Posted on 07/23/2010 6:21:38 AM PDT by Kaslin
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The surprise box-office boom for the cartoon "Despicable Me" is making it clear again to Hollywood this summer that family films are the most likely to be top-grossing films. "Toy Story 3" is No. 1 for 2010, not only among the critics, but among the people as well. "Despicable Me" already has broken into the top 10 box-office hits for the year to date with almost $130 million in ticket sales.
It happens over and over again. And still the "executives" are caught off guard. It shouldn't be that hard to figure out. Nobody needs a graphing calculator. Bring out the whole family, and you bring out a bigger audience. It's summertime, and the kids are bored. If the whole family doesn't go, the driving-age teenager gets assigned to take the young ones to the movies, sometimes more than once.
(Memo to Hollywood: Really, truly, this is how it works.)
And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the "family stampede." Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies "outperform" their guesses.
"The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.
"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."
So why don't the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a "nag factor" from young children wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?
"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.
Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film "This Is It" could ring up "$40 million or more" on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.
"Despicable Me" is a great example of the "out-performed expectations" story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the "experts" expected a much lower $30 million to $35 million weekend.
"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested "tepid" interest from consumers.
Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute "behind the scenes" infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.
Only one R-rated movie has grossed more than $100 million this year, the Leonardo DiCaprio horror flick "Shutter Island." It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by "Despicable Me." Three movies have grossed more than $300 million to top the 2010 list: "Toy Story 3" (a daring G), "Alice in Wonderland" (PG) and "Iron Man 2" (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed more than $200 million: "Twilight: The Eclipse Saga" (PG-13) and the family cartoons "Shrek Forever After" (PG) and "How to Train Your Dragon" (PG).
Why can't greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public's eyes want to go?
Here's what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. "Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it "isn't merely the best movie of the summer -- even with summer just kicking in -- but an immediate candidate for best of the year." Don't bet the mortgage.
The Last Airbender was an excellent movie too, with a great message :)
If you have an older male child that was a fan of the cartoon, I recommend. My BF’s 9yo LOVED it.
Great action scenes and the 3D effects were killer. Best thing out of M. Night Shyamalan yet.
Brokeback - I have gay friends that thought it was the worst movie they have ever seen. So much for intended demographic.
Passion - I really thought it was a good movie. Painful to watch, but I’m not so sure it was kid appropriate bc it was SO graphic.
10 Commandments - One of the best movies I have ever seen, and not just from the older years.
Pulp Fiction and The Red Violin - My personal two favorite movies.
Maybe parents and their teens can escape seeing the movie but they can’t escape having the trailer run over and over in front of them.
There is one called Pixar. They have an unbroken string of good, family oriented blockbusters, including the #1 movie so far this year.
Why more companies don’t emulate then, I don’t understand.
I personally liked Last Airbender. And it’s deeper than one would think, too.
It was based on a kid’s cartoon, and when I took my bf’s son to see it, I was the only female in there. Mostly pre- and pubescent young men in there. Might have something to do with less than rosy sales.
I compare it to a meld between LOTR and Mortal Kombat, but def 8-13 yo appropriate.
Where are they seeing the trailer? I haven’t seen it, I saw two movies last Saturday, one at an arthouse, and the only way I’ve heard about it is people griping about it on FR. Arthouse movies usually don’t have their trailers shown before megaplex movies, they only like to show trailers for movies they’re actually going to show (no reason to advertise for somebody else), the distribution company gets to put one trailer in but Focus doesn’t have anything in the megaplexes currently.
and I thought that too was a good movie... a very sad discourse about our youth.
I haven’t seen it, and probably won’t. I don’t like anime and I’ve lost all confidence in M. Night, so it’s way off my list.
Kids are All Right hasn’t gotten anywhere near Tucson yet. I probably won’t see it, again not in my wheelhouse. Gonna go see Winter’s Bone tomorrow though, that looks great.
Charlotte, being the queen city, will probably get it. LOL I probably won’t see it though, unless I get bored with Netflix in a few months.
See my #60 this thread, disc. It’s playing all over the TV.
I don’t watch anything on TNT or USA. I do watch some NBC and lots of SyFy though and their owned by the same guys as USA. Haven’t seen trailer 1 for the movie.
We have all the movies made by the folks that made “Facing the Giants”. I believe the first one if “Flywheel”. That one was produced on video.
You can see the production value get better with each film and even the acting seems to improve, but most of the on-screen talent is non-professional. But all that is ok because the stories are absolutely fantastic and some of the characters are quite rich and likable. And that is something completely missing from movies like “Little Miss Sunshine”.
Any movie that makes my sob like a little girl is good. And they do it without any “Ronin” car chases. ;)
Interesting. I can’t even scroll by NBC and SyFy mostly bores me (I can only endure so many CGI bugs the size of VOlkswagens, youknow? :D ). Do you like forensic drama or policiers? That’s what I watch: Bones, NCIS, Burn Notice, even The Closer on occasion. Never anything by Dick Wolf.
Try watching TV.
As FReeper BelegStrongbow posted earlier:"BTW, I can't seem to escape the trailer. TNT and USA show it endlessly."
And last night It was shown on another channel I was watching.
There’s good stuff on SyFy just not on Saturday nights. No CGI bugs in Eureka, Haven, or Warehouse 13. I like Burn Notice but I didn’t get into it until late, so I mostly Netflix it or randomly watch one at a friend’s house. I hate forensic drama, I like my cop shows to not have bad Star Trek technobabble, which from the commercials seems to be a big part of them. It could just be the demographic of the shows I watch doesn’t synch up with who they think will watch the movie, and they’re probably right because Kids are All Right sounds like a very boring movie to me.
I watch plenty of TV, but apparently not the programs they think share a viewer demographic with that movie. Maybe you should watch better TV.
I laughed hard and long at the remake of “The Day the Earth Stood Still.” The original is a seminal, untouchable film, made in two months on a budget of $ 1.2 million. The remake is a hideously bad film with an illiterate script, made over two years with an estimated budget of $ 120 million, including marketing.
LOVE NCIS and Burn Notice, and White Collar is super witty.
Have you seen Covert Affairs yet? It’s produced by the guy that did the Bourne trilogy.
I'm enjoying the heck out of Covert Affairs. I like the casting, the plots seem really tight, I suspect some serious unstorying to be going on. They've already hinted at it.
And of course it has nothing to do with the fact that I think the blind dude is completely awesome! LOL
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