May
5
No Grand Theft Auto IV effect on Iron Man
$104.2 million later, I think we can safely say that "GTA IV" had zero impact on "Iron Man's" opening. Paramount's Rob Moore was right: "It's crazy to think that young males can't carve out two hours for Iron Man. It's going to be a great week to be a young guy.'' (Pamela McClintock reports in Variety that the "Iron Man" aud was 62% male).
Obviously you can't prove a counter-factual, but when a movie breaks this many records, it sure doesn't look like anything was holding it back.
Pundits who got it wrong: Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, Wedbush Morgan analyst Edward Woo; the editors of GamePro; Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey; and probably others who I'm not finding right now. (additions to this list are welcome)
For the record, I explored the idea that "GTA IV" might impact "Iron Man's" opening b.o., but did a little research and concluded that was unlikely (though I did leave open the possibility that there could be a slight overall effect on movie viewership this summer amongst gamers).
Instead, I wrote in a story on the topic, "GTA IV" was more likely to impact homevideo sales (which is why no DVDs aimed at young males came out last week) and TV ratings amongst the gamer demo. I'll check the TV ratings data this week and find out if that proved true.
Chris Morris reports on the business and culture of video games and offers analysis of recent events and industry trends.
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Posted by: buy goonzu gold | March 11, 2009 at 11:03 PM
okay here's what i think of the movie i think marvel is running out of options in the movie department i mean they've had spider man 1-3, the punisher, x-men, fantastic 4 ect. and now they've sunk so low as to iron man imean come on iron man isn't the most popular of marvel character whats next a captin america movie?!
Posted by: Corey Chadwick | May 08, 2008 at 02:55 PM
I don't think people should have been worried about the release. If people want to see a movie the night it is released, they would step away from the game for 2 or so hours to catch the movie, and then go back to the game. The game will be waiting for them when they get back.
Posted by: Matt | May 07, 2008 at 06:57 AM
People in the gaming world, or any subculture for that matter, forget that there are people that aren't like them. I love video games, but the rest of my family and many of my friends couldn't care less about them. So this weekend, what do you think we did? I went to see Ironman with my Dad, and we enjoyed almost every minute of it. There are many people who won't buy GTA4 because it's rated M. The overall effect of GTA (or any video game for that matter) in America is going to be small. Sure, Halo3 was huge, but it was an exception and not a rule. GTA doesn't have the same appeal that Halo did, and I can't believe that some people could've thought it would affect a box office movie. Those people need to get out in the world more...
Posted by: Darren | May 06, 2008 at 10:55 PM
Iron Man was practically flawless as a super hero flick; its makers drop some pretty obvious sequel hints too... i'm thinking the next one should be equally great
Posted by: patrick | May 06, 2008 at 03:34 PM
I've been playing GTA4 daily since it was released, and I still had a chance to see Iron Man twice this past weekend, download it as a torrent and watch it a third and fourth time with some of my poorer friends (streaming through my Xbox360 onto my HDTV).
I also showed them GTA4 while they here, but nobody was interested in playing it. Too derivative of the prior versions. The other thing is, GTA4 is well and fine to play by yourself, but I can't stand watching other people play it. The learning curve is steep, so a beginner's gameplay is very repetitive and intensely boring.
However, I can watch and rewatch a good movie, do so with other people, and will go the extra effort to do both.
Funny thing, in the past five years, I've begun spending much more money on video games and playing them much less. However, with movies I've begun spending much less money but watching much more (to the point where I no longer subscribe to broadcast television, and watch two or three new movies a day). I'm not sure what happened.
Posted by: Rene | May 06, 2008 at 07:09 AM
Everyone has mentioned that Iron Man is, actually, a pretty decent graphic novel adaptation. I know me and most of my friends expected just the opposite. So I'd be willing to believe that Iron Man just did well because it was actually a good movie and word of mouth spread around. It probably would have done even better if it weren't for GTA4.
I'll go check Iron Man out, but not before I finish GTA4 :D
Posted by: Frank | May 05, 2008 at 10:08 PM
How can anybody positively say whether the release of GTA IV did or didn't impact the opening of Iron Man? Is it just because the movie made a good bit of money that you can positively state it had zero impact? I might be willing to go along with the idea if it weren't for two things. First, this isn't the all time highest grossing opening weekend for a movie (read: More people have gone to other openings). Second, I didn't go see the movie because...well...on this beautiful weekend I was stuck inside feeding my addiction to GTA IV. :)
Posted by: Common Sense Man | May 05, 2008 at 02:10 PM