Pan, I’m looking at you.
Advertisement
“Family films always have an audience, but that audience is extremely fickle and hard to please, just like the kids who go to these movies”, Dergarabedian said.
It’s now the first autumn release to surpass the $100 million domestic box office mark.
“Pan” opened to $15 million, which is below expectations and won’t even make a dent in its $150 million budget. It went on to gross only $48.7 million worldwide.
We don’t need to Monday morning quarterback this one to death, but I would suggest an origin story about a character before he had any special powers, where the biggest selling point was a villain we didn’t know much about other than that he dressed amusing, was fighting an uphill battle.
Among new markets, “The Martian” earned a massive $12.1 million in South Korea, the largest Fox opening of all time and an industry best for the month of October.
By that time, The Martian and Hotel Transylvania 2 may slip a bit on the box office charts, albeit perhaps not to the extent that Pan might keep falling.
“This is a movie that’s executed so well that you’re not seeing a biography of a man, so much as you’re seeing a work of art”, said Nicholas Carpou, Universal’s domestic distribution chief.
Don’t count on Warner Bros. returning to Neverland anytime soon. The result? A worldwide sum of $7.1 million. Trying to see clearly by the light cast from the fires of this wreckage, Pan would seem to provide a contrasting case study for The Martian. Between this and Jupiter Ascending, the studio now has two very expensive missteps in the same year.
It wasn’t all garishly Technicolored disasters this weekend. It’s limited release opening was akin to a new highly-anticipated Apple product launch. The figure makes for a venue average of $130,236, the best of the year (15) so far. With strong notices behind it and Michael Fassbender’s blistering performance making the film a heavyweight Oscar contender, Steve Jobs should sock away plenty of cash throughout the fall as it expands nationwide in the next couple of weeks. Yet the breakdown of who did see it was equally of interest. Ridley Scott’s sci-fi thriller won the box office for a second weekend in a row, adding another $37 million to its tally. It was enough to outpace another space epic, Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar, which only managed upwards of $28 million in its second weekend. The slow-and-steady success from the Anne Hathaway/Robert De Niro vehicle must help ease the “Pan” pain that Warner execs are feeling right now.
Advertisement
Hotel Transylvania 2 took second place in its third weekend with 20.3 million dollars, bumping its total to 116.8 million. However, when factoring in a global marketing spend of $125 million, that means the movie cost $275 million to produce and sell. Take heart, Sony, it could’ve been a lot worse: Pan worse.
