We won’t know for a few weeks whether Passengers is a hit, but it’s probably not going to be a blockbuster.
Sony’s ambitious bit of adult-skewing counter-programming is the kind of thing that, once upon a time, would have been an A-level blockbuster. It’s a $100 million+,
original sci-fi romance powered entirely by its concept and by the would-be star power of its leads, Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.
The $36m-and-counting seven-day total is below the most optimistic expectations but not necessarily a death sentence.
Both thanks to an unpredictable overseas box office and mostly predictable December legs for domestic releases,
this one may yet end up a modest hit (or something other than an embarrassment).
But rather than debate what its opening means for the would-be drawing power for its two leads, I’d like to argue something simpler. The movie cost too much, partially because the lead actors were overpaid. As you probably know, Jennifer Lawrence made headlines last year when she signed up for the long-gestating project with a whopping $20 million. And Chris Pratt, fresh off of Jurassic World, signed up as the male lead for an impressive $12m. This payday raised the budget for the film and created new expectations that this would be more than just a studio programmer. But in this day and age, no one is really worth $20m (and few are worth $12m) unless he or she are reprising a popular franchise character.
Chris Pratt is a beloved celebrity, a solid actor and (allegedly) a pretty nice guy. But all of Pratt’s hits heading into Passengers were explicitly in the comfort zone of big franchise plays. Regarding his work as a cinematic leading man, his big hits were Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.’s The LEGO Movie (a voice-over role), Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Jurassic World and Sony’s Denzel Washington-starring The Magnificent Seven. He snagged the big Passengers money after Jurassic World, which I guess makes more sense than Matthew Broderick snagging a $5 million payday for Inspector Gadget just BEFORE Godzilla. But I digress. He’s worth his weight in gold for Guardians of the Galaxy Volume 2, but not for a non-franchise star sell like Passengers.
All four of Pratt’s “big” films opened on the strength of proven brands and/or (in the case of Magnificent Seven) someone else’s star power. Now I will be the first to give Pratt’s crowd-pleasing characterizations partial credit for the legs of those first three hits. Moreover, Pratt’s relatively newfound (and kid-friendly) popularity may well have made himself into an added value element for Jurassic World in a way that, for example, Bradley Cooper would not. But going into Passengers, which by the way was an adult-targeted picture, we had no idea what Pratt’s pull was outside of a “was gonna be a hit regardless” franchise play. All the exuberant salary did was basically guarantee that the film would be viewed as a “test” for the actor’s stand-alone drawing power.
The $20 million payday for Ms. Lawrence was arguably intended to be symbolic. This was just several months after the Sony hacks exposed gender-based pay disparities, specifically for the ensemble American Hustle where supporting player Lawrence (who was a key marketing draw) was paid less than supporting character (and not a major draw) Jeremy Renner. Lawrence getting a $20m payday, a figure which 20 years ago was the high-water mark for actor salaries, made for media-friendly narratives concerning Lawrence “striking a blow” by getting paid more than her male co-star. The irony of that was she was playing a supporting role and her top billing/bigger salary created the false impression that she was the lead.
Jennifer Lawrence’s character in Passengers was “the girl.” She was a pure love interest who doesn’t show up until the end of act one. She does little beyond getting wooed by Pratt and wrestling with the consequences of a particular (SPOILER!) plot turn while the man gets to do the cool action-y stuff. Anyone who has seen the underrated Brat Pitt/Harrison Ford drama The Devil’s Own can attest that Lawrence isn’t the first movie star to get $20 million for a supporting role. The exuberant salary, again arguably intended as a symbolic triumph, created false impressions about whose story Passengers was telling and false presumptions that the filmmakers had fixed the “problematic” story turns in Jon Spaihts’s original (and arguably never intended to be blockbuster material) screenplay.
And the inclusion of two highly paid, pop culture-friendly would-be movie stars created an impression that Passengers, once conceived as a $40 million-ish sci-fi vehicle for the likes of Keanu Reeves and Rachel McAdams or Emily Blunt, would be a big-budget movie that required big-budget production values. Thus the mid-budgeted star vehicle became a $110m production, with $32m of that going to its two stars (who, to be fair, are between the two of them onscreen for nearly every second of the film). It also thus became a movie that somewhat needed an action-y ending for action-y trailers that (by default) negated the moral dilemma at the heart of the narrative. The big stars/bigger paychecks created unrealistic expectations for the film and for its financial performance in a brand-driven world.
