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You heard it here first. Variety Confirms: Polar Express a Bomb—Not. Confirming what I posted here on November 29th, this week’s Variety says that, contrary to initial reports, The Polar Express is a hit. (Here’s the link; registration required.)
Calling ‘em wrong
How B.O. pundits, crix misread tea leaves on two of the season’s key releases
Even in this age of corporate congloms, the movie biz is hardly a science.
A little more than a month ago, Warner Bros.’ “The Polar Express” was widely pilloried, and if anyone was paying attention to Walt Disney’s “National Treasure,” it was critics readying their brickbats.
Fast forward five weeks and “National Treasure” has become only the third movie of the year to claim the No. 1 spot on the box office charts three weeks in a row, and “Polar Express” has shown remarkable resiliency, defying the doom-and-gloom pronouncements following its Nov. 10 opening.
...And when [Polar Express] opened to just a hair above $30 million over its first five days, the Los Angeles Times labeled it a financial disaster, quoting an unnamed agent who said, “Warners must have black crepe in all the windows.”
“It has stuck in people’s minds that this is a big disappointment,” says Martin Shafer, CEO of Castle Rock, which produced the pic along with Bing’s Shangri-La, Hanks’ Playtone and Zemeckis’ ImageMovers. “But the movie didn’t turn out the way that people who wrote negative things said it would.”
Conventional wisdom “is that films released today have a 2 or 2.5 multiple,” Shafer says, referring to the formula to determine final cume from a film’s opening gross.
The average multiple this year has been a little over 3. Going into its fifth week, “Polar’s” multiple is already well past 4.
Over the Thanksgiving weekend, the three-day number improved 24% from the previous weekend, a virtually unheard-of gain. By its fifth week, “Polar” had cumed $100 million, with two more weeks until Christmas.
