18 August 2008 - This week saw widespread protests over what has been used as stigmatizing language toward people with disabilities in the movie Tropic Thunder. What were the effects of the protest and boycott?Most people in the entertainment industry suggest the protest and boycott had little effect on ticket sales. They point out that Tropic Thunder was the Number One film at the Box Office this weekend, unseating The Dark Night as Number 1. Bob Thompson on the National Post suggests:
So much for the boycott by a coalition of disabilities groups. As predicted Ben Stiller’s comedy Tropic Thunder knocked The Dark Knight from its perch atop the box office, despite threats by groups to picket the screenings.
Well, it is true that it beat out The Dark Night and you might also add that more people went to see it last weekend than went to see Star Wars or Gone with the Wind. The simple truth is that just about everyone on the planet who is interested in seeing The Dark Night has already seen it, and the box office receipts are naturally in decline.It was going into its 5th weekend with and average drop of 44% per week. Just one weekend earlier, when The Dark Knight was already a month old it had higher weekend box office sales than Tropic Thunder in its opening weekend. With an additional 37% drop in the intervening week, it was an easy target to be bumped off as number 1 in its 5th weekend as it closed in an additional 435 theaters. In a more reasonable comparison, comparing opening weekends, The Dark Night’s $158.4 million was well over 5 times the weekend revenues for Tropic Thunder.
In fact, the performance of Tropic Thunder was well below expectations. It’s weekend receipts were estimated at $26 million (see media by the numbers), well below expectations. Estimates of what Tropic Thunder was expected to do ranged from about $30 to $40 Million. So there is no doubt that the receipts fell well short of expectations. It was expected to do much better than Pineapple Express, but did significantly worse on its opening day. It’s first day drew only slightly more than half the receipts drawn by Pineapple Express in a similar midweek opening. It did marginally better for its first weekend, but considering that it cost more than 3 times as much to produce, this was unimpressive. Of 43 films opening on Wednesday ranked for opening receipts by Box Office Mojo, Tropic Thunder is listed in 40th place.
NewFutures, an organization that uses polling to predict box office receipts found a 45% probability that Tropic Thunder would do between $36 and $14 Million in its first weekend shortly before the film opened. This prediction dropped rapidly with the protests and had dropped from 45% to one-tenth of 1% by the time the weekend arrived. So, there is no doubt that the film did a lot worse than expected in its first week regardless of the spin that some people put on it. But the question is why.
Was it the protests? Could it have been that people stayed home and watched the olympics rather than going to the movies? Could it be that the movie is just not as interesting as it seems? It is hard to tell, and the film may still do well in the long run in spite of a slow start. What is clear is that people DID protest and that receipts for the film FELL SHORT of expectations!
For more on icad’s coverage of the Tropic Thunder controversy see:
Thunder Struck 15August 2008
Another Kind of “R” Word 15 August 2008
Tropic Thunder Update 13 August 2008
Tropic Thunder Blunder 11 August 2008
The Arc on Tropic Thunder 9 August 2008
Tags: Tropic Thunder
August 18, 2008 at 9:46 pm |
[...] box office, the reasons for the poor performance are open to interpretation. For more information see icad Posted in Cognitive Disability, Disability, Discrimination, Marginalization and exclusion, Mental [...]