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Showing posts with label disney. Show all posts

WEEKEND STUDIO ESTIMATES March 9-11

9:26 AM | Labels: , , , , , , ,

The weekend studio estimates (based on Friday and Saturday actuals and projections for Sunday) are coming in slightly stronger than the weekend numbers posted yesterday (based on Friday actuals only).  The box office volume for the top 12 films is now looking like a decent $123 million for the weekend, up 4% from last year's weekend and up 10% from the weekend's average for the past four years.  Disney is claiming John Carter will finish the weekend with $30.6 million.  Let's all play pretend and give Disney the pleasure of 24 hours of thinking they crossed the $30 million threshold for the opening weekend.  This seems like a classic case of "rounding up" on Sunday morning to make an opening number seem a little better, but it doesn't change the fact that John Carter is going to be a catastrophe financially: maybe $75 million domestic and $125 million overseas for $200 million worldwide.  Less the theater owners' portion and adding in ancillary revenues like home video, video on demand, TV rights and so on, the studio might keep around $200 million versus a massive $400+ million expenditure on production and marketing. 


The ShowbuzzDaily Domestic Final estimates now show that the films opening wide this weekend are headed for: John Carter ($75 million), Silent House ($13 million) and A Thousand Words ($11 million). 

The second week movies:  Dr. Seuss' The Lorax ($220 million, adjusted down slightly) and Project X ($67 million, steady).

The third week movies:  Act of Valor ($73 million, adjusted back down slightly), Tyler Perry's Good Deeds ($35 million, adjusted down slightly), Wanderlust ($20 million, down slightly) and Gone ($12 million, steady).    



March 9-11                          Wknd     vs     Showbuzz
(millions)                         Studio   Last    Domestic
                                    Proj.   Wknd     Final* 
The Lorax                 (Uni)     $39.1   -44%      $220-
John Carter               (Dis)     $30.6             $ 75
Project X                  (WB)     $11.6   -45%      $ 67
Silent House        (Open Road)     $ 7.0             $ 13
Act of Valor              (Rel)     $ 7.0   -48%      $ 73-
A Thousand Words          (Par)     $ 6.4             $ 11
Safe House                (Uni)     $ 4.9   -33%      $130
The Vow                  (Sony)     $ 4.0   -33%      $129
This Means War            (Fox)     $ 3.7   -33%      $ 53
Journey 2 Myster. Island   (WB)     $ 3.7   -44%      $102 
Tyler Perry's Good Deeds   (LG)     $ 3.0   -57%      $ 35-
The Artist               (Wein)     $ 2.3   -36%      $ 50



Total Box Office Volume 

The Top 12 Films this weekend are looking like a decent $123 million total Friday-Sunday, up 4% from the same calendar weekend last year and up 10% from the more typical volume for this weekend in other years.            

Top 12 Films: Weekend #10


     Volume    Movies Opening Each Weekend (millions)
2012  $123  John Carter $31, Silent House $7, 1000 Words $6
2011  $118  Battle LA $36, Red Riding Hood $14 Mars Needs Moms $7
2010  $136  Green Zone $14, She's Out My League $10
2009  $ 88  Race to Witch Mountain $24, Last House Left $14
2008  $106  Horton Hears a Who $45, Never Back Down $9
2008-11
Avg   $112





Next Weekend            
 
Opening wide next weekend are 21 Jump Street from Sony starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum.  This film will be compared to Limitless ($18.9 million opening weekend), The Lincoln Lawyer ($13.2 million) and Paul ($13.0 million).

Check back later today for our update on international grosses.

###

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THE SHOWBUZZDAILY REVIEW: "John Carter"

3:58 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , , ,




JOHN CARTER:  Watch It At Home - Never Goes Into Orbit

All signs suggest that JOHN CARTER will be a financial failure of historic proportions, mostly because of its colossal cost (Disney admits to $250M, which almost certainly means close to $300M when reshoots and last-minute CG are included--and that doesn't count the $100-150M of a big-time global marketing campaign).  It would be fun to pile on and lambaste the movie as an embarrassing fiasco, or alternatively to be contrarian and point to it as an overlooked, underrated pop masterpiece, but the truth is much more tedious:  it's just a mediocre time-waster that happened to cost a ton of money.


John Carter may run short in some areas, but no one can accuse it of lacking plot.  The script by director Andrew Stanton, Mark Andrews and (separately) novelist Michael Chabon is based on the novel "Princess of Mars" by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and it incorporates Burroughs himself (Daryl Sabara) into an elaborate framing device, in which he's a young relative of Carter's (Taylor Kitsch), summoned home after Carter's sudden death in 1881.  The story is instantly fishy--Carter's body is in a tomb that's been specially rigged to open only from the inside--although we have to wait for the end of the movie for it to pay off.    

