace SP with other fare and it'll be playing in about half the screens as it did the previous week, and even if the per-screen numbers hold or even rise a bit (which happens when screens condense) its box office will still drop proportionately, which is pretty much a predictable spiral.
The thesis of the article is that you can't judge by opening week, and that seems to be true. If all you saw was the opening weekend for Kick ***, Jonah Hex, and Scott Pilgrim, and for that matter Coraline, it would be difficult to predict their true success. Coraline had legs, and incredible word of mouth given its week two numbers. Kick *** charted kinda like the average movie in terms of week to week descent, but it was cheap to make and had decent overseas numbers. Jonah Hex, well, apparently that was predictable from week one numbers if my $3k rule holds generally true. Plus, everyone was betting on that one being a disaster. Scott Pilgrim actually seems to have slightly better legs than Kick *** did in terms of holding its numbers, but those legs are coming after the point where theater operators are unwinding its screens: at that point its basically too late to have anything more than a minor impact on your box office unless there's no competition and you actually start getting put back onto screens, which seems unlikely at this point. But Scott Pilgrim wasn't predictable from week one. The critical week seems to have been week two. Had word of mouth brought people into the theaters to see SP in week two and held its numbers at or near $3k, it would have, I believe, bought SP an extra week in wider release. To do that, though, it would have had to do what Coraline did: have a week two almost as good as, or better than, week one. It doesn't happen often that word of mouth can completely reverse a movie's fortunes, but it happens. **
Given that, plus SP's much higher costs (at least double Kick ***'s, depending on whose numbers you use), its going to be much harder for SP to turn a profit. Its DVD and rental numbers would have to be very high to compensate for the box office gap. That's certainly possible, so I wouldn't have been nearly as conclusive as the article was. But I think the box office numbers are basically a done deal at this point. Overseas could still be a big surprise there, but I think that's a long shot at this point.
** The $3k rule actually seems to work better than I thought it would. Adjusted for inflation, that would be about $2350 in 1999. Looking at the Matrix numbers above, it started getting pulled from screens when it dropped below $2200 per screen. Fascinating. I wonder how well the rule works across a larger data set.
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The theater owners will, of course, need something suitable with which to replace SPvtW. Often times a film catches a break by simply scheduling itself around its competition, as Coraline did. In SPvtW's case, it's going to have to hang on to as many screens as possible when the new Resident Evil movie comes out this weekend, having already been mauled by The Expendables, Piranha 3D, Vampires Suck, et al. If it can do that, then it won't face much competition for its demographic until Let Me In in October. Of course, this may mean just plateauing instead of spiraling, now that summer is officially over. Waiting until after Comic Con to release the movie was just another of Universal's missteps. Kick-***, on the other hand, released early enough in the season that it could take full advantage of its demographic's free time.|
Originally Posted by Arcanaville
In any case, if the pattern holds true, theater operators will continue to replace SP with other fare and it'll be playing in about half the screens as it did the previous week, and even if the per-screen numbers hold or even rise a bit (which happens when screens condense) its box office will still drop proportionately, which is pretty much a predictable spiral.
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What the NYT reporter totally failed to address in SPvtW's case, however, was the DVD, digital download, and TV sales that he said were also going to contribute handsomely to Kick-***'s bottom line. With SPvtW's friendlier PG-13 rating and more respectable reviews, it's likely to do better than Kick-*** in this arena, however its theater box office turns out. In my own experience, several friends are putting off seeing it simply because their home theater setups are (in their opinion) as good as seeing a film at a multiplex. They have become, like many people, devoted living-room downloaders and renters.
Jonah Hex, on the other hand, has no chance in any market segment, as everyone from critics to moviegoers agreed it was a terrible, terrible film.
Meanwhile, it's hard to say whether Universal is setting up expectations for a cult DVD hit or organizing a retreat under fire.
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| Regardless of the perceived outcome, we are proud of this film and our relationship with the visionary and creative filmmaker Edgar Wright. Studios need to continue to offer audiences good and original ideas/films. Edgar has created a truly unique film that is both envelope pushing and genre bending and when examined down the road will be identified as an important piece of filmmaking. We have always been aware of the challenges of broadening this film to a mainstream audience. We do wish a greater number of people went to see the film but hope that people will still make the effort to see this wonderful film. |
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I suspect that, if folks think about it, they aren't necessarily liking one film over the other, its that they like Gene Wilder better than Johnny Depp.|
Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
You mean the one that's way more faithful to the original story that Roald Dahl wrote? The one that was considered a box office hit compared to that gross derivation of the original story made in 1971 that was initially considered a box office flop and which Dahl was very disappointed with and hated the changes so much that he refused to allow the sequel book to be made into a movie? The one where, when Tim Burton went to visit the author's former house to get an idea of what the guy was like and immediately recognized it as Charlie Bucket's house, Liccy Dahl declared that, finally, somebody got it! That version?
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I personally like the subtle air of malevolence Wilder put into his performance, even if it wasn't true to the book. He's just fun to watch.
