I think marketing wasn't great but the main problem I feel is the release date. With lots of films out now an "original" sci fi movie like this with an aging star doesn't really stand out from the crowd. Overseas is going to be hurt badly too because of the World Cup



WB could have saved it if they moved JA earlier and put EOT into July. There is no reason whatsoever JA should have received that prime July spot. It should always have been a February or October release

I think the premise is a bit too far-out there for general audiences. It's a little bit too geeky scifi-fan premise. Something like Inception is an exception that defines the rule.

Also, after the first teaser, I don't think the marketing was all that.

And yes, the marketplace is crowded. Spiderman, Godzilla, and X-men all came in out the last four weeks. That's a lot of big scale action films, all of which have scifi-esque elements.

I agree that this would have done considerably better in the spring/fall.

Release Date

It would have been released in July where the whole month looks shit and empty?

Geeez. Nothing went wrong. The opening is good all things considered. If it develops legs - great. If not it will just suffer the same fate as most SF movies nowadays.

It's as if nobody pays attention to how SF movies performed on their OW recently.

SF movies with big names:
$27,017,351 Ender's Game
$29,807,393 Elysium
$27,520,040 After Earth
$37,054,485 Oblivion
$20,801,522 Looper
$25,577,758 Total Recall
$21,157,730 The Adjustment Bureau

Compared to these EOT opened above average.

Then there are sequels:
$54,592,779 MIB3
$51,050,101 Prometheus

Also original movies with no big names:
$37,285,325 Pacific Rim
$37,354,308 District 9
$35,573,187 Battle Los Angeles

These are a funny bunch as they all had rather big OW compared to the first group, but PR was seen as disappointing and D9 and BLA had great marketing and created buzz - but it still wasn't enough for $40m OW like some were expecting for EOT which unlike those two didn't have good marketing and didn't create much buzz.

Overall EOT opened well. We just have to see if it will create legs due to it being a rather pleasing movie if we judge based on reviews from critics and around here also, or if it will have short BO life as most of these movies above.

And before somebody mentions Inception - that is not an example of how most SF movies perform. It has been pretty clear it's going to break out and that movie did its own thing on the BO.

The marketing was not amazing, but I really don't see how anything went wrong. It's opened, and it's doing fine enough, just not as much as previous summer blockbuster like Godzilla and Days of Future Past. But then, as an original sci-fi, did anyone expect it to?

I do think "What went wrong" is a little harsh, but it did get its ass kicked by a low-budget teen romance.

But it's not really that tough a nut to crack. A gritty, dour-looking, non-familiar (though it IS based on a comic) sci-fi picture who's star is kind of a punchline, and fifth effects-intensive blow-'em up in little more than a month. I think District 9 was a lot like 300, where its out-of-nowhere success was lightning in a bottle that Hollywood can't seem to replicate.

This.

They could have called the film Live. Die. Repeat. since it was more prominent that the movie title itself. But I suppose for the same reason they changed the title from All You Need is Kill to Edge of Tomorrow, it would have been inappropriate.

Edge of Tomorrow is how the novel was translated into English in the first place. But I too think that Live. Die. Repeat. would be a better title.

I think the novel was called All You Need is Kill. Then the film was called that too. Then the decision was made to change it because of the word "kill". It changed to Edge of Tomorrow.

PR was supposed to be a huge summer tentpole. EOT wasn't as far as I'm aware. I already explainedwhy D9 and BLA had more going for them which explains why they opened better. I still claim that EOT belongs in the first group. And maybe it's time everybody accepts SF movies have a natural limit in OW, rather than most of them having lacklustre openings. Which is more likely? People blow up expectations and we end up with these pointless WWW threads.

Reshoots blew up the budget for sure. Also Cruise probably still gets a hefty amount. This is more of a case of total miscalculation on studio's part.

The marketing budget was also $100m. It was supposed to be a huge summer tentpole.

It's the original, non-franchise scifi movies that mostly perform modestly. Big, established franchises perform much better. Transformers is scifi. So is Star Strek. Avengers is full blown scifi, along with being a superhero movie. Star Wars is scifi.