Meanwhile, Burroughs reads the journal Carter left for him (cue the voice-over narration), and the main body of the story begins.  Carter, a former Confederate soldier, was prospecting for gold--and had actually found a lot of it--in 1868 when he was dragooned by an evil Army officer (Bryan Cranston) into fighting Native Americans.  He goes exploring in a cave where he happens to touch a magic crystal just as the mysterious, dying other inhabitant of the cave finishes saying some magic words, and instantly finds himself--

On Mars, of course,  Or Barsoom, which he discovers is the natives' name for the planet.  (Earth is Jarsoom, in case you were wondering.)  Where Carter, thanks to lower gravity and different bone density, can leap whole buildings in a single bound (or two at most).  He finds himself embroiled in a war between 3 factions of the natives:  the green 4-armed warrior Tharks (CG creations with the voices of Willem Dafoe as their leader and Samantha Morton as his daughter); the humanoid Heliums, led by King Tardos Mos (Ciaran Hinds) and his daughter, Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins), who's a scientist the way Denise Richards was a nuclear expert in The World Is Not Enough; and the bad-guy Zodangas, whose leader Sab Than (Dominic West) wants to destroy the Tharks and Heliums or marry Dejah, whichever comes first.  Actually, the real villains are the non-Martian (I think) Therns, who are led by Matai Shang (Mark Strong), and who are meaner versions of the Watchers from Fringe who can change identity at will and feed off warfare and planetary destruction (don't ask).  Oh, and there's a friendly giant hippopotamus/dog creature who seems to have wandered in from one of Stanton's Pixar movies and likes to lick Carter's face and rescue him.

You can appreciate the ambitions of Stanton and his team--they were honestly trying to tell an epic story much classier than, say, Prince of Egypt--but the narrative is overlong, tiresome and uninvolving.  The script is loaded with one howler line of dialogue after another (even after Carter has sipped a magic potion that enables him to understand and speak Martian, all the characters sound like they're being translated from the Tharkan).  Stanton doesn't seem to want to acknowledge how silly all this is, and playing it straight just makes the movie even campier than it had to be.

There are fine actors in the cast, but Stanton, whose first live-action movie this is, handles them badly--the Burroughs books were an acknowledged influence on the Star Wars movies, and Stanton seems have absorbed that in the worst possible way, drawing clunky, flat line-readings from almost all his performers.  (That's not what you're supposed to steal from George Lucas, man!)  Kitsch can act, we know that from Friday Night Lights, but his low-key, naturalistic strengths don't lend themselves at all to big-scale action-movie performing, and he and Collins couldn't have less chemistry (Kitsch only seems comfortable acting with the 4-armed green Tharks).  As the villains, Strong and West both look like they're mentally on their respective bank websites, paying some bills.

Stanton has achieved some CG feats:  the Tharks are wonderfully done, and there are Martian landscapes with genuine grandeur (of course, these are the parts of the movie most akin to the animation world from which Stanton comes).  The action sequences, though, are a mess, confusingly edited and mistaking rushing for rousing.  

John Carter isn't a shameful failure; it's just a failure.  It's Disney and not the filmmakers that has to take the blame for the size of the hole the movie going to make in the studio's earnings.


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THE BIJOU REVIEW: "The Muppets"

2:51 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , ,



THE MUPPETS:  Watch It At Home - Nonstop Cuteness
 
When it was announced that Disney's new movie of THE MUPPETS (the Mouse House bought the entire franchise from Jim Henson's company some years ago) was going to be written by Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller, previously behind Forgetting Sarah Marshall (and Stoller also directed Get Him To the Greek), and directed by James Bobin of Da Ali G Show and Flight Of the Conchords, the prospect of a reboot both fun and a little bit subversive was tantalizing.  Perhaps those old felt darlings could come back to life, kick-started in the way Ron Moore had given new life to Battlestar Galactica or Chris Nolan to Batman (except, you know, a little less viciously dark).  A Muppets that was looser and more improvisational, yet still with enough wholesomeness for the entire family.

What The Muppets is instead is... a Muppets movie.  Which is absolutely fine for the 7-year old goofball in all of us, but a little lame if you were hoping for more.  


Segel and Stoller have smartly approached the comeback of the Muppets with a story about the fuzzy crew needing exactly such a comeback.  In the story, the Muppets have mostly gone their separate ways:  Kermit still lives in their now disapidated mansion, but Miss Piggy has become a fashion editor, Fozzy performs in a Muppet tribute band, and so on.  When evil zillionaire Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) plans to seize the land of the old Muppet Studios for the oil beneath it, the Muppets can only regain control by, darn it, getting back together and putting on a show.  

The hokiness of all this, of course, is deliberate, and perfectly in keeping with Muppet tradition.  Where things go more than a little overboard is with the introduction of the major new characters:  human Gary (Segel) and his Muppet brother Walter (the story of how that came about would probably have been more interesting than this movie), as well as Gary's longtime girlfriend Mary (Amy Adams), who naturally only exists in order to long for Gary to propose to her.  (Lest we worry that Gary and Walter share a man-felt love that truly dare not speak its name.)  When the three of them go on a trip to Hollywood, they become the catalysts for the Muppet reunion.  These three characters are so aw-shucks sweet and laboriously naive that the Muppets themselves seem like Quentin Tarantino characters in comparison.  Despite some bright songs (especially one for Gary and Walter by Bret McKenzie, also of Conchords, that's probably the highlight of the entire movie), the three are all utterly one-dimensional and tiresome, without enough wit to be self-parodies.  That's particularly disappointing in Adams' case, because in Enchanted she did such a wonderful job of both embodying and satirizing family musical conventions at once, while Segel is just dull.  Bobin's direction, conservative throughout, lets these scenes play out in broad sit-com style.

