In an attempt to unravel the mysteries (and create some new ones) surrounding the box office gross of Titanic, CRAIG is joined by Sweetie Guy Hutchinson of bunchojunk.com.
Sweetie: Titanic is the highest grossing film of all time and I can’t figure out why. Take a look at the numbers. The film grossed over 600 MILLION dollars in the US! The next biggest gross is that of Star Wars (only 420 million). Plus, those Star Wars numbers are inflated by a re-release that contained new footage. That isn’t quite fair.
Still, if Titanic was re-released today with (or without) additional footage of Leo shooting first, I doubt it would make any money.
For such a successful flick, it seems to have been forgotten. I haven’t even seen it on network TV in the past 5 or 6 years!
CRAIG: What amazes me most about Titanic is that the movie consistently made 20 million or more each weekend for the majority of the winter of '97/'98. If I'm not mistaken Spice World finally bested it to take the # 1 slot after almost 20 consecutive weeks. Now I didn't see Titanic when it was in theaters (I was busy watching movies like Tomorrow Never Dies ((which I lost a bet on opening weekend when it fell short of first place behind Titanic for the weekend)) and the aforementioned ((and dare I say highly underrated)) Spice World), but I can't imagine that audiences were consistently lining up to see this flick. I've always been a bit skeptical of how box office grosses are calculated and Titanic's obscene run did little to convince me that something wasn't rotten in Denmark. It almost seems like the weekly 20 million dollar figure was arbitrary. I think one of the funniest things to consider is that had Titanic opened that summer as was originally planned it would have gotten crushed. Obviously someone made the right call moving it to a less competitive time of year.
Sweetie: That's right! It was supposed to be a summer release but then it got bumped to the winter! James Cameron was amazing with his ability to spin the public into believing that going over budget is a good thing. All I kept hearing from people was "hey, if I have to spend $8 on a movie, I am glad the movie cost 300 gazillion dollars!"
Suddenly people believed it was a good thing to waste absurd amounts of money to make a movie that Steven Spielberg could have made for fewer than 50 million.
Another thing I remember about this was that Celine Dion song. I'm not a fan, but I must admit that was a catchy song! I think a considerable amount of people were drawn to the theater just to hear that song. I also believe SHE went over budget by 200 million dollars on the song by singing into a solid gold and diamond encrusted microphone.
Spice World on the other hand BARELY went over budget (having Sporty and Posh in some of the same scenes was expensive).
By the way, I like your use of parenthesis within parenthesis. What were we talking about?
CRAIG: What can I say? I'm a parenthetical fiend. I think that we were talking about over budget water movies from the '90s that had box office results that confuse movie folks to this day. So, as I believe I was about to say before we got sidetracked, why did Kevin Costner's character need to have gills?
Sweetie: Kevin Costner was the bomb in Dragonfly, yo.
Anyway, I think you may be on to something about the box office being artificially inflated. It seems that every year some mini controversy arrives where a studio claims that another studio inflated the gross of their film. If I remember, Scream was accused of this. It's not too far of a stretch to imagine that Titanic's grosses are inflated.
Also, Titanic really lucked out when it came to competition. Take a look at some of the other films that played against it:
12/19 (Titanic opening weekend): Mouse Hunt, Tomorrow Never Dies
12/26: An American Werewolf in Paris, Jackie Brown, Mr. Magoo, The Postman, As Good as It Gets, Wag the Dog
12/31: Oscar and Lucinda
1/9: Firestorm
1/16: Fallen, Half Baked, Hard Rain
1/23: Phantoms, Spice World
1/30: Deep Rising, Desperate Measures
2/6: Blues Brothers 2000, The Replacement Killers
2/13: The Borrowers, Sphere, The Wedding Singer
2/20: Palmetto, Senseless
2/27: Caught Up, Dark City, Kissing a Fool, Krippendorf's Tribe
There are definitely some great films on that list (Dark City, Caught Up) and some hits (The Wedding Singer, Tomorrow Never Dies) but no real mega-hit films. Also, look at how many flops there were during that time. Many of these films were SUPPOSED to be mega-hits (Sphere, Deep Rising, Blues Brothers 2000) but fell well short of any real box office cash.
