How Much Does It Take to Buy a 50 Million Dollar Opening Weekend?

C

c.g._eads

Veteran
In this world where the only thing that matters is the opening weekend gross, I got to thinking, why does the opening weekend gross even matter anymore? As long as you have either explosions or effects and the studio is willing to put up 50 million for your advertising/marketing budget (commercials, posters, previews, print ads), what is a 50 million dollar opening? Let me get this straight. You paid 50 million dollars..... to GET 50 MILLION DOLLARS??? How is that difficult again?

So when I see from one of the big studios, a movie that made 50 million or 60 million, and they're sitting there bragging about it, I just laugh, because the opening was totally bought.

Marketing is a funny thing. Think about if Pirates of the Carribean came out without one single commercial. Without one preview, one poster, one bit of promotion from its stars. Would anybody go see it? No. It would be no different from any of the movies on this forum.

I just don't understand all the hoopla about big openings if they're bought. That's all.
 
studios want a big opening because it adds to the hype. i'm sure their publicists are talking to whoever will listen about how well the movie is doing.
 
I'm sure there's more than a few studio exec's out there that really wished it worked that way - the one's with the $20M ad campaign and the $2M opening. If all features made money (and no, I'm not talking about that famous studio accounting) then we'd all be a LOT more employable.
 
A big opening weekend HOPEFULLY brings with it a decent second weekend.
The idea isn't that you spend 50 million in marketing so you can get just a 50 million opening weekend - its so that second weekend will make at least 40 million..etc etc

Most movies don't make more money their second - So opening weekend is key because it sets the stage for the movie's run. The bigger the opening weekend, the more people who can go back to work on Monday and tell everyone they know that they should go see "BLANK" movie...

you get the idea.
And like Ugafan said - it adds to the hype.
People like to back a winner - so when a movie has hype, no one wants to be the guy who hasn't seen it.
 
Box office and the marketing hype that goes along with it is simply a marketing tool to getnerate hype and interest in their product for the profit windows. When you have these huge opening numbers regardless of how you get there the general public will want to catch it on the profit windows. The profit windows include rentals such as blockbuster etc, DVD sales (a window people like us who like owning the movie and the extras on them created), pay per view, cable, and broadcast television. Theatrical distribution has long not been a profit window but a marketing window and also helps with international distribution (more help to indies as the big boys all have their own international distribution).

(Based on info from Dov Simmons and others)
 
I don't believe advertising dollars are a part of one films budget ? And even if they spend 30 million is marketing; consider licensing from Burger King to Lunch Boxes to Cereal Boxes (and said DVD's, et al).

You can be sure they're seeing massive returns on these campaigns. At the end of the day, advertising and marketing are deductable anyways on their bottom line.
 
Yeah normally when I see film budgets, marketing & advertising is a separate item from the production budget.

The more money spent on a film's ad budget is starting to equal how much it has to pull in on opening night to be "successful." Cars for example, its ad budget was (IIRC) 2/3 the production budget.
 
my understanding is that the opening weekend is actually about much more than the second weekend

opening weekend figures are used to determine sales to markets oversees and to cable and ensure a higher DVD rental rate, so from a Doc I saw it is less about getting more people in the theater after opening (only word of mouth really does that in mass numbers) and more about a stamp for the film that allows it to make more money in the long run.

Pearl Harbor:
Budget: $135million
Advertising Budget: $200 Million!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GROSS: $450 Million
PEARL HARBOR
us

Opening Weekend: $75 Million
Second Weekend: $30 million
3rd Weekend:$10 MILLION .... $10 MILLION???????
If you have a second weekend drop off of more than 50% that's a very bad.
But because they had that "Opening Weekend" stamp, for which they paid $200 million they eventually made their money back including the advertising.

Net before advertising about $315 million.
Net after advertising about $200 million.



Here's some stats on Casino Royale for comparison.

Budget: $150 million (more than Pearl Harbor)
Gross: $600 million (already more than Pearl Harbor, from a smaller opening.
Opening Weekend: $50 million (but higher than Pearl Harbor weeks 2-10)
CASINO ROYALE
us

Notice how it beats the pants of Pearl Harbor in weeks 2 - 10. The graph will always go down, but the percentage it goes down shows strong word of mouth after a much more reasonable but very strong opening weekend.
 
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