Box Office Wrap-up at Tagline
I enjoy reading Tagline for the sharp cinematic analysis, but I particularly dig it for its frequent schadenfreude. Today they have a look at recent box office returns:
For a flick that was marketed as consisting pretty much of our Jude parading his way through a variety of stylish duds and sexy ladies, ‘Alfie’ somehow managed to cough up an estimated budget of $60 million. Throw in a (conservative?) chunk of change for that aforementioned marketing - say, $30 million? - and you have one hefty bill for basically securing a couple of pic-heavy interview spreads in style magazines. And, the all-important box-office? A trifling $11 million in ten days, in this, a season when the (apparently) execrable - and similarly budgeted - ‘Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason’ can make $8 million in one week and on just 530 screens. Or, when ‘Seed of Chucky’ can also rustle up $8 million in its opening weekend.
That’s great. Alfie is such a shoddy-looking, transparent star vehicle. The marketing material seemed to yell “hey, 18 to 35-year-old women, yield to our will and pound, panting and sweating and lemming-like, at the cinema doors!” One of the reasons Alfie failed, I’d bet, is that not a single dollar was spent marketing the film to men. And, as you may know, genders often attend movies together. Besides, apparently the original is a decent-enough film.
November 18th, 2004 at 11:21 am
In the end it will probably make back most of its investment. It’s already made an additional $9,060,365 overseas for a total of over 20 million and still has the remained of its theatrical run, PayPerView, rentals, sales, and possible TV runs left to regain its funds.
Plus, I don’t think that the studio spent $30 million on advertising, which seems extreme.
P.S. Thanks for mentioning HSX.com back in February. I’ve been enjoying it since then and have accumulated 44 million.
November 18th, 2004 at 11:26 am
Thanks for that, Jeff. You’re right, they probably will make their money back. However, I’ve read that the marketing budget is typically half the production budget again, so I don’t think $30 million is too far off the mark. This article says:
“Now, production budgets regularly run upwards of $150 million and their marketing campaigns add another $50 million to $80 million to the tab.”
So, that suggests that the typical marketing budget might be 33% to 55% of the production budget.