Tag Archives: flop

Jul 17 2013

Pacific Rim flops the test against Monsters University and sun

per the UK Daily Guardian

http://tinyurl.com/owjprju

 

Disney sequel is top at the UK box office as Pacific Rim fails to impress, and Andre Rieu’s live concert pulls in the profits

 

The winner

The third successive sunny weekend continued to see tough conditions for film exhibition in the UK, with significant drops for existing films, and below-expected numbers for new entrants. At least there wasn’t a historic Wimbledon final to contend with. Top title was Disney-Pixar’s Monsters University, with £3.46m, well ahead of rival new entrant Pacific Rim.

  1. Pacific Rim
  2. Production year: 2013
  3. Country: USA
  4. Cert (UK): 12A
  5. Runtime: 131 mins
  6. Directors: Guillermo del Toro
  7. Cast: Burn Gorman, Charlie Day, Charlie Hunnam, Idris Elba, Rinko Kikuchi, Ron Perlman
  8. More on this film

Disney cheerfully announced, “Monsters University Withstands the Heat as it Comes Top of the Class at #1 at UK Box Office,” adding that the film had achieved strong evening business, indicating a broad audience that extends beyond the family market. Fair enough, but that’s only the 11th best three-day debut of 2013, behind Iron Man 3, Man of Steel,Despicable Me 2, Fast & Furious 6, Les Miserables, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover Part III, The Croods and Disney’s own Wreck-It Ralph and Oz the Great and Powerful. Predecessor Monsters Inc debuted with a much more impressive £9.20m back in 2002, including previews of £2.71m.

In Disney’s favour are the strong legs often exhibited by animated features. For example, The Croods opened with £3.52m plus £1.85m in previews, and is now at an impressive £26.2m. Monsters University has posted a very similar three-day debut, and could easily end up with a comparable number, especially with the whole school summer holiday ahead of it.

Animation is so far proving particularly robust in 2013, with The Croods, Despicable Me 2 (£27.1m) and Wreck-It Ralph (£23.8m) among the top eight grossers so far. Despicable Me 2 is steadily rising up the all-time animation rankings, and now has Shrek (£29.0m), A Bug’s Life (£29.4m) and Chicken Run (£29.5m) in its sights.

Link to video: Monsters University

The disappointment

Critics and audiences bemoan Hollywood’s obsession with sequels and film based on established material such as comicbooks, TV shows and young adult fiction, but once again the numbers seem to support the studios’ risk-averse thinking. Pacific Rim, debuting with £2.19m is the latest film that is struggling to engage audiences, having been based on characters that lacked pre-existing awareness. The number would be less of a problem had the production budget not been a reported $180m (£118.5m).

Last summer, Battleship, derided at the time as a costly flop, opened with £2.25m plus £1.51m in previews. Thanks to director Guillermo Del Toro‘s credible reputation, Pacific Rim might hold up stronger in the coming weeks, especially as temperatures cool. But at this point it hardly looks a profitable endeavour for backers Warners.

The other big commercial disappointment of the summer so far is likewise based on an original story: M Night Shyamalan‘s After Earth, which debuted just ahead of Pacific Rim with £2.25m, and is now at £6.25m. Of course, critics may carp that the problem with Pacific Rim and After Earth is their familiarity, rather than their originality. The only 2013 release based on original characters that’s above £20m box-office is The Croods.

The live event

Dutch violinist André Rieu once again proved the potency of live events beamed into UK cinemas, with a stunning £449,000 on Saturday evening (includes some Sunday encore showings), according to distributor CinemaLive. The company adds that official data gatherer Rentrak has verified the result as the biggest opening weekend for an artist music concert at UK cinemas, ahead of May 2012’s Westlife farewell performance.

UK audience interest for Rieu’s concerts, beamed in from his home town of Maastricht, has been steadily growing since they began transmission here in 2010. His summer concerts in 2011 and 2012 grossed £55,000 and £153,000 respectively at UK cinemas, and his Home for Christmas 2012 pulled in £250,000, according to CinemaLive. A point to note: Rieu plays a week’s worth of concerts, and the cinema event has in fact been recorded several days before live satellite transmission.

The arthouse scene

Is your local arthouse playing mostly summer blockbusters? If so, it’s hardly surprising given the dearth of commercially viable specialised fare right now. With animation, action and comedies occupying the top eight places of the chart (respect to genre straddler Now You See Me, offering something a bit different and holding well in fourth place with £5.4m to date), and Bollywood flick Bhaag Milkha Bhaag in at number nine, the top release targeting non-mainstream audiences is The Bling Ring. Next comes Behind the Candelabra, now in its sixth week of release – the fact that it is still beating the numerous arthouse films released in the past month tells its own story. Everything else grossed less than £20,000 at the weekend, and the Other Openers chart below is mostly a sorry tale of woe.

