Sony gets a much-needed rise from Sausage Party
Sony Pictures’ raunchy animation romp, Sausage Party, debuted to a smokin’ $33.6m at the box office, finally giving a win to the pummeled studio.
Sausage Party
Rory Bruer, Sony’s distribution chief, told Variety that he thought the freshness and outrageousness of the movie struck a chord with audiences that had grown weary of Sony’s attempts at manufacturing blockbusters. Its reboot of Ghostbusters was Sony’s most notable flop, in a list that includes “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” and “The 5th Wave.”
The failure of Ghostbusters is well noted. One of the emails captured by Wikileaks from the studio didn’t sit well with fans, who saw Sony cashing in on nostalgia rather than coming up with something fresh to revive the franchise. Also, reviews were anything but enthusiastic – even for the trailer, which is the ninth most disliked in YouTube history – leading to the summer’s first disappointment.
This at a time when Sony needs to hit it out of the park. As The Drum reported on July 20, Sony took a dated approach to marketing Ghostbusters, marketing at the audience rather than engage with the potential audience to market the film.
Sausage Party managed to beat out another of the summer’s most hyped franchise movies, Suicide Squad, which took a 67% slide in its second week at the box office. And while the DC Comics movie isn’t considered a failure, it certainly isn’t a mega-hit, especially considering all the buzz behind it starting last year. At least Suicide Squad has its die-hard fans backing it up, as they did when they signed a petition demanding the closure of “Rotten Tomatoes,” a noted review site. Ghostbusters can’t even muster that kind of fan loyalty.
Sony hopes the momentum of Sausage Party leads them into a successful fall, one that includes a remake of The Magnificent Seven with Denzel Washington and Passengers with Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. Considering it has other reboots on the docket, including two more Bad Boys, Jumanji and Blade Runner 2, if Sony doesn’t up its marketing game and get its audiences excited, it could be a long, cold winter for the studio.