{"id":10942,"date":"2010-12-01T21:01:41","date_gmt":"2010-12-02T02:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/?p=10942"},"modified":"2021-02-05T15:56:24","modified_gmt":"2021-02-05T20:56:24","slug":"tracking-tron-legacys-box-office-chances-and-the-dangers-of-the-blockbuster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/2010\/12\/01\/tracking-tron-legacys-box-office-chances-and-the-dangers-of-the-blockbuster\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking TRON: LEGACY\u2019s Box Office Chances And The Dangers Of The Blockbuster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Is Disney\u2019s Tron: Legacy<\/strong> going to be a hit or a miss? That\u2019s the question being posed by several box office tracking firms, who are projecting that the film may just be a miss, possibly pulling as low as a $35 million weekend box office take when it opens on December 17.\u00a0 Given that estimates of the film\u2019s budget have gone north of the $200 million mark, TRON: Legacy<\/strong> would have to earn at least $50 million its opening weekend in order to break even.<\/p>\n

Of course, this just based on some preliminary surveys, so the $35 million figure may not hold much water. Also, it should probably be pointed out that Disney\u2019s take on the Rapunzel fairy tale, Tangled<\/strong>, was only projected to earn in the neighborhood of $40 million it\u2019s opening weekend last week, but pulled closer to $69 million. Given that TRON: Legacy<\/strong> is set to open on IMAX and 3D screens as well in addition to traditional 2D screens, that $35 million figure feels exceptionally low when one factors in the ticket price bumps for those venues. I think it might be fair to say that box office tracking is not always an exact science.<\/p>\n

Box office tracking figures are often arrived at through surveys taken which gage a \u201ctypical\u201d potential moviegoer\u2019s awareness of and desire to see certain films. I find it hard to believe that with the amount of promotion that Disney has done for the flick in the last several weeks that there aren\u2019t too many people who aren\u2019t at least marginally aware of the film\u2019s upcoming release.<\/p>\n

Now granted, as a film blogger, I am probably an atypical moviegoer. I\u2019ve been following the progress of this film since it was just a faint whispered rumor on the breeze several years ago and have been looking forward to seeing what director Joseph Kosinski has up his sleeve with this film. I\u2019m also of the age to have seen the original TRON<\/strong> in theaters as a boy and for it to great a lasting impression which is helping to fuel my enthusiasm. But then again, there were lots of twelve-year-olds like me who saw TRON<\/strong> in the theaters and on video in the past 28 years and I would imagine that there is a significant number of them are also looking forward to a return visit to the cyberspace world inside of computers that the first film introduced us to.<\/p>\n

Walt Disney Pictures is banking more than just the estimated $200 million spent on the film\u2019s production that it will be a hit. They already have a sequel in development as well as plans for an animated series and theme park attractions. If TRON: Legacy<\/strong> tanks, it loses not only all the money it spent of production and promotion for the film, but also all development costs for these already in the pipeline follow-up projects, a potentially huge write-off.<\/p>\n

What this leaves us with, is an illustration of the dangers that have come from the corporate blockbuster mentality. In the Golden Age of Hollywood, studios constantly churned out product for a movie-hungry audience. If a couple of films underperformed, the studio had plenty of more product on the way that would make up those losses.<\/p>\n

But these days, things are different. The collapse of the studio system and the rise of the talent agency system leaves us with studios financially unable to produce films in the quantity that they did in the 1930s through the 50s. And less product means greater risk. Studios are unable to offset the cost of a few bad films with the profits of a couple of successful films anymore, as the number of films they have to even out such profits and losses has dramatically shrunk. By placing all of their eggs in just a couple of baskets, studios are taking greater and greater gambles on their very own survival. This problem is only compounded within vertically integrated companies like Disney, who hope that a film like TRON: Legacy<\/strong> is a hit so they can launch numerous related projects across its various corporate components such as television and theme parks. How much of Disney\u2019s projected future corporate earnings are based on their expectations of how successful TRON<\/strong> will be?<\/p>\n

Now I\u2019m sure that Disney is a big enough company to absorb any red ink TRON: Legacy<\/strong> may spill on the overall balance sheet. I certainly don\u2019t think that things will get as bad for Disney as they did for United Artists back in 1980 when Michael Cimino\u2019s Heaven\u2019s Gate<\/strong> bankrupted the studio. But the possibility is always there for some other studios. It only took a couple of bad films to place MGM into the financial straits it is currently trapped in.<\/p>\n

And a poor TRON: Legacy<\/strong> box office performance also begs the question as to what will happen to some of the other big budget projects currently in development. Will the studio look at scaling back its financial commitment to Kosinski\u2019s planned remake of The Black Hole<\/strong> or David Fincher\u2019s new take on 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea<\/strong>? I certainly hope not, as these projects look to be far more interesting family film fare than some of the other upcoming films from other studios like live-action\/CGI hybrids The Smurfs<\/strong> and Yogi Bear<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

Via The Hollywood Reporter<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is Disney\u2019s Tron: Legacy going to be a hit or a miss? That\u2019s the question being posed by several box office tracking firms, who are projecting that the film may just be a miss, possibly [click for more]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[84],"tags":[1855],"series":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10942","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-news","7":"tag-tron-legacy"},"aioseo_notices":[],"nelio_content":{"autoShareEndMode":"never","automationSources":{"useCustomSentences":false,"customSentences":[]},"efiAlt":"","efiUrl":"","followers":[2],"highlights":[],"isAutoShareEnabled":false,"networkImageIds":[],"permalinkQueryArgs":[],"series":[],"suggestedReferences":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10942\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10942"},{"taxonomy":"series","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.filmbuffonline.com\/FBOLNewsreel\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/series?post=10942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}