Movie Box Review

Deadline has early numbers for Saturday and the weekend, and there aren't any major surprises. PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 is overwhelming everything else in the market even after its expected big drop from Friday (which included $8M from Thursday midnight shows).  If the preliminary $18M Saturday number bears true, the movie will have a better Friday-to-Saturday hold than Paranormal 2 did, which would be impressive given the larger opening day.  For the weekend, the total could reach $55M .

THE THREE MUSKETEERS and JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN are comparatively dismal, with Musketeers hovering around $9M and English trying to reach $4M for the weekend.  

All the non-horror, non-BIG YEAR holdovers are strong, with drops in the 25-35% range.  

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updated numbers and boxoffice analysis.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 continues Paramount's license to print money--it'll soon be in profit even with worldwide marketing costs calculated in.  Yesterday will probably prove to be by far the biggest day of its front-loaded run, but at those prices, who cares?

Sometimes it's not about the marketing--it's about the movie.  It would be difficult, if not impossible, to find 30 seconds of the godawful THREE MUSKETEERS remake that could be cut into a promo that would make anyone want to see it.  The movie reportedly cost $90M, and even though Summit seems not to be on the hook for much of the production cost, they won't even recoup their prints and marketing expenses.  The best thing about this is that it should mean the sequel threatened in the final scene won't actually be made.

If not for relationship issues, Universal would probably have let JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN slip quietly to direct-to-homevideo in the US, since there was already plenty of evidence that Rowan Atkinson has no boxoffice appeal on American soil.  As it is, they gave it a stealth opening in only 1500 theatres and with little marketing behind it.  Now that it's over, they'll continue to pour cash into TOWER HEIST, opening in 2 weeks.

With the exception of horror movies THE THING and DREAM HOUSE, there was no competition for any of the holdovers, and they all did very well, with 20-30% weekend drops.  (Well, all but THE BIG YEAR, which continued to be a movie no one wanted to see.)  The free ride for the family movies, however, ends this week with Friday's arrival of PUSS IN BOOTS.

There was no audience for the G-rated sports movie THE MIGHTY MACS, which will be lucky to hit a $1K average in almost 1000 theatres.  Emilio Estevez's spiritual-themed THE WAY almost tripled its count and did passably, with about $1750 in each of 280 theatres.

Two excellent indies made their debuts this weekend with very different release strategies.  MARGIN CALL opened at a surprisingly wide 56 theatres, and is also available on VOD, meaning its theatrical numbers are only part of the picture (studios don't release their VOD figures).  Despite that, it's headed for a very impressive $10K per theatre, which puts it on track to be one of the relatively few VOD titles to also exceed $1M in theatre revenues.  Meanwhile, Fox Searchlight gave MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE a more conventional showcase opening in NY/LA only, and is headed for a superb $35K in each of its 4 theatres.  That's roughly the same per-screen as THE SKIN I LIVE IN had last week in 6, but as often happens, when that film expanded this weekend to 21 houses, its per-theatre number went down to a still-good $11K.

Halloween weekend is a soft one for teen business, due to all the social events the holiday brings with it, and consequently the only major opening on Friday is DreamWorks' Puss In Boots for the kiddies.  Fox's IN TIME features a host of young actors who are trying to prove they can carry an action movie (Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried, Olivia Wilde), and the studio is putting some marketing cash behind it.  RUM DIARY is getting a wide opening, but it's more like the kind of indie Johnny Depp used to make in his pre-Captain Jack Sparrow days.  Also, Sony will open the Shakespeare-themed ANONYMOUS in around 250 theatres, having backed off their wacky initial notion of opening it wide.

One final note:  whether for ego, relationship or contractual minimum guarantee reasons, Universal has been utterly determined to get COWBOYS & ALIENS to the $100M mark, leaving it in hundreds of theatres long after much bigger hits have gone away.  Well, mission accomplished!  The picture has scratched its way to the goal, so everyone associated with the movie can be very proud.

Based on Friday and Saturday box office (and estimated Sunday numbers), we have a photo finish for #1, with Real Steel in its second weekend probably edging opener Footloose.  As for the other openers, The Thing opened weakly, and The Big Year was a complete bomb.  After weeks of progress versus last year's box office, this weekend crashed 34% versus the same weekend last year, when Jackass 3-D opened with $50 million.       

It's anyone's guess who's going to walk away with this weekend's title, and probably the winner won't be clear until actual grosses are reported on Monday.  Deadline has updated numbers, and reports that REAL STEEL is in position to squeeze ahead of FOOTLOOSE for the weekend, due to an unimpressive 10% Saturday bump for Footloose.  If true, that will be a reflection of the front-loaded nature of most movies aimed primarily at the teen girl audience.

