{"id":761,"date":"2020-08-02T12:38:30","date_gmt":"2020-08-02T12:38:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/?p=761"},"modified":"2020-08-02T12:38:30","modified_gmt":"2020-08-02T12:38:30","slug":"a-misguided-kevin-james-bomb-is-now-one-of-netflixs-most-watched-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/a-misguided-kevin-james-bomb-is-now-one-of-netflixs-most-watched-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"A Misguided Kevin James Bomb Is Now One Of Netflix\u2019s Most-Watched Movies"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Zookeeper<\/em>\u00a0tried and failed to cash in on the success of Eddie Murphy&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Doctor Dolittle,\u00a0<\/em>Ben Stiller&#8217;s\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum<\/em>\u00a0and Kevin James\u2019\u00a0<em>Paul Blart: Mall Cop<\/em>.<\/strong><\/p><div class=\"rfbgo64da3368b21f6\" ><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block; text-align:center;\"\n     data-ad-layout=\"in-article\"\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8209967072221559\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"2673331731\"><\/ins>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/div><style type=\"text\/css\">\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 1201px) {\r\n.rfbgo64da3368b21f6 {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 993px) and (max-width: 1200px) {\r\n.rfbgo64da3368b21f6 {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 992px) {\r\n.rfbgo64da3368b21f6 {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 768px) {\r\n.rfbgo64da3368b21f6 {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {\r\n.rfbgo64da3368b21f6 {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n<\/style>\r\n\n<p>Another week, another mostly forgotten box office whiff finding itself ranking as Netflix\u2019s most-watched \u201cnot a Netflix original\u201d film. This weekend, it\u2019s Happy Madison and MGM<em>\u2019s Zookeeper<\/em>, a poorly-reviewed and indifferently-received family-targeted comedy that earned $170 million worldwide (that\u2019s good) on an $80 million budget (that\u2019s bad) for Sony. It wasn\u2019t a disaster, and it probably broke even over the last nine years. It stands out as an attempt to mimic the distinct successes of three prior comedy hits without distinguishing itself from its predecessors. The film, about a zookeeper (Kevin James) who accidentally gets the ability to talk to his animal charges, plays like a somewhat low-energy hybrid of Eddie Murphy\u2019s\u00a0<em>Doctor Dolittle<\/em>\u00a0and Ben Stiller\u2019s\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum\u00a0<\/em>while obviously hoping to replicate the blow-out success of James\u2019 own\u00a0<em>Paul Blart: Mall Cop<\/em>. But it couldn\u2019t compare to the hits it tried to emulate.<\/p>\n<p><em>Paul Blart\u00a0<\/em>was, until just this year, the biggest-grossing \u201cnew\u201d January release of all time in raw domestic earnings. The \u201cDie Hard starring Kevin James as a somewhat buffoonish segway-riding mall cop\u201d comedy stood out in early 2009 both for being a kid-friendly comic vehicle for James (then the star of the popular\u00a0<em>King of Queens\u00a0<\/em>show) and for being an original\u00a0<em>Die Hard\u00a0<\/em>knock-off when such things were in short supply. It grossed more in unadjusted domestic earnings than every respective \u201c<em>Die Hard\u00a0<\/em>in a\u2026\u201d movie save for Harrison Ford\u2019s\u00a0<em>Air Force One\u00a0<\/em>($171 million in 1997), including all five\u00a0<em>Die Hard\u00a0<\/em>films. It earned a whopping $146 million domestic from a $46 million Fri-Mon MLK weekend debut and $183 million worldwide on a $26 million budget. It made 104% sense that Sony would fast-track another comic vehicle for its top-billed star.<\/p>\n<div class=\"recirc-unit recirc-unit-open\" data-gtm-vis-recent-on-screen-655684_1281=\"57373\" data-gtm-vis-first-on-screen-655684_1281=\"57373\" data-gtm-vis-total-visible-time-655684_1281=\"100\" data-gtm-vis-has-fired-655684_1281=\"1\">\n<div class=\"recirc-title\">Recommended For You<\/div>\n<ul class=\"recirc-story-list fuse-data-stories\">\n<li class=\"recirc-story\">\n<h3 class=\"recirc-headline\" data-ga-track=\"Personalized SEO Recirc Unit: 4\">Black Is King Trending Worldwide Shows The Power Of Beyonc\u00e9 Supremacy And Fanaticism.