Box Office Lessons of Summer 2008
by Brian Tallerico

3. Of Course, Some Stars ARE Still Bulletproof

Sandler and Myers can't make a hit out of anything they want anymore, but there clearly are a few actors that still can. Okay, maybe one. Hancock was widely panned by critics and viewers, but it went on to make $559 million worldwide. That's a stunning number, especially when you consider it opened not long before the biggest movie of the year. The fact is undeniable - Will Smith is the biggest box office star on the planet. He's one of the very few - maybe the only - stars working today who can not only open a critically derided movie but also carry a flick with reportedly bad word-of-mouth to half a billion dollars every single time. Will Smith has launched EIGHT movies in a row with a final domestic gross over $130 million. If you take out dramatic turns like Ali and The Legend of Bagger Vance, it's a 12-year, 12-movie run of over $100 million a movie. And he's not slowing down. Hancock is actually his fourth-highest grossing film ever, one spot behind last year's I Am Legend. The man is simply unstoppable. I think he could have dragged Meet Dave to $100 million.

Another surprisingly bulletproof star this season was Brendan Fraser. Journey to the Center of the Earth and The Mummy: Tomb of the Cheesy Special Effects won't be on anyone's list for their favorite movie of the season, but there they are, both in the top twenty of summer 2008 and both over $100 million. Journey had some of the strongest legs of the year, opening with only $21 million, but stretching that out to nearly $100 million. Five times opening weekend is almost unheard of nowadays, especially this year, when almost nothing had legs. Is it Fraser or the movies? Probably the latter. I's questionable whether anyone is really a "Brendan Fraser fan," but he's clearly doing something right and is one of the few actors who could be labeled a box office star of 2008.

Finally, if you want to talk bulletproof, look no further than Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz. What Happens in Vegas scored some of the worst reviews of the year with Time Magazine saying, "Worst-in-breed not only for this year, but very likely in living memory." With a 5.7/10 on IMDB, even viewers seemed to hate this romantic clunker. So, how did it make $210 million worldwide? It was both Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher's highest gross for a non-animated film in five years. Yes, a lot of the success of What Happens in Vegas can be attributed to counterprogramming, but there must be something else going on here. Is it the star power of Kutcher and Diaz? Scary, but it could be true.

One final note: We could easily point to Robert Downey Jr. as a bulletproof mega-star of the season, as he opened and closed it with Iron Man and Tropic Thunder, but the words "star power" aren't really appropriate. I love Downey, but he wasn't exactly bringing in the masses to movies like Zodiac. It was the choices he made - both in the roles he took and on-screen - that made him arguably the biggest star of the season.

4. "Legs" Are Overrated

Unless, of course, they belong to Penelope Cruz (who gave two of the best performances of the year in Elegy and Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Box office legs? They're a joke. Everyone used to talk about how success was measured by the second and third weekends of a movie. That may be true if your movie is The Visitor, but this summer proved that it's only frame one that needs to be a strike. What do Hellboy II: The Golden Army, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, The Incredible Hulk, You Don't Mess With the Zohan, and Sex and the City have in common? They're all considered hits that couldn't top out with over three times their opening weekend in final gross. They had NO legs.

It used to be that three times your opening frame for a total gross was considered pretty standard (maybe even low), but times have changed and, if you can write your own PR script with a big opening weekend, that's all the perception you need. Most people consider the new Hulk a bigger hit that the Ang Lee version. Those people don't notice that they made nearly the same amount domestically and that Lee's has actually made a little bit more worldwide. The new one falls into that category of a movie that no one wanted to see after opening weekend. Even a monster like The Dark Knight is going to make more than three times its opening frame. Sex and the City, Prince Caspian, Hellboy II, Hulk, and Zohan couldn't break 2.7 times their first frame. Bad word of mouth? Everyone seeing it opening weekend? A more crowded season than average? They all play a role.

Hellboy II's collapse was truly remarkable. Hellboy II: The Golden Army opened with $35 million and has only made $75 million six weeks later. Opening in the middle of the most crowded season of the year might not have been the best idea for the big red guy and releasing it a week before The Dark Knight was remarkably stupid, but what's truly impressive is that if you asked ten people, nine of them would call Hellboy II a hit. Yes, it made more than the first movie, but it also cost $85 million and won't even break Guillermo Del Toro's box office record - still held by Blade II. But studios are getting wise about the spin of opening weekend. With a big movie every Friday, all that matters is how you open when it comes to public perception as to your success or failure. The era of legs are done. Just don't tell ZZ Top.

Of course, there are more individual lessons of the season, like the fact that a movie needs a demographic (Speed Racer didn't have one), Hulk will never be a $200 million franchise, and Dreamworks and Disney are still the only animation houses that matter, but these were the big ones. Will things change? I do think more studios will look at counterprogramming, trying to target one, big opening weekend. Staying away from tentpole movies and looking for potential legs are outdated ideas. And unless it's Will Smith (or Brendan Fraser?), studios are going to be more wary about trying to feed audiences movies that they might feel like they've seen before. Of course, none of this is drastically new. They're all lessons that have been out there before and Hollywood may forget it all. Studios are not well-known for learning from their mistakes. But don't think that they aren't looking at these patterns and that they won't influence what you see in the future.

All stats are courtesy of Box Office Mojo.