Tuesday 18 June 2013
Man of Steel leaps precursor in a solo bounce as in the offing game pays off
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Man of Steel leaps precursor in a solo bounce as in the offing game pays off
Seven years
after Superman income debuted poorly, the series reboot has opened faster than
a speed bullet
Waiting it out
… Man of Steel's strong opening has blameless the decision of Warner Bros
not to rush out a follow-up to Superman Returns. Photograph: Clay Enos/AP
The champion
How long should a permission lie bare before it can be rebooted fruitfully?
With its premier comic-book property, Warner Bros allowed an eight-year break between Batman and Robin and Batman Begins,
although it's worth remembering that grosses for the Christopher
Nolantrilogy only reached spectacular levels with The Dark Knight,
three years later; the sequel made £49.1m, as opposed to just £16.6m for Batman
Begins. Sony did pretty well with The Amazing
Spider-Man only five
years after Spider-Man 3,
whereas Universal didn't create much excitement with Louis Leterrier's The Incredible
Hulk, five years after Ang Lee's less-than-fully
achieved Hulk.
Seven years after Superman
Returns underwhelmed
audiences with a total of £16.4m in the UK and Ireland, the pricey Man of Steel always looked likely to improve on
that total. With Nolan on board as producer, collaborating with screenwriter
David S Goyer on story, Warner Bros had reason to hope that the talent refresh
would excite blockbuster fans, even if director
Zack Snyder elicited a
mixed reaction. The distributor's hopes have proved well-founded: Man of Steel
has opened in the UK with a stonking £11.20m, just behind summer 2013's current
frontrunnerIron
Man 3, which debuted with £11.39m plus £2.32m in previews. With Iron
Man 3 currently at £36.9m, Man of Steel has every chance of reaching
comaparably lofty heights, as long as audience reactions are similarly
positive.
By way of comparison, in July 2006 Superman Returns
opened with just £4.34m. Snyder's biggest previous best was 300,
which kicked off in March 2007 with £4.75m, including £784,000 in previews. Watchmendebuted
in March 2009 with £3.24m. Snyder's last film, the widely derided Sucker Punch,
crept out with a poor £815,000, thereafter falling hard and fast. Man of Steel
star Henry Cavill's previous best wasImmortals,
debuting in November 2011 with £2.17m.
Among Nolan productions, The Dark Knight debuted in July 2008
with £11.19m, but that included £2.50m in previews. The Dark Knight
Rises, which benefited from fan enthusiasm for its predecessor,
exploded with £14.36m, without any previews.
Man of Steel has delivered the second-biggest opening of the
year, ahead of Fast & Furious 6 (£8.72m), Star
Trek Into Darkness (£8.43m
including £1.57m in previews) and Les Miserables (£8.13m).
The position strike
Steven Soderbergh's Behind
the Candelabra opened
over the 7-9 June weekend with an impressive £513,000 from 131 screens,
achieving a strong screen average of £3,918. But the aggressive expansion a
week later to 241 cinemas represented a risk, taking the film into regional
multiplex sites with a less proven track record playing arthouse fare. The
result: the film moves up from eighth to fifth place, with box-office rising by
21%, a solid site average of £2,582 and a 10-day cumulative total of £1.64m.
These numbers more than justify distributor eOne's belief in the commercial
appeal of the film, which might have been sidelined as a niche drama featuring
a bizarrely attired Vegas showman and his drug-abusing toyboy. Certainly in the
US, major and indie studios approached the project with caution – hence it
landing in the lap of HBO, which aired it earlier this month.
The flops
With Man of Steel opening on multiple screens at 572 venues,
competition from other new releases was predictably negligible. With little
fanfare, Universal dropped its Tina Fey-Paul
Rudd comedy Admissioninto
107 cinemas, yielding an unsurprisingly dismal £33,600, and a £314 average. Stuck in Love,
with a cast including Greg Kinnear, Lily Collins and Logan Lerman, achieved a
similarly weak £34,900, albeit from a lower screen count of 54.
