Remove one hit film from this fall’s lineup–“The First Wives Club”–and you’ve got a season that’s shaping up as a box-office disaster.
Even with that one success included as part of the mix, national attendance is down 15 percent compared to last year. Meanwhile, Variety estimates that there are 17.5 percent more movies competing in the marketplace, most of them accompanied by record-high production and marketing costs.
Studios are getting nervous, and so are theater chains that are expanding their multiplex building plans.
While “The First Wives Club” has so far earned more than $70 million and seems well on its way to joining the $100 million club, no other movies this fall have come close to matching those figures.
An opening weekend gross of $10 million is now considered essential if a studio-produced film is to make back what it cost. But the old formulas aren’t working.
Steven Seagal, star of “Under Siege” and “Above the Law,” was once a sure-fire draw for action fans. But “The Glimmer Man” registered one of his weakest openings–less than $7 million — and attendance dropped nearly 50 percent the second weekend.
John Grisham was once considered a marquee name, a guarantee of box-office success. Then “The Chamber” opened to a so-so gross of $5.6 million. Perhaps this one arrived too close on the heels of the last Grisham movie, “A Time to Kill,” which was released in July and is still playing.
Perhaps its death-row story struck too many people as a reworking of “Dead Man Walking,” or maybe audiences are in the mood for another revenge comedy that taps into rejected women’s anger the way “First Wives Club” does.
If so, “The Associate,” in which Whoopi Goldberg and Dianne Wiest team up to outwit their old-boys-club business associate (Tim Daly), could be in luck (it opens Friday). Unfortunately, that could lead to another cycle of copycat movies just as stale as the Willis and Seagal pictures.
The season’s most heavily promoted family movies, “Fly Away Home,” “D3: The Mighty Ducks” and “That Thing You Do!,” never came close to that magic $10 million opening-weekend figure.
Still, these three are steady grossers and they’re hanging in there in the top 10–which is more than can be said of Bruce Willis’ “Last Man Standing” or Jean-Claude Van Damme’s “Maximum Risk.”
Indeed, the action genre has taken quite a beating lately. Recently, two had respectable openings: “The Ghost and the Darkness,” with $8.8 million, and “The Long Kiss Goodnight,” which grossed about the same.
On the limited-release front, there are a few encouraging signs. The cheaply produced art-house hit “Big Night” landed in the top 10 a week ago, with an average gross of $4,767 in each theater that played it. That means it’s doing better than “First Wives Club” on a per-theater basis.
It dropped out of the top 10 again last week, but this past weekend looks soft–only one new film, “Sleepers,” is opening against the World Series–so “Big Night” is likely to climb the list again.
It’s a strong word-of-mouth picture, and so are “Lone Star,” which cost $5 million and has grossed $12 million to date; “Trainspotting,” which cost $2.5 million and has returned $15 million in this country (and considerably more in England); and “Emma,” which cost $7 million and has grossed $20 million.
“Lone Star” has been in national release since June, and it’s still playing on approximately 200 screens. That’s the kind of longevity that can’t be duplicated by most major-studio movies these days.
In a market like this, Spike Lee’s “Get on the Bus,” which cost just $2.4 million and is generating terrific word-of-mouth, almost can’t lose.
More Top Picks Best Japanese Chef Knives Under 500 Dollars