“Why don’t you guys have a discussion about the biggest misjudgments you guys have had on movies. BIMAN-Man with a 30M opening, gar, haha, even I knew that wasn’t going to happen. C’mon fellers, I know it is the holidays, but you can do better than that.” So wrote Bob & Ginny Bivaletz. Well, it’s nice to know what our adoring public think of us

It’s fair to say that I pretty much entirely lost the plot on BIMAN. No way was I expecting it to flop as badly as it did. But it isn’t my worst miscalculation. Not even close. Coming up are some of the duds from my past, my personal selection of the bad, the worse and the (very, very) ugly.

ENEMY
Huy the Infallible: Enemy of the State was the very first opener I ever played. This Will Smith guy, I thought, he’s had a few hits – Men in black, Independence Day – he’s gotta be worth a $30m opening. The only analysis I did? Reading the top article from the Hollywood Reporter, which said it was tracking ENEMY to take number one at the box office.
What went wrong: Everything. Plus Rugrats took the top spot. I lost 25% of my portfolio on one stock. ENEMY actually had an OK opening, considering it was a thriller released outside the holidays (OK, the weekend before Thanksgiving, but still), without the benefit of a massive screen count.
Lessons learned: The price I bought ENEMY at was not even remotely realistic. I know that now, but I didn’t then. We all start off as newbies and we all generally have at least one skeleton hidden in our closet. This is mine. Screen counts, fansite predictions, box office precedents, I didn’t check any of it, and I paid the price.

CRUEL
Huy the Infallible: After being ritually slaughtered with ENEMY, it was over three months before I played another opener. Varsity Blues and made a truckload of money, as did She’ll All That. Along came Cruel Intentions. No Dawson link this time round, but a whole lot of Buffy. What the hell, I thought, time for history to repeat itself.
What went wrong: History did repeat itself. Except that history in this case was ENEMY. Again, CRUEL didn’t do too bad. But a $13m opening still meant that I dropped $300,000.
Lessons learned: Sarah Michelle Geller is going to have give us more than just tonsil hockey if she wants a $20m opening. There were posters on TT predicting those kind of numbers and I just got caught up in the hype. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s obvious that, at $44, there was more downside than upside. Sometimes, you simply need to walk away from HSX and do a reality check.

DOUG
Huy the Infallible: Doug’s First Movie was trading at around $35 a couple of weeks before it opened. The obvious analogy was with Rugrats, another animated aimed at the youngest demographic, which adjusted past $80. If Rugrats could do that, surely DOUG could at least do half that?
What went wrong: Apparently not. DOUG tanked, taking in less than $5m on its opening weekend.
Lessons learned: I’m not very good at this am I? The obvious lesson is that analogies are dangerous. We’re all too ready to point out the similarities and ignore the differences. Rugrats was had a decent budget, a major marketing push and a huge built-in audience. DOUG didn’t. At least I managed to claw some of the money back by holding it to delist. Remember, family films tend to have great multipliers. Yes, even Dudley Do-Right.

BLAIR
Huy the Infallible: A zero budget affair, lacking in obvious mainstream appeal or traditional marketing clout with a release pattern at the bargain end of “wide” (1,000 screens). An obvious short at $30, right?
What went wrong: Wrong. Who needs screens or advertising when you’ve got the net and buzz? Here was Generation Y royally sticking two fingers up against the Hollywood establishment. Probably the most infamous example of the vast majority of the HSX community getting it badly, badly wrong. I wasn’t the only one who never saw this coming. And you know what? If it happened again, I’d probably do the same.
Lessons learned: Err, paradigm shift, anyone? Forget Star Wars, Woody and Buzz or little kids to see dead people. For the bean counters, this is probably the most ground breaking movie of the year. It showed that the web, as a marketing tool may have come of age.

IRONG
Huy the Infallible: Iron Giant was the other film creating a massive stir on the web. After the success of BLAIR, the sky’s the limit, right?
What went wrong: Nope. A great family movie that never found its audience. A confused marketing campaign didn’t help, but I couldn’t tell that from London.
Lessons learned: Yes, records break, “paradigms” shift. But where one leads, other won’t necessarily follow. BLAIR worked on the web because its target audience were the guys and gals who surf the net. IRONG was aimed at families. That’s the difference. BLAIR could get away with it net hipness. IRONG needed more, it needed a strong traditional marketing campaign. It didn’t get it.

JB19/SLEPH
Huy the Infallible: Two massive, massive films for the weekend before Thanksgiving, aimed at the same target audience. The market could absorb one, but two? There had to be a loser. I didn’t know which, so I shorted them both.
What went wrong: Oops. The first time movies opened over $30m each.
Lessons learned: How many times do I have to bang this into my head before I remember; the market expands to accommodate movies people want to see. As it happens, they didn’t get the same audiences. SLEPH took mainly late teens and early 20s, skewing female (now we know who the real Christina Ricci fans are). JB19 played mainly to boys, both younger (the joys of a PG-13 rating) and older (what do you expect with a 40 year old franchise?).

How small do I feel right now? After an entire column of self-flagellation, allow me a brief paragraph to rebuild my fragile ego. Please. Pretty please. Thank you:

OK, first off, I live in London. We’ve already had a guest column from Se7en bemoaning the sad lot of non-North American players. I’m not asking for any sympathy. Living 12,000 miles from Hollywood usually has a minimal impact on me. Usually. But it does mean that I don’t have the non-HSX reality checks open to other players. Even so, my record – at least since I joined HSBR – really ISN’T that bad. I DID manage to get some right. Of my staff picks for last year, I was averaging a little over 70%. Not omnipotent, but pretty good. (As for my record so far this year, it’s best not to talk about it.)

So, yes, I’ve picked some dogs in my time. Par for the course. The next time you decide to follow any advice of mine – or anyone for that matter – bear that in mind.

-Huy