The rest of the results are pretty much as Friday's numbers indicated.  THE THING is headed for $8.5M, which would be dismal if "dismal" weren't truly defined by the $3.2M earned by THE BIG YEAR.  Holdovers were much stronger, with THE IDES OF MARCH, MONEYBALL and DOLPHIN TALE all declining around 30%, and 50/50 holding even better than that.  

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for more updated boxoffice and analysis all weekend.

FOOTLOOSE has the advantage of facing no new direct competition on Friday.  That, along with what should be fairly good word of mouth, could give it some legs in the marketplace.  THE THING, on the other hand, had a make-or-break weekend this week with PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 about to hit, and it's not going to do much better than DREAM HOUSE did 2 weeks ago.

THE BIG YEAR is far from an art-house curiosity--it's a (supposedly) commercial mainstream comedy, and yet it's going to go in the books as one of the lowest-grossing big-studio movies of the entire year.  It's astounding that the combined names of Steve Martin, Jack Black and Owen Wilson couldn't even get this to the level of "mediocre."

REAL STEEL had a very decent hold (the weekend title this week will boil down to today's battle for the Saturday matinee audience), but its important number will be the international gross tomorrow, since it has no chance of breaking even without a strong overseas performance.

THE IDES OF MARCH and 50/50 are models of how producers can make relatively serious movies on reasonable (i.e., low) budgets and--despite marginal international appeal--have a chance at seeing profit.  (MONEYBALL, which cost more than double the two of them combined, is more problematic.)  Of course, it helps that word of mouth on both pictures is obviously exceptional, with 50/50 getting The Help-level retention at a drop of only 25% from last week, and Ides not much worse.

In limited release, the unquestionable highlight is Pedro Almodovar's strange, compelling thriller THE SKIN I LIVE IN (don't let anyone tell you the 2d-act secret).  It's going to do a terrific $37K or so in each of 6 theatres, and has a chance of finding a wider audience.  The long-delayed FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN could do an OK $6500 in each of 5, while TEXAS KILLING FIELDS is headed for a blah $3500 in each of 3.

Next weekend is all about Paranormal Activity 3, which will be aiming at the $40M earned by Paranormal 2 in its debut.  The 3D THREE MUSKETEERS and JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN will be much less of a factor.  

What was expected to be a slow weekend at the boxoffice is proving to be exactly that.  The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary numbers for Friday, and they show FOOTLOOSE in the lead with $5.5M, heading for probably $17M or so for the weekend.  THE THING is way behind, with $3.5M for Friday that may not even bring it to $10M by Sunday, but those are blockbuster numbers compared to the woefully mistitled THE BIG YEAR, an utter disaster with $1.2M on Friday that may mean a $3M weekend.  

As is often the case when new releases fail to excite audiences, the holdovers are doing quite well.  REAL STEEL's second weekend decline should be in the low 40% range, and the movie should be right behind Footloose for the weekend with around $16M, while THE IDES OF MARCH may go down less than 30% for a $7.5M weekend.  DOLPHIN TALE and MONEYBALL may also decline around 30%, while 50/50 seems to be headed for a superb hold, down only around 20% from last week.  

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY all weekend for updated boxoffice numbers and analysis.

THE BIG YEAR:  Watch It At Home - Very Small Pleasures

THE BIG YEAR is an amiable, good-natured comedy that's so insubstantial it seems to fly out of your memory even as you're watching it.  If it had been a low-budgeted indie that turned up at a film festival, it might have felt like a tiny delight, but with a big-studio sheen and the combined talents of Steve Martin, Jack Black, Owen Wilson, and director David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) involved, it all feels a little like a waste.

The subject is birding, where a "Big Year" is what the enthusiast can claim who manages to see more species of birds than anyone else that year.   There's no prize, cash or otherwise, apart from a bit of notoreity within the birding community, and of course the satisfaction of being the winner.  (This is all inspired by a real event:  Howard Franklin's script is based on the nonfiction book by Mark Obmascik.)  Having a Big Year isn't easy:  by definition, it involves almost 365 days of nonstop travel, seeking out the birds as they appear anywhere in the US.  Our 3 protagonists all seek the title for their own reasons.  Stu Preissler (Martin) has been a hard-driving businessman all his life; now that he's retired, he can finally devote his efforts--and wealth--to accomplishing his Big Year.  Kenny Bostick (Wilson) has won the title before, ruining his first marriage, and he's grimly determined to do it again, despite growing tensions with his new wife (Rosamund Pike).  And Brad Harris (Black)'s whole life has been a disappointment; he's decided that completing a Big Year is where he'll make his stand and finally score a victory.

