Biggest Box Office Disappointments of the Decade

[charlie Jatinder]

13 minutes ago, excel1 said:

Ultron was more anticipated than JURASSIC WORLD which opened to $208m same summer

2) Avengers business didn't really grow by the $67 million that separated Ultron and Infinity War's weekend. 

3) Ultron's weekend was barely higher than IRON MAN 3's inflated weekend.

Ultron Sunday was $50mn (-11%), which would be a bit inflated due to spillover from Saturday is business was lost.

 

Say it had same drop as The Avengers i.e. 18% its Saturday real value was $60-61mn, basically $4mn more. Hardly matters.

[excel1]

MayPac affected it's entire weekend, for sure. Saturday would have suffered the most but for many millennials, it wasn't even on their radar in comparison to Avengers 1, 3 or 4. 

[Eric Atreides]

Honestly the one true disappointment was Interstellar not hitting $200 million. Papa Nolan really should have mentioned the film featured the greatest, most beautiful young actor working today to really sell it to the masses.  

[filmlover]

3 minutes ago, Eric Sparrow said:

Honestly the one true disappointment was Interstellar not hitting $200 million. Papa Nolan really should have mentioned the film featured the greatest, most beautiful young actor working today to really sell it to the masses.  

Topher Grace is very flattered by this post.

[filmlover]

Also speaking of Nolan it was from the previous decade but it's kind of wild in retrospect that The Prestige made only $53M saddled between his first two Batman adventures. In part because magician movies are a hard sell, in part because a similar magician movie (The Illusionist) came out around the same time but still. A Nolan/Jackman/Bale/Johansson joint would be a certified event movie today.

[excel1]

6 hours ago, filmlover said:

Also speaking of Nolan it was from the previous decade but it's kind of wild in retrospect that The Prestige made only $53M saddled between his first two Batman adventures. In part because magician movies are a hard sell, in part because a similar magician movie (The Illusionist) came out around the same time but still. A Nolan/Jackman/Bale/Johansson joint would be a certified event movie today.

That also opened in the middle of dead box office season for the time. It made more money than anyone expected it to at the time. 

[filmlover]

1 hour ago, excel1 said:

That also opened in the middle of dead box office season for the time. It made more money than anyone expected it to at the time. 

Yeah, wasn't The Departed (which opened two weeks before) one of the biggest openings for the month of October ever at the time?  The days of the non-summer/non-holiday months being treated like scraps are long gone after the past decade.

[excel1]

2 hours ago, filmlover said:

Yeah, wasn't The Departed (which opened two weeks before) one of the biggest openings for the month of October ever at the time?  The days of the non-summer/non-holiday months being treated like scraps are long gone after the past decade.

Sweet Home Alabama $35m opening weekend was September record for a decade. 

[filmlover]

1 minute ago, excel1 said:

Sweet Home Alabama $35m opening weekend was September record for a decade. 

lol yeah and then within 5 years after Hotel Transylvania setting the record IT would literally obliterate those numbers. October has seen three $70M+ openings in the past three years alone.

[DAJK]

11 hours ago, Eric Sparrow said:

Honestly the one true disappointment was Interstellar not hitting $200 million. Papa Nolan really should have mentioned the film featured the greatest, most beautiful young actor working today to really sell it to the masses.  

My friend might be kind of jealous you're talking about her boyfriend (Casey Affleck's son in it lol) that way 😕

[CloneWars]

12 hours ago, excel1 said:

 

Actually it was pop culture impact in the United States was comparable to the Super Bowl. That weekend, a very significant amount of people allocated their Saturday afternoon & evening to watching the fight. They would have also set aside a good chunk of their weekend pocket money to buying the fight and viewing party arrangements, etc. Airtime from media and social media channels that was entirely devoted to Avengers 1, 3, and 4 was split 50-50 with the fight at best. For a very significant number of Americans, Avengers 2 was not the big event that weekend. This is a picture from Vegas's airport from the all the celebrity private jets in town for the fight:

 

 

There is no real way of knowing exactly how much "MayPac" cost Avengers 2, but common sense says 

1) Ultron was more anticipated than JURASSIC WORLD which opened to $208m same summer

2) Avengers business didn't really grow by the $67 million that separated Ultron and Infinity War's weekend. 

