Will Titanic be beaten?

Cafe Society
21

I find it extremely unlikely that either Harry Potter or LOTR will break Titanic’s box office record…in fact, I’d be surprised if the COMBINED tally of both movies broke the $600 million mark. That’s a lot of money, folks!

Historically, fantasy movies do not do well. (Not a single live-action fantasy movie is listed in IMDB’s top 239 movies of all time.) The buzz surrounding both Harry and Lord ensures that both should break this trend and easily break the $100 million mark, perhaps even $200 million. But that’s it. Both movies have large audience bases but are missing key demographics, such as older people, and, as Wumpus mentioned, teenagers.

If either movie has a chance of breaking the all-time Top 10, I’d bet on Harry Potter, which should get more repeat viewings. But that’s “only” $300 million, just half of Titanic’s take.

22

I think Harry has a chance. I know a surprising amount of adults who love the books (garunteed to see the movie) alot of teenagers who aren’t afraid of what their peers think will go see it, And lord knows every kid under 12 will have to see it three times. And I imagine quite a few of the fantasy buffs that are waiting for LoTR will see it. LoTR, I think, has a significantly lower chance, but still a chance. I think this will be a great movie simply based on the fact that I’ve seen interviews with the director and he doesn’t seem to be an idiot. I know I’ll see it at least twice.

23

Let’s give titanic a break, do we really need to beat it? i mean, it took a beating from that big chunk of ice already…

hehehe…

24

Jeremy’s Evil Twin has a point–I don’t think it applies, but it’s a point nonetheless. :slight_smile:

The generalization, “Historically, fantasy movies do not do well” is true, in a narrow sense. However, it’s not a very good guide to the success of Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings.

The first thing to remember is that audiences don’t know or care about these box office “rules.” If you had said in 1974, “Historically, science fiction and horror movies do not become blockbusters,” the box office pundits would all have agreed with you. That wouldn’t have stopped audiences from lining up for Star Wars and Jaws later in the decade. The public’s tastes change, as does Hollywood’s ability to bring off these kinds of movies. (Lord of the Rings would have been impossible to film only a decade ago. Most earlier high fantasy movies like Willow and Legend had cheesy, unconvincing efects, even by the standards of the day.)

The generalization also defines fantasy so narrowly that it’s virtually meaningless. Never mind that Star Wars is fundamentally a fantasy story with “Jedi” hastily substituted for wizards and “light sabers” for swords. It only counts as “science fiction,” according to the pundits, not as fantasy. (Though I defy you to find any science in it. :slight_smile: ) Likewise, Batman, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, ET, Mary Poppins, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon–none of these count as fantasy movies according to the “fantasy is box office poison” crowd. I don’t think audiences have such narrow genre tastes, personally. They just want to see something that’s really, really cool.

Last, no previous high-budget fantasy movie has had such a large pre-sold audience. There were literally millions of people clamoring to see these two movies before a single frame was shot or a single ad dollar spent. That gives these two flicks a huge head start.

True, these movies will probably “only” make $200-$400 million apiece. But they still have a better shot of breaking Titanic’s record than any movies released since '97–certainly better chances than the bland, imitative, over-hyped Pearl Harbor.

(I’m also perplexed by the Twin’s claim that Lord of the Rings lacks the older demographic. Tolkien was practically the bible for the entire '60s generation!)

25

Checking my link of the 100 most successful movies of all time adjusted for inflation I find:

  1. Star Wars
  2. The Empire Strikes Back
  3. Return of the Jedi
  4. SW: The Phantom Menace
  5. Mary Poppins
  6. Raiders of the Lost Ark
  7. Ghostbusters
  8. The Sixth Sense
  9. Superman
  10. Men in Black
  11. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
  12. Ghost
  13. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
  14. Young Frankenstein
26

I’ll go out on a limb here and say that neither HARRY POTTER nor LORD OF THE RINGS has a chance of coming close to breaking TITANIC’s record. It’s just not gonna happen, folks, no way, no how.

You can argue all you like about how popular the books are and how big the built-in audience is, but neither of those factors comes even close to putting those to films in the running. Remember, you can become a bestselling author by selling books to a few million readers. A few million viewrers adds up to box office grosses of $20- to $30-million (even less since many of these tickets buyers will be kids at discount prices). For these films to be huge, they have to attract huge numbers of people who never have and never will read the books.

