Got to love contractually obligated studio ads. (Unless it was simply meant as a sop to keep the ‘talent’ happy.) This week’s Variety Weekly, on pages 2-3, features a gatefold, four color ad “congratulating” Nancy Meyers and the cast (Cameron Diaz, Jack Black, etc.) and crew of The Holiday on “a smash international success.” Then, in huge lettering, we get the figure $125,000,000, followed by “International gross to date…and still counting,” in much smaller print. Well, let’s see. Of that $125,000,000, under $64 million was from the domestic box office, which ain’t great.
And in any case, that $125 m total figure is the international box office gross, meaning that the studio will see (roughly) half of that, or about $62 m, returning to its coffers. The film’s budget meanwhile, was $85 m. That hardly strikes me as a “smash hit.”
Now there’s still cable and home video monies (of course, the production budget figure noted above doesn’t cover the tens of millions spent on advertising, either), so I’m not saying the film won’t break even, or maybe make a small amount of change. Still, it’s hard to see this as remotely being considered a “smash hit.”
**That’s true even if you use the box office tally listed at Boxofficemojo.com, which is a significantly higher $190 million. That figure would be weird to me, since it offers that 66% of total revenues came from overseas, where American romantic comedies tend not to do well. Anyway, why would the studio pay for an ad that must have run tens of thousands of dollars, and so underestimate the proper gross. I think we can assume the $125 m figure is far closer to the mark.
