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Spidey Knocks Out Harry Potter at Box Office
RasputinAXP writes "According to this Yahoo article, Spider-Man picked up an Amazing $114 million dollars at the box office, squishing Harry Potter's $90.3 million like a bug. More coverage is available at Box Office Prophets' new Weekend Wrapup, including analysis."
You hype a movie like this enough and you're bound to make astonishing results, money-wise. Most people that went and saw the movie weren't even interested in it as Spider-man fans, they mainly went because their friends declared it was "ohhh sooo coool!".
I'm sure no one saw these figures coming from a mile away...
This is fabulous. This will prove Sam Rami as a real director capable of handling the big flicks and making them profitable. Maybe now someone will fund Evil Dead 4... maybe...
Im not particularly suprised, altho the parallel definitely exists. While Harry potter was catering to a much more central audience (I.E the people who read the books), Spiderman is something that everyone can identify with. Im pretty sure we've all seen the comics, the cartoons, the video games. There is just a lot more Spidey propaganda. Now, what I want to see is in 2 weeks, how much Episode 2 crushes the market...
all my
this movie would have been perfect for Katz to pontificate about the ramifcations from 9/11 on the setting of the movie to how Peter Parker was really just like a Columbine geek, but with superpowers.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
There's a better link with all sorts of box-office statistics here
I can't believe TItanic made that much!
-Riskable
"Those who choose proprietary software will pay for their decision!"
I would say that 114 is only 26% more than 90.
Calling that "squash like a bug" is not only bad journalism, it also shows that the person writing this has no feel for numbers.
If this was processor speeds we are talking about, the difference would be barely perceptable....
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted and ignored otherwise.
Please explain how the results for this weekend have been computed. It is still in the afternoon on Sunday when I write this.
Spider sense... tingling.
Harry Potter... bitchslapped.
/^[A-Z0-9._%+-]+@[A-Z0-9.-]+\.[A-Z]{2,4}$/i
Saying that film A made more money than film B is in the end a meaningless metric for determining how much overall success a film has enjoyed. The reason I say this is that ticket prices increase over time. This means that Titanic's $601 million, while impressive, is in the end less impressive than E.T.'s $435 million.
Tickets cost roughly $5, if not less, in 1982.
This means that roughly 87 million tickets were sold to E.T.
Tickets cost roughly $8, if not more, in 1997. This means that Titanic sold only approximately 78 million tickets, 9 million less than E.T. did fifteen years prior.
(obviously these are very rough numbers, and don't take into account many other factors such as matinee prices, 2nd run theaters, etc. but they give you the idea)
Following a gross, without accounting for inflation in ticket prices, is ultimately meaningless. It would be much more meaningful to pay attention to how many actual tickets were sold, but 87 million is a much less impressive number than 601 million, so it'll never happen.
I can dream, though.
Even Jesus hates listening to Creed.
"Comic Books and a children's book"...
Are you one of those people who thinks that they have to "grow up" and take things seriously? Public Art, like movies, is at its best when it gets over itself and focuses and making a movie that's both FUN and GOOD. A perfect example of movies needing to "get over themselves" would the TPM, and any "brainy" movie that died at the box office.
Forget that Spider-Man is a comic book, and forget that you're supposed to put away comic books when you grow up. It's a story about a kid who gets something no one else has, and how he deals with it. It's every bit as "grown up" as a good novel, epic play, or any other bit of nonvisual art that I'd actually pick up outside of a classroom.
Oh, one more thing: RIAA and the MPAA so far haven't "suppressed" any of my rights, although I do have a dry technical complaint against them.
Now now, less of the hyperbole. I won't have financed the RIAA until I've done my fiduciary duty by buying the soundtrack as well. :p
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Perhaps after Spidey, Harry Potter, and LotR, Hollywood will finally get a fscking clue that a big budget requires a good PLOT and good ACTING to back it up, but that when you can manage all of those, everyone wins...
:)
That, and it sure can't hurt the odds of better comic book based movies being made in the future.
The Free desktop that Just Works
>Now they have 114 million more dollars to suppress your rights.
Not really-- remember, no movie ever has made a profit, so we're safe That's why the studios are so endangered-- they can't even make a (paper) profit! Poor Hollywood, so poor, so poor.
And I like your 3rd choice of art movies
A.
