2004 Box Office Predictions And Discussions (1 Viewer)

[Matt Stone]

Adam, you seem a little biased in your polling of people. I can understand that a good portion of the Church going community will see the film, as well as many movie buffs...but releasing a film that focus on a controversial topic will never yield Titanic-like numbers.

I've heard everyone talking about Return of the King for the last year, but I never had the feeling it was going to take down Titanic's take. While The Passion may be a huge hit, there's no way in hell it's getting close to 600 million.

 

[Brian Lawrence]

You can't really measure people's interest in the subject matter, by looking at the box-office take of two of the shittiest films made in the last decade. That's kinda like saying that there is little interest in sci-fi because Wing Commander & Virus where both flops.

 

[Brian W.]

There's a key word you kept using there repeatedly -- "church." Most Americans don't go to church on any kind of regular basis -- only about 40%, according to the latest Gallup poll I could find. (And I'm surprised it's that high, 'cause I don't have ANY friends that attend church regularly.)

And, no offense, but a church lobby in a teeny-weeny town of 2000 people in the middle of Kansas is hardly a cross-section of the American public.

For a film to make it to $500 million, it's got to have a lot of repeat viewers. The fact that this film is in a foreign language (though I have heard he's decided to subtitle it), is extremely graphically violent, and WILL MOST LIKELY BE RATED "R" unless he tones down the violence, which I think he's dead-set against...I can't see this as as something very many people will go see again and again. It's not exactly a "date movie."

$100 million is not impossible, but $500 million...dream on.

 

[Malcolm R]

But they were Christian films funded/made by Christian sources, with big grassroots pushes at the church level (and lots of promotion on the Christian cable channels).

Given the complaints about regular Hollywood films, shouldn't the Christian base have at least turned out to support those films even if they're not the greatest, just to support Christian filmmaking and encourage them to make more, hopefully better, films in the future? Given that "The Passion..." is likely to be a better film it may do a bit better than these other films, but I don't see it expanding beyond a small core audience and a few curious moviegoers.

Though I suppose it's probably a similar situation to those who say "they don't make any good family films anymore," then don't take their families to support the good films when they DO make them. This is why "The Cat in the Hat" makes $100M and "Peter Pan" makes $40M.

 

[Brian Lawrence]

That may be a part of it also. It's a damn shame when a great family film like Whale Rider fails to make 1/5th of what Cat in the Hat did at the box-office.
Having worked at a video store, I saw a lot of that, Mothers, that would gripe about all the foul language, violence and sex in movies today, but when renting a video for their 6-8 year olds, would ignore recommendations for Iron Giant, Anne of Green Gable, Secret of Roan Inish and end up getting Nutty Professor II or Austin Powers :rolleyes

 

[Adam_S]

None taken, but that wasn't the point. I was trying to point out that this film has extremely widespread awareness, people know the film is coming even if they haven't seen trailers.

500 million may be unrealistic, but so long as I'd be predicting at least 100-150 million more than everyone else predicting 15-80, I might as well shoot for the moon. Who knows, there's a one in a million shot it'll make it, I think it's possible it could.

In my opinion, everything I've read about the film is that it goes way beyond an insular church base. And noone was interested in seeing Left Behind with Kirk Cameron and a bunch of nonames. and people were upset at the initial video instead of theatrical release. iirc about seven years ago, people were hoping they'd cast Harrison Ford as Rayford and Brad PItt as Buck. The people who'd read the book and were always talking about it (I admit I did read the first two when they first came out, but the second was AWFUL) expected the book to get a caliber of treatment that would garner that kind of cast; they were extremely disapointed at the end result. Books in the Left Behind series eventually reached number one on the NYT bestseller list, it's possible TPOTC will be one of the biggest grossers of the year.

The Cat in the Hat bought its gross, and Peter Pan doesn't attract a wide family interest the way the Star appeal of Steve Martin in a comedy does. If whole family's decide to see a movie, the mom's and dad's are more likely to want to see a movie with adult stars they know and trust from being in other movies they enjoyed than a movie featuring all kids and some english guy. I'd say Peter Pan is having more trouble from Cheaper by the Dozen than anything else. If it had an open slot the way something like Spy Kids did in March 01, it would probably be doing much better.

Thanks Brian I'd forgotten about Prince of Egypt. That's a great comparison to Left Behind and OMega Code. You're exactly right that people know when they're being duped, especially fundamentalists with an attitude of suspicion that expects the media to attempt to dupe or mislead them every day.

Adam

 

[nolesrule]

Prince of Egypt was animated, rated PG, in English (mostly), aimed at and marketed to families and is a somewhat more universal story than the subject matter of Mel Gibson's film. With all that in mind, shouldn't it do worse than Prince of Egypt, considering it is a less accessible film?

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I continue to think the most comparable film to The Passion is Last Temptation of Christ. Both are very controversial, provocative looks at their subject. Both stirred up a big fuss before they were anywhere close to movie theaters. Both came from very prominent filmmakers.

