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SUNDAY AM: What a huge disappointment for Disney. Jerry Bruckheimer’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice tanked by making only $5.4M Friday and $6.9M Saturday from 3,504 U.S. and Canadian theaters for what should be a paltry $17.3M for the 3-day weekend. So the pic’s cume is now $24.4M. Little wonder that Hollywood thinks this may well be the last film at Disney where megaproducer Bruckheimer just phones it in.
FRIDAY PM: Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice only made $5.2M Friday from 3,504 theaters for what should be a paltry $17.5M for the 3-day weekend. The pic’s 5-day projection keep going down, from $35M to $30M to $25M for the costly Nic Cage starrer.
FRIDAY AM: Disney’s disappointing Sorcerer’s Apprentice made $3.2M Thursday for a new 2-day cume of $7M. “Hard to believe it’s going to be a happy outcome,” one rival studio mogul chortled to me. “It’ll struggle to hit $30sM.” (Solid $3M Midnights For Nolan’s ‘Inception’)
WEDNESDAY PM/THURSDAY AM UPDATE: Sources at rival studios tell me that Disney’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice made about $3.7 million today from 3,385 theaters in the U.S. and Canada. That makes for a 5-day projection of less than $30M, and one studio predicted only $20+M, which is extremely disappointing for the costly Jerry Bruckheimer tentpole starring Nic Cage, and much less than even the low-ball $35M which Hollywood thought it could make. But I’d been following the pic’s tracking, which at no point hinted at a blockbuster.
At 2 1/2 weeks out, Sorcerer’s Apprentice was tracking worse than his U.S. underperformer Prince Of Persia: only 29 definite interest and 3 first choice compared to Persia‘s 36 definite interest and 5 first choice at the same time period. Though exhibitor screenings had gone well, Disney was concerned. A week later, numbers for Sorcerer’s Apprentice showed gains with tracking “a lot less dire,” one rival studio exec told me. But then, Sorcerer’s Apprentice stalled at 8% first choice and didn’t gain anything last weekend, which is unusual. “You’d like to see that weekend before opening show some real growth. But the pic is not showing a heck of a lot of strength with family audiences,” another source told me. “I’d be surprised if it got to $40M over the 5 days.” Yesterday, tracking was still stalled, showing that the 5-day total might only reach $30M and maybe get to $35M. ”That’s bad,” a rival studio exec told me.
Then again, Prince Of Persia was a North American disappointment when it opened to $30M and has now taken in $89M. But it has made 72% of its money internationally for $236M and what is now a worldwide cume of $325M. So perhaps Sorcerer’s Apprentice will, too.
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How many more bombs can Nic Cage’s career endure? His choices are so awful that he deserves to end up working at McDonald’s. Maybe he can blame his accountant for the bad movies, too.
It’s a shame they put Mickey in the trailer for this thing. He deserves better.
And speaking of that, and Muppets…how come Disney is eager to make a movie with Kermit the frog but not with Mickey MOUSE, THEIR OWN CHARACTER? (Don’t talk to me about the purchase…Eisner went nuts and spent too much of the company’s money at an antique sale…and now his successor is stuck with a piece of old junk. Glad the stockholders threw Eisner out. Question is, is Iger any better?)
If Disney had the smarts it would make a movie based on Kingdom Hearts. That could potentially be a hit with several demos, from kids to teens to adults who love classic Disney.
But then Richie Rossie hates animation. Maybe if somebody put lots of sequins on it…
This was a surprisingly entertaining film. Probably the first Bruckheimer film I’ve seen in a decade in the theater, but I love Alfred Molina so I went.
I know my kids don’t want to see it. They rather see Despicable Me and wait for this movie on DVD. For me personally the reason is Nicolas Cage. I can’t seem to enjoy this actor’s work.
M.T. Carney (empty carnie?) has now devised a desperate ploy to drive ticket sales before this ship wreck sinks to the bottom of the sea. You can supposedly go to fandango, type in a code and get two for one tickets. (google it.)
I think this is a tough concept–how do you make such an old fashioned idea relevant and cool? But rather than telling me how SA is cool, it seemed to confirm my biggest reservations that this is wall to wall special effects, is corny (wtf is a wizardian? did they really say that?) and that we are going to get kooky yet charmless nic cage. Bottom line is that it is desperate to create magic only to implode by trying to hard. Reminds me of the Disney flop, Hocus Pocus.
Hey — at least there’s a two-for-one deal on the tickets at Fandango.
Saw this last night, and I was pleasantly surprised. Baruchel was baruchel…charming in the geek trying to get the girl role. He was very relatable. Cage was bearable doing his best impression of a Christian Bale Batman voice. Molina killed it as did his apprentice. They used effects inw ays I’d never seen, had great character design, and interesting mythology, and a coherent plot (which is more than I can say for other summer blockbusters). National Treasure is the best comparison. Nothing groundbreaking, but solidly entertaining.
once i saw Nic Cage’s hair i knew to stay away
I saw the film last night. The effects and fight scenes were better than expected. Only one over the top CGI dragon scene could have been left out. Cage/Molina/Kebbel were great. Baruchel not so much. Thats mainly because you already knew how his character would develop throughout the movie. The love interest and roommate were unnecessary. The film ran out of steam after the second act. The main problem with the film is that the story isn’t original. Awkward guy can’t talk to the ladies, gets training, becomes master, gets girl, saves world. Baruchel played the same role in his last film “How to train your dragon” but instead of training it was friendship building. Not only that but there have been an onslaught of similar films recently ie all the superhero movies, harry potter, karate kid, scott pilgrim, kick ass etc.
TSA not a failure. Quite the opposite. Don’t you remember, the studio’s new recipe for success? Make movies that are brand names and franchisable from video games, comic book and remakes. PRINCE OF PERSIA, THE A-TEAM, MARMADUKE, JONAH HEX, SORCERER’S APPRENTICE — are winners because they all follow this new formula – and don’t let the movie going public tell you different!!
This kinda reminds me of the Warner Brother’s action formula that worked so well in the 80′s, but by the mid-ninties, audiences finally caught on and grew tired of.
Lets pray the marketing people running the studios today get the message sooner.
The A-Team costs 115 million just for production and is sitting at 135 million worldwide after being out in 50 international territories for almost a month.
You have to look really hard to find another movie with that budget and those low box office numbers in the past summer movie market. The biggest flop of the season so far with cost to box office ratio.
Prince of Persia will do probably 300 million worldwide and I think Sorcerer will come close considering the subject matter.
What Hollywood never seems to realize is that most of the US audience does not live in LA or NY but in America’s heartland. Of that demographic, most are Christian and raising Christian children. A movie that looks “dark” as in this marketing campaign, and has the word “sorcerer” in the title will not get any traction with this audience. Those parents will not take their kids to this type of film. Jerry Bruckheimer, who has a horse farm in Bible Belt Kentucky should know better! He should look up a few bible verses about sorcery and connect the dots.
Where do you come up with this crap? The 1.7 BILLION dollars domestic from the Harry Potter franchise would beg to differ, and that series is nothing but magic, witchcraft, spells and wiardry. Stop painting middle America as dark-ages inbred still burning people at the stake.
Good point. Just like ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone’
Of course, because NOBODY outside of the coasts ever spends money on Harry Potter. What an insightful person you are, my good little Christian soldier!
uh oh Laurie, you posted on this heathen demonic Hollywood site.
You are now going to hell for consorting with sinners.
That’s what you get for preaching.
The darkness just sucked you in girl.
Actually, most of the US audience lives in big cities… like LA or NY.
Since there is no such thing as sorcery, what’s the problem again?
Right. That’s why the Harry Potter films have made billions while movies like “Left Behind” have made…hundreds. This fictional bible-loving country of yours exists in pockets…most people live in or around big cites. That’s why even when your side wins elections, it does so barely (51% in 2004, 49% in 2000) and even the people who vote for your side don’t for the most part embrace your bible nonsense. If they did, Hollywood wouldn’t get away with half of what it gets away with and the internets wouldn’t be filled to the brim with porn (and by they way, the states that consume the most porn, alcohol and have the highest divorce rates? All in the Bible Belt. My state, the People’s Republic of Massachusetts has the highest rate of marriage, lowest rate of divorce, highest rate of post-grad and college education, income etc.) Enjoy the ash bin of history where you’re headed along with Beck, Rush etc…
Laurie,
I would avoid reading too much into Stories, Written by Men, about fictional characters wielding magic powers. I mean…unless those made up stories are at least 1900 to say 1700 years old, they can’t be true, right?
Uh, huh, so how do you explain the huge response to Disney’s Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe? C.S. Lewis loved magic and many of the old pagan gods, and he was the greatest Christian apologist of his time. Damn good writer too, better than Rowling. And oh, what about the Wizard of Oz, with all those Good Witches as well as the bad?
I’m a Midwesterner (born and bred in Indiana, where the frost is on the punkin, and raised in Tornado Alley), I’m a social conservative, and I love movies about magic. GOOD movies about magic. And Sorcerer’s didn’t look like that kind of movie, sadly, so I skipped it.
No females in the trailer or in the marketing. Why would take my daughter to a family film that ignores our gender?
lol. seriously? like really for real? comical.
Amazing point. Even Brokeback had women in the trailer.
I’m a single dad and my daughter throught it looked nice (she’s 9) but wasn’t impressed by seeing no girls/women. I’ll rent it to see if the girlfriend in the movie is typically made into the “save the lady” person.
Personally, I wish the movie lots of money so my daughter can hound me to buy merchandise next time we go to Disneyworld.
Remember when Nic Cage cared about acting? Does he share the same agent with Pacino?
To be fair, Cage is needing the money now after (allegedly) his manager stole all his money and IRS are hounding him.
What I don’t get is, why was he doing such garbage like NEXT and WICKER MAN remake before the IRS troubles?
I think it’s the updated Micheal Caine syndrome – don’t turn down anything you get offered (quality doesn’t matter) just in case you never get asked to work again.
And as he does now need the cash, expect even more big paycheck based duds to come from him.
I thought his acting in Bad Cop was great. Classic, great Nic Cage, a la Vampire’s Kiss.
Yeah, he’s good when he wants to be.
But around the mid 1990s he decided to join forces with Bruckheimer and be a ‘movie-star’ instead of a great actor and the results have rarely been at the level of his early work.
I’m not blaming him for running after the mega-paychecks (if I was an actor I’d do the same) but the movies he’s getting them for are getting worse and worse. Of course, the last few years, so have Bruckheimers’ flicks in general so they’re kinda sinking together.
Seriously, it looks just like every other CGI-heavy tentpole flick Hollywood’s churning out.
I seem to remember Eisner leaving and Disney replacing him with a network TV guy and then Dick Cook was asked to leave and he was replaced by a basic cable TV Guy and then Disney hired a adveristing person with no resume. Disney’s mantra seems to be anyone can be replaced by anyone who doesn’t know what they don’t know becuase there is no one left who knows!
This is my first ever post. I’m no longer a virgin. Sigh.
As soon as I saw the trailer for Persia, I knew it would fail. I like Jake G as much as the next guy. But I like him as an all american, short haired, clean cut kinda guy. As soon as I saw him with the long hair and that, uh, British accent, i thought to myself: NO WAY would I sit through that. To me, it was that simple. Could this be occum’s razor? could the reason it failed be that simple? I think so.
As for Sorcerer’s, one look at the bad hair and the dingy, dark, gothic outfit on Nic Cage made me want to sit this one out, too. I don’t want to look at that for 2 hours.
Maybe my reasoning is superficial, but it also seems obvious to me.
I’m not in the industry, but I go to the movies 2 times a week, and see pretty much all genres.
And I love this site!
@Laurie
I disagree. look at Harry Potter movies. they make millions! and its pretty much the same thing as Sorcerers Apprentice.
Maybe ‘Sorcerer’s Apprentice’ failing to open against ‘Inception’ will teach studios the lesson that the success of ‘Despicable Me’ didn’t… people want something new.
“A movie that looks “dark” as in this marketing campaign, and has the word “sorcerer” in the title will not get any traction with this audience.”
ORLY?
http://www.the-frame.com/film_guide/harry_potter_and_the_sorcerers_stone/posters/harry_potter_and_the_sorcerers_stone_ver2.jpg
No person or studio makes movies like this hoping for awards…they want money. That’s how you have to measure success or failure…and by that measure, Persia and Apprentice will be two of the biggest failures of the year. Between the cost to make them and market them around the world, Disney will lose way more than $200 million. And enough with the bullshit of how the overseas will save them both. A 200 million dollar loss assumes the foreign overperforms. The US is still the single biggest market, and with neither film getting close to $100 m, Disney loses big money.
ANd the marketing on both films was just awful.
I saw this already, back when it was called “Harry Potter”. No more with the derivative dreck.
of course it’s bombing. you cast nick cage in a summer flick that appears to be aimed at teens and is made by disney.
the only movies nick cage should have ever made were raising arizona, wild at heart, and leaving las vegas.
(same could be said for John Travolta with Pulp Fiction, Grease, and maybe Saturday Night Fever)
stop type-casting has-beens who are growing in awkwardness, and maybe you’ll have a movie that people want to see.
Hasn’t hurt Harry Potter, Twilight & Lord of the Rings very much, now has it?
“Hasn’t hurt Harry Potter, Twilight & Lord of the Rings very much, now has it?”
You workin’ for the mouse buddy?
This is yet another film to tack onto this summer as being the worst in over a decade.
The trailer for this movie that my teenaged daughters and I saw in the theater before Airbender was bad. It was *pretty* but completely unappealing.
And I know why we all thought so.
It gave not a clue about what the characters wanted. What did they need? What did the “apprentice” want? What did he have to have? The trailer with the chameleon trying to hide in a cactus had more heart in 5 seconds than the Apprentice trailer had in the whole thing.
Ideally, in any story, the protagonist propels his or her own fate. In a “chosen one” story this isn’t necessarily true. But think of a handful of other chosen ones… Percy Jackson or Harry Potter or even Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Each of them, even Buffy, wanted something with their whole hearts, had to have it.
Maybe in this story it was Cage’s character who needed something badly, but that wasn’t so much as hinted at in the trailer.
I really like FX and explosions and that sort of thing. This should have appealed to me. It didn’t.
I can’t believe lee gave INCEPTION a C. You got every critic on the planet praising with no less than 4 stars, movie fans alike who have seen pre-screenings that say its an amazing mind blowing movie experience, rotten tomatoes gives a 97 approval rating, IMd gives it 9.6/10 and lee gives it a C. Is this guy on crack? Is he depressed all together hating the movie industry? Frankly, lately all I seen as far grades go from lee are C’s. What’s up with that? What do you guys think? Let me know
Ummmm… what Rottentomatoes website are you looking at. Right now Inception’s got 84% total with 73% Top Critics. It hasn’t had 97 since Monday dude. New York Times hated it too. Check your facts. Not that that makes it bad, but it’s not getting as great reviews as you think.