Movie Box Review

Behold Liam Neeson, King of January.

OPENINGS:  THE GREY (Open Road) will easily take the weekend, albeit at a lower level than prior Neeson early-year thrillers.  Given that this one features killer wolves and hypothermia rather than gunfights and car chases, that's not unexpected, and the picture should hit a decent profit.  ONE FOR THE MONEY (Lionsgate/Summit) may have outperformed pre-opening predictions, but its $11-12M opening is still pretty dismal (the lowest of Katherine Heigl's starring career), and because of online discount ticket offers keyed to opening day, its Friday number may prove to be unusually frontloaded.  MAN ON A LEDGE (Summit/Lionsgate) is an out-and-out flop, and yet more proof that "stars" from special-effects-laden franchises can't necessarily open movies outside those franchises.

HOLDOVERS:  Everything is headed for a 45-55% normal range drop, with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST 3D (Disney) and MI4 (Paramount) on the low end, and HAYWIRE (Relativity) on the high.

OSCAR NOMINEES:  It was the week for the anointed films to expand their runs (except for Warners' EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, which had opened wide last week and dropped only 30% in its 2d weekend).  None of the expansions were particularly impressive:  THE ARTIST (Weinstein), still in just 897 theatres, will barely top a $3500 per-theatre average, while THE DESCENDANTS (Fox Searchlight), upped to 2001 houses, won't go much higher than a $3K average.   THE IRON LADY (Weinstein) is similarly unimpressive with a $2500 average at 1244, and HUGO (Paramount) didn't find much interest in its expansion back to 965 theatres with a $2300 average.  Despite Gary Oldman's Best Actor nomination, TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (Focus) lost almost half of its theatres and could manage only a $2500 average at 410, and ALBERT NOBBS (Roadside) didn't get much mileage out of its nominations for Glenn Close and Janet McTeer, expanding to 246 theatres for a $2800 average.

LIMITED RELEASES:  No major openings.  WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope), which couldn't land a nomination for Tilda Swinton, added 3 theatres for a decent $6K average in 10, while PARIAH (Focus) lost a third of its theatres and won't do much more than a $3K average in 14.

Next weekend is the Super Bowl, traditionally a weak moviegoing weekend, so the pickings will be lean.  Fox will pursue teens with the "found footage" sci-fi CHRONICLE, Universal targets kids with the save-the-whaler BIG MIRACLE, and CBS Films will try to gather what's left with the old-fashioned ghost story WOMAN IN BLACK, starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Deadline has early figures for Friday, and they indicate that Open Road's THE GREY will, as expected, win the day and weekend.  If the early estimate of $6.2M for Friday holds, it could gross around $15M for the weekend.  That's less than previous Liam Neeson vehicles Taken ($25M) and Unknown ($22M), but still impressive for a more old-fashioned man-against-the-elements adventure.

Lionsgate/Summit's ONE FOR THE MONEY seems to be headed for about $12M over the weekend, a bit better than projected, but still the lowest opening of Katherine Heigl's starring career.  Even worse is the same studio's (now that Lionsgate and Summit have merged) MAN ON A LEDGE, which may only make $6-7M for the weekend in what will be a short theatrical run.

Holdovers UNDERWORLD: AWAKENING (Screen Gems/Sony), RED TAILS (Fox) and CONTRABAND (Universal) are all looking at declines in the 50% neighborhood, but Relativity's HAYWIRE may take an over 60% hit.

Among the newly-minted Oscar nominees, Warners's EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE didn't add any theatres and should fall only 30-35%.  Fox Searchlight's THE DESCENDANTS almost quadrupled its theatres to 2000, and will increase sharply from last weekend, but with a per-theatre average of only around $3K.  Meanwhile, Weinstein Company's THE ARTIST continues to excite critics and Academy members far more than audiences, as its expansion to 900 theaters only yields around a $3500 average.

Movie stars are, make no mistake, trademarks.  Consumers who invest in 2 hours of George Clooney or Will Smith expect the same kind of reliable enjoyment that they get from a can of Coke or a pair of Nikes.  And no movie star brand in recent years has been mishandled as badly as Katherine Heigl's.

