Saturday, February 18, 2006

 

How's Hollywood Doing?

According to the great site Box Office Mojo, Munich and Syriana, two very bad, expensive, agenda movies continue to do badly at the box office. Munich is 56 days out from it's premier, playing in only 546 theaters, and has made $45 million (when it had a budget of over $70 million and another third to half that advertising it). Since only about 55% of the gross box office receipts go to the studio to repay the costs of making and advertising a movie, you'd have to call this a flop (more on international box office below). Syriana ($50 million budget) is 86 days out and down to 226 theaters with $49 million made. That ain't so good. But again, you have to lavishly overspend on the budget not to make it back. Even a barking dog of a flop like Looking For Comedy in the Muslim World, 28 days out and yet to make a million, will probably do OK with DVD and TV rights sales. Brokeback Mountain, which is a good movie, is 70 days out in a creeping barrage of a marketing plan, and now in 1966 theaters. It was made for $15 million and has made domestically $68 million. It was an agenda movie but at least it was watchable. I stand by my prediction that it will win best picture at the Oscars.

The way the site lists overseas box office it's tough to get a running total, but the site says Munich has done $39.7 million overseas and Brokeback Mountain has done $33.1 million, but
I don't know if that is current. No listing for Syriana. Let's put those triumphs of foreign marketing in perspective, shall we? Howl's Moving Castle, a cartoon from Japan's Ghibli Studios, which only did $4.7 million here in America, did $224.7 million overseas. Harry Potter/Goblet of Fire has made $.8839 billion and Narnia $.6526 billion World wide.

Comments:
Syriana is just about to come out here (or maybe it just did). I haven't seen it yet, but my wife worked on it. They spent a pretty penny in Dubai. Casablanca was a little cheaper.

I suspect it will find a faily good size European audience if they promote it at all.

I also suspect it will do well on video. I know it moves pretty fast, and it is hard to get all the subplots the first time through. Good formula for video.

If Clooney breaks even, I think he would call that a success. He definately has an agenda, but is that wrong? (And who doesn't?)
 
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