Box Office Round Up – June 12-14, 2015

Stumped-Magazine-Jurassic-World-Chris-Pratt

Get behind the numbers of the last weekend’s box office! This week, Jurassic World took everyone by surprise by pulling in more money its opening weekend than any other film in history. Chris Neumer investigates why no one saw this coming, why everyone is wrong about everything and gets into how Chris Pratt became the world’s biggest star in just two movies.

by Chris Neumer

Earlier this year, director Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper hit theaters and surprised the hell out of people. It took in nearly $90 million its (wide) opening weekend… in January! It wasn’t just the biggest (wide) opening in January, it more than double the previous record holder; Ride Along had opened to $41.5 million, American Sniper took in $89.2 million. At the time, I referred to it as one of the four biggest outliers of all time, along with The Passion of the Christ, Avatar and Titanic. Well, that grouping now has another member: Jurassic World

Jurassic World opened this past weekend and, come Monday morning, had the highest opening weekend in history. Such is the nature of life for the more unexpected super hit of all time.

What has fascinated me about Jurassic World since its first box office predictions came out is how wrong everyone has been about it. In its summer preview issue, Entertainment Weekly predicted that Jurassic World would do $295 million. The movie will most likely make that amount in its first week in theaters.

On the Friday the film was technically released, seasoned box office pundits were predicting that Jurassic World would have a $115-$125 million opening weekend take. They were off by almost $100 million.

It continued this way throughout the weekend. On Sunday when the weekend estimates were released, Jurassic World was seen as having the second highest opening total in history, just behind The Avengers. Early Monday, new estimates were released that stated that Jurassic World had actually done $5+ million better on Sunday than expected and had surpassed The Avengers; Jurassic World now had the highest opening weekend in history.

At the rate we’re going, I’m sure that when the actuals are released later Monday, Jurassic World will somehow have found even more money to lay claim to.*

* For the sake of accuracy and the integrity of the news media, I sincerely hope that Jurassic World’s actuals do not bring its weekend totals back below The Avengers’. That would put publications in the awkward position of issuing a clarification that their earlier clarification was wrong and that they were actually right in the first place, not wrong.

Everyone was wrong about everything! It’s not quite as to-the-point or beautiful as William Goldman’s axiom, “Nobody knows anything,” but it’s in the ballpark.

There are a lot of joys to writing about the film industry and specifically the box office, but weekends like these are a godsend. They are like sorbet; a palate cleanser that reminds you that no matter how many formulas, statistics or studies are out there, studios and the executives that work for them really don’t have any idea when hits are coming. No one anyone was predicting that Jurassic World would do anything remotely close to these numbers; on Friday, Universal was actually shying away from the $115-$125 million numbers, preaching caution, with Variety writing, “Universal is being more conservative and saying it expects a debut north of $100 million.”  And technically, they weren’t wrong…

The reasons that are being trotted out to explain Jurassic World’s $209 million opening weekend are the same exact reasons that would have been trotted out had the movie only made $109 million: fans love Jurassic Park, boys love dinosaurs and the box office was primed for a big hit.

What no one is getting into is why Jurassic World made nearly $100 million more than the estimates. Because, much like American Sniper, no one is quite sure. You can repeat that Pratt is a star, that audiences were ready for a blockbuster or that director Colin Trevorrow is the new Spielberg as much as you want, but none of that sufficiently explains this phenomenon. Remember, just two weeks ago, people were criticizing Universal for not releasing Jurassic World over Memorial Day weekend. Yeah, so about that…

One of the main takeaways from Jurassic World’s record breaking weekend has been that lead Chris Pratt is bigger than Jesus and Instagram combined. Pratt had already ‘won’ 2014 and is, I suppose, now primed to repeat in 2015. Pratt is earning lots of praise for his star turn here and, apparently, Jurassic World grossing a lot of money means that Pratt is also a good choice for the Indiana Jones reboot.

What I want to focus on is the extremely unique nature of Pratt’s story. Up until August of 2014, Pratt was known as a chubby, best-friend type both on TV (Parks and Recreation) and on the silver screen (Her, Delivery Man). You absolutely, positively could not have guessed that he would ever be a leading man. Not from his choice of projects, not from his body of work or simply his body. Then, in 2013, Disney /Marvel cast Pratt as the lead in its comic book adaptation, Guardians of the Galaxy. It was Pratt’s first leading role ever. And it became the third highest grossing movie of the year, doing well over $300 million.

It’s not entirely clear that any of that was actually a result of Pratt’s involvement. Marvel’s films have almost all done well financially if they haven’t involved the Hulk and, given Pratt’s completely lack of drawing power prior to Guardians of the Galaxy, it’s impossible to state that his participation caused a lot of people to come see the film.

Pratt was the perfect example of a new millennium Hollywood star: he was good-looking actor who happened to star in a movie that made a lot of money.

In spite of the fact that Pratt had one leading role to his name in a major release, he was deemed the biggest star of 2014.*

* This is really weird when you think about it, because how big of a star can you actually be when have only one starring role to your name? If you really were the biggest star on the planet, wouldn’t someone, somewhere have noticed previously?

Sometime in 2013, I believe, Pratt signed on to appear in Jurassic World. Pre-production on the film began in July of 2013 and principal photography started in April of 2014, so it stands to reason that Pratt signed on at some point just before that.

What this means is that when Jurassic World signed Pratt to star, no one had any idea that he was going to be big. They couldn’t. Guardians of the Galaxy had only been in theaters for a handful of days when principal photography on Jurassic World finished! For me, the marker of Pratt’s actual stardom will come in his next leading role; that will be the first role that he’s had as an actual star. Since it comes opposite Jennifer Lawrence in the film Passengers, it will be interesting to see what happens.

No matter what though, Jurassic World had a great weekend and Pratt somehow became the biggest star on the planet in just two leading roles. Kudos all around!