Remember when the $180 million dollar film “The Golden Compass” opened a while ago and only took in $25 million domestically? People rushed to call the film a financial bomb (as well as a critical bomb… because the movie just isn’t very good). But the fact of the matter is, that although undeserving, The Golden Compass is going to end up making a hell of a lot of money for the studio.
Yes, at this point, The Golden Compass has only pulled in about $65 million at the North American box office. However, the film has been a smash hit overseas taking in about $234 million for a grand total of over $300 million and counting. It still has to open in a couple of small markets, and then the DVD sales… when all is said and done, The Golden Compass stands to earn the studio over $150 million in profit. What the overseas audience saw in this mediocre at best movie that I didn’t is beyond me… but they saw something, and paid a lot of money to see it.
The good news is that the film was successful. The bad news is, since it was indeed successful, we’re pretty much guaranteed to get the sequel soon, which is a shame, because it’s not worth the effort. Maybe we’ll get lucky and the studio will just count themselves lucky to make such a big profit on the film, realize that a lot of people won’t see the sequel since the first one was so bad, and just forget about the sequel. One can only hope.
