Why do you continuously want people to panic? It's getting me really annoyed. Read my past couple of posts which will re-assure you that this is in no way a franchise killer, whether or not it is a "flop" or not.
I'd be a lot more hopeful if like 3 movies didn't open Friday. Hoping Noah can't find an audience because it's ticking off religious types and secular movie goers don't want a biblical story. The other 2 movies actually look
good, but it depends how much of a mainstream audience they manage to get. If we're
really lucky, families will still be going to the movies just enough to keep Muppets from dropping off too much. But that's if we're
really really lucky. Maybe we'll see an alligator.
Which, quite honestly, should count for something. Hollywood shoves
so many films into one month (where all the movies are losing money, and the only one with good numbers is actually Peabody and Sherman, considering how far 300 dropped off), and NONE of them make their budget back. MMW is a victim of being released too soon after Peabody and Sherman, which came after Lego, which came after Frozen... okay, The Nut Job got decent money because it was the
only thing in theaters in a dump month (same thing happened with that dumb Gnome crap- and it started making money 2 weeks after due to a vacation week). But MMW had the distinction of being in a long line of kid's movies. Burn out much?
The same thing happened last July. Too many big budget movies released at once. Despicable Me 2 was the only thing that really made money. Respectable. Then everything else either failed or barely made back their cash. Then by the time August came, too many kids movies out at once in a dump month. The Smurfs sequel crashed and burned, especially since the first one was an inexplicable hit... made all the worse by the fact they actually
tried on the second one. Planes, Turbo, Percy Jackson (which, if there's any hope of or at least a warranting a collective big face palm the Muppets getting another movie is that NO ONE liked the first Percy Jackson and it got another)... all opened up within weeks of each other. Planes somehow made money (sadly, yes), Turbo made it big overseas... Europe saved Smurfs 2 (considering how crappy their live action Asterix movies are, no surprise). There
is hope, albeit kinda faint, that this will be a bigger hit overseas.
Though I'd like to add, it
only missed 3 million to be considered successful. Flop or not, it could have opened
much lower. Sure, it would have been nice if, by now, it at least made up half the budget (or at least 25 mil). At least it's passing Muppets from Space and Buddy. It just would be nice if it at
least made MCC or MTI money.