Awards Season: The 2010 Fall Preview, Part II
Yesterday, I posted the first part of my Awards Season Box Office/Oscar preview. Below are my analyses for November and December. Reminder: Oscar Prospects are not displayed for those films which are not Oscar contenders.
NOVEMBER 5-7, 2010
DUE DATE
Premise: Trying to get home for his child's birth, a desperate father-to-be finds himself trapped in a disturbing road trip that threatens to destroy his sanity.
Box Office Prospects: $120 M
Thoughts: Blending the highly popular Robert Downey Jr. and The Hangover's Zach Galifianakis could have a box office-saving capability. Plus, being a broad comedy like Tha Hangover should result in solid business.
Cinema Sight Preview Page: Due Date
Awards Season: The 2010 Fall Preview, Part I
There are generally three distinct periods in the film year. The most important to studios is the Summer film season running from May through August. This is where they make a good deal of their money with kids out of school and ready to spend money to be entertained. Then there's Awards Season. This is the period running from September (sometimes October) through December in which studios roll out their major prestige pictures in hopes of bringing home the most coveted of industry prizes: The Academy Award. But often, they must impress the critics groups and sometimes even audiences in order to make that big acquisition. The third is what I call the doldrums or wasteland or dumping grounds, take your pick. This is the period from January through April in which a large portion of the potential duds get released. These can either be films studios don't think would be big winners in the Summer and which failed to garner enough early buzz or test well with screening audiences for awards consideration.
The Summer of Sequels: Or How to Stop Worrying
and Accept the Greed
Every year, box office pundits celebrate the arrival of summer. The biggest profits of the year are often posted during the summer months as teens and young adults are out of school and ready to spend their parents' hard-earned money on frivolous entertainment. So why is this summer any different from past seasons? It isn't. But some are already making it sound like the large number of sequels this summer tentpole season (10) is some magnificent, unheard of accomplishment. Yet, it's not really that far out of the norm.
In 2009, there were a total of 10 films that could have been considered sequels (two were iterations on past franchises, but not strict sequels of previous films: Dance Flick and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). There was only one remake.
Box-Office Preview #3: Weekend of January 22-24, 2010
Heading into the weekend, Avatar will attempt to become the first film since Titanic to remain at the top of the box-office for six consecutive weekends. Facing soft competition from three new releases, it should not be too difficult a task for it to manage.
The toughest competition that Avatar will face this weekend will almost certainly be 20th Century Fox's Tooth Fairy, starring Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson as a minor league hockey player who, after crushing a young fan's dreams, is sentenced to one week of hard labor as the fabled Tooth Fairy. Hack director Michael Lembeck has tread these high-concept waters before, having directed the last two pictures in Disney's The Santa Clause franchise, and Dwayne Johnson has a proven track record in family movies after the success of The Game Plan and Race to Witch Mountain. Although the film has received unanimously awful reviews, critical reception matters very little to these sorts of films and it should have no problem clearing $20 million this weekend, which should be enough for a second place finish.
Box-Office Report #1: Weekend of January 15-18, 2010
As expected, Avatar was king over Martin Luther King weekend, bringing in $54.4 million and pulling ahead of the $500 million mark, a milestone reached by only two other motion pictures in history, James Cameron's own Titanic and 2008's The Dark Knight. Not only did Avatar break $500 million this weekend, it reached it in an astounding 32 days, breaking the record previously held by The Dark Knight, which took 45 days to earn the same amount of money. In the process, it also shattered the record for the biggest fifth weekend gross, which had previously belonged to Titanic with $30 million, and became the first film since 1999's The Sixth Sense to retain the #1 spot at the box-office for 5 consecutive weekends. It also posted the biggest MLK weekend gross ever, eclipsing the $46.1 million grossed by Cloverfield in 2008. From Friday through Sunday, Avatar grossed $42.8 million, down only 14.9% from last weekend's intake of $50.3 million.
Avatar also grossed an additional $128.5 million internationally in 111 markets, raising its international total to $1.2 billion and its worldwide total to $1.6 billion, trailing only Titanic's $1.8 billion by less than $220 million, an amount that should easily be covered within the next 2 weeks.
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Box-Office Preview #2: Weekend of January 15-18, 2010
As we move into the first four-day holiday weekend of the New Year, two new movies and one Oscar hopeful going into wide release will try to suck away audiences from James Cameron's mega-hit, Avatar. Sadly for them, they will all probably come up short.
The film that has the best shot at dethroning Avatar is the Hughes Brothers' post-Apocalyptic thriller, The Book of Eli, starring Denzel Washington as a lone warrior who has assigned himself with the task of protecting the last known copy of the King James Bible in the world. While the critics have not been kind to Eli, I expect the film to be a modest hit for Warner Brothers. While it won't hit the top spot at the box-office, it should earn a respectable $35 million over the four-day weekend, which will be enough for a second place finish.
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Box-Office Preview #1: Weekend of January 8-10, 2010
And so begins a new decade of film with the first three new releases of the 2010s: Daybreakers, Leap Year, and Youth in Revolt.
Unfortunately, not one of them will be the first release of the new decade to reach the top spot at the box-office. In its first non-holiday weekend, James Cameron’s science fiction epic, Avatar, will brush aside the competition with ease and set the record for the biggest fourth weekend gross in Hollywood history. The picture, which has thus far shattered records left and right, has already broken even in just a few short weeks, even if the most inflated rumors concerning its budget are true. Worldwide, it grossed over $1 billion in just 17 days and should become the second-highest grossing film of all-time by Monday morning, as well as the highest grossing North American release of 2009.
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