'Pacific Rim' And How Box Office Tracking Becomes A Weapon
Scott Mendelson, Contributor
6/28/2013 @ 10:13AM
Here’s a shocker for you: Two weeks prior to release, a wholly original science-fiction action-fantasy with no major stars and a somewhat goofy concept is tracking for a lower opening weekend than the star-laden comedy sequel to a general audience-pleasing and financially successful original opening on the same day.
The reports of “doom” being leveled at Warner Bros.’ $180 million monsters vs. robots epic Pacific Rim may be indeed accurate.
The Guillermo del Toro ode to Japanese monster movies is “tracking” at around $30 million for the weekend, which would indeed be a little underwhelming. Grown Ups 2: The Grown Upping is tracking at around $40 million for the weekend, which makes sense since Adam Sandler and friends’ Grown Ups opened at $40.5 million back in June 2010. I know, next you’ll tell me that The To-Do List has less awareness than The Wolverine a month out from their July 26th release date.
What we have here is a classic example of pre-release tracking being used as an offensive weapon against a film to create the impression of upcoming box office failure, with the end-game goal of creating what amounts to a self-fulfilling prophecy. Back in the olden days before movie news was a general-audiences entertainment, pre-release tracking was relatively secret, and it was used as a way to measure the effectiveness of a marketing campaign and/or possibly signal where and how additional marketing dollars should be spent.
If, and I’m making this all up, Spider-Man wasn’t tracking as well with women, Sony would cut an ad highlighting the romantic drama between Mary Jane and Peter Parker and air it during the Oprah Winfrey Show and/or Friends. But now that said information is out in the open, the tracking figures become a weapon both for a flop-happy media and for rival studios. I’ve written about this before, but this is such a classic example that it bears repeating.
Hidden in the middle of Variety’s “Is Pacific Rim Doomed to Be This Year’s Battleship?” piece is the fact that Warner Bros. has only spent 30% of their marketing budget thus far. This is actually a wonderful thing to hear. I’ve long argued at the pointlessness of these insanely expensive long-lead marketing campaigns, with copious trailers, clips, and posters designed mostly to capture the interest of hardcore film fans who already bought their midnight IMAX ticket as soon as it was available.
Warner Bros. is holding most of its marketing money for the last couple weeks, which makes sense since most general moviegoers don’t really care about what’s coming out months from now. Even with the social media that seemingly surrounds every single living soul, there is still a large percentage of moviegoers that still choose to see a new release because that trailer they saw in front of Man Of Steel looks good or they liked the TV spot that aired during the NBA finals the night before opening day. So when Del Toro takes to the Internet to reassure fans that the tracking numbers are going up, that’s probably true since Warner Bros. hasn’t exactly been spreading awareness.
If I may put on my conspiratorial hat for a moment, I don’t think this is a coincidence considering the ongoing discussions for producer Legendary Pictures (which funded 75% of the film’s $180-$200 million budget) to align itself with a studio other than Warner Bros (talks to re-up their distribution deal broke down last week). If Pacific Rim tanks, then the asking price for whatever studio chooses to align itself with Legendary Pictures goes down. Heck, all of this talk of doom makes the theoretical price go down too, while the pressure to close a deal with a studio before Pacific Rim debuts rises in case the film becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But putting aside the reasons for what feels like a preemptive strike, Pacific Rim doesn’t have much awareness because Warner Bros. hasn’t had the time to focus on it. With Man Of Steel taken care of following a successful domestic and overseas launch, and The Hangover 3 and The Great Gatsby wrapping up their successful theatrical runs (both films cost around $105 million and made well over $300 million worldwide), WB now has two weeks to sell the heck out of giant robots doing battle with giant monsters.
I wrote back in April that Pacific Rim‘s fortunes were somewhat tied to the relative quality and/or audience satisfaction of the summer slate up to that point. And, at this point in time, it still looks like Pacific Rim, if it’s as good as I’m hearing from those who have seen it, may well be ‘the one we’ve been waiting for’ in the vein of Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Transformers, and Inception.
But either way, trashing the future box office performance of a major release where most of its advertising budget hasn’t been spent yet is both silly and counter-productive. It’s also the kind of preemptive strike that dissuades original would-be blockbusters, since audience awareness is always going to be higher in the early going for known entities and/or sequels. Pacific Rim may well tank domestically and may even tank overseas (although I’d argue the latter is highly unlikely), but no good comes from screaming *flop!* before the campaign has really begun, especially as Warner Bros. marketing actually waiting until it matters should be encouraged.
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