Message to nerds/geeks: You just have to wait for superpowers to fall on you. There is no way else you can interest a girl. This movie praises you, do not change a thing. Just wait.
Almost. But Peter got Mary Jane intersted by standing up to Flash & just being a nice guy all of those years--not by being spider-man.
;) So, the message is "talk to the girl." Heck, he even has his rich best friend steal the girl because he never says anything--what more of a "make your move" message do you want than that?
Okay, someone missed the point.
Spiderman's strength comes not just from his mad wack superpowers, but from his strength of character. "With great power comes great responsibility." That he chooses to use his powers for good and not evil is a display of his character.
The superpowers are just a vehicle for telling the story about the man. Any great fantasy or sci-fi is really about people.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
What, he didn't prove that he was a serious director with A Simple Plan? It was a critically acclaimed, gripping drama about the banality of evil, the polar opposite of Army of Darkness, yet just as high-quality.
And now he's showing that his range extends even further. Ah, our man Sam---is there anything he can't do?
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Jason X represents all that is good in the art? I agree that horror has it's place in the art, but Jason X is hardly Night of the Living Dead. It's just as much 'studio trash' as Spiderman.
Not at all. If you think that, you're missing the point.
As for falling for the hype, did you even see the movie?
Of course not. I know from the fact it is based on a children's comic book that it is unwatchable.
You can't change an organizations policy by boycotting them,
You have no idea how wrong you are. Think of Martin Luther King and the Birmingham bus boycott. That paved the way for Civl Rights and Affirmative Action as we know it today.
As for 'triumphant, original films', I saw Amelie at my local independent theatre the other day, before you question my 'cred'.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Sorry, but Amelie is the French equivalent of 'Spiderman'.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Who can forget the multi-millionaire Hollywood stars begging for attention just days after the terrorist attacks, all too eager to remind the rest of the world that they're better and more important than the lowly common folk and the situation at hand.
Or how every movie in production at the time was trying to figure out "how to best address the attacks" (Translation: how to best market it to the public).
You had the P.C. goons at the studios rushing to erase the Trade Center from their movies, past and present. ("Oh no! The sight of the buildings actually standing might offend or upset someone!")
You also had script monkeys trying to shoehorn patriotism into situations where it was not necessarily appropriate. ("Hey, I know! Let's put a bigass flag behind him!")
What's the message they're trying to get across? Spiderman standing next to the U.S. flag? Do they mean to say that we as Americans should applaud our fake heroes as "Real American Heroes" instead of our real ones?
Hollywood is trying to show that it's still important in this day and age. It clearly is not. Let fantasy be fantasy, and reality be reality. For God's sake, life is short. Let's get on with it.
Thank you.
Umm... I just saw the film last night. Spiderman (Peter Parker) DOESN'T get the girl. Its a TRAGIC ending. In fact, thats what makes this film (and
the Marvel comic series) so interesting - the characters are in many ways realistic (often they're outright dysfunctional).
Veering OT here, but has anyone seen For the Love of the Game? I've been wanting to rent that because it's Raimi (and based on a book by Michael Shaara--or is it Jeff?), but the fact that it's a Kevin Costner baseball movie's turned me off so far. Anyone know what it's like?
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Spidey has never been about the keen super powers. The series has always been about the problems that arise when an otherwise normal guy gets bitten by the bug, as it were, to go out and try to make a difference in whatever way he can.
He's constantly having to sew up his costume when he gets it torn up... he's misplacing his civilian clothes.. having to deal with hiding his costume because he's not a quick change artist.
Peter Parker is just some average Joe from New York who wants to actually _do_ something... the fact that he can stick to things and throw a Volkswagon Bug are just chrome.
How western culture has made people proud of giving their money.
I mean you can like a movie and pay for it, and there is nothing wrong with that, but to say this movie rules because we payed so many millions of dollars into it is just sad.
And then of course you have to race so many people will try very hard to make attack of the clones gross higher than spiderman and lor.
If the studios brainwashed the american public they couldnt have done a better job.
Two decades of Hollywood horseshit is being buried under righteous indignation.
Go Stan.
--Blair
"'Nuff sed."
yeah, we already know from phantom menace that a shitty starwars movie will bring in the money all the same.
So its like they cant lose.
For that matter, I've never seen them adjusted for population growth or the general economic climate. Star Wars came out when there were 200 million people in the U.S.; now there's something like 270 million plus. That's gotta make a difference, as does a movie's showing during boom times versus a recession.
