Muppets Most Wanted Box Office Numbers

[beaker]

It's still a better investment than a huge movie with a big budget, no matter how much it loses. But it still looks less and less likely this will get anywhere unless it manages to kinda hang around a few box offices after the 3 week mark.

For the sake of sanity, I'm just going to say it's because the Muppets are inaccessible and kids drug their parents to Peabody and Sherman. Because, frankly, if this is the one time people actually listen to critics, it's maddening. And again, a small amount of critics who were slightly disappointed. Of stick in the mud fans who think they're doing themselves a favor by avoiding it.

Who even knows who Peabody is? Im 36 and I've hardly even heard of that franchise.
I can't believe the low turnout is because of critics. Divergent got 41% on rotten tomatoes/meta critic. I guess it's just one of those anomalies, and it's a shame as it's a really funny movie I felt. (Disney certainly didn't skimp on marketing dollars, that's for sure)

 

[Pinkflower7783]

For some reason, utterly unbeknownst to me, American movie goers haven't taken to your film in the numbers they should.

Piggy: Give them time...!

Kermit: We're working on it.

From an interview in London...

 

[Drtooth]

My disappointment isn't so much in the box office floppage...but that I think a lot of people would like the film if they gave it a chance. I mean when you got the majority of cynics on here who aren't shy to sharply criticize Muppet projects, calling it a near perfect masterpiece...

Which is why I'm angry. The negative reviews are in the minority, and they didn't say the movie was horrible. They were just slightly disappointed, and acting like a selfish child on Christmas that got 4 out of 5 things he asked for... and the 5th thing was small, inconsequential, and not worth a temper tantrum. And now we have these classic fans standing their ground on the basis that "I'm such a huge fan that I want them to be locked in a closet forever because things will never be the same, so why bother." Staying away from this movie over the dark, hanging cloud of "slight disappointment" is just the most close minded thing I've ever heard of when it comes to these kinds of things.

The movie was, by all means, a good film. Much better than the last several projects, much closer to the original films. How come giving it a chance is like ripping out your kidneys? Yes, it is extortion to have to see everything a franchise does to keep it alive. But they don't even have to sit through Underdog, Yogi Bear, or Dragon Ball Evolution. This is a solid film that got flack for being a sequel, because hipster critics are predisposed to hate sequels because it somehow takes the place of an imaginary Indie Film they think will be so awesome.

Anyway, I actually prefer to think the film flopped because people didn't care and because of stiff Peabody competition. At least that does good for my Jay Ward fandom that we actually have a good movie that people actually like. And if it's because of kid's movie burn out from Frozen, Lego, and Peabody, that's also forgivable (stupid of them to release the Muppets 2 weeks after Peabody anyway). But if it's because "true fans" think that anything is an affront to Henson (not everything he did was golden, anyway...most of the stuff, but not everything) and those who are that influential to listen to the glass half full-this is the worst glass ever reviews, I'm DONE with the Muppet fandom. I can take months, years of nothing Muppety to look forward to if this if no one wants it.

 

[Drtooth]

Who even knows who Peabody is? Im 36 and I've hardly even heard of that franchise.
I can't believe the low turnout is because of critics. Divergent got 41% on rotten tomatoes/meta critic. I guess it's just one of those anomalies, and it's a shame as it's a really funny movie I felt. (Disney certainly didn't skimp on marketing dollars, that's for sure)

Can I say how shocked I am that the movie did well (other than actually seeing it and finding it the quality they never bothered in the 4 other Jay Ward films)? Mr. Peabody and Sherman is a cartoon that doesn't have a huge fanbase under the age of 30. Muppet movies are always accessible, Rocky and Bullwinkle only have collections for collectors. They just put collections of their old cartoons on single, kid friendly DVD's after the movie came out. The show's not even rerun anymore. The buzz from kids was inexplicable. And they had a very low merchandising presence, and the film was barely marketed (considering how Turbo and Rise of the Guardians did, it's no surprise). And that worked for the film, somehow.

But Divergent? Doesn't matter if it had 1% at Tomatoes. Tweenage-20 year old girls are gullible for crappy books like Divergent. I can't say the term for it, but it's exactly what Stewie from Family Guy called The DaVinci Code before he read it. A __________ aid. That's the only reason anyone's seeing it. Weak female role model is the silly named chosen one that gets some idiotic romantic scene with hot guy. Too bad it didn't fall off like that Instrumental Bones (or whatever that crap was called) in August.

 

[Pinkflower7783]

I love this:

When you two come to a new film, how dear to your heart does he remain, and what are the lessons you take from working with someone like that? Talking obviously about Jim Henson.

Kermit: Doing this because you like it. Doing this because you're driven to do it. It's nice for it to be successful, that's always nice. It's nice for critics to like it. But really, the only reason to do this is it's so much fun, and it's what you're driven to do.

Piggy: Kermit has always said that he just wants to make people happy. And that's something that you told me Jim had the same feelings about.

Kermit [nods]: He did, he did. He enjoyed making people laugh, and he always said that he wanted to make the world a better place for having being here.

