Flop Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Well, a few weeks ago I made a prediction about Apocalypto's prospective box office as a side note in a review. And I was wrong. Not about the idea that Apocalypto would be a flop -- more on that later -- but to do so in the first place. First of all, a review is no place for box-office prognostication -- it's foolish to pretend movies don't cost, and make, money, but that's not my beat, frankly. I was just plain angry after Apocalypto -- it's one of those movies that is, to me, so bad it doesn't just represent the presence of bad storytelling but also the absence of whatever four movies we could have had in its place.

I mean, Apocalypto was budgeted at $40 million -- not a lot by modern standards, but a heck of a lot when you consider that it was in fact shot on video. (I'd hesitate to guess what a shot-on-film Apocalypto would have cost -- $60 million? A hundred million?) Add in the usual 50% of the orginal budget for prints and advertising – the cost of posters, commercials, and the shipping and manufacture of heavy, celluloid prints – and you get approximately $60 million total. And all I can think of is the four $10 million dollar movies you could have gotten instead -- give $10 to Karen Moncrieff, $10 to David Gordon Green, $10 to Kasi Lemmons and $10 to Don McKellar, say -- and have gotten at least one film more interesting than Apocalypto. As for my suggestion that Apocalypto was going to be a flop? (Actually, what I said was "(Shot for approximately $40 million, it's nearly impossible to imagine Apocalypto making more than a quarter of that investment back.)") So, if we look at the numbers? Or, precisely, a budget of $40 million with a P&A investment of another $20 mil, as compared to the initial two-week box office of $28 million? Right now, Apocalypto's made 50% of what it cost -- better than some movies do, more than others. (And my prediction was wrong, and I'll say that. It wasn't that far wrong, though, and I don't think Apocalypto's suddenly gonna sell tickets like a house on fire, either.) But, frankly, the even more telling statistic isn't Apocalypto's 46% drop-off in box office, which is pretty much a shellacking -- it's the fact that Mel Gibson's prior film before Apocalypto opened to $83 million. And if your last film opened to $83 million and your newest film opened to $15 that, then, makes your new film a flop -- a big, fat flop -- that lands broken and splay-legged on the cold, hard ground of the court of public opinion with the unspinnable thud of incontrovertible fact.

Math is fun,

J.

Place your bets, kiddies – somebody at Universal is about to get pink slipped. The studio's King Kong made just $66.2 million from Wednesday through Sunday – a huge disappointment when you consider that The Chronicles of Narnia made about a million dollars more in only three days last week.

Universal, of course, is already running all kinds of spin on this. But-but-but it's three hours long, which means it can't book as many showtimes! (Didn't someone think of that before the thing opened?) But-but-but everyone is too busy Christmas shopping to go to the movies! But-but-but Titanic started slow, too! But-but-but grosses increased 40% from Friday to Saturday! (Well, yeah, but so did Aeon Flux.) But-but-but Kong doesn't have the built-in audience of Lord of the Rings! (Well, yeah, but it also doesn't specifically exclude those of us who chiefly associate "hobbits" with "those guys who never move out of their mother's basement".) But the best quote in the Reuters writeup comes from Box Office Mojo's Brandon Gray. Kong was " realistically, a tough sell," Gray says, because "it's incredibly tricky to get audiences excited about a movie that doesn't have a strong human character." Zing!

It takes only a glance at the rest of the Top Ten to see that Universal's claim that we were all too busy scooping up presents to hit the cinemas is all wrong. Narnia, for instance, held on steady, coming in at number 2 with $31.7 million, and Fox's The Family Stone slightly outdid expectations, earning $12.7 million and landing in third place. So what went wrong here? And will Kong come back from behind to, at the very least, pay off the Big Fake Gorilla's outstanding debts? Full top ten after the jump, and for more detailed figures, try this.