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Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 10:07:54 -0000

Actually, the box office receipts for franchise films (be they sequels or prequels) have nothing to do with the quality of that film. Instead, they reflect the popularity of the prior film. The Rings movies were very popular, and the box office actually rose. The first Pirates film was tremendously popular, and the box office for the much-less popular 2nd film reflected that. The first Harry Potter film was probably the least popular, and none of the subsequent films sold more than 80% of its tickets even though some of them (Prisoner, Goblet, the 2nd Hallows film) were vastly superior movies to the first. If you saw the prior film and liked it, then what the critics, friends, etc., say means nothing: you know that this is the type of film you'll like. If you saw the prior film and did not like it, then the same is true except that you know that is the type of film you do not like.

That said, we should have expected The Hobbit to be selling even more tickets than King given how popular King was. It's not coming close. The big reason probably is the 9 years in between: sequels demonstrating the rule almost always come out within 2-3 years of the prior film. After 9 years, a lot of the audience (in particular, young women) seem to have gone off of Middle-earth.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 12:16:50 -0000

Again, these things are not true. For "new" films (i.e., non-franchise films or first films in a franchise), there is a strong correlation between critical scores and how well films do on a per-theater basis.

For sequels (and this is a sequel as far as box offices are concerned), then critical scores, word-of-mouth, etc., have almost no effect on the box office: it's a product of the prior film's popularity and the prior films' success.

The other key thing with franchises that are adaptations (e.g., Rings, Harry Potter) is that what the hardcore fans feel about the film has no bearing on what Joe and Jane Public think: indeed, having the hardcore fans *hate* a film is evidence that it might actually be good as far as most people are concerned!

Here, the issue likely and probably is much simpler: it's been 9 years since the last Midde-earth movie, and a lot of the people who rushed out to see King no longer are interested in movies with Hobbits.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 13:13:04 -0000

Word of mouth is not affecting the Hobbit nor will it: for one thing, WOM does not have noticeable effects until much later in runs, and for another, it does not affect sequels while they are in theaters. (It might affect rentals, the way that it did for the 3rd Harry Potter film: which, in turn, boosted the audience to the highest it ever got for the sequels for Goblet.) That is for the same reason as why critical scores have so little effect: people's desires to see The Hobbit is based on their feelings about Lord of the Rings, not what critics or other people say.

As for repeat viewings, that's a very small fraction of ticket sales. It might have been as high as 5+% of King's tickets given New Line's surveys at that time: and that was considered incredibly high.

That said, the Hobbit took another 50% drop this Friday (01-04). It will limp past $300M, but we are looking at a 40+% drop in ticket sales relative to King. Again, that is really surprising given how popular King was: I can only think that the 9 year gap has made people forget how much they liked the films.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:06:18 -0000

The Hobbit's tickets are 40% higher than Fellowship: Fellowship's average ticket price was $5.75, whereas Hobbit's is $9.00 (after taking into account the 3D:2D splits). After 3 weeks, Fellowship had sold 36 million tickets in N. America. (It would sell 54.5M tickets in the end.) The Hobbit has sold only 27 million tickets in the same time. That's a 25% decrease in ticket sales!

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 14:10:08 -0000

This is a good point. Comparing a book to a film is like comparing a shark to a Tyrannosaurus: you have to focus on the part that transcends the medium (land vs. sea, book vs. cinema) for the parts that they can have in common (voracious predator vs. voracious predatory, story about realizing that you are more/less than you thought vs. story about whether you are more/less than you thought).

The film is telling the same story as the book albeit with a broader scope: instead of one protagonist, we have three. I'm not sure that the film is telling the story very well: as much as I enjoyed the film, I did feel that it dragged.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 05 Jan 2013 21:18:00 -0000

Well, here is a way to rephrase the issue. Given the success and popularity of Return of the King, The Hobbit should have sold 50-55M tickets easily. (Fellowship sold 54.5M tickets, for reference: The Hobbit should have done at least that well.) In other words, it should have cruised past $400M and flirted with $500M. It's not going to come remotely close to that: The Hobbit probably will sell only about 35M tickets.

So, what happened to those 20M people? OK, we know that women are not returning in the same proportions: but that does not come close to explaining what has happened. (Approximately 32M tickets were sold to women for King: i.e., not far fewer than will be sold period for The Hobbit.)

