Ad Age’s Second Annual Summer-Movie Report Card
Power sequels like ‘Potter,’ sleepers like ‘Bridesmaids’ and indies were this year’s big winners
■ BY ANDREW HAMP ahampp@adage.com
SUMMER 2011—expected to be the
highest-grossing ever for movies—
will be remembered for a parade of
soggy sequels interrupted by a string
of sleeper successes, from Disney’s
“The Help” to Paramount’s “Super 8”
to Universal’s explosive
“Bridesmaids,” second only to “Pretty
Woman” as the highest-grossing
female-targeted movie of all time.
Even Woody Allen scored the biggest
hit of his career with Sony Pictures
Classics’ “Midnight In Paris,” a film
that crossed the $50 million mark in
mid-August and was rereleased in 600
theaters just before Labor Day for one
last cinematic tour.
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was down just 1.43% during the
same time period, according to
Hollywood.com.
Here, in our second annual
Summer Movie Marketing Report
Card, we grade the movie marketers
that broke through, those that coasted on their coattails and those that
tanked.
WINNERS
WARNER BROS.
GRADE: A- THE INDIES
A- DISNEY
B+ SONY
B+ PARAMOUNT
B+
It probably could’ve taken top
honors based on “Harry Potter”
alone, as the second half of “Harry
Potter and the Deathly Hollows”
became the highest-grossing film in
the “Potter” franchise, taking in
$43.5 million just from midnight
screenings on opening night. But
the studio really found its strength
in marketing ensemble comedies,
using the alternate key art/trailer
strategy for its films “The Hangover
II,” “Crazy Stupid Love” and
“Horrible Bosses” to target different
audiences on TV and through print,
out-of-home and digital media. All
three of those films brought in
diverse audiences and
outperformed expectations, with
plans for “The Hangover III” already
in the works. Only “Green Lantern”
could be deemed a disappointment,
as it’s on track to barely recoup its
$200 million production budget in
worldwide grosses.
Sony Pictures Classics scored the
marketing coup of the summer in
the form of “Midnight In Paris,”
leveraging Woody Allen’s best
reviews in years to become the
must-see among art houses,
Europhiles and Midwesterners
alike. Fox Searchlight’s “Tree of
Life” used virtually no traditional
marketing and relied instead on
NPR media buys and heavy word-of-mouth to make the Terrence
Malick-Brad Pitt curio a quiet $12.7
million hit. And Focus Features even
scored two modest hits with “Jane
Eyre” ($11.2 million) and
“Beginners” ($5.6 million) by
finding literate, artsy audiences in
all the right places.
Say what you will about year-old
studio marketing chief M.T. Carney,
but her first full summer with studio
chairman Rich Ross was far from the
outright disaster many predicted
after last year’s costly flops such as
“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and
“Prince of Persia.” The fourth
“Pirates” film, while the lowest-grossing installment of the franchise
domestically, still took in more than
$1.04 billion internationally, proving
it still has sea legs across the globe.
Pixar’s “Cars 2,” which also
underperformed against its
predecessor, eked out a decent $187
million in the U.S. But the real
surprise was “The Help,” which
relied heavily on screenings among
the book’s core fans in the South and
used strong word-of-mouth to lure
bicoastal audiences (and even men)
into theaters. The $25 million film
surpassed the $100 million mark
after three weeks.
The studio batted five-for-five last
summer, making medium-to-large
sized hits out of “Salt,” “Eat Pray
Love,” “The Other Guys,” “Grown
Ups” and “The Karate Kid.”
Entering another summer without
a major tentpole film, the studio still
eked out some surprises in the
form of “The Smurfs” (who caught
Ad Age’s blink-and-you’ll-miss-it
appearance among the blue
crew?), a critically reviled family
flick that smartly counter-programmed against “Cowboys
and Aliens” and whizzed past the
$115 million mark domestically, and
“Bad Teacher,” a $20 million
Cameron Diaz comedy that
quintupled its production budget in
box-office receipts. Only
“Zookeeper” under-delivered,
suggesting the surprise star status
Kevin James earned with “Paul
Blart: Mall Cop” may be fading.
