The juggernaut that is The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, or as I call it, “Most Dangerous Game meets Battle Royale 1 & 2 meets Rollerball (the 1975 original and not
the crummy remake with LL Cool J)” is
unstoppable!
The film grossed $74.5 million over the weekend – $14.9 million of that was on Thanksgiving Day, making it the highest box office gross ever on that day, for any film, beating the previous record holder, Toy Story 2. To date, the film has grossed
almost $300 million in the U.S. since its Nov. 22 release, and is well
past the half the billion mark, with $573
million worldwide.
And there’s still an entire month, as well as the Xmas and New Year holidays ahead, which puts it on pace to be the highest grossing film of
the year domestically. Like I said it’s a juggernaut.
And if that wasn’t enough, Disney’s animated film Frozen opened right on Catching Fire’s heels, grossing over $66 million for some $93
million in just over a week.
Not surprisingly, other films struggled going up against that
tough one-two combination, such as the Jason Staham/James
Franco actioner Homefront, which made just under $10 million.
Although Mandela: Long Walk To Freedom, which opened on only 4 screens, grossed $100,306, with a decent per screen average of $25,076.
And The Best Man
Holiday fared pretty well, coming in at fourth place, with a smaller than excepted
drop off, earning around $8.5 million
for a $63 million total overall.
However, faring worse was Spike Lee’s remake, or “reinterpretation” as he calls it, of
Chan-wook Park’s 2003 Korean
thriller Oldboy, which came in at 17th place, grossing a dismal $1.25 million, but its fate was signed and
sealed months before.
Why FilmDistrict
moved the film’s original release date from mid-October to the Thanksgiving
holiday is still a mystery, since, typically, audiences aren’t really in the mood for such an ultra
violent, perverse and disturbing film during this time of the year. Not exactly holiday cheer.
And the fact the film opened in less than 600 screens could be a big clue that
FilmDistrict had little faith in the film. So why then did they bother to pick
it up for distribution in the first place?
But the shocker, at least to me, is the dreadful opening
of Black Nativity, which grossed a
tragic $5 million
over the holiday weekend, with the second lowest per screen average of all the new releases after Oldboy.
Of course it was going up against some tough competition,
but I still figured that the film would do at least twice that, with a
respectable $10 million, which would
have been good news for the modestly budgeted $17 million film.
So what in hell happened? I can only make a few guesses.
1 – Bad
marketing or none – It wasn’t the greatest you have to admit. Where
there any TV or radio spots for the film? Despite the mostly very positive reviews, the film got stuck with a bland poster that said nothing, and the trailer made
the film look like a very old fashioned, cornball picture, which also didn’t
give a real idea of what the film was. Was it a musical, a drama or none of
those? And seeing Mary J. Blige with
wings and that awful white afro wig sure didn’t help matters at all.
Also, might the PR campaign have been so inept that audiences didn’t even know the film was out? I had a conversation just a few days ago with
someone who was actually interested in seeing the film, but he had no idea that it had been released last week.
2 – Bad
timing – Deciding on when to release a holiday themed film is a tricky
thing. Too early or too late can seriously hurt its chances. Perhaps Tambay
said it best to me, when he shared that, “the timing of its release just wasn’t good.
Not that it would’ve been a hit movie if they’d moved it, but I think it
would’ve done better if they opened it next weekend. I know they probably
thought opening it right before Thanksgiving was a good idea, but next weekend
is wide open in terms of competition.”
3 – Lack
of box office power – Yes, he just came off a huge box office
hit with The Butler, but Forest Whitaker, as well as Angela Bassett and Jennifer Hudson, though they are all very well respected and liked,
are just not actors who would be considered box office powerhouses. And no one is going to
see a movie because Nas is in it.
Maybe a few high profile b.o. names could have helped, especially since the
film was a bit tricky to sell to an audience.
Would more high profile singers in the cast such as Alicia Keys and Mariah Carey have helped? Not very likely either.
4 – Title
turn off – Movies titles can make or break a film, so is it
possible that the title, Black Nativity, completely turned off audiences? For white
people, it clearly said that “This is not for you, you wouldn’t understand it even if Soledad O’Brien
explained it to you, so go away and watch Catching Fire instead.”
But could it have turned off black audiences as well? Did
the title of the film make it sound like a Xmas movie that was too “aggressively black” even for black
audiences? It might have worked just fine back during the “Black Power” 1970’s, but in this day and age, maybe not so much – especially with younger viewers.
5 – Waiting
for the other one – There was no pretense that Black Nativity
was a “crossover” movie that would
appeal to everyone. It was a black Christmas themed movie, written and directed
by a black filmmaker and aimed specifically for a black audience. Even the
title alone says that. That’s all wonderful. But unfortunately there’s another
black Christmas themed movie, written and directed by a black filmmaker aimed specifically
for a black audience, that will be released in a couple of weeks. Of course, I’m taking about A Madea Christmas (which is, by the way, being heavily advertised
on TV). And maybe the film-going audience decided that if they have to pick
only one black
Christmas themed movie to see this season, it’s that one, and they’ll rather wait until it comes out.
Also with A Madea Christmas, there’s a “safety” factor involved, in that you know exactly what you’re going
to get. Another Madea movie just exactly like all the other Madea movies that
have been made, except it takes place during Christmas, and there’s a comfort
in that for a lot of people.
Black Nativity, especially the way it was marketed as
I’ve just mentioned, was too “risky.” Audiences weren’t exactly quite sure of what
they would be getting.
And 12 Years A
Slave continues to hold on in the top ten with over $33 million to date; and I still predict, as I did last week, that the film will do between $46-50 million domestically.
12) Gravity WB $2,605,000 otal: $249,747,000