Jennifer Lawrence accepting $20 million (plus points once the movie breaks even) for a movie that wasn’t a sequel to a successful franchise (she’s worth whatever she got and more for the last three Hunger Games movies) is tantamount to walking into a trap. All that is going to happen is that the film will be more expensive, which means it’s that much more likely that it won’t be a hit, which then will inspire a wave of “I guess Jennifer Lawrence isn’t a movie star!” posts and conjecture. Never mind that Joy opened with a $17m Fri-Sun debut last Christmas entirely on her drawing power. Pratt may take similar arrows, but he has two franchises in which to dabble and an industry filled with male-driven star vehicles and sausage-fest ensembles.
With a $36 million-and-counting seven-day total, it is possible that the splashy sci-fi vehicle will have legs similar to The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. That too-expensive, unconventional, adult-skewing Sony Christmas release that did fine ($232m worldwide) for what it was but cost too much at $90m. If Passengers legs it like Lizbeth, it’ll make it to around $110-$115m domestic. That would be a relative win, especially if it does substantial overseas business. But since Passengers came in at $110m for Sony and friends (Village Roadshow, LStar Capitol and Wanda among others), it basically has to play out with its best-case-scenario to just break even. A cheaper Passengers, including lower paydays for both actors, would have created a greater likelihood of relative success and less pressure to prove that “big-budget, star-driven, adult-skewing, original sci-fi” can deliver blockbuster business.
Tom Rothman had a reputation over at Fox for being (simplification alert) a micro-managing penny pincher. But maybe, for example, bringing in Bryan Singer’s first X-Men at $75 million back in 2000 is part of why we are about to get our tenth X-Men movie. It was twenty years ago when Jim Carrey broke through the $20m-a-picture ceiling with Sony’s The Cable Guy, another (ironically) unconventional not-quite-crowd pleaser that ended up barely scraping by partially due to its large ($60m) budget. In an era which was less franchise-driven and more star (or star+concept) driven, giving big stars the big bucks made sense. You had movie stars like Tom Cruise headlining star vehicles were the top draw was Mr. Cruise. A Julia Roberts rom-com only needed Julia Roberts on the poster.
That isn’t the industry anymore. So-called “new” movie stars like Tom Hardy, Michael Fassbender and Chris Hemsworth can’t open a film outside of the protective franchise sheen. Most of the old-school movie stars (Hanks, Smith, etc.) are (at best) wildly inconsistent. Unless you’re Leonardo DiCaprio, whom I would argue has retained his gloss partially by avoiding franchises and pop culture properties, or the star of lower-budgeted comedies (Kevin Hart, Melissa McCarthy and Will Ferrell), you’re in a pickle. The “big” movies are now too expensive to rest on the shoulders of (most) movie stars, we’re getting a lot less mid-budget movies of all stripes, and the allure of the star vehicle has worn off in the era of the “Hey, it’s Angelina Jolie… AS Maleficent!” star+character/franchise sell.
In that sense, Passengers was an ambitious attempt to recreate a triumph of the old-school system. 20 years ago, a movie like Passengers would have been an A-level blockbuster title and one of the bigger hits of a given season. But today it’s tantamount to counter-programming against Walt Disney’s Rogue One and Universal/Comcast Corp.’s Sing. Movie stars reprising their franchise-favorite characters, think Kristen Stewart in Twilight or Johnny Depp in Pirates, are worth whatever they can get. Otherwise, non-comedy movie stars in pure star vehicles aren’t worth what they used to be. Lawrence and Pratt will be okay, and Sony will presumably survive. Albeit we should note how well Sony’s smaller fare (The Shallows, Sausage Party, etc.) did this year compared to its “big” (Ghostbusters, Inferno) offerings.
Passengers may leg it way to relative glory. After all, there does still seem to be a moderate appetite for big-scale science-fiction adventure movies among audiences who otherwise are addicted to comic book fantasies and animated talking animal fables. But thanks to the budget and old-school expectations, it now has to play “best-case-scenario ball” to not be a whiff. For the actors, with the caveat that the fat paychecks may have been symbolic (and it’s not like they have to give the money back), the mistake was taking a 1996 paycheck for a 1996 blockbuster in a 2016 environment. But no matter how this plays out over the next month, kudos to Sony and friends for trying.
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Source: Los Angeles Times