“Transformers: Dark of the Moon,”
while still a $350 million-grossing
behemoth, wasn’t quite the über-monster it could’ve been thanks in
part to confusing early ads
marketing it as a moonwalking
movie (and perhaps the absence of
Megan Fox?). But strong showings
for “Thor” ($181 million) and
“Captain America” ($169 million),
its final Marvel movies as a
distributor, bode well for Disney’s
“The Avengers” next summer. The
real standout was “Super 8,” the
viral marketing story of the year.
Mysterious trailers and TV spots
from J.J. Abrams and Paramount
made an event out of what was
ultimately a nostalgia-drenched
‘70s monster movie.
LOSERS
MIXED
LIONSGATE
D UNIVERSAL
A (FOR “FAST FIVE”AND
“BRIDESMAIDS”);
C (EVERYTHING ELSE)
It bungled the marketing
for macho movie “Conan
The Barbarian,” a blood-
soaked $90 million action
movie, alienating fans of
the original and
prospective new young fans with its hard-R
redband trailers and failure to translate star
Jason Momoa’s ardent “Game of Thrones”
following into ticket buyers. And “The Devil’s
Double,” which earned early awards
attention for star Dominic Cooper’s
impressive dual performances as Saddam
Hussein’s son and his body double, didn’t sell
enough tickets in limited release to warrant a
wide rollout, which will make it hard to recoup
even the $2 million to $3 million Lionsgate
paid to acquire the nearly $20 million movie
at Sundance.
The studio was looking like
the one to beat heading
into the season with the
one-two punch of late
April’s “Fast Five” (the
biggest opening in Universal history, supported
by a major tie-in from Dodge) and
“Bridesmaids” (the comedy success story of
the year, with over $168 million in grosses).
Then came the “Cowboys & Aliens” genre
mashup from “Iron Man” director Jon Favreau
that confused (and unintentionally humored)
audiences with its trailers, and “The Change
Up,” which couldn’t translate the earlier
success of summer stars Jason Bateman
(“Horrible Bosses”) and Ryan Reynolds
(“Green Lantern”) into a raunchy hit, even
after a last-ditch attempt to sell tickets through
Comcast sibling Daily Candy. After Lionsgate’s
similarly mixed results with Groupon and “The
Lincoln Lawyer,” the studio may have proved
once and for all that discounted tickets still
won’t persuade audiences to see a bad movie.
DREAMWORKS ANIMATION
B- FOX
B-
It was back-to-back
summer sequel
disappointments for the
animation studio, with
“Shrek 4” reeling in less
green than its
predecessors last summer and “Kung Fu
Panda 2” packing less of a punch this year. A
smart digital-marketing strategy that
included a virtual Facebook parade and an
interactive You Tube clip featuring star Jack
Black may have come at the expense of an
under-used traditional media strategy, as
young boys flocked to “Pirates,” “Thor” and
“Cars 2” instead. Still, credit the studio for the
summer’s healthiest marketing tie-in: Kung
Fu Panda tofu from House Foods.
“X-Men: First Class” did
OK for a prequel, but
failed to match the
tickets sold by the
original trilogy or 2009
spinoff “Wolverine.” Still,
the mutant flick had a fun TV tie-in from
Farmers Insurance, perhaps the most unlikely
movie-marketing partner of the year. Fellow
prequel “Rise of the Planet of the Apes,”
however, fared more impressively, logging an
unexpected $133 million in its first two weeks
and it’s now on its way to reaching the $350
million mark worldwide. Meanwhile, “Mr.
Popper’s Penguins” proved there’s still juice
left in Jim Carrey’s family comedy arsenal,
taking in $66.5 million.
