Another big hit of this year’s Northern America summer season made its grand debut last weekend: the Marvel superhero movie ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ opened in 4,375 theaters and took in $143 million at the weekend box office.
Thor: Love and Thunder’ stills compared to ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ released two months ago, ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ opened to $44 million less at the box office, slightly disappointing.
Although the $143 million is the best opening for the ‘Thor’ series to date, the film’s current critical feedback and audience acclaim are not very good.
On the film review website “Rotten Tomatoes”, the film has a comprehensive score of 68%, which can be ranked in the bottom five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
So it seems doubtful that Northern America’s total box office will eventually exceed the $300 million mark.
On the film review website “Rotten Tomatoes”, the overall score of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ is 68%, and the production cost of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ reached 250 million US dollars, plus the cost of publicity, the global box office is probably It takes between $700 million to $800 million to guarantee no loss.
In contrast, ‘Thor: Ragnarok’, which had better word-of-mouth, ended up with $854 million at the global box office, but $112 million of that came from the Chinese mainland market and another $23 million from Russia.
The reality is that ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ is not destined for Russia, and it is not known whether it will be released in mainland China.
In short, for Disney, the pressure on the box office remains not small.
Before ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’ appeared, all the superheroes of the Marvel Universe had not been able to make as many as the fourth stand-alone movie.
The character of Thor itself, whether there is enough charm to support such a series, whether the audience will produce aesthetic fatigue, as early as the beginning of the film project there is no small doubt.
Although this one is still directed by the previous one, which is also a Hollywood sensation today, Taika Waititi, Natalie Portman, who has appeared in the first two films, also returns with a new image.
But I am afraid that such a gimmick alone is not enough to attract more potential viewers to enter.
To talk about the gimmick, last weekend and sat on the weekend box office of $ 4.55 million ‘Minions: The Rise of Gru’, I’m afraid to be better than ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’.
The film has grossed $210 million at the Northern America box office and is approaching $400 million at the worldwide box office.
Universal Pictures put a lot of effort into marketing ‘Minions’, finding various partners including European football team Paris Saint-Germain FC and children’s pop group ‘The Wiggles’ from Sydney, Australia, for a local promotion campaign.
Jurian Noble, now president of global marketing in charge of publicity at Universal Pictures, jumped from Warner Bros. last spring.
When talking about this ‘Minions’ publicity and marketing efforts, he said that the epidemic has completely changed the past pattern of film publicity.
First is the time, in the past, similar to such a blockbuster, the film companies will be a month or two in advance to do a full promotion.
But because of the various uncertainties brought about by the epidemic, everyone is now starting to publicize two or three weeks in advance, but the funds invested are not significantly reduced, so instead it will appear that the publicity fire is more intensive and powerful.
Minions dressed in Paris Saint-Germain uniforms to interact with young fans For example, in France, Minions hitched a ride with the Paris Saint-Germain team to interact with soccer star Neymar.
In the UK, Minions even connected directly to the Queen of England to celebrate her big 70th anniversary on the throne.
In addition, Minions is actively involved in various summer festivals in important film markets such as Spain, Italy and Germany to expand its presence among the undoujin crowd as much as possible.
Of course, the film in the past week, the hottest marketing behavior, I’m afraid also by a group of young people in the United Kingdom and the United States in YouTube, Shake and Twitter and other social media platforms to initiate the “Gentlemen Minions” viewing activities.
They wore black suits, imitated the gestures and shapes of the villain Gru, and ate Minions’ favorite bananas, turning the five-year-awaited event into a performance art show.
They eventually got a positive response from the film’s official Shakeology account and Universal Pictures’ official Twitter account as well.
Young people are keen to go to the cinema in groups, uniformly dressed as Gru in ‘Minions’, and then upload it to social media such as ShakeYin However, there are a few black sheep whose disorderly behavior has attracted criticism.
In some cinemas in the UK, some young people wearing suits to see ‘Minions’ in pairs, it seems not purely for the purpose of watching the film, they are more interested in shooting short videos of themselves stepping neatly into the theater.
And after the opening of the movie they will also be loud, imitating Minions speech, and even throw things towards the screen, which really affects the viewing experience of other viewers.
For example, a local cinema chain in Worcester, UK, has lost a lot of money due to a large number of complaints from the audience and had to refund thousands of pounds of movie ticket money.
And, soon, theaters began to turn away young men in suits to see ‘Minions’.
However, on the whole, such instances of defeating people for the sake of eye-candy are not mainstream.
As the British ‘The Guardian’ review article said: there is reason to believe that the majority of these young people are indeed ‘Minions’ loyal fans, such as this dress up in groups to watch their favorite works, in fact, and ‘Star Wars’ fans, ‘Star Trek’ fans are not much different from the practice The fact is that this is not much different from what ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Star Trek’ fans do.
And all the cinema side needs to do is to manage it properly and guide it appropriately. After all, the epidemic is not over yet, whether it is the film production industry or theaters, are in need of avid viewers like this group of young people to save the market.
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