Yes, it is a cliché, but 2008 truly was the best of times and the worst of times.
The box office broke new records, including a brand new #2 domestic film of all-time increasing the standard by more than 15%, yet New Line – as constituted from Day One – was dumped by Warner Bros, three studios including Warners) dropped their Dependents, a fourth found a sucker to snap up a Dependent Dependent (Rogue), a fifth (Searchlight) basically shut down their DD without so much as an announcement.
Paramount had another excellent year with the DreamWorks product, yet DreamWorks left the stunningly brief marriage, in the-most-popular-kind-of-gay-marriage terms, the second the ink was dry on their green card.
MGM made big shows of landing Tom Cruise, Paula Wagner, Dennis Rice, and Mary Parent as they broke away from Sony’s “friends with few benefits” phony marriage, yet in the last year we have seen Wagner and Rice exit as the funding for UA became iffy at best, Press and Vollman enter in the heels of exiting Paramount/DreamWorks and resurrecting Valkyrie (though perhaps not enough so to be profitable), and the question of whether Mary Parent will have the opportunity to actually roll cameras on any more of her many interesting developed projects hanging in the air. (Plus the question… will MGM/UA be acquired again this year… perhaps by Sony in another version of the library play?)
Paramount Vantage started the year with two Best Picture nominees, splitting with Miramax on both No Country For Old Men and There Will Be Blood, yet died – for all intents and purposes and dangling contracts - shortly thereafter as John Lesher took his high-profile cash-burning ways to the big studio.
Universal toiled all year under the shadow of potential sales efforts by GE, yet had its best year ever, both domestically and worldwide.
Superheroes were good for over $2 billion in box office with three films, yet did not profoundly impact the immediate future of Warners, Paramount or Universal as all three deals were split or distribution-only.
Marvel had some very big numbers with Iron Man and The Incredible Hulk, yet spent so much on production that the profit margins didn’t make them the kind of success they seemed. Outlays on Iron Man seem to be about $310 million versus about $320 million in theatrical rentals, leaving a lot of profit in DVD and other ancillaries. But the $250 million against about $145 million in rentals on The Incredible Hulk is probably red ink against those Iron profits.
The Golden Globes were killed off by the Writers Guild of America strike, which left the big show slot to The Academy Awards alone, yet the ratings were still down.
Dreamgirls was not nominated two years ago, yet The Academy hired Bill Condon and Larry Marks to produce this year’s show, hoping to set a new standard that will redefine the show for the future.
The producer/studio exec behind some of the biggest, most popular films of all time was nominated for The Thalberg Award, seemingly a great opportunity to exploit that popularity, yet The Academy Board decided that Jerry Lewis would get the only special award this year.
Focus Features had a pretty terrible first eight months, picking up Hamlet 2 for over $10 million at Sundance and grossing under $5 million, unable to get the very well reviewed In Bruges rolling to more than $7.8 million, and seeing Amy Adams’ follow-up to Enchanted do just $12 million, inspiring rumors of a shut down, yet they created the biggest Coens Bros opening ever, have a major Oscar contender in Milk, and are in position to reap the benefits of being one of just three bigger budget Dependents (and one tight Sony Classics) left in the industry.
The Weinstein Company will barely reach $125 million total after releasing eleven movies (themselves and via MGM), had to make a security deposit for their slots in their still-not-as-good-as-under-MGM output deal with Showtime, have had legal troubles trying to move Project Runway to Lifetime from Bravo, couldn’t keep some of their relationships with filmmakers going for financial reasons, and seems to be treading water with the hopes that Inglorious Basterds, yet… uh… uh… uh… well, they won the fight over The Reader, right?
20th Century Fox had just two $100 million movies domestically all year, yet is looking at five films doing over $100 million overseas, is starting 2009 off with one of the season’s biggest grosser with one of the season’s smallest budgets, has been handed a big piece of Watchmen by a judge, and have six big time releases on the way, including the first Jim Cameron feature since Titanic.
New Line was shut down, yet had 3 of Warner Bros’ 5 biggest domestic hits of the year including Sex & The City, which as a wholly TW-owned film will probably be almost as profitable as the funding-split The Dark Knight which did more than twice the business. (WB passed on the TV-based film.)
Slumdog Millionaire will be enormously profitable and could win Searchlight its first Best Picture Oscar, yet WB sold off half of the film (or more) to Searchlight (which had passed on the film as too expensive two years earlier) after shuttering WIP and deciding that they could not market the film themselves.
Variety attacked Will Smith for both of his movies in 2008, as well as smacking down Steven Soderbergh’s Che’ at every turn, yet Smith’s Hancock turned out to be the second biggest hit of his career, Seven Pounds will be the #2 or #3 theatrical drama of the year (behind Ben Button and perhaps, 21), and Che’ is well on its way to be IFC’s biggest release of 2008 in spite of being 4.5 hours long.
Roger Ebert’s medical efforts to return his gift of gab have failed, yet his writing has been more aggressive, vigorous, and daring than at any time since early in his career.
Mamma Mia! SUCKED, yet it is easily the highest grossing musical in the history of the movies, more than 45% ahead of Grease’s $395 million worldwide.
Bolt cracked $100 million for Disney non-Pixar, yet it was only the second such success of this millennium. (A: Lilo & Stitch)
Quantum of Solace smashed the domestic Bond opening record by $26 million, yet will just barely pass Casino Royale as the best Bond domestic gross ever and may not be the worldwide best ever, with only Japan left to open (worth as much as $20 million, with $55 million in ground to make up).
Summit broke new ground with Twilight’s near-$200 million domestic gross, soon to pass Dances With Wolves to be the biggest indie grosser behind only The Passion of The Christ and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, yet Summit still hasn’t made or released anything else to get to as much as $25 million and the rush to get the next film out may be as much about collecting the Twilight revenues as about giving the fans what they want.
Overture didn’t break much, yet they have a threat to Summit’s big franchise, an English-language version of the pre-teen vampire thriller/love story/mr masterpiece Let The Right One In, due next January, which might also explain Summit’s rush to get Twi2 in theaters first.
There was a ton of talk about studios screwing up by focusing too closely and spending too much on the award season with certain films, yet so far, it seems that the vast majority of these movies are doing all the business they could have expected and more.
Big grosses are beautiful, yet a look at the box office charts from this last year remind clearly of the present danger of chasing the mega-numbers over taking bigger profits from more modest efforts. Only two films in the domestic Top Ten cost less to produce than $150 million. Only one of the Next 10 cost more than that to produce. True, the domestic gross for the first 10 doubled the second 10. But then again, because of the expense, 5 of the Top 10 were split revenue films and only 2 of the Next 10 were the same. This is a guide to the future.
Happy New Year.
Read the complete post at http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2009/01/a_tale_of_two_0.html