'Iron Man' Box Office Preview

It’s that time of year again. The days are growing longer, the temperature is rising and the predictions for box office are blossoming into the summer spectacle of 9-digit weekend openings. $100,000,000. Before Spider-Man broke that milestone, $100 million was a sign of great success…for a movie's entire run. Despite last year's Spider-Man 3 and Pirates 3, $100 million in a 3-day weekend remains an elite group. The only non-sequel on the list is Spider-Man with $114.8 million, and only two occurred outside of May (Dead Man’s Chest on July 7 and Goblet of Fire on November 18). I would not rule out $100 million or more for Iron Man, but that seems like a very best case scenario especially given the Thursday previews (which will not count towards the weekend). I’ll leave the precise predicting to Lee, but I’ll try to lay out the case for a wide range of possible openings.

I’ve been skeptical of Iron Man. I’m not a comic book fan and I had no idea what Iron Man was and the general idea didn’t sound very promising. The first promotional shots looked more like Plastic or Carbon Fiber Man than anything metallic, perhaps even a tougher looking Bicentennial Man. Eventually, however, I saw the trailer. The first 45 seconds are cheesy, but the second half showed promise and by the second trailer, I was sold. It looks like a satisfying summer action movie. As for the business...(continued below trailer #2).



May is by far the most promising month for spectacular movies. Last summer had the biggest opening of all-time with Spider-Man 3 grossing $151.1 million. At first glance, $100 million doesn’t seem that tough. Iron Man has strong reviews and tracking shows that audiences have reacted positively to the marketing campaign. Of course, Spider-Man was a proven franchise and it’s not a fair to compare a second sequel's open to a non-sequel. Let’s look at X-Men and try to make it into a $100 million opening. X-Men opened on July 14, 2000 with $54.5 million. We can adjust that open because tickets were cheaper in 2000 than they are in 2008 and that brings the weekend gross to $72.2 million in 2008 dollars. However, we can do even better by looking at X-Men’s total: $157.3 million, a mediocre 2.9 times its opening weekend. However, Spider-Man 3 managed an even worse 2.2 times its opening.

Let's assume X-Men opened the first week of May (yes, it’s a stretch). We take the total and divide by 2.2 and that would have meant a $71.5 million opening in 2000 dollars ($94.7 million in 2008 dollars). Therefore, we have some historical comparisons of both sequels and non-sequels in the same genre opening near and well above $100 million.

On the other hand, perhaps our expectations are far too high because of last year’s amazing summer for big openings. Let’s take a look at other top openings during the first weekend of May:

May 5-7, 2006 Mission Impossible $47.7 million
May 6-8, 2005 Kingdom of Heaven $19.6 million
May 7-9, 2004 Van Helsing $51.7 million
May 2-4, 2003 X2 $85.6 million ($101.3 million in 2008 dollars)

Iron Man doesn’t have as strong of a built-in fan base as X-Men or Spider-Man. In addition, Iron Man doesn’t seem as kid-friendly as Spider-Man. None of the Spider-Man movies seemed like family movies to me, but audiences apparently felt that way. Re-watching the Iron Man trailer, I don’t see anyone under 18 years of age whereas Spider-Man, X-Men and Transformers center around teens. How important is this to box office? I don’t run focus groups, but I have to assume if George Lucas felt the need to include Jar Jar Binks in order to appeal to young kids, it has to be a factor.

Is the largest factor going against Iron Man actually Grand Theft Auto IV? I don’t buy that line of thinking, at least given the evidence that box office dropped during Halo 3’s release. Halo 3 came out on September 25 and was the highest selling game of all-time; GTA IV is expected to break that record. September 28 - 30 was down 13% from the previous year but up 2% from 2005. I don’t see how any of this is evidence for Halo 3 affecting box office. September is traditionally a very weak month versus May which is an excellent month. It would be hard to compare Halo 3’s fans avoiding The Game Plan or The Kingdom with Grand Theft Auto's fans skipping Iron Man. Perhaps there will be an effect, but I don’t think Halo 3 offers proof. I hope some of these lofty expectations won’t cause some box office watchers to be disappointed with a 3-day weekend opening around $80 million and then blame GTA IV for the “missing” $20 million of box office.