Traditionally, January is not a month for blockbusters. It’s a month when studios can dump bombs and hope that smaller movies get some attention.
That’s what happened with Sony’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop which cost an estimated $25 million to make and earned $183 million at the global box office in 2009. That same month Taken performed well for Fox earning $227 million on an estimated $26 million budget.
But can January produce a blockbuster — a big-budget movie that earns multiples of its cost at the box office?
Maybe. Sony’s The Green Hornet (in 3-D) is expected to top the box office with $40 million over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, according to Exhibitor Relations. The only movies that have opened north of $35 million in the past few months are Tron: Legacy, which brought in $44 million its opening weekend and Tangled which brought in $48 million.
This time last year, the box office was still dominated by Avatar, which went on to become the highest grossing film of all time with $2.8 billion at the box office. With nothing even close to that in theaters now, The Green Hornet has a chance to dominate for a few weeks.
If the movie is a hit, studios could reevaluate their practice of lumping superhero movies into the summer and spread them out more throughout the year.
As I wrote last week, The Green Hornet has gone from being a potential disaster to a movie that could be a real game changer.
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment