RSS 2.0Did ‘Halo’ cause a bad week at the North American Box Office?
I can understand it when a sporting event, such as The Olympics or NCAA March Madness commences and films playing in theatres take a pinch. Sometimes what causes films to not doing well is holiday weekends…in fact many years ago in the US, releasing a film on the fourth of July meant the kiss of death, as folks would rather see fireworks and roast marshmellows. Forget all of that now. Just forget it. Because now when a film flops, it isn’t due to a sports event or holiday. It may not even be that the film was bad or poorly marketed. It may not be that audiences wanted to see something else. Now the scapegoat is…a fellow named Master Chief.
According to Advertising Age, the recent low box office numbers for the Ben Stiller-Farrelly brothers ‘The Heartbreak Kid’ are due, say Hollywood execs for the fact that a video game called Halo 3 sold $170 million on the day of release, and has since passed $300 million.
From Adage:
For Microsoft, it’s no wonder video games, and in particular “Halo 3,” are competing with blockbusters for opening weekends. “We marketed it like a film,” said Josh Goldberg, a “Halo 3″ product manager at Microsoft, adding, “and now, we’re just as big or bigger than film.” He said “Halo 3″ was marketed as an event film in terms of its partnerships, with beverage, automotive, fast feeders and mobile-phone companies all joining up.
There is no doubt there. Halo 3 was promoted quite well, and while I never played the games, obviously this had some appeal to the consumer. I do get tired, however, whenever the rabid fanbase for ‘Halo’ starts talking the long delayed film version. But in any case…this made me curious. So I decided to do a little bit of digging.
Heartbreak Kid had an opening of about $14 million, and did not take the top spot. Not any of the studios films that topped Kid, not even Game Plan made a complaint or excuse regarding Halo 3.
On November 9, 2004, Halo 2 came out. The biggest film that week in North America? The Incredibles ( Ray was second)…so I’m not so sure I’m buying into this.
What do you think? Are video game sales a threat to the film industry?
Darren Seeley (184 posts)Fave directors include David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Michael Mann, Anique Faqua, Walter Hill, John Carpenter, John Woo and James Cameron. An aspiring screenwriter, I wrote several spec scripts (platform: Final Draft) that I occasionally submit to contests, Inktip, and workshop through peer review sites like Triggerstreet and Zoetrope. I have attended The Austin Film Festival and Heart Of Screenwriters Conference in 2001 and 2002. CoP marks my third go around as an internet film reviewer of sorts. My previous film hub haunts were 'Dark Universe' and, most notably, 'The Projector Booth'. Location: MI,USA.
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