Link to video: The Bling Ring

The future

Overall, the weekend box-office is 43% down on the equivalent frame from 2012, although, as so often, the devil is in the details. A year ago the market was boosted by two successive weekends of previews in England and Wales for Ice Age 4: Continental Drift, totaling £4.8m – whereas there were no previews to add in for Monsters University or Pacific Rim. Cinema owners will now be pinning hopes on a) an end to the heatwave and b) a nice big opening from The World’s End, which reunites Edgar Wright with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. There’s also serial killer investigation The Frozen Ground, with Nicolas Cage, John Cusack and Vanessa Hudgens; Swedish thriller Easy Money with Joel Kinnaman; and arthouse offerings including Breathe In and Wadjda.

Top 10 films

1. Monsters University, £3,463,917 from 525 sites (New)

2. Despicable Me 2, £2,225,543 from 539 sites. Total: £27,082,903

3. Pacific Rim, £2,193,500 from 494 sites (New)

4. Now You See Me, £1,142,376 from 478 sites. Total: £5,366,612

5. The Internship, £397,660 from 388 sites. Total: £2,263,505

6. World War Z, £382,975 from 366 sites. Total: £13,242,263

7. Man of Steel, £278,607 from 317 sites. Total: £29,190,336

8. This Is the End, £181,367 from 265 sites. Total: £3,677,230

9. Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, 56 sites, £89,348

10. The Bling Ring, £76,540 from 75 sites. Total: £348,269

 

 

Jul 10 2013

‘Pacific Rim’ Looking Grim With $25 Million-$35 Million Opening

Per Variety.com

After spending the past two weeks trying to turn the tide for “Pacific Rim,” Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures now are bracing for what appears to be a gruesome inevitability for the $185 million-plus monster movie: A domestic opening ranging between $25 million and $35 million.

This weekend could be the second in a row in which an expensive non-sequel property bellyflops at the box office after “Lone Ranger” flamed out last weekend.

The impending doom has been pretty clear ever since “Pacific Rim” came on tracking early last month. And while there are certainly some last-minute hopeful signs for Warner and Legendary to cling to (i.e. strong reviews and unreliable tracking lately), there’s little chance that “Pacific Rim” will open well enough in the U.S. to counter its monster-sized budget and marketing costs.

FILM REVIEW: “Pacific Rim”

But before we delve into the negative, there are a few possible bright spots:

  • Positive reviews. As of Tuesday afternoon, the film has scored an 85% rating on RottenTomatoes, with a 98% rating among audiences who want to see the film. Exhibitor reactions to the film also have been better than expected.
  • Overseas. Warner launches “Pacific Rim” in 38 day-and-date territories, including the U.K., Mexico, Russia, South Korea, Italy and Australia.
  • Skewed tracking. “Pacific Rim” straddles the line of being a fanboy and family film, with heavy interest among boys, and tracking for younger auds is notoriously unreliable. Does that mean the film can double current projections? No.
  • Holiday frenzy. The buzz surrounding the Fourth of July weekend was still humming on Monday, when NRG — the most subscribed-to tracking service — released its most current weekend estimates. The company will revise those estimates Thursday.

All of those factors weigh in “Pacific Rim’s” favor, particularly the first, after Paramount managed to parlay strong early reviews for “World War Z” into a surprising $66 million domestic opening.

SEE MORE: Is ‘Pacific Rim’ Doomed to Be This Year’s ‘Battleship’?

But to be clear, an opening like that is not in the cards for “Pacific Rim” — not with competition from “Despicable Me 2″ and “Grown Ups 2,” both of which also have strong family appeal. Observers predict that “Despicable Me 2″ will win its second frame in the high-$40 millions, while “Grown Ups 2″ is expected to gross in the low-$40 million range. Both “Grown Ups 2″ and “Pacific Rim” are rated PG-13.

For “Pacific Rim,” which is a passion project for helmer Guillermo del Toro, the early July release date was likely modeled after “Transformers,” which opened with $70 million in 2007. That’s the kind of start Legendary expected to see when it greenlit the pricey ensemble project about an apocalyptic battle between aliens and robots created to fight them. But without a major star toplining the film, Warners — which came on board later to help finance 25% of the production cost — had to market the film based solely on the original concept. The studio only recently began highlighting the pic’s humor and lighter elements to help draw interest.

SEE MORE: How Legendary Is Trying to Turn Around Troubling Tracking for ‘Pacific Rim’

Tracking for the film outside the U.S. is strongest in Asia, with the area’s long history of creature features, but the pic is seeing only moderate interest in other parts of the world.

Some celebrities, including Kanye West, have taken to social media with positive reactions to the film. Videogame design icon Hideo Kojima also expressed his admiration in a tweet saying, “This film is not simply a film to be respected, but most importantly, it let us dream the future of entertainment movies.”

The film’s grim financial outlook notwithstanding, Kojima may have a point. If only the film’s budget could have been kept in check.