Inception: Hype and its Impact on Box-Office

Ever since Inception was announced, the film circles were abuzz with news of anything from release date to probable plots. The collaboration of the director of The Dark Knight and one of the biggest stars of Hollywood was of course destined to be hyped. The release date nears and the hype is building up exponentially propelled by the largely favourable reviews and media promotions. The Dark Knight too witnessed huge hype in the run-down to its release. We know that was due to the promos focusing on The Joker played by the talented Heath Ledger, whose unexpected demise had grabbed headlines. While it is certain that The Dark Knight would still have become a blockbuster had Ledger survived that drug overdose, it is doubtful if it would have bagged the record $158 million in the opening weekend. Before the release of Iron Man 2, a Yahoo report wondered if it would dethrone The Dark Knight from the opening weekend gross record, considering the huge hype. It ended up trailing a whole $30 million.

What make me somewhat nervous about the insane hype around Inception are its uncommon genre and the fact that it's not belonging to a pre-established premise like The Dark Knight or Iron Man 2 for that matter. The global box-office phenomenon Avatar pretty much negates the latter point. I had quoted the same reason and “optimistically" projected Avatar to gross up to $1 billion globally, hoping the 3D and favourable reviews will somehow push the film up to that. That one apparently will end up grossing almost thrice as much. But Avatar is an exception, and a huge one at that. As of 11 July 2010, Avatar's total gross is $2.73 billion, out of which only $750 million is collected domestically. In other words, a whopping 72% of the gross was collected from foreign territories. Even though the foreign collection share is very high, it’s not uncommon for blockbusters to collect more from foreign territories. In fact all Top 20 global blockbusters have collected more from foreign screens; all but one. The Dark Knight, with 53% domestic share is the one which is out of the league. Obviously the deeper we go into a comparative analysis between The Dark Knight, Avatar and Inception, the more it gets complex. To put it straight, Avatar with a huge hype and a non-established premise went on to collect in normal blockbuster pattern with a fatter foreign share. The Dark Knight with more hype and established premise ended up collecting more domestically.

The hype of Inception might not be as huge as The Dark Knight, but it is comparable to that of Avatar. The problem here, as I mentioned above is that the premise is not only unfamiliar to the audience, it seems to be a bit convoluted too. The first Inception review to get published stated that we, the audience are so used to being treated like idiots; which means that Inception is a film which makes you think. You won’t see many "brainy" movies with non-established premises in the top of the blockbusters table. I remember one report jokingly describing Inception as a weirdo/sci-fi/heist/thriller film. IMDb describes it as a drama/mystery/sci-fi/thriller. The amalgamated genre outcome may very well end up being unappealing on incomprehensible for the general public. That’s why I'm wary of the hype. The hype would help the film to gross around $70 million domestically in the opening weekend, but if the general public goes to the film expecting an action/thriller film as indicated by the TV spots, things may get bad in the second week. It would have been much better if they gave stress to the drama part as well. And I hope the film don’t end up looking so geeky to the common audience. I will of course be very happy to find myself proven too pessimistic in this matter after two weeks. Let's hope the audience will reward a director who trusts their intelligence.

Inception opens on 16 July 2010.

More info on Inception from Wikipedia.

Visit the Official Website.

Play the official Inception mind crime game.