Even though original Independence Day star Will Smith loudly declared this week that instantaneous social media messaging makes it impossible for studios to shield subpar movies going into opening weekend, 20th Century Fox becomes the latest studio to try doing just that. 20th Century Fox has done a shrewd job putting off judgment day on its sequel Independence Day: Resurgence (which Smith opted out of) from the domestic critical press until Friday morning, the day the Roland Emmerich-directed title officially opens wide. While trade reviews hit yesterday, they were done by overseas contributors and not the top critics of THR or Variety. Any U.S. critic looking to get a jump on Resurgence can buy a ticket to the film tomorrow night when it begins its weekend previews at 8 PM. Both trades deemed the sequel to be silly, mindless fun.
Such unconventional moves by a major studio for a $165M-$200M sequel 20 years in the making sends up warning flags to U.S. press. But Independence Day: Resurgence — which has benefited in buzz from limited sampling for critical aggregators like Rotten Tomatoes — might well sneak out a decent opening weekend. There have been limited instances in the past when studios held the press completely back from advance screenings, and in such cases, decent B.O. results were achieved, such as Paramount with 2008’s Cloverfield ($40M opening), 2009’s G.I. Joe: The Rise Of Cobra ($54.7M FSS) and Fox with 2004’s Alien Vs. Predator ($38.3M FSS).
Contrast that to Universal, screening Warcraft in advance for critics and watching the film get savaged. Fortunately, its numbers in China ($205M-plus) and other overseas territories ($135M) has helped the $170M film from being a fast red ink write-down after terrible results in the U.S ($39.3M). Fox’s tactics to control word of mouth come at a time when studios are daunted by the power of critic aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic and their increasing impact on a film’s opening weekend.
Making Resurgence available to the UK press is likely a safer bet for Fox: Its overseas launch is expected to rake in $100M-$150M from China, Russia, the UK and Latin America this weekend.
Those results will likely save Resurgence from its sinkhole here in the U.S. where it’s expected to be thrown out of the No. 1 spot by Finding Dory‘s second weekend. Here, it is on course to take second place with an opening between $45M-$52M. That projection for Resurgence doesn’t come close to recent tentpole reboots like Jurassic World and Star Wars: The Force Awakens, each of which made $200M-plus record debuts. When Independence Day opened in July 1996, it racked up opening records for the July 4th holiday with $96.1M in its first six days at the domestic B.O., with a U.S./Canada total of $306.2M and $817.4M worldwide. It catapulted Smith to A-list star status.
Smith’s comments about old games played by studios to shield films from critics were made at a Cannes Lions marketing session about the challenge of mounting tentpoles in the digital age. Smith’s decision to opt out of the sequel that launched him came as he re-calibrated his career moves in the wake of disappointments. He has become more selective about material. In Smith’s opinion, moviegoers are not so easily duped by the marketing of formulaic movies. And social media now makes it impossible to keep the stink off a bad movie.
“The power has gone away from the marketers,” Smith said, and as a star, he has to “not trick them (fans) into going to see Wild Wild West...Back in the ’80s and ’90s you had a piece of crap movie you put a trailer with a lot of explosions and it was Wednesday before people knew your movie was sh*t,” Smith explained. “But now what happens is 10 minutes into the movie, people are tweeting ‘This is sh*t, go see Vin Diesel’.”
Whenever rival distributors identify a strong four-quad title like Jurassic World or Captain America: Civil War on the release schedule, they typically stay away, but in this case, many are smelling blood with Resurgence and have piled on the weekend to chip away at its demos. Seeing a great opportunity to counterprogram against the Emmerich movie and lure young women is Sony’s Blake Lively shark thriller The Shallows, which moved to this Friday last week and is set to make $7M-$11M at 2,900-plus locations. Warner Bros./New Line/Universal’s Kevin Hart-Dwayne Johnson action comedy Central Intelligence is expected to hold at -45% with a $16M second weekend. STX Entertainment is opening its Matthew McConaughey Civil War epic Free State Of Jones which looks to bring in between $11M-$13M at 2,815 locations. Finally, Broad Green has Amazon’s Nicolas Winding Refn teen horror thriller The Neon Demon which is banking on an estimated $2M from 770 screens.
I don’t know why people are so caught up on critics. I usually go see a movie based on whether I like the trailers and promotions for it.
