{"id":8287,"date":"2010-04-19T17:06:43","date_gmt":"2010-04-19T16:06:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/?p=8287"},"modified":"2010-04-20T00:29:19","modified_gmt":"2010-04-19T23:29:19","slug":"kick-ass-disappoints-at-the-us-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/2010\/04\/19\/kick-ass-disappoints-at-the-us-box-office\/","title":{"rendered":"Kick-Ass disappoints at the US box office"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Despite an expensive marketing campaign and web-fuelled hype Kick-Ass<\/a><\/strong> under performed at the US box office this weekend<\/a>.<\/p>\n

There had been expectations that it would hit the Number 1 slot and could have a $30 million opening, but it failed to hit the top slot which was instead claimed by the DreamWorks animated film How To Train Your Dragon<\/a>, which is in its fourth week of release.<\/p>\n

* UPDATE 19\/04\/10: Variety are now reporting that Kick-Ass was the Number 1 film of the weekend<\/a> as Lionsgate opened it early on Thursday and are counting those grosses in with their final figure. This allows them to claim the weekend, although the figures are so narrow I still think the studio are going to be disappointed with this opening. *<\/p>\n

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It is worth pointing out that Kick-Ass was an interesting case study as it was funded outside the studio system and was a rare example of a high profile indie film having a shot at making some decent cash.<\/p>\n

Things looked promising as it was being released by Lionsgate<\/a> (the only major distributor outside of the big six major studios) and they have a strong track record in releasing edgier films – like the Saw franchise<\/a> – to a wide audience.<\/p>\n

Kick-Ass seemed to be tailor made for them: it looked like a superhero movie; it had lots of carefully cultivated buzz on the geekier websites (AICN<\/a>, CHUD<\/a>); and it was a film that directly appealed to a hipper, younger audience.<\/p>\n

This meant that Lionsgate felt they had a potential breakthrough hit on their hands and they spent heavily marketing the film. Some have speculated they acquired it for $25m and $40m on prints and advertising, including TV ads like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Going in to the weekend it had decent reviews (76 on Rotten Tomatoes<\/a>, 67 on Metacritic<\/a>), online buzz, awareness and it was on a load of screens with little in the way of serious rivals (the main one being the US remake of Death of a Funeral<\/a>).<\/p>\n

All this boded well and\u00a0some Hollywood observers were even\u00a0expecting it to make $30m<\/a>.<\/p>\n

By the end of the weekend it had only grossed $19.7m<\/a> and had been (narrowly) beaten to the top slot by an animated film that had already been out for three weeks.<\/p>\n

Why did it\u00a0under perform?<\/p>\n

My guess is that it played well to the male-skewing fanbase but just didn’t connect with the wider audience due to the violence, the in-your-face tone of the film and the fact that it was not a conventional super-hero movie at all.<\/p>\n

Distributor Lionsgate’s exit polling<\/a> indicated that 60 percent of those who saw\u00a0Kick-Ass\u00a0audience were male and 50 percent was under 25 years old.<\/p>\n

In essence, the geeks raved and went to see it but the wider audience didn’t.<\/p>\n

Given that the accepted formula for a film’s theatrical gross is to multiply the opening weekend figures by 2.5, this would suggest Kick-Ass is only going to gross around $<\/strong>65m.<\/p>\n

This might seem a respectable number for an independent production but in order to greenlight a sequel and build a franchise, they’d be looking for a higher number.<\/p>\n

Although the film had created levels of hysteria amongst fanboys not seen since Watchmen<\/a>, it is a\u00a0salutary\u00a0reminder that creating a genuine mainstream hit outside the studio system remains difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Despite an expensive marketing campaign and web-fuelled hype Kick-Ass underperformed at the US box office this weekend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,2],"tags":[1371],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmdetail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}