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Everybody has been waiting twenty years for this movie. And when word got out that the filmmakers got it right, everybody had to see it.
In case its not totally obvious, those numbers are estimates... The actual numbers won't come until Monday at the earliest.
" it really seemed like too much of a cross between Alien, Terminater, and 9 other Friday the 13th movies."
Whoah! Sounds awesome!
graspee
you are *almost* (but not quite) kind of funny, in a trollish sort of way
Well...not all the Spiderman fans are perfectly happy.
Saying, "I wrote a paper in Nano-technology" does not really do much to show Parker to be a technological genius, not nearly as much as inventing web shooters (they were organic in the movie as we all know), and Pete didn't love MJ since they where little...she wasn't even his first girlfriend.
Still, JJJ was perfect, and there were some great scenes and quotes in there like "your friendly neighborhood spiderman" and "with great power comes great responsibility," and there was some real attention to detail to make some of the shots reminescent of the comics, such as when Spidey hung upside down, and where he would go to think (on top of a gargoyle on a particular building).
Its better than anything else like it, but not at all the same spirit. In the movie (and trailer) aunt May said, "You do too much. You're not Superman, you know." If all he's got going for him is his super powers, then isn't that exactly what he is, just another superman?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
According to the records, The Phantom Menace made $64,820,970 during its openning weekend, and that was with all the hype and excitement that was going on at the time, with fans lining up for months ahead of time.
Unless Attack of the Clones can not only get beyond the general bad feeling that TPM left us with, and double its previous film's openning weekend intake, it won't manage it.
ATOC will make a boatload of money, but it's highly unlikely that it will undergo the opening explosion that Spidey is enjoying.
Let's see... $114 million...
:)
Cost to see it on opening day: $7.50.
Cost to see it the next day at a matinee: $5.00.
Cost to see it today at a matinee: $5.00.
Cost to see it tomorrow at a matinee: $5.00.
Cost to see it again tomorrow evening with my girlfriend: $7.50.
Seeing kick-ass Spider-Man movie five times in four days: PRICELESS.
libertarianswag.com
I was more impressed with Tobey Maguire's performance than Willem Dafoe. I know Dafoe was directed that way but I was detecting a bit of desire for the same overwhelming scenes that Jack Nicholson delivered(and stole the movie with) in Batman. Maybe if Dafoe would have had the same kind of sreen time Nicholson had in Batman he would have came closer to it, but I don't really put them(Dafoe, Nicholson) in the same tallent boat. Anyhow, Maguire is a very tallented actor and I think he did a good job and gave a great personality to spider-man. I was a little disappointed in how Maguire's range wasn't stressed by this movie though, but with how dry some of the dialogue he had to work with was, I think he did a great job. Maybe the sequel will let him peg out.
Actually to the guy that corrected this post, it's Willem Dafoe, not Willem Defoe. But who really gives a rats ass about actors' names. That's a bit of a shallow thing to get worked up over.
This is my sig. The post is over.
Are you aware that every story ever told is "formulaic"?
Are you aware that every movie Hollywood ever made is a "money grab"?
Do you always confuse "design" with "implementation"?
Do you like to hang around the water cooler saying things like "Don't waste your time with Linux--it's just another POSIX-compliant Open Source OS."?
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
A well-crafted lie appears unquestionable - Dama Mahaleo
I'm happy that people are making money off the Marvel properties, but it's a crying shame that stockholders like profits more that quality.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Looking over the statistics at boxofficemojo.com, i've made an interesting observation.
To begin, the unadjusted statistics are meaningless. It's like looking at the price of a 1910 hotdog and concluding that the cost of lips and a$$holes has increased.
Looking over the adjusted all-time records boxofficemojo.com, things look a bit more sensible. I have no doubt that these movies represent the most popular movies of all time (about half are even on the AFI top-100).
However, if we compare this to the adjusted all-time opening weekened statistics boxofficemojo.com , we see that Not One of the top 100 was more recent then 1989.
What this indicates to me, is that over the course of the last two decades, hollywood has shifted it's advertising dollar from a constant support of a released movie, to an all-out blitz opening weekends. Why?
The VCR perhaps?
-Chris
--an unbreakable toy is useful for breaking other toys--
Wah! Waaaah! WAAAAHHH!