<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"recirc-story\">\n<h3 class=\"recirc-headline\" data-ga-track=\"Personalized SEO Recirc Unit: 5\">Big Island Coffee Roasters Enriches Coffee Culture By Turning Turmoil Into Teaching Opportunities<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"recirc-story\">\n<h3 class=\"recirc-headline\" data-ga-track=\"Personalized SEO Recirc Unit: 6\">Keep Nespresso\u2019s Vision Alive<\/h3>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>Meanwhile, Fox was riding high on the\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum\u00a0<\/em>series. Loosely based on a 1993 children\u2019s book by Milan Trenc,\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum\u00a0<\/em>featured Ben Stiller as a divorced dad who gets a job as a security guard in a natural history museum only to discover that the exhibits come to life at night. As such, we got Stiller reacting in comedic ways to rampaging dinosaur skeletons and related PG-rated perils, plus an all-star cast (Robin Williams, Owen Wilson, Brad Garrett, Steve Coogan, etc.) playing historical figures. It wasn\u2019t a great movie, but it was a great premise, and it had the good fortune to open in December of 2006, one of the only year-end seasons since 2000 without a\u00a0<em>Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Twilight, Hobbit\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>Star Wars\u00a0<\/em>movie designating itself as the official year-end all-quadrants blockbuster.<\/p>\n<p>As such, Shawn Levy\u2019s\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum\u00a0<\/em>was the de-facto event movie of the holidays, to the tune of $250 million domestic from a $30 million debut and $574.5 million worldwide on a $110 million budget. Having watched it a few times with the target demographic, it plays very well to kids and I can see (even more so) why it was a monster hit in 2006.\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum: Battle for the Smithsonian\u00a0<\/em>dominated Memorial Day weekend in 2009 with a $69 million Fri-Mon debut and an eventual $413 million global cume on a $150 million budget. It smushed\u00a0<em>Terminator: Salvation\u00a0<\/em>which earned $371 million on a $200 million budget on the same weekend, again showing the value of a sequel to a recent hit that audiences actually liked versus a \u201cthe studio wants this more than the audience\u201d revamp of a previously-successful franchise.<\/p>\n<p>The notion of Kevin James as a zookeeper who talks to animals, all of whom are voiced by celebrities, was also not unlike Eddie Murphy\u2019s successful remake of\u00a0<em>Dr. Dolittle<\/em>. The Betty Thomas-directed comedy, which is (by default I suppose) the very best Dr. Dolittle movie yet made, was Murphy\u2019s first big family-friendly comedy after his comeback with Tom Shadyac\u2019s\u00a0<em>The Nutty Professor\u00a0<\/em>(rave reviews and $274 million on a $54 million budget in June of 1996). The low-key, small-scale family comedy, where one of the biggest conflicts is Murphy coming to terms with his eccentric pre-teen daughter, earned $291 million worldwide on a $71 million budget. It spawned one theatrical sequel ($170 million on a $71 million budget in 2001) and three direct-to-video sequels in 2006, 2008 and 2009. It would signify Murphy\u2019s new phase as a family-friendly entertainer who reacted to chaos rather than causing it.<\/p>\n<p>The whole \u201ccausing comedy\u201d (<em>Beverly Hills Cop, The Waterboy<\/em>) versus \u201creacting to comedy\u201d (<em>Daddy Daycare, Click<\/em>) sums up James\u2019 uniqueness as a comic star. While his characters were often put in extreme scenarios (a hostage situation at a mall, being able to talk to animals, having to engage in MMA fighting in order to raise money for public schools), his characters tended to be relatively ordinary and level-headed people. That sums up\u00a0<em>Zookeeper\u00a0<\/em>pretty well. Yes, it features talking animals, but it\u2019s not aggressively zany or frantic, and James\u2019 comparative push-over zoo employee is a buttoned down and decent guy. The movie may flirt with \u201cproblematic\u201d notions of dating in terms of the animal kingdom, but it doesn\u2019t have a mean bone in its body. Even James\u2019 ex-girlfriend (Leslie Bibb), who rejects his marriage proposal in the film\u2019s prologue, is accorded dignity, agency and respect.<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s not to say the movie is \u201cgood,\u201d although Rosario Dawson (as usual) gives more than what\u2019s on the page as the \u201ccorrect love interest\u201d and Nick Nolte gives a full-blown dramatic performance as an abused gorilla. James is a solid straight man, and the movie never pokes fun at his weight or his occupation as was arguably the case in\u00a0<em>Mall Cop<\/em>. In a vacuum, the movie is aggressively \u201cfine,\u201d with its kid-friendly charms arguably being why it is (for the moment) a popular Netflix title. Like the currently popular animated\u00a0<em>Animal Crackers<\/em>, sometimes the most valuable Netflix movie is a safe babysitter. That\u00a0<em>Zookeeper\u00a0<\/em>is also an $80 million Hollywood release with movie stars and Hollywood production values seals the deal. That budget, of course, is what doomed it commercially.