CMJ
May 17th, 2002, 06:41:32 PM
Really you guys should read his column. I just post stuff when he writes about SW, but it's ALWAYS great(even if you disagree with the dude). It's at thehotbutton.com for future reference.
Anyways...here's the relevant part of his column today....
***********************
The Force is with us.
According to Fox estimates, Star Wars: Episode Two – Attack of the Clones brought in $27 million on Thursday, a figure that includes Wednesday night’s midnight shows. And of course, the first maroon is calling it a disappointment.
I call Brandon Gray a maroon affectionately. He was a regular reader of the column as he developed his taste for box office analysis at USC and even wrote “Box Office Preview” and “Review” for me at roughcut.com when I decided my plate was too full. I took back the gig when I realized that I missed doing the numbers each week. In any case, Brandon is a smart guy and has managed to edge into Gitesh Pandaya’s turf (boxofficeguru.com) by pushing his own site (box officemojo.com) harder than Gitesh and in particular by filling the void that showbizdata.com left when it started charging for daily box office.
But even as Brandon is marking Clones’ opening – a rare Thursday opening, which gives “must see” folks a legitimate choice to wait for the weekend by coming right up onto Friday – as the fourth biggest opening day EVER, he is also calling it a disappointment, comparing it to Spider-Man and The Phantom Menace, which opened on a Wednesday and dropped to under $15 million on Thursday. Maroon!
Brandon is already questioning whether theaters will be burned by Lucas and Fox’s playdate demands… which is absurd. It’s as though everyone all of a sudden realized that there were negotiations for playdates at movie theaters. Pearl Harbor had tougher demands last summer with no movie stars and no track record to suggest that it would be playing to big numbers into weekend six. Spider-Man had six week demands, though to get over 6000 screens playing the film in the first two weekends, and not wanting to force multiplexes into choosing between Spider and Anakin, Sony was more flexible than Fox/Lucas.
(LATE NOTE FROM DP: As of Friday afternoon, Brandon’s critical analysis of the Thursday numbers has disappeared from his site and been replaced by Fox’s final number, $30.1 million, which although only $2 million better than the original estimate, is now a record and therefore, “soaring” and “scorching” and of course, all the worries about exhibitors “suffering” from six week deals are gone as well. While I am pleased to see that Brandon has found some equilibrium on the story – I take no responsibility for that – I am a great fan of taking the heat when you get caught short. Ironically, Matt Drudge was not made to look silly because he didn’t editorialize about the numbers… he just linked to Brandon’s early number story. But this is the time to look at reality vs. perception. $2 million is less than a half a percent of what Clones’ eventual gross will be… did it really make the difference between a positive story and a negative one? Would $2 million more or less for a movie like About A Boy – unless it were the difference between a seven and eight figure gross – matter at all? $13 million? $15 million? You’d never notice. We need to be careful about not emceeing horse races… some people have memories.)
However, the thing to keep in mind about Clones is that Lucas’ demands are part traditional exhibition and part – perhaps primarily – about product quality. It is not bull-DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR- when Lucas says that he cares about the quality of the screens on which his movie plays. As one reader pointed out, traditional projection problems, like aging bulbs, make a difference, but particularly make a difference on a picture like Star Wars, which is so rich and so diverse visually.
The point is, entertainment writers are suddenly throwing around the commitments theaters are making to Star Wars like they are incredibly extravagant. They are not. If Lucas wanted to throw his weight around, he could have made moves to hurt Spider-Man by making theaters choose. He could have had the Star Wars trailer playing in every multi for the last year or two. He could have gotten theaters to build in special pricing for opening weekend. He could have destroyed the rules. The idea that exhibitors are going to be hurt by Clones is just nuts. And I’ll tell you something else. If Clones hit a wall in the second weekend and fell off to, say, $20 million… I bet George would be the first guy to tell Fox to release theaters from their deals and to stop the bleeding… something Disney could have made a lot of friends doing in weekend four of Pearl Harbor last summer. If Clones was to be a mere $200 million movie, not only would Lucas still make a ton of money, but it would be in his interest to protect Episode Three.
Of course, that is not going to happen. Episode Two will have a $105 million four-day (or something like that) and some people will paint that, foolishly, as a disappointment. And when Clones passes Spider-Man somewhere around the $330 million mark, they’ll still be calling it a disappointment. And even if I’m wrong and Spider-Man does $400 million and Clones does $350 million, they will still be fools to be using the word disappointment.
But George Lucas doesn’t need me defending his box office numbers. Part of what I do admire about Lucas is that just keeps rolling along. He and his team make decisions and they move forward. While the barbs and arrows surely hurt, the empire marches on.
And to answer one reader who wrote in yesterday, I do think Clones works on the level it was intended. It is a visual feast. Stuff like Natalie Portman’s constant wardrobe changes are exactly the kind of camp that marked the original and that I wish there was more of in this film. What this series of three is missing in spades is the wildcard. Not only did Lucas have a Han Solo, but he upped the ante in Empire with Lando, another guy who could go either way, good or bad. In these films, we know the fate of the major characters, at least to some degree. There are no “Luke, I am your father” moments. Mace Windu is not double dealing. There isn’t an element in the Jedi counsel that wants Anakin to go to the dark side because they know that it needs to happen in order to create eventual balance in The Force and they are willing to sacrifice the next 30 years in order to have the final outcome of Return of the Jedi happen. And Episode Three is in real danger of becoming little more than housekeeping, which would be a shame. But in the meanwhile, Episode Two has lots of action, lots of interesting new characters, incredible images and Yoda. Compare it not to your Star Wars fantasies and to the rest of what’s out there and it rates pretty well.
