Hello all. Mark here.
I love researching movie posters. I’ve already studied Jason Statham posters and explored whether explosions on action movie posters matter. That is why I am excited to bring you this post. Nicholas Spark’s has had an incredibly schmaltzy run throughout the last 16 years and the movie posters for his book adaptations tell a tale.
Nicholas Spark’s book adaptations have become a moneymaking machine that combine well-known actors and a whole lot of melodrama. Sparks has become a brand and when you say it is a “Nicholas Sparks film” people know exactly what to expect. What does it mean to be a Sparks film? The movie needs beaches, mud slides, drowning, ghosts, cancer, untimely death, spunky grandparents, cute kids and some sort of lie. A pattern is afoot and I wanted to check if there is a correlation between the movie posters and box office/critical reception.
Here is the latest movie poster for The Best of Me.
The following post takes a look at the posters and analyzes the box-office, critical reception and audience ratings. The average worldwide box-office (per Box-Office Mojo) is $89,249,941 and the average Rotten Tomatoes critic score is 25%. The thing I find most interesting is that these films are critic proof. The critic score is 25% but the audience score is 66% (Per RT). The average budget is $31 million and the average profit is $58 million dollars! However, things are changing and so are the movie posters.
Here is the data from the movie posters
Posters featuring cuddles: Message in a bottle, Dear John and Walk to Remember have accrued a 29% RT (+4 on average) score and 66% (=) Audience score. the box office average is $93,784,012 (+ $4,534,071)
Why? Message in a Bottle featured Kevin Costner, Paul Newman and Robin Wright! They had huge names in 99 and the movie had a whopping $80 million budget (You could make Walk, Dear John, Safe Haven and Last Song for 80 million). It was the first Sparks adaptation and took itself fairly serious until the absolutely terrible ending. If you added for inflation the box-office would actually be around $150,000,000 as opposed to $114,000,000
The good thing according to EW is they are some of the least ridiculous of Sparks films. Walk to Remember is the least ridiculous at eight while John and Message rank six and three. Dear John was the last film to be released before Sparks took over writing the screenplays so that is why the critical and box-office scores are higher. The posters are more creative as well. The posters are expansive, intimate and most importantly no faces are grabbed.
Posters featuring head grabs of doom: Nights in Rodanthe, Safe Haven, The Best of Me, The Last Song and The Lucky One have accrued an 18% (-7) RT score and 62% (-4) Audience score. The average box-office score is $81,258,841 (- $7,991,100).
The Nicholas Spark’s films have taken a serious nosedive as of late. The last four films have an average 15% RT score and the posters look the same. With the exception of Nights in Rodanthe (which is the 2nd most ridiculous Sparks film) they gotten progressively more soul-crushing and Sparksesque (Safe Haven was ranked the most ridiculous).
Why are the face palm posters so critically reviled? Well, three out of five screenplays were written by Spark’s himself. The Last Song, Best of Me and Safe Haven were the three lowest RT ranked films. The only other film ranked that low was The Lucky One which collected a 20% RT score. These four films have become like the Saw, Final Destination (sans five) and Paranormal Activity movies (They built up a good name, follow a formula and have gotten progressively worse). The face palm romances follow a bonkers beat that introduce ghosts, lies and so much sap it could crush the most stalwart of fans.
Another factor is the lack of poster imagination mirrors the book content. They are scraping the bottom of the barrel to keep the Sparks train rolling.
Posters featuring the woman embracing the man’s cheek: The Notebook collected a 52% RT (+27) score and 85%(+19) Audience Score. The box-office is $115,603, 229 (+$26,353,288).
The Notebook was incredibly passionate and super bonkers (They die at the same time!) Rachel McAdam’s character is by far the most three-dimensional of Spark’s ladies and Ryan Gosling became a megastar overnight because of this movie. The Notebook is by far the most popular of the nine films because of the great acting, passion, and all around care spent on the script. I would rank the poster #1 on the romance scale. They look genuinely involved. If you look at the other posters the people look sorta bored.
Conclusion: The first five films attempted to take Nicholas Spark’s books and do something with them. They tried to work around the schmaltz, contrivances, syrup, mourning, melodrama and sentiment. However, eventually they gave up and gave in to Sparks. He started writing the screenplays and now they stick to a safe formula and face palming posters. The critics have given up trying to defend the films and judging by the Best of Me box-office ($34 million, the least of any film) the age of big money is coming to an end.
My guess for newest Sparks schmaltz-fest The Last Ride is $25 million box office, 10% critic score and 52% audience score. The good news is there is a slight deviation featured in the poster. The guy isn’t cupping a face, he is grabbing a hat.
Notice how they mention the two highest grossing Sparks romances? They are saying “We used to be good…sorta!”
