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May 31, 2006

Deconstructing New Mythology

Studios drop big hints if a film is a potential bomb
Updated 5/30/2006 10:11 PM ET
By Scott Bowles, USA TODAY

LOS ANGELES — The ads say it's the "must-see film of the year!"
Critics say it's a dog.
Whom do you believe?

DP – Well, to start with, in all but the rarest cases, ad pull quotes are from people that are considered critics. Peter Travers is more likely to be used than any other major outlet critic to prop up a movie that others hate… but don’t count two thumbs out when others are using them to hitchhike.

Amid Hollywood hype, Internet marketing and the tastes of film reviewers, the truth is out there.

DP – Uh, there is no truth, except in the rarest of occasions. The truth is, some people like what other people think is brown and runny.

Experts say that the way a film is marketed and sold can indicate not only what a studio really thinks about its fare, but also whether the movie is stellar or a stinker.
"There's body language" to every movie, says Senh Duong, founder of rottentomatoes.com, which culls the reviews of film critics nationwide.
"If a movie gets screened (for critics), if a star will talk, if there are sneak previews, they all tell you something about the movie," Duong says. "There are things to look for."

DP – I love Senh and all… great guy… useful site… but real sneak previews are rare and nowadays are a sign of desperation. 90% of movies still screen for critics and 75% of them still stink. Very few stars refuse to talk, as 95% are contractually obligated and will threaten future jobs if they do not. Think of any dud you can and you are likely to find a load of stories about how great the actors were at the junket.

Here, then, are a few clues that critics, studio executives and analysts say to look for when considering a movie:
•Was it screened for critics? If it isn't, the movie is usually a dud.
Most films that aren't screened for critics are horror flicks and goofball comedies — movies like Silent Hill and The Benchwarmers that are geared for teenagers who don't pay attention to reviews.
The movie "is probably bad, and it probably doesn't matter," says Duong. "Horror movies are usually cheap, and they can easily take in $20 million on their opening weekend. Why risk getting the bad press if the fans are going to come out, anyway?"

DP – Wrong! Of course, we are talking genre here. And most movies that don’t screen are genre. And most of those are not made for middle-aged critics and most middle-aged critics are not forgiving of them, as I think they should not be. But “probably bad” is not even the issue anymore. I can tell you that Sony decisionmakers liked The Benchwarmers. They also knew that critics would piss all over anything with Rob Schneider and David Spade. So why go there? Still, the $19.7 million opening was not easy and not unearned. Kids wanted to see this silly movie and they did… and they kept coming back in weeks to come to the tune of $57.7 million to date.

Critics liked Eight Below… and guess what? Almost the same multiple as The Pink Panther, which was not screened.

Senh is correct that there is no reason to risk bad press. He is dead wrong that it is easy to take in $20 million on opening weekend. Scott had it right at the top… these are movies for people who don’t read reviews, so why bother courting reviewers?

•When is the movie being released? The dead of winter and late summer and early fall are traditionally considered dumping grounds for bad films.

DP – This is no longer true. Hitch opened last year on February 11 and did $179 million domestic. 40 Year Old Virgin opened August 19 and did $109 million. Are We There Yet, Constantine, Coach Carter, Red Eye… all “off-season” hits. Open space is valuable now and studios are being more aggressive in a tougher market.

But the specific weekend of release can be telling, too. Unless a movie is beaten to the scheduling punch by another major release, a film that has the confidence of the studio typically opens the weekend before the holiday, not the holiday weekend itself.
"If you've got the goods, and the schedule allows it, you want to open the weekend before the holiday to get kids talking," says Don Harris, an executive vice president for Paramount Pictures. "That way, when schools let out, word-of-mouth has given you the must-see film of the holiday."

DP – True, but a mark of positivity, not negativity. And this is a change in recent years. Until Star Wars, four summers ago, it was all about Memorial Day weekend. Now it’s about the weekend before. And as Scott says, the position of other movies is more important than anything other than the movie you have to sell.

•Is the star talking? Actors who don't support their films usually know something you don't.
"Actors work long and hard on their movies, and they know that doing press for them is part of the job," Duong says. "If they aren't talking, they probably don't believe in it, and the movie is a stinker."

DP – Rarely happens. And sometimes, it happens for odd reasons. Scott Bowles himself didn’t get the facetime with Tom Hanks he was expecting on The Da Vinci Code train. But it had nothing to do with the quality of the movie. Others are truly press shy. And for a moment, the press conference style junket was a horrible signal… but now, it’s become ubiquitous.

When a big name doesn’t work, it is usually because of a conflict with another film that the star is in that is opening nearby. And they leverage the threat not to work to get dates changed, regardless of who it hurts.

•Is the movie getting "sneak peeks"? If studios offer early screenings for the public, they believe it will be a hit with audiences, if not critics.
Sony Pictures, for instance, offered "word-of-mouth" screenings at shopping malls in Arizona, Oklahoma and Nebraska for the Robin Williams comedy RV. Madea's Family Reunion offered screenings to church groups nationwide.

DP – Almost every single film does “word of mouth” screenings and radio promotion screenings. In fact, in smaller markets, those screenings are where critics tend to see the movie, unfortunately. As I wrote before, true sneaks tend to be about a failure to get the film any buzz in traditional marketing these days. (And of course, all of this is about wide release studio films… different roles for indies and dependents.)

Despite poor reviews — only about a quarter of critics liked them — both were hits. The $6 million Reunion took in $63 million, while RV has done $57 million and saw ticket sales increase this weekend after five weeks in theaters.
"I'm not sure what the critics see that the audiences don't," says Rory Bruer, Sony's distribution chief. "But ultimately, the audience is the final critic."

DP – It’s not quite that complex, which of course, Mr. Bruer can not say out loud. Critics are white and urbane (or at least we think we are) and movies for black, churchy audiences will never be well reviewed. Nor will mediocre family comedies. Exceptional family comedies with strong audience appeal will be, like Click, opened mid-season and be considered critic-proof.

But check this out… the highest Tomato-metered Adam Sandler movie of all time (with the exception of the PT Anderson pretentious critics wet dream and audience nightmare, Punch-Drunk Love) is Wedding Singer… at 56%. This is a film that is well remembered and currently, the Broadway musical from it is Tony nominated. 56%. Expect Click to rise to 60% - still a rotten tomato – and to do close to $200 million at the box office without the film being “hidden” from anyone.

There are a lot more movies that have done everything that Scott says you need to not to be suspect and are still poorly reviewed.

And how about this? Of films currently in cinemas, 20 are rated at over 80% on RT. A total of 4 have grossed more than $2 million in cinemas.

Oh those evil marketing people!!!

Posted by poland at 05:59 PM | Comments (32)

Scared For A Minute

Reading a Variety.com story,. I saw a link, “Diesel preps Hannibal pic."

Gulp!

Could that crazy idea actually be coming to fruition? It won't be Hannibal as a manny, so...

But I felt better when I clicked through and saw that it was a Liz Smith item.

You might want to come up with something that differentiates the gossip from the news, gang.

Posted by poland at 04:18 PM | Comments (13)

Broken Break-Up

"The ability to combine sadness and light in a movie is rare. But the ability to go from broad comedy to heavy, mean, real anger and hurt - while keeping the audience engaged - is near impossible. And it proves to be the death of this well-intended movie.

They didn't want to make The War Of The Roses II and they didn't want to make How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days. They didn't even want to do When Harry Met Sally. This is a movie about a couple that splits based on a whim and then proceeds to allow its characters to behave in endless stupid, if occasionally funny, ways."

The rest...

Posted by poland at 11:02 AM | Comments (16)

Key Art Bizarre

Empire Magazine gathered some international posters for Superman Returns that are interesting...

What is wrong with his face? Bad plastic surgery victim? (He is more butch here.) Will his face be madeover in the movie too?

I think this is the best of the posters so far...

Individual character posters are pretty well expected and in this case, I think it would be a good idea... especially the flying romantic, which targets the audience that the movie is not locked into... women. As for Mr. Spacey, I wonder why Pinky was cropped out of the shot?

Posted by poland at 10:23 AM | Comments (34)

May 30, 2006

When Harry Left Sony

The central reason for Sony to be part of the MGM acquisition in the first place was to acquire the MGM library to force the issue on Blu-Ray vs what was then Red-Ray and is now known as HD-DVD.

The “who will win” story has been going on for years now, especially in light of Sony’s Betamax disaster of the 70s and the ongoing story of Sony not having this generation’s iPod to drive company profits.

And now, MGM is off on its own, looking for the next big investor. (Sony was in for between $600 and $1 billion of the roughly $3 billion buyout.) Harry Sloan has created a distribution business with no films, almost no money, and very little staff by using MGM assets, like their Showtime cable output deal. Clearly, Fox Home Entertainment has given Sloan a better financial deal for the ongoing distribution of DVDs, etc.

So what has Sony gotten for its money?

Well, it got a bunch of Oscar nominations and a Phil Hoffman win for Capote, which was greatly driven by the strong efforts of Barker & Bernard at Sony Classics, but the movie existed because of UA.

They had a hit in The Pink Panther, doing about $160 million worldwide. The film budget, under MGM, was a bit out of control. I don’t know how things were split up. But Sony chose to spend a little more to get the movie where they wanted and it worked. Expect a sequel, which is already agreed to, with a tighter rein and a more clear appeal to families.

Bond is coming.

On the downside, they also had Into The Blue ($18.8 million), Basic Instinct II ($5.9 million) and international release oddballs like Yours, Mine & Ours ($16.5 million international). Then there is the UA product that has been released after an extended delay (Art School Confidential) or not released at all (Romance & Cigarettes, The Woods).

Also in this deal, Sony is losing the Home Entertainment distribution revenue from MGM’s TV and film libraries. But that deal, too, had an escape clause written into the original deal, so the studio shouldn’t be too surprised that they have been jilted.

Sony will continue to own and profit from 20% ownership of the asset that is MGM. So a great Fox deal is great for Sony as well. Bottom line is bottom line and Sony doesn’t have to fill the MGM void. To play the advocate, the “void” could be a good opportunity for Sony Home Entertainment to add more muscle that they actually control.

The key in this whole thing remains, as it began, the disposition of the MGM library as per Blu-Ray, which was the whole $600 million point in the first place. The official statement from Sony reads, “"We are pleased with our ongoing relationship with MGM. Both MGM and Fox are key supporters of the Blu-ray disc format, which will be of tremendous benefit to consumers as well as the entertainment community overall. Together with MGM, Sony Pictures will continue to co-produce Bond, Panther and other films, pursue other ventures including scan-based distribution, and vigorously support our continuing relationship with our partners to preserve and enhance the value of the MGM brand."

Sounds like a lot of hedging, huh? But the truth is actually not so bad. Apparently, MGM has committed to keep their library exclusive to Blu-Ray. And as recently as December, Fox Home Entertainment has said that they will be Blu-Ray exclusive. So it appears that Sony will get what it got into this for… at least for now.

(Oddly, the list of first releases on Blu-Ray includes only two MGM films, a lot of Sony and a few Lionsgate films.

And the success or failure of their investment will be told in time. Will MGM be sold again with a higher valuation? Will Bond, Clouseau, and Rocky Balboa make tens of millions or hundreds of millions for the studio?

There is no doubt, an acquisition that seems overly expensive that ends up with the company endlessly positioned as “the leader” in the deal with a handful of movies to distribute, rights to a handful of franchises (though we don’t know how much goes back to “MGM”), the percentage of the acquired company at the inflated value, and the apparent commitment to keep the library on the corporation’s exclusive format, looks like someone screwed up big time. But it could work out alright. It may not actually end up being a $400 deal just to make the library Blu-Ray exclusive. Or it may. Time will tell.

In some ways, this is all more significant as regards the industry perception of what kinds of deals are worth doing. As long as company’s can be bought for crazy numbers like $7 billion for Pixar or $900 million for DreamWorks’ library, that will be the holy grail. But it’s not hard to imagine a guy as creative as Harry Sloan making piecemeal deals with the MGM rights. Thing is, the library and rights business is a lot safer and potentially more profitable that running a studio. And given that the companies that are giving MGM their movies to distribute are essentially self-distributing and self-marketing and that Showtime deal that has sucked everyone in will pass, MGM may never really reemerge as a full service studio. One thing is clear, Carl Icahn is into Lionsgate, not MGM, for a reason.

Posted by poland at 10:26 PM | Comments (20)

What Day Is It?

I am shaken and stirred by the long weekend... I have no sense of what day of the week it is or whether writing about the movie business is a sane choice. All I know is that watermelon was served every-damned-where I went this weekend and while I have some waiting in my refrigerator, it may become mush before my taste for it returns.

Anyway...