<\/p>\n<p><em>Zookeeper\u00a0<\/em>earned just $13 million less worldwide than\u00a0<em>Paul Blart 1\u00a0<\/em>but at nearly three times the budget. Once again, studios hoped that the star of a well-liked comedy in a bigger-budgeted (and more fantasy-skewing) comic vehicle would equal increased grosses. Instead, it equaled about the same commercial result which now qualified as a miss in relation to cost. If you\u2019re playing off the success of one movie, don\u2019t do a follow-up that\u2019ll be a bomb if it only grosses what that previous outside-the-box hit did. Furthermore,\u00a0<em>Night at the Museum\u00a0<\/em>was a unique, star-driven high-concept comedy luckily opening in a holiday season without any mega-bucks fantasy actioners.\u00a0<em>Doctor Dolittle\u00a0<\/em>was a still-novel \u201ctalking animals with modern special effects\u201d comedy, three years after\u00a0<em>Babe<\/em>, starring a hotter-than-ever Murphy.\u00a0<em>Zookeeper\u00a0<\/em>was a knock-off of the genuine articles, and folks were less inclined to sample the would-be pretender.<\/p>\n<p>Kevin James is still a gainfully employed TV and film actor, with and without an assist from Happy Madison, while Hollywood is still trying to milk the \u201ctalking animals voiced by celebrities\u201d cow as evidenced by Robert Downey Jr.\u2019s $175 million (!!)\u00a0<em>Dolittle\u00a0<\/em>(which has just passed $10 million in China and thus has now earned $235 million global) and\u00a0<em>The One and Only Ivan\u00a0<\/em>(slated for August 14, but now debuted on August 21 on Disney+).\u00a0<em>Zookeeper<\/em>\u2019s modest commercial failure makes one nostalgic for when it was still more beneficial to offer something unique unto itself in the marketplace versus trying to copy the latest hit or relaunching a prior success. I always said that you make more money from the first<em>\u00a0Scream\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>Matrix\u00a0<\/em>than the \u201cnext\u00a0<em>Scream<\/em>\u201d or \u201cnext\u00a0<em>Matrix<\/em>.\u201d That\u2019s harder to justify when audiences just want\u00a0<em>Matrix 4\u00a0<\/em>or\u00a0<em>Scream 5<\/em>.<\/p><div class=\"lgrvw64da3368b223a\" ><script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\"\n     style=\"display:block; text-align:center;\"\n     data-ad-layout=\"in-article\"\n     data-ad-format=\"fluid\"\n     data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-8209967072221559\"\n     data-ad-slot=\"2673331731\"><\/ins>\n<script>\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/div><style type=\"text\/css\">\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 1201px) {\r\n.lgrvw64da3368b223a {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 993px) and (max-width: 1200px) {\r\n.lgrvw64da3368b223a {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 769px) and (max-width: 992px) {\r\n.lgrvw64da3368b223a {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (min-width: 768px) and (max-width: 768px) {\r\n.lgrvw64da3368b223a {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n@media screen and (max-width: 767px) {\r\n.lgrvw64da3368b223a {\r\ndisplay: block;\r\n}\r\n}\r\n<\/style>\r\n\n<p>Source:<a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/scottmendelson\/2020\/08\/01\/kevin-james-box-office-bomb-one-of-most-watched-netflix-movies\/#2c324198597a\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">\u00a0forbes.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zookeeper\u00a0tried and failed to cash in on the success of Eddie Murphy&#8217;s\u00a0Doctor Dolittle,\u00a0Ben Stiller&#8217;s\u00a0Night at the Museum\u00a0and Kevin James\u2019\u00a0Paul Blart:&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124],"tags":[3217,3208,3210,3215,3196,3195,3225,3222,3220,3194,3198,3216,3189,3236,3237,3200,3223,3219,3203,3232,3209,3206,3207,3238,3193,3228,3231,3224,3229,3221,3212,3213,3218,3204,3202,3197,3201,3199,3190,3191,3205,3214,3234,3211,3235,3230,3226,3192,3227,3233],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":763,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/763"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stremon.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}