TURNING THE PAGE
Booksmart’s box office totals not disaster many claim
From the start, Booksmart seemed a special kind of movie, earning deep acclaim from early viewers and critics.
The Olivia Wilde-directed film, about two overachieving high-schoolers facing challenges small and serious on graduation eve, drew praise for its honest portrayal of teenage girls.
It notched an extremely rare 99 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes. Social-media buzz out of SXSW was astronomical. And the film landed the “classic” modifier from more than one respected writer.
The results over its early days haven’t yet shown it, though. The Beanie Feldstein-Kaitlyn Dever comedy, on a U.S. holiday weekend, took in just $9 million including Memorial Day, and $6.5 million without it (all figures in U.S. dollars). That put it in sixth place, miles behind Aladdin’s $113 million. Many box office pundits (and fans of the film) wrote of a serious underperformance — a box office “tragedy.”
Even Wilde got in on the defeatist act. “We are getting creamed by the big dogs out there and need your support,” she tweeted over its opening weekend. She worried that this could have a disturbing downstream effect. “Don’t give studios an excuse not to green-light movies made by and about women,” she said.
Yet the despair, both for this film and the smart female-led entertainment, may be overstated. For the many of us who saw and loved the movie, and those yet to see and love it, there are reasons the sky isn’t falling (not on this, anyway). As much as Booksmart suggests a movie industry in sad transformation, it doesn’t suggest it all that much.
Following are some of those reasons.
1 There’s an Annapurna factor
The movie was produced and marketed by upstart Annapurna Pictures (and released by niche United Artists). That’s occasioned lots of debate about whether it received the right treatment.
Annapurna, founded and run by the auteur-minded financier Megan Ellison (yes, of that Silicon Valley Ellison family) took a specific approach: It marketed the movie heavily on social media, where its teen audience lives, and softly on TV, where it doesn’t (and where time is expensive). In this light, Booksmart results may not be a question of audience — they’re a question of how a studio reached that audience. It’s tough to know whether another studio would have done it better. But chew on this: Annapurna had three notable movies it went wide with recently: the Dick Cheney dark comedy Vice; the genre race parable Sorry to Bother You; and the superhero biopic Professor Marston and the Wonder Women. The highest-grossing was Vice with $8 million. Marston barely got to $700,000. One big decision Annapurna made was to go “wide” with the movie — industry-speak for opening on a lot of screens (in this case, 2,500 in the U.S. and Canada). This was ... a big gamble. The film has no A-list stars among the high schoolers. It wins with its lived-in quality and intimate portrayals — with virtues that don’t bring people out on opening weekend.
The more typical approach is to “platform,” to release in a handful of big-city theatres and let word of mouth take hold, then roll out more. Annapurna/ UA didn’t do that. And there’s no quantifying how much that hurt it in the long term.
2 The movie went too far, too fast 3 This actually didn’t go as low under the bar as it seems
The substantive high school comedy has been a niche play for years now — The Edge of Seventeen, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Spectacular Now, three great recent examples, each failed to reach $20 million in total box office. Booksmart is right in line with those.
That’s partly because Netflix and other streaming services have been gobbling up audience share with such movies as Set It Up and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before. Younger viewers are accustomed to seeing such films on their first weekend — and at home. OK, so this one’s not exactly a cheerful reason. “It’s not just this smart theatrical movie, it’s many smart theatrical movies.” But still, worth seeing the results in context — as consistent with the audience this kind of film gets, not as a disappointment. Plus:
4
The high school comedy is historically a slow burn
Do you know how many weeks it took before Pretty in Pink hit the magical $35-million mark? Ten. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off took two months to get to $50 million. Granted, movies rolled out slower then. But the fact remains: Outside of a few Superbad-y exceptions, high school movies catch on slowly in theatres, because they need time for their key factor to kick in: other high-schoolers. Which brings us to ...
5 Box office doesn’t matter much
On one level, Wilde’s point about results is fair. Hollywood executives look at comparable movies when deciding to greenlight. And the fact that Booksmart didn’t open big could give some executives eyeing similar films pause.
But only some — and frankly, probably those who didn’t want to pay for a smart female-led comedy in the first place.
And even if every theatrical studio executive decides to pass on the next Booksmart, that may not be a full-on tragedy. Because there are a lot more places these movies can now get made. The fact that Booksmart lost business because of Netflix has a positive flip-side: There are a lot more venues where a talented young filmmaker can finance those movies. And for that matter, a lot more places where they’ll be seen.
Booksmart wasn’t devoured in theatres on its opening weekend. But it can and very likely will be watched elsewhere for years to come. It may not become a hit, but it could still be a classic.