Critical reviews don't explain it: lots of sequels of popular films have been critically panned but still sold very well because people liked the prior film. (The *next* film in the series always saw a huge drop in ticket sales, however.)

Really, I can only think that it was the 9 year gap. Had The Hobbit come out in, say, 2006, then I think that a lot more people who enjoyed King would have been excited about more Middle Earth. After all of this time, however, people in their 20's and 30's now look back at their love of the Rings films as a sort of erstwhile whim.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 12:06:29 -0000

The issue is not how the fans react, but how Joe and Jane Public react. There are dozens of them for every one of us, after all. The Rings films succeed because those people (especially young women) liked what they saw and came back for the next movie.

That said, at the end of the day, most of the IMDB and Metacritic scores will be from general movie fans (or fans of the Rings franchise), not Tolkien fans. I would bet that it's probably true already: non-franchise blockbusters also get a ton of grades immediately and they do not have "fan bases."

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 12:18:09 -0000

Also, critics often separate between "good" and "enjoyable," or they will say "if you like X type of movie, then you'll like this one, too; but I'm giving it 2 starts out of 5 for lack of a coherent story, poor pacing, etc." Many critics will admit to "guilty pleasures": films that they gave only 1 or 2 stars but still enjoyed.

As for myself, I would call The Hobbit a very enjoyable movie, but only an OK one. (I would call the RIngs movies extremely enjoyable movies that also were excellent movies.)

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 12:22:20 -0000

Again, I don't think that either WOM or critical remarks had much effect on the box office in the first two weeks. (The holidays are particularly bad times for WOM: school is out, people spend less time at work, and they are frantic with traveling and shopping.) It was about people who wanted to see the film as soon as they heard about it getting out to see it.

Really, Word-of-Mouth is an anachronism. That affected movies years ago when they would stay in theaters for months and months. Probably the last "word of mouth" hit was "My Big Fat Greek Wedding": and it was months before that really had effect.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 13:00:15 -0000

Well, for those thinking that word-of-,mouth might be at work already, this weekend's box office data pretty flatly falsify the idea. The Hobbit made abut $17.5M, which is just under 2M tickets sold. By comparison, the Rings films sold from 2.3 - 2.8 million tickets in their 4th weekends. Given that there isa huge pool of Rings viewers who have not seen the film (basically, nearly 10M fewer people have seen The Hobbit than had seen Fellowship at this point), this indicates that nothing like word-of-mouth is reviving their interests. Now, given the IMDB scores, the word-of-mouth probably is good: but I would bet that (for whatever reasons) these people simply are not interested in seeing Tolkien films in the theaters anymore.

Re: Total Film: James McAvoy says he wants to play Gandalf in The Silmarillion

ProfWimsey — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 13:29:35 -0000

The only story from the Silm. that would make a good movie is Beren & Luthien. The Children of Hurin is too grim, and it really is just a sequence of events without any actual story to it.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:38:26 -0000

No, it really isn't. Look at it this way: the lowest selling Rings film sold about the same number of tickets as the highest selling Harry Potter film. The last Harry Potter film was not close to the top selling HP film: in most countries, it ranked 4th after Stone, Goblet and Chamber. It sold less than 80% of the tickets that Fellowship sold, at least in comparable markets. (Recent films have gotten tons of money from Russia and especially China that films 10 years ago never saw.)

Given that The Hobbit also had 3D ticket prices, The Hobbit should have blown Deathly Hallows out of the water in N. American, UK and global ticket sales. Really, this should have flirted with $2B overall. Instead, it's not even going to come close to even the last HP films' sales.

And that again begs the question: 10 years ago, half again as many people were interested in seeing Rings films as were interested in seeing Harry Potter films. Now, half again as many people wanted to see the last Harry Potter film as wanted to see The Hobbit.

What happened in the last 9 years?

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:45:13 -0000

Ticket price inflation has not shown much effect on audience interest in buying movie tickets. This has been true historically and recently. Two other factors have had much bigger effects, and both of these have been in place for many years now. One, theatrical runs are much, much shorter than they used to be, and there is only one run. (Gone With the Wind sold all of those tickets with 7 different theatrical runs, several of which last multiple years.) Once you could see a film only in the theater; but for many years now, that has not been the case. Two, theaters now have strong competition with cable television, computer games and home rentals: people simply do not go to the movie theater as often as they used to go.

