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“
Jurassic World” stunned the movie business this weekend with its massive
$204.6 million opening.
It’s the second-biggest debut in history and a sign that a franchise
that appeared to have run out of gas 14 years ago, when “Jurassic Park
III” petered out with $368.8 million at the global
box office, has been reinvigorated.
So how did Universal Pictures, the studio behind the dinosaur
thriller, pull off the cinematic comeback? Here are five key ingredients
in the summer blockbuster’s success:
1.) Chris Pratt is a star. Period.
In an era of would-be leading men like Jai Courtney and Garrett
Hedlund, Pratt shows what a true movie star looks like. After “Guardians
of the Galaxy” proved he was an actor to watch, with his
tongue-in-cheek work as a galactic adventurer drawing comparisons to
Harrison Ford’s Indiana Jones, “Jurassic World” offers up a second major
franchise to stick in his quiver. That’s a feat that only a handful of
actors have achieved, putting him in elite company with Robert Downey
Jr. (Iron Man, Sherlock Holmes), Jennifer Lawrence (“X-Men,” “The Hunger
Games”) and Ford himself (the “Indiana Jones” films, “Star Wars”). If
rumors are true, and Pratt assumes Ford’s bullwhip in a planned reboot
of Indiana Jones, he could score a blockbuster trifecta.
“He’s the modern action hero,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media
analyst at Rentrak. “He’s funny, he’s charming, he’s self-deprecating. I
call him Jimmy Stewart in a leather vest. He just has the perfect
sensibility for today’s audiences.”
But Pratt’s contributions extended beyond his onscreen work as a
velociraptor trainer. He was an indefatigable pitchman for the film. His
preemptive Facebook apology
for anything he will say during “Jurassic World’s” press tour inspired
headlines and showed a deft feel for social media. Even hiccups, like
when Pratt stumbled over the
meaning of “impotent,” proved the adage that all publicity is good publicity.
Somebody’s passion projects are about to get a greenlight. So if
Pratt has ever wanted to play a second century fresco painter struggling
with gonorrhea or something equally uncommercial, now is the time to
make that ask.
2.) Timing is everything.
“Jurassic World” was shrewdly positioned as the June blockbuster to
beat, ceding April to “Furious 7″ and steering clear of “Avengers: Age
of Ultron’s” May release. After “Tomorrowland” flopped over Memorial
Day, there was some gum-flapping among box office analysts about whether
Universal erred in not putting “Jurassic World” over the four-day
holiday. In retrospect, it was the perfect move. The box office, which
was coming off of three consecutive lackluster weekends, needed to cool
down before it could heat up again.
“You could see this coming after a number of films that didn’t live
up to expectations,” said Jeff Bock, a box office analyst with Exhibitor
Relations. “There was just this hunger for a big summer tentpole film.”
The studio benefited from timing of another sort. Over the past
decade and a half, the fourth “Jurassic Park” saw various filmmakers and
screenwriters , such as “The Departed’s” William Monahan and “I
Robot’s” Alex Proyas, come on board before getting tossed aside after
failing to find the right creative direction for the film. The tortured
development worked in “Jurassic World’s” favor, giving it distance from
“Jurassic World III,” which is generally considered to be the series’
nadir, and lending the franchise a feeling of freshness.
3.) The right director can make you almost forget about Spielberg.
Nobody can outshine Steven Spielberg, but with the “Jurassic Park”
director unwilling to return to Isla Nublar, Universal settled for the
next best thing — a filmmaker on the rise, who could pay homage to
Spielberg’s creation while taking the series in a younger and vibrant
direction. It found him in Colin Trevorrow, an indie impresario who had
made a stir with “Safety Not Guaranteed.”
Trevorrow’s time-travel comedy demonstrated the kind of fantastical
humanism and ability to tap into childlike wonder that is Spielberg’s
stock-in-trade, making him a worthy successor to the man who ushered in
the age of the summer blockbuster with “Jaws.”
“He has extraordinary energy and he had a vision from day one about
what this film could be,” said Nick Carpou, president of domestic
distribution at Universal. “His determination comes through.”
It also ranks as another example of major studios raiding Sundance, South by Southwest and their festival ilk for behind-the-
camera
talent to helm their most important franchises — an approach that
previously yielded Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, Gareth
Edwards’ “Godzilla” and Bryan Singer’s “X-Men” efforts. Nothing beats
commodifying some indie spirit.
4.) Premium formats are prime.
The Indominus rex, basically a T-rex on steroids, demanded to be seen
on the biggest, widest, most souped up screens possible. That meant
that “Jurassic World” got a major boost from premium large format and
Imax screens, along with
3D
showings. The sequel took in 48% of its domestic opening weekend
receipts from 3D screens, while setting new high-water marks for Imax
and private label PLF screens.
Those formats were in their infancy when “Jurassic Park III” was in
theaters — 3D was still a novelty and Imax was reserved for nature
films.
“I use my kids as a bit of a barometer,” said Anthony Marcoly,
president of worldwide cinema for 3D-maker RealD. “They’ve seen the
‘Jurassic Park’ movies before, but they’ve seen them on TV or DVD. They
haven’t had a chance to see a ‘Jurassic’ movie on these big [premium
large format] screens or in 3D. People wanted to be brought into the
world of ‘Jurassic’ and to see it in a grand fashion and just be drawn
into the story.”
It also helped that Trevorrow
talked up
the virtues of seeing “Jurassic World” with all the extra bells and
whistles on promotional videos and by appearing before screenings at the
Imax TCL Theater in Los Angeles.
“This is a shared experience,” he told the crowd at one of these events. “It’s why we go to the movies.”
The exhibition industry has taken its knocks for not keeping up with
the digital revolution that has upended the entertainment landscape, but
“Jurassic World’s” success with tinted specs and sprawling screens
demonstrates the lengths that theaters have gone to differentiate their
experience from the one found in the living room or at the keyboard.
Times have changed, of course, but some of it’s for the better.
5.) Dinosaurs ripping apart humans = appropriate for children of all ages.
It’s been 23 years since “Jurassic Park” first illustrated the
dangers of bringing velociraptors back to life, and in that time one
generation of film fans has come of age and another has emerged. That
means that a group of moviegoers who were first weaned on popcorn pics
with that first film have grown up and were eager to introduce their
sons and daughters to the magic of a T-rex rampage.
To familiarize a new group to the pleasures of the park, Universal
reissued “Jurassic Park” in 3D in 2013 in conjunction with its 20th
anniversary. It also
primed the pump in a nice piece of
corporate
synergy, hosting a special presentation of “Jurassic Park” last week on
NBCUniversal Networks that included interviews with Pratt and
Spielberg. The film and TV stations share a corporate parent in Comcast.
The PG-13 rating made the prospect of seeing pterosaurs treat
tourists like birdseed something of a family event. That resulted in an
opening weekend crowd that was 39% under the age of 25, a demographic
that hadn’t been born or was barely verbal when the first film debuted.
“We’re getting everybody and that includes parents with kids,” said Carpou.
Hollywood take note. That’s how you build a blockbuster