Like I listed earlier, Last Temptation - which enjoyed a TREMENDOUSLY high sense of public awareness - actually made $8 million. Why in the world would Passion do significantly better?

 

[Larry Sutliff]

One reason may be that the people who went out of their way to avoid LAST TEMPTATION because they thought the subject matter offensive will actually go see THE PASSION(I think the people who avoided LAST TEMPTATION were wrong; the film took Christ more seriously than most of the glossy Hollywood Biblical epics of the past ever did).

I think Adam may have a point about many people who aren't regular moviegoers seeing THE PASSION. I know several people from Roman Catholic circles that I'm involved with who rarely go to the cinema, but will be seeing this film, and the interest among practicing Christians of all denominations is very high.
The main problem for the box office is that, even if many non-theater goers pay to see the film, the main film demographic-the teenagers who hang out at the local mall multiplex-will probably avoid it like the plague. So, I don't see the film being a gigantic BEN HUR/TITANIC size hit. But I do see it being successful on the strength of the religious folks who will go, and also many film buffs who just want to see an excellent and audacious film, regardless of their personal religious persuasion. Again, I don't think $100 Million is out of the question.

 

[Tino]

Hmmmm.....the weekend actuals are in and ROTK came in $2.5 million less than the $30.7 million estimate with an actual gross of $28.1 million. That's a pretty substantial overestimate and reminds me of the FOTR "controversies".

Why does New Line have so much trouble with the LOTR estimates? I mean, it's not like they need to inflate the grosses.

 

[Chris Atkins]

While this film may be controversial among the movie in-crowd (younger people who post here) and the Film Community writ large, in fly over territory it is anything but controversial (unlike LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST, which another poster alluded to). The very people who picketed LAST TEMPTATION will probably be first in line to see THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST.

So I think it has a chance to make some money. I mean, millions of people go to church every week and hear preaching on Jesus Christ, and this movie seems to be reasonably faithful to that kind of preaching. So let's not assume there aren't millions of people who WOULD be willing to see this film.

And this production will be far and above the quality of LEFT BEHIND or OMEGA CODE. I know strong Christians who refused to see those because they felt like they would just be bad movies, regardless of content. There is also a large portion of the Christian community (Protestant and Roman Catholic) that disagrees with the theology of the LEFT BEHIND and OMEGA CODE movies (pre-millenial and dispensational if you are keeping score; very different from Roman Catholic and Historic Protestant doctrine on the end times). By contrast, PASSION appears to be focused on the person and work of Jesus Christ, something there is a great deal of agreement on among Christians in America.

Anyway, this wasn't intended to be a theology lesson, just some insight into what Adam is basing his prediction on. I could see it making $100 million or more as well.

 

[Brian W.]

Well, the estimate for ROTK was about 28.7 million at some point. That's what Box Office Mojo reported. I don't know where the 30-plus million estimate that was in the mainstream media came from, because Box Office Mojo never reported it. I don't know if New Line upped it at some point or what. But the original estimate was 28 point something.

 

[Matt Stone]

Yes they did. When I checked yesterday afternoon Mojo was reporting 30+.

 

[nolesrule]

BOM had a $30M estimate yesterday, because that's what New Line had released. The problem with the original estimate is that it was a particularly hard weekend to predict. Friday was uncharacteristically high because it was an extra vacation day following New Years Day (Jan 2 on Friday), and Sunday was uncharacteristically low because everyone had to go back to school today after a long vacation and many adults also had a long vacation and had to go back to work for the first time since before Christmas (there is a significant number of companies that have a shutdown period between Christams and New Years).

The last time that scenario happened was 1998. And the time before that was 1987. Movie theater viewing habits have changed dramatically In the last 16 years.

When Jan 1 falls on a Mon, Tues or Wed, most people usually have to go back to work on Jan 2, so the following weekend works more like a normal weekend.

 

[Brian W.]

Well, originally they were reporting $28 mil, because I remember being surprised when I started hearing the $30 mil number on the news.

 

[Chris]

BTW, to add to my predictions:

For the first film, I voted $7 (not million, $7.00, assuming one person saw it, informed everyone else quickly, and all avoided) well, that didn't work out.

So, this time:

Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed.. $21.00. (my hope) realistic: $48M

:frowning:

 

[Brian W.]

I guess you're right, Tino, because I contacted Box Office Mojo to find out if I was crazy. I must be thinking of a blurb I read on TheOneRing that had the weekend estimate at $29 million, something sent in by a reader.

 

[Tino]

Hey, there's a first time for everything!

Still, great numbers though and I really hope it passes $400 million.

 

[David Forbes]

Actually, the odds against are far, far worse than a million to one.

 

[BrianShort]

How big of a release is The Passion getting? If it's only going to be a very limited release, then it doesn't really matter if everyone and their mother in Podunk, Kentucky want's to see it, since most likely they wont be able to until the video/DVD release. On the other hand, if it's a reasonably large release, let's say 2500 theaters or so, then I think it will do quite well. So just assuming it gets a fairly wide release, I'll say $100,000,000.

Brian