The second installment of the “Twilight Saga,” New Moon, had an extremely successful opening last weekend, grossing $142,839,137 domestically, which is the the third highest weekend opening of all time. Unfortunately, the following weekend the movie made substantially less substantially less, only $42,870,031, a drop of over 70% which is much greater than what most movies experience. On average, for the top 100 grossing movies of 2008, titles dropped 50% on the second weekend. Out of the top 100 openings of all time, only New Moon has dropped over 70%. So how or why did New Moon lose its shine?

One factor is surely reviews. Looking at the top 100 second weekend drops it is clear that many of the movies were simply bad. Scathing reviews from critics and bad word of mouth from opening weekend customers can obviously deter people from seeing a movie. An approximation for this relationship can be seen by graphing a movie’s box office (BO) drop to its Rotten Tomatoes (RT) score, a well known index that  averages critics’ reviews into a simple average. Titles that mark above 60% are deemed ‘fresh’ while those below are ‘rotten.’ Taking the titles that had BO drops of over over 70%, in terms of average gross per theater, and plotting them against their RT scores yielded the following graph.

The two biggest drops  of 83% and 82% were  Gigli and Captivity, who both scored less than 10% on the Tomatometer. New Moon was in the upper left-hand quadrant of the group, with a 30% RT Score and a 70% box office drop. While most of the movies that dropped more than 70% were ‘rotten’ there was still a low correlation in this group between RT scores and BO drops. Certain movies with good reviews, like Hellboy II, Jackass Number Two and Borat, still dropped a lot during their second weekend. At the same time most “rotten” titles don’t drop over 70% or even 60% after opening weekend so it’s clear that there must be something else to explain the demise of New Moon.

The other factors that explain BO drops are not quantifiable and are related to its target audience. Earlier this year I studied the top 100 movies of 2008 in terms box office gross and I noted that certain titles were ‘sprinters’, quickly losing box office steam after the first weekend, while others were ‘marathoners’, keeping a steady earnings pace for much longer stretches. I also noticed that most of the ‘sprinters’ like Cloverfield, Saw V and Meet the Spartans were targeted towards teens or young adults. It makes sense that heavily hyped movies draws immense traffic from teens on opening weekend. Other titles, especially horror or science fiction franchises, while not exclusively aimed at teens, still fit the ‘sprinter’ modus operandi, since they attract extreme loyal niche audiences who have to see the movie during its opening weekend.

New Moon is clearly a ‘sprinter’ since it’s in the horror/fantasy genre, it’s aimed mostly at teens and young adults, and it has a loyal fanbase. Given these circumstances it should not be surprising that it dropped so much during its second weekend, even if there were no major openings this past Thanksgiving weekend- an oversight perhaps of other studios who overestimated the potential competition from Twilight’s second coming.

Last night I went to see the new Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie, which incidentally was pretty good. However, given recent mixed reviews and the underperformance of Mission: Impossible III, I wondered just how this movie stacked up to Tom Cruise’s previous starring roles.

Utilizing Rotten Tomatoes scores I complied the following historical graph showing how much critics have liked or disliked movies starring Tom Cruise. Since the purpose of this exercise is to focus on Tom Cruise’s ability to carry a film, I am exempting movies from which he did not have a prominent starring role, like The Outsiders or Tropic Thunder.

Out of these 24 releases, ten have been deemed “fresh” while only seven are estimated as being “rotten.” Valkyrie received a rating of 57%, which is considered neither fresh nor rotten, but a middling grade. What might be more concerning is that none of Tom Cruise’s movies since 2004 has garnered more than 75% of support from critics. This could be construed, as it once was by Viacom’s Chaiman Sumner Redstone, to be an effect of a negative public image.

In terms of U.S. box office, the story is somewhat better. Of the 10 last releases, all but one, Eyes Wide Shut, have garnered more than $100 million in the U.S. box office, plus two movies, Mission: Impossible II and War of the Worlds, have passed the $200 million mark. As I mentioned before, Mission: Impossible III was considered to be somewhat of an underperformer, achieving $134 million at the U.S. box office, more than a third less than the previous installment in the franchise, and concerning given its $150 million production budget.

In Valkyrie’s case the box office has yet to close, but the film has already grossed around $63 million. Based on the two week performance of his previous seven movies, I “guesstimated” that Valkyrie will wind up grossing around $105 million in the United States. Unfortunately, this would rank his Valkyrie as an underperformer in Tom Cruise’s portfolio, making less than all of Tom Cruise’s releases since 2000, with the exception of Collateral and Vanilla Sky. Moreover, these earlier movies had production budgets that where about a third less than Valkyrie’s costs of $95 million, which further exacerbates the situation.

Where Valkyrie might find salvation is in the foreign box office. The last historical war drama made by Tom Cruise, The Last Samurai, grossed over three times as much in the foreign box office than in the U.S. On average his recent movies have only made 30% more. I therefore expect that there will be many foreign press junkets will be organized to secure as add as much foreign ticket sales to the pot as possible.

In any case, Tom Cruise will have to follow up Valkyrie with a stronger performing movie. It seems that his new project is actually a comedy called Men, where “an advertising executive surreptitiously becomes roommates with his wife’s lover–an egotistical artist–in order to sabotage their affair and save his marriage.” It sounds like $50 million personable romantic comedy, something he hasn’t done since Jerry Maguire. Perhaps it’s a good idea.