3) Ultron's weekend was barely higher than IRON MAN 3's inflated weekend.

 

Many predictors expected the fight to have an impact and in hindsight, it's clear its impact was huge. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floyd_Mayweather_Jr._vs._Manny_Pacquiao

 

 

$300-$400M in weekend revenue. Good damn. No wonder why Ultron made as much as it did OW. Hell, it's actually probably surprising it even hit $191 considering the competition and the mild reviews.

[CloneWars]

Anyway, speaking of biggest box office disappointments, I have to say Coronavirus for giving us the worst BO year in history. At least, we will get to see Tenet this year, so there's that, but it seems an almost assured thing it's going to bomb unless OS saves it somehow.

[Webslinger]

The Mayweather-Pacquiao fight wasn't the only thing that held Age of Ultron back on that first Saturday, though it was definitely the biggest by far. Given that the Kentucky Derby and a Game 7 in the first round of the NBA playoffs were also happening that day, it was hyped up as the biggest sports day in ages. I remember not thinking that sports and an Avengers movie in its opening weekend would have much overlap, but they clearly did, and the (relatively) muted response to Age of Ultron itself kept it from making up the difference in its legs. Still, it made a ton of money, and prior to Infinity War and Endgame posting gargantuan numbers, it was easy to write the film's performance off as the consequence of not having the level of novelty that boosted the first Avengers in 2012.

 

As far as missed opportunities with franchises go, I'd also put up Star Trek Into Darkness. The 2009 Trek was huge and got such a warm reaction that it seemed like the newest cinematic iteration of the brand had tons of franchise potential, and then it never really capitalized on that potential with Into Darkness. Even with the four-year release gap and rumors about some storytelling decisions that were bound to be divisive, it was still expected to be a big hit up until the double whammy of meager Thursday numbers and underwhelming Friday numbers hit. Though the film didn't do terribly (I just looked up its domestic total and it was a little higher than I remembered), it clearly took a lot of air out of the franchise and set 2016's Beyond up to be even less of an event. And with how dire Paramount's situation has become, they needed this franchise to be big.

[filmlover]

6 hours ago, Webslinger said:

As far as missed opportunities with franchises go, I'd also put up Star Trek Into Darkness. The 2009 Trek was huge and got such a warm reaction that it seemed like the newest cinematic iteration of the brand had tons of franchise potential, and then it never really capitalized on that potential with Into Darkness. Even with the four-year release gap and rumors about some storytelling decisions that were bound to be divisive, it was still expected to be a big hit up until the double whammy of meager Thursday numbers and underwhelming Friday numbers hit. Though the film didn't do terribly (I just looked up its domestic total and it was a little higher than I remembered), it clearly took a lot of air out of the franchise and set 2016's Beyond up to be even less of an event. And with how dire Paramount's situation has become, they needed this franchise to be big.

The four-year gap didn't help but in retrospect, Star Trek '09's massive overperformance was probably the most we could ever really expect from any big screen version of Star Trek given that it's always been a more "niche" series compared to, you know, that other sci-fi franchise with "Star" in its title (which J.J. ended up jumping ship for before his second Star Trek movie was even released). The next movie iteration of the property is sure to go back to being a more modestly budgeted adventure, especially when massive scale CGI set pieces weren't enough to attract international audiences to this franchise.

