Posted on 03/26/2016 1:46:25 PM PDT by drewh
After a spell of big-budget disasters last year from Jupiter Ascending to Pan, cash is finally raining on the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, CA as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice is set to post the biggest pre-summer opening day ($82M, beating Furious 7‘s $67.4M) and weekend ($170M, outstripping The Hunger Games’ $152.5M). Heck, BvS is poised to be Warner Bros. best opening of all-time, beating Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($169.2M), and even The Dark Knight Rises ($160.9M) and The Dark Knight ($158.4M). In 4,242 theaters, BvS is the widest pre-May release and new record-holder for top March and Easter debuts. Reported yesterday: Flash grosses show BvS winning over China with $21.2M. Add that to the two-day $44M tally and the pic’s foreign cume is north of $65M.
Related'Batman V Superman' Conquers China With $21.2M, Raises Current Overseas Haul To $65M+ - Intl Box... “It’s highly unusual to see a superhero movie that’s been panned like this with such a huge opening. Typically they open big and get great reviews,” said one insider, scratching his head over the audience’s solid B CinemaScore and the 30% Rotten Tomatoes rating. Demos giving the film a higher grade break down thusly: Under 18 (at 22%) gave it an A- while under 25 (at 40%) gave BvS a B+.
batman v supermanQuite often, branded tentpoles are Teflon against poor reviews, and, yes, BvS is another example. Only Bond films have to sweat critical response since their fans skew to an older demo that reads reviews. But rarely do we see a panned movie with OK audience reaction open to $100M-plus. Of note in that category, BvS joins Twilight: Breaking Dawn 2 ($138.1M opening, B+ CinemaScore, 24% rotten) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen ($109M opening, B+ CinemaScore, 19% rotten).
Yet despite all the confetti guns going off on the Warner lot for BvS, critics remain grumpy and fans not entirely wowed by the film. Let’s consider what went right with BvS.
Warner Bros.’ decision to release a summer tentpole over Easter weekend was genius. More kids are off from school now than during the first weekend of the B.O. summer (first weekend in May). Seventy-six percent K-12 schools were off on Good Friday, with 45% scheduled to be off the Monday after Easter. Rather than get crushed by the next four-quad release on the summer calendar, WB decided in August 2014 to move BvS to Easter 2016, a decision made well before Furious 7 set the Easter frame on fire last year with a $147.1M opening. At this point, BvS will have plenty of breathing room in the weeks to come with the only potential obstacles being Disney’s live action The Jungle Book and Universal’s Snow White prequel The Huntsman Winter’s War.
WB already knew that Easter audiences could lay golden eggs: the studio launched Clash of the Titans over the holiday space in 2010 ($61.2M opening). BvS was originally scheduled to debut on July 17, 2015, but Ant-Man pushed it out, and then BvS was scheduled to open the first weekend in May, but Marvel plopped Captain America: Civil War there. Moving BvS to Easter 2016, WB CEO Kevin Tsujihara was aware of the risks and rewards: 2015 was bound to be an off-year for the studio without BvS in the mix, and the studio had to get the franchise right since it was all about re-launching DC 2.0 on the big screen. While a B Cinemascore comes with a 2.9 multiple, the thinking is that BvS will leg out at 2.25x its opening to $385M stateside. The film needs to make roughly $900M worldwide if it’s going to break-even theatrically off its estimated $400M production and P&A cost.
Next, the WB marketing and PR team did a stellar job at keeping the BvS want-to-see momentum going for a 32-month period. BvS was announced at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2013. Disney first piqued our interest with a teaser trailer 13 months before the Dec. 18, 2015 release date of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. BvS director Zack Snyder dropped the first teaser 20 months ago at Comic-Con 2014. $150M in global P&A spend and several trailer drops later, Warner Bros. finds itself with the best pre-summer opening of all-time. According to ComScore PostTrak polling, 18% of all moviegoers said that in-theater trailers influenced them the most to see BvS, while 17% said it was the online trailer and 11% cited TV spots.
But something went awry with BvS in controlling critical word of mouth. When Disney was tasked with re-invigorating the major franchise Star Wars that had been dormant for a decade, the studio invited all critics and press to the Hollywood premiere, creating a situation where no reviews could leak out ahead of the pack; luckily everyone loved the movie and all the reviews posted at once. I’m told that Warner Bros. tried to get as many critics in the same room at the same time during the early part of the opening week, but premiere schedules precluded all reviewers from watching the film at once, with some critics attending later in the week. The first, sour set of BvS reviews might have influenced the remaining critics, with a pack mentality setting in. Warner Bros. might consider different maneuvers with its next DC title, Suicide Squad, in August.
