No matter how big a movie is, there always comes a drop off point because you can’t stay on top forever.
These days, a film can drop over 50% or more its second week at the box office, because it’s all about first weekend business, as well as foreign box office. Like the famous producer Robert Evans (Chinatown) used to say, a movie coming out in the world is like skydiving. If neither the movie or your parachute opens, you’re dead.
So by this point you’d think The Hobbit would have a steeper drop off because it’s got bigger competition with Les Miserables and Django Unchained, and both new-comers came out on Christmas day, giving them a big head start on making the bucks. Yet as the box office reports are showing us, The Hobbit has what’s called “legs” in the business and it’s #1 at the box office for three weeks in a row.
As Entertainment Weekly also tells us, because of the storms in the northeast, movie-going may be a little down as well, much like we saw with Hurricane Sandy, but again, The Hobbit’s still making big money. As EW tells us, The Hobbit has now made over $200 million domestic, over $600 million world-wide. This has definitely got to be music to the ears of Warner Brothers, which took a big risk with The Hobbit, some say in the neighborhood of $500 million in production and marketing costs, but it looks like the risks are really paying off.
This isn’t to say the competition isn’t doing well either. Les Mis should make about $70 million or more by the end of the weekend, and Django made $60 million in six days, but it’s amazing to see that The Hobbit is still hanging in there as strong as it is.
The reviews were mixed, with many complaining about the 48 frames a second technology, and many feel the film’s pacing is too slow, with the first hour especially an endurance test before things finally get going.
Nonetheless, as we often say here on TG, it ultimately doesn’t matter what the critics think. The audience makes the final verdict, and they audience is absolutely still out in force for the world of Middle Earth.
