Alien: Covenant Box Office Performance

[0321recon]

Scott's free. We're getting "Awakening" after all:

http://www.alien-covenant.com/news/fox-trust-ridley-scott-break-new-ground-with-alien-covenant-sequel

Not sure if this has been posted already or not. Couldn't find anything on this forum, at least.

It's been discussed here...http://www.avpgalaxy.net/forum/index.php?topic=58873.45

Though, I do hope Fox let Scott take the reigns for the final film and salvage whatever is left of the story he wanted with the engineers.

[BishopShouldGo]

Ridley is impulsive. Just let him be a producer now.

[monkeylove]

"Alien: Covenant" opened to $2,6M in Japan.

"Prometheus" did $3.6M after first weekend.

Source: http://deadline.com/2017/09/war-for-the-planet-of-the-apes-china-opening-it-movie-spider-man-homecoming-mother-international-box-office-1202171328/

From this news I'll do some math to get some estimates of the overall box office results for A:C and what that means for its performance.

* Japan first weekend; "Prometheus" $3.6M from deadline.com (Box Office Mojo has that opening weekend at $3.8M.)
"Alien: Covenant" $2.6M
- 2.6 divided by 3.6 gives what percentage A:C's opening was compared with "Prometheus".
Answer; 72% using the deadline.com number
(2.6 divided by 3.8 = 68% using the Box Office Mojo "Prometheus" number)

- "Prometheus" total box office in Japan; $21,816,409 which I'll round down to $21 million. (I'm being conservative with these estimates.)
X 72% = about $15 million estimate for A:C in Japan using the deadline.com numbers
(X 68% = about $14 million estimate for A:C in Japan using the Box Office Mojo number)

* Total estimated box office for "Alien Covenant".
Currently  "Alien Covenant" box office is at $236 million but that may include the new Japan box office.
Google has the A:C box office at $233.1 million which is probably what it is without the numbers from Japan.

$233.1 million + the estimated $15 million or $14 million gets A:C into the $248 / $247 million range.
$248 / $247 million box office would be 2.56 / 2.55 times the production budget ($97 million).
2.5 time the production budget is $242.5 million.

* It looks like A:C box office will get to 2.5 times its production budget ($242.5 million).
- Many movies that have box office at around 2.5 times their production budget have historically been considered decent performers (getting sequels for instance).

You have to add the marketing cost to the production budget, and it's roughly equivalent to the latter. So the total cost might be $200 million.

After that, deduct around 30 percent from the box office because that goes to distribution. That means the studio earned around $175 million.

From there, if there's a net profit, remove 35 percent for taxes. Then get what remains and divide it evenly between investors and the studio.

Assume that both wanted a 10-percent return on their investment, or around $10 million apiece.

Given these, we can only hope that they do well with merchandising, but they usually want the returns right away in order to finance other projects.

[bb-15]

Nah, no one in mind.  Someone with a death wish most likely.  It'd be like trying to remake Jaws and they haven't done that yet either.

I think the problem is the two key sequences of Kane getting facehugged and the chestburster have been done over in the sequels, that they no longer pack a punch.  They've tried to rework the chestburster each time to do something different, but I think the Neomorph probably the only one that's been approaching the original for shock value and brutality.  Wren's head burster was a good try but a little comical in execution.

You can't rely on those two scenes again.  You can't rely on the evil secret robot.  The Alien will likely fail because it'll be either too much like the original, or too little.  It's quite the recipe for disaster, but there's always that tiny chance it'll surprise.

* Ridley Scott (in comments/interviews) was well aware of this problem of the Alien franchise tropes losing their horror punch. In "Prometheus" he tried to go in a different direction but while that film was a box office success, the hate for "Prometheus" by some was very loud and persistent.
- As I've written before, the Alien fan base is deeply split and Scott was caught in the middle of that. 

* But your topic imo touches on a greater issue; that in general science fiction horror films are no longer very scary.
- Every alien / genetically engineered movie creature has been done so much that this entire SF horror genre has lost its impact.
- A second problem with SF horror is that it requires explanation sequences, which with much of today's mass audience, gets in the way of the horror.

* The horror genre (for instance "IT" / "Annabelle: Creation" / "Get Out" / "Paranormal Activity") now focuses on villains who are deranged humans, ghosts or small toys/dolls often with loud jump scares. 
- These kinds of horror movies are cheap which SF cannot compete with in terms of cost.
And cheap horror films can make hundreds of millions of dollars.
- Also, SF horror is not only more expensive but if its story is serious science fiction, it will be more complicated which is turning off much of today's audience.

* The studio / Ridley turned to the most persistent / often emotional fans who had campaigned to bring back the xenomorph hunt, a standard Alien franchise trope.
- Unfortunately, following the advice of emotional SF fans is often a recipe for lower performance. This happened with "Star Trek: Beyond". "Beyond" made McCoy the 3rd main character demanded by some fans. That movie was a flop in terms of box office / production budget.
- Emotional fans cannot help in guiding a SF franchise towards financial success imo. 