From all indications, Heigl has no one to blame but herself.  After a fairly successful run as a teen actress on Roswell and in some minor movies, she was the breakout star of TV's Grey's Anatomy, gorgeous and with the ability to handle both romantic comedy and fairly heavy drama.  When her first major big-screen role was the smash hit Knocked Up, and she followed it up with the $77M grossing 27 Dresses, the cry of "New Julia Roberts" was heard throughout the land.  And then, almost as soon as she'd made a name for herself, she started doing everything she could to demolish it.

The truth is that none of us have any idea whether George Clooney is the smooth, amiable, happy-go-lucky guy he's established himself to be, or whether Tom Hanks is solid, trustworthy and quick-witted, or Julia Roberts is lovable and sweet.  All those stars may be nothing more than the inspired creations of publicists, brilliantly performed over a period of years.  But whenever they're in public, they appear to live up to their personas, and that's all we, as a public, ask.  Heigl, though, seems incapable of saying 5 consecutive sentences aloud without appearing obnoxious and ungrateful--to the writers and her other colleagues on Grey's, to Judd Apatow and Knocked Up, and just about everyone else.  It may well be that Heigl is more honest than the more easily controlled stars around her, but movie stars sell fantasies of themselves, and Heigl's isn't a fantasy anyone wants to watch.

Combine that with what appears to be fairly atrocious script sense--even 27 Dresses was mediocre at best, The Ugly Truth was flat-out awful, and Killers was worse--and you have a perfect formula for decimating movie stardom in less than 5 years.  The latest painful evidence of Heigl's situation is ONE FOR THE MONEY, a terrible movie that Heigl and her mother/manager helped develop and produce.

The picture is based on a very successful series of crime novels by Janet Evanovich (shades of Kathleen Turner's disastrous V.I. Warshowski), and Heigl plays Stephanie Plum, a tough New Jersey girl who becomes an investigator for her cousin the bail bondsman.  For her first case, she tracks down Joe Morelli (Jason O'Mara), a cop--and ex-boyfriend of Stephanie's--accused of murder.

There's no need to spend much time on the lame storyline or grating dialogue of the movie (the script, which was in development for many years, is credited to Stacy Sherman, Karen Ray and Liz Brixius).  The on-the-lam murder suspect barely bothers to hide himself, and over and over, only Stephanie figures out the obvious place he'll be.  Of course the two end up joining forces to find the real killer, and a look at the cast list makes that identity not too hard to guess.  

Director Julie Anne Robinson, mostly a TV hand (including on Grey's), doesn't do anything to enrich the material.  The movie looks cheap and has no rhythm--an early scene with Stephanie and her family, including her dotty grandma (Debbie Reynolds) is edited so clumsily it would look amateurish on YouTube--and there's no chemistry whatsoever between Heigl and O'Mara, despite the movie's strenuous efforts to suggest some.  (Scenes with Daniel Sunjata as Stephanie's bounty hunter mentor are more promising, but that's entirely because of Sunjata.)  The "New Joisy" stereotypes are painful, and there's not even any mindless action to enjoy.

Heigl seems to have realized that her career is in free-fall--her recent interviews have included nostalgic wishes to go back to Grey's and revisit her character, and she's doing an ensemble piece next, The Wedding with Robert DeNiro, Diane Keaton and Amanda Seyfried.  For now, she's the actress version of The Devil Inside--a big opening, followed by a horrific 2d weekend fall.  Nobody expects or wants a sequel to movies like that.

The Martin Luther King holiday weekend, a relatively small one for Hollywood because many people work on Monday, begins.

UNIVERSAL: The studio made the fairly extraordinary decision to sit out the holiday movie season entirely, presumably because they didn't think any of their product could compete.  They did, however, spend a lot of money marketing CONTRABAND, which wouldn't open for a month.  The effort paid off with an extremely solid Friday that could lead to a 4-day weekend approaching $30M.  But all that advertising was pricey, and the picture will have to achieve a substantial total to make it worthwhile.  It should help that the movie is quite entertaining, leading to good word-of-mouth (although there are quite a few action movies arriving as competition in the coming weeks).

