Tag Archives: William Goldman

Box office Problems…

I’ve mentioned it before -many times!- but it bears repeating. It’s the lovely quote by prestigious screenwriter/writer William Goldman concerning making films, and their chances of becoming box office successes:

Nobody knows anything… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.

I point this quote out because we’ve had, IMHO, two prime examples which demonstrate the wisdom of this quote.

I refer to the box office performances of Terminator: Dark Fate and the just released Doctor Sleep.

Terminator: Dark Fate (let’s refer to it as TDF from here on) looked to me like it would be a success well before its release.

I mean, come on! You had James Cameron back to the Terminator universe, not as a director but providing the story and producing the film, his first involvement in this universe since Terminator 2. You had hot director Tim Miller (Deadpool) behind the camera. You had the Arnold Schwarzenneger and Linda Hamilton. The film gets released and, over on rottentomatoes.com, winds up with a very strong 71% positive among critics and another very strong 84% positive among audiences.

Things were certainly looking good.

What could possibly go wrong?

Welp…

Rebecca Rubin at variety.com notes the following:

Terminator: Dark Fate stalls overseas with $29 million

According to the article, the movie has made approximately $200 million so far, counting both the U.S. and worldwide residuals. However, to “break even” the film needed to make around $450 million, which means -again according to the above article- Paramount stands to lose around $100 million from this film.

Ouch.

Scroll back up, my friends, and re-read that wonderful quote from William Goldman. Can you at least begin to understand why I feel it is so on the mark?

TDF had so much going for it, yet when it was finally released, audiences essentially didn’t care to go see it.

Why?

I suppose in part it could be because of fatigue with the Terminator brand. Even in my review of the film (you can read it here) I noted the weak box office and stated:

If I could go back in time, maybe I’d convince the makers of those (Terminator) sequels to lay off and, by the time TDF shows up, people might be more willing/eager to give it a shot.

It is also possible that, plain and simply, Arnold Schwarzenneger simply no longer holds the box office appeal he used to have. Maybe seeing an older Linda Hamilton was also a turn off. Let’s face it: The big box office hits often involve the young and pretty. Or maybe the story presented simply wasn’t “good enough” to justify seeing the film again. In other words, maybe the movie had few/no repeat customers, another ingredient necessary for box office success.

Who knows.

Nobody knows anything.

Regardless, the studios gambled on what I personally would have thought was a sure thing and, ultimately, it looks like that gamble won’t pay off. In time I suspect the film will make its money, especially through home video, but for now the film is a loser.

Which brings us to example “B”: Doctor Sleep.

Released just this past Friday, here was another film I would have thought would do quite well.

The movie is based on a Stephen King novel, the sequel to one of his most famous works and movie adaptations, The Shining. The director, Mike Flanagan, was a director on the rise known for his work in horror. He won plenty of accolades for his The Haunting of Hill House mini-series. He earned both Stephen King and the Stanley Kubrick (director of The Shining) estate’s thumbs up for his attempts to merge both movie and books.

The movie’s trailers, I thought, were intriguing. The idea of seeing what happened to the main character of Danny Torrence some forty years after the events of The Shining was to me very appealing. Hell, I don’t read Stephen King novels but I admit I was tempted to get that one!

Then, like TDF, the movie is released and gets wonderful ratings on rottentomatoes.com. As of today, the film has a 74% positive rating from critics and an incredibly strong 90% positive among audiences.

Only, it too underperformed.

Anthony D’Alessandro at deadline.com writes:

Doctor Sleep to lose $20+ million for Warner Brothers

The movie opened much softer than expected, earning some $14.2 million and coming in second to the wartime drama Midway. According to the above article, if Doctor Sleep manages to make some $100 million at the box office in its run, it will still nonetheless lose that $20 million. If it makes even lower than that…

Unlike TDF, I wound up not liking Doctor Sleep (you can read my review here). Having said that, I nonetheless really expected audiences to flock to the film the first week, yet that clearly didn’t happen.

Perhaps it was because the film was inexplicably released just after Halloween. Seriously, what’s up with that? You have a horror film you’re going to release and you don’t take advantage of the one holiday associated with all things that go bump in the night?!

