Passengers may or may not be an outright hit when the dust settles. The film was considered something of a test case. The $110 million sci-fi romance/drama was not based on a known brand or IP. It was not a sequel, a remake, or a reboot. And its core marketing trump card was old-school star power, in this case Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.
The film got mediocre reviews and didn’t exactly barrel out of the gate in North America, with a $30 million six-day debut that now looks like a $100-$105m domestic total. Yet after a month in worldwide theatrical play, it has crossed one relative milestone. With $255m and counting worldwide, it is the biggest live-action “not based on anything” Hollywood release of 2016.
The picture has earned $91 million in North America in its first 27 days, but it has (relatively speaking) broken out overseas. The Morten Tydlum-directed/Jon Spaights-written offering has earned around $165m overseas, including a $17.5m opening weekend in China. It made $32.5m overseas last weekend and has easily bested the $217m worldwide cume of Central Intelligence.
That Dwayne Johnson/Kevin Hart comedy’s $126 million domestic total remains the biggest North American grosser for a “not based on anything” live-action Hollywood release in 2016. And unless Passengers completely drops dead from here on out and does nothing in Japan in March, we’re looking at a $300m+ worldwide total. $350m is possible, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
So yes, regardless of whether or not the film ends up being profitable, the experiment was a relative success. For the record, if a $110 million movie can’t at least break even with $300m worldwide, then they spent too much on marketing.
The combination of glamorous movie stars, a high concept (two interstellar travelers are awakened from hibernation mid-voyage and hook up), and the promise of big-budget sci-fi spectacle seems to have been enough to snag a moderately decent worldwide total for the wholly original live-action release. So would a cheaper version of Passengers would have been even more profitable? Or were the top-flight production design and effects sequences enough of a draw to qualify as “necessary” for said eventual worldwide total?
Now you’ll notice that I have specified “Hollywood” release in relation to Passengers, and that’s because Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid earned $553 million early last year, with $526m of that coming from China alone. And 2015’s second-biggest live-action “not based on anything” release, behind Dwayne Johnson’s earthquake actioner San Andreas ($473m), was Monster Hunt, which made $385m including $381m in China alone.
And with $199 million and counting, it’s entirely possible that Zhang Yimou’s The Great Wall (opening in North America on Feb. 17 courtesy of Universal/Comcast Corp.) will end 2017 as the year’s biggest “not based on anything” release from Hollywood or elsewhere. There is a conversation to be had about China’s “not based on anything” mega-blockbusters. But that can wait until I actually see The Great Wall in a month’s time.
The grim part of this story is that a movie was able to become the year’s biggest live-action original with just $255 million global. There has been a huge decrease in big or even big-ish budget live-action Hollywood originals in just the last few years. As recently as 2013, there were five live-action original films (Gravity, Pacific Rim, Now You See Me, Oblivion and Elysium) that earned upwards of $286m worldwide. 2014 had three such films (Interstellar, Lucy and Neighbors) that made at least $270m worldwide.
2015 had San Andreas and then, in second place, Pixels with $244 million worldwide. In 2016, Passengers is the top “not based on anything” live-action hit of the year (assuming La La Land doesn’t eventually steal its thunder) with “just” $255m. Unless I’m missing something, I can’t think of anything in 2017 that is wholly original (does Dunkirk count?) that can be expected to approach even $250m worldwide.
The good news is that the relative success of Passengers makes the case that studios can still make money from high concept and star-driven big-budget original genre fare. The bad news is that the chance to prove as much is getting smaller each year with big money being (understandably) allocated for brand adaptations, reboots and sequels. At the very least, the strong worldwide showing makes a case that Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt are more than just “Internet famous.”