Superman Returns is moving up to a Wednesday launch, on the 28th. What is curious about this is whether it is a show of faith, that the weekend will be that good and therefore a Wed start will be an advantage in clearing out the die-to-sees before regular people que up on Friday night or whether this is a move to avoid uncomfortable comparisons to X3, as in "Well, we opened on Wed... you can't compare the openings.. we did about the same by the end of the first weekend as they did."

Added - The 14 Five-Day Openings Of More Than $100 Million
1. Revenge of the Sith | $172,802,507 | $380,270,577 | 5/19/05
2. Spider-Man 2 | $152,411,751 | $373,585,825 | 6/30/04
3. The Matrix Reloaded | $144,391,066 | $281,576,461 | 5/15/03
4. Spider-Man | $135,840,755 | $403,706,375 | 5/3/02
5. Shrek 2 | $128,983,060 | $441,226,247 | 5/19/04
6. The Passion of the Christ | $125,185,971 | $370,782,930 | 2/25/04
7. The Return of the King | $124,100,534 | $377,027,325 | 12/17/03
8. Attack of the Clones | $120,829,572 | $310,676,740 | 5/16/02
9. Harry Potter /Goblet of Fire | $119,743,524 | $290,013,036 | 11/18/05
10. Harry Potter/ Azkaban | $109,363,094 | $249,541,069 | 6/4/04
11. The Phantom Menace | $105,661,237 | $431,088,297 | 5/19/99
12. Harry Potter / Sorcerer's Stone | $104,590,892 | $317,575,550 | 11/16/01
13. The Two Towers | $102,046,212 | $341,786,758 | 12/18/02
14. War of the Worlds | $100,561,125 | $234,280,354 | 6/29/05

Italicized are the 2 pre-July 4 openers... both opened Wednesday...

Posted by poland at 04:34 PM | Comments (23)

May 28, 2006

The Race For Drudge!

Wonder why Box Office Mojo is suddenly leaping to posting earlier in the day on the weekends and coming out with Memorial Day Weekend Saturday estimates?

Wonder why Roger Friedman And Nikki Finke are making the same title mistake in their box office coverage that includes "Star War - Attack of the Sith?" (That would be Revenge... the clones Attacked)

Well, it all seems to come down to the race for Matt Drudge's attention.

There is no other news kicker like Drudge. If he links, your numbers go up. In the cases of all of these players, Drudge creates the chance to reach beyond the film industry. Box Office Mojo has a strong core business, but it has boundaries, since only a small percentage of the world cares about box office numbers. A Drudge link brings in civilians who see ads and more pages views equals more money. Roger Friedman is a lowlife gossip. My estimate would be that a Drudge link - which also has the advantage of being a real link and not just a quote, a la Page Six - multiplies his audience on that day by five to ten times. And Ms. Finke, who has given up any pretense of being a journalist to become a professional gadfly, probably owes more than a third of her total traffic in the three months her site has been in business to a half dozen or so links on Drudge.

For better or worse, Mr. Drudge has refused to link to any site I have been associated with since I wrote an Entertainment Weekly story about him and the Sidney Blumenthal lawsuit a decade ago. Of course, I was just a reporter working News & Notes and being shaped by editors. But with the exception of a couple of times when he decided to send his minions against me to shut me up about some opinion he considered too left wing, not a noise since.

Being stuck behind this wall is not helpful to me or my business. But this latest go round in the Drudge placement game is not about me, any more than being against test screening reviews was about me. It is, simply, the ugly incursion of capitalism into the idea of independent editorial on the internet. It's not new. But the lie of it is fresh.

When I started writing this, Drudge hadn’t linked to anyone about the box office today. Now, there is a link to Finke’s near-direct quotation from a studio publicist (she got hers up before Friedman today) and Mojo’s Saturday estimates and even a link to his pal, Andrew Breitbart, who cleverly set up a business to take full advantage of Drudge’s power by being his near-exclusive linking partner to wire service stories.

Right wingers of the world unite!

And New Media becomes a little more Sell-Out Media... drip, drip, drip...

Posted by poland at 12:00 PM | Comments (123)

Sunday Update

First, we have your Cannes Palm D' Or winner... and once again, the festival (as most do) finds a way to make it all seem irrelevant (which is the happy opposite of selling out, I guess) by going with Ken Loach's The Wind That Shakes The Barley, which is surely smart and surely of importance. But Loach's last three films didn't get American distribution, and the last one that did, Sweet Sixteen, grossed $316,319.

Almodovar's Volver grabbed a couple of awards and Inarritu's Babel got one. Good for the Volver sell, which is all arthouse and not so great for Babel, which now has a tag that will do them no good in selling a movie that hopes to be commercial, yet will be in every ad they make.

The Full List

At The Box Office – Box Office Mojo has taken the unusual step of offering Saturday estimates.

X3 remains about $13 million ahead of its predecessor, X2, not showing a continuing mathematical advantage as we move from opening day to Saturday. Part of that may be the midnight screenings adding to the opening day number. Part of it may be the 4-Day weekend. Regardless, this still points to a minimum of $105 million for the 4-day.

And so it goes…

Posted by poland at 11:43 AM | Comments (24)

May 27, 2006

Friday Estimates by Klady

Now.... that's a muthafuckin' opening....

Second highest opening day ever. And for all of those who have foolishly pointed to a lack of originality as a problem with theatrical box office... bzzt... WRONG!.

X-Men: The Last Stand reminds us of the central truth of today's movie market... give audiences something they want and they will come.

Based on the history, the four-day should be at least $120 million for the film. It’s hard to tell what the 3-day might be, since there is a lot of flex in there and there are so few films that are targeting this kind of number that actually open on a Friday. X3 was the first film of the summer that had a significant audience for the Midnight show launching opening day.

A bit of perspective… Opening Day of Mission: Impossible III + Opening Day of The Da Vinci Code combined was $45.3 million or $700,000 more than the Friday estimate on X3. The combined opening 3-day of those two films was $124.8 million.

This opening should be very encouraging to folks at Warner Bros and Disney with high-pressure openings of Superman Returns and Pirates of the Caribbean: Whatever The Hell The Sequel Is Subtitled just around the corner. Neither film will be happy without a $30 million-plus Opening Day. And with all the heavy-breathing around Da Vinci, that number still had not been achieved this summer. X3 is the eleventh film all-time to do it. There were two such summer openings in 2002, two in 2003 (plus LOTR Dec), two in 2004, and one in 2005 (and Harry Potter in Nov). Add one more November Potter opening to get to eleven total. The only non-sequels on the list are for the first Potter and Spider-Man… a little less encouraging for Supes, since a 20 years later sequel is not exactly a sequel. If I were a betting man, I’d be looking at Da Vinci-like opening numbers as the likely match for Superman Returns. And then, the second $50 million Friday in history as a real possibility for Pirates 2.

As for the rest… no huge surprise on The Da Vinci Code’s hard drop for the second weekend’s Friday. The drop for the three-day will be less. And it is a high demand/limited interest (though a big limit) movie and the legs will be decent, but not sensational.

Over The Hedge’s small drop is no surprise either. It’s still the only game in town for younger kids. Expect it to pick up over the rest of the weekend and to close in on $90 million by Monday night.

Mission: Impossible III and Poseidon are pretty much done now. Both have another $8 million - $20 million in them domestically thanks to a dearth of non-X action until 3 Fast 3 Furious arrives. Btw, M:I3 will close in on $300 million worldwide by the end of this weekend.

(EDIT 12:14p) An Inconvenient Truth, on 4 screens, will have, by far, the strongest exclusive opening of the year, with about $65,000 per screen. Projecting out rom this number is almost impossible, as the other films with similarly small and strong starts just this last year range from Brick to The Aristocrats to Shopgirl to Memoirs of a Geisha. As for docs, there is limited history, with the IMAX Everest ($360,424 on 10) and Unzipped ($71,275 on 2) as the previous top per-screen doc title openers. Time will tell...

===================

X-Men: The Last Stand | 44.6 | 3689 | New | 44.6
The Da Vinci Code | 10.8 | 3754 | -62% | 113.3
Over the Hedge | 7.5 | 4093 | -30% | 56.6
Mission: Impossible III | 2.1 | 3053 | -38% | 109.3
Poseidon | 1.7 | 3245 | -40% | 41.4
RV | 1.1 | 2481 | -17% | 53
See No Evil | 0.75 | 1270 | -56% | 6.7
Just My Luck | 0.55 | 1604 | -51% | 12.2
United 93 | 0.2 | 781 | -48% | 29
An American Haunting | 0.2 | 748 | -58% | 14.2
Also Debuting
Fanaa | 0.18 | 72 | New | 0.18
An Inconvenient Truth | .08 | 4 | New | .008
Cavite | .004 | 2 | New | .004

Posted by poland at 10:36 AM | Comments (97)

Are You Seeing Movies This Weekend?

This would be the entry in which to offer your opinions on X-Men: The Last Stand, An Inconvenient Truth, or anything else you are seeing this weekend.

Posted by poland at 01:17 AM | Comments (31)

A Filmmaker Responds... Wildly

This came in from the FilmMonthly.com website.

Apparently, they reviewed a film called Buddha Wild ... I have never heard of it before... and they didn't much like it.

And then the filmmaker, Anna Wilding, responded.

You can see her e-mail on the page. And Del Harvey, an editor on the site says, "When we posted the review, we were bombarded with some very rude and offensive emails and a few phone calls from Ms. Wilding herself, claiming we had committed slander, were total idiots, and so on."

The magic of the internet, eh?

Posted by poland at 12:22 AM | Comments (36)

May 26, 2006

Don't Trip On The Hype

I like Anne Thompson a lot, but I found myself snickering through here latest – and most appropriately titled – Risky Business column, headed “To studios in Cannes: Don't trip on red carpet.”

Anne tells the story of perceived success and failure of American films in Cannes this year and gives you a combination of the party line, the filmmaker’s line and in particular, the press’ line. But the big picture suffers. And her biggest problem is in believing that Cannes means anything in America and that it or anything is somehow bigger than the movies themselves.

First, she fetes Paramount’s success in Cannes. Well… they did good. But what did they really do? An Inconvenient Truth has been put through the paces for five months now. Going to Cannes was costly and pretty much unnecessary. Unlike The Da Vinci Code, the film had big premieres in L.A., N.Y. and Washington already. It’s not like the bases weren’t covered. To my eye, going to Cannes, where they got little coverage in the crowded media room, was just another few hundred grand against the film’s bottom line.

DreamWorks’ Dreamgirls did great… because the materials are great. And now, the movie will go into lockdown for the summer, without pushing out similar events to the Cannes event in N.Y. and L.A. because even though Terry Press & Co are surely happy to get Oscar buzz, they don’t want to be the front runner during the summer. Note that Clint Eastwood’s Flags Of Our Fathers, which is the putative frontrunner and is pretty much in the can now, went nowhere near Cannes.

This brings us to Babel, a film that might have made a mistake by going to Cannes at all, longterm. It is a film that absolutely, positively needs to have a festival launch. It’s a big festival movie, with box office prospects of less than $50 million domestic and thanks to Brad Pitt, the potential to do over $100 million in the rest of the world, regardless of quality. (In fact, with Pitt we have learned, the worse the movie, the better it plays overseas.) But while I’m sure Paramount Van Classics has sore shoulders from patting themselves on the back as the idea of pulling a Mystic River, which is Cannes to NY Film Fest opening night, getting the media all worked up now tends to cause a premature ejaculation, not a sustained level of pleasure, which this film desperately needs in order to have box office success, regardless of quality. Inarritu and Arriaga are brilliant… but not pop. And as lovely as dreams of Academy campaigns are right now, they better ay some bills because Academy members have proven, to date, to be a little less urbane than the dynamic duo.

World Trade Center, whose first 26 minute played – a very different kind of presentation than Dreamgirls, though similar in length - got more mixed reviews, but didn’t actually do much to change the balance of where the film will go in August. The film should be locked late in June and when it screens from start to finish, its future will be clearer. Cannes gave people a sweet taste, but it will not linger.

We’re a long way from seeing whether Paramount did well at Cannes or not. Of course, one more dynamic is that if Babel wins the Palm d’Or, it will be one more reason for Oscar voters, but not audiences, to pay attention. On the flip side, winning may keep it out of that NY Film Fest opening slot, which is not neccessarily bad since that fest has been an awards dead zone for a while, though it has launched Mystic River and last year's Good Night, And Good Luck.

As for Sony, who Anne pities for their alleged foibles in France, you have to look beyond the sting in the Croisette. The Da Vinci Code managed to screen for the first time for almost anyone three days before release… and side from a meaningless, unnecessary slap in the NY Times, paid no price for it. In fact, the opposite. My only negative on the Cannes screening was that most of the Sony crew was still on The Train when it happened and some of the negativity could, perhaps, have been ameliorated by their comforting presence. But you know, the movie is the movie is the movie. The reviews were not going to be markedly better than they were. And indeed, the harshness coming out of Cannes did more to make the movie a major event.