* What can the studio do?
- Science fiction which has horror can go in the direction of adventure.
Rampaging monsters / dinosaurs in an adventure are continuing as a genre with tiny bits of SF which have no importance to the story.
- But in the Alien franchise, it's important to realize that action is difficult in terms of bringing in good box office.
Only Cameron was very successful doing this money wise in the franchise with "Aliens". David Fincher, Jean-Pierre Jeunet (with help from Joss Whedon) and Ridley (with "Covenant") put in some adventure/chase sequences but they could not in terms of box office match what Cameron did. 
- The closest thing to Cameron's "Aliens" (a bug battle adventure) imo was "Starship Troopers" and that flopped at the box office.
- Conclusion? Imo doing some kind of reboot/repeat of "Aliens" is in no way a guarantee of box office success.

* Some clamor for finding a new director.
- Blomkamp? His career is stalled and with comparing box office/production budget; "Elysium" barely did better than "Covenant" and "Chappie" did worse.
- Cameron? He's busy.
- Abrams? Lots of the emotional fans don't like him.

- Imo Fox sees the challenges with continuing the Alien franchise;
And it seems that instead of risking putting another director in charge, the studio is leaning towards letting Ridley do another one;
As noted in this linked article already posted in this thread.
http://www.alien-covenant.com/news/fox-trust-ridley-scott-break-new-ground-with-alien-covenant-sequel

We'll see.   

[Darth Vile]

It's really all about the story... story and strong characters. If there's a great story/characters, there can be a great Alien film. The first Alien film didn't really have a strong original story, the characters were fairly cliche... however, it had a concept (and production design) that was highly original/unique. Rebooting the franchise, whilst I'm sure would be popular to some degree, certainly won't guarantee a good film, nor continued success.

[Kane's other son]

Alien was not cliche back in 1979.
There hadn't been any space monster movies for two decades and the fact that it was a crew of truck drivers and not scientists, and that the captain bites the dust and the survivor is the woman who kept her cool was very fresh.

[Darth Vile]

Alien was not cliche back in 1979.
There hadn't been any space monster movies for two decades and the fact that it was a crew of truck drivers and not scientists, and that the captain bites the dust and the survivor is the woman who kept her cool was very fresh.

I didn't state Alien, as a film, was cliche. I stated that the characters and story were. It's a haunted house story where most of the characters adhere to the broad brush strokes of 'standard' character traits depicted in numerous films before 1979. Horror films of the mid/late 70's were already establishing 'female leads' e.g Halloween, Carrie, Texas Chainsaw (and Alien was certainly part of that) etc. It was the production design, the body horror elements, and Scott's filmmaking that elevate Alien above and beyond the standard thriller. The point is that the filmmakers need to invest time in creating a great story/great characters to move the franchise forward; as simply remaking/rebooting the original film/films simply won't be good enough.

[bb-15]

Update on "Alien Covenant" box office.

Alien: Covenant pulled in another $830,000 from Japan, raising the international tally to $164.6m.

https://www.screendaily.com/box-office/kingsman-the-golden-circle-takes-international-box-office-crown/5122613.article

Box Office Mojo updated its foreign box office to about that level.
Total worldwide box office for A:C right now is; $238,826,860.
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=alienparadiselost.htm

[SM]

Really crappy return in Japan.

[BishopShouldGo]

People really did not want this movie, and did not like this movie. Yikes.

[windebieste]

Of course it has a crappy return in Japan.  Anyone wanting to see the movie would already have imported the BluRay.

Apparently, BluRay/DVD sales were very good for the movie.  Do you suppose there's a correlation between the 2?

It should have been released in Japan months ago.   Then the return would have been different. 

-Windebieste.

[𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔈𝔦𝔤𝔥𝔱𝔥 𝔓𝔞𝔰𝔰𝔢𝔫𝔤𝔢𝔯]

Of course it has a crappy return in Japan.  Anyone wanting to see the movie would already have imported the BluRay.

Apparently, BluRay/DVD sales were very good for the movie.  Do you suppose there's a correlation between the 2?

It should have been released in Japan months ago.   Then the return would have been different. 

-Windebieste.

Less than 10% of Japanese citizens understand or speak English. Less than 1% can speak it fluently.

All your base are belong to us.

[Jonesy1974]

Really disappointed in the Japan BO, I honestly thought it would make more than that.

[Ingwar]

240 millions worldwide is embarrassing. It has made so far 272 ... domestically. And it's a movie made for 35 millions without any A-list Hollywood stars.

[BishopShouldGo]

Budget doesn't matter and A-listers aren't draws on their own.

People just want good content.