"Neighbors" Outpaces "Amazing Spider-Man 2" on Friday

[CBR News]

The new comedy starring Seth Rogen and Zac Efron looks to top the North American weekend box office, pushing "Amazing" to No. 2.


Full article here.

[RobinFan4880]

That is a big fall. Poor Spider-Man.

[Dusk]

Well, that's too bad. But there's always Amazing Spider-man 3 and the two villains spin-offs, right?

[CrimsonEchidna]

Well, that's too bad. But there's always Amazing Spider-man 3 and the two villains spin-offs, right?

Spider-Man is going the way of X-Men and is just down trending domestically. I do think though that world wide it's still doing extremely well.

[Thennary Nak]

Ouch. Looks like the international market is going to have to carry ASM2 from those numbers.

[Pharozonk]

I have high hopes for Neighbors. The guys who were behind This is the End worked on it so it looks really damn good. Too bad ASM2 didn't meet most people's expectations.

[Colossus1980]

I wonder how much of an impact this will make on the Sinister Six spin-off. Depending on the villains/actors/special effects involved, the budget might not make this viable.

[LightningBug]

I'm not surprised. The word of mouth on ASM2 has been pretty awful. I haven't seen it myself yet, and it's due in large part to negative reviews from friends and family, especially from my geekier friends whose tastes I tend to align with. The absolute best review I have heard from a friend has been that ASM2 was the worst movie he ever enjoyed. A huge superhero tentpole getting outpaced in only its second week by a Seth Rogan comedy is a tough blow. By the time Days of Future Past comes out, Spidey will already be irrelevant at the domestic box office.

[Celestin]

I wonder how much of an impact this will make on the Sinister Six spin-off. Depending on the villains/actors/special effects involved, the budget might not make this viable.

It may have a lot of an impact. It's clear that Spider-Man's popularity is in decline in US. Of course it's still one of the most popular franchises and will be for a long time, but the reboot didn't manage to make it into something special for an audience. Instead it's another Spider-Man sequel that they may watch in the cinema or just wait for it to be on DVD. This is a big problem for any potential spin-off since it's clear that there is no particular need for more related movies.

AMS2 is doing a lot better in the international market, but it's also a lot less profitable than US market for the film studios (they get a smaller share). And Sinister Six may not be even nearly as popular since it will lack Spider-Man himself to make people go to watch it. Add that it will be a marketing challenge to promote a movie about villains instead of superheroes and it's becoming a rather risky project. Personally I wouldn't give it more than 120m budged, but they will probably give it about 200m to make it a blockbuster spectacle.

[Justice]

A huge superhero tentpole getting outpaced in only its second week by a Seth Rogan comedy is a tough blow.

Not just a Seth Rogan comedy, but a R rated Seth Rogan comedy.

In Cap 2's second week, it held off Rio 2 (#2), Oculus (#3), and Draft Day (#4). On the third week, it held off Heaven is for Real (#2), Transcendence (#4), and A Haunted House 2 (#5). Finally, it fell from the top spot on it's fourth week to The Other Woman (#1) while holding off Brick Mansions (#5).

But to fall on your second week to a R rated comedy? Not good.

[Lightsabretooth]

Ouch. A blockbuster superhero action movie getting beat out by a comedy it's second weekend out is never a good sign. But like LighteningBug said, I'm not surprised either since the word of mouth has been pretty universally bad.

[Zero Hunter]

I heard one movie review show saying that between the way the over publisized the film with too many previews and then opening it overseas first they probably caused a lot of their own problems. A lot of people were feeling a Spider Man fatigue before the film even opened because of the countless add and constant media push for months. Opening it over seas also didn't help because by the time it opened here in the States the bad reviews and spoilers had already flooded the internet and turned people who were on the fence off.

Less previews and opening in the states first probably would have netted them at least another 10-20 million their opening couple weeks.