Anyways...here's the relevant part of his column today....
***********************
The Force is with us.
According to Fox estimates, Star Wars: Episode Two – Attack of the Clones brought in $27 million on Thursday, a figure that includes Wednesday night’s midnight shows. And of course, the first maroon is calling it a disappointment.
I call Brandon Gray a maroon affectionately. He was a regular reader of the column as he developed his taste for box office analysis at USC and even wrote “Box Office Preview” and “Review” for me at roughcut.com when I decided my plate was too full. I took back the gig when I realized that I missed doing the numbers each week. In any case, Brandon is a smart guy and has managed to edge into Gitesh Pandaya’s turf (boxofficeguru.com) by pushing his own site (box officemojo.com) harder than Gitesh and in particular by filling the void that showbizdata.com left when it started charging for daily box office.
But even as Brandon is marking Clones’ opening – a rare Thursday opening, which gives “must see” folks a legitimate choice to wait for the weekend by coming right up onto Friday – as the fourth biggest opening day EVER, he is also calling it a disappointment, comparing it to Spider-Man and The Phantom Menace, which opened on a Wednesday and dropped to under $15 million on Thursday. Maroon!
Brandon is already questioning whether theaters will be burned by Lucas and Fox’s playdate demands… which is absurd. It’s as though everyone all of a sudden realized that there were negotiations for playdates at movie theaters. Pearl Harbor had tougher demands last summer with no movie stars and no track record to suggest that it would be playing to big numbers into weekend six. Spider-Man had six week demands, though to get over 6000 screens playing the film in the first two weekends, and not wanting to force multiplexes into choosing between Spider and Anakin, Sony was more flexible than Fox/Lucas.
(LATE NOTE FROM DP: As of Friday afternoon, Brandon’s critical analysis of the Thursday numbers has disappeared from his site and been replaced by Fox’s final number, $30.1 million, which although only $2 million better than the original estimate, is now a record and therefore, “soaring” and “scorching” and of course, all the worries about exhibitors “suffering” from six week deals are gone as well. While I am pleased to see that Brandon has found some equilibrium on the story – I take no responsibility for that – I am a great fan of taking the heat when you get caught short. Ironically, Matt Drudge was not made to look silly because he didn’t editorialize about the numbers… he just linked to Brandon’s early number story. But this is the time to look at reality vs. perception. $2 million is less than a half a percent of what Clones’ eventual gross will be… did it really make the difference between a positive story and a negative one? Would $2 million more or less for a movie like About A Boy – unless it were the difference between a seven and eight figure gross – matter at all? $13 million? $15 million? You’d never notice. We need to be careful about not emceeing horse races… some people have memories.)
However, the thing to keep in mind about Clones is that Lucas’ demands are part traditional exhibition and part – perhaps primarily – about product quality. It is not bull-DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR--DO-NOT-SWEAR- when Lucas says that he cares about the quality of the screens on which his movie plays. As one reader pointed out, traditional projection problems, like aging bulbs, make a difference, but particularly make a difference on a picture like Star Wars, which is so rich and so diverse visually.
The point is, entertainment writers are suddenly throwing around the commitments theaters are making to Star Wars like they are incredibly extravagant. They are not. If Lucas wanted to throw his weight around, he could have made moves to hurt Spider-Man by making theaters choose. He could have had the Star Wars trailer playing in every multi for the last year or two. He could have gotten theaters to build in special pricing for opening weekend. He could have destroyed the rules. The idea that exhibitors are going to be hurt by Clones is just nuts. And I’ll tell you something else. If Clones hit a wall in the second weekend and fell off to, say, $20 million… I bet George would be the first guy to tell Fox to release theaters from their deals and to stop the bleeding… something Disney could have made a lot of friends doing in weekend four of Pearl Harbor last summer. If Clones was to be a mere $200 million movie, not only would Lucas still make a ton of money, but it would be in his interest to protect Episode Three.
Of course, that is not going to happen. Episode Two will have a $105 million four-day (or something like that) and some people will paint that, foolishly, as a disappointment. And when Clones passes Spider-Man somewhere around the $330 million mark, they’ll still be calling it a disappointment. And even if I’m wrong and Spider-Man does $400 million and Clones does $350 million, they will still be fools to be using the word disappointment.
But George Lucas doesn’t need me defending his box office numbers. Part of what I do admire about Lucas is that just keeps rolling along. He and his team make decisions and they move forward. While the barbs and arrows surely hurt, the empire marches on.
And to answer one reader who wrote in yesterday, I do think Clones works on the level it was intended. It is a visual feast. Stuff like Natalie Portman’s constant wardrobe changes are exactly the kind of camp that marked the original and that I wish there was more of in this film. What this series of three is missing in spades is the wildcard. Not only did Lucas have a Han Solo, but he upped the ante in Empire with Lando, another guy who could go either way, good or bad. In these films, we know the fate of the major characters, at least to some degree. There are no “Luke, I am your father” moments. Mace Windu is not double dealing. There isn’t an element in the Jedi counsel that wants Anakin to go to the dark side because they know that it needs to happen in order to create eventual balance in The Force and they are willing to sacrifice the next 30 years in order to have the final outcome of Return of the Jedi happen. And Episode Three is in real danger of becoming little more than housekeeping, which would be a shame. But in the meanwhile, Episode Two has lots of action, lots of interesting new characters, incredible images and Yoda. Compare it not to your Star Wars fantasies and to the rest of what’s out there and it rates pretty well.