CRAIG: We see the box office disputes all the time. What happens is that the studio releases an estimate for what they think the movie will make and in turn on Sunday the movie houses (are they still called movie houses?) release figures based on what the film has done on Friday and Saturday. These estimates are usually a bit off mark by the time the final box office results are calculated on Monday. Either way, there definitely had to be some creative book cooking in the case of Titanic. Just look at the performance of every Leo movie since (and most look to Leo when they mention the film's success). I can't imagine that all of the teenie boppers that flooded the cinemas to see Leo in Titanic wouldn't have showed their loyalty to him a scant few months later when The Man in the Iron Mask was released. What I can't understand is that if there was some sort of conspiracy surrounding Titanic, why did Hollywood so easily drink from James Cameron's "Kool Aid"? I mean I don't think that anyone who considers themselves any kind of serious movie person would dispute that LA Confidential should have won best picture instead of Titanic. And speaking of Sphere, didn't it seem like Dustin Hoffman had a new movie coming out every week around that time?
Sweetie: Try this on for a conspiracy: virtually all of the all time box office champs at the time were made by Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. What if the book cooking was the part of a collective feeling amongst the major studios and media that these two guys were far too powerful and perhaps a target of professional jealousy? Maybe everyone was so glad to see a monster hit without either of them attached that they jumped on board. Looking back, I don't think Titanic ever had any "backlash." Most super successful films do. This film seemed to escape it. I don't recall Letterman or Leno making negative jokes about. When it was released it seemed to skate by with no criticism at all. On the other hand, when it was supposed to come out in the summer there was a whole lot of criticism and people talked about what a flop it would be. This may be one of the only hit films in history that was delayed by so long. Often a delay is certain doom for a flick.
CRAIG: Wow, now you really have me thinking. I just can't believe that Titanic was able to set such a dominant record. I mean, I was certain that one of the Lord of the Rings movies would out gross it. How could one of them have not with all of the repeat business that those flicks did. Another weird thing to wonder about is why Cameron hasn't made a film since? He was putting out films on a fairly consistent basis right up until Titanic came out.
Sweetie: Yeah, the fact that Cameron has stayed away from making films for almost 10 years is certainly strange. I guess part of that has to be fear that no matter what you do next it will be a disappointment.
Also, while it is certainly not a scientific survey, the IMDB's top 250 films DOES NOT include Titanic. The list is based on user ratings. Titanic has a rating of 6.9 out of 10. Certainly not something to be embarrassed by, but isn’t this supposed to be the most popular film of all time?
A quick search of Google did not turn up ANY Titanic fan sites! On the other hand titles like Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Jurassic Park turn up tons of fan sites and fan clubs.
Even much lesser films like Natural Born Killers have sections of cyberspace maintained by devotees. Isn’t it odd that no one seems to have any passion about the most popular film of all time?
I asked a friend (she loved this film) "When was the last time you watched Titanic?" She said, "Probably just after it came out on tape."
CRAIG: Now that is really interesting. How could the highest grossing film of all time not have made the IMDB top 250 list? Every other film in the top 20 has surely made the list. Something doesn't smell right. Oh wait a minute that might be me.
18 comments:
Does anyone have Titanic on DVD? I know everyone got the VHS tape for Christmas that year it was released, but did anyone RE-purchase it on DVD?
If anyone did pick it up on DVD they might be unhappy to hear that on 10/25 Paramount is releasing a 3-Disc Special Edition.
Curious to see how well it will do.
Wow guys, bravo for a nice post, especially the part about Kevin Costner's gills. Anyway, I unfortunately saw Titanic in the movies twice (I know it is embarrasing). In any case, I think the hype was there, no question, and it was one of those things where the masses flooded to it.
I wonder how Passion of the Christ adds up in tems of its box office numbers versus the IMDB Top 250.
Good question, T-bone. The Passion of the Christ earns a 7.4 user rating on the IMBD (which is higher than the 6.9 of Titanic.)
The Passion of the Christ made only about 1/2 as much much as Titanic, however.
Although the 7.4 (out of 10) is still not in line with it's box office draw it should be noted that Passion of the Christ likely received many "0" votes from people who did not see it but wanted to bring it's rating down.
You may remember some Jewish groups protested and criticized the film before anyone had ever seen it. Also, a certain percentage of atheists will cast a negative vote on anything the casts religion in a positive light.
Does this make any sense?
Didn't theater owners also complain about the running time? Since it was longer than most movies they wouldn't be able to have as many showings.
