The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
This weekend, it coincided with the Super Bowl in U.S. football. In the past, at this time of year, when encountering this event with the nickname of "American Spring Festival Gala", the film box office will always encounter a low tide, which is basically the lowest trough of the weekend box office of the whole year, and film companies are often unwilling to arrange new films to be cannon fodder at this time. This year, however, is a little different.
"Massacre on the Nile" threatens to stage a box office "tragedy"
On this Super Bowl weekend, three new films were released on a large scale. On the one hand, it is because the epidemic has disrupted the original movie schedule, on the other hand, because of the change in the schedule, this year's "Super Bowl" has been postponed by one week compared with the same period in the past, which happened to bump into the Valentine's Day schedule. In the end, Disney's "Massacre on the Nile" was released in 3,280 theaters and topped the weekend box office charts for $12.8 million, compared to the $29 million opening box office of "Murder on the Orient Express", also self-directed and self-directed by Kenneth Branagh, which opened in 2017, more than halved, although the media rating of "Massacre on the Nile" was slightly better than the previous game.
Stills from Massacre on the Nile
The problem is that this new version of Massacre on the Nile cost as much as $90 million to produce, much higher than the $50 million of Murder on the Orient Express. According to the current North American box office results, the loss of "Massacre on the Nile" in the North American market has become a fixed number. According to Kenneth Branagh's plan, he hoped that this new Poirot series would be filmed one after another. In this case, it depends on whether the film can win enough box office in overseas markets, including China, to reverse the defeat. This Friday (February 19), the film will be released in Chinese mainland.
In addition, there are many off-site tidbits of the film, and several leading actors have been involved in controversial events, which has also made the publicity and distribution of the film encounter many difficulties. The biggest negative news, no doubt, came from the film's lead actor, Amy Hammer. The American actor, who became popular with works such as "Social Network" and "Call Me by Your Name", was previously exposed to a scandal in his private life, and a number of women accused him of behaving in private, speaking extremely, and even rumored that he had exaggerated fantasies of eating human flesh and drinking human blood. Although Hammer denied the allegations, his public relations firm and agent team immediately announced that they had broken off their partnerships, and at least three other films chose to cut off him and change actors. Even "Massacre on the Nile", which has been completed early in the morning, is said to have considered finding someone to replace him and remake all related scenes, but gave up because the operation was too difficult. Even so, in the various promotional activities since the film, Hammer has never appeared.
On the other hand, the Israeli actress Gail Gadot, who plays his wife in the film, also has her problems. Because of the long-term conflict between Israel and Palestine, Gadot, who has never secretly said that he is patriotic and sincere, has been boycotted by many Palestinian friendly countries, and Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries have directly banned the introduction and distribution of "Massacre on the Nile".
In addition, Russell Brand and Lititia Wright in the film's cast have been embroiled in a war of words over vaccines over the past year. Both have spread anti-vaccination rhetoric and messages on social media, regardless of the adequacy of the arguments behind them, but in terms of public figures alone, I am afraid that it is somewhat contrary to the professional ethics requirements of careful words and deeds.
In short, all kinds of negative news, coupled with the collision with the "Super Bowl", as well as the mediocre word of mouth ("Rotten Tomatoes" professional film critics praise 66%), have become the cause of the box office failure of "Massacre on the Nile". However, the factors of the epidemic cannot be ignored. At that time, the total box office in North America exceeded $100 million in "Murder on the Orient Express", and according to rough statistics, nearly half of the audience was middle-aged and elderly people over the age of fifty. In the era of the epidemic, this part of the population is precisely the most affected, and the most reluctant to take risks to watch movies in theaters.
Stills from Murder on the Orient Express
Of course, "Massacre on the Nile" wasn't the worst new game of the weekend. The romantic comedy "Marry Me", which also aims at the Valentine's Day schedule, was released in 3642 theaters for three days over the weekend and only grossed $8 million, which is not as good as "Fools Forever", which has been released for two weeks.
