$15 million, nothing more. I anticipate that there will a lot of discussions today to try to explain the disappointing numbers. As Boxoffice Mojo points out today, “the opening was a bit higher than Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid’s $12.8 million in August 2004, but below Red Eye, another plane-based thriller that made $16.2 million on the same weekend last year.”
It is too early to draw any conclusions of course, as points Joseph Jaffe we need to understand how much the movie cost to make and market. I would suspect that the distributors did not pay the usual ticket to hammer the movie trailer on the biggest networks. Was the awareness only high among bloggers? Or is it just that nobody wanted to see what was advertised to be a very bad movie?
Says Kirk Skodis in Filmplug
My first take is that all things being equal, it comes down to the quality of the film. You can’t polish a turd, right? How much of any marketing could get people out to see this film? I laughed until my stomach hurt reading Chuck Norris Facts, I must’ve IM’d and emailed 100 friends about it to share the laughs - but you couldn’t pay me to see a Chuck Norris movie if one came out.
It is interesting to notice that this is a first example for me of such a discrepancy between the buzz generated by the movie and its first weekend boxoffice (source: Blogpulse).
For reference, Superman Returns opened at $52 million on its opening weekend and Pirates 2 at $132 million.
Update: Mack Collier tries to estimate the marketing and production costs for SOaP and comes up with an interesting conclusion: the numbers look pretty good in terms of profitability…
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