Of course Mom and Dad are going to take the kids to see HARRY POTTER on opening weekend. They might even go back. But that doesn’t mean the tens of millions of people are going to start buying tickets to check out why all their friends are going to see HARRY POTTER. It’s not going to become a huge cultural phenomenon where you have to see it or feel left out.

LORD OF THE RINGS will probably make less money, but it does have a small chance of breaking out big time if it clicks with audiences. It has less chance of being percieved as a “kids movie,” and the mythic undertones come closer to capturing some of the feel that made STAR WARS so big.

As someone else said further up in this thread, both films will do well, possibly even become blockbusters, but neither will reach the $600-million domestic mark.

Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

27

I wouldn’t consider a single one of those movies a “Fantasy” movie, and I think most, but of course not all, people would agree with me. When I think fantasy I think swords, magic, wizards, dragons, elves…etc.
Young Frankenstein is a comedy spoof of a horrow movie, how the hell did anyone get “fantasy” out of that?
RoTLA is action/adventure
MiB is sci-fi
Ghost is a drama/tear-jerker
Ghostbusters is a sci-fi comedy
Mary Poppins is a kids movie
Star Wars is sci-fi action/adventure

You get my point, all of these movies can be better categorized than “fantasy.”

28

Nice Save.

For some odd reason it reminded me of this quote.
“Aw, people can come up with statistics to prove anything, Kent. 14 percent of all people know that.”

29

Wizard of Oz wan’t in the top 100? :eek: I mean, that’s got to be a fantasy movie, no?

Chaim Mattis Keller

30

Well, since you asked, I’d say no, based on the same criteria that Cicso mentioned. I’d say it’s more of a children’s fairy tale (the Wicked Witch of the East and all that…).

31

Somehow I get the impression Cisco didn’t read my post. :slight_smile:

If you use Cisco’s narrow categories, though, Harry Potter doesn’t count as fantasy either–Harry Potter is a lot more like Mary Poppins than Legend or Ladyhawke. It’s about regular 21st century kids who happen to go to a magic school, not about knights in shining armor or princesses.

Scriptanalyst, Harry Potter is already “a huge cultural phenomenon where you have to [know about] it or feel left out.” Has been for several years now. True, not everyone has read the books. But everyone who has been paying the slightest attention the last few years has heard about the Harry Potter phenomenon, and many of those people will probably figure that seeing the movie is the easiest way to check it out.

The problem with all these “movie X can’t possibly break Titanic’s record” analyses is that they can all be used to show Titanic itself couldn’t have made as much money as it did. A three-hour historical romance with no stars and no action until the last hour becoming the highest-grossing movie ever? Impossible. :slight_smile:

There’s a large unpredictable, fluky element to the grosses, but one thing that has been constant over the last decade is that they’ve been growing. Even eminently forgettable movies like The Grinch and Twister have had no trouble making over $200 million. In that environment, it’s not a question of if there will ever be another fluke like Titanic. It’s only a question of when.

32

Actually, it’s not such a phenomenon, at least not in the sense of TITANIC. Harry Potter is a franchise for kids and their parents. No one is going to feel the need to see the movie just because they want to have a topic of conversation with their eight-year-old nephew. And no one (well, maybe a few idiots) is going to pay nine bucks to see a movie so they won’t feel left out for not having read the books.

Besides, for the film to become the blockbuster you’re talking about, the film itself must become the phenomenon, not the books. Stephen King is a publishing phenomenon, but that didn’t make HEARTS IN ATLANTIS pass TITANIC. X-FILES is (or at least was) a TV phenomenon, but that didn’t make the film pass TITANIC.

None of this is to say that the HARRY POTTER film won’t become a monster hit, but there is really no reason to even be discussing the “possibility” of its surpassing TITANIC’s box office grosses.

**

Good point. We can’t “prove” that HARRY POTTER won’t surpass TITANIC. I’m just saying there’s no reason at this point to even consider it a remote possibility.

**

This is a simplistic and misleading analysis. Movie box office attendance has remained generally flat for the last decade (with some ups and downs, mostly downs in the last year or two). Hollywood has managed to keep the grosses up by raising ticket prices. So yes, the numbers may creep higher and higher, but only incrementally, and not enough to account for the blockbuster success of GRINCH and TWISTER.

