Inside the Numbers: Super 8 and Amblin Entertainment

To anyone my age, Amblin Entertainment is a synonym for "nostalgia."  Steven Spielberg's production company has been involved in some of the most loved films of the 1980s, but as Super 8 has reminded everyone, they are still around!

Some of the most interesting critical debate stems around whether Super 8 is just a knock-off of old Spielberg films, with the term "nostalgia porn" quickly becoming a part of the cultural lexicon.  In honor of this debate, I decided looking closely into the box office numbers of the best and worst Amblin films in comparison to Super 8 would be worthwhile.  The film obviously was trying to bank on 20-somethings coming to the theaters and bringing their kids along to share the memories that they had with their families when first seeing E.T.  But what do the numbers tell us?

	Budget	Opening Weekend	Overall Gross	Adjusted Gross
E.T.	$10.50	$11,835,389	$359,197,037	$800,673,436
Gremlins	N/A	$12,511,634	$148,168,459	$306,841,737
The Goonies	N/A	$9,105,913	$61,389,680	$122,714,048
Back to the Future	$19	$11,152,500	$210,609,762	$420,995,458
Arachnophobia	N/A	$8,045,760	$53,208,180	$87,617,479
Jurassic Park	$63	$47,026,828	$357,067,947	$531,889,049
Super 8	$50	$35,451,168	XXX	XXX

It may not be fair to match Super 8 with some of these classics, but there are some interesting numbers here.  If I were to ask you whether you think Super 8 or The Goonies would have a higher gross (adjusted), I imagine you would say Super 8, easily, but that might not be the case.  Although it is certainly too soon to tell if Super 8 will ultimately be a success, if it comes close to the $94 million I projected, it would barely scrape by Arachnophobia's adjusted gross (in 2010 dollars).  I don't know about you, but I wouldn't consider that to be a shining success.

Yes, the film will be a success in terms of its production budget -- it should eclipse that by next week.  But considering the movies that it idolizes and mimics, it won't come close.  This is partly because of movie-going trends today -- mainly, there are more big films out to spread around.  In 1982, E.T. more than doubled the gross of its nearest competitor, while only five films grossed $100 that year (adjusted to $222,906,470 in 2010). 

There may also be a deeper discussion here about nostalgia films and how they perform.  There are recent examples which that banking on an audience's nostalgia may not always translate into incredible success.  The prime example is Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are, which made $77 million against a $100 production budget.  Although not quite as direct an homage, Paul also made less domestically than its budget.  Super 8 has already shown it will be more successful than those films, but it may become part of an increasing trend showing that the things we are nostalgic for will be more successful than the art it directly inspires.