That doesn't mean there's no fun to be had at The Muppets.  For one thing, the return of the lovable Muppets themselves is certainly welcome, even though it's odd not to hear Jim Henson's and Frank Oz's voices coming from Kermit and Piggy (it's the same feeling you get watching one of the modern day Looney Toons shorts that don't have Mel Blanc's legendary vocals).  There are also some clever celebrity cameos, like Emily Blunt as Piggy's assistant and Zach Galifianakis as a member of the show audience.  (And also more than a few utter throwaways, like appearances by Selena Gomez and Modern Family's Rico Rodriguez.)  Chris Cooper even gets to rap, quite possibly the last thing anyone ever expected to see him do on screen.

The Muppets is harmless and mildly enjoyable, with the emphasis on "mild."  It's the anti-Hugo:  one may be too Tiffany for many kids, while the other is a little too happy to be Wal-Mart.

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THE BIJOU REVIEW: "Real Steel"

3:57 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , , ,

REAL STEEL:  Watch It At Home - The Word is "Clunky"

REAL STEEL wants to be loved so much, it practically walks the audience members to their cars and offers to give them all a lift home.  And yet, the packed house I saw it with could only offer the movie a smattering of applause at the end, and no cheers at all for its supposedly titanic robot-vs-robot bouts.  That's the price the picture bears for being assembled out of a crate of movie spare parts.

In John Gatins's script (from an earlier incarnation credited to Dan Gilroy and Jeremy Leven, and based originally on a Richard Matheson short story), the time is very slightly in the future, which looks exactly like the present except that boxers have been replaced by giant mechanical robots who can fight endlessly and be repaired (usually) when their Rock-em-Sock-em pieces are knocked off.  The robots are "trained" by humans, one of whom is Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman).  Charlie is a figure out of a thousand movies:  an ex-boxer himself, he owes money everywhere, is completely irresponsible, especially to the sweet-yet-tough gym owner (Evangline Lilly) who loves him but knows she can't count on him, and still nourishes dreams of the big time.


Years earlier, Charlie had abandoned his wife and young son for his life on the road, and as Real Steel begins, he finds out that his ex-wife has died, and if he'll just sign the proper papers, his very rich ex-sister-in-law (Hope Davis, in a truly thankless role) and her tycoon hubby (James Rebhorn) will adopt the boy.  Charlie is happy enough to go along, in exchange for enough cash to buy a new robot.  BUT, because the wealthy brother-in-law wants an untroubled vacation in Tuscany, first Charlie will have to take in young Max (Dakota Goyo) for the summer.  Naturally, the two of them are unwilling companions at first; naturally, when Charlie's expensive new robot is blown up due to Charlie's greed, it's Max who finds Atom, a rusting wreck of a 'bot who can take a punch but has no skills; naturally, a reluctant Charlie is talked into training Atom; naturally, Atom begins to win.  And did I mention that early on, we're told that the number one unbeaten robot boxer in the world is Zeus, who's owned by a refugee from an episode of Nikita (Olga Fonda, I guess one of the lesser known Fondas) and trained by the sinister Tak Mashido (Karl Yune)?

All the cliches that were assembled to make Real Steel wouldn't be such a problem if the movie at least had some fun with them, but the picture is painfully earnest and undeveloped (Zeus's evil team doesn't even get to do anything dastardly).  The gradually thawing relationship between Charlie and Max follows its predetermined path (omigosh, what will happen when Max finds out Charlie took money in exchange for giving up custody?), as Charlie gains principles and becomes a better human being.  Even though the movie's entire reason for existing is that its fighters are made of metal instead of flesh, the fights themselves follow exactly the rules that go back (at least) to Sylvester Stallone 35 years ago:  our hero must take an unbelievable amount of punishment for round after round ("No one can survive this!"), until finally the feared opponent tires him/itself out, and that's when the hero has one shot, just one shot, to score a stunning knockout.  

Gatins' s script is completely uninspired, and the best that can be said about Shawn Levy's direction is that it isn't as egregious as the work he's done on sappy comedies like Cheaper By the Dozen and the Steve Martin Pink Panther remake.  His Night at the Museum pictures weren't classics, but at least they made some clever use of their gimmicks; this one is just loud, and it wears its sentimentality too much on its sleeve.  (The movie was produced by DreamWorks, and like a lot of movies and TV shows produced but not directed by Steven Spielberg, it often feels like a wannabe Spielberg picture.)

There are a lot of capable actors in this thing, none of them at their best.  Jackman just coasts on his star power, and Goyo's performance screams "child actor."  The robots do better, and there's some very effective melding of actual animatronic machinery with CG animation.  The picture has an A-list cinematographer in Mauro Fiore of Avatar, and Danny Elfman supplied the rousing score, so it all looks and sounds impeccable; however none of that can make it any less empty.