We follow all of them as they crisscross the nation, up to and including Alaska, following every rumor, flying and driving and tramping every terrain, looking for the rarest of birds and, as they gradually discover who their competition is, trying to gain advantages.  It's sort of a very low-key, almost New Age version of a Cannonball Run concept, but this time the rivals are genial practically all the time.  Franklin's script has plenty of amusing incident, and story arcs for all the leads (when Brad sights a lovely birder played by Rashida Jones, you can bet she'll be back before the year ends).  There's the occasional show of selfishness by one character or another, but it's always mild, and often regretted afterward.

As a result, The Big Year is perfectly pleasant without being memorable in any way.  Black and Martiin's characters bond, and the two of them make a nice pair together.  Martin, at this point, is an ultimate smoothie in this kind of role, and Black subdues his usual frenzy quite a bit.  Wilson isn't ideally cast as the most driven of the competitors (he had worked with Frankel on Marley & Me); his general laid-back persona removes most of the threat from even the most underhanded of Kenny's tactics.  The other very fine performers who turn up in smaller roles include Kevin Pollak, Joel McHale, Anjelica Huston, JoBeth Williams, Brian Dennehy, Dianne Wiest, Anthony Anderson, Jim Parsons, and Tim Blake Nelson.

Although there's some silliness in the storyline, Frankel modulates the tone most of the time to the same reasonably effective low-key level.  Visually, the film is unimpressive:  there are some nice scenic expanses shot by cinematographer Lawrence Sher, but the interiors look like the soundstages they are.  The other technical credits are very conventional.  

The Big Year isn't well-observed enough to be more than an ordinary Hollywood comedy, and while modesty can be a virtue, this wasn't necessarily the place for it.  Unlike its protagonists, the movie doesn't have that core of inspired madness that it takes to accomplish a crazy goal.

This weekend looks to be very weak.  The projected total volume of $85 million would be down 29% versus the same weekend last year (when Jackass 3-D opened to a staggering $50 million) and down 18% from the average comparable weekend the last four years.  It's lazy remake weekend starting Friday, with two of the three openers retreads.  Footloose will battle the second weekend of Real Steel for the top spot of a surprisingly soft weekend. 

REAL STEEL had a nice Saturday bump of 27%, but that's far lower than the 40% it was initially claiming (and only 4% higher than the one for Ides of March, which is decidedly not a family matinee movie).  The picture could benefit, though, from some additional matinee business on Columbus Day tomorrow.  Also helping out is the limited competition it'll face over the next couple of weeks, with Footloose aiming at a slightly older audience and Johnny English Reborn and The Three Musketeers not likely to be major boxoffice factors.  (That good luck runs out on October 28, when Puss in Boots opens.)  Still, the picture is unlikely to reach 9 figures in the US, which means its ultimate success will rest on overseas business.  The movie is rolling out gradually worldwide, and started with a good $22M this weekend in 19 territories, only 3 of which are major (Russia, Mexico and Australia).  

Even though they're in different genres, THE IDES OF MARCH will have competition next weekend from The Big Year for the older audience.  Since international markets aren't likely to be very interested in a story of US politics, the film will need to linger in domestic theatres for several weeks in order to hit a profit.

DOLPHIN TALE and MONEYBALL may end up in more or less the same place with their final US grosses (Moneyball making up midweek what it loses to Dolphin on the weekends), but Dolphin is in far better shape financially, as it cost about 25% less to produce (and probably also somewhat less to market), and has a brighter outlook internationally thanks to the overseas romance with 3D family movies. 

Cinemascoristas, please note:  the much-vaunted, "rarely-given" A+ rating that COURAGEOUS won bought it a thoroughly routine 50% drop in its second weekend, far less impressive than 50/50's and not even as good as the holds for the mostly-reviled DREAM HOUSE and WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER?  As of now, it doesn't appear the movie will even reach the $33M total that its faith-based stablemate Fireproof did last year.

In limited release, one has to give a little revolted credit to THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, which managed $3K in each of 18 theatres playing only midnight shows.  That's better than DIRTY GIRL will average at 9 playing a full schedule.  THE WAY did an OK $4K in each of 33, as did THE WOMEN ON THE SIXTH FLOOR in each of 6.  It wasn't a good weekend for expansions, as MACHINE GUN PREACHER fell to a $1200 average in each of 93, WEEKEND to $4K in each of 14, and TAKE SHELTER to $5K in each of 11.