[Wasp14]

Ouch. A blockbuster superhero action movie getting beat out by a comedy it's second weekend out is never a good sign. But like LighteningBug said, I'm not surprised either since the word of mouth has been pretty universally bad.

I avoided the movie because of the reviews, I'll be waiting for the Blu-ray release. Is it a case of too many villains again? Spoilers in the trailers, or just plain fatigue domestically? It seems to be doing well overseas, so that should carry it. I'm curious to see how well Days of Future Past does.

[The Indestructible Man]

Looking over at the info on The Neighbors, it made back it's production budget on Friday alone (with the Thursday night numbers working towards covering marketing costs, you could be looking at a film that spends it's Saturday & Sunday gross towards paying back ancillaries and may make an actual profit on its first weekend!)

I count myself among those who hasn't seen The Amazing Spider-Man 2 yet -- or The Amazing Spider-Man. The marketing of them really sells the visuals, but I prefer a more story-based film at this point, and I've already been Spider-Manned out from the first trilogy. Those sort of big visual 3D/IMAX action films are what sell overseas, so I can see why Sony and Avi Arad have apparently made sure to sell and design the look of this series as they have and release them first internationally, but there are some downsides when competing with the new breed of comic films -- the MCU continuity films or Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy, I would consider, first of all, which use comic iconography to tell very different sorts of genres of story, still within the larger marketable class of action film.

I think the multiple-weekend success of The Winter Soldier was due simultaneously to fortuitous timing as well as being both sold on (in trailers, etc) and built on a fine-layered political thriller that just happened to be dressed up in costumes. If you follow film site boards that first weekend, you see a lot of discussion of comic fans who went to a Captain America movie and end up convincing a lot of naysaying film fans to go the next weekend to check out a smart Robert Redford movie. Personally, I love how many conversations on political sites (on right and left alike) that I had over 2-3 weeks over civil libertarian issues discussed in that film and their relation to government overreach in nation security. That's the sign of a successful film -- like The Dark Knight, it created a zeitgeist of thought around it in addition to kicking ass. From what I hear, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 has lovely fight choreography and nice chemistry between it's Parker & Stacy; that's important for a Spider-Man movie, but not enough to be [Uimportant[/U]

The Achilles Hill of comic movies is that they are BIG. They're expensive, they're huge in production anymore, and we expect them all to be uber-successful and dominate the box-office for weeks at a time. For all the doomsaying, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 will actually make more money -- possibly even a bit more domestically when all is said and done -- than The Winter Soldier, with the seeing it seeing it IMAX and 3D and it being a huge draw in international markets. However, so much of marketing is expectation, and Sony expected this to be the movie of the year and to dominate theaters for weeks instead of falling to #2 behind a Seth Rogan frat comedy in Week #2. Likewise, they didn't expect Captain America (a less popular hero than Spider-Man) to star in a better-reviewed and more timely movie than the webslinger, fearing what a perceived defeat would do to franchise-growth plans (it's sort of understood that, between Marvel Studios, Sony, Fox, and Warner Brothers, you can't realistically have FOUR successfully supported comics movie franchise continuity universes out there, even if no one will say it -- so no one wants to be the first to seem to stumble).

This movie was a HUGE marketing project and just lost out in a week's time to a film that most folks' probably haven't heard of. No one should think of John Carter or Lone Ranger, given The Amazing Spider-Man 2's past success -- but the investment suggested to Sony that the domestic numbers wouldn't collapse so rapidly as they did. Either the marketing worked amazingly (no pun intended) and the movie failed, or -- since reviews were good for the film -- the marketing was successful but only in maximizing the audience to group into one weekend. In any case, this situation gives the folks in the studio and working on the franchise *something* to examine as work goes forward on the franchise's projects. Presuming the neighbors in the next trailer can keep it down...

[basbash99]

Wow $91 million last weekend to $10 million this weekend?? That's crazy. Any predictions on how it tops out in North America? At this rate I would guess $120 million