‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ saves a ‘confounding’ year at the box office

By Brian Truitt

USA Today (TNS) 

While 2014 couldn’t compete with 2013’s record box office, some unexpected heroes kept it from being a disaster.

Buoyed by a late boost from Peter Jackson’s final Hobbit film, the movie industry will finish the year with about $10.5 billion in ticket sales, according to estimates from Rentrak. That’s down 5 per cent, well short of last year’s impressive $10.9 billion domestic haul.

Even though 2013 had more notable flops (The Lone Ranger), the year overall had more hits than 2014 did, says Rentrak analyst Paul Dergarabedian. Plus, high-profile movies such as the anticipated erotic drama Fifty Shades of Grey and the Colin Firth spy movie Kingsman: The Secret Service moved to 2015, and there was no Pixar hit to provide a family-friendly bump.

The year “was confounding at best and frustrating at worst”, Dergarabedian says. “It’s one of those years that will go down in the record books as very interesting but not one we’d necessarily want to repeat.”

It could have been worse: In early summer, ticket sales were down as much as 20 per cent.

Despite the success of X-Men: Days of Future Past, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla and Transformers: Age of Extinction, box office pundits knew 2014’s warm months “didn’t have the firepower that the previous summer had” with Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2 and Man of Steel, says Jeff Bock, senior analyst for Exhibitor Relations.

Still, Guardians of the Galaxy — this year’s overall domestic box-office champ with a $332.7 million take — and a rebooted Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles turned the tide in August.

September and October proved to be the strongest on record, with more than $1 billion in box office for a slate that included The Maze Runner, The Equalizer and Gone Girl.

Then November got shots in the arm from the animated hit Big Hero 6 as well as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1. The penultimate movie in the popular Jennifer Lawrence franchise is No. 2 overall this year with $306.7 million and counting.

“Right when we needed it, Guardians came along and blew away everybody’s expectations,” Dergarabedian says. “That was a movie where you’d think it should be released in May, June or July, but they went in August and that created a real momentum. It created a new wave of moviegoing.”

Studios as a whole got more creative with release dates, Dergarabedian adds. Summer-ready Captain America: The Winter Soldier racked up $259.8 million (and ranked third overall in 2014), helped by an early April release that allowed it to dominate for three straight weeks against lesser competition. “They’re creating a situation where the movies define the month, not where the month defines the movies,” he says.

The success of the Captain America sequel, Guardians and Angelina Jolie vehicle Maleficent — three of the top six movies of 2014 — also cemented Disney as the biggest name in Hollywood, with Marvel, Pixar, Lucasfilm and Disney Animation all under its massive umbrella.

“The studio is just untouchable right now with Star Wars looming” in 2015, Bock says. “It’s almost like now there’s one super-studio and then everybody else.

“Where there might not have been a gap before, there’s certainly one now and everybody’s playing catch-up to what Disney’s doing.”

Some surprising hits of 2014:

The Lego Movie. It might have been silly to think an animated film based on a line of building-block toys could be a blockbuster, but everything was awesome for Lego, which ranked fourth with $257.8 million. A February release date and great reviews (audiences gave it a whopping 96 per cent approval rating on RottenTomatoes.com) helped, Dergarabedian says. But for those not in the target audience, “it’s not always easy to know what’s going to be a hit and what’s not. If you’re a 12-year-old kid when you hear about Lego, you might be losing your mind”.

Guardians of the Galaxy. It would have been pretty crazy to imagine a year ruled by a movie starring a talking raccoon and an alien tree — even for those who dug the obscure Marvel Comics series that first appeared in the 1970s. That said, kids asked Santa for Rocket Raccoon action figures, and “I am Groot” is arguably the coolest cinematic catchphrase since “Show me the money”. August films just don’t rule the box office like that, Bock says. “It’ll change things — this definitely will send some ripples down Hollywood.”

The Fault in Our Stars. John Green’s young-adult novel already was a hit and the adaptation with Shailene Woodley as a cancer-stricken teen in love proved to be gold as well — an example of a fall or early year movie being put right in the middle of a heated summer, Dergarabedian says. It was another example, along with Woodley’s Divergent, of “the YA female audience again showing their box office clout and really delivering a hit”.

Hollywood looks like it will find its magic again in 2015, with new Terminator, Jurassic Park, Avengers, Fast & Furious and Star Wars films, plus Fifty Shades, Entourage and other big-time titles.

“Because we’ve had a lull in 2014, it’s going to make 2015 seem really, really good,” Bock says.

Predicts Dergarabedian: “A year from now, we’re going to be talking how we’re 5 per cent ahead of the previous year and maybe even more.”