The Amazing Spider-Man 2 opened on May 2, 2014 the home of the biggest and most successful Comic Book Movies, such as The Avengers and Iron Man 3. Not unlike its predecessor, it had a surprise hit the weekend after its debut. (Ice Age and Neighbors, respectively) However, The Amazing Spider-Man had the benefit of a six-day opening weekend before July 4th, an American holiday. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 had only three days to show what it had in it. For a film, like this, with milder expectations, $91.6 million would've been fantastic. However, this is Spider-Man. He is the third most widely recognizeable superhero in the entire world. With a previously second-tier superhero like Iron Man showing Spider-Man up, not only half a million, but half a hundred million dollars on the opening weekend previously held by Iron Man 3, Sony's alarm bells better be going off.
Domestically, Spider-Man, again, is underperforming his last entry while also outperforming his last entry overseas.
Sony can rely on overseas markets to an extent. However, movies generally make more of their money in domestically than any other country, or pair of countries, on the planet. How far is too far to shrink?
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 looks to be hitting $200 million domestically which is $65 million below its predecessor. That is a large 24.5% drop in its domestic market.
Sony needs a strong franchise in order to keep going with its spin-offs and universe building.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 seems to be
Sony's
Iron Man 2, in terms of public reception, which isn't exactly good when Spider-Man doesn't have a three-year break between his next solo film and a bunch of team-up hype working with him. Critics, who are significant in deciding who goes to see these films opening weekend, weren't kind to
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is going to have to win back some of them in order to reassure audiences there is still something
amazing about this franchise.
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 is also going to be dependent on a
very good opening weekend. It seems unlikely that
How to Train Your Dragon 3 will open against
Pixar hit
Finding Dory only a week after Spider-Man's release but, either way, Spider-Man is going to have his legs cut into by these two sure-to-be franchise hits. While one of them is as sure to move as as-of-yet untitled
Captain America 3 and
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice are sure to move away from the release date six weeks before
The Amazing Spider-Man 3, Spider-Man can only hope it catches the weaker of the two, but, even then, it is unlikely Spider-Man will stay number one. With decreasing franchise confidence, and interest, from the audience, we are unlikely to see huge returns with
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 but, perhaps, franchise returns can be brought back up to abscene levels if
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 can be as fresh as
Batman Begins was. I have some ideas on how to do that:
1.
Marketing
It is never a bad thing to market your film or to let your audience know it is coming out. But, c'mon, did we know a single soul that didn't know
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 is coming out? Even those people that didn't watch all 572 trailers, 876 TV spots and 334 promotional videos?
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 spent a literal
ton of money making these things through the marketing alone. It might very well be time to take a page out of
Disney's playbook. Say what you want about
Disney, but they know how to market a film.
The Amazing Spider-Man 2 marketed its end like crazy, trying to tease fans that Gwen might day in this installment. However, how
awesome would it have been to see Gwen's dress in the theater and gasp? How
awesome would it have been if we hadn't known Dane DeHann was going to be the Green Goblin?
Captain America: The Winter Soldier seemed to give the whole movie away in its second trailer but when you saw that movie, you realize how much they left out. The whole film was a joyride because
Disney wasn't spoiling you silly.
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 can be made much more profitable by just lowering the amount spent on marketing the film.
Captain America: The Winter Soldier made
more money on its opening weekend than
Sony's
The Amazing Spider-Man 2. Now I'm not saying that marketing may have killed it for the audience as I don't have any proof of that. However, this does prove that conservative marketing can build up even
more hype for the film or just enough to show people that it is coming out.
My marketing strategy would be:
Comic-Con 2015 Trailer (Not released to the general public)
2016 Super Bowl TV Spot That Leads to the
FIRST trailer (February 2016)
The
second trailer is released a week before
Captain America 3 (April 2016)
Start your final push with TV Spots and further clips
2.
Do Something New
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 needs to be fresh in a way the rest of the films weren't. With Peter's first love bein dead, the rebooted franchise, for the first time, has the chance to do something
really different. Instead of Peter moving right along to Mary Jane, I would like to pay homage to the classic Mary Jane storyline. While Peter is recovering, he decides that Spider-Man isn't the problem: it is Peter Parker that creates the connections that are going to end up killing the people he cares about. Aunt May sees Peter shutting her out and everyone else, so Aunt May tries to get Peter over Gwen by trying to get Peter with Mary Jane. Peter refuses, not because he doesn't want to meet a new girl but because he
can't. This'll also allow Marc Webb to uphold the company mandate of establishing the Sinister Six as Peter becomes increasingly devoted to being Spider-Man. I think this would be a new thing to explore as, to my knowledge, we've never
really seen the psychological trauma this causes and the hero, instead of giving up his crime-fighting alter ego, buries himself in his crime-fighting alter ego. This would allow for Spider-Man to continue his investigation of OsCorp and to confront more and more villains that will eventually comprise the Sinister Six. Speaking of villains...
3.
Get a Recognizeable And Strong Villain
We've seen the Doctor Octopus arms for future Spider-Man films. With Spider-Man (essentially confirmed) going up against Rhino at the start of the third film and Vulture also teased for the next film, I think it might be time to bring Ock back into the picture as the main villain. It'll be difficult to live up to the near-perfect interpretation that Molina brought us but it'll have been 12 years and that is more than enough time to accept a new interpretation (more than we got for Spider-Man himself). Vulture could be a lot more like the villain of Two-Face in
The Dark Knight and allow for Spider-Man to fight Doctor Otto Octavius, his second most famous adversary. I would prefer this new film not to bring the Goblin back from behind the curtain until the inevitable
Sinister Six film as I think he's had more than enough time to shine. Doc Ock needs his film and doesn't need to be set up nearly as much as the new interpretation of the Goblin. We all know how strong a villain Ock can be, so why not use him? Also, bring in J. Jonah Jameson and the rest of the Bugle cast. They're
not villains but Jonah is definitely an antagonist worth bringing into the Spider-Man universe. Plus, having Spider-Man have multiple confrontations with
one, strong villain will help make up for the franchise missteps with the Lizard and Electro. Green Goblin, I felt, was strong but shortchanged in terms of screen time and I certainly don't want to see that happened to Otto in order to keep things fresher. Sometimes you just have to bite the bullet.
Well, there is my list to make
The Amazing Spider-Man 3 a better film with
3 reasons. If you could, please, tell me in the comments section below what you thought of it and also hit that thumb down below if you liked the article. As always be sure to share your thoughts
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