From Box Office Mojo:
Pretty impressive, especially since it’s going against Harry Potter. I guess everyone who wanted to see it, already saw it.
I didn’t want to make another topic for this so I’ll just post it here.
The first poster(s) for the Avengers:
http://www.thehdroom.com/images/news/9276h.jpg
Based upon opening weekend ticket sales, Cap is likely going to beat GL with Thor-like numbers or higher.
According to Rotten Tomatoes, “Captain America” grossed $65.8 million in its opening weekend. That’s a sliver over the $65.7 million for “Thor”. Not bad for a film going up against Harry Potter.
However, “Cowboys and Aliens” opens on the 29th and is getting good early buzz. It’s possible that movie-goers in search of some slightly cheesy popcorn fare will opt for this instead of “Captain America”. Will the Captain have legs? If not, it might still get beaten by “Green Lantern” in total domestic gross.
They apparently shot it for a lot less than GREEN LANTERN, though (and, at that, less than THOR). So it can gross less and net more, if it grosses less, after opening for more.
It’s doing even better, overall ticket sales-wise. From Box Office Mojo:
According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, Captain America’s box office returns have already exceeded Green Lantern’s, both domestically and worldwide. Green Lantern cost the most to make and earned the least out of this year’s crop of superhero movies. I think we can safely declare it the biggest failure of the films covered by this thread.
Cowboys and Aliens also underperformed, but, though it was based upon a comic book, it doesn’t really count as a superhero film.
Here’s the current numbers from Box Office Mojo.
Captain America: The First Avenger
Production Budget: $140,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $170,272,000 (2 weeks)
X-Men: First Class
Production Budget: $160,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $348,516,671 (9 weeks)
Thor
Production Budget: $150,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $447,743,560 (13 weeks)
Priest
Production Budget: $60,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $76,583,348 (12 weeks)
Green Lantern
Production Budget: $200,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $154,310,000 (7 weeks)
In terms of profit, Green Lantern came in down below Priest.
Ouuuuuuuuuch.
And I say that as someone who paid money to see Priest, but skipped Green Lantern.
I was just thinking of this. So I took the liberty of looking up the gross domestic totals for both the year so far and last week.
For the year
7 Thor $181,030,624
8 Captain America: The First Avenger $168,677,000
12 X-Men: First Class $146,010,145
17 Green Lantern $115,742,183
For the week
12 Captain America: The First Avenger $5,889,754
24 Green Lantern $ 476,423
35 X-Men: First Class $ 202,011
52 Thor $ 46,216
All but Captain America have dropped below $1 million per week. So their positions are very unlikely to change. Cap still has a chance to beat the functionally done Thor. But it has been averaging a 48% decline from week to week. I don’t think it can close a $13 million gap.
Cowboys and Aliens flopped. Here it is compared to updated numbers from Little Nemo’s post.
Cowboys & Aliens
Production Budget: $163,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $113,287,630
Captain America: The First Avenger
Production Budget: $140,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $318,844,957
X-Men: First Class
Production Budget: $160,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $350,939,744
Thor
Production Budget: $150,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $448,512,824
Priest
Production Budget: $60,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $76,583,348
Green Lantern
Production Budget: $200,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $194,342,183
Box-office grosses don’t say much about profitability. Most of the profit comes out of DVD sales and rentals, streaming sales and rentals, sales to cable stations, and toy and figurine sales. Some movies hold up much better than others in this market. Still, Marvel has to be celebrating.
Box Office Mojo has a ridiculously elaborate comparison page for these six movies.
From that link, though, it’s still a bit of an apples-to-oranges comparison. CAP has already grossed well over $20 million in Mexico; the numbers aren’t yet in for COWBOYS, which is opening there this weekend (and ditto for Peru, where CAP has racked up millions; and Colombia, where CAP has racked up millions; and France, where CAP has racked up millions). CAP likewise picked up more than $20 million in Brazil; COWBOYS doesn’t open there until September (and ditto for Germany, where CAP has racked up millions; and Italy, where CAP has racked up millions; and Spain, where CAP has racked up millions).
And no reports are yet in for COWBOYS in Hong Kong, where CAP has also racked up millions. And no reports are yet in for COWBOYS in Thailand, where CAP has also racked up millions. And – look, I’m with you in doubting it’ll catch CAP, but shouldn’t we hold off on calling it a flop until it at least opens in Japan next month?
I saw Cap and Thor, liked both. Plan to catch Green Lantern, Cowboys, and X-Men on HBO whenever they hit it. Dunno anything about Priest. Marvel is sitting pretty, though…Avengers is going to be a license to print money for them.
I saw Priest. It’s not a must-see movie. Some good special effects and fight scenes but that’s about it. Maggie Q needs to get a better agent.
Well, I don’t want to put much meaning in box office grosses. As I said, most of the profit comes off the back end.
But the rule of thumb is that a movie has to earn 2 1/2 times its production budget to break even. That’s because grosses are split with the theaters themselves, marketing budgets have skyrocketed with campaigns all over the world, and most powerful directors and actors take points off the gross.
So C&A has to get to $400,000,000 worldwide to break even. It won’t come close. By that standard it’s easy to call it a huge flop, worse than Green Lantern.
Worse? By the 2.5 rubric, Green Lantern needs to get to $500,000,000 worldwide to break even; I don’t see that GL will necessarily miss that closer than C&A will miss $400,000,000.
So they both flopped at the box office. I’d still rather have a piece of GL just for the money that the tie-ins brought in.
But studio accounting works both ways. Production budgets are often artificially inflated. A studio will finance a film production and then the film production will pay the studio for the use of its facilities. So a portion of the production money ends up cycling back to the studio.
This kind of arrangement benefits the studio because it makes more money in the real sense than it makes in the legal sense. And a lot of payouts are based on the film’s profits and this reduces them on paper.
If we start down that road, though, GL apparently shelled out an extra $100 million on advertising; C&A apparently made do with a $30 million budget. If that’s true, then I’m honestly not sure which film is the worse return on investment – and that’s with C&A yet to open in a bunch of markets where GL has already run its course.
Cowboys and Aliens just opened here last Thursday, but no one seems excited about it. Captain America did pretty well I think; the wife and I liked it better than Thor, which did so-so. I don’t know anyone who went to see Green Lantern.