Real Steel is inoffensive, and it'll please some people and make some money (although it may well need foreign revenues to pay for its enormous cost).  It's an example, though, of that increasing Hollywood phenomenon:  an imaginative idea filmed with no imagination at all.
 

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PATHWAY TO PROFITABILITY -- The Studio View

5:35 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,

At ShowBuzzDaily we look at the movie year in three parts: the soft Winter/Spring year-part from January through April, the strong Summer season from May-August, and the slow-starting but soon sizzling Fall/ Holiday season from September through December.  With the Summer season over, it is a good time to take stock of the year so far. 

The chart below summarizes the distribution of all wide-releases films in 2011 (between January and August) according to Worldwide box office revenue.  As we saw last week, the film business is heavily weighted toward strikeouts with a few homeruns and triples.  The ten films in the top two categories in the table are guaranteed huge profits, while the 40 films in the bottom two categories are sure to burn through a lot of cash.


                 Distribution of 2011 Films (through Sep 4)

                        #      (average - millions $)      Ovrseas
                      Films Worldwide  Domestic  Overseas  Multiple
Mega-hit ($750M+)        3    $1157      $325      $833     2.6
         ($400M-$749M)   7     $536      $183      $352     1.9
         ($200M-$399M)  11     $263      $129      $134     1.0
         ($100M-$199M)  15     $148       $83       $64     0.8
         ($75M-$99M)    15      $88       $41       $48     1.2
         ($35M-$74M)    18      $50       $38       $12     0.3
Bomb     ($0-$34M)      22      $21       $17        $4     0.2

A note on reading the chart above.  A total of 15 films this year have grossed between $75 and $99 million worldwide this year.  The average film in this group has averaged $88 million worldwide, with $41 million domestic and $48 million overseas.  (The numbers do not always add up because of rounding error.)  The 1.2 Overseas Multiple indicates films in this category do slightly better outside North America than in it.  In contrast, the 18 films in the $35-74 million group do about the same as $75-99 million films domestically but have virtually no overseas revenue (a 0.2 Overseas Multiple). 

Of course, the chart above looks at Hollywood as a whole, and does not take into account the fierce competition between the six major studios.  The chart below does just that by counting the number of films in each worldwide revenue category for each studio's slate so far in 2011.  Read on to see how each studio stacks up.  


                 Distribution of 2011 Films by Studio

                             DIS   FOX   PAR   SON   UNI   WB
Mega-hit ($750M+)             1     0     1     0     0     1 
         ($400M-$749M)        1     1     2     1     1     1
         ($200M-$399M)        0     2     3     4     1     1
         ($100M-$199M)        3     2     1     1     3     3
         ($75M-$99M)          0     1     1     2     2     5
         ($35M-$74M)          1     1     0     4     4     2
Bomb     ($0-$34M)            4     2     0     2     1     0

DISNEY -- The Mouse House has become a punching bag and a target for industry gossip of late.  At least one of the six majors has to be under-performing, struggling operation.  Kind of like how NBC is treated in the press, with "perennially fourth-place" always preceding the network's name.  As you can see, Disney has the highest number of films in the bottom ("Bomb") category.  Although it has three films in the $100s of millions worldwide, these films are just barely profitable or not profitable at all if the production budgets approach $100 million.  Most important, although Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides made it into the top category and Cars 2 landed in the strong second category, there are NO Disney titles in the $200-399 million range, a category that separates winners from losers during the year.

FOX -- 20th Century Fox had a fairly stable year so far, with an even distribution of films.  No mega-hits, but three films in the next two categories and limited number (three) in the bottom two categories.  

PARAMOUNT -- The Melrose studio has the best distribution of the six majors so far this year, thanks to some strong output from DreamWorks.  A mega-hit in the latest Transformers, as well as Kung Fu Panda and Thor in the second category.  What's most interesting for Paramount this year is the utter lack of bombs in the bottom two categories.  Zero.  But we still have a third of the year to go for things to even out.  But still, regardless of where the films came from or what the complicated co-financing deals were, this is a pretty good performance.

SONY -- The Culver City studio has released the most films so far this year (14 versus a low of 8 for Paramount), and it has the most sitting in the bottom two categories.  If there is a silver lining, more Sony clunkers broke $35 million than fell below that level, but that's a pretty lame compliment.  Although Sony managed to place four films in the $200-399 million tier, it only has one (The Smurfs) in the upper two categories (and it just barely makes it).  A disappointing but not disastrous showing.

UNIVERSAL -- Then there's Universal.  Not suffering quite the amount of abuse as Disney in the trades and gossip mill, its 2011 slate is heavily weighted toward the bottom end of the chart.  Only two Universal films (Fast Five and Bridesmaids) occupy the top THREE categories.  The rest of the slate is packed in the lower- to lower-middle categories.  With Comcast pulling the plug on many expensive projects, it will be interesting to see if a singles or doubles approach can really change its profile.  One doesn't want to spend money wildly on every project, but sometimes an expensive swing-for-the fences project or two will actually result in more homeruns to finance the inevitable mistakes.

