This weekend's dismal performance of Bryan Singer's much-anticipated Jack the Giant Slayer may have seemed familiar to those who recall the sad fate of Disney's John Carter almost exactly a year ago. But what exactly is the lesson that Hollywood should learn from this latest big budget flop?
Jack's box office performance in its opening weekend was worryingly low; it took in only $27.2 million, with experts already suggesting that the movie actually needs to make almost 20 times that figure worldwide in order to recoup the studios' investment in its production and marketing. Jack's performance is, in fact, even weaker than John Carter's much-derided $30.2 million opening weekend in 2012, leading to one obvious explanation for what went wrong:
March Isn't Summer Yet
Both Jack and John were well-made, relatively enjoyable adventure movies starring recognizable faces in familiar stories and worlds filled with more than a handful of special effects. In other words, exactly the kind of thing that tends to fill multiplexes every summer with far more success. Could the problem be that this kind of thing isn't what audiences want to see this early in the year? It's worth noting that Jack was initially targeted at a summer 2012 release date, and was moved multiple times before ending in its current March 1, 2013 release slot.
>'In cinema, familiarity doesn't breed contempt; it breeds comfort and return business.'
Jack and John aren't the only casualties of a March release. Go back to 2011 and you'll see the under-performing corpse of Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch, or head back a couple of years earlier to glimpse the grim specter of the same director's ambitious, flawed Watchmen adaptation. Studios have been trying to expand the summer blockbuster season for some time - understandably, considering that the period is the most lucrative for them - but audiences, it seems, aren't quite buying into the idea.
Familiar Isn't Familiar Enough
Could it be that Jack, John et al. lack the brand awareness of their summertime brethren? Certainly, only Sucker Punch falls into the category of being truly an unknown quantity, but even the fairytale of Jack and The Beanstalk lacks the pop-culture punch of seeing that Marvel Comics logo appear on screen during the trailer, or knowing that you're paying money for the latest installment of a franchise you already like...
The dominance of franchises and known quantities in mainstream cinema is hardly a new idea; eight of the top 10 movies of last year came from already successful pop culture franchises (nine, if you consider the Pixar brand a franchise in itself), and the year before where franchises made a clean sweep of the top 10. In cinema, familiarity doesn't breed contempt; it breeds comfort and return business. Maybe the problem with the studios' attempts to jump-start summer early is that they're not putting their best foot forward, and skewing the results by offering stories and characters that no one knows that they want to see yet.
Know Your Audience
And then there are demographics. Not all big-budget movies released in March have flopped; 2010's Alice in Wonderland, Tim Burton's eye-straining 3-D re-imagining of the Lewis Carroll story, was a massive hit. It was the second most successful movie of the year, in fact, beating Iron Man 2 as well as that year's installments of both the Twilight and Harry Potter series. It's tempting to point to that as a fluke, but Disney's similar Oz The Great and Powerful is apparently tracking toward an $80 million opening this weekend, according to reports.
Perhaps Jack's problem was that it pushed the fairytale in the direction of a traditional action-adventure format, instead of staying more true to its roots, and spring moviegoers prefer something more whimsical and magical (and kid-friendly?) over the heroics and derring-do of the summer blockbuster ideal. Remember, after all, that A Good Day to Die Hard also failed dramatically when it attempted to convince audiences that it was a good pick for a Valentine's Day date movie.
We're All Doomed
Of course, it's possible that Jack's failure to perform may simply be a symptom of a more general malaise for cinema audiences this year. The Hollywood Reporter points out that the box office for the first weeks of 2013 is down by 15 percent when compared with 2012 numbers, noting that only one movie has grossed $100 million in North America this year, compared with the three that had reached that milestone by this time last year. Perhaps audiences are just not in the mood to go see movies in this current political and economic climate. (Damn you, sequester!)
There are multiple possibilities behind Jack the Giant Slayer failing to become a box office giant, in the end. But many of them point to the same basic idea: Hollywood doesn't quite understand what audiences want to spend their springs watching just yet. But give it some time; they'll come up with a formula soon enough - or waste all manner of movie potential trying, at the very least.
