Neighbors destroys Spider-Man at the box-office

Sony executives are not having a good week. The company’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 apparently just can’t stick: after a $91 million first-place opening last weekend (which, for everyone who doesn’t read box office reports like a film nerd, is a huge opening), the sequel dropped to a second-place $37.2 million, with newcomer comedy Neighbors taking the top spot with $51 million – more than $10 million above most box-office predictions, and a huge success for an $18 million comedy (again, for non-film nerds: a movie typically needs to make at least double its production budget in theaters to make a profit, since marketing costs are not included in budgets; Neighbors passed that mark in three days, while Spider-Man needs to make about $750 million worldwide to be considered a success).

Why the upset? More specifically, why did Spider-Man fall so far (it had a bigger drop than is typical for a tentpole in week 2) and Neighbors absolutely crush expectations? There’s a couple of possibilities when looking at the situation economically (since as much as I would like this to be about the actual quality of the movies, this is an econ class post), involving supply and demand. It’s entirely possible that Spider-Man is the victim of “blockbuster fatigue” – it’s entirely a formula movie, sold to audiences entirely on the basis of its spectacle. And audiences have a lot of spectacle to choose from. The film market is flush with images and films that were impossible even five years ago; now every film studio is off on a special-effect superhero blockbuster craze. Moviegoers have a lot of superhero movies to choose from (Captain America: The Winter Soldier is still in theaters; X-Men: Days of Future Past is coming out soon and audiences may be waiting for that), so if the product is mediocre, skeptical filmgoers might choose to see something else, and wait for a better blockbuster. Demand for superhero blockbusters is high, sure, but not so high that audiences don’t discriminate at least a little. Longevity in theaters is often determined by quality and resulting word-of-mouth (i.e. Captain America, which got great reviews (and was pretty damn good too), topped the box office for three weeks running).  Hence, Spider-Man‘s massive opening weekend haul and fast drop off.

The success of Neighbors is perhaps easier to explain in supply-demand terms: there’s a distinct lack of comedies in theaters at the moment (the most recent prior to neighbors was The Other Women, and that was the first in a while), so Neighbors was able to satisfy a greater-than-expected audience demand. And it should have a good run – the supply of comedies is fairly low for the next few weeks until Adam Sandler’s Blended is released (and will likely be swallowed opposite Days of Future Past). And it doesn’t hurt that the movie is supposed to be hilarious to boot.