WARNER BROTHERS -- Other than the final Harry Potter (and that is one BIG exception to make, I grant you), a rather quiet year so far for Warners.  Avoiding bombs very well, most of the slate, however, lands in that region where it is tough to make a profit.  But, of yeah, it had Harry Potter, and that covers up a lot of mediocrity. 

Of course, a movie's production budget has an incredible impact on profitability.  After all, profits (such as the are counted by creative Hollywood accounting rules) are based on a film by film basis and not arbitrary category averages.  For example, two films in the third category ($200-399 million worldwide) are near each other on the worldwide revenue ranking but worlds apart in terms of profit.  Bridesmaids is sitting at $281 million worldwide ($168 million domestic and $113 overseas), while Captain America: The First Avenger is at $339 million worldwide ($175 million domestic and $165 overseas).  The two films have similar domestic grosses but the international advantage clearly goes to Captain America.  However, which film is more profitable?  Bridesmaids was reportedly made for under $50 million, while Captain America was produced for at least $150 million and probably closer to $200 million.  Both films probably had between $75 and $100 million in worldwide marketing costs.  Nonetheless, Bridesmaids has the clear profit advantage, given its comedy genre and lack of special effects.  

We will look closer at film by film profitability in coming weeks (using close but not precise estimates of production budgets), but think of our studio scorecard as a 30,000 foot overview of the Hollywood landscape.  

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THE BIJOU REVIEW: "Fright Night"

12:07 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

 

FRIGHT NIGHT - Watch It At Home:  At Least Farrell Had Fun

The new remake of Tom Holland's 1985 FRIGHT NIGHT has a great set of credentials.  Craig Gillespie, the director, was behind the well-regarded indie Lars and the Real Girl, and has since been house director of United States of Tara for Showtime.  The cast includes Anton Yelchin, about to make a big splash in the wonderful Sundance prize-winner Like Crazy, along with Colin Farrell, the very talented young British actress Imogen Poots, David Tennant, and Gillespie's Tara star Toni Collette.  And most notably, the new script is by Marti Noxon, who cut her--sorry--teeth on the classic Buffy the Vampire Slayer and has since worked on shows like Angel, Mad Men and Grey's Anatomy.


And with all that, mostly it's just another crappy horror movie with a supposed comic edge. Holland's picture (which grossed only $25M in 1985, so this is hardly a grab for the riches of a lucrative franchise) was an arch, even campy black comedy in which Charley (William Ragsdale), obsessed with horror movies and lore, came to realize that his new next door neighbor Jerry (Chris Sarandon) was actually a vampire, and enlisted the services of Peter Vincent (Roddy McDowell), host of the local low-rent, late-night horror TV show, to bring him down.  

That basic outline is still the plot of the remake, but there are quite a few shifts in detail and emphasis.  Most of the changes seem to stem from the idea of resetting the tale from the midwest to Las Vegas, which was a promising concept--a city that truly never sleeps--but because (for budget reasons, no doubt) the movie was actually shot in New Mexico, Vegas as a physical location plays virtually no part in the picture.  This time, Jerry (Farrell) isn't an old-world Dracula type like Sarandon; he's a contemporary douchebag who supposedly works construction on the strip, wearing tight t-shirts--Charley's mom (Collette) and even his girlfriend (Poots) can't help themselves from leering at him.  Peter Vincent (Tennant) is now the star of a campy, but higher-scale, horror-themed stage show at the Hard Rock Hotel.   Meanwhile, Charley (Yelchin) is now more of a post-nerd guy who, for reasons even the movie doesn't understand, has a hot, compassionate girlfriend, and he spends the first part of the movie not believing the vampire story at all, despite the efforts of his former pal Ed (Christopher Mintz-Plasse) to convince him.

You can see how all of this may have pitched well:  in these Jersey Shore days, the idea of a douchebag vampire could have been fun, and Charley, dumping his own friend for the sake of popularity and hovering on the edge of becoming a douche himself, could have been a complex match for Jerry.  In the movie, though, with its imperatives of getting to the 3D bloodshed, very little of this is developed.  Yelchin basically does his best Shia LaBeouf as Charley, and the movie turns into Suburbia with fangs. Farrell has some really good moments as Jerry--he's scary and funny as he preens in front of Collette and Poots, and when he hovers just outside Jerry's doorway, frustrated not to be invited in--but the script betrays him by turning Jerry into a crazy killing machine much too early on.  Tennant livens things up as Peter Vincent (he's basically doing Russell Brand in Get Him to the Greek), although even he can't do much with an extraordinarily clumsy chunk of exposition late in the story that's supposed to explain why he's helping Charley.  Poots, who's given very interesting performances in indie movies like Cracks and Solitary Man, is here just "the girl."  And although Collette grounds her mom character nicely, it's hard to see what she's doing in the movie, other than as a favor to Gillepsie.  