Perhaps it was the fact that, despite many viewing The Shining -movie and book- as a classic, it is an older work and they simply weren’t that interested in revisiting something that old. Perhaps the cast simply wasn’t strong enough to elicit interest.

Who knows.

Nobody knows anything.

And so it goes.

Didn’t see that coming…

One of the things that amuses me is the way movies either hit or sink.

There seems to be no rhyme or reason… one film connects with audiences and can become a HUGE box office hit, beloved by audiences world-wide, while another film is a complete (or near complete) wiff and sinks without much of a trace. Often this comes down to how “good” or “bad” a film is but not always. There are films that are critical bombs yet connect with audiences. There are films that are critical darlings yet bomb with audiences. Then there are those films that are complete box-office failures which, over the years, become cult darlings. Some even manage to become viewed as genuinely classic films, even if they did nothing when they were originally released. In the later case, you have the classic Metropolis and Blade Runner, both of which didn’t do very well upon their initial release and are now considered film classics.

We’re at the beginning of the school year and the latest movie releases are slim pickin’s indeed. This is not terribly unexpected. The summer rush is over and with the beginning of school, people aren’t as free to go to the theaters during the week, so studios aim their “biggest” guns to the summer period and release lower budget works they hope will recoup their investment and can hope -but do not expect- the box office of these films to be in the mega-hit range.

This past week, two films were released to theaters, one which I only discovered at literally the very last moment.

That film, Angel Has Fallen, is the third of the “Fallen” movies featuring Gerard Butler as Mike Banning, the President’s secret service detail. The two previous films featuring the character were 2013’s Olympus Has Fallen and 2016’s London Has Fallen.

The plot of the first two films involve Banning trying to save/keep the President, played in those films by Aaron Eckhart, alive despite an intense terrorist attack. In the first film, that attack was on the White House itself. In the second film, it was while the President was in London.

In this third film, Mr. Eckhart is gone, replaced by Morgan Freeman (who was in the original two films as well), as the new President. Further, Radha Mitchell, who portrayed Banning’s wife, has been replaced by Piper Perabo. This time around, Banning is framed for trying to kill the President and must clear himself…

The other relatively “big” film being released this past week was the horror/comedy Ready of Not

Both films, IMHO, look interesting based solely on their trailers, though I have less interest in Angel Has Fallen because the previous film, London Has Fallen, was so awful IMHO and Ready or Not features an intriguing (again, IMHO) concept for a horror/comedy.

So, going into the weekend, I figured Ready or Not would likely be the box office champ, with Angel Has Fallen either a very, very close second or perhaps just taking the #1 spot.

Boy, was I wrong.

Angel Has Fallen easily took the #1 spot at the Box Office with a much stronger than expected $21 plus million take. Ready or Not came in 6th with a decent (considering the film’s very low budget) take of $7.5 million.

One other new film, Overcomer (another film I know absolutely nothing about), came in at #3 with $8.2 million. The rest of the films in the top 10 were holdovers from past weeks (if you’re curious, here’s the complete rundown of the box office weekend via Box Office Mojo).

Again: I’m intrigued by this. Incredibly so. I suppose audiences were in a mood for an action extravaganza and that’s why Angel Has Fallen did well. There might be other times and other weeks where there are plenty of action films available and a film such as this one may not have done quite as well. As for Ready or Not… maybe audiences weren’t in the mood for a horror film this weekend. Maybe if the film had been released closer to Halloween it might have garnered a little more interest.

Is this the reason one did really well and the other not quite as well? I suppose its possible.

Ultimately, who knows?

As it is, I once again fall back on the quote by screenwriter William Goldman, of Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (among others) fame. In his book Adventures in the Screen Trade, Mr. Goldman provided a quote I’ve posted here many times which, in my opinion, encapsulates the entire entertainment industry…

“Nobody knows anything…… Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what’s going to work. Every time out it’s a guess and, if you’re lucky, an educated one.”

I absolutely love this quote because its so damn true. You can create what you think is an absolutely smashing work, one you think audiences will eat up and make you a zillionaire… and the work comes and goes without so much as a shrug from audiences. Then you can create something almost literally in your sleep, a work you think is nothing big, and it becomes HUGE.

The best we can hope for is some mild/moderate success in the works we do, and hope the next one does even better.

Ultimately, nobody knows nothing.

Least of all me.