The professional film critic praise rate of "Marry Me" and the audience praise rate are in the opposite direction
However, "Marry Me", starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson, cost only $23 million to produce, and on the same day of its release, it also landed on Paacock, an online platform owned by Universal Pictures, and it should not be a problem to recover the cost. The reason why Universal Pictures chose the strategy of online and offline simultaneous distribution is also to be able to borrow Lopez's popularity and pull some subscribers for Peacock. After all, Peacock and Warner's HBO Max were launched at about the same time, and the latter has 73.8 million subscribers by means of a wave of online and offline blockbusters released simultaneously in 2021; while Peacock's subscribers are only 9 million, and if they don't work hard, they will definitely soon lose the first in this streaming war.
Last weekend, in addition to "Massacre on the Nile" and "Marry Me", there was also a "Blacklight" starring Liam Neeson. But since both works can only get such box office results, the old tough guy action movies that have nothing to do with the Valentine's Day atmosphere, let alone the loneliness of the box office. The film was released in 2,772 theaters in North America and ended up in fifth place with a weekend box office of $3.6 million.
Oscar-nominated films have been dismal at the box office
Last week, the Oscar nominations were announced. As is customary, there should have been multiple nominee films to open this past weekend. On the one hand, it is to take advantage of the opportunity to take more box office, on the other hand, it can in turn rely on the audience's reputation to win more momentum to impact the small gold people. In any case, it is a good thing for the cinema to make money. For example, the 2020 Oscar nominations were announced on January 13, and the weekend since, several films nominated for Best Picture have grossed $33 million at the North American box office. But this year, that number may seem unbelievable at first glance: $1.72 million!
In the three days of this weekend, the ten new Oscar-nominated works, in addition to the streaming "Sound Girl", "Don't Look Up" and "Canine Power", "Licorice Pizza" has increased from 786 theaters to 2,000, the most radical. Belfast also increased from 390 theaters to 928. Only "Driving My Car" is basically maintained at about 100 theaters, without making any big moves, and it is estimated that the distributor is worried that such a three-hour foreign language film is really difficult to attract many fresh audiences. The number of theaters screenings of "Jade Face Love Demon" and "West End Story" did not increase or decrease last weekend. Dune, which was supposed to re-enter the theater with the momentum of being shortlisted, seems to have finally abandoned this plan. Counting "King Richard", which has been down, the total box office of all the new Oscar nominations this weekend is really only $1.72 million. Neither has it made the cinema much profit, nor has it helped the word-of-mouth spread of the film itself.
Overall, this year's ten best film candidates are probably lacking audiences. According to statistics, among the seven films with box office data, only "Dune" got 107 million North American box office, which is still a good audience. The remaining six films combined currently have only $2.5 million at the North American box office, which is basically the worst batch of Oscar candidates in the past decade.
The reason for this situation is of course that the epidemic factor cannot be ignored. Because middle-aged and elderly audiences have always been more interested in such "Rushing Olympic" films, they are not like young audiences who can return to the theater despite the epidemic.
This again involves the problem that this year's Oscar Best Picture does not have a place for "Spider-Man: Homeless". Last year's Oscar ratings have fallen to their lowest in history, and this year's Oscars have still completely shut out box office blockbusters — the film received only one Oscar nomination for Best Visual Effects, which has always been one of the earliest results of the awards ceremony, and this year's Oscar ratings may not be much better.
In fact, as soon as the Oscar nominations were announced last week, director Kevin Smith and famous Jimmy Kimo both shouted injustice over the failure of "Spider-Man". The former made a big splash for "Spider-Man" on its podcast program, mocked the movies that were clearly selected did not meet the interests of the people at all, and did not know what reason the Oscars had to complain about the loss of the awards ceremony ratings. The latter is even more aggressive: why the current Oscar candidates are becoming more and more serious, this is not the purpose for which movies were invented in the first place; in other words, movies should entertain people. "Let me guess how they voted. The Oscar judges got the votes and looked at them, saw the names Ofcaprio and Streep, and ticked off these kinds of movies. Then they took the kids and drove to the movie theater to see Spider-Man. They love Spider-Man, but they just won't vote for it. ”
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe
Proofreader: Liu Wei