Well Marvel Studios has had a decent summer so far. Thor, the most difficult of The Avengers in terms of subject and the fact that it introduces cosmic powers and Aliens to the same world that the Hi-Tech Iron Man lives in, has been out and conquered the world; Making over $420m so far and likely heading somewhere between $450m -$480m. Whilst that’s pretty good news, anything over $300m was a major success for this film, the fact that critics have mostly liked the film and audiences have mostly loved it too is much better news. It means people will be all the more excited for next year’s game changing The Avengers and that Thor will get at least one more solo movie in the not too distant future. Speaking of the not Too Distant Future, whilst it’s a Fox film and not a Marvel Studios’ one, the shifting of the X-Men from said future to 1962 seems to have worked well and Marvel can take some pride in their most popular comic sellers latest movie. Whilst its $120m global opening is some way short of the “original trilogy and Wolverine films, the critical response and public opinion are encouraging; especially as this film has an essentially ‘star’ free cast and few of the characters the movie going X-fan has grown to love. (More on that in the forthcoming, weekly box office blog.)
So the stage is now set for Captain America to complete the final piece of the Avengers Jigsaw Puzzle. Marvel had essentially reversed the release strategy from 2008 when the less risky Iron Man came storming out of the gate in May, followed by the far riskier reboot of The Incredible Hulk. Both films were successful in varying degrees. Iron Man made far more money, but The Incredible Hulk fulfilled Marvel Studios’ aim of making the character someone that people cared about again after Universal’s brave but unloved Hulk in 2003.
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| Courtesy of Entertainment Weekly. |
This year the much riskier ‘Aliens as gods and technology so advanced it may as well be magic’ Thor was unleashed first followed by the almost sure fire hit, in North America, Captain America in July. There is still the likelihood that America will be the opposite of Thor, Massive in America and pretty good, but not as big everywhere else. But American Super Heroes, especially Marvel ones are beginning to travel a lot better than in the past. Captain America represents the American dream, not American policy or politics and if the movie embraces that, he is going into battle with several, non American, Special Forces, as well as some European super heroes, it should travel just fine.
Far too much has been made of the dropping of the “Captain America” from the movies full title “Captain America: The First Avenger”. But that’s just politics, the fact is the title change is in a massive THREE markets, Ukraine, Russia and South Korea; I fail to see a problem with that and let’s not forget, Marvel Studios are spending an awful lot of money bringing our childhood (and adult hood for us geeks) heroes to the big screen, they have every right to do what they can to earn that money back. (Short of completly sabotaging the characters of course!)
So are you ready to see more Captain America action? More of Chris Evans with his top off more like, Erica I’m looking at you!
Here’s TV Spot 2...
And here’s the one called TV Spot 3
Definitely not...
How is 300 mill a success for a film that cost over 200 million dollars to produce,advertise and distribute overseas?
ReplyDeletePt.1
ReplyDeleteI'm writing a piece about the whole Marvel Studios and The Avengers project. That will go into more detail than I will here but here's some answers for you. First of all the $200m is not an official figure. There are many reasons for this, not least of which is the guestimate of $50m for the distribution and marketing. I know it's based on the cost of the film and various historical factors but it also fails to take any account of the legion of cross marketing deals, partnerships etc that a film of this nature has wherein much of the advertising ends up effectively free and in some cases money is made.
More importantly the answer to your question lies in the expectations set. Marvel studios would of course lover all of their films to gross $1b worldwide, but you have to have realistic goals. Thor is a hero that was effectively unknown before this film. (Not to mention the unknown lead etc) On top of that he is an unconventional Super Hero being a character from Mythology who is an alien. More than that the film has a high percentage of its runtime in what is effectively a fantasy setting, which is not always an easy sell in the North American market.
So Thor had several targets for Marvel Studios. Almost of equal importance was a desire to start a new "franchise" (I hate that term) by having a successful film both in terms of gross and public opinion AND the introduction of another key member of The Avengers; both as further promotion for that film and to make The Avengers that much easier to write & Film. If enough people have seen the stand alone movies it removes the requirement to spend precious time on origins and exposition of each character. You can get straight into the story and the interactions between the Avengers and S.H.I.E.L.D and the Villains(s). The key antagonist was also introduced in this film.
Pt.2
ReplyDeleteWhereas 20 years ago it was considered the norm to expect a sequel to gross around 2/3 of the original or preceding movie, recently it has become more common for sequels to out-gross the original films. Especially with the home market so saturated these days, with DVD, Blu-Ray downloads (legal and illegal) the potential for a much wider audience to watch a film they were unsure of spending time and money on in the cinema and then decide to go to a sequel is huge now. So an initial cinema gross that just breaks even is not a bad thing IF the film was well liked. One because the revenue from home sales and TV sales will increase the profitability of the film, not to mention with a film of this nature 100s of millions of dollars in merchandising, increased comic book sales and so on. If the sequel is good an increase in takings, a significant increase is achievable. X-Men from $296m to $407m (and it would have been more if it wasn’t for that meddling Matrix sequel!). Blade to Blade II, Hellboy to Hellboy II and Batman Begins to The Dark Knight (even with the exceptional circumstances surrounding that film). Austin Powers is still the extreme example of this though. So yes $300m on a stated budget of $300m for the type of film this was, with the difficult sell, would have been a success because all things added up the film would have made a profit and it would have introduced Thor to a wide audience, and planted the idea that there are aliens visiting Earth in Iron Man’s universe, there are powers far greater than our own and that, as Fury tells Tony Stark, there a much “..bigger universe” out there, not just Iron Man and The Hulk.
Which brings me to the final part of this long, long answer. The gross of Marvel Studios’ Incredible Hulk was $263m (adjusted it’s around $288) Given that the Hulk, even as damaged as he was following the 2003 movie, was a universally known character the gross of that movie had to be the first benchmark for Thor, a “relatively” unknown character. A simple rounding up to $300m makes that the first REAL marker, although beating Incredible Hulk, both its original gross and then it’s adjusted gross, were also milestones. Given that that much money in a cinema run, if the character was as well liked as Hulk in Incredible Hulk, brought likely DVD / Blu-Ray revenue and TV sales that would significantly increase the gross. (again ignoring the numerous ancillary benefits). It’s also the around the mark for other “mid range” super hero films, such as X-Men & The Fantastic four and higher than other ‘unknown’ solo heroes such as Daredevil, Ghost Rider (another example of a film that approx doubles its budget in cinema takings but justifies, they hope, a sequel that will be expected to significantly increase the franchise’s takings.)
Pt.3
ReplyDeleteAfter that it all good news. Can you match the grosses for bigger films, like X2? Can you match the international gross of Iron Man, Pass Batman Begins, Superman Returns and so on? Marvel Studios are over the moon about Thor’s takings, but be sure they would have been happy with the audience reactions they have got and lower takings for the reasons mentioned above and probably more.