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Is the Superhero Movie Dying?

By Dustin Rowles | Posted Under Box Office Round-Ups | Comments (29)

Death_of_Superman_Variation_by_LonesomeFaery.jpg

Captain America was the big winner over the weekend, racking up a nice, tidy $65 million. We won’t know until later today if it beat out Thor ($65.8 million) for the best opening weekend of the year for a superhero movie. What we do know is that the openings of both Thor and Captain America combined barely topped the opening last year of Iron Man 2 ($128 million). There have been five major superhero movies to have opened since Iron Man 2, and their openings break down like this: Green Hornet ($33 million); Thor ($65.8 million); X-Men: First Class ($55 million); Green Lantern ($53 million); and Captain America ($65 million). Not exactly record breakers. Those numbers are all a far cry from the opening weekend receipts of the major superheroes, Spider-man ($114, $88, $151 million); and The Dark Knight ($158 million) and even fall short of the X-Men series before Brett Ratner derailed it.

Some, specifically, Susquehanna Financial Group’s Vasily Karasyov, claims in a report that the death of the superhero movie is quickly arriving. Beyond the four franchises — Batman, Spider-man, X-Men, and Iron Man — there’s not a lot of hot properties left to be turned into huge blockusters, she argues. It’s probably why we are seeing a Spider-man reboot so soon; it’s one of the few that can open big. We’re not even sure that Superman is capable of that anymore, as we get word that the release of Zack Snyder’s too-soon reboot is being pushed back to 2013.

Superhero films are expensive, and the profit margins are getting smaller (Green Lantern doesn’t even look likely to reach into the black) and Captain America won’t be able to rely on foreign grosses as much as some of the other superhero films to ensure profitability). We may already be seeing the death of the superhero movie. There are three scheduled for release next summer (The Dark Knight Rises, The Avengers, and The Amazing Spider-man), but there are no attempts to start a new franchise. 2013 looks even worse: A new Iron Man, another Thor and Snyder’s Superman are all that’s on the horizon right now. Indeed, 2011 may be the peak of superhero movies, at least in terms of quantity. And given the overall mediocrity of the offerings outside of the Nolan’s Batman movie and the original Iron Man, I can’t say I’m disappointed to see them fade away.

In other box-office news, Harry Potter continued its box-office onslaught, adding another $48 million. It should top $300 million domestically next weekend and looks to compete with Transformers 3 ($325 million so far) for the highest grossing film of the year.

Friends with Benefits, meanwhile, sold $18 million in tickets, a million bump over what Easy A sold in its opening weekend (Easy A would make $57 million and become a big hit on DVD, and I expect a similar course for Friends with Benefits. Reviews for the Will Gluck film have been positive overall (70 percent on RottenTomatoes), but the movie will likely have it’s demo eaten into next week by Crazy, Stupid, Love, the one movie I’m hoping will salvage an overall mediocre summer.

There wasn’t much excitement otherwise at this weekend’s box office. Horrible Bosses, in at number five, continues to perform well and with $82 million now and $100 million in its sights, could be the sleeper hit of the summer. The duds of the summer, however, may be Larry Crowne ($34 million overall) and Zookeeper ($59 million).










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Comments

Tick-tock, tick-tock...

All it takes is one solid, high-profile video game movie, say Halo or Gears of War, and the new market shall be created.

Posted by: D-Day at July 25, 2011 10:40 AM

D-Day: Good point, but my money is on an "Uncharted" movie. As long as they stick to the established characters and deliver a solid action/adventure it could be a mega-hit. I don't even care if they follow the plot of the games, I'm fine with a new adventure or origin story for Nathan Drake. Just as long as they don't make up a bunch of bullshit like Russell was doing. The game universe works fine, don't try to fix what ain't broken.

Posted by: TylerDFC at July 25, 2011 10:48 AM

Or they could try to do something completely new.

Posted by: TheOtherGreg at July 25, 2011 10:55 AM

The video game efforts so far have been so weak that I doubt they take off as a movie creating model. Like you say D-Day, it only takes one hugely successful movie to make everyone in Hollywood think "This is the next big thing," but they're going to have to show me a successful video game movie before I think they're able to make one. (If that makes any sense.)

