I will admit, I was surprised by how "not great" Baywatch did this weekend at the domestic box office. While an $18.6 million Fri-Sun/$27.6m Thurs-Mon opening weekend wouldn't be terrible for an R-rated comedy, this one was projected to top $40m over the holiday and happened to cost $69m. Yes, there is still hope. If it is as leggy as Blended was back in 2014 and makes it to $70m domestic and then scores a best-case-scenario optimistic 30/70 domestic/overseas split, we're looking at $233m worldwide or just over triple the budget. That same split with a more realistic $55m domestic total puts it at $184m, or a face-saving 2.66x the budget. Point being, even if overseas rides to the rescue, it's a disappointing figure in North America and another public whiff for Paramount. So let's see why I (and most of the folks making up their summer betting pools) were so wrong about the Dwayne Johnson/Zac Efron/Priyanka Chopra/Alexandra Daddario comedy.
1. The reviews were terrible.
As a general rule, I have argued that star-driven comedies are relatively critic-proof. If you're a fan of Melissa McCarthy or Kevin Hart, then you're probably going to find their antics to be amusing no matter what critics say about The Boss or The Wedding Ringer, or at least you're willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. But the reviews for Baywatch were almost universally poor, with many of the reviews stressed that the film just wasn't funny or even trying to be all that shocking. And since Dwayne Johnson is known more as an action star than a comedy star, and Efron is an added value element more than a surefire opener, the reviews did hurt in this case. That doesn't mean Johnson was right to pull the whole "fans versus critics" card, but he surely knew that bad reviews wouldn't help over the long weekend.
2. The budget was too high.
One of the reasons star-driven comedies can survive bad review is that they tend to be cheap. That pesky $69 million budget meant that the film couldn't get by with a $20-$30m Fri-Sun debut on par with Tammy or Get Hard. Once you start spending more than $45m on an R-rated comedy and/or banking on overseas grosses for a comedy, you're in perilous waters. A movie like Identify Thief or Ride Along doesn't depend on overseas bucks to make a profit, so anything they make outside of North America is arguably gravy. As a general rule, American comedies aren't guaranteed to break out because comedy is less universal than action and explosions. But Baywatch was pricey enough that it either needed to go nuts in North America (like 21 Jump Street) or break big overseas. And budgeting for best-case-scenario is a dangerous business.
3. Audiences didn't want or need a Baywatch movie.
So, here's the $69 million question: Does an original, R-rated comedy that plays out almost identically to Baywatch, but isn't explicitly based on Baywatch, open better this weekend? Now, for the record, the brand may indeed have value overseas. Baywatch was once the most popular TV show in the world. But domestically speaking, using the Baywatch brand may have backfired.
True-blue fans were turned off by the R-rating and the marketing that emphasized raunch and indicated that the film was basically making fun of the old show. That wasn't quite the case (the movie is pretty mild and champions the original show), but opening weekend is about marketing as much as quality. But general audiences don't necessarily have a soft spot for the often-ridiculed David Hasselhoff/Pamela Anderson show. It was a lose/lose situation.
So, in retrospect, this may have been a situation where Baywatch was one of those classic "just because folks have heard of it doesn't mean they want a movie based upon it" situations. Yes, I thought that the very idea of a Dwayne Johnson/Zac Efron beach-set action comedy would overpower the IP. But maybe, in this case, the negative value of the IP overpowered the rest of the marketable elements. I may go into this another time, but if Baywatch does breakout, might we start seeing movies that are sold as original movies in the states and brand adaptations overseas?
So that's a wrap for this quickie. I'm curious to see how the film performs overseas next weekend, when it launches into about 65% of the international marketplace. Obviously, if it breaks big overseas, that's worth a separate conversation, but we'll cross that bridge when the time comes. This is all bad news for Paramount, but the cast will be fine. Johnson's Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle looks great and Efron has that Ted Bundy movie on deck. So yeah, Baywatch wasn't a good movie and earned far less than projected this weekend. The worst part of it being lousy is that now I have to rent CHiPs to compare the two.