Damn good point. Jason.
With Titanic's epic running time it had about 30% LESS showings than most films. Somehow it STILL was able to top the box office charts!
That's an excellent point, Jason. That fact alone makes Titanic's dominant box office showing even more mysterious.
Sweetie, you'll notice "0" ratings for lots of controversial or over hyped films, so the Passion's rating doesn't surprise me. I noticed a trend a few years back where Star Wars fans and Matrix fans were beating up on each other on their respective IMDB message boards. I'm sure both franchises suffered many "0" ratings due to that feud.
Yes indeed. There was a simmilar war (but even goofier) between Mystery Science Theater fans (representing the film Mano's The Hand's of Fate) and WWF fans, particularly fans of wrestlecrap.com (representing the Hulk Hogan film Santa With Muscles.)
In this war, however, both films were fighting for the spot of WORST film when opposing fans started giving the film a "10" to bring the rating up!
The only true 10 is the Roddy Piper movie about the aliens and the sunglasses. That and that Sean Penn, Michael J. Fox Vietnam movie.
James Cameron has become obsessed with the Titanic and spends his time diving down to it repeatedly and showcasing it on the Discovery Channel.
Wow, you guys are a couple of regular Oliver Stones!!! I don't buy into any conspiracy theories about over-inflated grosses or anything like that; the simple fact is that "Titanic" for some reason struck a chord in a certain demographic that had never really been tapped into before, and these teenaged girls (and T-Bone) flocked to the theatres in droves, repeatedly. And then they outgrew it, which explains why nobody really cares about the film anymore. Certainly the same people who made multiple trips to the cinema are not the same people who rate movies on imdb.com.
The biggest problem I always had with "Titanic" was that Cameron justified spending this obscene amount of money on the ship, making sure every tiniest detail was authentic, when the only one who would ever know any different would be him. And then somebody forgot to write a script, so they just trotted out the same tired love-story cliches that have been seen a billion times before. Yawn.
You know that Oliver Stone is one of my heros...
To address your point, I think the main thing that confounds me about "Titanic" is the obscene amount of money that it made and that no other film has even come close to its domestic box-office. The only film that can almost rest in the same category is "Gone With the Wind," which when it is inflated to match the current cost of a ticket would clearly blow "Titanic" out of the water. What is interesting about this is that when "GWTW" was released in 1939 there was less competetion (which meant a majority of the population was going to see the same movies)and the films had much longer theatrical runs so people had no choice but to see movies like it over and over again.
I don't buy the fad aspect of "Titanic," mainly because it has never been repeated. Sure tons and tons of teens went to see it, but it still doesn't explain its absurd numbers.
Something just isn't right.
you guys are experts at this.
keep it up!
I think James Cameron will look like Kenny Rogers in about 5 years.
Mitch - Sounds like you've been drinking laundry detergent.
I just HAD to comment. A. Titanic is my all time favorite movie. Not because of LEO and not because of the romantic storyline. For me, like most of the flocking fans, it was about the history of the Titanic. Remember when National Geographic published that they found the hull and it was the cover story? Wow. That was the day I fell in love with that big destroyed boat.
The whole thing about normal people living life until tragedy hits.. that's what everyone was watching it for (myself, three times in the theater). I know, I get the cracks about Leo's bad acting, Kate's worse acting, etc. but I don't mind -- I watched it because of the third class and the crew and everyone that actually tried to help those victims. And because I wasn't born that year, so the only way I could see it portrayed was in that movie. And when Katrina airs in every major theater in America, circa 2056, I'll probably be there then too.
Americans were watching for the tragedy. Check out the discovery channel. They gross alot of viewers on every Titanic study they do. (BTW the one that showed the baths was AWESOME.)
anyway, that's my 2 cents.
Jaded, thanks for the comment.
I think the funniest thing about my conversation with Sweetie is that neither one of us even got into the actual movie. We both seemed more interested in figuring out why it is the highest grossing film of all time. Your comment shed some light on a view that I'm sure that many people share. Thanks again.
Mitch, thanks for the comments. I'll try and make my grammar more gooder in the future.
I really wish I had got to talk about the movie, too. When I saw it (in the theater, but only after someone spoiled the ending) all I kept waiting was for Billy Zane to turn into a cyborg.
In fact I'm still waiting.
I also think Craig writes like a re-re.
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