Box Office Round Up – January 9-11, 2015

Taken

Get behind the numbers of the last weekend’s box office. This week, we look at the lessons of Taken 3 and why Selma has its work cut out for it.

by Chris Neumer

The reason that I began writing about Hollywood’s weekend box office stemmed from a desire to delve into the lessons that could be learned from the numbers that came in. Something slightly more than which movie beat which movie and labeling the star of the #1 movie a weekend winner.

I’ve been fascinated about the business side of the film industry for years. I love the art of film making, but I’m also uniquely intrigued by the fact that multi-national companies exist to make money off of entertainment. I feel in this way that Hollywood is the exact opposite of ketchup makers.

There is a time and a place for ketchup. People need it for hamburgers and hot dogs, so when planning those meals, they go out and buy it. End of story. There’s no cultural bellwether for ketchup; there’s no backlash against ketchup. No amount of marketing will make ketchup a viable option with cereal or ice cream. It just is and the companies that sell it just do.

Then consider Hollywood.  It has to figure out what stories are going to be capturing the hearts of everyone in the world two plus years in advance.  And then when its films are completed and released, it has to convince everyone that the product is actually worth consuming. You don’t need a trailer for ketchup; you do for Into the Woods.*

* I also find it fascinating that adapting works that already exist into movies is a selling point.  The audience already knows what’s going to happen!  And that’s a selling point?  I may have to delve into this a little more in a later column.

And that’s the part that resonates with me. Hollywood is creating entertainment for profit. Most people who aspire to get involved with the film industry do so to be on the creative side of things. Would-be actors, screenwriters and directors move to southern California to try to break into the artistic side of the industry, in order to (hopefully) create memorable characters, stories or moving images. It’s the studio executives who try to sell said creations for cash.

But therein lies the contradiction at the heart of Hollywood. Almost everyone who is drawn to work in the industry is drawn to the artistry of the field; the only reason the industry continues to exist though is because studios pull in huge sums of money from mass-marketed, CGI spectacles, like Transformers, that are considered abominations of cinema by critics and artists alike.

I happened to think of that particular contradiction while looking at this last weekend’s box office numbers with Taken 3 pulling in an outstanding $39 million its opening weekend and the critically acclaimed Selma finishing second with $11 million its first weekend of wide release.

It is a tale of two movies that could not be more different. Taken 3 is horrific. I mean, it blows. It has an 11% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. To put that number in perspective, 11% fresh is the same rating that George Clooney’s Batman & Robin got. It’s just awful. And it pulled in $39 million. Selma has a 99% fresh rating and is getting Oscar buzz galore. It pulled in $11 million.

So, what lessons can be learned from this?

Let’s start by throwing out a few things that aren’t true.

1) Liam Neeson is A Huge Movie Star

Since Neeson appeared in 2009’s surprising smash hit Taken, he’s begun to develop a reputation as a man who can absolutely open movies. Effectively a white Denzel Washington. And this is just not true. By my count, Neeson has stared in three major financial disappointments during the last five years: A Walk Among the Tombstones, Battleship and The A-Team. Throw in his co-starring roles in A Million Ways to Die in the West and Wrath of the Titans and you’re looking at a murderer’s row of huge flops. Neeson is a man who, yes, has a very particular set of skills—he is phenomenal as an ass kicker on a singular mission—and in that realm, he can appear to be bigger than Matt Damon and Johnny Depp combined. Outside of that very particular set of skills though, Neeson falters.

2) This Is Yet A Further Sign That Society Going Down the Drain

If you ask most people whether they’d prefer to see a glossy action movie featuring an ex-CIA operative trying to clear his name or a well-acted period piece about Martin Luther King planning a civil rights march in Alabama, I think you know where the majority of votes would lie. Hell, I’d prefer to see Taken 3… and I know it’s terrible!

Selma is not an easy movie. It’s fantastically made and important, but it’s not a light-hearted romp. And those are always tough sells to mass audiences.  Especially on the heels of weeks and weeks of discussions about Ferguson, Missouri and shaking your fist at the sky wondering whether things will ever improve between the police and minorities.

3) Taken is a Huge Franchise

With the release of Taken 3, 20th Century Fox has unleashed something that I didn’t really think possible in today’s day and age: a non-blockbuster trilogy.

If you took the domestic box offices from the first two Taken films and combined them with the opening weekend numbers of Taken 3, you’re looking a series that has grossed less than The Hunger Games: Mocking Jay – Part 1 has by itself. That will change next week, but I can’t see these three Taken films collectively doing more than $450 million.

Now, $450 million is nothing to sneeze at, particularly when you think that the budgets for the films add up to $120 million, but it’s not a game changing franchise by any stretch of the imagination. It’s closer to Paranormal Activities than Spider-Man.

Now that that is behind us, we can get to the actual lessons to be learned from this weekend’s Taken 3/Selma combo. As far as I can see there are two:

1) Budget Matters

You know why people are excited about Taken 3 and Selma’s combined $50 million opening weekends? Because their budgets didn’t come in much more than $60 million. If there’s anything that should be, dare I say, taken from the Taken series, it’s that…  Do you know how upset Lionsgate would be if The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 opened to that?  Hell, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 pulled in about $170 million is first seven days and Lionsgate was angry about that figure.

2) There Is An Almost Untapped Market For Low Budget, Single-Minded Action Films

The first Taken cost $25 million to make and brought in $145 million. Why? Because the action was good and there wasn’t a whole lot of need for story complexities. It harkened back to the late ‘80s and early ‘90s when Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme were running around kicking people. Audiences want to see this! But, for whatever reason, Hollywood hasn’t been giving it to them (save for Jason Statham). With a great casting choice in the lead, a very focused conflict and good action scenes, audiences don’t really care how good (or bad) critics feel the movie is.  Hence, Taken 3 opened to $39 million.

The weekend’s top ten films.  Numbers from BoxOfficeMojo.com

1) Taken 3 – $39.2 million

2) Selma – $11.3 million

3) Into the Woods– $9.6 million

4) The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – $9.4 million

5) Unbroken – $8.2 million

6) The Imitation Game – $7.2 million

7) Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb – $6.8 million

8) Annie – $4.8 million

9) The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death – $4.7 million

10) The Hunger Games: Mockingjay- Part 1 – $3.8 million