The movie is badly constructed even as a genre piece.  Apart from the sloppy vampire mythology, which introduces a late gadget into the story just to ensure a happy ending, all the set-piece action sequences go on forever, and at 106 minutes, the picture feels 15 minutes too long.  Gillespie has no particular feel for atmosphere or pace beyond the obvious quiet-quiet-quiet-BANG of horror cliches, and the picture is never at all scary.  There's nothing notable about the picture technically, either:  vampire movies aren't really ideal for 3D, since by definition, they tend to take place in the dark and the dim 3D image makes things even murkier; it's hard to tell whether Javier Aguirresarobe's photography ever had any distinction. 

In an era where we're inundated with vampire stories, a new entry in the genre really has to take some chances to make a mark.  (And if it does, as with last year's Let Me In, the audience may reject it.)  Fright Night sounded like it might be one of those, but it's just another late-summer grab for ticket sales, part of the August/September low-budget horror fest.  Next week's entry:  Don't Be Afraid of the Dark.  


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THE BIJOU BOX OFFICE: Opening Day For "The Help"

10:14 PM | Labels: , , , , , ,


DreamWorks/Disney's decision to open the lengthy, serious THE HELP on a Wednesday in mid-August looked like a questionable strategy, but so far it's paying off:  Deadline reports that its opening day gross is headed for $5.5M, very solid for a mid-week debut.  By way of comparison, Eat Pray Love, also based on a bestseller targeted to female audiences, but with the advantage of a Friday opening (not to mention Julia Roberts) opened with $8.5M, on its way to a $23M weekend.  The Help will hoping that good word of mouth will propel it to around $20-25M by Sunday, and then a leggy run through August.  With a spartan production budget of $25M, the picture is far cheaper than Eat Pray Love or Julie & Julia, another August success, and those two got to $80M and $94M, respectively.  While Help figures to be a tough sell overseas, it may not need much of an international contribution to reach profit.  

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for all the latest boxoffice numbers and analysis, starting tomorrow with Mitch Metcalf's weekend predictions.


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A MIDSUMMER STUDIO REPORT CARD: Studio Directory

10:00 PM | Labels: , , , , , , , ,

With a summer movie season bracketed by the first weekend in May on one end, and Labor Day on the other, we've reached the midpoint of 2011's array of blockbusters, here at SHOWBUZZDAILY, we'll be providing our judgments on how the studios are doing.  Click the links below to see our assessment of each major studio.  

Disney  (Grades: B Money; C+ Quality)

Paramount  (Grades: B- Money; B- Quality)

Sony  (Grades: C Money; B- Quality)

20th Century Fox  (Grades: C+ Money, B- Quality)

Universal  (Grades: B+/C+ incomplete Money, C+ Quality)

Warner Brothers  (Grades: B+ Money, C+ Quality)

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A MIDSUMMER STUDIO'S REPORT CARD: Disney

10:02 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , ,


With a summer movie season bracketed by the first weekend in May on one end, and Labor Day on the other, we've reached the midpoint of 2011's array of blockbusters, and for the next week, here at SHOWBUZZDAILY, we'll be providing our judgments on how the studios are doing.  US Grosses are as of July 4, 2011; Overseas Grosses are as of July 3,2011.

Today;  The Mouse House


MOVIES IN RELEASE

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN:  ON STRANGER TIDES
US Release:  May 20
US Gross:  $234,200,000
Overseas Gross:  $774,000,000
Worldwide Total:  $1,008,000,000

CARS 2
US Release:  June 24
US Gross:  $123,002,000
Overseas Gross:  $82,200,000 
Worldwide Total: $205,202,000

THE MONEY
 
You can't argue with a billion dollars; Pirates 4 is the 8th biggest worldwide moneymaker of all time, and it could catch up to Pirates 2 in 4th place, just $58M ahead.  That would leave it behind only Avatar, Titanic and the last Lord of the Rings on the all-time list.  These massive numbers disguise the fact that Pirates 4 has the lowest US boxoffice total of the Top 19 worldwide--amazingly, only 23 cents of every dollar it's earned has come from the US, and it's by far the least successful of its franchise in the domestic market.  A dollar is a dollar, even if it has to be converted to get there, and Disney will take the money wherever it's earned.  Since future installments of the series will certainly be coming (at least as long as Johnny Depp wants to don that eyeliner), it'll be interesting to see if Disney tries to boost the US popularity of the series through casting and locations, or whether Pirates embraces its foreign identity and treats the US as a large but not crucially important territory.

The news is less ambiguous for Cars 2  Domestically, it's headed for the 2d lowest Pixar gross ever, and it's dented the Pixar brand critically (see below).  The international view is a little incomplete ($82 million is a good first weekend in a limited number of territories and we expect this number to jump substantially next week).  We have a ballpark estimate of $275 million total overseas, assuming an international multiple similar to recent Pixar releases over a domestic total as measured by the ShowBuzzDaily Domestic Final estimate.  As with many high profile Hollywood movies, the international gusher of money can mitigate weakness on the homefront.

THE QUALITY

In 2 words:  Not Good.  