Now in the wake of bad reviews and OK audience responses, team Snyder –which is in pre-production on Justice League — faces the challenge of changing their game up. At this time, despite any amount of money being deposited in Warner Bros. coffers from BvS, it would be prudent to listen to critics and fans’ story notes, especially the near universal complaint that BvS is too long, too brooding, too hackneyed (did we really need to see Bruce Wayne’s parents die for the umpteenth time on the screen?). This is all for the sake of DC 2.0’s longevity moving forward. And Snyder takes this DC stuff seriously. It’s not just about throwing it up on the screen. As he told The Daily Beast, “I look at it as more being mythological than, say, bubblegum.”
What’s clear from reading the CinemaScore reports is that people came out this weekend because they wanted to see a Batman film (62%). This was a stronger pull than the cast: Ben Affleck and Henry Cavill pulled in 21% of the audience, while Gal Gadot accounted for 14% (which is pretty good for a fresh face).
At the same time, critics might acknowledge the strides that Warner Bros. made in elevating the Batman and Superman franchises. Given critics’ acerbic reactions, you’d think they were asked to sit through Gigli or Superman III again. While WB botched the Superman franchise in the 1980s with Superman III and Superman IV, BvS wasn’t a property they were going to waste. A lot of thought went into nurturing this beast, with all studio departments working at full cycle.
Warner Bros. finally made the movie that most Batman fans wanted a see: A movie that was akin to an adaptation of Frank Miller’s beloved The Dark Knight Returns comic book series, which ends with Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne beating the crap out of each other. No amount of dagger-throwing by New York Times critic A.O. Scott or Wall Street Journal’s Joe Morgenstern was going to prevent audiences from seeking BvS. Not to mention, fans finally got to see Wonder Woman’s bigscreen debut (a Fandango poll revealed that 88% were interested in seeing the movie just for her). Rev4 movie theater metrics showed that of those polled during the last two weeks of their theater sample, 75% said they wanted to buy a ticket to BvS (to 18.5% who didn’t). Sixty-percent of those polled by ComScore last night said they bought tickets in advance.
When WB launched its Batman films in 1989 through Tim Burton’s psychedelic goggles, Miller’s Dark Knight Returns books had already been in release for three years. At the time, the literary property was too ambitious for Warner Bros: Batman was an old man, the story took place in an ultra-violent Gotham and presented a high- concept notion of the city’s good guys going at each other’s throats. A few years ago, I asked BvS screenwriter David Goyer that if Dark Knight Returns was the movie everyone wanted to see, why hadn’t Warners already made it? His response was that the property was too risky to spring on mass audiences; the palette needed to be primed before springing Dark Knight Returns. And that’s essentially the evolution from Burton to Christopher Nolan to Snyder.
*****
Batman V Superman Box Office ChinaBvS’ $27.7M Thursday reps 34% of its Friday figure, beating all superhero preview nights outside of The Dark Knight Rises’ midnight shows ($30.6M). Not only are Imax, RealD, 4DX drivers for BvS’ biz, but this film is projecting 41 times on Saturday at the Hollywood Arclight, with showtimes from 8:30AM to 2:30AM. Meanwhile, at the AMC Empire on 42nd Street in NYC, BvS boasts 53 showtimes from 8:30AM to 3AM. PLFs should generate $17.6M, with $4M of that coming from Cinemark XD auditoriums.
The Snyder mashup is currently estimated to take a 35% decline on Saturday for $52.8M. That percent decline is on par with Avengers: Age of Ultron‘s second day. ComScore PostTrak audience gave BvS a 73% grade in the very good/excellent boxes. Definite recommend rate to friends remains at a solid 60%. Looking at the family responses — it’s pretty damn good. Parents give BvS a very good/excellent score of 79% while kids under 12 grade it at 87%. Seventy-nine percent of all parents are spreading good WOM to their friends about Snyder’s movie while 75% of all the kids that watched it are telling their friends immediately about it. Boys made up most of the kid crowd at 60% with 45% between the ages of 10-12. Primary reasons why they showed up? Eighteen percent said it was because it was a superhero/comic book movie, 16% were Batman fans, while 9% came out for Affleck, Cavill and Gadot.
Guess what’s in second place? Disney’s Zootopia, which is looking at an estimated $23.5M in its fourth frame, off 37%, elevating its cume by Sunday to $240.9M. That’s 6% ahead of where Pixar’s Finding Nemo was at the same point and 46% ahead of Disney original animated feature Frozen through its first 24 days.
