2012 Summer Box Office Post-Mortem A Disappointment

Aside from a few marquee releases performing as expected or above and beyond, the Summer 2012 movie season has gone down as a collective box-office disappointment.

If there's a "feel-good" surprise smash of the summer, it would have to be "Men in Black 3." Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones reprised their hit 1997 roles as Agent J and Agent K joined by Josh Brolin as a younger-days K, and audiences showered them with $624 million worldwide. That take was instrumental in making Sony the only major studio to see its ticket sales increase significantly over the previous season.

The record-decimating run of Marvel's "The Avengers" accounted for over $1.5 billion of the approximate $4.3 billion in domestic ticket revenue between May's first weekend and Labor Day Weekend. Sales actually slipped 2.2 percent from the 2011 season, despite this summer being headlined by a much-hyped comic book trio of Disney-Marvel's "The Avengers," Sony's "The Amazing Spider-Man" and Warner Bros.' "The Dark Knight Rises."

Yeah, speaking of those other two anomolous hits...

Despite impressive bottom lines, neither probably performed up to hopes. "The Amazing Spider-Man" made nearly two-thirds of its $705 million total gross overseas, the largest-ever overseas take for Sony's franchise.

Meanwhile, despite "The Dark Knight Rises" eclipsing the opening-weekend sales of 2008's "The Dark Knight" with $30.6 million in opening-day midnight screening revenue alone before the Aurora, Colo., massacre, the success didn't entirely hold. Though it now ranks among the ten highest-grossing releases of all time, "The Dark Knight" performed better for almost every period after the opening weekend.

A few films so out-performed what their production costs, that astronomical bottom line or not, they can't help but be called hits. Grossing $133 million domestically, Channing Tatum's male-stripper drama "Magic Mike" made 16 times its $7-million budget. Elsewhere, the British dramedy "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel," made for $10 million, ultimately made $131 million worldwide. Even "The Avengers," costing a pricey $220 million, made back its budget seven times over.

So, there we have the most notable successes: "The Avengers" was pound-for-pound king of the jungle. "The Dark Knight Rises" was a roaring success, even if it didn't surpass 2008's Oscar-winning "The Dark Knight." A young British man, Andrew Garfield, playing Spider-Man probably played more than a small part in reviving a franchise that had lost its way. A few low-budget films found massive audiences. But above all, the "Men in Black" nostalgia tour was a big comeback for Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones, director Barry Sonnenfeld and a beloved summer-movie hit franchise about to turn 20 next year.

That's the back-slapping. Elsewhere, hands were aimed upward at some people responsible this summer's several tragic flops.

No flop was probably more unintentionally laughable than Adam Sandler's comedy "That's My Boy." It's unfortunate enough that it's a $70-million movie that didn't even earn back its budget, pulling in only $50 million worldwide. Consider also that it only made $17 million more over the summer than the summer petering-out of "The Hunger Games," which opened in March and then added another $33 million domestically over the summer months before its DVD and Blu-ray release last month.

OK, so "That's My Boy" was bad. It tanked horribly. It's "Battleship" that holds the distinction, being a $300-million-grossing movie that cost $200 million to make, of having the chairman of Universal Pictures-owning Comcast call it a "large, unfortunate miss" publicly. A movie with a budget like that only making $100 million over budget during the year's biggest release slate is pretty pitiful. At least it made it into the black. Tom Cruise's "Rock of Ages" ($75-million budget, $50-million worldwide take) was a -$25 milllion failure that actually looked promising. Ben Stiller's "The Watch," on the other hand? The $68-million comedy made a pitiful $37 million worldwide.

"Prometheus," "Snow White and the Huntsman" and "Dark Shadows" were all highly touted, but failed to earn back their respective budgets with domestic gross. The Jennifer Lopez-led "What to Expect When You're Expecting," on the other hand? $40-million budget, $80-million worldwide gross. Huh.