So where is the evidence of loss… except for Ron Howard not getting kissed by Giles Jacob… boo hoo… Ron Howard was 100 times more powerful than Giles Jacob before Da Vinci and is 200 times more powerful than Giles Jacob after Da Vinci. The only negative of his apparent snub is that he will discourage filmmakers from coming out to Cannes to allow Cannes to whore itself, as it so dearly wants to, in future. (Here’s an open secret… that won’t matter either… even at Columbia, where the sting will be gone before you can say Click… next time they have the right film at the right time, the same cost/value analysis will be made and another director will want his/her ego stroked.)

As for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, here’s the thing… you actually had to show the movie sometime. And Cannes was more likely to bite on it than, say Toronto, where it wouldn’t have been booed, but also would not have stood out much, based on the massive number of films in play and the comments I have heard from all countries, not just French hissers. Moreover, Columbia can now spend the summer resetting the film even more clearly as a romp. Bring It On meets An Interview With The Vampire. Expect a big emphasis on the soundtrack and a lot of MTV action. And if they turn the corner, they turn it. The Cannes experience will empower Sony’s marketers to control the marketing by giving Ms. Coppola an object lesson, however unwished for. And if they don’t get there, it was never going to get any better than this.

Southland Tales, which has cost more than double the figure that Anne has been quoted and swallowed, has been in production for a year. If Richard Kelly wasn’t ready, he shouldn’t have brought the movie. Moreover, the film already has a long tradition of not being done. The production has been a disaster and as with Marie Antoinette, it served as a firm target and not a hindrance. Now, Kelly & Crew can push out this blather about the film being rushed and hope to pull a Brown Bunny of their own, though the actual financial upside of that “turnaround” was still not enough to get it out of the red… and it only cost $3.5 million, not more than 10 times that.

The bottom line is, you have to show your movie. Why didn’t Down In the Valley do better at Cannes? No one wanted to see it then. No one wants to see it now. Why did Brown Bunny turn around? It didn’t. Roger Ebert played/got played Vinnie Gallo and for all the hooplah, the total US gross didn’t pay for the billboard on Sunset that got so much attention.

Cannes is just one marketing tool for English-language movies that go there. Like any other tool, it can fail or succeed. And then, you use your other tools.

And for journalists? A nice week at the beach parties… exhausting… but so is home… and as we know, all politics are local. Cannes is important to those who are there. For those who still have to work to make something positive of these films, it’s already in the rear view mirror.

Posted by poland at 10:54 AM | Comments (30)

May 25, 2006

Anyone? Anyone?

As far as I can tell, for the first time in memory, the Cannes closing night awards are not scheduled to be televised anywhere in America. Anyone know different?

Posted by poland at 01:40 PM | Comments (13)

Images Of Marie

The funny thing about all the Marie Antoinette clamor is that it sounds like Ms. Coppola delivered exactly the movie she promised and intented. The trailer tends to confirm this. The question is whether there are many people who will value a movie about a spoiled brat... especially when Ms. Coppola shows her so much love.

It's all sounding a little Spanglish to me. But we shall soon see...

In the meanwhile, these two images seem to me to be the key to the film.

Lonely.

Horny.

Posted by poland at 12:56 PM | Comments (27)

In The Year 2000....

Will this communal experience replace the movies... or the image of an audience with 3D gasses?

This image actually comes from a blog entry from The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Posted by poland at 12:18 PM | Comments (5)

That Slippery Summer Slope

Can we make any summer assuptions anymore?

"In spite of all the slump talk, last summer was the first in history to have seven $185 million-plus movies, the previous record being five. A big part of that was the pleasant surprise of Batman Begins and Mr & Mrs Smith joining July 4 targeted War of the Worlds as three films over that figure in June. Until Spider-Man 2 and Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban both did it in 2004, Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me was the only June release in history to crack that mark. (EDIT, 1:06p, 5/25/06 - I stand corrected... the first Batman did it in 1989.)

This summer, Cars, Superman Returns and Click all have a shot at the target. Some tough talk about the first two have some people questioning them and Adam Sandler seems to have a glass ceiling at $180 million, so all three could come up short just as easily - though all three are pretty sure bets to come close in even the worst case scenario."

The \rest of the 20 Weeks of Summer Column

Posted by poland at 12:13 PM | Comments (6)

My Footnotes To The Used Guys Story

Good story by Sharon Waxman on the end of Used Guys, a very expensive high-concept comedy that SCREAMS The Cable Guy and Toys..

That is the first of a few things that were left out that probably should have been included.

1. The Cable Guy – Greenlit at about $40 million… ended up at near double that… all in 1996 Hollywood dollars. A true disaster. Just over $100 million worldwide.

2. Jay Roach hasn’t had a film that’s gone out of control, but then again, his entire directing career to date consists of 3 Austin Powers films, 2 Fockers, and Mystery, Alaska.

3. Jimmy Miller is the central figure in the cost of Hollywood comedies right now and talk to the media or not, there are a lot of stories about how he has pushed the envelope. The producer of Kicking & Screaming is his own story.

4. The #1 lesson in movie star value is that they are worth the price if the production cost is reasonable for a comedy. That’s why there is so much heat around the new comedians as they come up. But egos are making these projects more and more dangerous.

5. Jay Roach says it himself and it should have been the lead in the story instead of at the bottom – “"They'd made tremendous discounts on a big-budget movie. This is not some labor-of-love thing," he said. "This film is dead in our center strike zone." Exactly. So why not take all backend or upfront with a longer draw before getting points against gross?

It sounds like Waxman’s studio source was rounding figures, saying “the talent is making $60 million before the studio can recoup its costs,” means that he is arguing recoupment at a $200 million gross with 27% going to Carrey/Stiller/Roach. But that number is too small to get to recoupment on a $110 million production budget and at least $75 million in worldwide marketing costs, even with Home Entertainment. Just to cover the budget and marketing without a single point coming off the top, a $110 million film would need to gross about $175 million and do well in Home Entertainment.

Take 27% off the top and you’re looking at a $300 million - $350 million worldwide gross to break even. Carrey has done that kind of business three times in his career (Liar Liar, The Grinch, Bruce Almighty.). Stiller also has three times (the two Fockers and There’s Something About Mary). But it’s no cakewalk. And that would put talent’s take before recoupment at around $100 million, not $60 million. But what’s $40 million between friends?

But here’s the rub… based on these numbers, if the movie grossed $150 million worldwide, which is very possible, Fox would lose roughly $70 million on the deal while Carrey/Stiller/Roach would make a minimum of about $60 million.

6. How likely is it that there is no connection to Fox’s experience with Stiller on A Night In The Museum, which is said to be expensive and over schedule? Aside from his supporting role in Dodgeball, this is the first film that Stiller has starred in for Fox since There’s Something About Mary broke him out.

But aside from that...

Posted by poland at 02:37 AM | Comments (25)

May 24, 2006

Learning From Having Your Nose Shoved In It

Funny how the take on Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette is described by Reuters as "Cool French reaction to 'Antoinette'," by the AP as "Coppola's Marie Antoinette earns a few catcalls from French at Cannes," and by The Telegraph as "French fail to see the funny side of Marie Antoinette"

Ya think that blaming The French instead of offering the kind of definitive view the media loves to simplify it all into has something to do with the whiplash on the Da Vinci Code reviews?

At least The TonyOhla has the good taste to take the heat for themselves, as their two takes equal one mixed review.

Posted by poland at 05:44 PM | Comments (14)

One Problem With The Videogame Biz

There are a bunch of movies that don't have videogame titles.... too much money involved and if the movie stiffs, the game is likely to as well. And of course, it takes years of lead time.

So when Snakes on a Plane, which seems like the most obvious dark horse videogame idea of the summer, arrives in August, don’t expect a game. If there is enough box office or clamor, maybe there will be one next summer.

But as I was watching Randy Johnson struggle against the BoSox just now, there was an ad or X-Men – The Official Game Of The Film. And what am I seeing? Nightcrawler, who is not in the new film, and The Statue of Liberty… not in the new film.

As it turns out, they are selling this game as a step between the second X-Men film and the new one. There are materials from the new film and some kind of explanation about Nightcrawler’s absence. But this has to be an afterthought. Looks to me like they are just on a production time delay, much like the Lord of the Rings games which all came out late.

It’s the same problem with movie execs trying to follow trends. There is just too long a delay from concept to screen to keep up with the culture wars. Thus the release of Superman Returns: The Videogame just in time to match the release of the… DVD… in November or so.

Posted by poland at 04:57 PM | Comments (8)

Why Can't The Left Make Better Movies?

Damn that right wing! They are so good at making big popcorn movies and the left just doesn't know how to entertain an audience...

HA! Just kidding. But here is a look at two well meaning films that I wish were made well.

The Hot Button, May 24, 2006

Posted by poland at 04:48 PM | Comments (13)

Odd Press Release Header

I know that it's product. You know that it's product. We all know that they all know it's product. But did they have to call it product?

This is how the header for the Fox Searchlight schedule for the next 10 months showed up in my inbox this morning.

PRODUCT PREVIEW 2006

Posted by poland at 04:41 PM | Comments (1)

May 23, 2006

Ghost Rider - Home & Away

So many trailers are now getting picked up wherever they land by websites, Sony apparently decided that launching the Ghost Rider trailer, both international and domestic, on Apple at the same time. So then, the question... how are they different?

Well, there are some minor style differences, a date on the domestic, and more printed words on the domestic. Aside from that, I picked up on these three variations.

First the domestic

Peter Fonda doesn't appear to the rest of the world

This is the first image of Eva Mendes here at home

Fire... heh heh

And now the international...

A kiss is still a kiss... but not in the USA

Here is our first lingering glimpse of Ms Mendes in the rest of the world

Ghost Rider rips up a small commercial street, but not here...

One of the things consistent in both versions? Ghost Rider uses his flaming chain almost the exact same way that Spider-Man uses his web to pull himself across the face of a building. And it's in slow motion in case you might have missed it. Magic.

Posted by poland at 03:54 PM | Comments (51)

New York Times Editors Staying Away From Positive Box Office Stories In Droves

The New York Times couldn't be bothered to write a story on the success of The Da Vinci Code last weekend. They did pick up a Reuters and an International Herald Tribune wire stories.

This just continues the record-shattering 29 week slump in box office reporting (aside from Arts, Briefly) in the New York Times, from Oct 8, 2005's reporting of the absurdly off-the-mark OTX study, entitled "Study Finds Young Men Attending Fewer Films" until May 8, 2006's "New 'Mission' Opens Weaker Than Expected."

There were two "up" weeks in those 29 weeks. After months of "slump" reporting, Lorne Manly wrote, "Doing the Hollywood Math: What Slump?" on Dec 11. This was followed by Sharon Waxman, who took a moment to write "A Good, but Not Great Start For Kong" on Dec 19, 2005.

But after that, nothing all winter and spring, as the box office trended up.

This phenomenon could be explained by a BSX study that shows that middle aged editors don't like going to the movies anymore and don't want to edit any stories that show that exhibition is back up this year and that Home Entertainment is now "inexplicably" slumping.

Fortunately, Ms. Waxman and her editors did find the time to question the release strategy of The Da Vinci Code just one week ago. If the BSX figures are right, don’t expect a NYT story about just how right Team Sony was in their strategy.

And what will it take to get The Paper of Record to write a story about the box office year trending up? Maybe they’ll wake up and smell the Pirates. Or maybe they’ll just wait for another film they can paint as disappointing before they break the ongoing slump.

(And on a side note, as of noon on Monday, The Drudge Report as gotten out of the Da Vinci Code business... not only no new info, but the weekend's hyperactive links to Nikki Finke & Box Office Mojo are gone. Did someone send out a memo?)

Posted by poland at 01:16 PM | Comments (6)

Getting Into The Da Vinci Figures

So… The Da Vinci Code had the 13th best 3-day opening ever and now, the 10th best 4-day start ever with an $8.9 million Monday.

