Box Office 2014: A Year in Review

The mainstream American film landscape is an ever-changing one. The moviegoing public, that fickle white whale that studios have chased, cajoled, and bamboozled for decades on end, has been provided with an almost overwhelming number of pictures from which to choose. This year, about 150 movies got wide releases (playing in 1,000 theaters or more), while hundreds of others fought for breathing room on the fringes in independent theaters and on other platforms, like Video-On-Demand and streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. About 1.2 billion tickets were sold this year, but of course, not everyone can be a winner. With six major studios (Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Disney, Universal, Sony, and Paramount), and dozens of major films playing on thousands of screens at a time, there will always be some blood on the floor at the end of the day. Read on for an analysis of the winners and losers of the American movie scene this year




5 Hits to Take Note Of

Hollywood finances are about as incomprehensible as anything; it's not always just the budget-to-gross ratio that determines a film's success. For instance, "The Amazing Spider-Man 2", which more than made back its $200M+ budget with a $700M gross is by and large a failure because it was expected to make more than a billion dollars. It was so "bad" that Sony has revisited its entire plan for the Spider-Man universe, even going so far as to begin talks with Marvel Studios to plan a crossover with the Avengers et al. The following pictures found success that will be important in the increasingly unpredictable film market.

1. "The Lego Movie" - Everything is indeed awesome for the upteenth film based on a children's Warner Bros.'s biggest hit of the year (not saying much, they also released "Transcendence" and "Winter's Tale" - see Five Biggest Losers). The success of the movie has prompted Warners to put into development not only a sequel but at least two spin-offs. Meanwhile, Paramount, not to be outdone, has scheduled a Monster Trucks film for May 2015. A Monster Trucks Film. Given the current level of originality displayed by the studios right now, expect "Cheerios: The Movie" in the near future. The problem with this already idiotic plan is that people actually liked "The Lego Movie": it has an 83 on critic aggregate website Metacritic, which is better than current Oscar frontrunners "The Theory of Everything" and "The Imitation Game". It is highly unlikely that any of the spin-offs, rip-offs, or sequels will reproduce the flash-in-the-pan success of the original, making the mini-trend this picture has created inevitably short-lived. Regardless, it is a significant success. Hollywood has taken note. Made for $60M, "Lego" grossed $468M worldwide, in the process becoming one of the most profitable films of the year.

2. "Transformers: Age of Extinction" - Speaking of movies based on children's toys, guess which joint made more than a billion dollars worldwide this year? Yep, it's the fourth movie in the series about talking robots who turn into cars, which is inexplicably not called "Trans4mers" (was that excessive, Mr. Bay?). However, what's important here is not the Who, but the Where. Of the billion or so dollars that were raked in, less than a third came from the United States. In fact, the single biggest territory was China. This makes sense, since director Michael Bay and Paramount transposed the movie's third act to China in order to pander to that quickly expanding market. This move was met with hostility from the American "Transformers" fanbase, which proves that you can make three terrible movies and everything is peachy, but make one terrible movie in China and you're fucked. Correspondingly, "Age of Extinction"'s domestic take was the smallest in the series, but amazingly, it didn't matter. It's not new for studios to openly pander to foreign audiences (witness Sony awkwardly shoehorn Taiwanese pop star Jay Chou into "The Green Hornet"), but this is the first time the American audience has not been the number one priority. It will be interesting to keep an eye on future big-budget tentpoles given this rather startling precedent.

3. "Gone Girl" - Finally, a break from the  toys. This October, something rare happened: an adult blockbuster opened to critical acclaim and great box office ($356M and counting worldwide against a $61M budget). The term "event movie" is generally reserved for $200M monstrosities aimed at boys aged 12-25, but "Gone Girl" proved that R-rated pictures can be culturally significant. The extremely popular source novel didn't hurt of course, but it's a breath of fresh air nonetheless.

4. "Ride Along" - There always seems to be a certain level of surprise when a film not based on a pre-existing property (book, comic book, etc.) succeeds, which indicates a certain pessimism that is not particularly conducive to any kind of progress. The success of "Ride Along" ($154M against a $25M budget) is not a win for the little guy, or a rallying cry for mid-budgeted movies. In fact, it's a pretty terrible film, full of gags that seemed to have been plucked from the first drafts of a half-dozen different movies. However, it did well because it had a bankable star (Kevin Hart, omnipresent), an easily communicable premise (nerd has to win over girlfriend's tough cop father), and a confident, effective marketing campaign. In an age where studios gravitate towards films designed to sell dolls (sorry, action figures), it's easy to forget that there are less expensive, less risky ways to fill theaters. If nothing else, "Ride Along" signals the arrival of Kevin Hart, who also starred in "About Last Night" and "Think Like a Man Too" this year and has three major films in the pipeline for 2015, including "Get Hard" with Will Ferrell and "Ride Along 2".