It's just rare for an *original* scifi movie to break out, like Avatar, District 9 and Inception did.

Nothing really went wrong in its opening. It is closer to a LOT of original SCI-FI openings and with good WOM it can end close to their totals. Does anyone still remember the $100m total club so the expectations were lower on this one until the great reviews came in. If we look the early predictions thread and the tracking numbers everything pointed to this opening which is still fine for it given the marketplace IMO.

Though I do agree scheduling could have been better for this one. It opened after quite a few action movies and WB could have opened this one in July with or without JA.

The marketing sucked, but that's because it was a very hard movie to market. "Live, die, repeat" isn't exactly an appealling tagline.

I'm surprised a studio authorized a movie so hard to market.

you can't say nothing went wrong. It is a 178m budgeted movie opening with 29m. That is shit no matter which way you slice it


I believe a July release date could have saved it

Because it looks like one of those Sciencetology advertising movie (though it isnt....I mean from the plot?). The marketing made it look like it could go in that direction.

Okay, I think we've got to stop this "a low-budget teen romance outdid it, HA! Loser!" mentality. Since maybe February, the Fault hype train started up and kept on chugging. In fact, I think, possibly in March itself, Fault was expected by us the outopen and outgross Edge. The media, in this regard, are stupid, but we all knew that already.



True, but here sci-fi is used as a rather big brush. Avengers is more superhero than sci-fi. Star Wars and Star Trek, especially the former are more fantasy. Transformers fits the bill, but usually I associate sci-fi movies with intelligence, depth in its world, creativity etc. TF is purely sci-fi because of the Transformers themselves, otherwise it has 0 elements of a sci-fi movie.

The rest are but Avatar/Cameron and Inception/Nolan have that something major extra.



As in the first point, only when the reviews were stellar, about one and a half weeks ago, did expectations rise. Otherwise, the expected total was $101m (going by MGKCs game). It still has a chance to reach around that ballpark, so like Godzilla before it, it may reach the expected gross just in a different way. It is a bomb, but that was known a couple months ago when THR revealed the $178m budget.

All I'm saying here is that people seem to be saying that it's surprising it opened so low when the ceiling for months was Oblivion. Sure, it wouldn't have been that much better, but nowhere in this movie's cycle were predictions over $140m even discussed, and that would still have been less than their production budget. I hope for a strong run and good home video sales so more movies like this can be made. I suppose I should be thankful they are still being made given _axiom's discovery.

Bad marketing.

Unfortunately, I think there is a sizable amount of people for whom Tom Cruise is an argument NOT to see a movie.

I'm gonna have to echo two other points in this thread:

- The marketing. While it didn't do a bad job per se of conveying its concept, it also didn't sell it as well as it could have. The piece that becomes evident with the Groundhog Day-esque setup is that there's quite a bit of effective gallows humor in it, and the audience I saw the film with responded very favorably to it. I think that the marketing went out of its way to present the film in a gritty, serious manner, when the reality is that the finished film works so well because there's so much levity in it.

- The release date. Releasing this movie so close to other tentpoles prevented it from standing out. A July release would have been much better because there would have been more time to sell the film (and specifically, time to sell it when it wouldn't have been standing in the large shadows of other films), and it also wouldn't have to face two films that are primed for huge openings in its second weekend.

This is definitely true.

Despite his almost (Rock Of Ages, I'm looking at you) impeccable taste in choosing scripts and his total professionalism and skill as an actor, his personal antics from the past seem to be the one thing that have gotten stuck in the head of the simpleminded.

I think making back-to-back post apocalyptic sci-fi tentpoles might have been a mistake for Cruise. Particularly if people didn't exactly love Oblivion.

Hell, even the posters are pretty damned similar:

http://fanart.tv/fanart/movies/75612/mo ... bbf99d.jpg
http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/images/2014/0 ... Poster.jpg

Cruise in a sci-fi setting. Big ass gun. Crazy things flying in the sky. Destroyed/toppled landmark to the left.

I enjoyed both movies.

So I'm happy.