Despite favorable reviews, the film adaptation of the Neil Gaiman/Charles Vess illustrated novel Stardust only brought in $9 million in its opening weekend, coming in at No. 4 in the week’s top ten films. Rush Hour 3 took the top spot with $50.2 million, followed by The Bourne Ultimatum and The Simpsons Movie.
Rob Moore with Paramount talks about the film’s less-than-stellar opening:
The movie’s theme made it difficult to market in a 30-second TV spot, said Rob Moore, Paramount’s head of worldwide marketing and distribution.
“When you make an original movie, it’s always very challenging to be able to communicate to your audience what the genre is,” he said. “These movies tend to be driven by word of mouth and home entertainment.”
Moore said it is expected to do better in international markets.
I guess Chris was right … which is too bad, because it’s a great film.
The bigger news, though, is how well the overall box office has been doing lately. Even though Rush Hour 3 didn’t make as much as the second film in the series, it is the sixth “threequel” of the summer to open in the No. 1 spot, and it ranks as the fourth biggest August opening ever. Also, this weekend’s top 12 movies grossed more than 30 percent higher than the top dozen on the same weekend last year. So far this year, the box office is up 6.6 percent to $6.324 billion and attendance is up 1.9 percent.
Joshua Rich offers up additional commentary on the weekend’s numbers over at EW.com. Also note these numebrs are estimates; final figures are due Monday.
August 12th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
I think the biggest problem with Stardust is that from the trailer it looks like yet another generic fantasy movie. I was a bit surprised to know that Neil Gaiman who’s work has been nothing short of brilliant thus far was behind this.
Judging just from the trailer:
- A young handsdome, but inexperienced guy
- Beautiful woman
- A pirate
- An air ship
- A powerful sorceress who wants…to be beautiful (never seen that before)
- Sword fights
- Magical explosions
All of this adds up to a very mediocre looking experience. The poster is really the least of its problems. Post-LOTR and Post-Pirates and Post-Harry Potter, you’ll need a lot more than the above listed elements if you want the big bucks. Where is the attempt at doing something new?
I heard that after hearing this, the financiers of “The Seeker: The Dark is Rising” had to be placed on 24hr suicide watch.
True story.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
I saw Stardust on Friday and it is FAR, FAR better than any of the Harry Potter films. Stardust is really an excellent movie. I highly recommend it (and I didn’t expect that much of it going in, because of the trailer.)
August 12th, 2007 at 10:03 pm
DeNiro looked completely out of place in the trailers I saw..and Claire Daines wasn’t especially charismatic in her scenes. Looks like everything Gaiman touches DOESN’T turn to gold.
August 13th, 2007 at 12:47 am
Well Stardust Is a generic Fantasy book, dont get me wrong the book wasnt bad, but it felt more like an old fairy tale than anything Gaiman had written, there was simply nothing special at all about it
August 13th, 2007 at 9:58 am
I haven’t seen the movie, but I will say that what set Stardust apart from other fairy tales was that it was, in a word, naughtier, from Dunstan Thorne’s rather explicitly described sexual romp with the slave girl that conceived Tristan (Tristran in the original) to the manner in which some of the dialog was written.
It wasn’t necessarily meant to be original, and was always rather predictable, but the real value added was a bit of an edge to the storytelling as a whole and the dialog in particular.
August 13th, 2007 at 12:25 pm
I thought it was a great movie, and I thought the problem with the marketing wasn’t so much that they didn’t know how to market it, but more that it wasn’t marketed.
I never once saw a television commercial for this movie.
That, and I think the general public can figure out if they want to see a movie on their own without being hand-held and told exactly what genre a movie is in. They just need to be aware the movie exists in the first place.
That said, the theater was pretty packed when I saw it.
August 13th, 2007 at 12:41 pm
I’m sure it’s good if Gaiman, and DeNiro are involved but I wasn’t interested in it. I was more interested in seeing Bourne or Rush hour. I saw The Simpsons already and I would see it again before seeing Stardust. I wish it did better at the box office but look on the bright side it did come in 4th, it could have come in 8th. The marketing is solely to blame, I have seen the commercial on TV maybe once, and I barely remember it. This could have done better if it was marketed better.
If it ever comes out on HBO I’ll check it out, since everyone says it’s good, but I just wasn’t moved to see it.
August 13th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
I’m getting Serenity flashbacks. This was an outstanding peice of work and deserved better than this at the box office. I saw the movie, having never read the book only because of a) Neil Gaiman and b)curious to see why De Niro would do a fantasy film. I hope it does better in DVD sales.
August 13th, 2007 at 4:47 pm
I saw a ton of tv trailers for it here in ny…and am going to see it and support it this week. lets be honest, the viewing public is no way to gage anything.
August 13th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Heh. Yeah, I had Serenity flashbacks too.
Which is sad, because this was SUCH an awesome movie.
August 13th, 2007 at 9:54 pm
Well of course people would rather go see a stupid racist/action/comedy film that they’d already seen twice already! It’s Amurrika!
August 13th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
I saw it on Friday afternoon and just loved it. Our theatre was 3/4 full, and the response I heard was overwhelmingly positive.
I actually have it as my movie of the summer right now…it’s not perfect, but it’s damn good.
If you’re on the fence about seeing it, hop onto to the go see it side…you’ll be glad you did!
August 13th, 2007 at 11:17 pm
this movie was one of my must sees. I’ve never seen any of the Bourne films, and though they get excellent reviews, I’m not in any hurry to see them. same with Harry Potter. Stardust was fantastic.
August 14th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
They didn’t do a good job of explaining the plot in the trailers at all. If you didn’t know the origin of the story it would just look like “evil queen” “good princess” adventure story with some light effects thrown in.
August 16th, 2007 at 2:00 pm
it was fun, but the soundtrack was just horrible and killed the film in places to me. too much “cueing” action and such in the music.
enjoyed it otherwise.
August 27th, 2007 at 5:09 pm
you can NOT judge a movie by it’s trailer…this movie was great…way better than i ever though it would be…someone up on top was judging this movie based on the trailers…i don’t see how their point of view about this movie even comes into play if they haven’t seen it yet…go see it you will LOVE it