Because trailers can often be misleading.
This. I’ve been burned too many times by a great trailer for a bad movie. My time and money are worth too much to me to waste on bad movies.
Buyer beware, really. Anything and everything you purchase is left to your discretion. No one’s opinion is going to determine what your personal experience will be. If you have to rely on someone else to tell you how you are supposed to feel about something, then you’re not living for yourself. Critics have become a sort of parasite that prey on the audience’s credibility.
Quit being part of social media that is stuck on this binary path it’s been on for a while.
@Jorge Hernandez
WTF does that mean, dude?
“No one’s opinion is going to determine what your personal experience will be.” – no, but it can be a damn good indication, though.
“If you have to rely on someone else to tell you how you are supposed to feel about something, then you’re not living for yourself.” – you read way too many self help books. I ain’t letting people tell me how to feel, when I read reviews, I am forming an opinion as to whether or not a film is worth my time and money. One way to do that is to invite the opinions of people WHO have seen the film. Basic logic.
“Quit being part of social media” – dude, that’s the best part. I’m not any social media. I am on the internet, though.
” If you have to rely on someone else to tell you how you are supposed to feel about something…”
Well, good thing I don’t do that. Critics don’t tell me whether I’m going to like something. The point is that at least in the theatres I can’t watch the movie to see if I like it without paying for it. And yes, my time is limited, I only am able to see a limited number of movies so I want them to be good ones.
Going to see a movie is taking a chance. Even word from the critics is going to steer me wrong sometimes but it’s a hell of a lot better than nothing. Home video, particularly “free” on a streaming service I already have? Sure, that’s where I’ll take a chance on badly reviewed movies and I’ll turn it off if it’s no good. Or if I hear from people that I know and trust that a poorly reviewed movie is good I may give it a shot in the theatre. But it’s rare to hear that.
No freaking clue what you’re going on about with the “social media binary path” thing. But not surprising considering your entire comment is a straw man argument.
“Trailers can be misleading”, and critics have axes to grind. I go to a movie based on my likes, not what some goof living in mommy’s basement puts on a blog (though he might be better than the high paid critics you hear from).
Not every movie needs to be Citizen Kane which some people think they must be. Then again what do I know, I like Wild Wild West that Smith hated so much.
I’d say trailers are misleading WAY more often than critics have axes to grind. Particularly looking at a site like RT that aggregates them instead of just one critic.
I’ve ignored the critics and gone to movies with bad reviews because the trailer was good and I was interested. And far far too often I’ve regretted it, pissed I wasted my time and money.
Hell, I’d argue that if critics are wrong it’s because they are sometimes way too POSITIVE. Just look at the “fresh” reviews for things like Indy 4, Star Wars prequels, etc.
I will most likely see it whenever I get to it. But, I must admit, not having Will Smith in the film and basically maintaining the same plot with a lot more digital manipulation are turns offs for me.
52M opening weekend? How low was the budget on this thing? With the iffy reviews it won’t have great legs. So unless it opens pretty big or is absolutely huge overseas, how do they make money on it?
And if they wanted to keep critics quiet, that sure didn’t work with all the bad reviews from overseas. At 44% so far.
The reviews are better than 3/4 of other films that have opened this summer. At least it’s over 50% on the Tomato Meter!
Not any more. And that’s still without most of the US critics since they refused to screen it early.
Looks like 165M budget. A movie like this is going to be frontloaded, it would probably need around 80M opening weekend to be sure of making it to 165M domestic. 50M opening would probably be lucky to make it to 125M domestic if that, and some are predicting the opening even lower.
I’m going to see it just to support Fox for refusing to cast Will’s son in the movie.
Even is that rumour isn’t true, it’s still reason enough to see it!
Maybe the critics should that this as studios saying enough to their blatant disregard for movies that are just that, simple fun. Before going to the theaters I wish everyone of these bitter critics would watch Ratatouille to remind them selves the public looks beyond movie structure and extreme plot complexity for fun and that as they writing for the public, trying to sway their opinions, they should do their jobs with the public in mind, not their own grander.
So in summary, you think everyone should just turn off their brain and pretend that bad movies are fun just because they have lots of big explosions?
No thanks.
I love your comment!