You might think that the Great Recession has affected things. However , recessions often are good for movie sales. This might sound backwards, but recessions hurt the things that compete with films more than they hurt films. Movies are a cheap alternative during "staycations" or relative to premium cable channels, etc. (Indeed, people now forget that we were in a pretty major recession when the Rings trilogy came out!)

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Mon, 07 Jan 2013 19:48:16 -0000

Yes, but opposite of what you think: historically, movie ticket sales go up during recessions.

As for Bloom helping The Hobbit II, do not bet on it. Yes, girls were swooning for him 10 years ago. However, those girls have grown up!

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Tue, 08 Jan 2013 23:35:00 -0000

For one thing, the last Harry Potter film did not sell a particularly large number of tickets: in the major markets, it sold less than 80% of the tickets that the first film (and Fellowship) sold. It sold only 70% of the tickets that King sold. It made more $$$ solely because of 3D tickets and new markets like China. The "hype" for the last film resulted in only about a 10% increase in ticket sales in the major markets: it failed to sell as many tickets as either Goblet or Chamber. In other words, about 5% of the people who went to see Harry in 2005 ignored the hype in 2011 and stayed home.

The Hobbit is not a new franchise. Everybody knows that it's the next Tolkien movie. The last one sold about 60 million tickets in N. America alone. At 40% 3D sales at 2012/13 prices, that would be $540M right there. Again, $1B should never have been the goal: this film should have flown past $1.5B (which would still have been a huge ticket sales drop from King) and flirted with $2B.

This film is going to sell only 35M tickets, tops. That's 25M tickets fewer than King. No, it wasn't repeat sales: New Lines' estimates from 9 years ago were that maybe a little over 3M tickets were sold to repeat viewers. (That's a hell of a lot, too!)

Here is the other bad news: one thing that critics are very good at doing is predicting how films (and books and music) will be viewed over the long-haul. Yes, the early IMDB numbers are very strong, but those always start strong and then diminish. Do not be at all surprised if they are much lower in 11 months and if there is even less interest in The Hobbit in 11 months than there is now.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:19:16 -0000

One, it is not the Americans, it's also the Europeans: ticket sales (in numbers) are way down in the UK, France, Germany, etc., too.

Two, the critics are not relevant: people see "sequels" (and this is a sequel for all intents and purposes) based on their feelings about the prior film. What almost certainly has happened is that, 9 years later, people have lost interest in Tolkien films.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:22:20 -0000

You are correct that interest in the Hobbit is not the same as it was for Rings. However, it's not the critics. Again, it has been well documented that critics have very little influence on the box office totals of sequels. Many sequels have gotten far worse reviews than the Hobbit and sold more tickets. For example, Transformers II had 20% positive reviews and still sold about 15M more tickets than The Hobbit is going to sell. The Twilight films had far worse reviews and got far stronger return box offices. The Pirates sequels, Shrek sequels, etc., all survived equally bad or worse reviews.

The big difference? Those sequels came out much more quickly. It's been 9 years here.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:24:21 -0000

According to people I know, the 1980 presidential election was a really close one between Al Gore and Ralph Nader. People that we know mean very little, as they are highly non-random collections.

Along these lines, hardcore fans for Twilight, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, etc., mean very little to the overall box office. The Twilight films sold multiple times the tickets in N. America alone that the books sold world-wide. Harry Potter films sold more tickets in N. America alone than the corresponding books sold world-wide (up to those points; the global book sales have exceeded the N. American ticket sales in the subsequent 10 years for the first book).

And this film, too, was part of a big brand-name franchise. People who liked the prior films but who were put off by the critical reviews are very few and far between: people trust their own reviews ("I like this brand name") over critical reviews or word-of-mouth. Just as you couldn't talk the people who didn't like the early bad Harry Potter movies into seeing the good later ones, you are not going to talk people who liked the early good Tolkien films out of seeing the later bad one.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sat, 12 Jan 2013 12:31:39 -0000

You cannot use the simple inflation adjustment: that uses average 3D sales for all films. Instead, you need the 3D:2D splits for individiual films. Given reports for the Hobbit, that makes the average ticket price was about $9: and Fellowship would have made nearly $500M at those prices whereas King would have made $550M.