-np
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I've always used below $2K weekend box as an indicator of a mass reduction in theaters. I use it to guess if a movie is going to be pulled the following Friday. Combine that with Rotten Tomato numbers and I've been able to catch a few highly rated movies just before they left.
The reason I go on about per screen box is when films like Vampire Sucks are kept for their 3rd week while SP, who had box per theater, had it's theater number eviscerated. Sure, VS had better opening weekend numbers, it was a straight up parody of a series with mixed popularity. It didn't matter if it was dumb, people went to see it because it made fun of movie they didn't like. Vampire Sucks is still going to be in 1600 theaters this weekend while last weekend it earned only $1300 per theater while SP earned $1900 but will now be in only 600 theaters, basically 2nd run houses.
Who else made less per theater than SP last weekend but will be in more theaters this weekend than SP.
Scott Pilgrim - $1925 last weekend - 616 theaters this weekend - Week 5
Eat Pray Love - $1803 - 2339 - 5
Nanny McPhee Returns - $1305 - 2350 - 4
Vampires Suck - $1313 - 1670 - 4
The Switch - $1655 - 1595 - 4
Despicable Me - $1865 - 1371 - 10
Piranha 3D - $1360 - 825 - 4
Lottery Ticket - $1642 - 905 - 4
Toy Story 3 - $1279 - 13
Almost but not quite
The Expendables - $1948 - 3398 - 5
My point is Universal allowed theaters to opt out of SP a week to soon. I think it would have showed it had more legs than several of the films that came out the following week. It got kneecapped and the rapid reduction in theaters had everything to do with it's rapidly shrinking box office. Most box office news articles don't mention how many theaters thus allowing the average Joe to draw the wrong conclusion.
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A movie isn't better just because it's faithful to the source. Someone could make a more faithful version of Wizard of Oz, but I doubt it will be as good as the 1939 classic. Kubrick's The Shining was much better and more interesting than the faithful TV version.
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Originally Posted by Coyote_Seven
You mean the one that's way more faithful to the original story that Roald Dahl wrote? The one that was considered a box office hit compared to that gross derivation of the original story made in 1971 that was initially considered a box office flop and which Dahl was very disappointed with and hated the changes so much that he refused to allow the sequel book to be made into a movie? The one where, when Tim Burton went to visit the author's former house to get an idea of what the guy was like and immediately recognized it as Charlie Bucket's house, Liccy Dahl declared that, finally, somebody got it! That version?
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And a more faithful LOTR trilogy would have sucked balls.
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Originally Posted by Vox Populi
A movie isn't better just because it's faithful to the source. Someone could make a more faithful version of Wizard of Oz, but I doubt it will be as good as the 1939 classic. Kubrick's The Shining was much better and more interesting than the faithful TV version.
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- CaptainFoamerang
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As would a more faithful Interview with a Vampire.
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Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
And a more faithful LOTR trilogy would have sucked balls.
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The too faithful for it's own good edition of Lord of the rings. Now with an extra 5 hours of footage...all of the local wildlife and terrain in up close detail.
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Originally Posted by CaptainFoamerang
And a more faithful LOTR trilogy would have sucked balls.
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The numbers don't seem to support that conclusion. Both movies maintained their screens for two weeks, and both began to unwind after that second week when numbers dropped to similar levels. Once a movie starts dropping off of screens, you can't keep comparing per-screen revenue across movies in different release weeks, because the act of contracting the screens affects the per-screen numbers. That's why Scott Pilgrim's weekend numbers actually blip upward in weekend four compared to the previous weekend, because it was now in about half the screens it was on in weekend three. That's a smaller number of people compacting into an even smaller number of screens. But the per-screen numbers are already small enough that expanding the number of screens wouldn't significantly increase box office materially.|
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
My point is Universal allowed theaters to opt out of SP a week to soon.
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A movie like Eat Pray Love is an even worse comparison. That movie demonstrates significantly stronger legs than Scott Pilgrim, holding its numbers above the threshold a week longer and suffering only a small per-screen drop when its numbers were cut by only a small amount - suggesting that the interest in the movie was dropping slower than most films do at that point in their release. There's no way to argue that somehow EPL is stealing screens from SP. EPL earned those screens with much stronger overall numbers. And when you factor in the fact that SP's screens had to be cut in half just to achieve those per-screen numbers, that all but proves to me EPL has the stronger legs. SP wouldn't make better use of those screens than EPL even though SP's per screen numbers last week were slightly higher. They would have just diluted those viewers.
Basically, SP's per-screen numbers for last weekend are only higher than VS's and EPL's *because* of the large reduction in screens that took place prior last weekend. My guess is that an examination of the other films would show a similar pattern.
The numbers suggest that the theater operators are collectively employing the same strategy for both movies based on the revenue numbers. I don't see significant bias between those two movies in terms of deployment strategy except for the fact that Vampires Suck and EPL opened on 10%-15% more screens initially. But the screen allocations seem to be entirely consistent with the strategies I see most everywhere else I've looked so far.
