Why'd it bomb? Ted 2


Ted (2012) was a surprising success at the box office, grossing over $200 million dollars in America alone! While Ted 2 didn’t exactly bomb, it failed to make quite as much as its predecessor. In fact, it made $216 million worldwide while the original made $218 million domestically. What happened?

4. More competition
When the original Ted was out, the only competition it really had was Magic Mike and Madea’s Witness Protection. Unfortunately, when Ted 2 came out, Jurassic World, also from Universal, was still making a killing at the box office, probably taking away half of Ted‘s audience. There was also Inside Out but that probably didn’t take away too much of its audience for obvious reasons…
3. No Mila Kunis
Granted, story and characters aren’t exactly the most important thing in something like Ted. No, it’s how funny it is. That being said, Mila Kunis actually played a pretty likable character in the first movie. Cutting her out probably didn’t sit well with many people who thought she and Mark Wahlberg had good chemistry together. Therefore, they decided not to see the movie.
2. Seth Macfarlane’s sudden downturn in popularity
To say 2013 wasn’t a good year for Macfarlane would be an understatement. First, he hosted the Oscars and his rather lewd humor got a very divisive response from audiences (then again, maybe getting him to host the Oscars wasn’t the best idea in the first place?). Then, he pissed a lot of people off by killing off Brian in Family Guy and then bringing him back two episodes later in what felt like a really obvious ratings grab. And then he produced Dads, a sitcom that got terrible reviews and was quickly cancelled. While 2014 wasn’t quite as bad for him, he then made A Million Ways To Die in The West, which got bad reviews and most people didn’t like it (plus it underperformed at the box office). All of these things together probably turned a lot of people off from Macfarlane and, therefore, they didn’t want to see anything he wanted to do, including a sequel to Ted.
But the biggest reason is probably…
1. Did anyone really want a sequel to Ted?
It wasn’t a bad movie but it had a pretty self-contained story that more or less ended at the end of the first movie. There wasn’t really anything else you could do with the story or just the premise of a talking teddy bear that drinks and smokes pot. Not only that but I think a movie with the style of Family Guy really got old after two movies. I think many people agreed with me on that and therefore stayed away from the sequel because…there’s just not much more you could do with it. And, listen, I’m one of the five people who actually enjoyed A Million Ways To Die in The West and even I didn’t think this was necessary!
It seems like, after this movie, MacFarlane has more or less decided to stick with TV, at least when it comes to projects he’s writing and directing. While that’s a little sad, it might be for the best. It’s just too bad his movie career went the way it did, after it started off so promising…Well, he’s always got Family Guy!

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Valerie
Valerie
6 years ago

I really liked A Million Ways To Die In the West also as well as the first Ted movie! I agree that a Ted sequel was overkill. With that being said, a little Seth MacFarlane goes a long with me.I wish studios would put a stop to tall the sequels with movies with minimal exception. It feels like the original movie are being cheapened with a sequel.

Carl
Carl
6 years ago
Reply to  kevthewriter

A reviewer I follow (Brad Jones) has mentioned that he can’t really think of any comedy sequels that were particularly good (especially compared to the original). I didn’t take much stock in it at first, but the more I thought about it, and the more I saw things like Ted 2, I realized he’s right!

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