Weekly Box Office and Film Discussion Thread

[mr3urious]

It's nice to see Zootopia get all this mainstream attention this time. Frozen-mania is long overdue for an end.

 

[Muppet Master]

Dang at Zootopia.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

Falling just a light 33% in it's second weekend to a 10 day total of $142.6 million domestically already ahead of Kung Fu Panda 3's total. Very impressive. Though it's kind of sad for Kung Fu Panda, falling 60% last week from 8 to 3 million, and 53% from 3 to 1.6 million this week, yikes it got hit hard, so far it's made $136 million domestically, it'll probably top off at around $140 million, which is actually pretty good for a January release and just $25 million below the last one. Though it's foriegn box office is really underwhelming. At just $192 million, that trails the second one's $500 million and the first one's which was around $400 million, and it's worldwide total so far is just $328 million way below the previous ones which were over $600 million, what happened.

 

[mr3urious]

10 Cloverfield Lane also made a lot more money than I expected, around 25 mil. this week. A lot less than Cloverfield itself, but it was cheap enough to produce that it turned a profit, so sequels are inevitable.

 

[Drtooth]

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Falling just a light 33% in it's second weekend to a 10 day total of $142.6 million domestically already ahead of Kung Fu Panda 3's total. Very impressive. Though it's kind of sad for Kung Fu Panda, falling 60% last week from 8 to 3 million, and 53% from 3 to 1.6 million this week, yikes it got hit hard, so far it's made $136 million domestically, it'll probably top off at around $140 million, which is actually pretty good for a January release and just $25 million below the last one. Though it's foriegn box office is really underwhelming. At just $192 million, that trails the second one's $500 million and the first one's which was around $400 million, and it's worldwide total so far is just $328 million way below the previous ones which were over $600 million, what happened.

January was really not a good month to release it, but frankly, what was? November pretty much killed Good Dinosaur, December would have seen too much competition from Star Wars, and March....well, at least someone had intuition that Zootopia would be a monster. They have nothing all summer long, and they have that Troll thing in November. There could have been a better place to put KFP3, but they got overly cautious. DW hasn't had a massive hit for a while and I sort of blame the fact they have this big deal with Netflix. I'm guessing most parents are just waiting for it to hit there so they don't have to pay that much to see it. Plus, the movie was essentially made for China by China and probably done cheaper because of it being completely outsourced.

But I'm fine if that was the last we see of Po and the Furious Five. Po's character arc closed nicely. Three movies should be a limit. If they want to go the Shrek and Madagascar route, I'd love to see a Monkey spin-off.

10 Cloverfield Lane also made a lot more money than I expected, around 25 mil. this week. A lot less than Cloverfield itself, but it was cheap enough to produce that it turned a profit, so sequels are inevitable.

Good that it manages to be a squeaker. I'd say only Cloverfield fans actually knew what this film was and what it was about since the trailers are pretty cryptic. I think that was a brilliant move, but unfortunately one that didn't translate.

 

[mr3urious]

January was really not a good month to release it, but frankly, what was? November pretty much killed Good Dinosaur, December would have seen too much competition from Star Wars, and March....well, at least someone had intuition that Zootopia would be a monster. They have nothing all summer long, and they have that Troll thing in November. There could have been a better place to put KFP3, but they got overly cautious. DW hasn't had a massive hit for a while and I sort of blame the fact they have this big deal with Netflix. I'm guessing most parents are just waiting for it to hit there so they don't have to pay that much to see it. Plus, the movie was essentially made for China by China and probably done cheaper because of it being completely outsourced.

At least KFP3 scored a decent profit for a January release, and DW seems to be taking this victory in stride.

 

[snichols1973]

This interview article (12/3/2010) featuring Jeffrey Katzenberg discussed DreamWorks' tentative future plans:

http://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/katzenberg-talks-dreamworks-sequels/

According to KFP3's IMDB trivia section, "The CEO of Dreamworks confirmed that this is not the last movie in the franchise and that 3 Kung Fu Panda films are planned ahead."

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2267968/trivia?ref_=tt_trv_trv

 

[Drtooth]

A new KFP series on Netflix would be far better. Po's character arc is finished, and without spoiling the film for those who haven't seen it, I really don't think there's much more they can ad without it being a 90 minute long episode of Legends of Awesomeness. This last movie barley was like that. It's the same reason why I really hope they don't make another Madagascar film. Technically Penguins was a sequel, but only in so much as it takes place after the end of Madagascar 3, and it didn't really need to be. It could have been its own separate thing, and the connection to M3 was essentially just a one off gag/springboard to the story anyway. I just don't see a movie where Alex and Co just have circus adventures. Their character arcs are done, they've outgrown the Zoo they thought they wanted to go back to.

 

[Drtooth]

This is pretty disappointing...

The rights for The Little Prince (a completely finished movie that already made 80 million over seas) have been dumped by Paramount, and only picked up for streaming by Netflix. This really should have been released theatrically, as it desperately needs to be seen on the big screen. I guess that the year is full of so many CGI kid's films that this just can't compete, and Paramount clearly didn't want to tangle with Zootopia or any of the others.

 

[mr3urious]

This is pretty disappointing...

The rights for The Little Prince (a completely finished movie that already made 80 million over seas) have been dumped by Paramount, and only picked up for streaming by Netflix. This really should have been released theatrically, as it desperately needs to be seen on the big screen. I guess that the year is full of so many CGI kid's films that this just can't compete, and Paramount clearly didn't want to tangle with Zootopia or any of the others.

And that's a darn shame, as it looks like a quality movie that doesn't deserve to get the same treatment as some bleventeenth-party CGI product. The actual Little Prince story is done in stop-motion, for one!

 

[Drtooth]

Heck. The linking footage looks pretty darn Pixarian. I even saw a theatrical trailer for this with Kung Fu Panda 3. I feel it's obvious to point out that Norm of the North was a low budget DTV throwaway that Lionsgate thought was good enough to release theatrically, but Paramount didn't want to bother with this actually good film. But the sad thing is, I can see why they'd postpone the film so it doesn't get bogged down with the yet another Ice Age movie or any of the other CGI kid's films this year. But I certainly feel they didn't have to drop it all together when it could have gotten a nice August sleeper hit slot, or even a limited release like one of the Ghibli films gets before its inevitable home video intentions.