'The Golden Compass' Crashes and Burns -- Is Bob Shaye Finished?
Filed under: Action, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Deals, New Releases, Box Office, Fandom, Family Films, Movie Marketing, Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig
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At an admitted production cost of $250 million, which may not even include marketing, The Golden Compass needed a smashing domestic opening weekend just to allay fears that it would cause major long-term problems for a struggling New Line Cinema. Instead, it pulled in an alarmingly low $26 million this weekend at a whopping 3,500 theaters, much closer to Eragon's disasterous $23 million opening weekend last Christmas than the $65 million opening weekend for the first Chronicles of Narnia film or the routine $90 and $100 million openings for the Harry Potter films. (The lowest opening weekend for a Lord of the Rings film was $47 million.) With muted buzz at best, expect Golden's numbers to plummet next weekend, especially with a new crowd of pre-Christmas contenders packing in, and total domestic box office to top out at around $80 million. Ouch.
Over at Nikki Finke's blog, she's declaring Golden a "wildly expensive flop" and specifically citing a low per screen average, which is another indicator that this thing will have no legs and certainly won't do well enough to warrant those two sequels. In fact, coming on the heels of other huge disappointments for New Line like Shoot em Up (a $5 million opening weekend) and Rendition (a $4 million opening weekend) and Mr. Woodcock (an $8 million opening weekend), this will likely spell the end for New Line chairman Bob Shaye, who shareholders already want to dump because of his ridiculous feud with golden goose Peter Jackson.
If there's any saving grace for this boondoggle, it will be international box office, which is important for a film like The Golden Compass. Even though the film may need to pull in over $700 million internationally just to be in the black, the Guardian is reporting that first day grosses in British cinemas were very healthy. The film has already grossed $4.3 million in Britain, which is very substantial, and a good indicator of how it will fare across Europe.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
12-09-2007 @ 7:24PM
EJ is an Idjit said...
Ryan
By quoting Nikki Finke on anything you therefore confirm that you have no journalistic abilities, knowledge or talent. Nikki Finke is a fool and you follow a fool. Bob Shaye is fine, too bad they don't replace you.
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12-09-2007 @ 7:46PM
The Addict said...
Wow EJ, you're a dick.
However, I've been to several blog sites over the past few minutes and each one keeps reporting that the production costs for The Golden Compass are more and more. Next website I go to will say "With production costs admittedly reaching 183.32588 trillion dollars..." Oh how I love the exaggeration of wrong information.
Anyone want to play telephone?
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12-09-2007 @ 8:00PM
EJ is an Idjit said...
Sorry Addict, you can call names but you and Ryan are still foolish and retarded
If you want an accurate analysis of the opening, including a mention of Nikki Finke as walking fecal matter,
try this
http://www.mcnblogs.com/thehotblog/archives/2007/12/kladys_friday_e_24.html#comments
But it is easier to just spread stupidity isn't it?
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12-09-2007 @ 8:24PM
Sam H. said...
It's funny, but I avoided going to see this movie on Saturday because I was concerned about crowds. Shows what I know.
I'm a little annoyed by all the doomsaying surrounding the picture. Family movies have seen the bulk of their earnings shifted away from theaters and onto DVD, so the movie will likely do quite well once it sees a home release. Also, it more than doubled the take of the #2 movie for the week, which isn't chump change.
It didn't smash like THE LORD OF THE RINGS, but nothing was going to smash like that.
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12-09-2007 @ 9:26PM
Midnight13 said...
How old is the book series that the movie is based on? I've never heard of "The Golden Compass". I've never read "The Lord of the Rings" book series either but I at least have heard of LOTR even before it was turned into a film franchise. I knew of "The Hobbit", I've read about half of the "Chronicles of Narnia". I've never read a single "Harry Potter" book but I knew of thier existance even before the films. "The Golden Compass", based off a fantasy book series ala LOTR and "Narnia" apparently, but I've never heard of it. Could I possibly be in the minority on this?
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12-09-2007 @ 9:57PM
Juice said...
You're not. Everyone I know in the states had never heard of the books until the movie was announced. I read the books some 6-7 years ago but I wasnt living in the US at the time. Over in the UK and some other places the book is huge but its not talked about much in the media like say...harry potter. when it is, its usually the whole anti-religion thing.
IMO, the books are great and definitely should be made into movies. its a shame it didnt get a good opening. Maybe they should see how popular these books are in the main markets before they think of adapting it to a movie. LOTR's and Potter's popularity is huge and far outweigh His Dark Materials.