Here are the eleven non-holiday Mondays that were better than Da Vinci:

Film | Monday Gross | Date | Day Of Release | Gross-to-Date | Total Gross
Star Wars: Episode III | $14,352,807 | 5/23/2005 | 5 | $172.80 | $380.30
LOTR: The Return of the King | $13,563,208 | 12/22/2003 | 6 | $137.70 | $377.00
LOTR: The Two Towers | $13,509,942 | 12/23/2002 | 6 | $115.60 | $339.80
Shrek 2 | $11,512,320 | 5/24/2004 | 6 | $140.50 | $441.20
Spider-Man | $11,034,785 | 5/6/2002 | 4 | $125.90 | $403.70
Star Wars: Episode I | $10,881,272 | 5/24/1999 | 6 | $116.50 | $431.10
Star Wars: Episode II | $10,660,341 | 5/20/2002 | 5 | $120.80 | $302.20
Austin Powers III | $10,200,239 | 7/29/2002 | 4 | $86.80 | $213.30
The Passion of the Christ | $10,131,876 | 3/1/2004 | 6 | $135.30 | $370.30
The Matrix Reloaded | $10,108,350 | 5/19/2003 | 5 | $144.40 | $281.60
Rush Hour 2 | $9,470,392 | 8/6/2001 | 4 | $76.90 | $226.20

And the three other films that had non-holiday Mondays better than $8.5 million

Signs | $8,773,638 | 8/5/2002 | 4 | $68.90 | $228.00
Jurassic Park | $8,618,340 | 6/14/1993 | 4 | $58.80 | $357.10
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory | $8,534,478 | 7/18/2005 | 4 | $64.70 | $206.50

Interestingly, only 18 films have ever opened to more than $70 million… and none of them achieved that on a holiday weekend. This might seem to make sense because the four-day weekend appears to balance out the 3-day. But in fact, when looking at 4-day openings, there are 27 films that have done more than $70 million in 4 days and Pearl Harbor, Men In Black II and ID4 are the only ones that join the group as holiday weekend openers.

(EDITED For Nemo error, 2:02p)

Looking at the films that have opened over $70 million, one thing you notice is how erratic the openings vs finals have become. Until last year, every $100 million start passed $380 million… last year, Harry Potter IV didn’t crack $300 million.

Of the six with openings between $85 million and $100 million, only Spider-Man 2 broke out of the $215 million - $318 million group.

Between $75 million and $85 million, $213 million is the low. LOTR: Return of the King's $377 million domestic is the high. This indicates that for all of our opening weekend insanity, at this level, the opportunity that comes with a $75 million opening vs a $100 million opening can be pretty much the same. Legs is legs.

The only other adult-focused film in the entire group of 18, The Passion of The Christ, hit $370 domestic and $612 worldwide. It appears that the international business for Da Vinci will significantly outdo the domestic. Another anomaly to Sony’s benefit.

1. Spider-Man | $114,844,116 | $403,706,375 | 5/3/2002
2. Star Wars: Episode III | $108,435,841 | $380,270,577 | 5/19/2005
3. Shrek 2 | $108,037,878 | $441,226,247 | 5/19/2004
4. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire | $102,685,961 | $290,013,036 | 11/18/2005

5. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | $93,687,367 | $249,541,069 | 6/4/2004
6. The Matrix Reloaded | $91,774,413 | $281,576,461 | 5/15/2003
7. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone | $90,294,621 | $317,575,550 | 11/16/2001
8. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets | $88,357,488 | $261,988,482 | 11/15/2002
9. Spider-Man 2 | $88,156,227 | $373,585,825 | 6/30/2004
10. X2: X-Men United | $85,558,731 | $214,949,694 | 5/2/2003

11. The Passion of the Christ | $83,848,082 | $370,274,604 | 2/25/2004
12. Star Wars: Episode II | $80,027,814 | $302,191,252 | 5/16/2002
13. The Da Vinci Code | $77,073,388 | $85,885,320 | 5/19/2006
14. Austin Powers in Goldmember | $73,071,188 | $213,307,889 | 7/26/2002
15. LOTR: The Return of the King | $72,629,713 | $377,027,325 | 12/17/2003
16. The Lost World: Jurassic Park | $72,132,785 | $229,086,679 | 5/23/1997
17. The Incredibles | $70,467,623 | $261,441,092 | 11/5/2004
18. Finding Nemo | $70,251,710 | $339,714,978 | 5/30/2003

Da Vinci seems poised to become the 30th film in history to crack the $600 million mark worldwide, Sony’s third such film, and the second Sony film to do it starring Alfred Molina.

Tom Hanks' only $500 million worldwide movie is Forrest Gump with $678 million worldwide. His current #2 is Saving Private Ryan with $482 million.

Also lost in all of this is that Da Vinci is Sony’s fifth $20 million-plus opener this year (not including The Benchwarmers, which officially opened at $19.7 million). This is a record for Sony, topping their best of four. And the studio record for a year is Fox’s with six, which seems likely to fall before summer ends, with Click and Monster House on the way from Sony.

Posted by poland at 12:54 PM | Comments (27)

X-Men 3: The Last Review

X-Men: The Last Stand is a real Brett Ratner movie.

And by that, I mean that it is endlessly flawed, hamfisted in many ways, but still has enough flourishes to get away with it. Not every Brett Ratner film is as successful a film as this one. There were moments when I considered whether this is his best film. It may be. But it is really too flawed to allow the word “best” to be used in reference to it. Yet, it doesn’t suck.

The best thing in the film is crystal clear. And that is Famke Janssen’s Phoenix character. She is the only element of the film that succeeds on both a physical/effects and emotional level. Ironically, she has almost no dialogue. In that arena, the show stealer, as was inevitable, is Sir Leigh Teabing (aka Sir Ian McKellen), as the leader of the loyal opposition.

The premise, as I’m sure you’ve determined for yourself, is that the homo sapiens have figured out a cure to mutantism… which leads to the defense of the right to be a mutant. Unfortunately, this is where Kinberg & Penn come up with their weakest dialogue, as characters repeat the same thing over and over again, sometimes literally. The sophistication of the idea of mutantism as a race/genetic trait/sexuality is fascinating and in many ways the strength of the Bryan Singer X-Men films. Here, it is little more than an excuse for a lot of action.

But the Phoenix… though the writing is sketchy, the idea is stronger than everything else. And the physicalization of it is dark, and powerful, and as comic book movies go, pretty real. Jean Grey was all ego. Phoenix is all id. And Xavier has stood in as her super-ego since her powers were discovered in childhood.

For my money, I would have preferred the X3 that really focused on that idea of Jean Grey/Phoenix and how each of the characters has to face that battle on various levels because their mutations give them so much physical power. After all, isn’t the emotional trauma between a father who believes that mutantism is a defect and a son who is a beautiful mutant enough? Isn’t this at the heart of the Wolverine and Rogue stories… and even in the new story of Hank “The Beast” McCoy, who was always my favorite X-Man because he was the ultimate example of maximum powers of the physical and intellectual?

Phoenix is powerful here because she is one of them. And the idea advanced here, that she is kind of the child of both Xavier and Lensherr/Magneto is interesting. I just wanted more, especially because it needs it and because the added characters, outside of the occasional stunt, just aren’t interesting.

I would go on with specifics, but I don’t want to spoil anything.

Fortunately for Ratner & Co, there is a great set piece in the second act and a pretty good one to close the film… even though that closer spends a lot of energy on being big without being smart and Ratner’s absolute inability to establish space in an busy sequence is galling. The close of the close is one of the two most memorable, terrific bits in the film and before that, we get some good old geek fun as Kitty Pride and Juggernaut get some feature powers time. (Iceman vs Pyro continues to be a lame though heavily featured storyline.)

Typical of the big, showy stuff that is not based in anything important in the screenplay and feels like an afterthought for the trailer is the Golden Gate Bridge hunk… which has no payoff and could have with just a few additional lines of smart dialogue. No one bothered.

The script and directing also fails to put together even a Super Friends TV cartoon level of the mutant team working together. It may have been terrible animation, but whatever Superman did led to what Aquaman did to what Batman did to what Wonder Woman did. And when those Wonder Twins turned into stuff, it was always helpful stuff. Every mutant gag here seemed to be a standalone. And perhaps the greatest opportunity for a superhero screenwriter ever, a kid who is “one of them,’ a mutant, but one whose power is to short circuit the power of whoever he is near and only for as long as he is close. This is the magic conceit every screenwriter dreams of… except for these two, apparently.

Still, I can’t say that I was ever in pain or that I disliked the experience. I would be very interested in seeing the Phoenix scenes again. I would also be fascinated to know whether my guesses of which scenes were shot by Philippe Rousselot before he was fired are right. There are a few scenes so poorly lit that I can’t imagine that either Rousselot or his replacement, the great Dante Spinotti, would be happy to be credited with them.

But I digress…

The film basically works. X2: X-Men United is ridiculously overrated by critics. X-Men is a bit underrated. And this film does make you appreciate how much this concept of the X-Men was Singer’s. One has to believe that Singer would have made The Beast and Colossus really work or he wouldn’t have bothered. (One thing Ratner does better is Storm, though it is still a crap role that should have been given to Angela Bassett. Ms Berry is sexy and sassy and raw in her emotions, not Mother Earth sexy, which is what Storm is. Still, she’s better here.) And there is a lot of flying – and other effects – in the movie that look like someone in a harness hanging straight up and down… cheap… even though the budget went through the roof, according to the Wall Street Journal.

But there are two or three memorable things here that say that the film works, in spite of all the troubles getting here. I still wish Matthew Vaughn has made the film, because he might have made a smaller film, but with material like this, he likely would have made a greater film. (Word is that Stardust, which Vaughn is shooting now, will be something truly special if the script is any indication.)

And yet, give the devil his due.

In Thursday’s 20 Weeks column, I expect to bump my projection for the film over the $200 million mark, as the first big action film of the summer that won’t be categorized as a disappointment by most. In fact, with Ratner at the helm, one has to say, this is a pleasant surprise.

Posted by poland at 12:10 AM | Comments (62)

May 21, 2006

The New (And Probably Last) Superman Returns Trailer

I know I've been tough on Superman Returns, but this new trailer, which seems to be responding to some of the gentility of The Man Of Steel is much better. Consider the teen boys sold.

But is the closer, which you will see if you watch, a real Twister/ID4/Day After Tomorrow moment that make it a must-see movie for a lot of people? Or is it just too familiar?

Posted by poland at 04:16 PM | Comments (30)

Interesting HBO Weekend

In my hotel room this weekend, I somehow ended up watching a mini-festival of bad movies featuring Batman & Robin and Sliver.

Wow! They were as bad as I remember. Maybe worse!

Posted by poland at 03:10 PM | Comments (9)

Commenter Entry Of The Week

Jimmy The Gent started this conversation in another thread...

Here's a fun question: What has been your most memorable summer at the movies?

For me, I think it's a draw between 1986 and 1993. I was 7 going on 8 in 1986. You had: Top Gun, Hard Choices, Raw Deal (a guilty pleasure), Invaders From Mars, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Mona Lisa, The Manhattan Project, Back to School, The Karate Kid, Part II (another guilty pleasure), Ruthless People, Runniing Scared, Labyrinth, About Last Night..., Psycho III (an underrated movie), Big Trouble in Little China, Great Mouse Detective,
Aliens, Stand by Me, She's Gotta Have It, Manhunter, The Fly, and Night of the Creeps. You also had so-bad-its-good stuff like Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2, Maximum Overdrive, Cobra, and Transformers: The Movie.

In 1993 I was 14 going on 15. That summer saw the release of: Much Ado About Nothing, American Heart, Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story, Dave, Hot Shots! Part Deux, Carnosaur, Menace II Society, Cliffhanger, The Long Day Closes, The Music of Chance, What's Love got To Do With It, Jurassic Park, Sleepless in Seattle, Jaquot, The firm, Rookie of the Year (a great baseball movie), In the Line of Fire, Poetic Justice (an uderrated movie), Robin Hood: Men in Tights (an underrated late-career Brooks with an early glimpse at Chappelle), So I Married an Axe Murderer (early Fat Bastard sighting), The Fugitive, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Heart and Souls (a great Downey performance), The Secret Garden, Manhattan Murder Mystery (a great Allen, a great portrait of marriage, and one of the lovliest showcases for NYC), King of the Hill, The Ballad of Little Jo, and Man Without a Face (a fascinating movie to examine in light of Gibson's later directorial work).

Who's next?

Posted by poland at 12:06 AM | Comments (57)

May 20, 2006

Friday Estimates By Klady

Okay... not much more to say about The Da Vinci Code. I’m not even going to get rolling about a second weekend hold because really, if I thought $50 million was where this was going and it’s going to have at $75 million-plus launch, I don’t have an answer worth discussing. I will let the news be news when it is news.

But there is another important opening this weekend worth talking about, and that’s Over The Hedge. It’s not in quite the trouble that some would say, but its Friday was off about 22% off of Madagascar. Friday was about 29% of Madagascar’s opening weekend, so for Over The Hedge, the $10.8 million estimate would project to a $37.2 million opening weekend. Here are some comparative numbers...

Madagascar - $47 million
Shark Tale - $48 million
Lilo & Stitch - $35 million
Shrek - $41 million

I won’t even deal with Finding Nemo or Shrek 2, because it would be unfair. But it’s not a disaster... just not a great launch. The biggest problem for the film is that is has only two more weekends (which, of course, includes the thick Memorial Day weekend) before serious competition shows up with Cars. Madagascar did two-thirds of its total domestic business through its first three weekends. If Over The Hedge is on a similar pace, it should be at around $100 million by the end of the third weekend... and the next $50 million, which would make it a hit instead of a minor miss, will be threatened. And there ain’t nothin’ they can do about it.

