Spidey Knocks Out Harry Potter at Box Office

RasputinAXP writes "According to this Yahoo article, Spider-Man picked up an Amazing $114 million dollars at the box office, squishing Harry Potter's $90.3 million like a bug. More coverage is available at Box Office Prophets' new Weekend Wrapup, including analysis."

Well

[elite lamer]

Common sense...Spider-Man was a good movie on it's own, it didn't NEED it's huge franchise to make people buy tickets.

Re:Not surprising....

[Com2Kid]

Am I like the ONLY person in the world who has not seen ANY hype at all for this movie? I have seen like ONE preview before a movie (I forget which movie it was in fact) and I have seen no ads on TV, no billboards, nothing.

What hype? Hell I thought that only Geeks and Nerds would even be INTERESTED in the movie, or even know it existed for that matter.

Re:This number is meaningless

[Paradoxish]

Meaningless if this story were comparing Spiderman to E.T., but not meaningless when comparing it to a movie that was released only a few months ago. Ticket prices haven't risen significantly (or at all, probably) since Harry Potter is a very recent movie.

So I agree that money made is a useless figure for comparing movies with a big gap between release times (10-15 years or more), but when comparing recent movies it serves its purposes well enough. I suppose it's most useful to suits, though...

"I know we're making a movie like spider-man, and maybe spider-man sold 87 million tickets.. but how much MONEY did it make?"

Still, it works for this comparison.

Re:So Nerdy, so Slashdot...

[GearheadX]

Spidey has never been about the keen super powers. The series has always been about the problems that arise when an otherwise normal guy gets bitten by the bug, as it were, to go out and try to make a difference in whatever way he can.

He's constantly having to sew up his costume when he gets it torn up... he's misplacing his civilian clothes.. having to deal with hiding his costume because he's not a quick change artist.

Peter Parker is just some average Joe from New York who wants to actually _do_ something... the fact that he can stick to things and throw a Volkswagon Bug are just chrome.

Isnt it funny

[Edmund Blackadder]

How western culture has made people proud of giving their money.

I mean you can like a movie and pay for it, and there is nothing wrong with that, but to say this movie rules because we payed so many millions of dollars into it is just sad.

And then of course you have to race so many people will try very hard to make attack of the clones gross higher than spiderman and lor.

If the studios brainwashed the american public they couldnt have done a better job.

Not surprising because ...

[Hank Kingsley]

Everybody has been waiting twenty years for this movie. And when word got out that the filmmakers got it right, everybody had to see it.

Re:This number is meaningless

[Fishstick]

Check out the Frontline episode, the monster that ate hollywood. [pbs.org]

It *is* all about the opening weekend gross these days, according to this story.

Have risk-averse MBAs killed Hollywood's magic? Studio executives, producers, filmmakers, and critics talk about how the movie business, and movies themselves, have changed.
John Pierson, the man behind many an indie, takes stock of what's "independent" today. Plus, interviews with Elvis Mitchell, Allison Anders, Kevin Smith, and Michael Douglas.
The Atlantic Monthly's Charles C. Mann on what Hollywood has learned from Napster. Plus, industry insiders discuss how digital technology and the Internet may transform filmmaking.
A closer look at the business of movies, including the story of how Steven Spielberg's "Jaws" gave birth to the summer blockbuster and changed Hollywood forever.

The premise is that all the studios and distributors are now controlled by a handful of mega corps who make and market movies based on a formula of risk management. They closely estimate and monitor the opening weekend gross, which is indeed used as the yardstick to extrapolate the total return on the movie including first-run, overseas dist, video sales, merchandise, tv and cable runs, etc.

Comparing to movies 5-10 years ago _is_ meaningless. Comparing to Harry Potter is very relevant.

Re:Do they ever adjust for inflation?

[div_2n]

I agree it would be nice to have them factor in those variables, but there is so much to consider that a complex formula would be required.

I think there should be at least three measures that show a movie's performance. 1) Percentage profit a movie makes 2) Tickets sold compared to population given as a percentage 3) Average percentage of seats filled at theaters.