Edited August 16, 2020 by filmlover

[excel1]

The late 2000's saw 3 large scale domestic break-out in rapid succession: 

 

2007: Transformers - ~$110ish 3 day (opened on a Tuesday) /$319m

2008: Iron Man- $102/318m

2009: Star Trek- $79/258m

 

Their popularity varied a bit but nothing too extreme. The handling of their sequels, however, did vary a bit. Transformers 2 and Iron Man 2 were both fast tracked to ensure only a 2 year delay while Star Trek 2 took 4 years.

 

2009's Transformers 2 exploded and would have challenged the opening weekend record had it opened on a Friday.

2010's Iron Man 2 was a hit that saw a significant increase in opening weekend business over the original though it was actually towards the lower end of expectations

2013's Star Trek Into Darkness regressed significantly from the first with inflation and 3D factored in. The 4 year delay was much too long to hold interest.

 

Trek 2 really needed to open in May 2011. It would have easily sacred Thor 1 away from the first weekend of May spot and would have likely been an Iron Man 2 sized hit. Very poor strategy on studios part. This is where Disney's Bob Iger was so point with the strategy of prioritizing brand franchise content & positioning them for individual max potential as opposed to just going through the motions. Paramount needed to recognize that the opportunity cost of NOT pushing out Trek 2 and getting it a prime release date would be severe, which is precisely what occurred. 

 

With an "original" break-out hit, studios usually need to strike while the iron is hot & fast track the sequel otherwise the buzz dies off fairly quick as there's nothing else new coming out to keep the property relevant. Warner Brothers is basically doing that now with Aquaman 2 in my opinion, a film I expect to see a severe decline in business from the first because the 4 year gap is much too long. To a point, we just saw this with FROZEN 2. 

Edited August 16, 2020 by excel1

[filmlover]

The overall decline of home media the past decade has made it difficult for sequels to truly grow from their predecessors, even though there's still been exceptions to the rule like Pitch Perfect (although the last movie collapsed) and John Wick. Iron Man 2 seeing no growth from its predecessor was a a surprise, but the movie had a somewhat mixed response and the MCU obviously was still in its early years. Since then MCU solo sequels have shown growth from their predecessors but the overall nature of the expanding universe complicates that a bit.

[YM!]

Kung Fu Panda 2 fall domestically is what really surprised me, as marketing was solid, there was hype but did Hangover 2 really hurt it.

[YM!]

On 8/15/2020 at 9:04 AM, Napoleon said:

The Lego Movie 2

I know the five year wait and over saturation hurt it but the drop makes me sad and is kind of wild how it barely did $100M.

[Webslinger]

17 minutes ago, YourMother the Edgelord said:

Kung Fu Panda 2 fall domestically is what really surprised me, as marketing was solid, there was hype but did Hangover 2 really hurt it.

I was thinking of this one as well. It definitely set the stage for the later box office disappointments of How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Lego Movie 2. In retrospect, the fact that so many animated sequels saw significant drops from their predecessors in the '10s makes Despicable Me 2's run in 2013 feel even more monstrous.

 

Oddly enough though, my friends and I were probably among the very few adults (20 at the time) who willingly chose to see Panda 2 over Hangover 2 that weekend (i.e. not as a back-up option to the latter being sold out - we went on Friday afternoon, when neither movie was sold out; we then caught Hangover 2 the following weekend).

[YM!]

6 minutes ago, Webslinger said:

I was thinking of this one as well. It definitely set the stage for the later box office disappointments of How to Train Your Dragon 2 and The Lego Movie 2. In retrospect, the fact that so many animated sequels saw significant drops from their predecessors in the '10s makes Despicable Me 2's run in 2013 feel even more monstrous.

 

Oddly enough though, my friends and I were probably among the very few adults (20 at the time) who willingly chose to see Panda 2 over Hangover 2 that weekend (i.e. not as a back-up option to the latter being sold out - we went on Friday afternoon, when neither movie was sold out; we then caught Hangover 2 the following weekend).

I was 11 when it came out and wasn’t allowed to watch most R rated movies. I remember Nick parading it.