Mission: Impossible III will pass $100 million this weekend and is not going past $125 million. But it should also pass $250 million worldwide this weekend. Batman Begins level worldwide box office is possible. And no question, that will be a disappointment for everyone involved. The only person who can make the movie profitable is Tom Cruise, who could cut his piece of the gross, if he wants to make an impactful statement. Even if he gave up a couple of points, it would be significant and unprecedented. He and Paula Wagner are partners with Paramount on the film and this would make a statement. If he gave up as much as 10% that he is entitled to, he could probably make the movie profitable. That would be massive. Is the future of this franchise actor about the next movies or banking tens of millions now? Only he can answer that question and no one can really fault him for answering whichever way he likes. But giving back money you are owed is, in Hollywood, beyond above and beyond.

Movie / Friday est / % Change / Screens / Cume
The Da Vinci Code / 28.8m / - / 3735 / 28.8m
Over the Hedge / 10.8m / - / 4059 / 10.8m
Mission Impossible 3 / 3.6m / -52% / 3450 / 95.8m
Poseidon / 3.0m / -59% / 3555 / 30.6m
See No Evil / 1.6m / - / 1257 / 1.6m
RV / 1.4 / -40% / 2925 / 46.7m
Just My Luck / 1.1m / -45% / 2543 / 8.2m
An American Haunting / 0.5m / -58% / 1265 / 12.5m
United 93 / 0.4m / -60% / 1308 / 27.3m
Stick It / 0.3 / -73% / 1100 / 23.1m

Posted by poland at 04:59 PM | Comments (33)

Mea Culpa-ing Now

Well, I should start eating crow now.

The Da Vinci Code is still an awful movie, but it will get well past half way to my 20 Weeks of Summer estimate this weekend alone.

It will be another week or two before we see what kind of legs this one has, but expect a barrage of "critics are out of touch" stories before the ink on Sunday's papers dries.

Posted by poland at 12:27 AM | Comments (71)

May 19, 2006

Monty Python & The Da Vinci Code

From Worth1000

Posted by poland at 11:52 PM | Comments (0)

What I Was Talking About...

I wrote a Hot Button today called The Summer Of Rage and nothing that's happened in the last dozen hours since I wrote it has done anything to quell my aggravation.

I hate to even bring this bitch up, but Roger Friedman so embodies the lowest form of the media trends that it is hard to avoid him (especially since The Drudge Report has become a haven for him, Nikki Finke, and Box Office Mojo) and today, he pulled one of his extreme burns.

Why does this schmuck, surrounded as he is by Cannes activities, feel the need to chase down and kick Superman Returns yet again? Cannes has whored out, but not nearly enough for our Roger, who is crushed that, just days after everyone on the Criosette was kneeing Da Vinci in the balls,.Superman hasn't flown in to put itself in front of the firing squad?

Forget the fact that he is just plain stupid and that as far as my recollection goes, none of the July 4 weekend movies have ever played in Cannes... since it is six weeks out. There is this eye-rolling it's-so-obvious attitude about studios throwing their movies into the critical rink whenever that movie journos have adopted lately that is about as stupid as stupid can be. It assumes two things. 1) We are right. 2) The studios know what they have.

There is plenty of Kool-Aid quaffing in the world, but there are also a lot of movies that linger on the quality edge and studios get surprised by critical reaction a shocking percentage of the time.

And why does WB need Cannes if they are going to spend more than $100 million in worldwide advertising? So they can compete with Da Vinci for attention while Da Vinci opens and get shit on by critics who prefer smarter film? What's the upside?

Moreover, the freakin' movie isn't locked yet! Every year we in the press bitch about how so many movies needed more work. Well, Superman Returns has gone from 2hours 50 minutes to 2:40 to 2:30 and change in the last few weeks. And it might get tighter. Why does this guy want it NOW?

The nice thing about Roger is that we all shoudl know by now that whatever he writes is payback or payoff for something or someone. What is sick making is that Drudge supports it and as a result, others will follow him off the cliff.

Stop the madness.

Posted by poland at 02:34 PM | Comments (20)

Dreamgirls On The Croisette

There was some joy in CannesVille tonight (they’re 9 hours ahead of L.A.), as DreamWorks/Paramount offered a sneak peak at their Oscar candidate and, they hope, the second big commercial movie musical success story of recent years, Dreamgirls.

The studio coughed up four songs, a verbal tap dance by writer/director Bill Condon, and a terrific three minutes trailer-style clip reel to a fifth song in the film.

First on tap, the Dreamettes get their first professional gig, singing back up to Eddie Murphy’s James “Thunder” Early, the show’s take on James Brown, Jackie Wilson, and Marvin Gaye. The number, “Fake Your Way To The Top” dazzles as the girls mature into pros and relationships manage to develop before our eyes, even without words.

My favorite unspoken bit is when Murphy’s Early (a performance that stinks of Oscar, even in this small quantity) wants two back up singers, but accepts the three, figuring without a word that there is the beauty, the singer, and the one to whom he is immediately attracted and that if the girls were forced to drop one member, his hoped for lover would be the one to go. And of course, this is an early echo of what is to come in the film.

Next, there is the scene when Jamie Foxx’s Curtis Taylor lets the Dreamettes know that they are going to go off on their own as The Dreams… and that lead singer Effie (Jennifer Hudson) is going to have to back up beauty Deena (Beyonce Knowles). That leads into the song, “Family,” sung first by Effie ("What about what I want?"), who is then joined by her brother, CC (Keith Robinson) and then by the rest of the girls and Curtis.

Condon uses a completely different camera style covering this song and the contribution of Broadway lighting legends Jules Fisher and Peggy Eisenhauer becomes apparent, as they and his DP Tobias Schliesser and production designer John Myhre rock a simple white background on an empty theater stage. Beautiful.

Next, it’s Jamie Foxx singing “When I First Saw You” to the now Diana Rossified Deena/Beyonce. There is more magic, beyond the performance, as the number is constructed around massive photos of Deena in that 70-‘s Mahogany/Eyes of Laura Mars style that those of us old enough to remember will remember. And Sharen Davis' costumes, which are good everywhere else, are Rossian to a crossed t here.

Finally, we get the title song, “Dreamgirls,” which is set on some kind of showroom stage, the lights of which become the starlight in which our Dreamgirls will float.

That was intoxicating enough. But then, there is a brilliantly cut three-minute trailer – though it may not be a theatrical trailer at any time, though it should be – built around Jennifer Hudson singing, “One Night Only,” which you may remember, starts slow and then builds into Beyonce's/Deena's version, which sounds like a monster disco hit.

The images that flash before is in the tightly cut part are almost shocking at times, ranging from what looks like black and white to gold lame suits and some great butt bouncing to the young girls to the aging cast, from love to hate, from fun to fear.

The combination is undeniable. It’s not a Miramax slap-dash con job where all you see is a quick cut reel so you really can’t see the impact. It also doesn’t try to tell the whole story and I imagine that only a handful of people are left in the press who saw the show on Broadway all those years ago. But with four full numbers and the “trailer,” you get the breadth and the width of the film. And it couldn’t be much more exciting.

I am, no doubt, a little hungry for quality these days. And this is only a snack. But my hunger has been well sated for now. And any fears or questions I had about where this project was going have been answered in a great way. Terrific.

(Images from the red carpet)

Posted by poland at 09:00 AM | Comments (42)

May 18, 2006

WTC: The Trailer

Someone sent a note about it, so I figured you all might want to be part of the discussion...

On today's box office chart on MCN, the big positive mover was World Trade Center, from $75 million to $140 million. Why?

Because seeing that trailer, I think that Paramount has found he answer to marketing a 9/11 drama/thriller and even, it seems, figured out an answer about how to make it.

Once you get past, "Do I really weant to see that?," you are dealing with a regular, well-made, drama/thriller... Apollo 13 underground. With Nic Cage there and a decent film, this could well be the first film to get positive box office movement off of the events of 9/11.

Or not. You tell me.

Posted by poland at 12:19 PM | Comments (59)

Da Vinci

Well, I was looking to swim upsteam, but instead, went down the drain with the film...

My Da Vinci Code review

Posted by poland at 12:04 PM | Comments (47)

May 17, 2006

Junked Entries

i got a note from a blog participant asking if he had been banned because his messages had not come up after he posted.

As it turns out, dozens of messages were in the "junk" folder, automatically put there by Movable Type.

I haven't changed anything in the last few days, but it seems to have made decisions itself. Sorry. I have de-junked all of the entries that were not sales links and porn (aka, real junk).

No one has ever been banned and not entries have ever been erased from this blog.

So if you see that your entries are not coming up, please let me know so I can check into it.

UPDATE, 11:50a - I just downgraded the junk filter a bit, as there were still good messages being caught badly. Hopefully, that will help. Sorry for the issues.

And forgot to point out last inght... I never moderate either. Only for junk mail.

4:01p - Still happening on some entries... not happy... sorry... trying to work through it...

THURSDAY ADD - This all appears to relate to some kind of Spam fighting add ons to the site. I have adjusted the levels, but the same two blocks seem to be hitting sporadic entries andI haven't figured out how to make it stop completely. As you might expect, this is very irrtiating to me, as I have to babysit.. we'll keep working on it.

Posted by poland at 02:58 AM | Comments (26)

May 16, 2006

Must Be A Full Moon

First The Da Vinci Code gets treated like a woman in the first act of A Clockwork Orange and now, this...

Did they really find the only image that could actually drive teenage boys away from Superman Returns?

Let's not split hairs. This may be the mainstream movie one-sheet with the gayest sensibility ever. It has a certain beauty, but the cape reads Phantom Of The Opera (Lloyd Webber version), not superhero. And I can't wait to see what Defamer does with the peninsula floating just in front of Supes' crotch, consumating with the A in Superman.

Maybe girls will like it.

(ADDED 2am Tues - A reader redo of the poster after the jump...)
(EDITED - Noon Wed - I have removed the faked poster by the now great and mighty Synthetic Neutron at the request of WB. To be honest, I think the poster is so mean, but so funny, that I was compelled to post it, but didn't feel terribly bad about taking it down. Besides, isn't the real thing enough?)

Posted by poland at 07:00 PM | Comments (60)

The Moron-A-Thon Heats Up…

I will see The Da Vinci Code tomorrow… and I’ll have an opinion. And so what?

Meanwhile, in Cannes, there is a clusterfuck of attention seekers wanting to be proclaimed The First To Pan Da Vinci!

According to Drudge, sludgemaster Roger Friedman’s proclamation that he is first therefore gets the 1st treatment. The first review in my inbox was from Film Stew. By the time I went to post something, AP & Reuters both had full stories up on the web. (Updates on MCN)

Somehow, all of this excitement of The First Kill makes Hollywood marketing look subtle in comparison. It reminds me a lot of the stick figure in the Oscar nominated Don Hertzfeldt animated short, Rejected. The character on the left screams “My anus is bleeding,” while the crowd cheers.

Posted by poland at 06:07 PM | Comments (35)

The Premature Oscar Column

What films are in the running for Best Picture?

"Besides Francis Ford Coppola and Milos forman and Sofia Coppola and Marc Forster, there are ten more Oscar-space directors with eleven more films in play this fall. In alphabetical order, AlmodovarCondonEastwoodFieldGibsonHytnerMinghellaScorseseScottSoderbergh.

That's fifteen films from Academy Award tested filmmakers. Fifteen!"

And my first Oscar Best Picture list...

Posted by poland at 12:13 AM | Comments (42)

May 15, 2006

Darth Paul

Or is it Chancellor OpusDeiAtine?
Or The Operor?
Or Opus McDeirmad?

Posted by poland at 11:53 PM | Comments (27)

Der Vurld Traden Centre

The World Trade Center trailer came out, as is so often the case these days, in another country before it hits here. At least this is a quality QT play.

(UPDATE: The UIP site pulled teh German trailer this morning... here are some images... this conversation probably should be shelved until the American version permieres on Wednesday.)

So what do you think? Too exploitive? Emotionally charged? Perfection?

I think this will be very effective. It gets the idea that people want to be respectful, but also want a movie that is a real movie. And of course, it gives away the relatively happy ending.

Posted by poland at 05:52 PM | Comments (24)

Amy Adams, Dog Lover

So Amy Adams is going to be in Underdog.

Will she be wearing a snout as Polly Purebred?

And is this "selling out" or "doing what a girl has to do for a $500,000 bucks?"

Posted by poland at 05:30 PM | Comments (12)

May 14, 2006

Fascinating

Remember when cars were sold on ego and machismo?

