Who would have thought that this weekend’s leading two pictures would end up in a veritable draw? Indeed, both Cowboys & Aliens and The Smurfs have both earned an estimated $36.2 at the weekend box office. Of course, analysts are quick to shout “failure” at the former and “surprise success” at the latter, which doesn’t quite seem fair at first glance. Yet when one considers that there were exceedingly high hopes for Cowboys & Aliens, and The Smurfs was projected for an approximate $20 million opening, the picture begins to look much clearer. Further clarification comes from the budgets of both films with Cowboys has been rumored to have been produced at a cost of $200 million, while The Smurfs (even with its CGI) slides in at a more modest budget of around $125 million.

In other words, while Katy Perry’s slutty premiere dress probably has very little to do with The Smurfs‘ relative success, the fact of the matter is that The Smurfs has benefited from very low expectations while Cowboys & Aliens has suffered from not living up to fanboys’ high hopes. Daniel Carlson of Pajiba describes the Cowboy as an inept, predictable yarn full of stock characters with a script chock full of “awkward exposition” that “spends two hours haphazardly mashing up two established film genres but never bothers to give the viewer a reason to care about it.” Even worse, Cowboys & Aliens, which looks to be firmly in the high-concept, low-execution camp, pulled its weekend gross from 3,750 theaters while The Smurfs managed the same total from 3,395 theaters:

Cowboys &amp Aliens: This much-hyped high concept pic from DreamWorks and Relativity and Imagine and Universal (distributing domestic only with Paramount taking foreign) couldn’t do even the predicted $45 million for the weekend, but it didn’t even get to $40M either. “Cowboys & Aliens did not get any late night young male business — hence the reason Universal’s estimates were so far off,” a rival studio exec explained to me Friday night. I’ve been saying for months this actioner should have been done as a comedy! But that idea was only briefly discussed and quickly rejected. Problem is that the budget has been pegged by insiders at a low of $163M (because of filming rebates) and a high of $200M. That’s partly because Cowboys endured a tortured 14-year development history involving more than a dozen writers. (Just five writers received screenplay credit after the Writers Guild not surprisingly held an arbitration trying to figure out who did what.) So here’s yet another Hollywood case study of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

It’s going to be hard for anyone involved in the movie to shrug off responsibility for it underperforming because even the studio was gushing pre-release about its pedigree “because of its deep bench of heavyweight filmmakers and stars, and the most fan-engaged because of involving them directly at every step, particularly through director Jon Favreau, the big-ticket director most active in social media and direct interaction with his followers. Every step of the campaign kept many hands on the wheel, shared by Universal, DreamWorks and the filmmaking team, who all worked in close collaboration on every decision.” Oops! As for marketing, the first teaser trailer was placed on Part 1 of Harry Potter And The Deathly Hallows last November, followed by a Super Bowl teaser. The first full trailer made its debut on American Idol on April 14th and in theaters on April 29 with Universal’s big hit Fast Five. The TV campaign included season finales for Top 10 Nielsen shows and sports events.

The publicity campaign launched at last year’s Comic-Con even though the film had only been in production for a few weeks, Favreau used his Iron Man connection with fans to debut nearly 8 minutes of footage, including the first alien attack on the pioneer town in the film. While Harrison Ford made his first-ever appearance to a huge reception. This year’s Comic-Con featured a full-frills world premiere featuring Favreau as well as Spielberg, making his own first appearance at the Con. But it’s interesting how the movie disappointed despite Favreau whoring himself out to The Hollywood Reporter (which nobody reads) and Ain’t It Cool News (which nobody believes). The director even dragged along producer Ron Howard and producer/co-writer Bob Orci to some events, showing more and more footage each time. I heard from Universal that Daniel Craig was a royal pain in the ass when it came to doing publicity, but he did enough with Harrison Ford to merit one magazine cover line, “When Bond Met Indy.”

[From Deadline]

Disappointingly, Daniel Craig’s promotional tactic of dropping F-bombs and talking politics didn’t work to sell this film in the optimal manner. Could’ve fooled me, but I suppose that The Smurfs benefited from a greater than anticpated nostalgia factor because (as alluded to within my Pajiba review), it certainly wasn’t a worthwhile endeavor by any stretch.

Further down the pipe, Captain America: The First Avenger and his wayward, waxed-up nipples pulled in $24.9 million over the weekend (for a domestic total of $116.8 million) while Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 took in $21.9 million (for a domestic total of $318.5 million and a worldwide gross of $1 billion). Meanwhile, fifth place was occupied by the other opener, Crazy, Stupid, Love., with $19.3 million and an emphasis on the stupid.

Movie stills courtesy of AllMoviePhoto