Or will it continue to be business as usual?
That huge sigh of relief you’re hearing at this very
moment is coming from Warner Bros
and Legendary Pictures execs, who
sold the farm for a reported $225
million to pay for Man of Steel
and crossed their fingers hoping that they made the right bet.
And they did.
The film was No.1 at the box office both here and
internationally alike, grossing some $125
million this weekend domestically and another $151 million overseas.
However, though Warners lucked out with the success of Man of Steel,
one has to take into consideration Steven Spielberg’s recent dire prediction
that the Hollywood will “implode” if it doesn’t change its act,
or maybe, perhaps, it’s just too late. They’re too far along the way towards
their own self-destruction.
Studios are spending way too much money on big
blockbuster films, in which, not only careers, but an entire studio’s existence hinges
on the success and failure of a few films.
Spielberg was quoted: ”There’s going to be an implosion where
three or four or maybe even a half-dozen mega-budget movies are going to go
crashing into the ground, and that’s going to change the paradigm.”
I admit that I would love to see that happen. Maybe then, we would
see studios and producers making smaller, more adult films like they used to before the Comic Con
geeks possessed them.
This whole current situation reminds me of the dire situation 20th Century Fox was in
after the 1963 release of their gargantuan epic Cleopatra, which cost the studio back then a staggering $42 million dollars (over $320 million in today’s dollars). Fox wound up in such bad shape that it literally shut down production everywhere, closed the
studio lot and laid off employees for several weeks until it could regain its
financial footing.
We’ve already had After
Earth. What will happen with The Lone Ranger
(with its reported $250 million
budget), Pacific Rim, and Wolverine (and was anybody asking for a
sequel to that)? What happens if they
all tank and not even the overseas box office saves them? What will studios do
then?
But that’s enough of that. As for the other films, despite the very strong competition, the apocalyptic comedy This
Is The End scored nicely with just under $33 million, while Now You See Me and Fast and Furious 6 are going strong.
Last week’s surprise hit The Purge not surprisingly dropped big, but with $51 million so far against the film’s very modest $3 million production cost, it’s a huge hit. Of course, Universal has already greenlit a sequel.
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1) Man of Steel WB $113,080,000 Total: $125,080,000
2) This is the End Sony $20,500,000 Total: $32,800,000
3) Now You See Me LG/S $10,320,000 Total: $80,009,000
4) Fast & Furious 6 Uni. $9,433,000 Total: $219,574,000
5) The Purge Uni. $8,201,000 Total: $51,845,000
6) The Internship Fox $7,000,000 Total: $30,951,000
7) Epic Fox $6,000,000 Total: $95,429,000
8) Star Trek Into Darkness Par. $5,660,000 Total: $210,491,000
9) After Earth Sony $3,750,000 Total: $54,200,000
10) Iron Man 3 BV $2,908,000 Total: $399,610,000
11) The Hangover Part III WB $2,735,000 Total: $107,986,000
12) The Great Gatsby WB $1,605,000 Total: $139,909,000
13) Before Midnight SPC $1,526,000 Total: $3,198,000
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