I just saw a Volkswagon Passat ad on the Yankees game (they lost) that featured people in hot cars with bullhorns, shouting out the bad ego reasons for buying their cars. "My mother didn't love me." "I'm overcoming my shortcomings" "I make more money than you."

And there is the nice young couple driving along in their Passat. The ad is tagged, "Lowest Ego Emission Of Any German Engineered Sedan."

And as much as I don't approve of all those reasons for buying showy cars, I was a little shocked that the subtext here was "be part of the crowd." Especially marketing to a Yankees audience… a team that is seen by many as a choice for bandwagoneers.

At first, I was struck by it as a response to South Park's Smug Alert episode. And of course, Volkswagon has the great "de-pimp your car" spots, though those replace pimp cool with Stomare cool. And the message I got there was 'back to basics."

Here, it's a tougher message. "Those people are assholes and your superiority comes from not standing out."

It's odd. There is something very conservative - which is not to say Republican - feeling about the whole thing. And perhaps this is an odd symbol of the challenge in politics in the next decade. How do we find extraordinary leadership if we are supposed to be embarrassed by anyone who behaves in an extraordinary way? Or does that all go out the window with personality? And is the voting community simply hypocritical after all, voting personal issues in the end without much interest in the bigger picture, no matter what we say over dinner?

Veddy interesting…

(Here is a link to the commercial if you haven't seen it and wish t do so.)

Posted by poland at 12:27 PM | Comments (21) | TrackBack

Sunday Estimates by Klady

Well… the headline of the weekend is, Mission: Impossible III A Little Less Impossible In Second Mission. Or Lohan’s Teen-y Audience. But the headline will be Poseidon Sinks.

Sadly, the coverage is mosly about the expectations of journalists and not news.

The news is, Mission: Impossible III and Poseidon are disappointments at the box office based on their budgets, not particularly based on the opening numbers. But headlines don’t want to dig down into those realities. And as we continue down this path in journalism, the stories are starting to overlook these basic realities. What’s creepy is that Poseidon didn’t even get the media hype that turned into backlash. It was as though Poseidon got all of Tom Cruise's backlash with none of the benefit.

None of this is to say that Warner Bros didn’t screw it up from stem to stern. And a big part of it is not unlike last year’s Kingdom of Heaven experience with Fox. There are three things that can drive big action movies – comedy, strong quiet character beats, or the visual beat that gets audiences excited. People went to The Perfect Storm to see the big wave and many went back for the personal drama. People went to Twister because of a flying cow and an aggressive tire. Independence Day blew up the White House and The Day After Tomorrow took out New York.

A wave flipping a cruise ship over just isn’t that impressive anymore. And it wasn’t that impressive when The Poseidon Adventure came out. What drove that movie was characters we fell in love with, no matter how cheesy. This could have been Das Cruise Boot – tough, dark, truly scary - and that would likely have been great. Or it could have been actors we love, which worked for SWAT a couple of summers ago.

That said, the media wants to go negative and though this summer, to date, is significantly better at the box office than last year, the negativity will out. I guess it’s better than sycophantically going along with every studio press release and blindly reporting on grosses without paying any attention to costs. But somehow, this is beginning to feel just as blind in a completely different way.

The two major beneficiaries of the relatively soft start are RV, which has taken advantage of one last weekend as “the family choice” and United 93, which seems to be getting adult moviegoers who don’t see any good choices.

========================

3-Day Estimates | Weekend | % Change | Cume
Mission Impossible III | 24.6 | -48% | 84.7
Poseidon | 20.5 | - | 20.5
RV | 9.0 | -18% | 42.3
Just My Luck | 5.6 | - | 5.6
United 93 | 3.6 | -32% | 25.7
An American Haunting | 3.4 | -42% | 10.6
Stick It | 3.3 | -40% | 22.3
Ice Age: Meltdown | 2.9 | -30% | 187.3
Silent Hill | 2.2 | -45% | 44.5
Hoot | 2.1 | -38% | 6.2

Posted by poland at 11:10 AM | Comments (31)

How Time Flies...

Just over a year ago, Mark Gill said to Anne Thompson, "You almost look at this year's Competition films and don't have to worry about buying anything. They may be good, but none of them are remotely accessible to an American audience."

My response was, "The quoted Dependent head is Warner Indie chief Mark Gill. And I can only pray that Gill's quote was somehow pulled out of context, because if it wasn't, it may be time for him to find a new career."

Ironically, I couldn't and can't disagree with his assessment. But for the head of an art dvision... bad hoodoo...

Posted by poland at 12:13 AM | Comments (1)

May 13, 2006

Cannes Winners At The Box Office

Here is a chart the NY Times probably should have done with their John Anderson piece, "Cannes Gold Tarnishes in U.S.."

The analysis kind of does itself for you. If it’s in English, you can make real money on quality movies. If it can get into the Oscar race, you can make more.

YEAR | FILM | DOMESTIC BOX OFFICE | THE REST OF THE WORLD
2005 | Enfant, L' | $465,000 | $4,700,000
2004 | Fahrenheit 9/11 | $119,000,000 | $103,000,000
2003 | Elephant | $1,300,000 | $9,000,000
2002 | The Pianist | $33,000,000 | $88,000,000
2001 | The Son's Room | $1,000,000 | $10,800,000
2000 | Dancer in the Dark | $4,000,000 | $36,000,000
1999 | Rosetta | $267,000 | n/a
1998 | Eternity and a Day | $107,000 | n/a
1997 | Taste of Cherry / The Eel | $750,000 | n/a
1996 | Secrets & Lies | $14,000,000 | n/a

This question isn’t really whether America responds to Cannes winners. (Sundance has an even worse cause & effect record.) But whether Cannes has bent to the perceived importance of the American market. This year, there are 20 films in competition. Seven of the films come to the festival with built-in American interest and only one of the films, Ken Loach’s The Wind That Shakes The Barley, comes to France without an American distributor already in tow. (Please note also that every single one of the six distributors is major studio owned.)

The four competition films in English are Columbia’s Marie Antoinette, Fox Searchlight’s Fast Food Nation, Universal’s Southland Tales, and the aforementioned The Wind That Shakes The Barley.

The other three competition films with built-in US interest speak to the current trend in Spanish-language cinema in America, with Alejandro Inarritu’s Babel (Par Classics... and is in English, Spanish, Japanese, Berber, and Arabic), Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (Picturehouse) and Almodovar’s Volver (Sony Classics).

In addition, the festival includes 4 major American films that have no awards-type aspirations, only praying to be quality commercial releases, The Da Vinci Code, United 93, Over The Hedge, and X-Men: The Last Stand.

Does the once beautiful festival turned cheap trick have any business lecturing America on our tastes? If the festival does not take itself seriously enough to use what power it still has to move the quality agenda forward, why would anyone else? (That is, outside of journalists who love getting a free trip to the South of France each year.)

The truth is, Cannes has become far worse than Sundance in terms of selling out. Yet, the unfamiliarity seems to be a condom from the contempt that has infected so many journalists and critics in recent years.

And the studios are happy to be welcomed to abuse the credibility of the festival and to use it mercilessly as a platform to market their big, but not necessarily fine, movies to the more-important-than-home-in-many-cases European and world market.

Posted by poland at 08:19 PM | Comments (17)

Some Publicity SoaP Doesnt Need

This, of course, might get some of the people who LOVE Snakes On A Plane web hype excited instead of disgusted, but this sceeenshot from Dateline NBC's most recent to "Catch a Predator" series about catching older men who are searching the web for underage girls they can have sex with is not likely the kind of promotion that will make New Line or Time-Warner execs very pleased...

Next up on Dateline, screen names "TheDaVinciLoad" and "PenisOfTheCaribbean"

Posted by poland at 07:01 PM | Comments (1)

Friday Estimates by Klady

Not an exception hold for Mission:Impossible 3, but not a nightmare either. Is there some backlash by real people against the media showing itself to be worse hos than Mr. Cruise, now making the movie one that has to be seen so it can be talked about?

Poseidon at $18 million - $22 million is not a slot disaster. Nor is it a success. It’s a flat miss. But since the trend now is to start throwing budget at expectations movies before they open, expect to read nuclear winter stories on Sunday night. The bottom line is that Poseidon deserves to be placed amongst the summer’s flops, unless there is a shocking – really shocking – turnaround in international markets.

The question is whether it is The Island or Steath? First thing to note is that the film is likely to out-open both pictures by 50% or more. But the voracious nature of the press has gotten worse. The same thing is true of Kingdom of Heaven, which ended up being profitable for Fox after a big international comeback. That film did less than half of what Misison: Impossible III did last weekend in the same slot the year before, but in perception, one was a flop and one was a MEGA-flop.

If I had to put the entire thing into perspective, I would argue that Poseidon is more The Island than Stealth in that it had a more skilled director with a more storied box office history and it also had problems with a no-name cast. The thing about no-name cast on a big movie, in my opinion, is not about “you can’t do that” anymore, which is the hum floating around the studios, but rather that you have to cast all the parts extraordinarily well to get away with it or to have a visual gimmick that has never been seen – and that people really want to see – that overwhelms everything else.

Steve Buscemi was the one great surprise in The Island. But it needed more than that. Poseidon might have survived Josh Lucas and the studios’ vain attempt to make him the next action hero, but the disaster, in my opinion, was not getting Hilary Duff and Wilmer Valderama and Jason Alexander on that boat. The campaign WB ran – what would you do? – needed to be something trailer and spot viewers felt. If you have to tell them, you’ve lost. And they needed some people in there who aren’t played for comedy, but who are funny, since humor is a powerful cover for fear. Jason Alexander getting through an airshaft is tense. Mia Maestro panicking is not.

Anyway…

Just My Luck crashed in a way I didn’t expect. In a reversal of the hyper nature of coverage right now, this opening will actually be half of what Herbie: Fully Loaded's reportedly poor opening (which turned out to be just fine) was last summer. And watch as this one goes nearly unreported next week. Personally, I got sucked into what it seems Fox marketing and publicity got sucked into… thinking Lindsay Lohan and some clear demographic space was enough. But the feeling at other studios is that the movie is a tweener, stuck between young girls who want their Lindsay innocent, barely ready for a kiss, and teen girls who want their Lindsay getting done by Wilmer and Ashton on a beach somewhere. It’s the ol’ 13-year-olds read Seventeen Magazine and 17-year-old read Cosmo.

RV continues to hold very well, probably benefiting for being the only choice in the market for families. Still, the gross isn’t big enough to make this one a success. Robin Williams and Barry Sonnenfeld could not have made the movie on the cheap.

Disney’s Goal! walked, talked, and grossed like a throwaway. The only curiosity about this film is why iPod-lovin’ Bob Iger didn’t try to turn a corner on day-n-date with a film like this. Yes, it was not going to make a massive splash in any case. But given that it is a family film and a theatrical release seemed like a waste of money, it might have been interesting.

===============

Title / Distributor / Gross* / Theaters / % Change / Cume
Mission: Impossible III / Par / 7.6 / 4059 / -54% / 67.7
Poiseidon / WB / 7.3 / 3555 / New / 7.3
RV / Sony / 2.3 / 3536 / -18% / 35.7
Just My Luck / Fox / 2 / 2541 / New / 2
An American Haunting / Freestyle / 1.2 / 1703 / -43% / 8.4
Stick It / BV / 1.1 / 2009 / -41% / 20.1
United 93 / Uni / 1 / 1871 / -33% / 23.1
Silent Hill / Sony / Alliance / 0.7 / 1888 / -42% / 43
Goal! / BV / 0.65 / 1007 / New / 0.65
Ice Age: The Meltdown / Fox / 0.6 / 1879 / -36% / 185

Posted by poland at 01:06 PM | Comments (33)

May 12, 2006

A Brief Look At The Problem With The Dependents

This really is a full column, but for the moment, I want to offer some reason for my derision of Anne Thompson’s Friday column, “Success of indie units gives execs new clout.”

First, she is right that producers like Michael London do have more clout, though in that case, London has also worked with the big studio sides successfully as well. Scott Rudin has yet to be helped in his profile by an indie. The other producers mentioned are esteemed... and have been for years, without successfully breaking the indie glass ceiling.

As for the Dependents themselves – which aside from Harvey Weinstein did not, in fact, participate publicly in the screen ban battle that did no one any good then or now – they are a mess right now, far less powerful in any way other than media hype than they were just two years ago when they peaked. WIP is in transition to a more major-controlled arm. Linde’s ascension at Universal is a reminder of just how tightly held he was by the big studio and the value of his international skills, much like Jim G at Fox. Miramax is just getting started and where it is going is unclear. UA is no more, though it did great for Sony Classics by dumping Capote in their laps last year. Fox Searchlight has had some success with their horror film and their Toronto pick-up, though fell flat with their urban film and their Russian pick-up (with a sequel on the way). Picturehouse still barely exists as of this writing. And all we really know about (working title) Paramount Classics is that John Lesher can give lots of money to people who he already knows.