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2Universal’s distribution of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 from Playtone/Gold Circle/HBO is now looking at a Friday of $7.2M, putting its opening at $17.8M in third place at 3,133 venues. Estimated production cost was $18M, which is 3.6 times more expensive than the original 2002 movie. It’s going to be interesting to watch the legs on this one. First, older moviegoers do not show up all at once, but rather spread out over time. The last movie though a miraculous platform built its way to $241.4M. Audiences still love this fluffy franchise 14 years later with an A- CinemaScore. Females at 71% gave MBFGW2 an A-, along with the over 25 set who turned out at 78%. The 50+ crowd repped 43% of the audience, and thought it was alright with a B+. Sixty-three percent came out because it was a sequel to their favorite movie, while 30% shelled out to watch Nia Vardalos and 20% came for John Corbett. It’s hard to find a comp for this. The first Greek Wedding wasn’t monitored by CinemaScore and studios don’t make sequels for blue hairs anymore (remember Grumpier Old Men?).
Lionsgate’s The Divergent Series: Allegiant falls to fourth with an estimated $3.7M for Friday and a black eye -68% second weekend decline of $9.2M putting its 10-day at $46.3M. That’s steeper than the -59% second frame drop weathered by Insurgent a year ago when it came up against DreamWorks Animation’s Home and Warner Bros.’ Get Hard. Sony/Affirm’s Miracles From Heaven at 3,047 is a tad thinner than projected with a second sesh of $9.1M and a running cume of $33.7M in fifth place.
More good news for superhero movies this weekend: 20th Century Fox’s Deadpool by Sunday will be within $900K of overtaking Warner Bros.’ American Sniper as the second highest R-rated film at the domestic B.O. Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ still rules the adult record with $370.8M.
Bleecker Street’s drone thriller Eye in the Sky flies into the top 10 after moving from 35 to 123 venues with $958K. Roadside Attractions’ Hello My Name is Doris is also a big draw on the Specialty scene with a No. 9 take of $1.6M.
Dumb.
I’m not sure why I’m supposed to plunk down $ to choose sides when two good guys fight each other for whatever reason.
I can’t accept the premise, so no way not even will I rent it from the library. They can go pound sand.
I halfway expected to see that black tranny in Orange is the New Black as a gay Superman and Samuel L Jackson as Batman.
It was panned and it’s losing money.
Pretty much like I suspected. I’m smarter with my spending. Bullets and such instead.
how can they lose money with a 350 million worldwide projected opening?
I just have no interest in this. I saw Man of Steel on TV and hated it. I just can’t motivate myself to go to the movies. I didn’t even see the latest Star Wars after seeing all the rest on opening day (I might have been a few days late for the original).
Do they still have movies?
I don’t understand why Batman would fight Superman if they’re both on the side of Good?
I liked “Creed”
I’m a huge comic book geek, and I’m sure I will watch this movie eventually, but I’m in no hurry. The only great movie that Warner/DC has produced so far has been the The Dark Knight only because of Heath Ledger’s performance as The Joker.
Their movies tend to be too dark, too loud, overwrought and overhyped.
I’m much more looking forward to Captain America: Civil War in May.
From what I understand, the fight between Supes and Zod in the first movie leveled a Wayne Industries building, killing hundreds of Wayne’s employees, so he sees Superman as a loose cannon who has to be taken down. In the movie, Batman’s been operating for years, and Superman was a complete unknown until that battle, so he doesn’t know or care about us motivation.
Batman fights crime his way. Suddenly, Superman is swooping in to "save the day." But Batman (and the citizens of Gotham) are misinterpreting the way Superman fights for justice.
Batman sees Superman as a legitimate, if not unprecedented, threat to his city. So he's going to man up and take on this "supervillian."
What Batman does not know, is that Superman is a pawn for Lex Luthor for his own nefarious purposes. Once the two of them realizes this, they join forces, along with other superheroes in the background like Wonder Woman and Aquaman.
There. I just saved you $20 bucks in tickets and another $30 in popcorn in soda.
I wanted to see that and never got around to it.
The movie's entire production and marketing costs are estimated at $1 billion dollars. So, it has to make a billion dollars just to break even.
So you haven't seen it?
How can it be losing money when it just opened with what is apparently the largest opening weekend ever?
the reviews have been terrible..
But you speak as if you have seen it. Instead you're going off of others' opinions. I'm going to make up my own mind on Monday.
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