let's not forget that at the end of the day this film is still something of a gamble...
"we" of course will go see it as will diehard depp fans and perhaps fans of the vampire genre but the great masses might not be lining up the the multiplex to see a remake of an old soap opera.
True. And the fact that
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 made $138,122,261 in its first weekend does prove, as Variety said, "there's plenty of life in the undead." However, as I've said before, I would be thrilled if the Depp/DS film pulls in something like those numbers for its entire US run in theaters. There's no way DS is going to do those numbers in its first week because it's nowhere near as established in the minds of the potential audience as the
Twilight films or even the
Underworld films are, having already had multiple successful predecessors at the box office.
Something I did find interesting when I just noticed it on boxofficemojo.com is that BD P1's budget was $110 million. That's more along those lines of what I was expecting for DS. But as others have said, shooting mostly in studio definitely helps to cut down on a film's budget - plus it's probably likely that some of the personnel involved in the film took a much smaller upfront salary and are more than likely getting a share of the gross in return for that. Plus DS was completely shoot in England, unlike BD P1, which was shoot in several exotic locales, including Brazil. And to put things in even greater perspective comparitively, the first
Twilight movie only cost $37 million to make, so DS' budget is well ahead of that.
Something I also noticed on boxofficemojo.com is that
Hugo is only estimated to make $11,350,000 for the five day Thanksgiving weekend. True, it's only playing in about 1200 theaters, whereas its competition is playing in close to three times as many (or even more than three times as many when it comes to BD P1), and that figure is very close to
Hugo's projected gross for the weekend, which was $10 to $12 million - but I really do think it shows that even a movie with as prestigious a pedigree as
Hugo's and one as highly lauded by critics as
Hugo has been is now having a much tougher time at the box office because of the higher cost of 3D tickets and the trending unwillingness of a good portion of the audience to spend extra for 3D. Again, thank heavens DS was not shot in 3D as was initially announced!
And finally, it was mentioned that DS will be in post-production well into next year, so it has months of post-production still ahead. Though that might not have much or even any effect on its budget because, as madscntst mentioned, films tend to anticipate what post-production is going to cost and that's factored into the overall production budget before production even begins. In most cases they rarely go over that estimate - or at least rarely go over it by much.
165 days 8 hours 10 minutes 7 seconds until the day the Depp/Burton Dark Shadows is released(ET)!!