Opening Weekends

Harry Potter's record breaking opening weekend made me stop and think about an argument that has bounced around Hollywood since they first started tracking box office receipts. Is too much emphasis placed on those opening numbers?

It seems to me that it has become every producer and studio's main obsession to rack up those numbers the opening weekend. So much so that Marketing has become the new king of Hollywood. I haven't looked up the numbers, but it doesn't take an accountant to see that the amount of money spent on marketing has skyrocketed in recent years. And all of it is aimed at that opening weekend.

Let's look at this year's number one movies for every week up until Harry Potter's debut.

• Cast Away
  
• Save the Last Dance
  
• The Wedding Planner
  
• Hannibal
  
• The Mexican
  
• Exit Wounds
  
• Heartbreakers
  
• Spy Kids
  
• Bridget Jones Diary
  
• Driven
  
• The Mummy Returns
  
• Shrek
  
• Pearl Harbor
  
• Swordfish
  
• Tombraider
  
• The Fast and the Furious
  
• A.I.
  
• Cats & Dogs
  
• Legally Blonde
  
• Jurassic Park III
  
• Planet of the Apes
  
• Rush Hour 2
  
• American Pie 2
  
• Jeepers Creepers
  
• The Musketeer
  
• Hardball
  
• Don't Say a Word
  
• Training Day
  
• From Hell
  
• K-Pax
  
• Monsters, Inc.
  
• Harry Potter

A motley crew of movies and a nice mix of genres. On that list there are quite a few really bad movies, a whole bunch of so-so movies and a few really great movies. Some of those movies leave me scratching my head in wonder that they appear there at all. And while some of them had the added benefit of opening during the slow weeks, all of them share strong marketing campaigns. I'd being willing to guess you recognize the names of all of those movies, and probably can even remember an ad for them you saw on television. I know I can.

I guess the best reason for a studio to push a movie's opening weekend is that word of mouth is so important to a movie's longevity. Pearl Harbor is the perfect example. Heavily hyped, it opened to a large audience and equally large box office receipts. Once word of mouth spread however, it quickly sank out of sight and will be remembered as one of this years biggest flops, even though it will undoubtedly make money in the long run, thanks in large part to the 'hit the ground running' ad campaign that helped the studios recoup much of the cost it's opening week. Without that big push to get it going, it would have belly flopped even harder than it did, but with a quieter splash. So while more publicly embarrassing to go out with such a loud bang, fiscally, it was probably the smart thing to do.

Probably the most common argument against tracking those numbers is that because of this emphasis, studios won't back a movie if they don't think they can turn it into an opening weekend event. I don't buy this argument at all. Take The Sixth Sense and The Others, they share a common theme and a common box office success story. Now certainly, The Others didn't become the huge hit that The Sixth Sense eventually became, but both of them started small and built an audience based on good word of mouth. The smaller movies are out there and if they're good, they will eventually find an audience.

I think what it finally comes down to is that inside Hollywood it means bragging rights. A "My last movie was bigger than yours", kind of thing. Why does the rest of the country care? Why can you find the top ten list posted in every newspaper and a million websites, including this one? Because our culture likes to quantify things. We like lists and statistics. And maybe we like looking at that box office total and knowing that a tiny little part of that came from us. One thing's for sure; those lists aren't going away.