John Scalzi - Four Reasons Why Avatar Is Too Big to Fail
I was forwarded this New York Times article on James Cameron's scifi flick Avatar, and how the production and marketing of the movie will likely cost a staggering half-billion dollars. The friend who forwarded it to me wrote, "is this film ever going to make its money back?" Sure, it could, and probably will.
Some of the answers are in the article itself: First, the half-billion under discussion is not being fronted by a single studio (in this case, 20th Century Fox); it's the entire outlay of cash, which includes funds from two other movie companies that between them are covering 60 percent of the production costs. It also includes advertising deals where one company basically uses Avatar properties while promoting their own goods; the article notes Panasonic using Avatar clips as part of a $25 million effort to push its own home theater lines.
To be clear, Fox isn't getting off cheaply; when all is said and done it's going to be on the hook for at least a couple hundred million dollars in production and marketing costs. If the flick fails, it will hurt. But there's a difference between being on the hook for a half a billion, and being on the hook for half that.
Beyond that, there are other factors to consider.
First, there's a difference between 20th Century Fox spending a couple hundred million dollars (or so) in the production of Avatar, and, say, Warner Bros. putting $100 million dollars into The Adventures of Pluto Nash. Honestly, I try to imagine the pitch for that one: "We have a great idea! First, it's a science fiction comedy. Second, the star hasn't been hot in a decade except when he wears a fat suit. Third, the director has never had a hit that didn't star Billy Crystal and a herd of cattle. It can't miss!"
Contrast this with the pitch one would make with Avatar: "It's the Oscar-winning director of the most successful movie in history returning to the genre that made him famous, using new technology to show moviegoers visuals they have never, ever seen before. Plus, it'll be in 3D, so we can charge more for the tickets." If I were a studio executive, I know which of these I'd go for.
The point here is that track record does matter. James Cameron will spend every single dollar a studio gives him (and more!), but as far as being both a bringer of big box office and pushing the technical envelope, he's in a class which at this point includes only George Lucas, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg. More to the point, with the arguable exception of The Abyss (which I think eventually broke even), James Cameron has not lost money on a movie.
Another thing to consider: Titanic brought in two-thirds of its total gross from overseas markets. True Lies (Cameron's movie before Titanic) brought in 61 percent of its gross overseas. Terminator 2: 60 percent. Over the last twenty years, Cameron's movies have been instrumental in expanding the global market for Hollywood flicks and, for better or worse, making the U.S. film industry factor in global tastes when making its product.
What this offers Fox is a hedge against a possible lackluster U.S. performance -- frankly put, it's the global market that will be Cameron's primary box office, with the domestic box office the (probably large) cherry on top.
Finally, there's the matter of 3D. In the last couple of years, 3D screenings of movies have been a boost to the box office bottom line, but Avatar will be one of the first major studio live-action flicks in recent memory (if not the first) for which the 3D-enabled theaters are going to be the movie's main revenue stream as opposed to a bonus. Since tickets for 3D theaters go for up to a 30 percent premium over standard tickets, that's likely to make a huge difference in the opening weekend numbers and help to keep the weekend-to-weekend fall-off manageable.
What could sink Avatar? For the opening weekend, I'd say almost nothing; even if the reviews are uniformly negative (which I don't expect), very little will stop a wide swath of science fiction and action fans from filling seats. Very bad word of mouth could kill second-weekend and repeat viewing, but it really would have to be pretty bad.
In short, unless Avatar turns out to be historically awful -- which given Cameron's track record is unlikely -- it's a pretty safe bet that the movie is going to hit its marks financially. At which point, a half billion-dollar price tag won't look like folly; it will simply look like the cost of doing business with James Cameron.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. He's also Creative Consultant for the upcoming Stargate: Universe television series. His column appears every Thursday.
Wow, go ahead, worship. Really, why waste electrons writing this when you could have built a shrine to James Cameron, took a picture of it, and posted it here instead?
