Premature Congratulations
Let me take you all the way back to Tuesday 17th. Why? Because a little something called the hype machine and viral marketing world was in full effect making the American movie consumer wet their pants over what was to be the greatest monster movie debut since the Stay Puft Marsh Mellow man crept across the screen in the mid eighties. All weekend movie blogs were wetting their pants over the box office possibilities 40 million dollar weekend predictions and questions over Cloverfield being the best movie of the year...
Welcome to January 27th. In Cloverfield's second weekend in theatres the numbers have come in and what we find is JJ Abrams panicing to get his mom in the multiplex. Cloverfield opened and destroyed the theatres: 41 million dollars. The biggest January weekend pull ever. It's second week? 12.7 million. That is barely 30 percent of its gaudy opening weekend. What happened? I guess people decided an hour and a half of shaky cam wasn't worth 10 bucks a ticket. Maybe, monster film fans will only see a movie over and over again if they get to see the monster for more than 10 minutes. Hey maybe the idea of people saw I Am Legend and decided New York can only be destroyed so many times before they stop caring. Or Maybe it was all hype.
My choice to see 27 Dresses last weekend just keeps looking better and better. Sure it only made 22 million dollars in it's opening weekend (JJ Abrams a la 1/17/08 "22 million HA!"), but its second time around it held strong at 60% ($13.6M) of its opening take... I guess all that sequel talk can be forgotten. Here are a couple other hypetastic movies that had a rather pungent odor after their opening weeks: Rob Zombie's Halloween (open: 31m, total gross to date: 77m, also set a record for box office pull on labor day), Evan Almighty (open: 31M, total: 100M Domestic, Movie Budget: suspected 200M), Snakes on a Plane (open: 15M, Total: 79M).
So what do we learned? A bad spoof comedy mocking year old movies, a rehash of Rambo, and a chick flick all beat out a marketing monster flick (pun intended) It all boils down to don't believe the hype.
Welcome to January 27th. In Cloverfield's second weekend in theatres the numbers have come in and what we find is JJ Abrams panicing to get his mom in the multiplex. Cloverfield opened and destroyed the theatres: 41 million dollars. The biggest January weekend pull ever. It's second week? 12.7 million. That is barely 30 percent of its gaudy opening weekend. What happened? I guess people decided an hour and a half of shaky cam wasn't worth 10 bucks a ticket. Maybe, monster film fans will only see a movie over and over again if they get to see the monster for more than 10 minutes. Hey maybe the idea of people saw I Am Legend and decided New York can only be destroyed so many times before they stop caring. Or Maybe it was all hype.
My choice to see 27 Dresses last weekend just keeps looking better and better. Sure it only made 22 million dollars in it's opening weekend (JJ Abrams a la 1/17/08 "22 million HA!"), but its second time around it held strong at 60% ($13.6M) of its opening take... I guess all that sequel talk can be forgotten. Here are a couple other hypetastic movies that had a rather pungent odor after their opening weeks: Rob Zombie's Halloween (open: 31m, total gross to date: 77m, also set a record for box office pull on labor day), Evan Almighty (open: 31M, total: 100M Domestic, Movie Budget: suspected 200M), Snakes on a Plane (open: 15M, Total: 79M).
So what do we learned? A bad spoof comedy mocking year old movies, a rehash of Rambo, and a chick flick all beat out a marketing monster flick (pun intended) It all boils down to don't believe the hype.
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