Why It's Not 'Pacific Rim' Versus 'Grown Ups 2'
It doesn’t matter which film tops the box office this weekend. It doesn’t matter if Despicable Me 2, Pacific Rim, or Grown Ups 2 ends up “number one” on Sunday morning. When it comes to box office, rank is a patently irrelevant statistic. Pacific Rim is
going to gross what it’s going to gross. It may in fact do the $30
million that tracking has estimated. It may surge higher than
“expected” and hit $40 million, $50 million, or beyond. Grown Ups 2
is probably going to do around $35-$45 million, or about on par with
the first film’s $40 million gross. Neither of these films may have the
numbers to topple Despicable Me 2, which could fall 50% and
still end up at $41 million for the weekend. But none of these films
are competing against each other. They are all competing against only
themselves.
Box office is not poker. It’s not about new releases and holdovers
attempting to make more money than the other movies in the marketplace.
Box office is blackjack, where it’s only the film itself against ‘the
house’. ‘The house’ in this case being an individual film’s budget and
specific (reasonable) expectations about what would qualify as success.
If Pacific Rim opens with $30 million, it will arguably not be a domestic success even if it’s number one for the weekend. If Pacific Rim muscles
its way to $50 million, it will arguably be a success whether it’s in
first place of tenth place. The individual numbers are what counts. It
doesn’t matter how high a film debuts, nor does it matter how long it
stays in the top five or top ten of the box office. It’s about how much
money a specific film makes in relation to how well that specific film
has to perform.
Yet too much box office coverage is dominated by ranking,
turning each weekend into a horse race where films are pitched in a
fierce battle for the top spot or the runner up spot. Back in January
2012, pundits breathlessly followed the box office fortunes of Chronicle and The Woman In Black.
There were constant updates over which film would open at the top the
box office, as if a $20 million debut for either movie (both were
well-reviewed films which cost around $15 million) wouldn’t quality as a
massive win for the entry that came in at number two. And in October
1999, there was a switch in terms of ranking regarding the Sunday
weekend estimates and the Monday actuals. The top three films all made
$10-$11 million, but the alleged third place finisher, Fight Club, ended up in fact being number one. But do you think 20th Century Fox
was now thrilled that their $70 million picture had opened with just
$11 million purely because the film happened to make more than the other
films playing that weekend and was now ‘the number one film in
America!’?
The horse-race mentality is all-too similar to what has infected and
severely damaged political journalism. Every election year, political
pundits breathlessly cover who *wins* a given presidential primary even
in states where it’s not ‘winner take all’. Even in situations where
two candidates were so close that they received an identical number of
delegates, such as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum during the 2012 Iowa
Caucus, pundits breathlessly debate which candidate “won” the night. But
even that makes a little more sense as primaries of course eventually
end with a single champion, whomever gets the party’s nomination. But a
film in a marketplace isn’t attempting to crush all combatants and
become king of the mountain. It’s merely attempting to make enough money
to justify the financial investment. The box office fortunes of a given
motion picture lie only how well each film does in relation to its own
demands for whatever happens to constitute success.
So yes, Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain is a big success by virtue of its $17 million five-day gross while The Lone Ranger is
a relative failure with its $48 million five-day gross. Different films
have different needs for financial success. And come Sunday morning, Pacific Rim and Grown Ups 2
should be judged not over which film topped the other, but by how much
each film debuted with in relation to their own specific box office
needs. The studios don’t care how much all of the films in the
marketplace made in a given weekend if their film tanked. And studios
don’t care if their film was number one or number two, as long as the
actual weekend gross is to their liking. Paramount was thrilled that World War Z opened with $66 million last month and they surely didn’t care too much that Monsters University was still the top film of that weekend. And if Pacific Rim can
open substantially higher than its tracking (and/or make a killing
overseas), Warner Bros. surely won’t care too much if it makes more or
less than the likes of Grown Ups 2 or Despicable Me 2. And we shouldn’t care either.