6/21/09

After getting used to headlines trumpeting amazing box office and sleeper hits like Taken and Paul Blart, Mall Cop for most of the winter and spring, those headlines have shifted to the question "Where have the uber-blockbusters gone?"  You know, like last summer's trio of 300 million-plus grossers, Iron Man, Indiana Jones & the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Dark Knight.  For that matter, the previous May alone featured three 300 million-plus hits:  Spider-Man 3, Shrek the 3rd and Pirates of the Caribbean:  At World's End.  But as of this date, gasp, not one of the top 50-grossing movies of all time (a list that goes all the way down to Cars and its' 244 million-plus booty, was released in 2009.  Star Trek ($239m and counting) and Up (224m with a lot of legs left), will certainly pass that number, but neither is the runaway hit one expects to dominate a normal summer.  It can be argued after people flocked to what would traditionally seem like throwaway schedule filler earlier this year that the movie holidays were primed to explode.  But, no dice thus far, with only Transformers:  Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince having legitimate shots at giving the season a true monster hit.  Because if you think the summer schedule's been a bit dry so far, better start looking for alternative hot weather activities for a July schedule that's as blah as any I can recall.  At the moment when The Dark Knight set last year's box office on fire, Harry Potter will be the only thing standing between Hollywood and a year-to-year box office apocalypse.  So, what's up?

-The Strike Strikes Back:  It seems like so long ago, but when Hollywood writers hit the picket line last winter, they made it impossible for many big-ticket projects to get before the cameras in time to meet a summer 2009 release date.  Just as bad in its' own way was forcing projects like Night at the Museum:  Battle of the Smithsonian and the upcoming GI Joe:  The Rise of Cobra to lens with the kind of half-finished scripts that are usually fleshed out on the set during production.  By, you know, writers.  As a result, by the time the writers settled, this summer's cupboard was mostly bare, and could be filled only with the kind of movies that shoot quickly, mostly comedies like The Hangover and The Ugly Truth.  The former has been an amazing success story, but the ceiling on that kind of sleeper hit is nothing compared to what we'd be expecting from the sort of pre-sold titles that normally fill these slots.

-May Madness:  OK, so you're a studio executive starting the summer knowing there will only be so many true blockbusters in play.  How do you respond to this phenomenon?  By seeking to keep as much distance between them as possible in hopes of maximizing word of mouth and legs?  Or, perhaps, you could follow Hollywood's lead and release X-Men Origins:  Wolverine, Star Trek, Angels & Demons, Night at the Museum:  Battle of the Smithsonian, Terminator Salvation and Up all during the same 5 week period.  All but the last no doubt cannibalized the living daylights out of each other, making all but Star Trek one-week phenomena.   And, of course, the mad Memorial Day showdown between Museum and Terminator ensured that neither would come anywhere near their potential.  Warner Bros. made what was likely the season's smartest scheduling decision when they pulled the Potter sequel from last fall and moved it to the middle of a very wide-open July.  So why contradict that reasoning by pitting the bad buzz-plagued Terminator sequel/prequel in the middle of a holiday meat grinder?  Why not flip the June 12 release of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, something unlike any of the other May titles, and Salvation, giving it a window when no major sci-fi flicks opened either the week before or after it?  Of course, hindsight is 20/20, but I waited pretty much from the moment the two tentpoles picked that same Memorial Day date to see one or the other blink, and neither did.  And both suffered.

-Are we over this pre-sold blockbuster thing?:  At a moment when every studio in town is taking Trek's success as a sign that we need to "reboot" the hell out of everything (A Buffy the Vampire Slayer reboot?  With neither Joss Whedon nor Sarah Michelle Gellar involved?  Seriously?), there's something to be said for the notion that what moviegoers back in the winter were responding to was an everything-old-is-new-again freshness found in movies like Gran Torino and He's Just Not that Into You, the kind of titles they'd been mostly ignoring while bingeing on empty-calorie blockbusters the last few years.  There's been little or nothing like that this summer, and the movies that have exceeded expectations (did a Sandra Bullock romantic comedy really scrape 35 million dollars this weekend?  THAT'S retro!) have not been the ones people had their eyes on.  It's a thing that just makes you go "hmmmmmm...".

Nobody's more psyched than me to remake the acquaintance of Optimus Prime and friends this coming Wednesday, and I'm sure the box office numbers that result will make the ground shake.  But when we go back to year-to-year disappointment in the weeks that follow, remember to take the numbers with a wee grain of salt.  There's a lot more than disenchanted moviegoers in play here.