Keeping Miramax, then and now, out of the equation, Dependents WOM have recovered from last year’s disastrous first four months of the year in which they grossed just $53 million between all the divisions. That was down from $80 million in the same period the year before (2004). And this year, the divisions have managed $115 million, with the two Searchlight hits representing more than half the gross ($62 million) themselves so far.

But what happens when you add Miramax/Dimension? Things change dramatically. First-third 2004 was a $203 million period for the Dependents. First-third 2005 was down minimally, with $189 million. And this year looks painful so far with just $118 million.

No one has come close to making up for the loss of the Weinsteins from the Dependent ranks. And even taking them out of the equation, that area of the business is certainly not thriving.

Worse, what is the heart of the success the Dependents do have? Mostly genre pictures, not adult quality. Thank You For Smoking and Friends With Money are the exceptions this year so far, appealing to adults intellectuals. But after that? The Hills Have Eyes, Something New, Dave Chappelle’s Block Party, and Phat Girlz are the only Dependents to crack $5 million. That’s 6 of 23 that will crack $5 million.

The same has been true in the last couple of years. Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind is the one shining star in the first third of the last two years. After that, Johnson Family Vacation, Kung Fu Hustle, Assault On Precinct 13, The Jacket, Never Die Alone, Millions (it’s for kids!) and Club Dread. That’s 8 of 28 over $5 million, if you’re counting.

Basically, there are two consistent players in the showy niche, Focus and Fox Searchlight. And Sony Classics has become the warm wet spot for higher end films with lower expectations.

But thriving?

Peter Rice’s power has been secure for years now and will keep growing with success. Barker & Bernard are well ensconced.

On the flip side, Gill is out. Battsek and Lesher are brand new and inexperienced in making movies. And Linde’s ascension is not a shock – outside of devaluing Focus – because his international business prowess was so highly esteemed when Universal acquired Good Machine years ago. So three of six divisions are completely up in the air and post-Weinstein, one more has to deal with a loss of part of its leadership, and the overall market is down… way down.

Good things may be coming. I hope. But now is hardly the time to be counting eggs.

Posted by poland at 02:36 PM | Comments (15)

It Was M:I 3 Night On Leno Thursday Night

One has to give Tom Cruise and Paramount points for going down fighting.

Second weekend talk show appearances by stars like Cruise are a great rarity in this business. Yet, there he was. Thursday night is the key night for network advertising and promotion and there he was. And he brought Kanye West with him to sing a song from the movie... that is in the movie, I guess, over credits. (It's only available for purchase on iTunes.)

Cruise was game. There was no talk about the box office. There were two clips, an EPK clip of Cruise doing a stunt himself and of the causeway stunt from the film.

It’s been an ugly, somewhat unfair week for Mr. Cruise. Too much is too much. His choice to continue working for the second weekend sends a strong signal… if not to ticket buyers, then to future employers. Selling your wares is a big, big part of being a star. And Cruise clearly hopes to be next year’s comeback kid, even as the media is anxiously hoping to give Tom Hanks that tag in a week or so.

Posted by poland at 12:41 AM | Comments (40)

May 11, 2006

I Kinda Half Watched Dirty Dancing Havana Nights On Satellite...

No wonder it bombed!

The first film was a fantasy for regualr girls. Jennifer Grey was the perfect cute, sex, but imperfect lead with Swayze as the macho female fantasy. What do people always quote from the film? Not sex, but "No one puts baby in the corner." It's emotion.

Tihs film, however attractive Diego Luna is, is a male fanatasy. Giant blonde girl with oodles of money with well place boobs falls for plain looking, poor, ethnic midget.

I'm sure the target marget of men under 5' 7" who want to climb 6' tall blondes LOVED the film.

What were they thinking?

Posted by poland at 04:58 PM | Comments (17)

20 Weeks Of Summer - Reasonable Expectations

After a well chewed over start with M:I3, I thought it might be a good idea to lay out some landmarks for the season before we see the films or their marketing campaigns.

The column

Posted by poland at 12:25 PM | Comments (25)

May 10, 2006

I Think They Forgot, "See This Movie!"

(The one-sheet is after the jump... this is a promotional handout at theaters)

Posted by poland at 04:32 PM | Comments (32)

Will It Float?

What's wrong with Poseidon?

Posted by poland at 11:41 AM | Comments (57)

Sit Back, Relax, & Enjoy Mocking Tom Cruise Before The Show

A reader of The Hot Button sent in a note today about his experience at the Alamo Drafthouse this weekend where he went to see Mission:Impossible 3.

To give you a litle background, the Alamo Drafthouse is a growing chain out of Austin , TX that shows movies in a theater that has rows of seats that have small tables in front of each seat. You can order food before, during and after the movie, which is served discretely.

The tone is loose and fun. There is a lot of movie love in the space and a lot of smarts as well.

So the Drafthouse, as it expands, is showing more and run first-run movies. The Lake Creek location is showing M:I3 as well as five other first run movies. And is in the Drafthouse spirit that they ran a pre-show trailer for the film that features, according to the site reader, “clips from the past year or so with all of Tom Cruise’s craziness. They showed him on Oprah, him looking psychotic talking to Matt Lauer, and a bunch of others.”

Next, a slideshow of Brett Ratner's girlfriends before X3?

Fun!

Posted by poland at 12:45 AM | Comments (16)

May 09, 2006

The Trouble With Rage

I had an odd feeling over deja vu when I read this piece by the Washington Post's Richard Cohen.

His story is about the rage and accusations that came in when he took the position that Stephen Colbert wasn't funny at the Washington Correspondent's dinner. Mine includes, but is certainly not limited to, Brokeback Mountain. The best run, to me, was in 2004, when I went from being a liberal Christian hater when I complained about the divisive way Mel Gibson was pushing The Passion of The Christ and then, just a few months later, was a closet right wing Bush lover because I had pretty much the same problems with how The Weinsteins and Michael Moore were selling Fahrenheit 9/11.

Of course, what I know now is that there is an upside. In time, the rage subsides, waiting for the oxygen of another cause. And if you’re lucky, you get a regular participant like palmtree, who adds more than the first blush of anger and mockery, however wacky he may sometimes be.

Posted by poland at 01:26 PM | Comments (22)

Just For Debate

Mission: Impossible 3, Day 4

M:I3's Monday Continues To Match The Opening Weekend's Relative Pace Vs Previous Summer Openers With A $3.5m Monday... Same Day For Kingdom Of Heaven ($1.7m), Van Helsing ($4m), X2 ($6.5m), & Spider-Man ($11m)

Posted by poland at 12:40 PM | Comments (17)

May 08, 2006

Mission: Semantics

For some reason, this turn of phrase by Anne Thompson this morning in her Risky Blog

"Fact: The weekend numbers for Mission: Impossible: III were not what they should be."

This is probably a good test of how well you know how I think if you can figure out what word hit me funny...

"should"

We're going to be reading endless speculation about "what went wrong" for the next few days. And the answer will always be, as it has to be, opinion... gut reactions with some educated guessing. The pre-release tracking suggested women had fallen off the Cruise bandwagon, Paramount reacted with new ads (the ultimate confirmation), and fortunately for my blood pressure and Sony's Da Vinci push, Mr. Cruise is the whipping boy of the moment (let the media build you up and be prepared to be shredded as soon as you show vulnerability) and the only "slump" spin is coming from the ever-reliable New York Times, where Sharon Waxman, coincidentally, did her first box office story since King Kong was perceived as not opening as it should have.

But, “should.”

This is heart of where all the “theatrical is dead” writing is coming from as well. “Should.”

This is a business of marketing and launching dozens of individual products each year that have an average cost of more than $120 million apiece to produce and launch. Where did “should” come into it? It came in because people, whether studios, producers, or journalists, get used to the idea that there is a “should.”

It’s no different in sports, where being #2 is a failure, even if being #2 means great success against all but one competitor. “They should have won.”

History tells us that Mission: Impossible 3's opening will probably be somewhere around the 10th best of the year. “Should” it have been guaranteed a higher place?

It’s not about “should.” We create “should” by converting our hopes and expectations into standards. But that’s why they play the games. And that’s why we watch. But just expecting it does not make it so.

Of course, along with being so distracted by Tom Not As Terrific that no one (except Len Klady) is screaming “Slump 2,” people are letting the marketing campaign off the hook. And the simple reality is, when any movie doesn’t open to expectations, the culprit is the marketing campaign. When a movie opens above expectations, the culprit is the marketing campaign.

In this case, Tom Cruise was part of the marketing campaign as movie stars always are. One industry insider offered over the weekend, “They should have locked that loony up,” suggesting that the studio should have gone with less of their star since Cruise has become his own worst publicity enemy.

But I would go farther and suggest that the studio oversold and missold the movie – and this has nothing to do with my feelings about the quality of the movie - so that they had massive awareness and perhaps lost the interest of some of the people who might have otherwise gone to see the movie.

Think of how they sold The Longest Yard last summer. Did you feel as overwhelmed by the media push for that film as you did for M:I3? No. But the film opened to about the same number… and was even less inherently appealing to women. The studio probably invested about $50 million less in selling that movie as well. Of course, Sandler doesn’t sell overseas over much, so expectations were lower and the hyperactivity was reduced.

Look at Sony’s sell of Da Vinci Code. Is Tom Hanks selling the movie or is the movie selling Tom Hanks? It’s a balance. The challenge for that movie, in my opinion, is selling to younger audiences – audiences you need to cross the $150 million mark that Da Vinci hopes to cross before the end of Memorial Day weekend – while M:I3 was challenged by women.

There may well be a fall off in Cruise’s appeal to women, especially American women. But the movie wasn’t helping. They added Asian eye-candy (how they wrote her) to the team and a girlfriend/wife who didn’t have the brass of Jamie Lee Curtis in True Lies to sell to women. (Jim Cameron figured out how to pander to women in action movies better than any hardcore guy director ever.) Phil Hoffman became the Jamie Foxx of the film. That’s not hot. How does the marketing group avoid the Oscar wining villain? But will he sell any tickets? (Capote gross - $29 domestic, $18 million elsewhere) If you look at the M:I3 trailers from other countries… much less emphasis on Phil.

And of course, Hoffman is really a Bond-style villain here… not very physical… not a lot of screen time. So the ads, with him talking a lot, made the film look like Saw With Big Action Scenes. It was creepy and mean and threatening. And unlike the horror/thrillers that draw women/girls, there was a woman in jeopardy, but she was not taking action for herself, which is what seems to draw that young female audience. A beat with Michelle Monaghan “saving” Cruise with a wink might have been good for another $10 million at the box office this weekend.

And that is marketing constructing the audience. Cruise, weakened or not, was still good for a $40 million start. That is hardly embarrassing or “the end” of Cruise. But to get past that number, they had to sell something else. And they didn’t.

Next month, there is a real chance that I will be writing about some film that targeted too wide and missed their core. Just because I think M:I3 failed to expand its base doesn’t mean that expansive marketing is the best choice for every film. Every film has its own unique life. And we all have a tendency to be too glib about what one thing happened, good or bad. Success lets people off the hook too easily and failure gets narrowcast into a mantra.

“Should,” indeed.

Now... should we talk about the headline "Cruise Is No Longer Invulnerable?"

I'll just respond, Vanilla Sky ($203m ww), Minority Report ($358m ww) Collateral ($218m ww). All of these are successes in the end. But by Anne's standard of vulnerability, he's been vulnerable for a loooooong time.

Posted by poland at 10:43 AM | Comments (68)

May 07, 2006

Weekend Ouch-stimates - May 7

There are all kinds of stats to play with and even an anonymous e-mail on a gossipy website claiming that Scientologists bought hundreds of tickets in bulk at The Arclight here in L.A., suggesting more sold elsewhere as a plot to raise the Mission: Impossible 3 gross. (There actually is a sane explanation, if the sighting is true… lots of Scientologists here in the HQ city and a bulk buy much like that of a church for Passion of The Christ.) Of course, to have any real effect on a gross this large, there would have to be tens of thousands or really, hundreds of thousands of tickets bought towards that end. (Figure $1 million equals no fewer than 100,000 tickets… even on opening weekend with big city pricing.)

So let’s pick a few choice uglies. (And to be fair, let’s note that Klady’s estimate is $1.2 million lower than Box Office Mojo… though Klady is usually more accurate about North America, paying closer attention to Canada.)

Mission: Impossible launched to $45.4 in 1996. Mission: Impossible 2 opened to $57.8 million in 2000. Neither of these numbers makes this release look good. Both of those launches were on Memorial Day weekend.