The brave hopefuls
While Admission and Stuck in Love lacked clearly-defined
audiences, two upscale pictures had an evident target at which to aim. Neither
did brilliantly. Joss Whedon's Shakespeare adaptation Much
Ado About Nothing managed
£69,000 from 64 cinemas, and a £1,067 average. Chasing a similar market, period
romance Summer in
February did a tad
better, with £75,000, also from 64 venues, and a £1,170 average. Summer in
February's backers would have hoped to pull in the Downton
Abbey crowd, with a
cast including
Dan Stevens, as well as younger fans of co-star Dominic Cooper. The
film's distributor, Metrodome, released Danish period romance A Royal Affair in the exact same mid-June slot a year
ago, opening with £76,000 from 48 sites, and going on to achieve a healthy
total of £374,000, nearly five times its debut. The older upscale audience is
notoriously dilatory at going to the cinema, and tends to be relatively strong
midweek, so it's not over quite yet for Much Ado and Summer in February.
The quarter-century club
Star Trek into Darkness is the fourth film this year to reach
£25m, joining Les Miserables (£40.65m), Iron Man 3 (£36.86m) and The Croods(£26.18m).
Fast & Furious 6 is right behind it with £24.43m, and should join it in the
quarter-century club this weekend. This time last year, plenty of releases had
reached £20m – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Woman in Black, The Hunger
Games – but only one had pushed past £25m: The Avengers.
The future
Thanks to the arrival of Man of Steel, the market overall is a
giddy 100% up on the previous weekend, and also a pretty cheerful 93% up on the
equivalent frame from 2012, when Rock of Ages landed in fourth place, behind
holdover hits Prometheus, Men in Black 3 and Snow
White and the Huntsman. It's worth recalling that the Euro 2012
football championships ran from 8 June to 1 July, so the period was relatively
quiet for new releases. This Friday, the big new release is World War Z,
starring Brad Pitt. At this point,
there's little to be gained by backers Paramount trying to deny much-reported
production problems, but a delayed release and expensive reshoots may now have
fixed the film's flaws. Niche counter-programming comes from Richard
Linklater's Before Midnight,
but broader audiences are more likely to be checking out previews on Saturday
and Sunday for Despicable Me 2. There's also crime thriller Snitch, starring
Dwayne Johnson – aka The Rock – and retro-flavoured coming-of-age British indie
Spike Island, featuring a soundtrack heavily peppered with vintage Stone Roses
cuts.
Man of Steel leaps precursor in a solo bounce as in the
offing game pays off
Seven years after Superman income debuted poorly, the series
reboot has opened faster than a speed bullet
Waiting it out
… Man of Steel's strong opening has blameless the decision of Warner Bros
not to rush out a follow-up to Superman Returns. Photograph: Clay Enos/AP
The champion
How long should a permission lie bare before it can be rebooted fruitfully?
With its premier comic-book property, Warner Bros allowed an eight-year break between Batman and Robin and Batman Begins,
although it's worth remembering that grosses for the Christopher
Nolantrilogy only reached spectacular levels with The Dark Knight,
three years later; the sequel made £49.1m, as opposed to just £16.6m for Batman
Begins. Sony did pretty well with The Amazing
Spider-Man only five
years after Spider-Man 3,
whereas Universal didn't create much excitement with Louis Leterrier's The Incredible
Hulk, five years after Ang Lee's less-than-fully
achieved Hulk.
Seven years after Superman
Returns underwhelmed
audiences with a total of £16.4m in the UK and Ireland, the pricey Man of Steel always looked likely to improve on
that total. With Nolan on board as producer, collaborating with screenwriter
David S Goyer on story, Warner Bros had reason to hope that the talent refresh
would excite blockbuster fans, even if director
Zack Snyder elicited a
mixed reaction. The distributor's hopes have proved well-founded: Man of Steel
has opened in the UK with a stonking £11.20m, just behind summer 2013's current
frontrunnerIron
Man 3, which debuted with £11.39m plus £2.32m in previews. With Iron
Man 3 currently at £36.9m, Man of Steel has every chance of reaching
comaparably lofty heights, as long as audience reactions are similarly
positive.
By way of comparison, in July 2006 Superman Returns
opened with just £4.34m. Snyder's biggest previous best was 300,
which kicked off in March 2007 with £4.75m, including £784,000 in previews. Watchmendebuted
in March 2009 with £3.24m. Snyder's last film, the widely derided Sucker Punch,
crept out with a poor £815,000, thereafter falling hard and fast. Man of Steel
star Henry Cavill's previous best wasImmortals,
debuting in November 2011 with £2.17m.
