Business is Business
So how is SiCKO! (and what is with the spelling?!) doing a the box office?
Good but not great. It’s currently the #5 documentary of all time, having just passed Madonna: Truth or Dare, a film only slighly less informative about health care.
Whether it passes Bowling for Columbine or An Inconvenient Truth depends on its legs - whether or not it maintains its market share the way those two films did. But there’s no way it’s going to catch March of the Penguins or Fahrenheit 9/11. So much for tapping into the national pulse.
I think it’s becoming clear that documentaries are still aiming for the $10-30 million market and that the $70-100 million bonanzas were unique. Penguins and F911 happened to hit the box office at the right time - when reality television was at its ugly zenith and mainstream movies were at their ugly nadir. F911 opened at #1 in the box office mainly because it’s primary competition was White Chicks. White Chicks, of course, was operating at the disadvantage of offering slightly more insight in the Bush Administration.
F911 is looking less like the harbinger of things to come and more like a weird national twitch. Moore tapped into the extreme anger and frustration that the Left had felt ever since, oh, let’s say December of 2000. He’s still a big voice, unfortunately. But the idea that he’s going to be driving the national discussion and changing the movie industry is looking less likely. The Dems won in 2006 and the Left is sleepy. Their love of socialized medicine apparently does not burn as hot as their hatred of George Bush.
Comments
Morgan Freeman’s narrator voice would beat the crap out of Moore’s narrator voice.
Morgan Freeman’s narrator voice would beat the crap out of Moore’s narrator voice.
Personally I’d be happy if Morgan Freeman just beat the crap out of Moore, heh.
To be honest, I’m hoping that the movie lasts in theatres another two weeks or so.... because I’d like to finally see it, and it opens in Australia, where I am now, just after I return stateside.
“Sicko" in Top 5 Grossing Docs of All Time—This Weekend it’s “‘Sicko’ Night in America!”
Someone needs to post todays (Thursday 19th) email from Moore. The guy is basically on his knees begging us to see his movie, its pathetic. He sounds like a snake oil salesman, not to mention hes even stooped to having a contest.
“Nows The Time”! woo hoo I’m very excited, with so many exclamation points I almost peed myself.
Just when I think Ive seen it all from Moore he finds another way to make me shake my head.
shakes-head
The contest isn’t FREE but its sincere:
And, to show my thanks to all of you who’ll go see “Sicko” this weekend, I’m going to send one of you and a guest on a free weekend to the universal health care country of your choice! That’s right. You’ll get to pick one of the three industrialized countries featured in the movie where, if you get sick, you get help for free, no matter who you are. All you have to do is send us your ticket stub (make sure it says “Sicko” on it and has the name of the theater and this weekend’s date on it—Friday, Saturday or Sunday - July 20th, 21st, 22nd). Attach the stub to a piece of paper with your name, address, phone number and email and send it to: ‘Sicko’ Night in America, 888c 8th Avenue, Suite 443, New York, NY 10019. (Yes, you have to use that old 18th century device called the U.S. Postal Service, and it has to be postmarked on or by Tuesday, July 24th). First prize is a weekend in the city of your choice: Paris, London or Toronto. This includes airfare, hotel, meals and, most exciting, a representative from their fine universal health care system who will give you a personal tour so you can see how they treat their fellow citizens. You’ll meet people who pay nothing for college and citizens who are in the fourth week of their six-week paid vacation. Oh, and you’ll have time to see the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben or whatever they have in Toronto that is old and tall. (If you don’t have a passport, we’ll pay for that, too!)
So one minute he’s screeching its super-successful, then all he offers is to send all of two people abroad, for FREE, to hear the TRUTH. Why not send a whole plane full of Katrina victims in Che T-shirts to see The Light and spark The Revolution when they return all enlightened and fit?
If it was for next weekend instead of this weekend, I’d totally be tempted to enter.
I’d insist on eating at McDonalds with my tour guide while they expound on the virtues of free health care. I mean, What could spoil the mood any worse than some Eurodrone essentially praising Michael Moore under the Eiffel Tower?
EW wrote:
9)SiCKO
Send in the life support: Despite its wider release (adding 261 theaters over the previous week) Micheal Moore’s latest actually saw its weekend take drop by 20 percent. The health-care docu needs another $10 million to match the gross of Moore’s 2002 pic “Bowling for Columbine” - and it’ll neeed a miracle to approach the $19 million that “Fahrenheit 9/11” brought back in 2004.
How much of the $12k that Mikey most nobly and anonymously gifted him with - for FREE - did JimK pay this sorry excuse for a trade rag to slight SiCKO so malevolently?
Weekend 1:
$68,969/1 theater = $68,969/theater
Weekend 2:
$4,501,712/441 theaters = $10,208/theater
Weekend 3:
$3,600,179/702 theaters = $5,128/theater
Weekend 4:
$2,604,139/756 theaters = $3,445/theater
Before this weekend, SiCKO posted a total gross of over $17M. While admittedly it took several months for BFC to earn the same amount, it never had such a wide simultaneous release (it maxed out at 246 screens in the US), and interestingly it performed much more consistently from week to week at the beginning of its run than SiCKO has to date.
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DonnaK just said “It’s the “we not me” reduction of the “I” thing. He’s trying to de-emphasize the “I” nature of Americans.
I think she’s right, and I also think it’s very, very dumb. :)