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Indie Sizzle vs. Hollywood Fizzle
Sundance vs. Hollywood: Which has better legs?
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| The Hulk scared up an audience dropout of 70 percent between its opening and second weekends. |
A feeding frenzy.” “a behemoth swinging its weight around.” “completely irrational.” each of these phrases has been used by respected members of the film community (Steven Soderbergh, Lory Smith and John Anderson, respectively, to be exact) to describe that orgy of film and fraternization otherwise know as the Sundance Film Festival. In recent years, many who preferred the liberated, art-centric, bohemian air that festivals once symbolized have taken to labeling Sundance a mere marketing arm of the studios and mini-majors.
Over-anticipated and self-indulgent Sundance may be, but with good reason: while studio blockbusters are busting after opening weekend, Sundance winners are wowing wider audiences with each passing day. Why? Audiences believe that Sundance films are better.
Summer 2003 boasted a behemoth line-up of big-name action flicks. The Hulk, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle were three of the studio system's heftiest (and most costly) ventures. At an average budget of roughly $150 million each, these overblown offerings grossed their way into 2003's top 10, but did little to invigorate viewers. The proof is in the numbers.
The Hulk opened with a record weekend, but played a >deflated second week with losses of over $44 million. One of the summer's most massive disappointments, in just seven days, The Hulk's audience dropped 70 percent.
Terminator 3 showed a similar lack of staying power, plummeting $25 million in sales between the first and second weekends—an audience fall-off of 56 percent.
The hyper-hyped Charlie's Angels sequel lacked longevity, too, forfeiting 63 percent of its viewers in a cascading loss of $24 million in sales the weekend after its opening.
These huge second weekend droughts are not unique to the fatuous flicks of 2003, but are evidence of a growing Hollywood trend. “Today, if you drop only 50 percent your second weekend, that's considered pretty good,” says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations Company, a firm that tracks box office stats. “We always think it can't get any worse, but now it's not unusual to see some 70 percent—even 80 percent—drops.”
Why are studio blockbusters becoming one-weekend wonders? Why did summer movies stick around a decade ago, taking only 54 percent of their total grosses in the first three weeks, while last year's top 10 devoured 75 percent of their audiences right off the bat?
For one, the average wide-release studio movie plays on 3,200 screens, compared to a mere 1,200 screens in 1993. This means many more moviegoers can see a blockbuster opening weekend—and they do, thanks to the typical $75 million marketing campaigns waged for most worldwide releases.
Still, not everyone sees big-name films on opening weekend. So why the drastic drop in numbers? And why, contrary to studio executives' hopes, aren't theatergoers going back for seconds? Why do these mammoth movies sizzle... then fizzle?
“Big marketing blitzes can buy you an opening-week audience,” offers Dergarabedian, “but ‘bought' is all it is. For any kind of staying power, you need word of mouth... [Negative] word of mouth is killing Hollywood.”
Word of mouth may be killing Hollywood, but it's a problem the better films (read: Sundance winners) don't have.
Thomas McCarthy's The Station Agent, the 2003 Sundance Audience Award winner, had a modest domestic gross its first weekend (nothing compared to its multimillion dollar studio contemporaries). But unlike many studio films, The Station Agent didn't bomb the following weekend. In fact, it pleased its audience so much that it actually started to gain viewers. In three weeks, this Sundance winner's sales swelled a whopping 400 percent!
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| Sundance favorites American Splendor, starring Hope Davis and Paul Giamatti, and The Station Agent, with Peter Dinklage, proved they had staying power. | |
Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini's Sundance Grand Jury Prize winner, American Splendor, also enjoyed the word of mouth that trails in the wake of pleasing product. In two weeks, its sales exploded 185 percent. By its fifth weekend, it was showing on 45 times as many screens as it did when it opened.
Together, the domestic grosses of these two Sundance films was almost nine times their combined budgets, while the grosses of The Hulk and Terminator 3 were a negative four percent of their costs.
At a time when audiences are more curious, have more “alternative” choices and are more insulted by Hollywood's hollow handiwork, theatergoers seem to prefer more substantial cinema.
“Clearly, the audience is not liking [the blockbusters],” Newsweek movie critic David Ansen proclaimed to The Washington Post. “[Through word of mouth] viewers are creating larger audiences for the stuff they like, and killing off audiences for the stuff they don't,” adds Anthony Kusich, a Reel Source, Inc. box office analyst.
As swollen and contrived as Sundance and its fellow festivals may be, the numbers prove that their moviemakers are at least conscious of what the studios have forgotten: make good movies and, above all else, please the audience.
“I get the impression that the movers and shakers of Hollywood think they control the public,” renowned critic Leonard Maltin surmised to The Washington Post, “but they can't. The audience has the final say. They always have and they always will.” MM
*Box office numbers from www.the-movie-times.com and www.the-numbers.com.
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COMMENTS | POST A COMMENT 
- Comment by Hoodia Weight Loss Pill on 5/29/08 at 2:35 pm
Great article. Well written, this will certainly help.
- Comment by Eee PC 1008 on 5/23/09 at 9:15 am
I was googling around abit on the Hulk and found this page. Wow, didn’t realize that it was release so long ago. Should be a cheap dvd pickup!
- Comment by منتديـات on 11/25/10 at 9:19 am
- Comment by منتديـات on 11/27/10 at 1:48 pm
This story was published in the Winter 2004 MovieMaker Magazine. The headline was:
Indie Sizzle vs. Studio Fizzle / Sundance vs. Hollywood: Which has better legs?
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