Overseas, the picture is not as rosy as you imply. The Hobbit's numbers are way down in terms of ticket sales, but getting a triple boost for US dollars: 1) 3D tickets; 2) inflation, and, 3) the lower value of the dollar relative to 2001-2003.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:10:04 -0000

As far as the accountants are concerned, the next film in the franchise is a "sequel." That's true if it is a true sequel (e.g., Prisoner of Azkaban relative to Chamber of Secrets), the next installment in the same story (e.g., Towers and King), a prequel (The Hobbit relative to Rings), or just an independent story later in the same universe (e.g., Skyfall, The Dark Knight Rises, etc.)

Most of the films in my example above fall into the last category.

Re: Death of ‘Hobbit’ at boxoffice greatly exaggerated

ProfWimsey — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 20:11:46 -0000

Oh, I should also add that the (highly significant) correlation between "original" popularity & success and "sequel" success extends to all four types of films that the accountants call sequels.

Re: Does The Friday Docback Getta Lotta Outta SHADA?? DOCTOR WHO Story #109, And More!!

ProfWimsey — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 17:05:29 -0000

Huh, I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned how Adams basically rewrote this story as "Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul." It's a shame that this didn't get finished. The show had gotten very tired at this point: Baker's schtick was old, and his & Adams' habit of rewriting all the scripts for comic value left stories that are good for laughs on first viewing, but sort of hollow on second viewings. This story looks like it was working better: and quite possibly because Adams' wrote it with his and Baker's humor in mind, meaning that they were slipping jokes into the story rather than excising story to slip in jokes.

Re: The Hobbit Earns More in Worldwide Box Office Than Fellowship or Two Towers

ProfWimsey — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 21:48:25 -0000

The film is going to sell only about 60% of the tickets that Fellowship sold in the same major markets (US+Canada, UK, Germany, etc.) and half the tickets that King sold. The female audience plunged from the 52% levels of King to the 40% levels of Fellowship.

"Brand name satisfaction" coupled with expanded markets (Russia, China) and the much lower value of the dollar relative its value 10 years ago means that this film should have made twice as much money as it did. Critical reviews should not have been important: people see Film X+1 based on what they thought of Film X, and people loved King.

So, what the *bleep* happened?

Re: The Friday Doback Has An Answer For 'The Twin Dilemma' - Don't Watch It!!

ProfWimsey — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:43:29 -0000

It does bear remembering that Colin Baker went into this thinking that the Twin Dilemma Doctor was going to be transitory: his unstable personality and even wardrobe were supposed to mellow into something closer to the Pertwee model than anything else, but still a bit different: the Commander McBragg / Frasier Crane / etc. pompous braggart who could actually back up his boasts.

However, JNT was convinced that TV audiences could not handle any change in characters, so the Doctor remained as static as ever: and unfortunately stuck in a very unlikable form. The irony, of course, is that Doctor Who was being driven off the air by character dramas in which all the stories focused around the evolution of the characters.

It actually is a real shame that Colin Baker could not have worked with Davies or Moffet: Baker's ideas of what to do with the Doctor (i.e., an evolving person rather than a static icon) is generally like their's.

Re: The Friday Doback Has An Answer For 'The Twin Dilemma' - Don't Watch It!!

ProfWimsey — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 20:02:43 -0000

I suspect that the idea of dynamically developing the Doctor was just too alien to most of the people involved. I do not know Saward's views, but JN-T took the show in the opposite direction in many ways: he made the Doctor even more of a static icon than he already had been! However, the bigger problem might have been pure inertia: the show had prospered for 20+ years with the lead character being some variant of the British Superman (part James Bond, part Sherlock Holmes, part WInston Churchill, part Charles Darwin, etc.). Changing it must have seemed difficult. However, TV was changing greatly at that time in the UK and elsewhere, and Doctor Who's failure to adapt to this almost certainly had a lot to do with it's demise. Thus, it was not "the production was not as good as the 1970's": instead, it was "the production was too much like the 1970's."

But to that end, you do nail it: no Coronation Street viewer would find it at all plausible that Peri would continue to hang out with this jerk!