Sony's 'Angels & Demons' triumphs over Viacom's 'Star Trek'

Coming in third was X-Men Origins: Wolverine from Marvel (NYSE: MVL) and News Corp. (NASDAQ: NWS). In fourth place was Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. That one doesn't seem to be making too many waves at the box office, unfortunately.

I've been a bit of a curmudgeon these last few weeks. Is it me, or is the initial crop of summer films not performing up to expectations? Let's look at Angels. We've got the star power of both Tom Hanks and Ron Howard supporting the picture. We've got what I thought was a decent marketing campaign. And we've got a nice pedigree going. Remember, this film belongs to a franchise started by The Da Vinci Code. Back in 2006, Code opened to $77 million. I don't know, to my way of thinking, Angels should have gone beyond $80 million in its first three days to be considered a success.

Of course, sequels (or, prequels, as I think may be the case with this one) oftentimes don't do as well as their predecessors (and it should be noted that, as far as I can tell, the reviews weren't heavenly for Angels). But what does this imply about the franchise model? To me, it means that budgets for sequels need to be kept carefully in check for the sake of shareholder value. The budget for Code was reportedly $125 million. Angels cost $25 million more to make. Why put more money at risk for the next film in a series if sequels sometimes have a harder time of it?

Shareholders won't be able to do anything about this, as you can imagine. Can't fight the Hollywood studio-agent system. At any rate, of all the stocks mentioned here, I think Time Warner might be interesting on a pullback ahead of the release of the next Harry Potter flick. And I like Marvel on a pullback, too. This will hopefully be another interesting summer for media investors.

Disclosure: I don't own any company mentioned; positions/opinions can change without notice.