Got two bucks for a movie ticket?
Newspapers and PR reports were all aflutter last week with the news that Boy, written and directed by Taika Waititi, is now the “number one New Zealand film of all time”, overtaking The World’s Fastest Indian (TWFI) with a lifetime box office of over $7,050,000 in the eight weeks since its release on March 25. But are we comparing apples with apples?
Released in 2005, TWFI took 46 weeks to reach the same level.
However, the New Zealand Film Commission admits the lifetime box office number is not adjusted for the inflation of movie ticket prices – not to mention population growth – and simply reflects the total receipts the distributor receives. With the cost of a movie ticket at Sky City Queen St now at $15.50, plus numerous multiplexes showing films all times of the day and night, a film released today will reach monetary milestones much quicker than those made back when the moonwalk wasn’t ironic.
Perhaps a ‘bums on seats’ rating might be a more representative way of finding New Zealand’s number one film. In 1987, when New Zealand’s 7th highest grossing film Footrot Flats was released, 15 bucks would have likely taken the whole family to the movies.
Still, accounting quibbles aside, Boy’s success makes a refreshing change from the Avatarisation of the cinema.
Boy’s makers expect to add a further $1 million to the box office total by the end of its cinema run.
Meanwhile, the film’s theme tune, Poi E, the 1984 hit song by the Patea Maori Club, is making a fresh assault on the New Zealand charts, driven by a new Waititi-directed music video and online campaigns through Facebook and Twitter to push the song to number one. Entering the charts at number 20 earlier this month, the song is now sitting at number whitu .
THE TOP 10 NZ FILMS
1. $7,050,000 – Boy (2010).
2. $7,047,000 – The World’s Fastest Indian (2005)
3. $6,795,000 – Once Were Warriors (1994)
4. $6,400,000 – Whale Rider (2002).
5. $4,075,000 – Sione’s Wedding (2006).
6. $3,200,991 – What Becomes Of The Broken Hearted (1999).
7. $2,420,000 – Footrot Flats (1987).
8. $1,642,508 – Second-Hand Wedding (2008).
9. $1,600,000 – Goodbye Pork Pie (1981).
10. $1,506,195 – In My Father’s Den (2004).
courtney lambert @cjlambert
May 25, 2010
Also shows how out of touch most of our film reviewers are. It got pretty average reviews by most mainstream media. Go Taika :)
iChild
May 25, 2010
Totally deserves to be in #1 spot. It's a brilliant film which resonates with a huge proportion of the NZ public in a number of different ways.
It's awesome that for once NZ has gotten behind homegrown talent instead of trying to knock it down.
Duncan Stuart
May 25, 2010
In a survey we did not long ago for the NZ Film Commission, we tested film popularity from a number of angles. Quite apart from raw Box Office (Inflation adjustment is essential) we also measured reach in terms of seeing the movie on TV or on DVD – and on these terms the propensity of NZers to see the more major NZ films was quite astounding. Raw box office doesn't tell half the story.
The other thing we did was ask people about their favourite kiwi films of all time, and which movies they'd most like to show somebody from overseas (what I called the showcase question.)
We got quite different results for these questions, naturally, (we admire Once Were Warriors but wouldn't want to showcase this to our visitors from overseas) and the various measures we used showed just how blunt the raw box office measures really are. Movies like Pork Pie transcend generations and have taken on a cult status – others less so.
I don't think any one measure is sufficient to mark the social impact of a movie, but most financial measures fail to show how much these films enter truly our cultural dialogue.
I've written elsewhere how annoying I find the Poi E theme to be – and how bizarre I found the original video to be with its appropriation of Michael Jackson moves – but there's no getting around the fact that the original song (and video) and the new movie Boy (and video) have left a big indelible stamp on our ever expanding cultural story. Good on everyone concerned.
MCB
May 25, 2010
Boy deserves to poll well.
I took my kids and we all laughed in unison. Very honest and real. Well done Taika. Will there be a 'Girl' ?