Due to the World Cup Warner Bros and Universal have brought the international release of two of their films ahead of the US to give them an extra week of screen time before the World Cup begins we have the crazy situation of three massive summer films opening on one weekend it will happen many times this summer and again next year but it cannot be good for any of the films as they will not perform as well as the studios need and are likely to cannibalize each other.
Opening on Wednesday May 28th is the much hyped Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie which had its UK premiere last week at Kensington Palace. Angelina’s last film was flop The Tourist which she starred alongside Johnny Depp, she has been busy lately directing Unbroken which is released in December. It is one of the many re-imaginings of Disney animated films next up is Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella.
Opening on May 30th is Tom Cruise’s Edge of Tomorrow which will have 3 premieres on one day on May 28th, first in London at 7am, then Paris and New York. Tom Cruise’s last films haven’t been as successful which is probably why he signed up to do Mission Impossible 5 and is so interested in Top Gun 2. A Tom Cruise film would normally have the weekend for itself so it will be interesting to see how he does against two other big films.
Also opening is Seth MacFarlane’s A Million Ways to Die in the West, like him or loath him Seth had huge success with Ted (had a £9.3m opening in August 2012) with its sequel out next year. The trailers for the film look like Family Guy set in a Western with typical Seth humour.
The weekend before X-Men Days of Future Past opened and the previous weekend Godzilla and this weekend with the 9 day opening weekend of Bad Neighbours which makes for a very busy and packed May with many of these films not reaching their box office potential as they are likely to cannibalize themselves as the cinema marketplace has grown in the UK and with all of those films aimed at the same audience they cannot all perform as well as the studios expect. We saw that last month when Rio 2, Noah and Divergent opened the same weekend they all opened at similar levels none had a breakout opening.
Whilst the ‘World Cup is on the major studios play chicken not releasing any major films but then once it is over we have a similar situation as before the World Cup with a string of blockbuster films opening week after each other starting with How to Train Your Dragon 2, Transformers: Age of Extinction, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes building up to July 25th with Jupiter Ascending, Hercules and Purge Anarchy all opening.
The dating madness of this summer has nothing on the madness that 2015 brings with many $200m+ mega films opening against themselves all of them cannot perform as well as studios expect there will be some mega casualties. We have seen several in the past year from John Carter, Battleship and The Lone Ranger 30 years ago the mega flop Heaven’s Gate destroyed United Artists now the studios are all part of multi-billion media corporations a $200m lose can easily be swallowed up within the billions spent by these corporations over the year the only changes that will happen will be in personnel heading the studios who will make the same mega-pictures their former bosses have made.
It’s also interesting that most of these former bosses of the studios who had been sacked go on to have production deals at either the same studio or a competitor.
There was much excitement that Paramount had turn the negativity of Noah into a hit comparing it to the success of World War Z and the Wolf of Wall Street but if you look at the numbers Paramount are unlikely to be opening the champagne bottles. World War Z cost $190m and took $540m worldwide less than half of which Paramount will see and then you add the huge marketing and publicity costs it’s amazing that Paramount are considering a sequel. The Wolf of Wall Street cost $100m and took $390m worldwide $116m from the US Paramount only released the film in the US and Japan so the majority of that box office they won’t see. Out of the $116m box office Paramount might get back $60m but out of that comes their share of the budget and the marketing costs which include the extra costs that the delayed release cost.
Noah has taken $100m in the US and $350m worldwide the films budget was $130m and add the huge marketing costs Paramount are likely to see back about $200m less costs will see the possibly make a small profit.
If you compare it to Jackass: Bad Grandpa its budget was $15m it took over $150m which will mean it will likely be more profitable for Paramount than Word War Z, The Wolf of Wall Street and Noah combined.