Measure 1 would show how profitable a movie is. An indication as to its success relative to the financers.

Measure 2 would not represent really how many people actually saw it (some see it multiple times) but it would give at least a quasi-accurate indication over time of how one movie compares to another.

Measure 3 would potentially measure a movie's ability to draw the crowds.

There are ways these could be manipulated to give even more accurate indications. I do agree that raw sales figures are flawed.

Is it just me...

[Rogerborg]

... or did the visual FX in this movie suck donkey dong? And the trailers for AOTC look really ropey as well.

This isn't uninformed griping, I used to work with CGI artists in a games company. A typical conversation with a client would go something like this:

• Client: Can you...
• Artists: Sure, we just need to double the size of the render farm. You can afford that, right?
• Client: Uh, I haven't told you what I need yet.
• Artists: Bah, we can do anything you want, exactly as you want it, and as realistic as you want it. All we need to do is throw enough hardware at it, and buy enough third party lightwave plugins.
• Client: Uh, OK. Here's a bushel of money.
• ... time passes ...
• Client: Deadline time, hand it over.
• Artists: Uh, the thing is, we were planning on just buying all the models, but they all sucked, so we had to do our own. And then we had some trouble with the animation paths. And there was a bit of an overcommitment on the render farm, so we had to prune a few million poly's on some of the scenes, but if you just give us another two weeks, we can buy more hardware and re-render...
• Client: The fuck? We go gold tomorrow! What part of "deadline" didn't you understand? Aaargh! You know what this'll cost us in reviewer kickbacks?

OK, I'm over generalising. They sometimes got it just right, but a lot of the time they vastly over commited themselves and ended up with a final product that nobody really liked, least of all themselves.

The problem as I see it is that the answer is always "yes". Models and stop motion put a well understood limit on what was achievable, and scenes were set and shot around those limits. Even when pushing the envelope like in SW:ANH, they didn't over stretch themselves or try anything that they knew they couldn't achieve.

Contrast with SW:TPW, SW:AOTC and Spider-Man. The answer was always "yes". Go ahead, give us anything to do, and we'll do it. Let your imagination go wild.

And what did we get? Ropey looking integration of CGI into live action scenes, ropey looking integration of live action into CGI scenes, 100% CGI scenes that jar badly with the live action.

You can counter with Ray Harryhausen, but then I'll just have to roll out Alien, Aliens and Blade Runner. Do less, but do it well. Learn to say "no", guys.

$114 million for the weekend?

[ziegast]

There's no doubt that the movie is having a successful weekend, but how successful was it?

Is the John Harman a prophet? or is he just a part of the hype machine for Sony? He already seems to have wrapped up the weekend in past tense before it's even over.

Spider-Man opened to $114 million on 3,615 screens

At least the Yahoo article quoted sources:

... according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.

Let's take it for what it's worth - propaganda. The goal is to get the people out there thinking, "Gosh, this movie is so popular. Maybe I should go out tonight and see it."

The weekend is not over. Sony could hypothetically be ready to announce next weekend's box office results on Thursday this week. We'll all forget about Spider Man the following weekend when it's 15 minutes of hype^H^H^H^H fame are over when next Star Wars prequel is released.

What movie company was beind movies like "The Animal" that garnered rave reviews from fictional critics?

This one will make Marvel some real money

[harlows_monkeys]

Interesting story on CNN yesterday about this and other Marvel movies. Marvel sold the movie rights for X-Men for a fixed fee of $350,000. They got no royalties at all. X-Men was a big hit in theaters, and on DVD, and none of that went to Marvel.

The deal for Spiderman, and for Daredevil and Hulk in the next year or so, is more normal, and they will get royalties.

Re:Where's the Jon Katz review?

[NeMon'ess]

Uh huh. That entire sequence was shot specifically and only for that trailer. It was never meant to be in the movie. The trailer was so successful that the sequence was going to be incorporated into the movie but after 9/11 it was pulled entirely.

Wait just a minute here.

[Rhinobird]

Are you guys saying you wanted REALISM from a movie based on a COMIC BOOK? (smacks forehead)