Yup, critics can’t have fun and only like deep movies with “extreme plot complexity.” That’s why The Shallows is getting 90%+ right now on RT – those shark movies sure are deep and complicated. (No pun intended)
So tired of BS comments like this. So if the critics are biased against “fun” movies, how do you explain the positive reviews and RT Fresh ratings for almost all the MCU films, DEADPOOL and JUNGLE BOOK this year, the last three FAST & FURIOUS movies, etc.?
Critics are more important than ever now when you have so much competition from other forms of media to compete for audiences attention. They have become essential to a films success.
No they are not. BvS opened to a great numbers with all that critical bashing (audiences wanted to judge the film themselves and they did, it sucks).
The great reviews from critics didn’t help CW to open higher than AOU. More importantly they didn’t help CW to have better legs( currently CW is heading to finish one of the worst legs in MCU and marvel films aren’t known for their legs)
In summary, movies are made for audiences not for critics. It is nice if you got nice reviews but the movie success depends on mainly auidence’s word of mouth.
Dude, shut up about Civil War already. It has had a great run and legs are similar to Ultron and IM2 and 3. At this point you’re just beating a dead horse and everyone is laughing at your expense, constantly trying to talk down a movie that made 1.1B worldwide.
Obvious troll is obvious.
“Critics are more important than ever now”
This is what is wrong with the movie going audience. Moviegoers are refusing to take responsibility for their movie choices. If a studio is not making the movie that you think you will not like, then do not watch it. There are other genres to choose from. Stick with the genres that resonate with you and stop trying to look up someone else’s skirt.
Many that criticize have no place in a forum that is meant to evaluate a piece within its genre. Instead, these so-called critics and the sheep that follow them want all films to be like the genre they prefer.
“I think I will like it” means nothing. It’s often impossible to actually tell if you will like a movie without seeing it, many movies look like I would like them – interesting topic, good trailer, but the poor execution ruins them and there’s no way to know that before seeing the movie.
And genre has zero to do with it. Within ANY genre there are fantastic movies and terrible ones. And yes, critics can be very useful within any genre.
Seriously, people getting THIS worked up over bad reviews of an Independence Day sequel?
FOX typically spends less on P+A than the other Hollywood majors. Outside of major events like the SB, they’ll start TV 3 wks before release & cut it sharply if the opening underperforms. That’s why X:Apoc started generating profits after about $450M WW, & IDay2 will around $500M.
Deadpool is the exception. For whatever reason, FOX agreed to Ryan Reynolds & crew’s unique campaign about 6 mo’s before it’s release. Because the feedback was so posititve, Deadpool made appearances around Halloween, ThankyDay, & Christmas before the major TV spends started in mid Jan. Deadpool really is a culture of it’s own at FOX & the hope is continued success will spread that.
Disney typically spends the most on P+A because they are the cultural opposite of FOX. They view every film as a part of the much larger Disney-verse. That’s why even after Alice 2 flopped they kept up the TV spend. They did the same with TGD, & Finest Hours. That extra effort & cost is why her opening is down to 37% of her total. Apoc’s is above 44%. At this point they are more interested in Alice 2 video sales & her ability to draw patrons to BFG & Pete’s Dragon. You can’t argue with their success:
2016 video sales; #1 Force Awakens, #2 TGD.
If we elect Trump he will do more damage to the world than the aliens.
He will build a wall to keep the aliens out! It will be a massive wall, not just a great wall, but the greatest wall. It will make America great again!
That’s Hollywood. The real world is the Pres has to answer to Congress & they don’t like him. They probably dislike Hillary less though. The most likely scenario is that the Trump vote + GOP establishment vote puts more GOP members in Congress as they are coming from different walks of life.
Anna Kendrick’s tweets about Mae Whitman not reprising her role was the first thing most people heard about this movie – typical sexist Hollywood casting a younger, taller, blonde with barely any acting experience over a very talented actress.
What this movie was and who’s the target audience is was clear from that moment and it sent a clear message that this isn’t a movie many women would be interested in seeing.
Very few people give a damn about the recasting of such a small character. The first thing people heard about this movie is that it was getting made and without Will Smith. Stop thinking everything is about sexism, and that will be the movies downfall.
Maika Monroe is also a talented actress.
