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Venom - Did the wheels just fall off the bus?
Posted by Labels: Box Office, Marvel, Prediction, Sony, The Amazing Spider-Man, The Mummy, Venom
As of this morning, Wednesday October 3rd, the score on rottentomatoes.com for Venom was 27%. The first thought that came to mind, why so high? Honestly that's what popped into my head.
I have heard from people inside the industry that Sony was anticipating the movie to make just under $60 Million Domestically on opening weekend with a total domestic take of $120 to $130 Million. Which until yesterday is below what the box office predictors were suggesting. The individual I talked with this morning however is worried that with such a negative score, coupled with confirmation of several rumors, the movie will have a hard time attracting non-core audience members to the theater, and that the core audience will only see the film once.
I am not sure if my brain was tuned out but alarm bells should have been going off way back in July when Studio estimates appeared with $60 and $130 million.
When you look at a movie box office two numbers are important, the Opening Weekend (which is where studios make the most of their money) and multiplier (a movies legs). A domestic movie opening at $65 Million and ends with a total domestic take of $176 it has a multiplier of 2.7. That is considered a good Multiplier, not great, but close. A movie that opens at $65 million and ends at $181 has a multiplier of 2.8 is almost great as 3.0 is consider great.
A domestic box office of $60 million and a total domestic take of $120 Million has a multiplier of 2 and would be considered abysmal or bad. The first two movies are Captain America: The First Avenger and Thor both of which opened with roughly a $65 million opening and multiplier of 2.7 to 2.8.
For Marvel Films, not just films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but all Marvel films on Punisher Warzone ($4 M / $8 M), Elektra ($12 / $24) and Fantastic Four (2015) ($25 / $56) have the kind of multiplier we are seeing predicted by Sony. Most Marvel films are in the 2.6 to 2.8 range.
What's more of an issue is that this film is being release in a very non-competitive time slot (early October) where it should have little competition for viewers over the next three weekends. I was asleep at the wheel.
The other challenge for Venom is it's score on rottentomatoes.com, metacrtic, and other aggregate score web-sites. On rottentomatos.com this morning it has a score of 27%, which means that only 27% of the reviewers scored the movie as a C+ (2.5 out 5 stars) or better. Metacritic score, currently at 35, is a measure of how well the film scored with critics. Scores of 81 or better are considered great, 61 to 80 are considered favorable, 41 to 60 mixed, and 20 to 40 unfavorable and below 20 just plan bad. The people I talked to suggested that Sony was expecting a rottentomates.com score in the neighborhood of 55 to 60 and metacritic score in the 50 to 60 range. Neither score is looking like it is possible today.
Where do studios get their estimates, test screenings. You show the film to 300 random viewers and gauge their results. In recent years Movie Studio test screening scores and Critical Reviews have become more aligned or in tune to one another. Occasionally a movie with high test scores will get poor critical responses, The Mummy, and even more rarely a movie that does poorly with the test audience, School of Rock, will get a solid or good critical reception. In general these scores now-a-days are fairly well aligned. Venom scored in the mixed to positive range with test audiences and is now getting lower scores from critics.
During the spring of 2017 executives Universal Studios were cautiously optimistic about The Mummy, a reboot starring Tom Cruise the hoped to launch their Dark Universe. The movie had done fairly well at test screenings they had an expectation of $50 to $60 million in the opening frame and multiplier of 2.7. The movie had "momentum" in early May 2017 before a the first box-office web-site lowered their estimate based upon the negative reception of the final trailer. The movies momentum and hype crashed and the movie project was only projected to take $39 Million in the final estimates, before taking a actual of of only $31 M.
This year the momentum for Venom has been building, even last week movie box-office predictors were seeing high social media numbers and excitement for the film before the breaks were applied right before the launch. So Venom is not following the exact same path as The Mummy; its path is more aligned with The Amazing Spider-Man, another Sony Marvel film, where the wheels fell off basically as the movie launched. It was projected to be in the $75 to $85 million range for its opening weekend and slid in at just $62 Million a 20% drop.
If Venom plays out like The Amazing Spider-Man in terms of box office it should see a 20% drop from the box office predictions of last week, or $52 million. And if continues to score in its current range the legs of 2.5 it should have a final domestic take of $135.
While those final numbers are in line with Studio Estimates they are clearly not as high as some prognosticators have suggested.
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