Summer Box Office Closing Report

The summer is now officially over and our minds are already beginning to turn to… the Christmas movie season.  But first, let’s take stock and see where we are with comic book-based movies.  We have just one left for release this year, the feature version of Steve Niles’ 30 Days of Night, but that’s waiting for the appropriate Halloween period.

Much has been made of the $4 billion summer box office and how it set a new record, until you adjust for inflation and then it doesn’t beat 2002.  Studios say that’s okay, because the hits will also prove strong sellers this holiday season in DVD (regular, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, collect them all!).  With average ticket prices creeping up to $6.85 (it’s $10.25 in Connecticut, where on earth is it only $6.85?), the receipts have also risen.

Here’s an updated look at the genre films released this year with their total box office to date followed by their budgets. Again, following that logic, 300 remains the clear winner by traditional Hollywood logic.  When all the home video sales get counted next spring, we’ll see if that remains the case.

Ghost Rider, $115,802,596 / $110,000,000

300, $210,250,922 / $65,000,000

TMNT, $42,273,609 / $34,000,000

Spider-Man 3, $336,530,303 / $258,000,000

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, $131,451,007 / $130,000,000

Stardust, August 10, $31,912,000 to date / $70,000,000

Stardust opened very weakly, but no one faulted the film and everyone pointed the finger of blame on Paramount’s inept marketing campaign.  Word of mouth has helped it along but it won’t make money until the home video release which will turn it into a perennial like its model, The Princess Bride.

As covered here previously, studios receive a percentage of ticket sales on a sliding scale, reaping the lion’s share of the ticket revenue in the opening weeks of release.  Additionally, the rule of thumb is that a feature needs to earn three times its budget to even come close to covering production and marketing costs.  Studios have expanded that math to now include foreign box office and ancillary sales (hotels, airplanes, downloads, pay-per-views, etc.) upfront so films that may tank in America may still be hits on the ledger sheets.  That explains why we will endure a second Punisher film.

And here’s our schedule scoreboard for the future:

2007

30 Days of Night, opens October 19

2008

Wanted, March 28

Iron Man, May 2

Incredible Hulk, June 13

The Dark Knight, July 18

Hellboy 2: The Golden Army, August 1

2009

The Spirit, January 16

Watchmen, March 6

Superman Returns 2, June (may be delayed until 2010)

The Green Hornet, Summer