As Men In Black 3 crosses $400 million worldwide, some thoughts on preconceived box office notions and the wisdom of double-checking your conclusions.

As of yesterday, Sony's Men In Black 3 has grossed $400 million worldwide after twelve days of theatrical release.  At this rate, $600-$700 million worldwide seems probable.  So even if the budget is $300 million, so large that the film may not be profitable even if it surpasses The Hunger Games's $645 million worldwide take, it is quite clear that Men In Black 3 is a pretty big worldwide box office hit.  It's arguably so big that only The Avengers (already well-ahead of course), The Dark Knight Rises, The Amazing Spider-Man (also a Sony film), and a trio of animated films (Madagascar 3, Ice Age 4, and Brave) stand even a theoretical chance of out-grossing it this summer.  Yet I come not to cheer-lead but to ponder.  At summer's end, will anyone bother to remark at how well the film did over its entire run?  Will the various pundits who wrote the film off as a flop or a disappointment after its 'mere' $200 million four-day global opening weekend over Memorial Day eventually check back at Box Office Mojo and realize the error of their original prognosis?  It's unlikely. The box office pundits of the world are often so dead-set in their preconceived presumptions, sometimes before a film even opens, that it's too much to admit that opening weekend isn't everything and that sometimes a would-be disappointment didn't disappoint in the end.

The constant drive to emphasize the negative, often in the face of opposing facts, is as much a force in entertainment journalism as it is in politics.  If Men In Black 3 is a global hit, you can't write critical essays exclaiming that Will Smith isn't a box office star anymore.  If you can ignore Cars 2 grossing $559 million worldwide, you can still write a damning take-down of Pixar as if their entire legacy is doomed.  It's easy to scream *flop!* when Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows opened to just $40 million last December, but harder to check back and realize that the sequel actually out-grossed the original film by $19 million worldwide.  If you can ignore the fact that Mr. Popper's Penguins and Yes Man grossed $187 million and $223 million worldwide on respective $55 million budgets, you can hem and haw about how Jim Carrey has so obviously lost his box office luster.  If you could ignore the fact that Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull vastly out-grossed Iron Man worldwide four summers ago ($786 million versus $585 million), you possibly found yourself writing the sexier narrative that upstart Tony Stark defeated the underwhelming Dr. Jones in a head-to-head box office match-up based on their near-tie at the US box office.

The examples are countless but the meme is the same: Ignore the sometimes complicated box office story in favor of simplistic interpretation, usually a negative one that allows you to write a negative hit piece on a star, filmmaker, or studio.  It takes work to realize that Jim Carrey has only had a single $400 million+ hit in his entire career (Bruce Almighty) and that his latest star vehicles are, by virtue of back-end deals, now cheaper than most Adam Sandler films.  It takes time to explain that while Men In Black 3 cost way too much to make, it's a big hit in terms of realistic expectations and its performance is proof of Will Smith's continued global drawing power.  It takes energy to double-check box office figures, to compare them to relevant precedents, and draw often nuanced conclusions in regards to how well a given film has performed at the domestic and worldwide box office.  But if you deal in box office minutia, you damn-well owe it to your readers to actually do the homework and check your work before drawing a broad conclusion that the facts might not justify.

Scott Mendelson