Pirates 4 was perhaps less disastrous than its immediate predecessor, but it's a dull and unexciting adventure that feels like it was made with everyone's eye on their paychecks.  Those paychecks have plenty of zeroes, so it's not clear if anyone cares, but it'd be nice to think that the slack writing, acting and direction will eventually catch up with the series.  

Cars 2 isn't just the worst Pixar movie to date, it's the first bad Pixar movie ever, lazily plotted and mostly unfunny.  The bulletproof reputation that kept Pixar on a pedestal above DreamWorks and any other animation pretenders has been breached, and the next Pixar movie (the medieval Scottish adventure Brave in June 2012) will be scrutinized--by audience and critics--with a skeptical eye that the studio has never experienced before.  The Disney policy of encouraging sequels and franchises (discussed in this NY Times article) may have to be balanced against the value of the studio's most prestigious and profitable brand.

STILL TO COME

WINNIE THE POOH - July 15:  Pure counterprogramming to the Harry Potter avalanche that day, aimed at kids too young for the increasing darkness at Hogwarts.  Modestly budgeted and marketed.

THE HELP - August 12:  Notable as the first "serious" release from Disney's new DreamWorks division (I Am Number Four was its first nonserious release).  It's too early to discuss The Help in any depth, but it's a worthy movie with a great cast, based on a bestseller, that seems a bit out of place in its mid-August slot; normally a picture like this, hoping to get some awards attention for the actresses at least, would be opening a month or so later.

FRIGHT NIGHT - August 19:  More DreamWorks, this one a low-budget horror comedy that'll be hoping to make a few bucks before summer ends.  The trailer looks promising, but it opens against the new Conan the Barbarian, and the following week it has to face the latest Final Destination kill-fest, so it runs the risk of being squeezed out.  

MIDSUMMER GRADES:

THE MONEY:  B.  A summer whose only major releases are shaky entries in preexisting franchises, with the other titles (the first of the company's new regime under Rich Ross) as virtual throwaways, builds nothing for the future--and the mismanagement of the Pixar brand is worrisome.    

THE QUALITY:  C+.  Two mediocre movies don't make for a good season, and "Won't Make You Actively Suffer!" isn't much of a summer slogan.


Click HERE to read the other studio report cards.

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THE BIJOU REVIEW: "Cars 2" - Running On Fumes

4:07 AM | Labels: , , , , , , , , , ,


CARS 2 - Watch It At Home:  Pixar Shifts Into Second Gear

CARS 2 is preceded by a short subject, the first in what's intended as a series called Toy Story Toons.  Entitled Hawaiian Vacation, it features all the familiar characters and voices, runs about 10 minutes, and effortlessly recaptures the joy, wit and grace of its predecessors.  If you see it, cherish those minutes, because after it's over, Cars 2 begins.


And with that, one of the greatest streaks in motion picture history comes to an end.  All good things, they say, will do that:  after 15 consecutive weeks in 1997-98, Titanic was no longer #1 at the boxoffice; 26 years following its 1939 opening, Gone With the Wind gave up its crown of most successful film ever (unadjusted for inflation) to The Sound of Music.  And now: after 16 years, 11 brilliant feature films, 6 of the 10 Best Animated Feature Oscars awarded thus far (not to mention 2 Best Picture nominees) and billions of dollars truly earned, Pixar, mighty Pixar, has... bunted to first. 

It would be neater to say that they've struck out, but not quite accurate:  It is Pixar, after all, so Cars 2 is often visually glorious, from spectacular cityscapes to tiny, marvelous details.  But it's the first film the studio has made that feels dramatically lazy and assembled for commercial reasons, with a "soul" applied by rote--it's their first "product."  If Pixar's unspoken slogan has always been the animation version of "It's Not TV.  It's HBO," Cars 2 is TV.  Which was probably inevitable, but still pretty damn depressing to watch.

Although formally Cars 2 is of course a sequel to its 2006 forebear, it's actually a reconfiguring of the original.  The main character this time is Mater (voiced by Larry the Cable Guy), the small-town tow truck from Radiator Springs who became race car Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson)'s best friend.  Cars 2 is an action comedy, and one of a familiar sort, where the slow-witted (but pure of heart) Mater is embroiled in an espionage plot, mistaken for a master spy by new characters Finn McMissile (Michael Caine) and Holley Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer).  This is the kind of thing Bob Hope did in My Favorite Spy in 1951, and Get Smart and The Pink Panther series are variations that date back 50 years.  Laboriously we have to wait for almost the entire movie before Mater can understand that the spies think he's one of them and he can convince them he's not, and it was funnier when Hope did it.  Meanwhile there are huge action sequences that could have come out of last year's G.I. Joe movie.

All of this would have been bearable if behind the story, Cars 2 had the kind of originality and heart that's been a hallmark of every other Pixar film, but this is just an empty romp, with an instantly obvious "surprise" villain and predictable jokes. (There's even something unpleasant about the story as it's revealed--mild spoiler alert--that the evil cars are a pack of jealous clunker models like Pacers and Yugos; it's like a version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer where the Island of Misfit Toys hatches a plot to kill Santa.)  As a result, even though Cars 2 is the most frenetically paced of any Pixar movie, it's also the most tedious, because like any other hollow action movie, it just grinds its way from giant set-piece to set-piece; if Michael Bay ever directed an animated film, it would look like Cars 2.  

