Close encounters
Faceoff could prove Mayday for tentpoles
It is nearly impossible to overstate the importance of each film to its respective studio. Collectively, the films will cost in the neighborhood of $1 billion to make and market.
As franchises, these films are not just big one-off bets: each is a vital investment in keeping alive a franchise that can generate billions of dollars in ancillary revenues and, in the case of Disney and Sony, in other businesses at the congloms. With DreamWorks Animation, whose only business is movies, the "Shrek" character is a critical component of its stock price.
So why, with so much at stake, cluster all of the movies in the same month? After all, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" just proved the perils of putting other franchises in its wake: It seriously dented the box-office results of "Superman" and "Cars" abroad.
Studios optimistically believe that the market will expand with the critical mass of pics. Pessimists sense a disaster that will have the industry rethinking the entire nature of the tentpole strategy.
"If one of these films doesn't work, a franchise comes crashing down," says an exec at one of the three studios. "It has nothing to do with what these films cost; it has everything to do with the survival of an enterprise."
Previous installments of the franchises, including "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," which is still doing significant business, have grossed a combined $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office.
For the third installments to be successful -- given how much the three studios are spending to make and market the pics -- it's hardly a far cry to say that success on these pics will be a domestic gross north of $300 million.
But as reasonable as that sounds given the franchises' track record, history says that at least one of the pictures will stumble. May is the favorite time to launch such tentpoles, but this year "Poseidon" flopped and "Mission: Impossible 3" underperformed.
In fact, the only time when two May releases each passed $300 million domestic was in 2002 with "Spider-Man" and "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones."
The combined domestic gross of "Spider-Man 2," "Shrek 2" and "Pirates 2" (so far) is $1.2 billion. For sake of comparison, the record for the biggest May ever was set in 2003 when all pics released that month -- a list that includes "Finding Nemo," "Bruce Almighty," "The Matrix Reloaded," and "X2: X-Men United" -- cumed a total of $1.4 billion.
The confluence of these three pictures will put the industry in uncharted territory.
"You can't go historically," says DreamWorks Animation marketing head Terry Press, "because you are looking at a history-making month."
Tentpole pics were once thought of as a way for studios to minimize risk. In many quarters, making one giant event picture for $200 million is thought to be a safer bet than four pictures at $50 million each.
The biggest problem with that strategy is that every studio is now using it.
In fact, execs at the three studios realize that history is against all three tentpoles succeeding. They just don't think theirs will be the one to misfire.
Privately, a triangular firing squad of sorts is forming, with rival studio execs sniping about the other's projects. Each has made the case that "Spider-Man 2" or "Shrek 2" or "Pirates 2" may have made money for its studio, but it was a disappointment to fans.
Any of the studios could still change its date, but there is little room left on the calendar. The only other franchise in their league, "Harry Potter," has another installment that opens on July 13, six weeks after "Pirates."
After the avalanche in May, a studio is planning to hoist a tentpole every weekend for an unbroken 10-week stretch from June to August: Warners' "Ocean's Thirteen" (June 8), Fox's "Fantastic Four 2" (June 15), U's sequel "Evan Almighty" (June 22), Pixar and Disney's "Ratatouille" (June 29), DreamWorks-Paramount's "Transformers" (July 4), Warners' "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" (July 13), U's Adam Sandler laffer "I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry" (July 20), Fox's long-awaited "The Simpsons Movie" (July 27), U's "The Bourne Ultimatum" (Aug. 3) and finally New Line's "Rush Hour 3" (Aug. 10).
What keeps the studios locked into these dates is the way they search for them. Often the first step when distrib execs pick a release date is checking how much a weekend has grossed in previous years.
They avoid less trafficked parts of the calendar, such as late August and early September. No studio has ever tried to launch a tentpole there.
So, there is a chicken-and-egg problem: Late August will continue to be avoided only until a studio finds success there, but it is going to take a studio to take the gamble to release a picture then.
In fact, the popularity of May demonstrates how summer can grow in Hollywood. The first weekend of May was once avoided as much as late August is now, until 1999 when Universal opened "The Mummy" on May 7 to $43 million.
"Spider-Man 3," which opens on May 4, is returning to the same frame that launched its first installment, when it set a three-day opening record of $116 million.
"It's my favorite spot in the summer," says Columbia marketing and distrib chairman Jeff Blake. "We've got the original lead off summer date that we had on 'Spider-Man 1' and that worked out pretty well for us. We're pretty confident we can make a pretty big splash."
Likewise, "Shrek the Third," opening on May 18, is in the same frame when the two previous pictures bowed.
"Yes, we would have preferred not to have 'Pirates' on our second week," says Jim Tharp, distrib prexy at Paramount, which will handle the pic. "Having said that, we like the May 18 date since it's been successful with both 'Shrek 1' and 'Shrek 2.' "
"Spider-Man 3" and "Shrek 3" had been on their dates for a long time when Disney decided in March to schedule "Pirates 3" on the Memorial Day weekend. Though both previous "Pirates" had done well launching on the weekend after July 4, that spot in 2007 is occupied by the fifth "Harry Potter," one of the few pics that "Pirates" can't force off its date.
Memorial Day weekend is considered one of the best grossing frames on the calendar. The record for the biggest total weekend was set over Memorial Day in 2004 when "The Day After Tomorrow" opened and "Shrek 2" was playing in its second week, boosting total box office to $248 million.
Likewise, Disney distrib topper Chuck Viane believes that the marketplace can expand to accommodate as many pics as audiences want to see.
"These titles could launch the most historic summer ever seen," he says. "Having been around this for so long, for me it's always about the movie. There's always room for two or three movies if they deliver."
Press says that with other big pics clear of the trio, "everyone will get their own room. It will be all about 'Spider-Man' for two weeks, then all about 'Shrek' and then all about 'Pirates.' "
In 2003, for instance, multiple pictures did prosper: "X2: X-Men United," "The Matrix Reloaded, "Bruce Almighty" and "Finding Nemo" opened successfully week after week.
Then again, tentpoles cost even more now. And in 2003, "Nemo" was the only one of the four May pics to pass $300 million domestically. "X-Men 2" was the lowest grossing of the bunch with $215 million domestically -- a good figure, but one that would be disappointing to any of the May 2007 trio.
So how much longer will the studios cram the summer sked?
Next May may prove to be the thing that makes studios more hesitant about greenlighting $200 million behemoths, and embrace a saner kind of crowd control.
"I think it'll be a defining time for the industry," says one exec. "Going into a summer with this many sequels, if one or two of the three don't work, we're talking about a big problem."
