For a film "not designed for the theatrical market" they sure spent enough
on Television ads... more so than just about any other release this summer from
what came blasting across my screen every 30 minutes for the past 3 weeks --not
to mention all those interior full-color inserts in the NetFlix envelopes. What
is cost to make isn't so important at this point is how much they spent to
promote it, which was one heck of a lot.
I see no basis for predicting that a film which bombs this badly at
the box office is going to do "huge" business in the DVD, rental and TV market.
That's classic studio exec morning-after wishful thinking.
The word will still be out on this one when it pops up for DVD sales
(in what, 90 days max? Likely they'll want to push out onto the
shelves even faster than usual... say 40 days...) and it will be immediately
discounted and shortly thereafter remaindered. There will be some pay-per-play
on cable and satellite, but again, its reputation will precede it. Yes, Showtime
or HBO will pick it up cheap and run it 2 times a day for 3 months,
but there ain't all that much money in that. It will be on free TV in no time,
filling up space between commercials.
A well-deserved end to this ill-conceived experiment in mass
internet-marketing and over saturation TV-spot advertising. Word of
mouth still counts. Real word of mouth... and despite the studio's best efforts
and big bux, most people can still distinguish genuine word of mouth from
studio-purchased word of mouth, even if it is being broadcast by bloggers.
A note to the next studio which tries this stunt: Do it *before* the kids
go back to school, not after. And make sure it isn't up against another dumb
movie, like TALLADEGA NIGHTS. When there are two dumb movies in
release at the same time, giving people a choice in mindless
entertainment, if yours isn't the obvious choice you're in big do-do.
-- JR
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 21:44
Subject: Re: [MOPO] "Snakes on a Plane" opens with anemic $15
mil.
Of course, there is a truth here, Snakes on a Plane cost half as much as
WTC to make, and was never really designed for the theatrical market.
A movie like this is basically glorified STV fare, and one must imagine it
will do excellently there. WTC will do well on rentals, but Snakes on a Plane
will do amazing on sales at the video level. Even the most recent American Pie
sequel, STV, sold over a million copies, and the rental is huge. WTC will have a
good rental, and decent television run. Snakes on a Plane will have huge rental
and huge long lasting television run, TNT will still be showing it in 10 years
with good ratings.
One film is focusing on an older one time viewing market, it's a hard
market to get into theaters and WTC has done very well at it. The other appeals
to a younger, watch it until you puke audience.
Was SoaP anemic? A little harsh. Considering it's only on the first lap of
it's race. Something tells me it's got a long STV franchinse ahead of it, New
Line is very likely to milk this for years to come. Afterall, it opened better
than their franchise Final Destination, and it's had two theatrical sequels.
Ron
David Kusumoto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote:
**
I was always skeptical a film like this would open with monster numbers.
Forget about the Internet blog hype. Its premise suggested it could be
afflicted with the "Arachnophobia" syndrome at the box office, e.g., a
movie of greater interest to GUYS, but NOT to most women, with a gross-out
factor that skews different than for even couples who are inclined to
chase the horror genre.
** You could canvas 10 of your relatives
and friends to get a good idea as to who would be inclined to PAY to see
this. Opening at $15 mil. ensures "Snakes" will pull in numbers that are
lower next week. Even if the film was across-the-board-critically
acclaimed, there was no getting around the "ick" factor with general
audiences.
** Similarly, look at Oliver Stone's "WTC." It's putting up
good numbers and despite my mixed feelings about it, people are not
inclined to PAY to see a film like this when there's a choice between it
and "Talladega" for a fun time out. "WTC" -- even if it had been as
partisan as Moore's "Fahrenheit 911" -- tests an audiences endurance to
pain, no matter how good it is, no matter how good you feel when you walk
out.
-koose.
======================
"Snakes on a Plane"
fails to charm Sunday, Aug 20, 2:19 PM (ET) By Dean Goodman
LOS
ANGELES (Reuters) - So much for the Internet hype. "Snakes on a Plane," a
camp thriller that generated an unprecedented tsunami of online hysteria
during the past year, crawled into the No. 1 slot at the North American
weekend box office with estimated ticket sales of just $15.3 million, its
distributor said on Sunday.
New Line Cinema had hoped the movie
would open in the low-$20 million range, a spokeswoman said. While the
Time Warner Inc.-owned studio was disappointed, she said the film would be
profitable. Hailed by celluloid cognoscenti as being so bad that it's
good, "Snakes" cost about $30 million to make, a relatively modest
sum.
The sales figure covers actual data from Friday and Saturday, as
well as an estimate for Sunday. It also includes $1.4 million from
Thursday-evening screenings.
Samuel L. Jackson plays an FBI agent
trying to regain control of a plane that the Mafia had filled with
poisonous snakes in order to kill a protected witness. The only problem
was that the title so handily summed up the film's plot that there was
little incentive to see it, said Brandon Gray, an analyst at
boxofficemojo.com.
"This tells you that you need to have a compelling
story or premise to get an audience for your movie," he
said.
Senior New Line executives were not available for
comment.
The project had been in development since 1999, going through
several studios, rewrites and directors. It became a cause celebre last
year when Jackson publicly assailed New Line for changing the title to the
nebulous "Pacific Air 121."
The studio backed down, empowering
Jackson and adoring online fans to complain that the film was not violent
enough. Scenes were added ratcheting up the gruesome quotient. The
bloggers' victory ensured plenty of media coverage, seemingly turning the
little B-movie into a preordained must-see hit.
But
filmmaking-by-Internet committee has its limits. Industry surveys in
recent weeks indicated only modest interest among the moviegoing masses.
New Line found itself both playing up the film's unusual backstory and
playing down its sales expectations. It did not screen the movie in
advance for critics, a common tactic when a studio fears the reviews will
be less than complimentary.
The box-office champion for the
previous two weekends, "Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,"
slipped to No. 2 with $14.1 million. The total for Sony Corp.'s Will
Ferrell NASCAR comedy rose to $114.7 million.
Director Oliver Stone's
September 11 drama "World Trade Center" held steady at No. 3 in its second
weekend with $10.8 million and the two-week total for the burgeoning hit
rose to $45 million. The film was released by Paramount Pictures, a unit
of Viacom Inc.
The top-10 contained two other new releases, as well as
an arthouse hit that entered the top tier for the first time after
expanding into national release.
The college comedy "Accepted"
opened at No. 4 with a solid $10.1 million. The film stars Justin Long as
a youngster who starts his own fake college after he fails to be accepted
into any real colleges. It was released by Universal Pictures, a unit of
General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal Inc.
The teen comedy "Material
Girls," starring siblings Hilary and Haylie Duff, opened at No. 9 with
$4.6 million, in line with the modest expectations of its closely held
distributor, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc.
Doing considerably better was the
family comedy "Little Miss Sunshine," which jumped five places to No. 7
with $5.7 million in its fourth weekend. The crowd-pleaser has earned
$12.8 million to date. It was released by Fox Searchlight Pictures, the
arthouse arm of News Corp.1 Twentieth Century Fox unit.
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