Posted by: Socrates_Johnson at July 25, 2011 11:03 AM

"but my money is on an "Uncharted" movie."

My concern with an Uncharted movie is that it gets turned into Sahara. The new attached director (who had some interviews at Comic-Con) was the same guy who did Limitless. So prepare for a) rumors of Emu Drake, which are inevitable yet guarantee nothing, and b) pissed fanboys because no one really like Limitless despite it making money.

Much as I love Uncharted, I don't think it's the big property that will wind up tentpoling (god that sounds dirty) an entire genre.

It's just not quite as popular as something like Halo, which is a film I don't understand why it doesn't get made. Money should not be an object if they can get a budget in/around/under $200mil, backed by Microsoft. It's also a property that can attract bigger backers and a bigger director.

The parallel I'd make is X-Men/Spidey 1. Say Uncharted get released first, meanwhile they're working on a Halo-like property. Drake comes out and makes good money with a good to above-average film, making vid game movies seem somewhat viable. 2-3 years down the road, Halo movie comes out and blows Drake out of the water box-office wise, and now we have a rush to start converting best-selling properties into film. First X-Men movie made ~$300mil, then Raimi's Parker swooped in and made over $800mil.

Posted by: D-Day at July 25, 2011 11:07 AM

And if they make a Halo movie, it should just be a full length feature version of Red vs. Blue. That would be awesome.

In an unrelated note: There are some pretty big reason I don't work for a major Hollywood studio.

Posted by: Socrates_Johnson at July 25, 2011 11:12 AM

Nothing that makes or made money ever dies in Hollywood. Thor and Cap and IM both made money so there will be more of them.

You also forgot there is another Wolverine movie coming, based on the Silver Samurai comic run of years back and a new Ghost Rider movie with Nic Cage both per CHUD.

Posted by: logan at July 25, 2011 11:16 AM

I don't think Superhero movies are dying as much as they're getting to be like Rom Com, where you know exactly what's going to happen at any given moment in the movie.

Look at the James Bond movies. The only exciting thing about them now is who's playing James Bond and who's going to be the new Bond babe. After that who cares? He's going to shoot bad guys, bed the babe and save the day.

Posted by: John W at July 25, 2011 11:31 AM

In order of your superhero list: new property, new property, damaged goods, new property, new property. A fairer comparison would be looking at the original Iron-Man opening box office total. Even then, it's not exactly fair as that had recognizable star power at the helm. People knew Robert Downey, Jr..

Posted by: Robert at July 25, 2011 11:44 AM

I don't think you can count "Green Hornet" in with comic-book superhero movies.

As far as the rest - I think there is an upper limit to the amount any of the remaining comic-book characters can make in a movie. Once you get past the big names (Superman, Batman, Spiderman), there is a very steep decline in how many people recognize the characters or are drawn to the movie.

So, there is still money to be made on such movies, but only if they don't have a huge budget. Hollywood should be thinking new actors, less special effects, more story and try and build a franchise rather than hoping for a ready-made franchise when it comes to these characters.

Posted by: Kerminy at July 25, 2011 11:46 AM

Superhero films are expensive, and the profit margins are getting smaller (Green Lantern doesn’t even look likely to reach into the black)

The fact that Green Lantern wasn't good probably should factor into this equation somewhere.

Posted by: twig at July 25, 2011 11:50 AM

As Logan said, nothing that makes money in Hollywood ever dies. And even things that die come back zombie-style to inflict more pain on another generation.

The main problem with the latest movies is that they just weren't all that good. The buzz for Iron Man was much better than any of those you list above. The trailers and initial reviews were excellent plus it had perfect casting of a known actor, so everyone was expecting a good movie and it did great business. Can you say that about any of this summer's movies?

Don't forget also that Batman Begins, a movie better than any of this summer's offerings, grossed less that $50 Mil in its opening weekend. Expectations were lower after the way Shumacher ran the Batman franchise into the ground. Plus Bale and Nolan, while respected, weren't household names. I think that X-men First Class suffered from the same syndrome. The next X-men movie, if any good, will perform much better opening weekend.

