The Paper's reporter Cheng Xiaojun
Last weekend, the new film "Sonic the Hedgehog 2," which cost about $100 million to produce, entered 4,234 North American theaters and eventually grossed $71 million.
There is a big market for family movies
The reason why "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" has become the best-grossing animated film since "Frozen 2" in 2019 is not only because it is of high quality, but also because it is the first family movie for a small audience in nearly four months to enter the North American theater line, and it also retains a 45-day window, and it will not land on the Paramount+ streaming platform until a month and a half later.
Sonic the Hedgehog 2 poster
Due to Disney's "obstinate" determination not to let "Youth Metamorphosis" enter the theater, American audiences have not been able to see such family movies in theaters for a long time. The last theatrical film of the same kind dates back to "The Voice of Joy" released at the end of December 2021. In the end, the film also earned $161 million in North American box office, although far less than the first north American box office released in 2016 of $270 million, but after all, it was in the era of the epidemic, and it was a sequel itself, which was a pretty good result overall.
More critically, of the $161 million North American box office of "The Voice of Joy 2", nearly 40% of it was harvested after January 7. Why emphasize January 7th? Because since January 7, the film has landed on the streaming platforms of Apple, Google and Amazon. Being able to still get a good box office after this shows that the confidence of American families to get out of the epidemic and enter the theater is slowly recovering.
It is to see the box office performance of "The Voice of Joy 2" that Paramount has more confidence in the release of "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" this time. Like the industry, they had expected the film to get more than 50 million at the box office, and the final $71 million really surprised everyone.
Of course, the audience of the "Sonic the Hedgehog" series is not exactly a child, and the middle-aged and young Americans with game complexes also account for half of the country. At the beginning, it was their strong protest after watching the first trailer that forced Paramount to modify the original setting in various ways, and the result was that the wrong entry and wrong exit did a lot of publicity for the film. The addition of two new characters, myers the yellow two-tailed fox Miles and the red needle Mole Narus, which are very popular in the game, also attracted many loyal viewers of the previous film to continue to be popular.
The first "Sonic the Hedgehog", released in mid-February 2020, happened to be stuck before the outbreak of the epidemic in the United States, and it earned $58 million at the opening box office. This not only set a record for the opening of an ip movie in North America, but also the last work to open a box office of more than $50 million before the advent of the epidemic. Now, after two years, the second film has appeared gorgeously, and the box office has also reached a higher level, whether it means that the US film market has fully recovered, it may also need follow-up data to support.
"Outlaw Ambulance" has the potential to sell seats without selling seats
Released on the same day as Sonic the Hedgehog 2, action film director Michael Bay's new work, Ambulance. The film's reputation is not bad, with A-level audience ratings and 68% of the film critics and 88% of the audience on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes". But after being released in 3,412 theaters, it grossed just $8.7 million, not even as long as Dr. Night: Möbius and The Lost City.
"Outlaw Ambulance" has 68% of the critics' praise and 88% of the audience on "Rotten Tomatoes"
Such results are worse than the $12 million opening box office of Master Bay's 2005 "Escape from Clone Island", which has set a new low in his nearly three decades from film. Although the production budget of "Outlaw Ambulance" is only $40 million, this opening results mean that "Outlaw Ambulance" must have a good performance in overseas markets to ensure that distributor Universal Pictures does not lose money. The film has been confirmed to land in Chinese mainland theaters on April 22.
According to Scott Mendelssohn, an American box office analyst, on the surface, "Outlaw Ambulance" has at least four of the five major indicators of the so-called blockbuster: a big-name director, a star cast, a story-grabbing story (a sympathetic bank robber stops an ambulance carrying a patient), and the recognition of film critics, but for plot reasons, it lacks the comfort that audiences can talk about to escape the world.
"Outlaw Ambulance" Chinese mainland set for April 22
But today's film market is probably like this, and the audience is only interested in IP movies and series of films. Or rather, the audience is only willing to pay for such films. As for non-IP movies, even if they are filmed well, even if they have the above-mentioned popularity indicators, they can sit at home and wait for on-demand in the future. Therefore, even a well-known director like Michael Bay, if he wants to achieve box office success in recent years, he can only rely on IP works such as "Transformers", and original works such as "Outlaw Ambulance" and "13 Hours of Crisis" will fail at the box office if they are not successful.
Originally, the comic adaptation of "Doctor Night: Mobius" was poorly praised, and the industry generally believed that it would leave a good living space for "Outlaw Ambulance". And after that, the next work of the same nature will not be released until April 22, "The Northman". Those American audiences who love to watch action movies, if they come to the theater at this time, there is not much room for choice, and the box office of "Outlaw Ambulance" should not be bad, but the results can be seen that even if it is a comic book with a poor reputation, it is still more popular than the original film with good reputation. In the long run, it is difficult for the American film industry to say whether it is a good thing or a bad thing.
Warner and Quest are officially merged
Last week, the biggest news in Hollywood, in addition to Will Smith's ten-year ban from the Oscars, was the official completion of the divestiture of Warner Media Group, which was originally part of AT&T Holdings, and the merger with The Exploration Communications Group.
The entire merger, which began about a year ago and was officially completed last Friday, was formed with a new company called Warner Bros. Discovery), which continues to be the lead of Discovery Channel CEO David Zaslav, is intent on hitting the three biggest streaming giants of Disney, Amazon and Netflix, by integrating the two major streaming media, HBO Max and Discovery+.
In Zaslav's view, the advantage of the newly established Warner Bros. Exploration is that it has both the wonderful film and television drama works on HBO Max and the various original documentaries of Exploration Communication, including the Discovery Channel, animal planet channel, and tourism life channel. "Being able to deliver the most engaging and complete content... Enough to super-serve every family member, everyone. ”
Currently, Discovery+ has 22 million subscribers worldwide, and HBO and HBO Max have 74 million subscribers worldwide, for a total of 96 million (of course, it is not excluded that many of them have subscribed to both services). Netflix currently has nearly 222 million global subscribers and Disney+ has nearly 130 million. For the number of future subscribers, the new official Zaslav is very optimistic, believing that the merged Warner Bros. Exploration streaming platform will also have 200 million, 300 million or even 400 million subscribers. The ambitious New Yorker even bought the Hollywood mansion of Paramount Legends tycoon Robert Evans, who died in 2019, as his home base in the hope of making a big splash in the film and television industry.
Editor-in-Charge: Zhang Zhe