... or did the visual FX in this movie suck donkey dong? And the trailers for AOTC look really ropey as well.
This isn't uninformed griping, I used to work with CGI artists in a games company. A typical conversation with a client would go something like this:
OK, I'm over generalising. They sometimes got it just right, but a lot of the time they vastly over commited themselves and ended up with a final product that nobody really liked, least of all themselves.
The problem as I see it is that the answer is always "yes". Models and stop motion put a well understood limit on what was achievable, and scenes were set and shot around those limits. Even when pushing the envelope like in SW:ANH, they didn't over stretch themselves or try anything that they knew they couldn't achieve.
Contrast with SW:TPW, SW:AOTC and Spider-Man. The answer was always "yes". Go ahead, give us anything to do, and we'll do it. Let your imagination go wild.
And what did we get? Ropey looking integration of CGI into live action scenes, ropey looking integration of live action into CGI scenes, 100% CGI scenes that jar badly with the live action.
You can counter with Ray Harryhausen, but then I'll just have to roll out Alien, Aliens and Blade Runner. Do less, but do it well. Learn to say "no", guys.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
There's no doubt that the movie is having a successful weekend, but how successful was it?
... according to studio estimates issued on Sunday.
Is the John Harman a prophet? or is he just a part of the hype machine for Sony? He already seems to have wrapped up the weekend in past tense before it's even over.
Spider-Man opened to $114 million on 3,615 screens
At least the Yahoo article quoted sources:
Let's take it for what it's worth - propaganda. The goal is to get the people out there thinking, "Gosh, this movie is so popular. Maybe I should go out tonight and see it."
The weekend is not over. Sony could hypothetically be ready to announce next weekend's box office results on Thursday this week. We'll all forget about Spider Man the following weekend when it's 15 minutes of hype^H^H^H^H fame are over when next Star Wars prequel is released.
What movie company was beind movies like "The Animal" that garnered rave reviews from fictional critics?
Seriously. Should we care, other than the fact that it gives the MPAA that much more money in their warchest to buy away our rights?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
No-one else has said it yet.. but.. whoa, Kirsten Dunst.. ain't she looking FINE? Great tits.
Come on, you know that's what you're all thinking. Her tits and motherly looks could sell a film any day.
mogorific carpentry experiments
I've heard of Marvel vs. Capcom, but Marvel vs. Hogwartz? Now that's something I'd pay to see!
The people on the Queensborough Bridge and throwing stuff at the Gobiln really did embody the spirit of this city, as demonstrated not only on and after 9/11 but every day. If you don't live here, then you may believe the stereotypes of New Yorkers as pushy and rude. The fact is, there is a hell of a lot of solidarity, compassion and pride in this city, and I appreciated Raimi's and Koepp's homage to us.
I also saw nothing wrong with Spidey's leap past an American flag at the end. It was not lingered on, and in fact many tall buildings in NYC do have flags on top of them, so it was not implausible. I am one of many who feel that the symbols of this country, like the flag, represent not so much its government as its people. Spider-Man and Peter Parker are fictional, but the values they represent ("with great power comes great responsibility") are important to many Americans. I didn't mind the flag at all, and I bet most viewers would agree.
</my $0.02>
Somebody set up us the dead horse!
You have no chance to be humourous make your time!
Loneliness is a power that we possess to give or take away forever
Don't get me wrong, there were flaws, but overall it was a good movie and really entertaining. For me, it is better than X-men and the first Batman. I like character development, so having peter parker go through the awkward phase of learning how to use his powers was great fun. Plus having him wrestle was just too funny.
It was awesome, as long as you had no plans to take it seriously. The only problem I had was that I saw it in an empty theater. A lot of the really funny lines ended up falling flat because there wasn't enough of an audience to generate a satisfying laugh response.
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
The deal for Spiderman, and for Daredevil and Hulk in the next year or so, is more normal, and they will get royalties.
Nicholson's joker was just that: Nicholson's joker. He lacked all the tragic pathos of the best Joker stories from DC comics, and was basically the same silly imp that Nicholson played in "The Witches of Eastwick", "One Flew Over the Cookoo's Nest", and "The Shining".
Dafoe, on the other hand, played the dual sides of the Green Goblin perfectly. His whole face changed instantly whenever the goblin took over his psyche, and back again just as quickly. No lighting tricks, no make-up, just good acting.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
But that's the answer to why Hollywood makes so many escapist films--because they sell enough to place a movie on the all-time best-seller list.
