There are those who believe in the depths of their souls that humanity is in a state of awakening, and that we are poised to set aside our animalistic urges and embrace a future of enlightened awareness. These people are clearly not paying attention to movie ticket sales.
Are there breasts? That’s $20 million right there. Is the movie a remake of a TV show? That’ll get you $35 mil right out of the gate, just on name recognition and foolishly optimistic nostalgia. Is the movie a sequel, or, better yet, a three-quel? Go order your yacht.
This summer we received a full range of what studios think the public wants to see. Apparently the public was demanding a confusing and bland Spider-Man movie, a confusing and bland Pirates movie, a Shrek movie that wasn’t interesting enough to be confusing (but was bland), and an Adam Sandler movie (which tells you all you need to know).
So I’ve given up on expecting good things in Monday’s box office totals. “Rush Hour 3,” almost universally described as a pale and unfunny imitation of itself, took in $50.3 million this weekend. “Stardust,” a bright and funny and adventurous tale, managed $9 million. I wasn’t standing in front of the theaters yelling, “What’s wrong with you people?” – too hot out there – but I was definitely thinking it.
Ah, but I can enjoy seeing which movies tanked. There’s a German term, “schadenfreude,” which refers to taking pleasure in the misfortunes of others. I think that’s a perfect description of the gleeful feeling I had when I saw that “Daddy Day Camp” opened with a measly $3.3 million. Last week I was dancing at my desk because “Bratz” didn’t make $5 mil and I was positively cackling because Lindsey Lohan’s torture-porn movie “I Know Who Killed Me” went down the tubes. Ha! America may not like what I like, but at least it has some standards!
And I have the satisfaction of knowing that even the movies that didn’t do as well as I’d hoped will still triumph eventually. “Stardust,” being a comedy-drama-romantic-adventure-fairy-tale, is most often compared to “The Princess Bride,” another hard-to-market movie that underperformed at the box office but took off in video sales, and I see no reason why it won’t happen again. “Serenity,” the big-screen sequel to the TV show “Firefly,” barely broke even in the theaters, but tremendous DVD sales have led to a collector’s edition 2-disc set with an hour of new stuff coming Aug. 21.
This would tend to suggest that people did want to see these movies, they just didn’t know it at first. And there were some pretty decent flicks this summer. “Waitress” and “Ratatoulle” were excellent, “Live Fast or Die Hard” and “Oceans 13” redeemed themselves from prior shameful sequels, “The Simpsons Movie” was better than some seasons of “The Simpsons,” and “The Bourne Ultimatum” raised its own bar, again. Maybe movie-goers aren’t that stupid after all. Maybe it’s the marketers, and the people who cut the trailers. Maybe it’s the studios who think that compulsive self-copying and plenty of fart jokes are all you need for box office success.
“AWN reports that the release date for Shrek 4 has been set by DreamWorks Animation and Paramount as May 21, 2010. DreamWorks Animation chief Jeffrey Katzenberg said during an earnings call earlier this week that there will be a Shrek 5 as well.” (Animated News)
Sigh.
