SHOWBIZ STOCK WATCH: Warner Bros. Is the Favorite in the 2008 Market Share Race Despite Shifting 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' to 2009; Paramount/DreamWorks Targets No. 2 with Sony 3rd!
by Steve Mason
The certain $500 million domestic box office take of The Dark Knight has moved Warner Bros. past Paramount/DreamWorks in the 2008 market share race, and, with Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince set for November, the studio seemed a lock to sail past Sony's 2006 domestic box office record of $1.71 billion. The 2008 release schedule got a major shake-up on Thursday, however, as Warner Bros. shifted Half-Blood Prince to July 17 next summer.
Warner Bros. still seems likely to be Hollywood's No. 1 studio for this year, edging Paramount/DreamWorks, and they seem destined to post at least the second-best all-time annual domestic haul with something over $1.6 billion. And, as the studio continues to juggle its release schedule, it is not inconceivable that Warner Bros. could still top the Sony record, even without HP6.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars, opening this week, seems unlikely to break out in a big way for Warner Bros., so the studio will ride a few key titles the rest of the year (although nobody is writing the release schedule in ink). There is the film adaptation of the Nicholas Sparks novel Nights in Rodanthe (Sept. 26), starring Richard Gere and Diane Lane, Ridley Scott's Body of Lies (Oct. 10), based on the excellent David Ignatius CIA thriller, Pride and Glory (Oct. 24), starring Edward Norton and Colin Farrell, and Four Christmases (Nov. 26), inherited from New Line, featuring Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn and an all-star cast. Warner Bros. will also get a few big weeks out of Jim Carrey's surefire Yes Man in this calendar year, and Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino could arrive in December as well.
Paramount, which enjoyed back-to-back-to-back $200 million grossing films this year, an industry first, has fallen about $175 million behind Warner Bros. Tropic Thunder, from the DreamWorks pipeline seems likely to top $100 million, then the Melrose Avenue gang wraps the year with Shia LeBeouf in Eagle Eye (Sept. 26), a possible $200 million gross from Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (Nov. 7) and a couple of weeks of David Fincher's The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Dec. 25), starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blancehtt. There is also an unset wild card title in The Soloist, from Atonement director Joe Wright and starring Robert Downey Jr., Catherine Keener and Jamie Foxx. My hunch is that Paramount/DreamWorks manages to push past $1.5 billion giving it one of the Top 5 annual studio performances in history.
The smart money is on Sony to finish No. 3 in the market share race, riding its R-rated late-summer hits Step Brothers and Pineapple Express, a possible October sleeper like Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist and the surefire James Bond picture Quantum of Solace to something in the $1.2 billion range. The other three of the big six, 20th Century Fox, Disney and Universal, should each finish the year at right around $1 billion in domestic sales.
This is amazing. After all the Paramount hype and the "can't miss" picks. Paramount not only has a bomb of epic proportions in TT but is going to lose to TDK and WB in the money race!
Posted by: JackO | August 15, 2008 at 12:59 AM
No im pissed they should bring harry potter back they showed the trailer and it will priemire somewhere in london on nov 17th bring it back to nov. 21
Posted by: salva | August 15, 2008 at 08:15 AM
Until recently I think boxofficemojo.com showed Warner enough behind that even TDK wouldn't put them ahead. But it looks like the $270+ million they got from 3 movies that New Line made helped put them ahead.
And as far as JackO's comment, I highly doubt Tropic Thunder will be considered a "bomb of epic proportions" after its run.
Posted by: Darin | August 15, 2008 at 12:06 PM
TT with a negative cost of over 110m excluding marketing costs and considered one of the most expensive R rated movies will surely be a BIG disappointment if not a BOMB if it doesn't bring in the numbers for the weekend. Right now most are predicting 25m and if that happens..OUCH. Actually with all its profanity laced lines and its abundant toilet humor not to mention its overload in vulgarities I would have thought this would have being a monster hit based on the "taste" of today's critics and audiences.
Posted by: jdls08 | August 15, 2008 at 02:25 PM
Who is calling Tropic Thunder a bomb? In 2 days it's made over $11 million, pacing it for a $40+ million opening which is right around studio estimates. It also happens to be getting very good reviews, so i don't know where the attacks are originating in these posts.
Paramount is having an excellent year - nearly $850 million in their top 3 films ALONE! Disney is the studio that's bombed big time this year with Narnia 2 disappointing in sales and the highly-hyped Wall-E basically tying Dreamworks' Kung Fu Panda (and Dreamworks still has Madagascar 2 in the can for 2008).
Posted by: BobbyB | August 15, 2008 at 04:07 PM
yeah, I'm not sure why you're not counting Iron Man in there, because that's $300 million alone, then add in Indiana Jones (another $300) and Kung Fu Panda (over $200 million) and Paramount, as a distributor, is having a much better summer and year than Dark Knight and that's not even including Madagascar 2 which should be another $200 million. That's how the numbers are counted up every other year so not sure why you're deliberately skewing things against them.
Posted by: Edward Douglas | August 15, 2008 at 10:22 PM
I actually think Tropic Thunder is opening better than I thought -- I'm only swayed by the so called Buzz and the great reviews but it's not a movie that i must see on opening day. Besides this opening is great given that it is mid-august and usually movies don't open that high in this time period mainly because studios don't offer much worth seeing.
Posted by: jake | August 16, 2008 at 02:07 AM