On the other hand, the last six years of Summer’s Opening Day, as noted Friday, now looks like this:
2006 – Mission: Impossible 3 - $46.8 million (est) – WW Final ???
2005 - Kingdom of Heaven - $19,635,996 - WW Final - $212m
2004 - Van Helsing - $51,748,040 - WW Final - $300m
2003 - X2: X-Men United - $85,558,731 - WW Final - $406m
2002 - Spider-Man - $114,844,116 - WW Final - $822m
2001 - The Mummy Returns - $68,139,035 - WW Final - $433m

Dave Germain of the AP reports: “Debuting in about 55 other countries, "Mission: Impossible III" took in $70 million, for a worldwide total of $118 million. Paramount noted that the new movie beat the $115 million worldwide debut of "Mission: Impossible II" in those same countries.”

You can choose to believe Paramount’s numbers… or not. International box office remains a black hole for journalists and box office trackers like Box Office Mojo as well.

Piecing together what I can from stories here and yon, here are some of the best worldwide 3-day openings (LOTR, for instance, nearly doubled the number below over 5 days… the Wed opening also hamstrings Matrix Reloaded and Spider-Man 2).

Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azkaban - $180m
Matrix Reloaded - $172m
X-Men 2 - $155m
The Day After Tomorrow - $155m
Spider-Man 2 - $148m
Matrix Revolutions - $130m
Lord of The Rings: Return Of The King - $125.9m
Van Helsing - $107 million

So… even though Mission: Impossible 3 may have trumped M:I2 as a worldwide opening, worldwide openings have changed a lot on the years that have passed.

In any case, the opening is about a 25% lower than might have made the studio comfy. And unlike Kingdom of Heaven, which had no opening level stars - and shy leads for anyone paying attention... and period status to overcome - no one can really argue that Mission: Impregnable 3 (and Tom just had a baby in his third marriage... hmmm...) had a hard time getting attention as the season opener. Tom, Sari, Kate, JJ, Hypebeca… it has been endless for weeks.

And now, out come the brickbats. And next weekend, if Poseidon wins the weekend with, say, $30 million, the media (including Klady, who is already heading that way... even suggesting that DVD will somehow make up for a week theatrical start because people are more axiously waiitng for the DVD... which could not be more factually inaccurate) will start writing slump stories again… even though the year and the season will still be up from last year.

Thanks, Tom.

=================================

3-Day Estimates / Weekend / % Change / Cume
Mission: Impossible 3 / 46.8m / - / 46.8m
RV / 11.1m / -33% / 31.0m
Stick It / 5.6m / -48% / 18.0m
American Haunting / 5.4m / - / 5.4m
United 93 / 5.0m / -57% / 19.9m
Ice Age: Meltdown / 3.9m / -46% / 183.2m
Silent Hill / 3.9m / -59% / 40.8m
Scary Movie 4 / 3.4m / -56% / 83.4m
Akeelah and the Bee / 3.4m / -43% / 10.7m
Hoot / 3.3m / - / 3.3m

Posted by poland at 11:26 AM | Comments (68)

May 06, 2006

Friday Estimates - May 6

So… $53 million to $56 million is likely to be the final number for the weekend for M:I3… which is less than Paramount sees as their “less than that and we’re dead” number. Interestingly, Hot Bloggers seem more forgiving than the studio. Perhaps it’s because the Paramounters know the real cost of the film.

As per Friday’s entry, the opening will be the third best of the last six summer launchers, ahead of Kingdom of Heaven - which did much better overseas (10x domestic opening) than here, as is Tom Cruise’s expected trajectory – and barely ahead of Van Helsing (6x domestic opening). Given how small the domestic opening of KOH was, 10x opening was an easier feat. Based on this opening, I would expect MI:3 to do between $350 milllion and $400 million worldwide. But of course, that’s just a guess.

RV seems to have been helped by MI:3 as families looked for an alternative without explosions.

An American Haunting managed to find 1667 screens to open on, in spite of MI:3 eating about a quarter of all North American movie screens. But it may find even harder going as the weekend continues, probably not making it past $5 million for the weekend.

Hoot won’t find that. Big ouchie.

Perhaps the most significant number of the week for the industry is the number for the sixth weekend of Ice Age 2. It is now clear that the film will not make it to 3 times opening, which will be the worst multiple in WIDE RELEASE CG ANIMATION HISTORY! The only film that comes close is Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which is still far enough ahead by percentage that it will likely remain ahead of Ice Age 2.

The point is not to piss on Ice Age 2. The movie was, as I recall, as well reviewed as the original, if not better, and was certainly not beaten up the way a Robots or Shark Tale was. Yet, kids are done with it. And this is just with The Wild and The Benchwarmers coming up behind the film in the box office quadrant.

This is not a movie quality issue or a distraction issue. This is clearly the downside of the shortened window and the increasing perception of an even shorter window. Parents and perhaps even young kids are learning about the short window and choosing to wait. And here is one of the issues completely forgotten by day-n-date drum beaters… families aren’t NOT going to buy Ice Age 2 on DVD if they have to wait until August or September. This demo, more than any other, is purchase compulsive. As long as the kids are wearing out the DVD player, they will buy the six major family films every single year, no matter when they come out. At the same time, the films targeting young kids and their families have had the longest legs for year now. If you figure a CG animated hit at least 3.5 times opening, Ice Age 2 is down by about $35 million IN RENTALS… net that is, black gold, Texas tea. The DVD is going to make a lot of money and more money than the theatrical. But in whose interest is leaving $35 million on the table?

If you are a distributor with one of the six CG animated films coming out this summer, you should be shitting your pants over this number for Ice Age 2. Perhaps one of the films will break big. But even that film is sure to be hurt by competition, whether of quality or not. And more so, by the perception of the closing window.

=========================

Mission: Impossible 3 / 17.0 / - / 4054 / 17.0
RV / 2.8 / -38% / 3651 / 22.8
Stick It / 1.9 / -52% / 2044 / 14.4
An American Haunting / 1.9 / - / 1667 / 1.9
United 93 / 1.5 / -60% / 1819 / 16.3
Silent Hill / 1.2 / -60% / 2556 / 38.1
Scary Movie 4 / 1.1 / -56% / 2537 / 81.0
Hoot / 1.0 / - / 3018 / 1.0
Akeelah & the Bee / .09 / -47% / 2195 / 8.2
Ice Age: Meltdown / .09 / -48% / 2426 / 180.2

Also Debuting
The Promise / .07 / - / 213 / .07
Art School Confidential / .04 / - / 12 / .04
The Proposition / .009 / - / 3 / .009
Down in the Valley / .007 / - / 3 / .007

Posted by poland at 01:57 PM | Comments (44)

May 05, 2006

The Best News I Heard In San Francisco

Francis Ford Coppola is back from Eastern Europe and Walter Murch is hard at work cutting together FFC's first film in nine years, Youth Without Youth.

I don't know what the schedule for post-production is... maybe they'll try to get it ready in time for this year's award season... maybe they'll wait for Cannes next year. Either way, I am thrilled that The Man is back behind the camera. (Of course, this still hasn't kept him from expanding his winery business again...)

Posted by poland at 04:23 PM | Comments (26)

M:I3 Friday

So the release is here...after the Impossible Jump... after HypeBeca turned itself into a Cruise whorehouse with Al Roker as host... 0ver 4000 theaters with more than 8000 prints... etc, etc, etc...

Anyone want to venture a guess as to how it's going to do?

(I'm guessing you'll be high... and right now, it appears that $70m will qualify as way high.)

And tell us now, so you can't waffle tomorrow... how big does the number have to be before you start calling it a dissapointment?

And if it is a disapointment, who or what wil get your blame?

ADDED LATE -
THE LAST FIVE YEARS OF SUMMER OPENINGS
2005 - Kingdom of Heaven - $19,635,996 - WW Final - $212m
2004 - Van Helsing - $51,748,040 - WW Final - $300m
2003 - X2: X-Men United - $85,558,731 - WW Final - $406m
2002 - Spider-Man - $114,844,116 - WW Final - $822m
2001 - The Mummy Returns - $68,139,035 - WW Final - $433m

Posted by poland at 04:09 PM | Comments (57)

May 04, 2006

What I Meant...

I got a note this morning, from a journalism pro, suggesting that I had a beef with Paramount because in my 20 Weeks chart, I wrote about M:I3, "good reviews from traditional media are not a good sign."

Well, I have nothing against Paramount (after years of having a conflictual relationship, things are improving), but I still hold the point, as I suspect I will for other big, dumb action movies this summer. Many critics, when they smell money, tend to give a pass to mediocrity. It's just the way it is. No one wants to seem like a cranky old square.

To wit, Jami Bernard's review in the NY Daily News today. She closes:
"The plot makes no sense, and the emotional pull of Ethan's relationship is negligible. But logic and humanity would probably gum up the (fire)works. The "Mission: Impossible" template is about being resourceful, using gadgets in interesting ways to infiltrate the Vatican or swing Tarzan-like over the rooftops of Shanghai. The pangs of love can't give these guys - or their target audience - the same adrenaline rush. "

That is a 3 star review? Is she reviewing the movie, the "template," or teenaged boys?

Roger Ebert is probably a little too generous, but still, he gets down to it in his 2.5 star review:

"Either you want to see mindless action and computer-generated sequences executed with breakneck speed and technical precision, or you do not. I am getting to the point where I don't much care. There is a theory that action is exciting and dialogue is boring. My theory is that variety is exciting and sameness is boring. Modern high-tech action sequences are just the same damn thing over and over again: high-speed chases, desperate gun battles, all possible modes of transportation, falls from high places, deadly deadlines, exotic locations and characters who hardly ever say anything interesting.

I saw "M:I" and "M:I II" and gave them three-star ratings because they delivered precisely what they promised. But now I've been there, done that, and my hope for "M:I IV," if there is one, is that it self-destructs while mishandling the Anti-God Compound."

In the end, I think we all saw the same mediocre, uninspired movie. But critics seem to forget to review the movie and not the culture too often these days.

Posted by poland at 11:41 AM | Comments (71)

May 03, 2006

I Know It's Off Topic, But...

I feel kind of good about Moussaoui not getting killed by the country.

For me, it is a good sign that an American jury chose rational ideas over vengence.

Another good movie today at SFIFF... it is poorly retitled Seeds of Doubt, as opposed to the actual translation from the original German title, Consequential Damage. Did the title make it sound too much like a Schwarzenegger picture? Maybe.

The movie is about an Arab medical researcher living in Germany, happily married to a great woman, a good father too his young son. But what happens when people start getting paranoid about him in a post-9/11 world? Every small bump in the road is suddenly suspicious in a terrible way. And what if they are right about him?

And Silke Bodenbender... oy... she just turned 30 and if she can speak or learn to speak English, she is exactly what American filmmakers love and she can act well enough too... five years from now, of course, she will hit Actress Dead Zone in this country and will have to wait a decade before she can play mother to teen girls... but that's another column...

Posted by poland at 10:07 PM | Comments (14)

In SF

Another looooooong road day...

Anyone surprised by Gill exiting WIP - "The penguins saved him!" - must have also been surprised by Joe Roth formally announcing the end of Revolution Studios. Why does the news seem so old lately?

The new Superman Begins trailer strikes me as everything Bryan Singer avoided doing wrong in the X-Men movies... too much stuff, not enough character worth caring about.

I am fairly comfortable that positive reviews in both trades for M:I3 is a clear signal that the movie is mediocre.

More manana...

Posted by poland at 02:52 AM | Comments (75)

May 01, 2006

Evolution Of A Leak

The Casino Royale teaser trailer hit the web today in a way that defines the nature of the web and media in future.

As best as I can tell, the 60 second tease aired in France on a TV Network called M6 on a Saturday show called Cinesix. The show is not available on the web, nor is the trailer... not on the M6 site or any other French site.

However... someone taped/Tivo'd/burnt the 60 seconds off the TV and it's on YouTube as I type.

Showbiz, baby.

Not so bad for Sony... It looks a lot better than Mission:Impossible 3 to me...

(LATE ADD: And this see-it-before-it-dissapears trailer is another leak of some kind... looks like a vendor posted it to the web so the studio could see it and the address got out. It may not even be headed to theaters. But it is better than what they have now, in my opinion.)

Posted by poland at 05:28 PM | Comments (51)

A Straight Q&A

1. Do any of you actually care about Pellicano?

2. Do any of you you really think that $11 million, headed for $30 million max, for United 93 equals "We are ready for this film?" Is "ready" a real issue?

3. Do any of you care what Tom Cruise does with his penis or his soul if M:I3 is a kick as action film?

4. Does Robin Williams make you laugh in movies anymore?

5. Does anyone believe that the Page Six story about Lindsay Lohan walking in on Brett Ratner and his girlfiend, suggesting that Ratner has bedded Lohan and that his model girlfriend isn't just there for potential work, was placed by someone other than Mr. Ratner?

Posted by poland at 01:52 PM | Comments (29)