12-10-2007 @ 1:33AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
You aren't. It's only 12 years old - far too young to start a franchise unless you have 50-60 million sales - and it's fairly obscure/controversial as it's a children's story about alternate unvierses/organized religion.
The concept of the stories is pretty good; the execution is another matter. I read the trilogy and with the exception of the second book, it's really quite bad. Like Ayn Rand bad. It's not a shock the movie isn't popular as the books simply don't have a following of 30-40 million people.
12-09-2007 @ 10:02PM
Ray said...
So, when will Peter Jackson be starting shooting on The Hobbit?
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12-09-2007 @ 10:19PM
Philip said...
Just another example of people hating a movie before they see it. I mean, this isn't Lions for Lambs. You can't pigeon-hole this movie in that same way. As a non-practicing Southern Baptist, I can see preachers all over the Bible-belt killing this movie on Sundays. Then their congregation goes home on Sunday night and watches Desperate Housewives. Total hypocrites.
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12-09-2007 @ 10:48PM
Robin said...
Agreed re: hypocrites. One "critic" review on Rotten Tomatoes said "won't put people in the seats at the theater or take them out of the pews" WTF? Ass.
We were going to see it and actually have been looking forward to it for some time but are both sick this weekend. Will probably catch it this week/weekend sometime.
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12-10-2007 @ 1:35AM
YouFaceTheTick said...
Far too many of the negative reviews focus on elements not in the movie - religion, god, christianity - and seem to hit on things they've HEARD are in the books. It's a sad commentary on film critics who can't review a film on its merit, leaving on their ignorance of the books upon which a film is based.
12-09-2007 @ 11:37PM
Scott K said...
I too read the book upon hearing about the movie. I had never heard of it either. I think most people in the US just think it is a random kids fantasy film and don't know about the books.
I like the movie even though the pacing seemed rushed. I was hoping it would succeed so that we could possibly get an extended DVD cut and the sequels.
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12-09-2007 @ 11:44PM
Screen Rant said...
Well Rotten Tomatoes has it at a stellar 43% positive, not exactly a glowing recommendation.
I guess the aren't as many moviegoing atheists as Hollywood thinks there are.
Vic
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12-10-2007 @ 2:02AM
GB said...
Its amazing to see the lists of the highest paid actresses and most of them have flops after flops. Maybe WB was also right about actors more successful than the actresses.
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12-10-2007 @ 2:20AM
Sy said...
New Line executives should be fired. Releasing anything with the slightest whiff of anti-religion tone DURING CHRISTMAS SEASON in the US market is stupid at best and twisted at worse.
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12-10-2007 @ 1:39PM
eugene said...
I'm sure to the people at newline, releasing a movie that had even a hint of being anti-christian during christmas, was a good thing.
12-10-2007 @ 3:32AM
Rich said...
You knew this movie was gonna flop with the way they were pushing it. Only crappy movies are pushed that hard. I had no idea what the story was about until after I saw the previews. I am gonna stick by my intial assessment, that the movie looks like crap and I might catch it when it hits TBS.
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12-10-2007 @ 8:43AM
Franklin said...
This movie always looked like "Imaginationland: The Movie" (reference to the recent three-episode South Park storyline). In other words, it looks absolutely ridiculous.
The sad fact is: The general movie going public doesn't really care for these "epic" fantasy movies, unless they are based on a VERY popular book series. LotR and Harry Potter fall into this category. I'm not sure if the Narnia franchise will continue beyond its first sequel.
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12-10-2007 @ 11:16AM
Eddie said...
Damn, I was really hoping this would backfire on the church. Everytime they decry a movie, they end up just giving it more PR and it goes on to make sickening amounts of money.
This was a decent movie, the coolest part was the snowbear fight and I'll agree with audiences if they didn't think that was worth the price of admission but something tells me their lemming pastor decried it last sunday at the pulpit (being a good steward of the time God gives him to help people, of course) and so that kept all the lemming families away from the evil that is a CGI animated kid's film.
It'd be funny if it wasn't so deeply, deeply sad.
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12-10-2007 @ 11:59AM
Robobagins said...
I'm not surprised about this. Aren't we all tired of "epic" movies? Especially ones that are the first part in a trilogy? I thought this movement had reached it's low point with "The Seeker" but still studios keep on churning them out.
Also I haven't seen any marketing for the books, which doesn't bode well either. I remember during the LotR, HP and Narnia blitzs there were ads in stores for the books as well.
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