Typical Hollywood Panic Attack. They won't know until it comes out. Besides, what they JUST HAPPEN to gloss over is that really the original TRON finished with $33 million, which payed off the film itself rather well. Only problem was that they payed a huge (at the time) price for marketing, $15 million. Meaning they made very little profit on the film itself.
Crummy way of counting the Opening Weekend as the only way of judging films aside, TRON has an incredible legacy that will never die, and this film is aiming to continue it for a new generation.
And if it does not do well at the Box Office, and Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Colorwash Treater does, I will officially cutoff America from getting any more good movies.
You heard me.
Well, a few points to consider...
1: The Hollywood Reporter, when it tracks interest in a given movie, it's usually a pretty reliable guesstimate of how well a movie will do. The wild card tends to be word-of-mouth. If a movie has tremendous word-of-mouth, it may wind up having legs that keep it in the theater much longer than expected. Because I'm old and don't get out of the house much
a good not-so-recent example would be The Italian Job. Not a lot of interest, a weak opening weekend, but strong word of mouth, and it wound up playing for months, never making crazy money, but performing solidly week after week. On the flip side, interest was strong for "The Hulk,' but audience reaction was so weak, attendance crumbled more than 80% between the first and second weekend. It's a reliable barometer based on reliable patterns. So I guess you can hope for a wild card.
2: According to imdb, Tron made a little under 27 mill in its domestic run, not 33. Maybe your total is worldwide, I don't know, it's kinda moot, we'll say you're right and box office is 33. You ARE aware that Disney doesn't get ALL of that, right? They do have to shell out a FEW peanuts to the theaters showing their movies, after all. Traditionally, studios and theaters split the ticket price, and it starts out lopsided in the studios' favor. It could be 75-25 or 80-20%. If the movie is a big tentpole kind of picture, with a lot of interest, it may even be 85-15 or 90-10%. Subsequent weeks of release, it evens out, and usually by the 5th week, the split is 50-50. Of course, how many movies nowadays even last 5 weeks? One of the reasons popcorn and a soda at your local multiplex is eleventy-seventy-teen dollars; it's the only way they make coin. Tron lasted about 9 weeks in theaters. Speaking generously, if Disney made 70% of every box office dollar, 70% of 33 million is 23.1 million. With a production budget of 17 million, plus marketing costs, we're not talking a movie that paid itself off very well at all. They probably made more money from the video game than the movie, though once you factor in video sales and rentals, it got in the black.
So what we're talking about is a 200-million-dollar gamble, on a property that has a devoted-but-not-huge fanbase, and not a lot of interest beyond that base. If the movie kicks a tremendous amount of keister, positive word of mouth will give it legs. But still, whatever videogame thay make based on the movie will probably help recoup the cost if the movie doesn't do well - indeed the video game's profits is probably the main reason they took a risk making the sequel in the first place.
