The Martian
The Martian is a big-budget space movie with several major stars — including Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, and Chiwetel Ejiofor — releasing on a weekend with no other new competition (particularly of a similar sort regarding genre, tone, and style), so it should open pretty well. Good reviews will assist it further (it’s currently enjoying a Rotten Tomato score above 90%), as well the inevitable positive audience scores and word of mouth, because it’s a great picture (more on that in a moment, though). Fandango tracking has it as the leader in advance ticket sales for the weekend by a large margin (with a score of 90 out of 100 on their Fanticipation scale), and early predictions estimate an opening domestic weekend in the $40-45 million range.
By way of comparison, Gravity opened to nearly $56 million in North America two years ago on the same early October weekend, and last year Interstellar took $47 million at the domestic box office on its freshman weekend. Gravity, though, enjoyed tremendous buzz and near-frenzied levels of anticipation after smart marketing that released extended scenes from the movie to demonstrate how fantastic the visual effects looked and highlighted the use of long, uncut shots. Plus, the mix of sci-fi and disaster is typically a potent recipe for financial success in films. Sandra Bullock’s popularity with audiences, as well as her Oscar-winner clout, and the supporting performance of George Clooney all contributed to further enhancing Gravity’s box office performance. IMAX ticket sales also boosted it significantly, something The Martian will lack.
Interstellar, meanwhile, had the Christopher Nolan brand name, which spells immediate blockbuster status. It also had a lot of advance buzz about the scientific concepts involved in the story, and its first-ever realistic portrayal of black holes and worm holes on the big screen. Add the star power of Oscar winners Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway, and the big opening and overall strong global box office receipts for Interstellar were a given.
The Martian is based on a best selling novel that enjoyed a great deal of attention in the lead-up to the film’s release, too. It became a best seller and one of the must-reads of 2014. So that could be a good sign for the film adaptation. All of this, plus the aforementioned casting, genres, and timing of release mean The Martian should easily hit the expected opening numbers.
Overseas, it should also enjoy good returns, for the same reasons. It’s the Asian marketplace where it will perform best overseas, I imagine, especially in China. Besides the simple fact China is now the most important foreign market by sheer force of its size and consumer base, The Martian has a China-related subplot and other elements I won’t mention, which will no doubt feature significantly in the international marketing to boost interest.
Whether it can perform to blockbuster numbers remains to be seen, but it has all of the ingredients to be as big as Gravity or Interstellar, and it certainly deserve to be in light of how good and entertaining it is. So a domestic opening likely north of $40 million and a final worldwide tally somewhere around $500 million looks to be in the cards, if things go as well as it seems like they could. However, it faces Pan on the second weekend of release, and then Bridge of Spies and Crimson Peak arrive on weekend three to eat into the adult moviegoing target audience. So the lack of IMAX screens and the competition on subsequent weekends are two of the biggest obstacles it faces.
Now, aside from its financial prospects, is The Martian any good? Well, I’ve already mentioned that it’s a great film, but turn the page and read on for my full review of what makes it work, and the few things that perhaps don’t work as well as the rest!