There is, of course, a flip side to the positive box office trending of documentary films - much increased expectations and subsequent disappointment if these expectations are not met. Just to show how the expectation dynamic has shifted (maybe even gotten out of hand), one only need look at ThinkFilm's other big summer doc release Murderball.
After four weekends in theaters, Murderball has grossed more than half a million dollars. This past weekend was its best to date, with a take of more than $200,000. And it seems certain to pass the million dollar mark before summer is over, which would likely move it into the top 50 documentaries of all time.
Among the films in the 1 million to 1.3 million range, a target that Murderball should be able to hit without much difficulty, are a number of films considered to be big successes: Brother's Keeper, Dogtown and Z-Boys, Startup.com, Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, The Thin Blue Line and American Movie. Pretty fine company for any film (even if ticket prices are slightly higher).
But as Eugene Hernandez reports in today's Indiewire, the perception is that Murderball's performance to date is highly disappointing. He links to an article in yesterday's Washington Post that compares Murderball's gross with that of the popular Penguins:
But three weeks after opening, "Murderball" had grossed only $264,000, a paltry sum compared with, say, the documentary "March of the Penguins" (which has grossed more than $10 million).
Note that though the article ran in yesterday's Post, the film had more than doubled that "paltry" (a bit more than Gigantic made, by the way) figure by yesterday evening.
The Post article comes a couple weeks after a fairly devastating LA Times piece that basically declared Murderball DOA:
A week before "Murderball's" premiere last weekend, ThinkFilm fielded excited calls from theaters booking the film, asking for more prints of the acclaimed documentary about wheelchair rugby. They needn't have bothered. Although it was one of the year's best-reviewed films, "Murderball" did half the business the film's distributor originally projected it would, grossing $57,000 in eight theaters.
Now, granted, this is probably not the average ThinkFilm was looking for (remember, they just grossed over $60,000 per screen for The Aristocrats), but it's far from a disaster. In fact, the film placed third on Indiewire's BOT chart that weekend for specialty per screen average, although Indiewire did classify this as a "moderate" debut. The same Indiewire article quotes ThinkFilm head Mark Urman as saying, "Of course we could've had higher numbers, but we always knew we had a marketing challenge facing us, and as wonderful as the film is, it's still possible to see it as a documentary about handicapped people and their problems -- if you're someone who doesn't see beyond the surface."
Yesterday's Post article hits on the same theme, blaming the disappointment on the subject matter:
At first, Urman says, he thought that maybe the title wasn't working, or that word of mouth about "Murderball" simply wasn't as good as the company predicted. After ThinkFilm hired a market research firm to test audiences' reactions, they found that response to the movie was overwhelmingly positive.
Their conclusion? The wheelchairs are scaring filmgoers off. "We have a film that is about men who've had either terrible injuries or illnesses," Urman says. "I think people assume -- incorrectly -- that it will be emotionally draining as opposed to emotionally uplifting. I've heard people say, 'Oh, I've heard good things about it, I just don't know if I'm ready for it,' or 'I don't know if I'm in the mood.' "
This may very well be the case; perhaps audiences felt that the film might be depressing. But, perhaps some audience members were turned away by the fact that it's a film about sports, which aside from Hoop Dreams has never been a particularly popular nonfiction feature subject.
Looking again at the chart of top documentaries of all time, the only sports-related films to crack the top 100 (where Murderball, based on yesterday's cumulative total, sits at #78) are Hoop Dreams at #7, Step Into Liquid at #17, When We Were Kings at #24, Riding Giants at #31, Beyond the Mat at #34, Life and Times of Hank Greenburg at #36, Dogtown at #44 and Still We Believe: The Boston Red Sox Movie at #89.
That's just 9 films in the top 100 that are related to sports (as opposed to 20 films related to politics/current affairs and 16 films about music and musicians) - 1 basketball (2 if you include Murderball), 2 surfing, 1 boxing (Ali and Foreman, I mean, come on), 2 baseball (including the regionally-aimed Still We Believe and the social-justice oriented Hank Greenburg), 1 wrestling and 1 on skateboarding (which is, in many ways, a pop-cultural film rather than a strict sports film).
Perhaps there was justification for all the rampant high hopes for Murderball - it got stellar reviews, tons of publicity and the Sundance and MTV stamps of approval - and maybe audiences' discomfort with disabilities played a role in undercutting the film's potential. Or maybe the film is about on track to do as well as it was supposed to - Dogtown or Kid Stays in the Picture-sized numbers. Hopefully we haven't reached the point in our documentary frenzy that such a result should be considered a massive disappointment.
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