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Get ready to fluff your most festive cravat, because Grand Budapest Hotel this week became Wes Anderson’s first movie to cross $100 million internationally, becoming his highest-grossing film to date (in terms of worldwide gross). Somewhere, there’s a tiny madras sportcoat covered in confetti and celebratory cosmo stains.
In terms of domestic box office, Budapest is actually a distant third behind Moonrise Kingdom and Royal Tenenbaums, but has earned 62 percent of its gross overseas. Only Darjeeling has a higher percentage from foreign box, at 66 percent.
It’s odd that even after seven relatively popular movies, Wes Anderson has never had a movie open in more than 2500 theaters. His widest, Fantastic Mr. Fox, opened in 2300 theaters, and the next closest is Grand Budapest, with 1467. By comparison, even Draft Day opened in 2,781. I assume the common knock on Wes Anderson would be that he doesn’t play in the sticks, but from the looks of it, that theory has never been tested. Maybe just once, try opening one in more theaters than f*cking Jobs.
In any case, I think the reason Wes Anderson movies are starting to make big money is the same reason I didn’t entirely love his last two: he’s become predictable enough that he’s a brand. People know what they’re going to get when they see a Wes Anderson movie nowadays, which is exactly the reason it feels to me that his movies are missing some of the magic. I went into Grand Budapest expecting an exquisitely furnished ornate cuckoo clock of a movie and that’s exactly what I got. As exciting as it is to do the unexpected, it’s not normally a good money-making strategy, as The Life Aquatic’s gross and my criminal record seem to prove.
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It’s a bad thing for those of us who like being surprised. I don’t think it’s a net good, really. It’s just part of the thinking that dictates that everything has to be the beginning of a trilogy or a franchise or whatever. I’d like to see people rewarded for taking chances.
His next movie will be about a suicidal movie director who finally churns out something that grosses a hundred million dollars and is miserable about it.
Whimsical blockbusters! Take note, Michael Bay.
Fully agree with that last paragraph. That’s true for most director’s, you know what you’re going to get with Tarantino and Spielberg for example. But those other directors still find a lot of originality or quality within their standard forms. Wes Anderson’s movies are increasingly less interesting because you don’t get anything new (also, nothing funny), just a continuing revision of the styles he personally finds interesting.
Picasso was interesting because he did new things while refining his style. If he just kept abstracting women using only bright pastels, it would have gotten stale.
so he’s like the Foo Fighters of whimsy movie-making.
Ugh, now he’s become mainstream. I’ll have to move on to another director who is less appreciated by the masses.
*adjusts Google glasses, swigs PBR, rides off on fixie to get another ironic tattoo*
I found The grand Budapest to be my favorite of his films.
I like what he does. So him being a brand is fine with me. I also like what Steven Soderbergh does but he has made some shitty, shitty films, so much so that I do not go see them in the theater. It isn’t worth the cost of a ticket.
Being a brand is not a bad thing. It is far worse to be a pretentious twat as you well know.