Avatar is highly risky, even for Cameron. It could fail, as a matter of fact, I bet will fall short of goals. Good directors can fail bad (Hello, "1941" anyone?).
Cameron is good to but to slather some worshipping-distorting views as an argument doesn't work. Neither will Avatar.
Way to totally misread the post, PrisonGuy. Scalzi isn't saying Avatar is guaranteed to be a success -- he's simply pointing out historical facts that make it more likely the movie will earn more than it cost. Sorry you couldn't get past your own biased opinion to realize that.
PrisonGuy:
Meh. I'm not sure how pointing out business factors and a director's track record equates to "worship," but, you know, whatever.
And, as it happens, no, I don't think Avatar is "highly risky." Certainly it carries risk, as do all major, expensive films. But as an example, New Line Cinema took a far greater risk bankrolling the three Lord of the Rings films with a (then) largely unknown director who had never been anywhere near an epic-scale movie. James Cameron doing science fiction, on the other hand, is a pretty good (if expensive) bet.
Avatar certainly can fail, but I think it's very well-positioned not too, all things considered.
Also, a reminder to folks that there may be a lag between sending in your comment and it showing up in the comment queue. Please be patient; there's no need to send your comment twice.
I for one consider 3-D to be nothing more than a gimmick, just like it was in the 1950s when I first saw it. It adds absolutely nothing to the story. So I for one won't be paying that 30% premium.
Based on what I have seen so far, I most likely will go to the movie, depending on what I ear after the first weekend reports are in.
Blue elves.
It's gonna tank.
I'm no fan of 3D, and I have to say seeing the Avatar Day footage really sold me in this case. I don't know that it'll take off the way Cameron wants it to, if only because there are few other directors willing to go to the same lengths as he does.
If you'd told me while we were working on it that not only would Titanic become the top-grossing film of all time, but it would still hold that title in 2009? I would have called you insane. Interestingly, Titanic owes a significant portion of its success by having blown its schedule out of the water and, subsequently, going over-budget. The Titanic that would have released in the summer of 1997 was a somewhat different movie, much more a summer action movie. The intervening six months or so shifted the movie more towards the relationships, thereby ultimately widening its appeal. (Quote from Cameron during production: "It's not a love story, it's a FUCKING LOVE STORY!")
You can see him refining the same lines in Avatar, and not only is he doing so while going back to the genre he emerged from, but he's doing so at a time when sci-fi and fantasy are at an all-time high as far as general public acceptance goes. Cameron's a risk, for sure, but, man. How do you not take that bet?
Personally, the best part for me is that I know, as he's sitting reviewing dailies right now probably not all that far from where I sit, he doesn't give a rats ass about how much money Avatar will make. And I really wouldn't have it any other way.
One can also argue that 3-D will have an impact on those who wish to pirate the movie by sitting and recording it on a camcorder. That will help the bottom line.
Dr. Phil
Dr. Phil: It's releasing in 2D as well. They'd never limit their screens like that, no matter how many 3D screens they are able to release on.
Well, no movie is too BIG to fail (thus a terrible title to this article), but a James Cameron movie is likely to be at least a little too GOOD to fail. Cameron is only about 1/4 as good as his tremendous ego leads him to believe he is, but that's still twice as good as most directors making SF movies. He's also about 3 times smarter than most of them. The Abyss was actually a pretty decent movie with an excellent cast and at least one good-for-all-time scene, it was the god-from-a-bottle ending that ruined it for me. I'm not at all surprised that it has made a profit. Avatar is quite likely to be too smaltzy for me, judging from the trailers, but so was Titanic, and I saw it just like I'll go see Avatar (but, like Titanic, only once).
I know James Cameron has a great track record, but I honestly cannot see this movie going anywhere. Sure, he's made a lot of movies that have hit it bit, but at least with those you could easily say what they were about. A doomed love story, an evil machine from the future, etc. I'm still not sure what the heck is going on with Avatar. Um, yeah, because there's a planet and it's got these blue people and, uh, we can't go there but we can possess the blue people and then we can go there for...I'm sorry, what was the point? Plus it looks way too much like it's a movie for little kids.