Piggy: I did not know him but he sounds like a wonderful person.

 

[LouisTheOtter]

I'm going to throw a few things out for everyone to chew on:

* Muppet films are not now, and have never been, huge moneymakers. We all know this. Adjusted for inflation, TMM is the only movie to crack the $100-million mark at the box office (let alone the $200-million mark). And that movie, as wonderful as it is/was, had the advantage of being the Muppets' first big-screen release and hitting the cultural sweet spot at a time when the characters were on TV every week and doing tons of TV specials and other appearances. The media landscape has changed dramatically since 1979 and the fact that the Muppets are as prominent as they are in 2014 is something to celebrate.

* It's entirely possible that Disney, despite their best intentions, over-saturated the market with MMW promotion and turned some people off. I got an "uh-oh" feeling when I looked at the Good Morning America Facebook page and saw comments from people who announced they would rather watch CNN than sit through another Muppet appearance. (Mercifully, these were only three of about 40 comments, but it doesn't take much for negativity to seep in.) We already had a great Toyota Super Bowl ad (and related online campaign); was it overkill for Disney to buy advertising rights to the pre-game show? Even Mrs. Otter and I, who have been eagerly awaiting this movie for months, found ourselves a little weary of the relentless wave of TV ads in the final week before its North American opening.

* Similarly, as grateful as I am to Disney for putting their deep pockets and overall goodwill behind the Muppets, I suspect there are still a significant number of people who look at Disney and see a corporate behemoth, no matter how high-quality a product they may be promoting. This kind of thought process sickens me because it means people are missing a lot of great movies and TV shows to prove some kind of nihilistic/hipster point, but I know it's out there. (And yes, I'm well aware that this didn't keep people from flocking to Frozen.)

* And the non-Seymour elephant in the room: Given the current political climate in Russia/Ukraine, did moviegoers sour at the thought of a film that spends a significant chunk of its running time in a Siberian gulag?

(P.S. Pinkflower, thank you for sharing those interview quotes. I almost teared up at the last one about Jim Henson.)

 

[CensoredAlso]

* Muppet films are not now, and have never been, huge moneymakers. We all know this. Adjusted for inflation, TMM is the only movie to crack the $100-million mark at the box office

Thank you, I actually was thinking of pointing that out. The goal has never realistically been to make Bayformers money, heh. That doesn't mean the movie is a failure.

And the non-Seymour elephant in the room: Given the current political climate in Russia/Ukraine, did moviegoers sour at the thought of a film that spends a significant chunk of its running time in a Siberian gulag?

No, I doubt most people even know that's the plot of the movie. And even then, it's not the type of issue to push that many buttons in America. We're annoyed at Russia but technically they haven't done anything to us directly. And they're pretty traditional cartoony villains, like using Nazis in Indiana Jones. Most Americans aren't going to get hugely offended.

Now if say, the Muppets were captured by the Taliban you might have something there, lol.

 

[dwayne1115]

At the end of the day I think for us Muppet fans the Box office numbers should not really matter.

We got an awesome well made Muppet Movie, and if other people don't want to enjoy it, well it's there loss and my gain because I will be going to the theater at least two more times to see this wonderful movie.

 

[Drtooth]

At the end of the day I think for us Muppet fans the Box office numbers should not really matter.

On the plus side... yes. We've managed to get 2 Muppet movies while Henson can't even get the most independent of their three big movies (Happytime Murders that is) off the ground. And Disney did try it's darndest. They didn't try to file this film into the background and then just dump some more Marvel and Frozen stuff on top of it and forget about it. And yes, it may be a bigger hit on DVD/Netflix than it was in theaters, and wise film distributors need to realize that DVD/Netflix/Whatever sales are more important than ever. It saved lots of movies from the scrap heap. And maybe they'll separate the movie from the franchise and we'll get something else in the near future.

But what I keep seeing is that a franchise/property is forever tied to the movie, and if the movie doesn't do well even if it's because it's actually terrible, the fans hate it and it can't get that audience of kids that don't know who they are and don't care, that property tends to disappear permanently. Look at Speed Racer. Big Budget loss of a film, the American company doesn't even bother to renew the license... last you see of it is like a .5 second clip in Lego Movie commenting on how much of a failure the line is. On the plus side, they did have to pay Tatsunoko for it. The Bullwinkle Movie? Look how long it took for the cartoon series after that movie to hit DVD. Inspector Gadget never recovered (except in Europe, which actually GOT Gadget and the Gadgetinis)...of course, he wasn't that popular with anyone who wasn't an 80's kid anyway.

Best case scenario I can think of is this. The Japanese Gatchaman film (that they had to make because Imagi fell). Universally hated, tanked... there was an anime series made to boost the old property... the animated series was the hit. Hopefully the Muppet merchandise continues to fly off shelves despite the film, and that speaks louder than the BO number.

 

[mr3urious]

I like to think that MMW underperformed due to all the burnout from kids' movies, too, as well as the Spring Break weekend preventing the college crowd from seeing it during the opening weekend. Hopefully it would earn a bit more in round 2, along with the foreign market pulling in some extra cash.