Movie News
Why $25 mil. is OK for ‘Grindhouse’
Posted by Neil Miller (neil@filmschoolrejects.com) on April 8, 2007
As of Saturday afternoon, the whole of the internet seems to be up in arms about Grindhouse’s estimated lack of success. “Grindhouse”, the much anticipated homage to 1970s and 80s exploitation flicks directed by heralded indie icons Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino, only brought in an estimated $5 million dollars on Friday. As Reuters reports, “Grindhouse” came in 4th place on Friday behind “Blades of Glory”, “Meet the Robinsons” and “Are We Done Yet?”. This was a significant disappointment to the Weinstein Co., who were counting on “Grindhouse” to deliver their best opening weekend since Scary Movie 4 raked in $40 million last year.
So why has “Grindhouse” all of the sudden been labeled as a failure by sites like CHUD.com and /Film even after being labeled as The Best Reviewed Wide Release Film of 2007? Well, $5 million is pretty low of a number, especially when your $5 million is topped by a movie headlined by Ice Cube, a Disney movie designed for 3D and an awkwardly homophobic yet hilarious comedy about figure skating. The critics all loved this film, yes. But it appears that America didn’t get it. It may have been the gratuitous violence and sexuality in the film that scared audiences away. Or the 3 hour and 5 minute run time of the film, that was a hard one to get over. It could even be the holiday weekend; Easter is not traditionally a big box office weekend, with a BO total last year of less than half that of Memorial Day weekend. Heck, even “Passion of the Christ” only made $15 million on Easter weekend in ‘04. Either way it is clear that this film, as some dreaded, was completely lost on the American mainstream, but that not be such a bad thing.
With the $5 million dollar Friday, “Grindhouse” is trending for a $25 million opening weekend, which is not bad in my mind. First off, while Harvey Weinstein may not like it, that is not a bad opening weekend. As well, you have to understand that this film is very likely going to be one of the great fanboy cult flicks of the decade (yes, I said “of the decade”), leading me to believe that it word of mouth will carry it well into its second week of release. Also, it sets up for a very strong DVD release, something that will probably occur during the late Summer months.
On top of all that, we are just talking about Friday’s results. It is beyond me why everyone is getting all worked up over one day’s worth of receipts. I know of plenty of people who were waiting until Saturday night to catch it. As well, I am going to hold strong on word of mouth and say that it’s second weekend will be successful. So if you are reading the news, thinking to yourself that “Grindhouse” may be too long or that it isn’t do well, just remember that it still is one of the best reviewed films of the year thus far — and once you’ve seen “Blades of Glory,” there really isn’t anything else out there worth seeing.
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6 Comments
April 8th, 2007 at 3:18 am
Ummm …. $5 million blows for a Friday night showing for a film like this. Friday is the teens’ night at the movies. But I’d guess a lot of the Taratino admirers will wait it out until next week, fearing the worst from the ruffians on opening night/next day.
April 8th, 2007 at 5:22 am
“As of Saturday afternoon, the whole of the internet seems to be up in arms about Grindhouse’s estimated lack of success.”
A similar thing happened with Children of Men.
There are relatively large pockets of moncultural nerds around the web with a grossly over-inflated sense of importance in the world. They blow up at everything that doesn’t fit their taste because they’re so used to virtually living among other people nearly exactly like themselves.
Sure, they’re from different states or even countries and they often disagree about the details of one subject or another, but the sphere things that are relevant to them is and the angle from which they approach these things are universal.
Normal people don’t give a shit about Grindhouse aren’t going to see it and certainly don’t care what “the internet” is saying about it.
April 8th, 2007 at 11:00 am
Glenn — Good point about “teens night.” That is another point that I missed.
normal — Children of Men was a fantastic cinematic achievement, so I wouldn’t use it here. And I think that the internet does have a say in these sorts of things. Where do you think people read the most movie reviews? I’ll give you a hint: its not your local newspaper… The internet’s voice does matter, but you are correct in saying that a lot of “normal” people (read: Mainstream America) aren’t going to be running out to see “Grindhouse.”
April 8th, 2007 at 1:44 pm
[...] early this morning I reported on how everyone has been up in arms about the low box office figures being delivered by Grindhouse, the highly touted exploitation [...]
April 8th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Grindhouse tanked (and it clearly did tank) for a simple reason. It was a long, bore.
Blame the audience if you think they “didn’t get it” or blame the internet because…well for whatever reason you like but I sat through about 2 1/2 hours more than I cared to on Saturday and although Planet Terror was simply a bad movie, would never have been released on its own, Deathproof was probably the most indulgent piece of crap I’ve sat through…since Children of Men.
April 9th, 2007 at 11:02 pm
Of course no one here is smart enough to realize that the length of the movie has EVERYTHING to do with why it made such a small amount of money on it’s opening weekend. It’s almost 3.5 hours long. It can only be shown 4 times a day on a single screen. Even if it doesn’t continue making money at the box office, the DVD sales will go through the roof.