Plus, we all now know it's just a thinly veiled rip-off of "Dances With Smurfs". :)
Yeah, Cameron has a great track record, but he's also shrewd and smart. When "Titanic" was getting critically panned before it was released, he smartly spent a year showing the film at film festivals, building up good word of mouth before the movie was officially released. He made those early nay-sayers eat their words.
It is entirely possible that Cameron has contracted Ego-Lucas Disease and will fantastically flame-out with this movie. I doubt it since there have been no warning signs of this as of yet. At the worst, it will be a moderate success. But I suspect it will do much better than that.
John Scalzi wrote:
But as an example, New Line Cinema took a far greater risk bankrolling the three Lord of the Rings films with a (then) largely unknown director who had never been anywhere near an epic-scale movie. James Cameron doing science fiction, on the other hand, is a pretty good (if expensive) bet.
I reply:
Um, yes and no. Let's be fair here: 'The Frighteners' showed that Peter Jackson could bring in an elaborate, effects heavy film on-budget (and a relatively modest one), on schedule and make some money while doing it. (I don't think anyone at Universal blamed Jackson or his movie for getting swamped in the wake of Independence Day. What wasn't?)
As for the idea that Cameron's name is going to open a science fiction film big -- anyone here inspired to see Solaris or Strange Days because his name was on the poster?
Craig Ranapia:
I'm not 100% with your reasoning there regarding The Frighteners, I'm afraid. The scale of LotR was a an order of magnitude up from Frighteners which was originally to be part of the cheaply-made and programmatic "Tales From the Crypt" series of movies from Universal. I agree Jackson benefited from the experience (because, among other things it helped him build up WETA). But directing a moderately-priced film that grossed (domestically) half its budget is something that earns one a full-throated instant thumbs up. It was a big, big risk -- which to be clear, I'm very glad New Line took, as I had been a fan Jackson since Meet the Feebles.
Also, I think you're mixing up Cameron's draw as a producer (in the case of Strange Days and Solaris) and his draw as a director. Moreover, Solaris was primarily pushed as a Soderburgh/Clooney vehicle.
John:
Fair points, but from what I've read about the backroom process (and if Bob Shaye or PJ want to weigh in and say I'm full of it, I stand corrected) but the real crap shoot on LoTR was that they could have had Spielberg in the director's chair, and New Line would still have been betting the farm on a project that was very far from a sure-fire hit.
And I very much doubt that Jackson got the job without putting a very strong business case that he could bring it in on-schedule and on-budget. One thing I don't think Jackson gets full credit for is that he's every bit as smart about the business of making movies as he is about the craft.
...anyone here inspired to see Solaris or Strange Days because his name was on the poster?
In the case of the latter, quite. If you can find a copy, I highly recommend Cameron's scriptment for the film. It's a great raw look at his writing process. Strange Days is one of my favorite films, both for Cameron's great characterization in the script and Kathryn Bigelow's solid grip on action filmmaking. It was the movie that made me a fan of her work, and it's sadly underrated.
Sigh, you're probably right, John. It's an obscene amount of money, but given the importance of the market outside the US, it will probably succeed. Which will be too bad it if really is, as someone described it recently on Twitter, "a steaming pile of Fern Gully, Pern, and Poser."
"but as far as being both a bringer of big box office and pushing the technical envelope, he's in a class which at this point includes only George Lucas, Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg."
Incidentally, these guys are also in another class together: Makers of big budget racist-as-hell flicks that never got called out like they should have been. Goofy Jamaican and Evil Slant-Eyed Asian-Accented aliens! Heart-rippin'-out Indians! Veiled, dirty savages of Southron and Skull Island! And of course, Cameron's "Slaughtering Arabs is Hilarious" epic True Lies.
"Failing" has to do with a lot more than money.
Cameron makes the most expensive movies of all time and manages to turn a profit on them, sometimes in a record-breaking amount. It's kind of his thing.