It was a great Valentine's Day weekend for Time Warner (NYSE: TWX). According to Boxofficemojo, the remake of Friday the 13th took the top spot, hacking up over $40 million at domestic theaters for the three-day weekend as of early estimates. Even if those estimates change a little, the horror flick is staying put in first place. Michael Bay was the producer on this film, and he brought his slick sensibility to the sick classic.
And, of course, he made sure that Jason Voorhees was prominently featured in the project, even though the supernatural serial killer wasn't the antagonist in the original source material. That was a good decision (although I do sometimes wonder what it would have been like if Bay had stayed true to the original and just used Jason's mother as the killer), considering that Jason is the heart of the brand equity of this franchise. I'll tell you, when I saw the early numbers reported at the beginning of the weekend, I was amazed at how good the business was for Friday. Every marketing cylinder was hit on this one.
Time Warner's movie strategy expertly captured the youthful demographic this weekend, giving them an exciting, if bloody and gory, way to celebrate Valentine's Day. At a reported budget of only $19 million, Friday stands a good chance of making money (I have no idea what the marketing costs were). And you've got to hand it to Time Warner for being able to snare the second spot with Into You, a film that probably skewed a little older and perhaps took in the section of the Valentine crowd that had no interest in seeing a monster in a hockey mask graphically off a bunch of goofy people at a haunted campsite. Time Warner's studio operations will hopefully benefit from these projects in the next reporting period, but you certainly wouldn't buy the stock based on this box-office performance, as the sizeable conglomerate won't see a big enough impact from these projects on the bottom line. Still, every success counts for shareholders, and if Time Warner can keep budget/marketing investments as low as possible on future movie deals (which all studios should be striving to do in this bear market), then the company will be doing its job.
Disclosure: I own Disney, GE; positions can change without notice.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-17-2009 @ 2:03PM
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