What’s Behind the Dismal Winter at the US Box Office
5:00 AM PST 3/6/2013 by Pamela McClintock – THR
Theater stocks slide and grosses drop 15 percent as “Jack the Giant Slayer” leads a
season of discontent and a glut of grim action flops leaves few studios unscathed.
When Bryan Singer sat down at his computer in mid-January and read Internet
comments criticizing a new Warner Bros. poster for his big-budget epic Jack the
Giant Slayer, he fumed. He didn’t care for the cartoonish image of the film’s stars
brandishing swords and standing around a swirling beanstalk. So Singer complained
on Twitter. “Sorry for these crappy airbrushed images,” he wrote Jan. 16, irking
Warners’ powerful marketing head Sue Kroll. “They do the film no justice. I’m proud
of the film & our great test scores.” An insider confesses, “Bryan felt like he had to
apologize to his fans.”
The dust-up points to a long and fraught process culminating with the low $27.2
million North American debut of Jack the Giant Slayer during the March 1-to-3
weekend, the latest in a string of dismal 2013 domestic releases. Revenue and
attendance both are down a steep 15 percent from the same period in 2012, wiping
away gains made last year. Jack might have cost far more than any of the other
misses, but in assessing the carnage, there’s a collective sense that Hollywood is
misjudging the moviegoing audience and piling too many of the same types of movies
on top of one another.
There were 13 R-rated films opening through the first nine weekends of 2013, an
unprecedented number even for off-peak months. Many of those films were violence-
laced action pics heavy on gunfire and featuring a parade of aging stars. “It’s true, a
lot of movies have been cannibalizing each other,” says Dan Fellman, president of
distribution at Warners, which distributed Sylvester Stallone’s dud Bullet to the
Head (Joel Silver and IM Global partnered on the pic). Adds another studio
distribution chief: “A lot of these films came out in the midst of the gun-control
discussion sparked by the Newtown school shooting. It was terrible timing.”
Warners’ homegrown Gangster Squad also fired blanks, and Fox’s Bruce Willis
starrer A Good Day to Die Hard will be the lowest-grossing film in the franchise
domestically. It has earned nearly $60 million to date and likely won’t get to the $83
million earned by the first Die Hard in 1988 (the sequel has earned north of $160
million internationally).
Universal’s Identity Thief, which opened in February, is the only 2013 release to have
crossed $100 million in North America, with earnings of $107.4 million through
March 3. In February 2012, three films grossed more than $100 million: Safe House,
The Vow and Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. Overall domestic revenue this
February plummeted 24 percent, sparking alarm on Wall Street. That, coupled with
Jack’s weak debut — driving revenue down 38 percent from the same weekend a year
ago, when Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax opened to $70.2 million — caused analyst Eric Wold
of B. Riley Caris to downgrade theater chains March 4, sending shares of Regal,
Cinemark and Carmike Cinemas lower.
The finger-pointing has begun over why Jack failed to connect. Warners’ New Line
division and Legendary Pictures spent nearly $200 million to produce the revisionist
fairy tale thanks to costly special effects. Tack on a hefty marketing spend, and the
price tag grew to close to $300 million — reminiscent of last year’s Battleship, which
resulted in a sizable loss for Universal after topping out at $303 million globally.
Box-office experts say Jack is headed for the same fate unless it takes in $400 million
to $500 million worldwide. In its favor: Early response in select Asian markets has
been slightly better.
Sources say Singer ultimately was pleased with Warners’ marketing campaign, but
the director’s impetuous tweet won’t soon be forgotten by studio executives, who
promptly demanded it be deleted (it’s still there). What Singer’s camp can’t quite
reconcile is the March 1 release date. Jack was supposed to open in June 2012, when
older kids and college-age fanboys would be out of school, but more time was needed
for special effects and to make the PG-13 film more kid-friendly. A new March 22,
2013, date was planned because it coincided with spring break. But the filmmakers
were startled when it was again moved, this time to March 1, one week before the
release of Disney’s Oz the Great and Powerful, a film that targets the same audience,
and further from the Easter holiday. Oz is tracking for a $75 million-plus opening,
though there are no guarantees in the current climate. “They always said they’d find a
place when kids were available. Also, everybody [at Warner Bros.] underestimated
Oz,” says the source.
Fellman says March 1 was the best date because there were no other event films
(animated tentpole The Croods opens March 22). “Multiple reasons go into a dating
decision, including the international rollout,” he says, adding that the market often
can sustain multiple event pics.
Privately, studio executives concede that Jack was a feathered fish, neither a straight
fanboy tentpole that Singer (X-Men, Superman Returns) is famous for nor a pure
family play. “Sometimes you simply have a movie that is rejected,” laments one
Warners executive, a common refrain these days in Hollywood. “You can spend as
much as you want, market it a zillion different ways, and it still doesn’t work.”