The Hot Blog

Pathetic theater average for Tenacious D, at least The Fountain had a leveled average.

Really wanted to see The Prestige make it to $55M, but The Departed still has a shot at $120M.

The Queen & Santa Clause 3 are the most promising rises of the weekend. SC3 may even top Borat for the weekend.

Casino Royale's second weekend is nearly equal to Die Another Day's. The coast is clear for it's legs now that Deja Vu is out and about.

David, I have more problems than I want to trying to sign into your blog. I always enter the correct user name & password and then get a screen that asks me to share my email. No difference, if I click yes/no I don't get access. It's a lousy sign-in identification service. Maybe a php message board would be better. Anyway, can you just enter this comment into the Blog, because I cannot:

Hard to believe that Casino Royale cost $150M. I sometimes wonder how and where Boxofficemojo gets its information. Craig's salary was reported at $1.5M but with endorsement tie-ins in the U.S. and Europe he's going to clean up; plus isn't there a James Bond "video" game with his likeness? That should be a nice haul right there. I'm sure Dench didn't get the gold, so where did the $150M expenses go?

L. Wright

I'm having no problem signing in.

I doubt Casino Royale cost as much as $150m, but remember that location shooting is very expensive.

Wasn't there a fire at the Bond studio? Surely that added to the budget as they would have had to rebuild whatever sets were destroyed, along with the resulting production delays.

I dunno, i get the feeling like $150 mill is now the standard fare for an A-list Hollywood action production. Bond does tend to score a lot of product placements though, so $130 may be closer to the actual.

LA Times said that it has $150-million production cost.

Futmore, its worldwide marketing budgetis $120-million.

The fire hit after production was completed.

Umm.. not really much to discuss. It's interesting seeing Happy Feet and Casino Royale stick so close to each other.

Casino Royale should catch up this coming week, though I'll be curious if it can beat Nativity Story on Friday...probably not.

Really? Nativity Story is tracking well? I guess the Christian audience really will swallow anything.

On the Thursday Casino Royale was beating Happy Feet in terms of total gross, so it's obviously playing catchups during the week. But how much longer can they do that before Happy Feet pulls forward.

I still love that Keisha Castle-Hughes is, very unmiraculously, preggers. That's one marketing hook they weren't gonna use.

I don't think there's any question that Happy Feet will eventually outgross CR. "Family friendly" films almost always end up with a higher multiplyer of opening weekend/eventual gross than actions films. Even a hugely well received action flick like Bourne Supremacy ended up with "only" a multiplyer of 3.88, while a "disappointing" Pixar film that nobody I know seemed to like all that much ended up with a multiplyer of 4.06.

However, I'm quite optimistic that CR will end up outgrossing DAD, if only slightly.

I'm guessing about $190-210m for HF, and about $165-175m for CR.

"Really? Nativity Story is tracking well? I guess the Christian audience really will swallow anything."

Damn Christians! They should be happy with their Shortbus and their Tenacious D and keep their mouths shut like the rest of us.

You tell those damn Christians where to go Jeff!

The "disappointing" Pixar film is of course Cars. Don't know how the name got left out of my post. But I guess all of you already knew what I meant.

As for the Nativity story. It looks so unbelievably bad that I cannot believe it's tracking well. Christian or not, a movie should at least look interesting to have a high interest level.

Nicol, you yourself said The Nativity Story looked shoddy and like something made crassly by unbelievers out to cash in on a trend.

I don't know what Shortbus (which is actually quite good) or Tenacious D have to do with anything.

Forget it jeff. Obviously everything you say is anti-Christian, regardless of what the topic is. Everyone is always out to get the Christians here. It's all a conspiracy.

Perhaps it's just me, but I didn't like Happy Feet. It was the ending that ruined it for me. As for Casino Royale, WOW, loved it. But I can see why Happy Feet is outgrossing 007. Plus, it's the holidays and there are not many holiday movies to see. However, here in Bangkok, people aren't excited over Happy Feet at all. I was the only one with another person at the show I went on Sat at around 7 pm. Casino Royale had a lot of people though. I hear it's doing well oversees and it's certainly doing really well in Thailand.

Stella's Boy, you're not supposed to refer to the conspiracy in public. Now THEY know!

I see Jeff flushed Nicol out of the brush. I was beginning to worry about him.

Jeff, I liked Shortbus too, but did you think it bogged down near the end with all that overbaked pseudo-gravitas? I think JCM is a natural filmmaker, but I'm not sure he knows how to end a movie. Hedwig had the same problem for me. He just has to rain on his own parade.

I agree that Shortbus went a little overboard into melodrama, and the end song went on a little longer than necessary, but at the same time I enjoyed the insanity of the conclusion.

I dont think CASINO ROYALE cost 150mil. Where did all the money go? To marketing costs? Because its not on screen.

And I'm fairly sure the people going to see NATIVITY STORY don't really care about tracking or reviews or anything. They want to see the movie. For whatever reason. Im sure its a little more than "Christians swallowing" it. Just like who's going to see DECK THE HALLS. Most people who buy tickets dont really care.

It looks like utter swine but that doesnt stop a large market from seeing it. If NATIVITY STORY gets shoddy reviews and cracks 120million than you can lump all Christians into a group for being suckers.

However much they spent on Casino Royale, a lot more of it is on the screen than in, say, Superman Returns.

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)

URL:
Remember me? YesNo

Comments: