The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes Becomes the Latest Disappointing IP-Based Movie

This Week In Movie Posters and the Weekend Box Office Round-Up!

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The Box Office Round-Up

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, a spinoff to the three Hunger Games movies that opened between 2008-2010, opened this weekend to a $44 million domestic gross, leading the box office. That’s only $2 million off The Marvels’ $46.1 million last weekend, which is pretty good considering this was a prequel without benefit of any of your favorite actors and characters from the series, like Jennifer Lawrence, Pita Bread, Futurebeard, and Haymitch Jablowme.

All the other Hunger Games movies opened above $100 million domestically, and this one grossed less than half that. Not only that, it was this was another one of those numbers that was revised downward all weekend long as each day seemed to underperform expectations based on the previous. Its closest comparison, as a prequel/spinoff of a successful series, is probably Fantastic Beasts, whose $74 million domestic gross was considered disappointing in 2016. (They still kept making them, and Johnny Depp getting replaced by Mads Mikkelsen after the second was part of the basis of his lawsuit against Amber Heard. Ah, Hollywood!).

But that was seven years ago and The Marvels was last weekend, so the perception of Songbirds & Snakes benefitted some from lowered expectations. Apparently it also had a much lower budget as well.

Per Deadline:

…at a $100M-plus production cost, 65% of which is funded by foreign sales, with another $20M+ in German tax credits, the Lionsgate Francis Lawrence-directed movie is structured completely differently financially than the $200M The Marvels. Lionsgate has largely covered their nut and exposure in foreign territory licensing, materially participating after their partners recover their costs. Songbirds & Snakes will be profitable, with a domestic end results between $120M-$130M. Still, there didn’t seem to be any kind of urgency here on behalf of fans to reignite new life into Hunger Games.

It’s always an exciting day when a distributor largely covers their nut and exposure in foreign territory licensing, I always say. Still, it doesn’t seem like a great sign for a movie when the box office write up has to include phrases like “German tax credits.” You probably shouldn’t have to work this hard to scrape a profit on your shameless cash grab, just saying!

Speaking of The Marvels, that lowest-opening-in-MCU-history now includes a 78% second-weekend drop, also the biggest in MCU history (previously it was Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, aka Ant-Man 3, with 69.9%).

Meanwhile, Trolls 3 opened to $30.6 million for second place, but down from $46 million opening of the first Trolls, in 2016.

Diminishing returns seems to be the theme here. How long until the film industry pivots away from IP-driven strategy? Hopefully they already have and we’re just living in the lame duck period of IP drivel, when the execs already know it doesn’t work anymore but they still have to put out what they’ve already made. Apropos of nothing, I can’t wait for Wonka!

This Week in Movie Posters

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.

Here’s the latest poster for A24’s wrestling movie, The Iron Claw, which includes both the arthouse standard yellow text and doubles down on amber with everyone bathed in golden light. I feel like everyone in this sort of looks like The Torch from Top Secret.

I also feel like that guy from The Bear chooses roles based on whether he’s allowed to have a big hair helmet that covers his ears. I don’t think I’ve ever seen his ears. Here’s a picture of him from 12 years ago. Still can’t see his ears!

Here’s one of a new batch of character posters from Migration, which is the latest from Illumination (who also make Despicable Me/Minions and The Secret Life of Pets). Illumination always sort of feel like a poor man’s Pixar to me, but they may be flip flopping. The character design in this looks five times better than probably the last five Pixar movies. I mean sure, you could bust your ass trying to anthrpomorphize a cloud or you could just draw a silly duck. Work smarter, not harder!

Here’s the poster for The Teachers’ Lounge, which seems to be an arthouse film out of Germany. I know it says “German” or “Germany” like five times on the poster but I could also tell just from the bangs.

Ay, it’s-a me, Enzo a-Ferrari. Enzo a-just a-wanna say-a one-a thing-a: you come on up atta da king-a, you best-a not-a miss-a!

Why do I get the sense that he’s about to do an obscene hand gesture?

And here we have another Blumhouse horror movie. Seems like they release one of these every four weeks now. If M3gan gave us Scary Doll and Five Nights At Freddy’s gave us Scary Chuck E. Cheese, Imaginary looks like it’s going with Scary Teddy Ruckspin. What did I say about working smarter not harder? No one does that better than Blumhouse. (I’m fine with it! M3gan was mostly fun!).

What number Wimpy Kid movie is this? Doesn’t this kid ever hit the weights? They should hook him up with the Liver King in the next one before his lungs collapse from being insufficiently swole.

Here’s the latest character poster for Family Switch, whose title apparently also applies to switching the name/face order. Looks like a wacky family comedy though! They’re Culkining!

I really enjoy the idea that Mark Wahlberg is doing an inspirational dog movie. The perfect follow up to his hard-sell Catholicism movie co-starring Mel Gibson! Which was directed by Mel Gibson’s fancy horse wife. Did you guys remember that happened? It’s my curse to remember these things.

Anyway, I think part of the reason it’s funny is that Marky Mark seems like the furthest thing from a dog person I can think of. It looks like they couldn’t even get him in the same room with the dog for this poster.

Butterflies are well-known vaginal imagery, right? I’m not just imagining that? It looks like they put a little Rorschach vagina right above his head. *sigh* I love art.

I enjoy that the top third of this poster manages to cram in like six different fonts. You can tell they’re really going after that Gather/Live Laugh Love demographic. This one apparently comes from the studio behind The Jesus Revolution and I Can Only Imagine, so I’m excited to find out which details of the subjects they whitewash in this one. Six kids? That’s not a family, it’s a cult.

Just because I’m morbidly curious, let’s go to IMDB:

The movie also follows the family's mother, Helen Smallbone as she uses her faith to hold the family of nine together by turning struggles into an adventure for her children.

“Smallbone,” eh? Perfectly cromulent name. It was co-directed by Joel Smallbone, so I’m sure it will be a clear-eyed, unbiased take on the material.

Aw, c’mon, man, you never bring a rose to a gun fight.

Also, what the hell is that background supposed to be? Are they going to have kinky gun sex in a clipart fallout shelter?

Kaley Cuoco’s hair looks like one of those games where you cover half the person’s face and the other side looks like a completely different person.

Like father like son! They’re similar in… something! Based on this picture, it looks like they’re both YouTube influencers. “We gave $3,000 to a homeless man and what he did will shock you!” ass faces.

Ah yes, sumptuous visual effects for candy magic enthusiasts, exactly what made the original Willy Wonka such a hit! I’m actually kind of excited for this, I can’t remember another project that seemed such an obvious misread.