Last week I predicted that Christopher Nolan's Inception would be a good film but a flop. In the interest of testing my predictive powers, it's worth noting the film had a decent first-weekend box office of $60 million. However, we'll have to wait until the next week to see if it has holding power or merely played to the general SF fan base and the director's own fans.
By way of comparison, the SF film Serenity opened with ticket sales of $10 million its first week against a budget of nearly $40 million. Unfortunately, Serenity's box office dropped off sharply in following weeks and it only ended up making just over half of its budget back (which doesn't include the cost of ads and marketing). This suggests the film--while a great space opera film--only played to the genre's fan base.
At $60 million, Inception played to more than merely the genre base--obviously the opening also attracted all the Nolan fans out there. However, like Serenity it still earned roughly a quarter of its $200 million budget (again, not counting its massive ad and marketing campaign, and yes, I realize $60 million is slightly more than a quarter of $200 million, but I'm using Hollywood math here to make a point :-). Anyway, in order to determine if the film is successful or not the next week will be critical. Most Hollywood films these days experience a 50% or greater box office drop in their second week. If Inception can avoid this, then I will be wrong and the film will be a moderate to big success. If word of mouth doesn't bring in the audiences and it experiences a large drop off like Serenity did, then it will be on its way to flopping.
I'll write more on this in a week once the trend is clear.
FWIW, this was the second biggest opening of an original science fiction movie, behind only Avatar.
Posted by: rochrist | July 20, 2010 at 01:07 PM
Only if you don't adjust for inflation or higher ticket prices. Back in 1996, Independence Day earned $50.2 million during its opening weekend, while Jurassic Park took in $47 million its first weekend. Since ticket prices have doubled since then, this isn't that big an opening.
Posted by: Gordon Snelling | July 20, 2010 at 01:34 PM
Jurassic Park was an adaptation. I'm not sure about ID, but according to Boxoffice Mojo, this was the biggest sci-fi opening that wasn't a remake, sequel or adaptation, ie, original material.
Posted by: rochrist | July 24, 2010 at 08:16 PM
@gordon Inception's opening was the sixth best opening of the year - with every single movie ahead of it being a sequel to a massively popular franchise. Saying it opened averagely because Jurassic Park and Independence Day would have grossed more with ticket price inflation is stretching at best especially when gauging the movie's profitability - I doubt anyone at WB is worrying themselves about how much the movie might have made two decades ago (it's worth noting that WB officially has the budget for Inception at $160 million, although admittedly $200 million does seem like a more realistic figure).
It's impossible to gauge how those movies would have done now, or how Inception would have done back then as so many other factors, such as the prevalence of DVDs have changed things. Would anyone seriously make an argument that if Gone With The Wind was released today, it would make the $1.6 billion domestic that it's adjusted to with ticket price inflation?
With second weekend estimates now in (and it having the second best drop among all wide released films this year) it's essentially guaranteed to be one of the top grossing movies of 2010 (of which it's already sitting at #10). Considering the movie anywhere near a flop at this point is denial - and should have been after its first weekend. or its first Monday. or when it hit $100 million on Thursday. Or when it similarly opened to #1 in every other country its been released in internationally (international numbers put its total gross well over its production budget as it is). Its UK gross alone after 2 weeks is almost double the total combined international gross of Serenity, which is honestly a pretty inappropriate movie to use as an indicator for how Inception will perform.
Posted by: Sk | July 25, 2010 at 03:55 PM
You are correct--Inception is a big hit. I was wrong with my prediction. However, my prediction was made before the film was released. To call the prediction "denial" is incorrect because at this point I agree the movie is a hit.
I'm actually glad to be wrong in this instance. It's always good when a smart, intelligent genre film succeeds. I didn't think people would respond to the movie as they have and it's great that people have.
That said, I just saw a report where in addition to the $200 million budget, the film also had over $100 million in advertising. So even though it now is a hit, it still hasn't made a profit. But I'm sure it will at some point in the coming weeks.
Posted by: Jason Sanford | July 25, 2010 at 04:06 PM