But in fact, this isn't just a Pixar movie, but one personally directed by John Lasseter, which makes its vacuousness even more of a shock (Brad Lewis is credited as "co-director"); the script is by Ben Queen, with Lasseter, Lewis and Dan Fogelman sharing the story credit.  This is Lasseter's first film as director since the original Cars in 2006, after which he took on heavy corporate responsibilities at Disney.  Pixar has become a multi-billion dollar business (Cars was a successful movie, but it became a financial bonanza through merchandising sales) that is now very much in the sequel business, with Monsters University upcoming.  Did any of that contribute to the routine feel of this film?  That seems like too easy an answer, especially since the masterful, heartfelt Toy Story 3 was only a year ago.

There are certainly things to appreciate in Cars 2.  The story is set against the backdrop of a series of 3 Grand Prix auto races in Tokyo, Italy and London, organized by alternative fuel tycoon Miles Axelrod (Eddie Izzard) and all these locations are spectacularly imagined in the film's car-centric universe.  (In Japan, there are kabuki, sumo and geisha cars.)  The sheer scale of the number and varieties of vehicles is sometimes breathtaking.  Almost alone among recent 3D films, the images are bright and clear (although the 3D isn't really necessary).  There's also a surprisingly political point of view in the film's ending.  The movie isn't a waste of money; it will earn its billions from global boxoffice and toys.   But the gasps it provokes are of a markedly lesser kind than the ones Pixar has in the past.

Along with the marvelous Toy Story Toon short, there's another promising sign before Cars 2 begins:  the first teaser trailer for Pixar's upcoming Brave, which will open next summer.  Set in ancient Scotland, with a female protagonist, it looks ambitious, distinctive... like a real Pixar movie.

(CARS 2 - Disney/Pixar - G - 102 minutes - Director:  John Lasseter - Script:  Ben Queen - Cast:  Larry the Cable Guy, Owen Wilson, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, John Turturro - Wide Release)

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PROM: Bland-Land

7:16 PM | Labels: , , , , , ,

Not Even For Free; No Pig's Blood At This Shindig.

The relationships we have with the stars we watch are no less real for being imaginary, and that's particularly true for television stars, whom we often watch inhabit and grow within the same character over a period of years.  So fans of the great TV series "Friday Night Lights" must be forgiven some additional groans at the sight of Aimee Teegarden, for 5 years part of perhaps the most believably rendered family in the history of American television, playing a simple, flat, uninteresting high school girl in the new movie PROM.  But Prom needn't be compared to a crowning jewel of TV to come out behind:  it's also no Some Kind of Wonderful, no Pretty In Pink, no Carrie, no "Glee," no "90210"--hell, it makes 10 Things I Hate About You and She's All That look like Bunuel's Los Olvidados and Van Sant's Elephant combined.  

Prom is, even by Hollywood standards, an extremely calculated piece of business.  It was the first movie greenlit by the new administration at Disney, and it means to set the tone for a chunk of their commerce.  Not, obviously, the giant pieces that will be taken up by new Pirates of the Caribbean and Muppets movies, but off-season entertainment catering to young girls.  Vehemently drained of profanity, drinking, drugs and sex (despite the presence of one character who appears to be perpetually stoned for no apparent reason), it seems to take place at a Stepford school, where the students might not pass the Replicant tests administered in Blade Runner. 

Prom is, as you'd expect, set in the period just before the big dance, and features several plots that try to outdo each other in predictability.  Our main heroine Nova (Teegarden) is an overachiever forced to work on party decorations with the local "bad boy" Jesse (Thomas McDonell), who is--no!--not really bad at all.  Meanwhile, designated scuzzball Tyler (DeVaughn Nixon) steps out on his loyal girlfriend with a sophomore, who is thereby blinded to the true love of a contemporary.  And you know the one about the guy who claims to have a hot Canadian girlfriend, except absolutely no one believes she'll show up at the dance?  Guess what happens!  And the sadsack (Nicholas Braun) who has to attend the prom alone--think he might find a soulmate there?  If there was just a single instant of believability or surprise or even humor in any of this, it might excuse a lot, but under Joe Nussbaum's direction, the performers are manacled to the script credited to Katie Wech, and no stray moments are allowed to interfere with the plan.  (Adults cashing paychecks include Jere Burns, Dean Norris and Amy Pietz.)


Prom is inoffensive, for parents who value that virtue above all else, but a steady diet of its pablum could lead children who watch it to become perpetually dull.  And one hopes that Julie Taylor--um, I mean Aimee Teegarden--will find some projects that actually require use of her talent.

(PROM - Disney - 103 minutes - PG - Director:  Mike Nussbaum - Script:  Katie Wcch - Cast:  Aimee Teegarden, Thomas McDonell, DeVaughn Nixon, Danielle Campbell, Yin Chang, Jared Kusnitz, Nicholas Braun - Wide Release)

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