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Fine lets roll back and compare 2nd weekend/week box office between SP and Vampires Suck before either lost their first batch of theaters.
Scott Pilgrim - $1845/$2825 - 2820 theaters - dropped from 1255 theaters for week 3
Vampire Sucks - $1615/$2068 - 3233 theaters - dropped only 799 theaters for week 3
So at the end of it's 2nd week, Scott Pilgrim loss 44% of it's theaters compared to only 25% for Vampires Suck yet earned 36% more money during the preceding week. That's what sticks in my claw.
When SP was jettisoned for week 3 there were two new films with a wide release, Takers and The Last Exorcism and a limit release of the extended version of Avatar. So maybe Scott Pilgrim was the movie with the lowest box office and was bumped to make room. However Vampires Suck faced three new films on wide release leading into it's 3rd week, had a worse week 2 box office than Scott Pilgrim but was displaced from far fewer theaters.
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I think that's great to hear - You don't normally see that kind of support from the studio.
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Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
Meanwhile, it's hard to say whether Universal is setting up expectations for a cult DVD hit or organizing a retreat under fire.
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Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
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I think/hope you mean "craw."
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Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Fine lets roll back and compare 2nd weekend/week box office between SP and Vampires Suck before either lost their first batch of theaters.
Scott Pilgrim - $1845/$2825 - 2820 theaters - dropped from 1255 theaters for week 3 Vampire Sucks - $1615/$2068 - 3233 theaters - dropped only 799 theaters for week 3 So at the end of it's 2nd week, Scott Pilgrim loss 44% of it's theaters compared to only 25% for Vampires Suck yet earned 36% more money during the preceding week. That's what sticks in my claw. |
Thanks for eight fun years, Paragon.
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Unfortunately, that quote came from a studio exec just after SPvtW's disappointing opening weekend, so I don't read it as especially encouraging for the film. The studio line could be more cutting losses on the film while it's in theaters without alienating Edgar Wright, who still has a lot of potential in his directorial career. That said, I have no idea how Wright's previous films performed on DVD, so I can't guess at what Universal's expectations for this one are.|
Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
I think that's great to hear - You don't normally see that kind of support from the studio.
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At any rate, we'll see how it performs this weekend and how many screens it remains on.
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Maybe...|
Originally Posted by ChrisMoses
I think/hope you mean "craw."
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Wooop, wooop, wooop!
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You may have a better case there than on the concurrent week numbers. An analysis of the daily numbers suggests that not only was Scott Pilgrim's screens reduced more heavily in week two (although random spot checking movies suggests SP is not extraordinary in this regard) theater operators were also more willing to yank SP for mid-week releases. The American opened on Wednesday, September 1. That day saw a significant intra-week drop in SP screens, and no change in VS screens. Eat Pray Love and Inception both lost only marginally (but given those movies' numbers, that's entirely understandable). Piranha 3D and Nancy McPhee lost no screens (but that would have only been week 2 for those releases).|
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Fine lets roll back and compare 2nd weekend/week box office between SP and Vampires Suck before either lost their first batch of theaters.
Scott Pilgrim - $1845/$2825 - 2820 theaters - dropped from 1255 theaters for week 3 Vampire Sucks - $1615/$2068 - 3233 theaters - dropped only 799 theaters for week 3 So at the end of it's 2nd week, Scott Pilgrim loss 44% of it's theaters compared to only 25% for Vampires Suck yet earned 36% more money during the preceding week. That's what sticks in my claw. When SP was jettisoned for week 3 there were two new films with a wide release, Takers and The Last Exorcism and a limit release of the extended version of Avatar. So maybe Scott Pilgrim was the movie with the lowest box office and was bumped to make room. However Vampires Suck faced three new films on wide release leading into it's 3rd week, had a worse week 2 box office than Scott Pilgrim but was displaced from far fewer theaters. |
Come to think of it, if it wasn't for Vampires Suck, there would be reasonable explanations for Scott Pilgrim's screen logic compared to all other movies. Its specifically VS that seems to suggest that either theater owners disliked SP more than normal, or liked VS more than normal, or both.
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It's funny because when you wrote 'claw' I thought of Zoidberg and his Christmas card with Santa Claws. |
Originally Posted by Father Xmas
Maybe...
Wooop, wooop, wooop! |
total kick to the gut
This is like having Ra's Al Ghul show up at your birthday party.
Like I said in the comments thread for that Cracked article: Scott Pilgrim's lack of success was mostly due to it coming out on the same weekend as the most anticipated action film of the summer and a highly anticipated chick flick as well. If it had come out one weekend before or after it probably would have done much better.
Then again, it did have Michael Cera as the lead and I know a lot of people who just hate that kid. Including myself.
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Very much agreed. Sometimes adaptations make changes for the better.
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Originally Posted by Vox Populi
A movie isn't better just because it's faithful to the source. Someone could make a more faithful version of Wizard of Oz, but I doubt it will be as good as the 1939 classic. Kubrick's The Shining was much better and more interesting than the faithful TV version.
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Tales of Judgment. Also here, instead of that other place.
good luck D.B.B.