Actuals are out... and it's actually good news:
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/
MMW bumped up .5 mil to debut with a 17 million weekend.
Before you start celebrating, this is actually the first initial number before the estimates came in with 16.5, and back then it was still a disappointing number.
Headdesk... That's much better? is that still the "we aren't counting Sunday because we're impatient" number, or did it only get .5 million over Sunday? Either way, the fact it didn't even nudge up to 20 mil (the lowest number they'd expect for it to be considered successful enough, and almost 10 mil below the already low estimate) just grinds my gears. Unless it's indeed the Sunday morning estimate, then they're just ignoring a slightly helpful increase. People see movies on Sundays. It's a thing.
To clarify some things: the fact that this was released in March has nothing to do with anything. Movies can break out at anytime, it just needs the audience attention. The Lego Movie opened with near 70 million in the first week of February! This was merely the classic case of too much family competition combined with a tough YA opener. Can we blame Disney? I don't know... they had this release date locked in for a very long time, and I'm not sure how long ago Divergent came into the picture but honestly I thought Muppets was the only opener until three weeks ago so that shows how much I paid attention to it.
I agree. it just takes a very energized base to see a movie. Lego was a monster. It was hyped up, it was something that hugely appealed to kids.
But some crap like Nut Job and Gnomeo and Juliet manage to make money for being the only films out. The Muppets was released with 3 weak kid's movies (one of them being a vanity project that no one that isn't a film student would care about). MMW opened opposite Peabody, which was still performing strong (held at number three). And it's really tough as a fan of BOTH Muppets and Jay Ward. I'd hate to have seen P&S spanked by Frozen and Thor, but I'm very conflicted that MMW didn't even have close to Peabody's momentum.
Clearly, other than most fans, there wasn't that much momentum for the Muppets despite the new plushes selling out and the cereal boxes flying off the shelves. That's what confuses me. Which brings me to...
Like Drtooth said, marketing comes into play with this. The Mouse spent probably a cool couple dozen or so million on marketing alone, and that does not figure into the film's production budget. The Muppets were showered EVERYWHERE and this is what they have to show in return: a tepid showing. It's just... not good.
Which ticks me..the...heck...off. Unless there was some violent hype backlash about it, there is NO WAY this movie should have been ignored more than the first one. Disney did everything right this time (except for releasing
anything on DVD), the Muppets were everywhere. That should have translated to a bigger opener than the last one. Divergent had
absolutely no marketing of any kind up until 2 weeks, when they blitzed with 2 talk show appearances and a commercial. But then again, it seems word of mouth of the book was the only thing it needed. It's not really the same audience, but still... that's going to be a thorn in our sides. The real competition is Peabody, but still...
stop writing these terrible books and making movies out of them.
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