Box Office: Clint Eastwood Drives His Gran Torino to the Top

Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on January 11, 2009

What is there to say about this weekend? I know there’s been a raging debate around here about what impact the big Hollywood stars have on the box office, and on and on. Well, let me weigh in with some words of my own. This weekend the somewhat surprising winner at the box office was Gran Torino, which made $29 million. And there is one reason, and one reason only why this movie made the money that it did:

Clint Eastwood.

Let me tell you something: if Gran Torino didn’t have Eastwood at the helm, and it featured a bunch of unknowns directing it or in the cast, it would not have made the money that it was making this weekend. I’ve been reading these comment boards everywhere about Gran Torino, and fans have been raving about “Clint this” and “Clint that”.

But here’s the important point that has to be made. Ultimately, at the end of the day it comes down to the material. Sure, people wanted to see Clint Eastwood, but they didn’t want to see Eastwood this weekend in some embarrassing piece of junk with a monkey sidekick or something like that. Heck, there are plenty of mediocre movies being served up with stars in them. People want to see a star in something great, doing a great performance.

They had heard for weeks about how great Gran Torino was and how it could be Oscar material, and the potential exclamation point to Eastwood’s spectacular career. And besides that, Clint Eastwood has about as good a pedigree when it comes to making good movies as anyone in Hollywood. Heck, he took home Oscars for Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby. I think people know by now that Eastwood would deliver the goods, so that attracted people to this flick, along with the fact that it was an Oscar contender.

Don’t get me wrong. You probably could have made a movie like this without Eastwood at the helm that could have done fairly well and gotten Oscar buzz. But it probably would have taken a lot more time and effort for it to make a lot of money. Eastwood’s involvement made a huge difference — not so much because he was a star, but because of what he brought to the production. Also, it could be his swan song — his final great movie as an actor and a director.

That’s why people were braving the weather to see this flick – it wasn’t “just” because it was “Clint”. It was a lot of factors coming together.

In fact, Clint is not even known for delivering boffo box offices – he is known for his movies, and that is the way it ought to be. But he did do well at the box office this weekend. This movie made $9,650,000 on Friday, which was reportedly a record for a open-wide release for Eastwood. Of course, this flick had also been in limited release for about a month and has now grossed $40 million.

As for my theories about the NFL having an impact on the box office, I obviously neglected to consider that a lot of fans have totally lost interest by now because their teams had been eliminated. (In Los Angeles, they have no team at all). So to HECK with that theory. That is all I have to say about Gran Torino.

Now the other big surprise was The Unborn, and I have no idea why this movie did as well as it did. It made $21 million, almost as much as Bride Wars. Now, it didn’t have any stars in it, which kind of proves the theory that you don’t need big stars to make money at the box office. But its reviews have been absolutely terrible, almost as bad as for Bride Wars. Maybe guys were reeled in by the promos featuring Odette Yustman in her undies. Maybe people were starved to see a horror movie — any horror movie. Heck, we haven’t had too many horror flicks lately, but we HAVE had plenty of movies about cuddly dogs. That’s the best theory I can offer up at the moment.

By the way, my prediction that Bride Wars would underperform because of all the bad reviews it got turned out to be totally, effing wrong, because it made exactly what it was expected to make: $21 million. But that news was kind of lost in the shuffle because these other two movies performed way better than expected. I guess people really were dying to see these other two, while a lot of folks looked at Bride Wars and figured it was yet another lame Kate Hudson romcom from Hollywood.

I thought the poor reviews would have had more of an impact at the box office than it did. This weekend we had $42 million wasted by North American moviegoers on two movies that got ratings of 13 percent (The Unborn) and 12 percent (Bride Wars) at Rotten Tomatoes. So much for the theory that audiences are attracted to quality. (But then again, look on the bright side. They both lost to Gran Torino, and people were attracted to quality there.)

The damages:

That is it for this weekend. Suffice it to say I plan to spend less time in the future intellectualizing about what is likely to happen at the box office and spend more time trying to figure out the mob mentality, because it just seems the flicks that win are the flicks that the mobs are truly excited about — like Gran Torino this weekend. Back for more later this week at the Reject Report.

Read more articles by John Cairns