Among Nolan productions, The Dark Knight debuted in July 2008
with £11.19m, but that included £2.50m in previews. The Dark Knight
Rises, which benefited from fan enthusiasm for its predecessor,
exploded with £14.36m, without any previews.
Man of Steel has delivered the second-biggest opening of the
year, ahead of Fast & Furious 6 (£8.72m), Star
Trek Into Darkness (£8.43m
including £1.57m in previews) and Les Miserables (£8.13m).
The position strike
Steven Soderbergh's Behind
the Candelabra opened
over the 7-9 June weekend with an impressive £513,000 from 131 screens,
achieving a strong screen average of £3,918. But the aggressive expansion a
week later to 241 cinemas represented a risk, taking the film into regional
multiplex sites with a less proven track record playing arthouse fare. The
result: the film moves up from eighth to fifth place, with box-office rising by
21%, a solid site average of £2,582 and a 10-day cumulative total of £1.64m.
These numbers more than justify distributor eOne's belief in the commercial
appeal of the film, which might have been sidelined as a niche drama featuring
a bizarrely attired Vegas showman and his drug-abusing toyboy. Certainly in the
US, major and indie studios approached the project with caution – hence it
landing in the lap of HBO, which aired it earlier this month.
The flops
With Man of Steel opening on multiple screens at 572 venues,
competition from other new releases was predictably negligible. With little
fanfare, Universal dropped its Tina Fey-Paul
Rudd comedy Admissioninto
107 cinemas, yielding an unsurprisingly dismal £33,600, and a £314 average. Stuck in Love,
with a cast including Greg Kinnear, Lily Collins and Logan Lerman, achieved a
similarly weak £34,900, albeit from a lower screen count of 54.
The brave hopefuls
While Admission and Stuck in Love lacked clearly-defined
audiences, two upscale pictures had an evident target at which to aim. Neither
did brilliantly. Joss Whedon's Shakespeare adaptation Much
Ado About Nothing managed
£69,000 from 64 cinemas, and a £1,067 average. Chasing a similar market, period
romance Summer in
February did a tad
better, with £75,000, also from 64 venues, and a £1,170 average. Summer in
February's backers would have hoped to pull in the Downton
Abbey crowd, with a
cast including
Dan Stevens, as well as younger fans of co-star Dominic Cooper. The
film's distributor, Metrodome, released Danish period romance A Royal Affair in the exact same mid-June slot a year
ago, opening with £76,000 from 48 sites, and going on to achieve a healthy
total of £374,000, nearly five times its debut. The older upscale audience is
notoriously dilatory at going to the cinema, and tends to be relatively strong
midweek, so it's not over quite yet for Much Ado and Summer in February.
The quarter-century club
Star Trek into Darkness is the fourth film this year to reach
£25m, joining Les Miserables (£40.65m), Iron Man 3 (£36.86m) and The Croods(£26.18m).
Fast & Furious 6 is right behind it with £24.43m, and should join it in the
quarter-century club this weekend. This time last year, plenty of releases had
reached £20m – The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, The Woman in Black, The Hunger
Games – but only one had pushed past £25m: The Avengers.
The future
Thanks to the arrival of Man of Steel, the market overall is a
giddy 100% up on the previous weekend, and also a pretty cheerful 93% up on the
equivalent frame from 2012, when Rock of Ages landed in fourth place, behind
holdover hits Prometheus, Men in Black 3 and Snow
White and the Huntsman. It's worth recalling that the Euro 2012
football championships ran from 8 June to 1 July, so the period was relatively
quiet for new releases. This Friday, the big new release is World War Z,
starring Brad Pitt. At this point,
there's little to be gained by backers Paramount trying to deny much-reported
production problems, but a delayed release and expensive reshoots may now have
fixed the film's flaws. Niche counter-programming comes from Richard
Linklater's Before Midnight,
but broader audiences are more likely to be checking out previews on Saturday
and Sunday for Despicable Me 2. There's also crime thriller Snitch, starring
Dwayne Johnson – aka The Rock – and retro-flavoured coming-of-age British indie
Spike Island, featuring a soundtrack heavily peppered with vintage Stone Roses
cuts.
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