5. "God's Not Dead" - More like "Subtlety's Not Dead", amiright? Sarcasm aside, this is a milestone. The evangelical religious right, led by Billy Graham and his ilk, is a massively controversial movement, but more importantly, they go to movies a lot. This year, we had "Son of God", "Heaven Is for Real", and to a lesser extent, "Noah" and "Exodus: Gods and Kings" all become hits of varying degrees due to the support (again, to differing extents) of these right wing evangelists. "God's Not Dead" is, depending on your point of view, either the apex or the nadir of this mini-trend. Made for pennies and distributed by the relatively tiny Freestyle Releasing, the film grossed almost $61M in the US. Without the backing of a studio and the marketing muscle that comes with it, this is a huge accomplishment. Expect even more small, faith-based films to saturate the marketplace.

Plus One: "Chef" - Not exactly a blockbuster compared to the rest of this list, but still worth mentioning. Directed by and starring Jon Favreau, last seen directing the stoically moronic "Cowboys & Aliens", "Chef" follows a schizophrenic female private detective as she searches for a missing prostitute in the sun-drenched streets of Bogota, Colombia. Just kidding, of course it's about a chef. Anyway, it's a minor, milquetoast crowdpleaser designed to inoffensively kill a Sunday afternoon that the studios used to make on a weekly basis. Except that "Chef" is an independently produced film, distributed by the smaller Open Road Films, and it still grossed more than $31M. Audiences will always want these kinds of smaller, uplifting films, no matter how many $200M superhero movies come out.

The Five Biggest Losers

1. "Transcendence" (Warner Bros.) - There was once a time when it meant something to have Johnny Depp in your movie. Maybe audiences are growing tired of his offbeat schtick, or maybe his choices haven't been up to par. Whatever the reason, his last few movies - "The Rum Diary", "Dark Shadows", and "The Lone Ranger" - haven't all just failed, they've hemorrhaged money, and "Transcendence" was just the cherry on top. On paper, it sounded good: Christopher Nolan's longtime director of photography Wally Pfister felt confident enough in this sci-fi pic to turn down work on "Interstellar". Unfortunately, it quickly became known as the Movie In Which Johnny Depp Becomes the Internet, and, in no uncertain terms, took a bath. It grossed $103M worldwide on a production budget of $100M (which doesn't include marketing costs), incurring a $30 million loss for production company Alcon Entertainment.


2. "Winter's Tale" (Warner Bros.) - Yep, the folks at Warners have struck again. Unlike "Transcendence", it's hard to see how this seemed in any way like a financially viable prospect. Based on an ambitious fantasy novel that spans generations, directed by first-time helmer Akiva Goldsman, and starring Colin Farrell and Jessica Brown Findlay (from TV's "Downton Abbey"), "Winter's Tale" is a movie destined to flop from the get-go. Throw in an estimated $150M budget, and the makings of a catastrophe appear. In the end, the film couldn't even make back a third of its production budget. Warners has had a very tough year that culminated in almost a thousand company-wide layoffs, and it's hard to believe the folly of "Winter's Tale" didn't have a lot to do with it.

3. "Pompeii" (Sony) - Another big-budget romance starring largely unproven actors (in this case Kit Harington (Jon Snow from "Game of Thrones" and Emily Browning) and coincidentally released a week after "Winter's Tale", "Pompeii" is another flop box office prognosticators saw coming a mile away. It ended up with a $117M worldwide gross against a $100M budget backed almost entirely by German production company Constantin Films, leaving them on the hook for most of the cost.

4. "Men, Women & Children" (Paramount) - Something happened to Jason Reitman. His first three pictures ("Thank You for Smoking", "Juno", and "Up in the Air") were not only critical favorites but also bonafide box office hits. His fourth, the acerbic Charlize Theron vehicle "Young Adult", flopped pretty loudly, but got generally good reviews. However, this January, his soapy romance "Labor Day" was seen by few and liked by none; it was a contender for this list. It's his latest, though, that is the most resounding failure. The Adam Sandler-Jennifer Garner melodrama was made for $16M, and grossed $706,000 in 600 theaters. To compare, "American Sniper" recently opened on four screens and grossed about as much. "Men, Women & Children" is perhaps the only "total loss" on this list.

5. "Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return" (Clarius Entertainment) - Animation seems to be experiencing a bit of a boom now. In the last few years, audiences have been treated to critically acclaimed blockbusters like "Big Hero 6", "Frozen", "Despicable Me", "Brave", and "The Lego Movie". Unfortunately, no one informed the folks at Clarius, who put this $70M film out in the summer to disastrous results. It grossed a bit over $18M worldwide, probably due to the fact that the animation looks, to put it scientifically, fucking terrible.



All figures courtesy of Box Office Mojo

Also, whoever is still paying to see those Michael Bay movies, stop. You're just encouraging him at this point.