Last winter saw some unseasonably big box office numbers. Big budget disaster movie 2012 made over 0 million worldwide. Twilight: New Moon matched it. However, it was the Christmas period that was the big surprise. Sherlock Holmes surprised everyone with a great opening and long legs. I need not, of course, mention Avatar, the highest grossing movie of all time.
This winter kicked off with a record breaking weekend, as the triple threat of Megamind ($45 million), Due Date ($30 million) and For Coloured Girls ($20 million) combined to produce the biggest box office weekend opening for a November. Megamind carried that momentum through into the next weekend with another $30 million, meaning this looked to be just the beginning of a Winter that could almost be as hot as a traditional Summer.
The box office magic continued for the boy that lived, with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1. The Potter franchise has been a box office juggernaut, running on the massive popularity of the book series and Warner Bros expert handling of the movie adaptations. Sequels have come regular as clockwork, meaning interest has never been allowed to die down, and the original cast have been able to effectively work right through the saga. There was no reason to think Deathly Hallows would be any different, and as part of the final installment, it was unmissable for a large number of movie goers. The decision to abandon 3D will hit the film’s final box office haul, with the extra revenue for the inflated ticket prices and the extra interest the format still draws capable of adding around a potential 20% to gross profits. The template for Harry Potter’s box office performance has been $70 million opening weekend, and a $300 million final domestic gross. Deathly Hallows shattered this with a US opening weekend of $125 million.
The next potential big hitter is Disney’s animated Rapunzel spin, Tangled. Animated family movies have made a killing this year, with How To Train Your Dragon, Shrek Forever After and Toy Story 3 doing particularly well, making hundreds of millions between them. Toy Story 3 on its own made history as the highest grossing animated movie of all time. Disney will hope to carry on the current trend, and build on the success of their last solo animated effort The Princess And The Frog. There’s no reason to think that Tangled won’t manage a similar opening to the aforementioned Megamind.
The third installment in the Chronicles of Narnia trilogy, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, should at least match previous outings with an opening of around $50 million. There is also the potential for the combined star power of Jonny Depp, whose profile helped lift the Pirates series to a billion dollar franchise, and arguably the biggest female draw in Hollywood Angelina Jolie to make The Tourist this year’s big box office surprise. To be fair, this is probably fairly unlikely, and an opening that rivals Salt’s $35 million can be seen as a success.
Next up will be Disney’s much hyped, over publicised Tron sequel. This is a really interesting one. Disney are trying desperately to match the success of their Pirates of the Caribbean franchise. They were only partially successful with Prince of Persia earlier in the year. The brand power of the videogame on which it was based didn’t prove strong enough to push it into the realms of their Pirates movies, as a reasonable opening led to a huge drop off. Tron is a sequel, so they will be hoping that the mixture of nostalgia, flashy effects and a huge promotional campaign will make Tron: Legacy this year’s Avatar. On the downside, their is no real star power attached, Jeff Bridges is a great actor but doesn’t have that box office cache. Add to this the fact that the original Tron was, in truth, actually not very good, and the outlook for Tron is hazy. It could fizzle out like Prince of Persia, but also has the potential to make similar numbers to the year’s first big box office hitter Alice in Wonderland.
Rounding out the year will be the Ben Stiller vehicle, Little Fockers. The third installment of the Meet the Parents series, Fockers could well match the £50 million + performance of its predecessors. Another comedy, Gulliver’s Travels starring Jack Black, has a chance of making an impact, but based on the performance of Black’s previous few movies hopes look pretty slim.
As we come towards the end of the traditional ‘Oscar contenders’ portion of the year, it certainly looks like the run up to Christmas will be a jolly period for the big studios hoping to cash in on peoples good cheer. There were only a few big winners financially speaking in the Summer, and this Winter has the potential to produce just as many, which will undoubtedly help give Hollywood producers a warm feeling inside during the cold snap.
Bazmann – You can follow me on Twitter at www.twitter.com/baz_mann
