2010 at the Box Office (1 Viewer)

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Michael Reuben

...and almost everything I really liked was either foreign or independent (like Winter's Bone).

I assume that Winter's Bone didn't get a big release but it played by me (for suburbia, I get to see a decent amount of smaller movies). I meant to go on the last day it was playing but got caught up with some stuff and missed it. From what I heard about the movie, I missed a pretty good picture.


I'm definitely not a "All new movies are bad" kind of guy but 2010 hasn't been a banner year. I enjoyed a good number of movies (Shutter Island, The Runaways, Kick-Ass, Get Him To The Greek, Toy Story 3, The Kids Are All Right, Inception, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, The Last Exorcism, Machete, Easy A, The Town, The Social Network and Jackass 3D) but I think only Toy Story 3 and The Social Network are Best Picture material out of what I've seen.

 

[Michael Elliott]

WINTER'S BONE is the best movie I've seen so far.


The rest of the really good movies (SHUTTER, GHOST WRITER, SOL. MAN, INCEPTION) were 3 1/2 star films to me. Nothing I could see as "Best Picture" so I hope some of the upcoming stuff is better. Even "trash" like the horror genre has delivered one poor film after another and this is coming after 2010 gave us some pretty decent stuff.

 

[Michael Reuben]

Two that I'm looking forward to: True Grit and Biutiful.

 

[Jeremiah]

I am a little pissed Black Swan isn't playing near me, I was all geeked for it until I saw it's playing 60 miles away. Do they play on giving it a wider release later in the month? I figured it would tomarrow but I looked and it's still not close.

 

[TravisR]

^ Don't quote me but since it's almost guaranteed to be nominated for Best Picture (if only because they need to nominate 10 movies and there's little competition so far), I think it will definitely get a wider release at some point.


For what it's worth, I think True Girt looks very promising. Also, I'll probably check out I Love You, Phillip Morris, The Fighter & Somewhere and I'll wait until I hear reviews on How Do You Know, Country Strong and Blue Valentine (which could be good but all I've really heard about it is that it beat the NC-17 rating).

 

[JayMacey]

OK. Sorry, that had me confused

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Looks like Tron Legacy came in a bit above expectations with a $43.6 million opening weekend. A staggering 23 percent of the gross came from the film's 234 IMAX 3D theaters.

 

[TerryRL]

While a $44 million debut is definitely nothing to feel bad about. Disney was expecting an opening haul north of the $50 million mark. This weekend's percentage hit will be very telling in regards to whether or not the Mouse House will have a new franchise to hang their hats on.

 

[SilverWook]

Do the studios factor in the recent abominable winter weather's effects on the box office?

 

[TerryRL]

Yes they do.

 

[Brandon Conway]

I'm glad to see the day-to-day holding of Voyage of the Dawn Treader during the winter break. Seems like a lot of its audience was waiting until school was out and families were together. I'm hoping the total world wide box office makes it to $350-375 mil, which coupled with home video sales should be enough to greenlight The Silver Chair, though likely at a smaller budget ($75-90 mil.). Right now it's at $260 mil. worldwide.


By compariosn, Prince Caspian cost $225 million (with a much larger ad budget I suspect) and made just $420 worldwide with good home video sales and we got Voyage. Voyage cost $155 with a decent but not outlandish ad budget so I would think my $350-375 number should be correct.

 

[Malcolm R]

Originally Posted by Brandon Conway

I'm hoping the total world wide box office makes it to $350-375 mil, which coupled with home video sales should be enough to greenlight The Silver Chair, though likely at a smaller budget ($75-90 mil.). Right now it's at $260 mil. worldwide.

Is it even possible these days to make an FX-heavy fantasy film for less than $150 million? Isn't the budget for the two "Hobbit" films over $600 million?

 

[Adam Lenhardt]

Originally Posted by Malcolm R

Is it even possible these days to make an FX-heavy fantasy film for less than $150 million? Isn't the budget for the two "Hobbit" films over $600 million?

What it costs you is eye candy. This series has always been too heavy on eye candy, anyway. The biggest F/X shots in a "Silver Chair" film would come right at the beginning, with Aslan sending the children soaring over Narnia. Most of the rest can be achieved with trick photography. It's a much more intimate story, with only three characters for a good chunk of the story.

