[…] “The Fault in Our Stars” took in a spectacular $48.2 million at North American theaters between Thursday night and Sunday, and it did so with nary a billboard in sight and no weekslong television ad barrage. In fact, 20th Century Fox spent less than $30 million on marketing, or half of what …read more […]

Good points, all. Another thing to note (which perhaps the full NYT article referenced a bit more explicitly) is that John Green himself has a MASSIVE following on youtube, twitter, and tumbler, and through the entire development process he's been putting the whole weight of that toward pushing this movie. Couple that with the huge success of the book itself, and they didn't HAVE to go crazy with marketing in order to "win." Probably the smartest marketing decision they made was getting John Green on set for the shoot, and letting him tweet to his heart's delight. My point, I guess, is that even though Warner Bros dropped the ball on this one, I'm not sure the marketing game plan for THE FAULT IN OUR STARS is repeatable.

Good point, Josh. Clearly John Green is a 'brand with a huge following. It's interesting that he had more heft than Tom Cruise did. This is another example of how much Hollywood has changed in the last 25. Gone are the days where the key asset for a movie was the A talent attached to it. Now it's more about the IP. What concerns me about what transpired this weekend is that Hollywood will see this as a confirmation that pre-awareness content, like a TFIOS novel, is a more solid bet than original IP, like All You Need Is Kill. Or I should say, yet ANOTHER piece of evidence. The suits don't need anything more to confirm their obsession with pre-branded content. It's the OTHER side that concerns me. It makes the buyers less likely to have a go at an original spec script, pitch. There is still a chance EOT might break even with a strong performance internationally (it has grossed $111M in foreign sales thus far), but it will be a struggle and likely not get the movie to $450-500M which is probably what it needs to hit to recoup investment. OTOH maybe we'll see a lot more $10-15M movies a la TFIOS, comedies like Easy A featuring female leads or at least having strong female roles. Interesting times...

Carson Reeves mentioned this on ScriptShadow and I couldn't agree more... The title is bad. The original title "All You Need Is Kill" was awesome. Edge of Tomorrow is about as generic as it gets. If you know nothing about the movie and read the title in no way will it motivate you to take a leap of faith and see it. It's bulky and awkward. I don't know. Perhaps I'm making a bigger deal of it than I should, but for me, it's a big reason why I think this movie struggled.

Evidently, Kalen, Warner Bros. changed the title after the Aurora, Colorado shooting. That's what I've read. Not sure if that's a fact or not. I agree, EOT is not a good title, communicates basically nothing. All You Need Is Kill is much more interesting.

>>"...EOT could have worked a similar angle in its marketing because it is — at its emotional core — a love story as well between Cage and Rita. But no. Edge of Tomorrow was positioned as a big summer tentpole movie, so it had to focus on the kapow-boom-bang..." The whole pop-corn sci-fi scene and screenplays based on human "meccano"/erector set premises, is becoming endemic. Lol! Could be studio execs over-compensating when they green-light erector - set scripts? ;) A by-product is no one wants to touch specs anymore, especially sci-fi specs. I'm all for sending out the bat signal on the need for more Psychological Sci-fi. Let's see how "The Dirrogate" fares on the Blcklst. Awaiting evals as we speak! https://blcklst.com/members/scripts/view/18743

the box office lately seems to be inundated with action-packed huge-budget films with SFX, so frankly it's nice to see character-driven stories like TFIOS take the forefront - about time actually, glad it happened now (also I saw Xmen last night and while I liked the story, had the same 'tired' feeling I have been having with all these franchises - action and explosions taking precedence over story). While I love Blockbusters, I hope Hllywood can really learn from this and refocus its efforts a bit - not every success has to be a plot-driven steam-engine - character stories with simple but relatable themes can succeed too.

But since you recommend it, Scott, I may still go see Edge of Tomorrow - tired a little of action-Tom Cruise flicks but if there is a deeper story, I would certainly take the effort see it.

I generally agree with the analysis of why EOT has stumbled at the box office. BUT... >>at its emotional core — a love story as well between Cage and Rita. For me that core was insubstantial and inadequately developed. The human story got lost and buried in the $100,000,000+ CGI spent on the aliens.

I kept hearing that EOT is "video game the movie," with cage dying and respawning like in a game: you die, you start over. But really, it feels like every video game out there: war, grit, robots, aliens, even the characters and how they interact... it's video game the movie, but you don't have to leave your HOUSE to get kind of content. It's not just that there are tons of robots and power suits in movies, but there's also a glut in video games as well! The games are more interactive (sometimes customizable), much longer and have an MA rating instead of having to make concessions for a wide audience rating. Movies can't even claim star power because that's not as big a draw as it used to be, and video games are getting big actors in there as well (Kevin Spacey, Ellen Page, Willem Defoe are probably just the tip of the iceberg). What's interesting is that TFIOS phenomenon is also happening in games: there are tons of similar blockbusters every year, but the stuff that looks the most fascinating are the smaller indie titles like Gone Home, Papers Please... I've been watching the E3 trailers and while the new Tomb Raider and the new amazing Batman look amazing, the stuff that I want to play are things like Inside or Ori In The Blind Forest. Different, small, intimate. But you can't maintain a gargantuan business on different, small, intimate.