All this means is that the film that beats TITANIC won’t have to sell as many tickets as TITANIC did (in the same way that TITANIC hasn’t sold as many tickets as GONE WITH THE WIND). But even with inflated prices, the new box office chamption (whatever it is) would still have to sell nearly 100-million tickets in the US.

That’s a lot of tickets, and we can’t just assume “Oh well, it’s bound to happen any day now because of rising ticket prices.” It will happen eventually, but it will happen because a film comes along that becomes a collasal hit with viewers who want to see it, whatever the price of the tickets.

Steve Biodrowski
http://www.thescriptanalyst.com

33

I was going to say that it will be beaten simply because of inflation. 50 years from now when it’s $75 to see a movie, it won’t take as many people to break it.

However, who knows how the industry will be by then. We may not even go to the movies anymore, we could just download them.

34

notcynical:

Fairy tale != fantasy???

Chaim Mattis Keller

35

As opposed to lightsabers, the Force, Jedis, the Sarloch, and Yoda? I’ll grant you that MiB is more SF than fantasy, and I’ve never seen The Sixth Sense, so I don’t know about that one, but as for the rest… If you’re going to be that specific in your genre definitions, you might as well say that before Titanic, no movie about a big ship that sank on its maiden voyage with the teen heartthrob du jour and a big diamond aboard had ever done well at the box office, either.

36

Ok, I’ll give you Star Wars, you can have it. But only because of The Force. Star Wars has always been kind of borderline for me. Think of the movie without The Force though, it would be purely sci-fi adventure. I mean, lightsabres are supposed to be futuristic technological weapons, and all the other races and alien beings are products of man’s intergalactic travels. Take out The Force and there’s no fantasy about it.
Maybe I was a little too constrictive about my genre definitions but I’d like to hear one person out there say that they honestly consider Young Frankenstein a fantasy movie.

37

Count me in as a Harry Potter may do it, but no way no how to LOTR.

Judging by the book sales alone (for Potter), every bloody kid in the states is gonna want to see it (probably many times). And a lot of parents (either willingly or as chaperone). Plus the timing is great - it’s gonna open huge, and then it’s got all of Thanksgiving weekend to rake it in. Just for starters.

As far as LOTR, I can’t wait to see it…but I don’t sense nearly the same buzz. I work w/ many people my age (mid 30’s) and no one is talking about it. Well…their loss, I suppose.

38

Scriptanalyst, you seem to be assuming that only children read the Harry Potter books, and that only children and their parents go to “kid’s movies.” Neither assumption is true. Certainly Shrek couldn’t have hit $250 million with only a kid audience, and certainly Monsters Inc. couldn’t have managed the sixth-best opening weekend in history if it didn’t attract teens and adults as well.

(According to this page:
http://www.boxofficeguru.com/052101.htm
Shrek’s opening weekend audience was split evenly between families and “non-families”.)

You’re right that a typical best-seller only sells a million or so. However, we’re not talking about a typical best-seller. The Harry Potter books have sold over 35 million copies in the US. (A figure that’s even more remarkable when you consider how heavily kids rely on libraries for their books.) So we’re talking ten million fans or more. How does having ten million people pre-sold on your movie hurt its box-office chances?

It was the OP who attributed higher grosses to ticket prices increases, not me. I attribute the recent increase in megablockbusters to massively wide openings, improved marketing, and the 'Net. The big hits are getting bigger, as are the big flops…

It comes down to whether you view Titanic as a unique, unrepeatable act of Divine Providence, or just an unusual event. I view as an unusual event, hence something that is bound to happen again. As you say, all it takes is a movie that really grabs a large segment of the audience.

39

A movie can belong to more than one genre. Blazing Saddles is a western and a comedy. Young Frankenstein is a fantasy and a comedy.

Here’s a fantasy plot for you: A good wizard and an evil wizard who works for a great demon, fight for the soul of a powerful, but untrained young mage/warrior. Gee, sounds a lot like Star Wars to me. Take out “The Force” and you may have a SF adventure, but you sure don’t have Star Wars anymore.

40

But the Force is no longer a mystical force. It is a product of micro-organisms in your bloodstream. Giving the Force a scientific explanation kinda takes away from the “fantasy” aspect.

That said, what was Lucas thinking with midichlorians?