Are Franchises A Box Office Bubble?
August 29th, 2007 in Box Office, Critics, Development Hell, Idle Speculation, Movie News
Batman and Robin did more than stink at the box office. It blow the super-bubble. Every in-production superhero movie came to a crashing halt, as the rise of the supes sustained by the first Batman flick by Tim Burton suddenly and completely lost its footing.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been second-guessing myself as to just when that will happen for the current crop of super-flicks. And all my guestimations have passed by the wayside. I first thought Catwoman - a movie which far surpassed Batman and Robin in terms of  sheer gawdiness and took a far worse box office crunch (making only 40 million to its 100 million dollar production budget domestically). Surprisingly, they kept coming - I believe because of Troy, which skyrocketed the average budget and made 100 million dollars look like chump change.
In the wake of the box office record and predictions more sequels and three-quels are on the way, I have to question - if comic book flicks aren’t the fad, are franchises?
Now, don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love comic book flicks. My reasons for second-guessing this trend’s end-date were entirely selfish - I wanted to know what comic book movies I’d see, and what ones might freeze after the hypothetical fall which never came.
Though not mutally exclusive, franchise flicks and comic book ones are starting to diverge. Comic book movies not only air in the summer, but also the spring and late winter. By comparison, heavy hitters like Pirates and Jason Bourne only make their debut in the summer. Even Harry himself has jumped ship from the first snow of winter to the boys of summer - and the time Harry Potter premiered in December seems already a distant memory.
What unfortunately also seems like a distant memory in the wake of the box office record breaker is the report earlier in the summer that audiences were getting tired to sequels and three-quels. After the Spider-Man 3 and after Shrek 3, audiences began to get a wiff of franchise fatigue and poor Fantastic Four 2 (a superior sequel) ended up looking like leftovers.
This isn’t the first time this has happened, but now box office analysts seem to be seeing everything in rose-colored glasses, or perhaps, green ones.
Audiences aren’t attended sequels and three-quels because they are comfortable. Were they “comfortable”, they’d just stay at home and wait for the rentals. In cases even as madcap as Spider-Man 3 or jarring as Hostel 2, people make the trip to the theatre because they want to see what happens. Comfortability with the characters is almost an anti-thesis.
The box office record might be cause for cheer, but a word of caution to the analysts and execs - don’t expect the same success with sequels and three-quels unless the conditions above are met. Otherwise your returns might be a bit disappointing.
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