05.08.07

The Third Times the Charm

Posted in Movies, The Diesel at 6:24 pm by Diesel The

Holy Crap! Initial three day estimates for Spidey 3 were about $148 million.
According to this EW report when the actual figures came in today, they increased another 3 million. $151 million!? You have got to be kidding me. This is $15ish million more than the record set just last year by Pirates 2, which broke the old record held by 2002’s Spidey 1 (and briefly by Aquaman 1) by an astounding $20ish million. And, oh yeah, Pirates 3 comes out over Memorial Day weekend. Any bets on whether or not that breaks Spidey 3’s record? Not to mention the fact that Shrek 3 comes out May 18th, the weekend before Pirates 3. This is ridiculous. Depending on your point of view (or back end points) this is an abundance of riches or just an abundance of, er, abundance. Yes, these ridiculous numbers are due partly to the rapid rise in the cost of movie tickets ($12-$15 per for a weekend screening out here in LA), but also to the cost of the movies themselves.

Spidey 3 is rumored to have cost in the neighborhood of $350 million. There’s that “Holy Crap” for you. This movie had to become one of the highest grossing of all time just to make its money back! But the sonofabitch did it in almost one weekend, when adding in the worldwide gross. Insane. The cost of making these sequels rises for the same reason television shows become less profitable the longer they’re on the air and why every good baseball player ends up in Boston or New York: money, money, money. A sequel is, at its essence, is an attempt to give the audience exactly the same experience they had with the first movie, but changed just enough so that they’ll shell out more money for it. So, above all, you really just want everything the same. So after Spidey 1 is a huge hit, Tobey McGuire, Kirsten Dunst, and the actors all get a big raise, as well as the director Sam Raimi and all the producers, et al. Immediately you have a bigger budget. Want to do a third one? Yup, everyone gets another raise. Wanna come back for a 4th, even though all the good ideas you had were used in the first three? What the hell, you’re gonna get even more money. So the real question is: Where do I sign up?

So that was a huge digression from my main point, which was simply that it’s shocking how tightly packed these summer release schedules are. 3 of the biggest movies sequels ever, opening within 4 weeks of each other. I won’t go see Spidey 3 – I almost did, but I just don’t care enough, but I will definitely see Shrek and Pirates. Despite being an elitist, I’m also a sucker. Who knows? Maybe they’ll actually be good.

So here’s my box office prediction for these three behemoths, the only guarantee is that I will almost assuredly be wrong.

Spiderman 3 – obviously the opening weekend numbers are already in on this, but you can trust me when I say I only expected this to do around $100 million for the opening. Not bad. In fact it’d be one of the highest opening weekends ever. But I was still off by 33%. Ouch. I will say that I think word of mouth will kill Spidey (I’ve only heard middling to bad things) and it’ll top out under $400 million domestically. Yeah, real stretch for me to say that. Fine. More specifically, $315 million. Happy now? It’ll drop 50% to about $75 million this weekend, and then drop like an anvil when Shrek 3 is released, to $30 million, to $20 Memorial Day weekend and peter out after that. So doing the math, carry the 1, I get to about $315.

Shrek the Third – This is not going to open as big as Spidey 3, probably breaking $100 million, though. I’ll go $115 to move it into third place on the all-time list. This will have much better legs with the family crowd though and still do $80 - $90 million over Memorial Day weekend and continue dropping at only a 30% clip. It’ll end up far out grossing Spidey 3, stopping around $425 million or so.

POTC: At World’s End – Then this bad boy will come out and obliterate everything in its wake. Over Memorial Day weekend it’ll break the 3 day record, probably hitting $160 (why not?) then add another $45 million on Memorial Day itself for a 4 day take of $205 million. Mark it down. If it’s any good at all, it’ll score another $100 million the following weekend. So you’re talking about $300 million in 10 days. It’ll come to a rest in the $450 million range. And Johnny Depp will get a huge raise for POTC 4: Rich and Sexy.

So three out of 4 weekends with $100 million dollar openings? Very possible. If not likely. Remember when $100 million was the benchmark of a successful movie for its entire run? Me neither.

Okay, this was supposed to be a short post (too late) so I’ll end here. I just hope these next two movies are pretty good.

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