This holiday season the studios have been putting on their thinking caps and trying out new things. With the tough economy, combined with the numerous forms of competition (TV, Netflix, Hulu, etc), Hollywood has been experimenting with both release dates and limited releases. Here I will list some of the more notable instances, and discuss what worked (Precious), and what did not (The Road).
Disney’s A Christmas Carol
For the release of the classic tale of Scrooge & Co., Disney decided to try out the Christmas film before it was even Thanksgiving. The Robert Zemeckis film, which cost $175 million to make only brought in $30 million for its opening weekend box office. While Disney was probably hoping to maintain continuous business throughout the holiday season, they will actually be lucky to make their money back. There is too much competition this winter for a mediocre retelling of a classic story to gain any traction as the season goes by. A Christmas Carol would have been better served with a December release. Christmas day would have been too late, but before Thanksgiving was too early. While the film is still in theaters, the ad campaign ended weeks ago. There may be a late advertising push closer to Christmas, but the film has already lost steam. It is really a testament to the high interest in 3D IMAX that the film has been able to make any money at all – those tickets are more expensive. One argument for releasing Christmas movies early is the DVD potential, but A Christmas Carol will not be released on DVD by Christmas, so that argument would not apply here.
Precious
Lionsgate has done a tremendous job with the slow roll-out of the studio’s best film this year. With early screenings at film festivals, Precious was acquired by Lionsgate with the backing of Tyler Perry and Oprah. The $10 million film has tripled its original budget at the box-office, and positive w0rd-of-mouth combined with awards buzz will continue to help the small film bring in the dollars. Lionsgate’s uncommon release strategy has helped Precious maintain a solid, continuous presence at the box-office by slowly releasing the film into more markets each week. Usually, a small film would have a limited theatrical release, followed by a wider release which would depend on the limited release’s showing. With Precious, Lionsgate has been incredibly patient. Even with the limited release of Precious making big money (per theater), Lionsgate only expanded the release by a couple hundred theaters per week. From week one to week two, Precious went from 18 theaters, to 156. Currently, the film is still only open in 663 theaters. To put this in perspective, Twilight Saga: New Moon is open in 4,024 theaters.
The Road
Based on the successful Oprah book club endorsed novel by Cormac McCarthy, The Road has a solid pedigree. Good book, director, screenwriter, actor. It’s the plot/premise that is the problem. The Road is a bleak, dreary, sad downer of a film – perfect for Thanksgiving week, right? Yeah, no. The film, budgeted at $30 mil, has brought in only about $2 mil, although the initial release was limited. Unfortunately for the producers, there really was no good time to release this film. The Thanksgiving week push was probably something of a Hail Mary, trying to do some reverse psychology on holiday theatergoers. The film went into production in early 2008: in other words, pre-economic meltdown. The premiere was supposed to happen in late 2008, but was pushed back several times to work on the post-production, along with finding a better release date. That did not work so well. As this summer has shown, adult dramas do not do well in a recession. Depressing, post-apocalyptic adult dramas do even worse. Adults are not going to spend $12-15 per ticket on a sad-doll movie about the end of the world. Even Precious is at least hopeful and inspiring.
The Blind Side
The release for this film was mixed. In a silly move by Warner Bros., The Blind Side was released during the same week as Twilight Saga: New Moon. While a feel-good inspirational movie is usually a good bet for Thanksgiving, there was a lot of conflict between the potential audience. Luckily for WB, good work of mouth has benefited the football drama, which stars Sandra Bullock. The opening weekend was pretty good, but it was the film’s second week that was eye-opening. For the first time this year, a wide release film actually went up in its second week. New Moon won the second week’s box-office again, but with a %70 decline in audience. Amazingly, The Blind Side is now the year’s biggest hit to never reach the number one position at the box-office! The film, which was budgeted at $39 mil has already topped $100 mil! Now we can just wait until next year when five similar movies come out.
UPDATE:
In a rare feat, The Blind Side rose to no.1 at the box-office in its 3rd week of wide release! The film pulled in $20 mil and is well on its way to $200 mil.
