In the aftermath of the meat grinder that is San Diego Comic Con and
with the relative underperformance of Pacific Rim (in cinemas now! Go see it!)
I’ve been wondering how much of a dollar figure can you put on the support of
the worldwide, internet savvy nerd. Are films and comic books destined to
remain in some form of ghetto? Ignored by the mass audience until something
like “The Avengers” or “Harry Potter” breaks out into the mainstream once a
decade? Full disclosure, I’m a geek. I play video games, have watched and
enjoyed Anime, read comics etc. But I’m also financially minded, I studied
Business in college and work in that area, I read a lot of articles about
economics and finance. My life is clearly thrill a minute stuff to be sure. As
a result of my education, I’ve always been interested in the business part of
“entertainment business.” I’ve been known to read a book or two about the topic
on my commute to work.
First, let’s talk “Pacific Rim”. I saw it, loved it and will likely try
to see it again before it leaves cinemas. I’m sure many of you reading this had
the same reaction. My Twitter and Facebook feeds are full of my friends saying
great things about the film. It’s probably got the best word of mouth of any
film this summer. But the end result is that the movie will struggle to achieve
$100 million in its theatrical release in the United States. It’s good money to
be sure but it’s far behind several inferior films released this summer. A
cinema ticket costs ten dollars, a 3-d ticket somewhere around fourteen
dollars. Going by those metrics probably around seven to nine million Americans
will pay to go see Pacific Rim in the cinema. When you take into account those
of us that will go see it twice or even three times the number of paying
individuals shrinks down to the lower end of that 7 to 9 million figure.
That’s a reasonably sized market, but it’s only about 3% of the
population of the entire country going to see one of the biggest and best
summer films of the year. The film clearly hasn’t hit the mainstream in the way
that its makers would have liked. It had a few things going against it: no brand name
recognition and no “stars” being the main ones. Studios
cannot make money selling a mass released product to 3% of the people, which
means that films need to reach a broad audience. One way of ensuring this has
been to take product from other sources and adapt it. Comics and books are the
old reliables for adaptation as evidenced by the proliferation of comic books
on screen we’ve seen since the mid-nineties. World War Z was based on a
well-received, though not really mainstream book. Adaptations of pre-existing
material have benefits, if they’re good they have a built in fan base and have
a story arc mapped out on the page which means less guessing as to how to fix
those problems in the third act.
Pacific Rim is an original creation, more or less, it’s heavily
influenced by Japanese monster and mecha films and shows but it’s not a
straightforward adaption of any of them. As a result it’s not as easy to market
it to mainstream audiences. Most peoples experiences with the genres it draws
from are “Godzilla” or something brought over from Japan and badly dubbed to be
shown to an audience of sugar crazed eight year olds in the mid to late eighties.
Telling people that the movie is “Robotech versus Godzilla” isn’t going to sell
tickets. We’ve already been burned by that sort of thing thanks to Matthew
Broderick. One complaint I’ve read about Pacific Rim is that the trailers didn’t
grab people. This is most likely because the coolest stuff from the film isn’t blown in the trailers. This is
something that’s infected Hollywood in a big way this past decade. The money
shots are used up in two minutes of footage shown four months before the film
is released. It drags people in to see the film but it also leaves audiences
with a bad taste in their mouths once the film is finished
Which brings me to San Diego Comic Con, this years’s convention was the
biggest ever. 140,000 people passed through the doors of the convention centre
to see previews of next year’s slate of geek friendly product. There were
massive queues, some crying, new trailers etc. What got good buzz? The Hunger
Games, The announcement of Batman versus Superman, The Marvel Studios panel and
Agents of SHIELD. These properties don’t really need SDCC to sell themselves,
they’re based on pre-existing material with a large fanbase. The trailer for
Catching Fire could have been released at any time and garnered just as much
attention. Batman versus Superman is a fine idea until you hear that Zack
Snyder is directing it because you can then be assured that the plot can be
written in two sentences: Batman and Superman are manipulated by some villain
to fight each other. They then team up to take down said villain.
SDCC is a great promotional tool but it mainly works for pre-existing
properties and caters to those fan-bases. The hype about the show being where
projects are made or broken is just hype. There’s very little in the way of
evidence to back up that assumption. New properties, whether they’re
independent comics or new TV shows don’t break out into the main stream from a
good showing at SDCC. I went to SDCC a few years back, one of those years there
was reasonable buzz about the “Bionic Woman” pilot that was shown. The result?
The series didn’t survive. Good word of mouth from SDCC didn’t help it reach a
worthwhile audience share. Maybe there are examples of breakout successes for
new properties from the convention but I’m honestly struggling to remember
any. The hype generated by SDCC
doesn’t pass beyond the people who were probably going to buy or watch the
product anyway and that audience isn’t particularly large to begin with.
So in short, the engaged, hardcore geek audience is small, maybe it’s
five million people in the United States and a few percent of the global market
worldwide. There’s money to be made there for sure. But is it enough money to
fund massive films and base an enterprise on? I think this year and next year
will show it for certain. The summer blockbusters this year all underperformed
except for Iron Man 3 (which was successful on the back of 2 previous films and
the Avengers). Will the blockbuster season become one breakout hit per year
with a bunch of barely profitable also rans like this summer has been? It’s a
scary thought and it would mean that our summer films become ever more generic,
mindless and dumb in order to get Joe and Joan Average to attend them in
cinemas. Scripts and production design will continue to fall in importance in
the Studio’s minds as it will all be about the marketing. Trailers will
continue to show the best moments of the movie in order to get people in the
doors. Which is exactly what Pacific Rim didn’t do and is now paying for.
Go see Pacific Rim and show the studios that there’s an audience for a
superior summer film, before it’s too late
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