2008 Continues to 'Stand Still' for 20th Century Fox

Once again it appears 20th Century Fox has a film that won’t be breaking any box-office records as their late-2008 sci-fi blockbuster The Day the Earth Stood Still earned $12.5 million on Friday and looks like it probably won’t reach even the mid-to-upper $30 million mark many predicted and certainly not the overwhelming $55.2 million our Box-Office Oracle Laremy Legel assumed it would take in. At this point I’m sure Fox is just waiting for 2008 to end as this has been one of the worst years for a major studio that I can remember. Their biggest hits are an animated flick (Horton Hears a Who) and the awful comedy What Happens in Vegas.

I am sure they were hoping The Day the Earth Stood Still would at least drum up some of the support last year’s I Am Legend managed in the same frame when it earned $77.2 million in three days, but Keanu Reeves doesn’t have the same star power as Will Smith and the movie itself doesn’t help matters. It looks like Marley and Me will be the studio’s last chance for a live-action film to reach the $100 million mark and considering the marketing for that film coupled with the downer ending I don’t see that happening. To put it into comparison, Fox has no chance at reaching the coveted $1 billion mark domestically this year if you take all of its films together. Using Box-Office Mojo’s numbers as of the posting of this article here is how the studio totals breakdown as of right now:

Paramount/Dreamworks $1,492,912,903
Sony/Screen Gems $1,173,996,293
Warner Bros. $1,062,227,476
Universal $975,347,107
Disney $821,312,467
Fox $772,920,401
Lionsgate $412,006,352
New Line (Warner Bros.) $402,914,595
Summit $197,745,735
Focus Features $80,383,617
MGM/Weinstein $71,826,954
Fox Searchlight $69,386,519
Weinstein $43,537,287

Depending on how you count New Line Cinema as it was absorbed by Warner Bros. in 2008 Paramount/DreamWorks and Warner Bros. are hotly contesting for that #1 spot. Sony has done surprisingly well considering they have had a whole slew of crap this year, but Hancock performed well beyond its quality earning $227 million and currently sitting as the fourth highest grossing film of 2008. Universal has had a decent year with several films (four to be exact) ranging from the $102-143 million mark, no big blockbusters unless you count the overseas exploits of Mamma Mia!.

Summit obviously busted out of the box as $142 million of its $197 million are due to the success of Twilight, which only opened a few weeks ago and is expected to see its sequel, New Moon, going into pre-production possibly as early as next week with Chris Weitz (American Pie and About a Boy) at the helm. They also have an interesting 2009 slate with Push, Knowing and New Moon at the end of the year, which will test how long they plan to stick around.

Lionsgate, like Fox, had a terrible year even though they had a few decent films such as The Bank Job, Rambo and the curiosity behind W. However, decisions like Disaster Movie, Transporter 3 and the insistence of releasing more films in the Saw franchise shows they are studio with very little imagination.

However, the big story remains 20th Century Fox, a studio that has had a tough time over the last few years. Taking a look back at the last five years I could only come up with 12 films I would say were either considered good or worthy of conversation, and I feel I was incredibly generous in my choices:

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003)
X2 (2003)
I, Robot (2004)
The Passion of the Christ (2004)
In Her Shoes (2005)
Walk the Line (2005)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)
Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
The Simpsons Movie (2007)
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Horton Hears a Who! (2008)

There are certainly some good movies in there, but to say there are an overwhelming amount of bonafide hits would be stretching the truth to the Nth degree, and I only included Kingdom of Heaven because I love the director’s cut so much.

This is the studio that brought us Oscar Best Picture nominees such as Moulin Rouge, Titanic, Working Girl, The Verdict, All That Jazz, The French Connection, Patton, The Hustler and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. What has happened? This is a studio with an opening studio logo and theme song that makes your ears perk up as soon as you hear it… at least it used to. Now it is an endless stream of films they either hide from the reviewing press (Mirrors, Babylon A.D.) and others they should have (Deception, Max Payne).

Of course, I am not the only one noticing all of this. A recent post at Hollywood-Elsewhere brings about this bit of second hand commentary:

20th Century Fox, a friend tells me, is a pensive, unhappy place to be right now. “Agents all say they’re the studio of last resort, they don’t pay money, and Rupert Murdoch has said they’re all on a lifeboat and there are going to be radical changes there. He’s unhappy, and when he gets this way he fires people.” The friend points out that the contact of Fox president/COO Peter Chernin “has been up for weeks and he still hasn’t renewed it. I think he and [Fox Filmed Entertainment chairman] Tom Rothman might leave.”

As often is the case in trying times, a regime change may be in order, but I am not ready to take rumors and speculation as solid intel, but it wouldn’t surprise me if everything mentioned above was true.

However, I will give Fox some credit for a pair of films in 2008 as they let M. Night Shyamalan do his thing with The Happening and despite the negative mumbo-jumbo behind Australia, Baz Luhrmann is on record saying it is the film he wanted to release. Too bad both films turned out to be no good, and of course to varying degrees depending on who you ask.

I am not sure if there are decision makers at the top of the food chain that just don’t get it. Did the writers’ strike impact them more than other studios? What is it? Will 2009 be an improvement? Let’s see… In 2009 we have the following films confirmed for release:

Anything catch your eye?

Of course we all can’t wait for James Cameron’s Avatar, but that film is just over a year away and I don’t think Fox wants to wait that long. I personally dug the new trailer for X-Men Origins: Wolverine and I think it is definitely going to be well over $200 million following X-Men: The Last Stand‘s $234 million in 2006.

The first Night at the Museum earned a whopping $250 million so the sequel should help. The Fantastic Mr. Fox comes from Wes Anderson based on a Roald Dahl novel and certainly peaks my interest. The Chipmunk sequel bores me but the first one made $217 million. I don’t think Dragonball Evolution, They Came from Upstairs or Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li should expect anything more than the $40 million Max Payne and Hitman made unless they end up being bonafide good films and they aren’t looking too peachy. Oh, and with The Rock in Tooth Fairy they may be able to drum up another $90 million like Game Plan made in 2007.

Monetarily 2009 may not be that bad of a year as the first nine films on the slate include a trio of mediocre flicks and five they could potentially knock it out of the park. Hell, the numbers I gave total $911 million without anything credited to The Fantastic Mr. Fox and especially Avatar. Obviously that is assuming the sequels do as well as the first film, but we are only talking about seven films here folks. And the eighth will be a boom or bust and the ninth is a film people have been waiting for for almost 11 years!

However, outside of Avatar I’m not seeing anything all that new from the studio. Sure, they may make money but isn’t it also nice when they are actually good and bring something to filmmaking on a whole? At least Australia was a risk, something the studio needs to take more of. Their films have become such glossy, candy-coated regurgitations it is hard to tell one from the other. I will say this, at least they dumped those crappy spoof movies off as Lionsgate distributed Disaster Movie and now Paramount is set to sludge away on Dance Flick. Movies like that would only add insult to injury at this point. Hopefully with Fox’s release of Meet the Spartans in January of 2008 that was the end of that trash for the studio and they are on to bigger and better things, because, quite frankly, I am tired of not liking their movies.