 

[TerryRL]

Originally Posted by Malcolm R

Isn't the budget for the two "Hobbit" films over $600 million?

The budget for the two 'Hobbit' flicks is in the neighborhood of $670-$700 million.


After a somewhat soft opening ($24.0 million) 'Dawn Treader' has shown sturdy legs during the last couple of weeks, enough for Fox and Walden Media execs to begin talking about the next film in the series.

 

[TerryRL]

The early year-end numbers are not encouraging as it looks as though the month of December only managed about $650 million at the box office, marking the lowest number the frame has seen since 1999. With only about 81 million admissions sold in the month (by comparison last December tallied 142 million ticket sales), this will easily go down as the worst attended December in movie theaters since the mid-1990s. Overall, 2010 pulled in $10.3 billion domestically, the second biggest in history behind last year's $10.6 billion mark, but given that ticket sales are at the highest they've ever been 2010's 1.3 billion worth of admission sales ranks as the lowest the industry has had since 1995.

The suits at the studios are hoping (praying actually) that 2011 turns things around.

 

[Robert Crawford]

Originally Posted by TerryRL

The early year-end numbers are not encouraging as it looks as though the month of December only managed about $650 million at the box office, marking the lowest number the frame has seen since 1999. With only about 81 million admissions sold in the month (by comparison last December tallied 142 million ticket sales), this will easily go down as the worst attended December in movie theaters since the mid-1990s. Overall, 2010 pulled in $10.3 billion domestically, the second biggest in history behind last year's $10.6 billion mark, but given that ticket sales are at the highest they've ever been 2010's 1.3 billion worth of admission sales ranks as the lowest the industry has had since 1995.

The suits at the studios are hoping (praying actually) that 2011 turns things around.

Perhaps the suits should give us better films then.

 

[TravisR]

Originally Posted by Robert Crawford

Perhaps the suits should give us better films then.

Yeah, considering that the two biggest hits of the month are pretty bad movies (Tron and Little Fockers), they ought to be happy that they managed to make as much as they did.

 

[Malcolm R]

Originally Posted by Robert Crawford

The early year-end numbers are not encouraging as it looks as though the month of December only managed about $650 million at the box office, marking the lowest number the frame has seen since 1999. With only about 81 million admissions sold in the month (by comparison last December tallied 142 million ticket sales), this will easily go down as the worst attended December in movie theaters since the mid-1990s. Overall, 2010 pulled in $10.3 billion domestically, the second biggest in history behind last year's $10.6 billion mark, but given that ticket sales are at the highest they've ever been 2010's 1.3 billion worth of admission sales ranks as the lowest the industry has had since 1995.

The suits at the studios are hoping (praying actually) that 2011 turns things around.

Perhaps the suits should give us better films then.

[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I don't understand the thinking in Hollywood executive suites. If you put out garbage films, you'll get garbage grosses. Amazing how they never seem to make the connection that it's their poor product that results in the poor box office.


It's also depressing to look at the release schedule Terry posted in the 2011 BO thread. I'd expect next year to be even worse. Expectations cannot be that high if "Smurfs" and "Piranha 3DD" are expected to be the top grossing films of their respective months.

 

[Michael Elliott]

People have always enjoyed garbage films. I think the biggest problem is that they spend $120 million on something like HOW DO YOU KNOW. Even if it had turned out to be a minor hit it still would have lost a lot of money. Now I guess the film is going to lose over $100 million and I'm surprised more people aren't talking about this. Brooks has never really had a "hit" so why on Earth did a studio greenlight $120+ million? Even the WALL STREET sequel had a crazy budget. If it takes $100+ million for these type of movies then I'd be worried too.

 

[Edwin-S]

Everyone has their own definition of what makes up a "garbage" film. TravisR thinks TRON: Legacy was a bad film and I thought it delivered exactly what I was expecting: an FX heavy film. I certainly didn't go to TRON with the expectation that the film was going to have some kind of award winning writing. The original film didn't exactly achieve any accolades for the writing either.