Posted by: ed newman at July 25, 2011 11:52 AM

i agree, the predictability of the origin story is a giant irk factor.
throw us into something unexpected.

just take a comic character, any comic character, show what you need, edit what you don't, and make sure the "villain" is both formidable (if you want to have Lex, fine, but make that fucker OWN HIS SHIT) and faithful to that meanie's comic counter-part (Galactus Really Shoulda Stepped Outta That Cloud).

Posted by: gp at July 25, 2011 11:56 AM

"Or they could try to do something completely new."

Oh no, another shirt messed up from coffee-thru-the-nose laughing!

TheOtherGreg should be ashamed for posting funny shit like this on a Monday morning - he sure got me on that one!

Posted by: GMan at July 25, 2011 12:16 PM

I say the whole genre can't die soon enough. I'm expecting Dawson's Spiderman to double-tap it for good.

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at July 25, 2011 12:17 PM

"Much as I love Uncharted, I don't think it's the big property that will wind up tentpoling (god that sounds dirty) an entire genre."

The game you're looking for is:

Assassin's Creed

/you'll see

Posted by: BarbadoSlim at July 25, 2011 12:22 PM

Super Hero movies are choking to death by plotless, dialogless, metaphor voided, craptastic scripts which wrap their uninteresting hands around every PG-13 movie and squeeze the shit out of them until money dribbles out. Not even the teens which these movies are dumbed down to attract are interested anymore.

Posted by: carrboroninja at July 25, 2011 12:25 PM

"but my money is on an "Uncharted" movie."

I'd go with a "Bioshock" movie. Mystery, powers, and a great game.

As for the "Death of Superhero movies": it's all franchise set-up right now. Are movie audiences tired of them? Probably. But that's what they like to see: the set-up, the origin.

Oh and I caught Harry Potter 7, Part 2, Non-3D last night. How did they get 2 hours out of that? It was nice and all, but it's not a movie. It's half-a-movie.

Posted by: Fredo at July 25, 2011 12:52 PM

I think many have touched on the real issue here. It isn't so much that super hero movies are dead, per se, but that, once something starts becoming formulaic, it starts to get boring. What makes any movie crappy is when the writer/actors/directors just phone the whole thing in. There's no originality, no thought.

As Kerminy said, if a studio takes a property with the idea of treating it with the seriousness and effort needed to turn it into a franchise, rather than starting with a property hoping it will be a ready-made franchise that they can churn out using the standard formula, there's great potential for good super hero movies.

Posted by: Jaaron at July 25, 2011 1:04 PM

MORTAL COMBAT!!!

Posted by: MRod at July 25, 2011 1:12 PM

What's Mortal Combat?

Posted by: Socrates_Johnson at July 25, 2011 1:19 PM

The game you're looking for is:

Assassin's Creed

/you'll see

Don't even tease like that.

Posted by: twig at July 25, 2011 1:45 PM

As I understand it, Sony's control over the Spider-man franchise and Fox's over X-Men is dependent on them producing films every few years, or else the properties revert to Marvel. So look forward to and continued slew of these franchises, regardless of quality, as long as they continue to turn a buck for the studios.

Posted by: csb at July 25, 2011 2:43 PM

So while they have to make movies to keep the license, nothing says they have to invest much of anything in them. If you want to know what I mean, try looking up Reb Brown + Captain America. Or the 1994 Fantastic Four movie.

Posted by: Socrates_Johnson at July 25, 2011 2:51 PM

PS. I wouldn't suggest actually WATCHING those movies however. Do so at your own peril.

Posted by: Socrates_Johnson at July 25, 2011 2:52 PM

Not a moment too soon.

Posted by: , at July 25, 2011 3:24 PM

I've been reading comic books my whole life, and while not every one of these movies is amazing, this strange new world I live in, where pretty girls dress up like superheroes, and no one laughs in your face for liking Captain America is like a dream come true.

It sucks to see someone who's opinion I've come to respect pissing all over that and gleefully waiting for it to all to end.

Posted by: AmbroseKalifornia at July 25, 2011 11:52 PM

Socrates_Johnson, I think what MRod was trying to say was "MORTAL KOMBAT!!!"

Posted by: qualtinger at July 27, 2011 5:37 AM

You have a lot of useful pointers on this site.

Posted by: DJ Taylor Made at August 4, 2011 3:34 PM