Oh Please. She barely got any screen time in iDAY. She’s a non-factor in IDAY2’s BO. A much bigger factor is Vivica A Fox. Her drama was evident in both the award winning trailers & the film itself. Like Godzilla 2014, IDAY had great trailers that focused on the drama of the chars more so than the story. Seeing it on char’s faces formed an emotional bond to the quads weakest in action. That’s why Godzilla passed $200M with just a B+ Cinemascore & why X:Apoc is struggling to pass $160M with a A-.
I find Alice 2’s, Apoc, & IDAY2’s trailers dissapointing in that respect. They focus more on the story & action & offer little drama on the faces of the char. Alice 2’s in particular is surprising given how Disney has gotten it down to a science in most of their other films.
You know that Godzilla opened to 90 ml and finished barely above 200ml( one of the worst legs that year along with TASM2, even transformers4 have better legs). And one of the best examples of great trailers bad movie.
Take that, Maika Monroe! That’s what you get for accepting a job offer! Who cares if you were great in It Follows, you’re young and blonde and that means people like Anna Kendrick and Amy here don’t think you’re worth defending!
Anna Kendrick’s tweet sparked news articles across the web, so it’s not only her followers that saw it. Sites like Buzzfeed and HitFix picked up on the tweets and ran with it. It reached major news sites like CNN, Daily Mail, front page of Yahoo, etc. Many of the critics included in Rotten Tomatoes are writing for sites who had multiple news articles about Whitman’s exclusion and sexism in Hollywood as a result.
Mae and the character really don’t matter. It’s slacktivism: people can be angry online about something and shake their online fists at those sexist Hollywood directors and producers. That news also came immediately on the heals of Mae Whitman’s movie The Duff which addresses a theme and appealed to younger audience who have no idea who Vivica Fox is and have more interest in Jaden than Will Smith.
Maybe the people angry about Mae Whitman’s exclusion never were going to see the movie to begin with, but Rotten Tomatoes gives significant power to critics online who are pissed off about things like that.
I totally forgot about that.
Lame on their part, but if the movie does poorly that will be way down on the list.
‘This is sh*t, go see Vin Diesel.’ – Always good advice.
But it’s not like the Fast and Furious franchise isn’t sh*t, but they still make a ton of money from being fun!
Reviews here in Uk are not bad at all. I’m rooting for this to be a hit. There are far worse movies out there that do well. Hope the critics don’t sharpen their knives just because they weren’t allowed to review it early…
It’s still getting better reviews than FREE STATE OF JONES — and X-MEN, and NOW YOU SEE ME, and WARCRAFT, and ALICE, and TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES…
Currently lower than Xmen. And that list says more about how this summer has been weak than about ID.
Saw it this morning – good, not as the good first and not spectacular. I can understand not bothering with the critics. The movie’s diverse cast and setting will help make the film a huge hit overseas, especially in China. And fans of the original will enjoy it. So who cares about film critics? Really?
Will smith is now picking his next project carefully and doing films like Focus and Concussion. Opening your film closer to oscar season doesn’t make your film great. He made a wrong turn when he tried to launch his kid career and diminished himself by doing a superhero movie.( now Tom Cruise is the only real movie star that’s left)
He once said ” box office numbers gets me going. Nominations is great, you get to go to dinners and everything but Knowing people are paying to see my movie, that’s what’s matters to me most”. Maybe he should go back to doing that. Entertaining the audience!!
Diminished himself by doing a superhero movie? You mean Hancock or Suicide Squad? The latter looks to be his first real hit in a long time, his first return to entertaining the audience.
Odd to whine that he made a superhero movie and then turn around and whine that he should be doing something fun and mainstream. Make up your mind.
Hides from bs talk.. I would too. People talking crap and 9 times out of 10 the reviewer is off base for too much… If he or she were a surgeon… You’d not have that person work on you. Simple. No red flags. They just want people to see the movie.
Movie looks terrible.
THR: Utterly ridiculous but also rollicking good fun. Resuregence delivers bang-for-buck entertainment reasonably well.
Variety: Delivers swiftly and generously when it comes to the goods most viewers will have come for. Emmerich is the DeMille of global destruction. There’s something genuinely, boomingly imposing about “Resurgence’s” largest visual coups.
Yep, there are always reviews to cherry pick and support your opinion.
Those two are in the minority.
We’ll see what audiences think when we get the cinemascore along with the weekend numbers.