(On another note, I think one of the strengths of "The Exorcist" is how well it works as a drama even when you edit out all the head-spinning icky-goo parts. And the acting! Lee J. Cobb acting against type, and Jason Miller--a Pulitzer-prize winning playwright and Tony-winning director himself--round out an unusually solid cast.)
"Hardly used" will not fetch you a better price for your brain.
Based upon that, Gone with the Wind is much more popular than otherwise thought because nobody had a lot more than $.25 back then. There are many other factors to consider, though. Like for instance, during economic downturn, entertainment industries thrive (it serves as a form of escapism). Also, the theme of "Gone with the Wind" which is "I will personally rebuild the life that was taken from me" spoke to the entire nation of the time. Its been a while since the US was as unified in misery or anything else (although 9/11 certainly came close).
Still, it goes to show that "Gone with the Wind" was almost needed at the time. People almost needed to see it. So its going to be the most popular for a long time, hopefully. If this nation is that unified again, we'll either be really pissed or really sad, and I'd rather not see either condition.
On a similar note, the first cliffhanger, the Pickwick Papers (by Charles Dickens) still holds the record as being bought and read by more of the literate world than any (non-Bible) in the history of the world. Wierd, huh?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
As for opening days, first weeks, overalls, etc. it would really be interesting to see how this stacks up against opening of Gone With the Wind, ET or Return of the Jedi with dollars adjusted for inflation. What you never hear is an estimate of how many bodies they got into theater seats, also, track it next weekend, as the word-of-mouth gets around and we see whether it has lasting power.
All-Time Box Offices[Adjusted for Inflation] (Gone With the Wind is #1, Titanic is *only* #7)
Some other lists (@ boxofficemojo.com)
Gone with the Wind, 198M in 1939 dollars, 1.1B in 2002 dollars, a ratio of 5.7.
Ten Commandments, 65M (one third GWTW) in 1956 dollars, 760M in 2002 dollars, a ratio of 11.7.
Now this makes no sense, it implies there was serious deflation from 1939 to 1956.
However!
What if they don't count box office receipts from just the release year, but actually account for inflation in each year of ticket sales? This just might be accurate. Has the Ten Commandments ever been re-released? I know GWTW has been re-released at least once.
Very puzzling. Wish they'd explain their methodology a bit.
Infuriate left and right
Are you guys saying you wanted REALISM from a movie based on a COMIC BOOK? (smacks forehead)
If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much. --Nikola Tesla
I don't need other people to laugh for me. This is why I dislike canned laughter on comedy programmes on TV.
graspee
"Really, I never could give a rat's ass for these kinds of announcements, and it means little to me whether Sam Raimi is a capable director or not. I take the numbers with a salt lick, as from my impression it's just a device to try to drum up attendance. Is it ever verified? Or would it just be some great trick pulled by the MPAA on a repeatedly duped public, who will then be wondering why such a successful movie doesn't get squat for academy awards."
Well, I'd say it gauges pretty well for the people WITH the money who are investing in movies.
Raimi's done a lot of movies, but very few big budget ones. Army of Darkness was probably his biggest prior to Spidey, and that didn't return much at the box office.
Oh well. I was happy to see Bruce and Ted in this movie... But yeah, twould be insatiably cool to see another Evil Dead... S-Mart Avenger strikes again. =)
Karma: Non-Heinous
Assuming that a sufficient quantity of the material could be synthesized with the required tensile strength to hold a human, it might not have that much mass.
But granted, it does strain credulity.
Something you might want to think about is the amount of time that Spider=Man has had time to build up an audience vs Harry Potter.
(Aside from the fact that if you had 90 cents and I had $1.14 I would hardly think my bank account squashed yours like a bug...)
Liberty uber alles.
http://www.the-movie-times.com/thrsdir/TopTen.mv
Look at what is said for the price charged per theater aka theater average(I believe for spiderman it was 31k per showing). That doesn't mean that they sold 31k of tickets per theatre, but just that the theater paid the studio 31k for showing the movie. The price rapidly drops after opening weekend. I seriousy doubt that each theater seats 4 thousand people who pay 8 dollars a piece to see the movie.
Therefore it is possible for more people to see a movie which only costs $5000 a showing as oppossed to 31k in this case.
Its really quite misleading.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.