DISNEY:  The studio's 3D re-release of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST had a well-chosen release date, a holiday when the holiday family movies (including Disney's own War Horse) are running out of steam but the other studios aren't getting involved.  The result is a $25M+ 4-day weekend that will pay for the minimal cost of the 3D transfer and also feed sales of the new homevideo edition.  

WARNERS:  JOYFUL NOISE was hoping to hit the holiday's family audience too, but so far it's not working out so well.  With a 4-day weekend unlikely to reach $15M, the picture will have to hope for good word-of-mouth (which the faith-based audience sometimes provides) to stay in theatres for a while.  And the studio has stuck doggedly to its strategy on EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE, which will finally expand next week, and which is still earning a very good $15K in each of the 6 theatres where it started on Christmas Day.

WEINSTEIN COMPANY:  THE IRON LADY expanded well to 800 theatres, and should have a per-theatre number for Friday-Sunday (plus a little extra for the Monday holiday) comparable to the one Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy had when it did the same expansion a week ago.  The picture will be hoping, of course, for a Meryl Streep victory at the Golden Globes on Sunday.  Meanwhile, the studio is playing a bit of a shell game with THE ARTIST, increasing the theatre count (to 216) just enough so that the weekend total (around $1.1-1.2M) stays steady, even as the per-theatre figure falls by 20%.  MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, which lost almost one-third of its theatres this week, badly needs Michelle Williams to win the Comedy Actress Golden Globe.  (Don't ask how that movie is a "comedy".)

SONY CLASSICS:  CARNAGE expanded to 494 theatres, but will need major Golden Globe help to keep those screens very long.  It's headed for a $1500 per-theatre average.  

HOLDOVERS:  Nobody who saw THE DEVIL INSIDE (Paramount) last weekend could look at themselves in the mirror this week, and the result should be one of the 10-15 largest 2d weekend drops in history (and it would have been worse if Sunday hadn't been part of a holiday weekend).  That was by far the most dramatic drop, with the holiday movies aimed at adults looking at 30-40% declines, and the family movies getting a Sunday advanrage from the holiday for a 10-25% fall.  YOUNG ADULT (Paramount), though, gave up the ghost (unless Charlize Theron pulls out an upset Globe win), losing more than half its theatres. 

LIMITED RELEASES:    PARIAH (Focus) expanded to 24 theatres and should do an OK $5K average.  IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY (FilmDistrict) expanded to 18 and should do a less OK $3K in each.  WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (Oscilloscope) returned from its holiday-week awards-eligibility run to 1 NY theatre, where the buzz on Tilda Swinton's performance and local raves should get it to $50K over the long weekend.  

Live by Cinemascore, die by Cinemascore.

THE DEVIL INSIDE:  The most hilarious studio event of the last 24 hours has been Paramount's frantic attempt to argue that an "F" Cinemascore for THE DEVIL INSIDE, making it one of the half-dozen worst exit-polled movies of the past several years, isn't really that bad if you take out your abacus and do their version of the math.  The studio's spin has blanketed Deadline, The Hollywood Reporter, and no doubt other industry mouthpieces.  At SHOWBUZZDAILY, we don't put much stock in Cinemascore to begin with, but the studios normally cling to every B+ and A- like guarantees of Oscar glory, so the ego involved in arguing that the lowest possible score is not-so-bad is much like a parent insisting their kid's getting expelled from school is some kind of triumph.  Spin aside, Devil Inside had a remarkably strong, if predictably front-loaded, $34.5M weekend, with a 30% drop on Saturday and another 50% (which may end up being low) projected for Sunday.  Paramount would be best advised to shut up and count its money.  

TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY (Focus):  A very fine expansion with $5.8M in 809 theatres (the studio is currently projecting a very low Sunday drop, so that number could end up slightly lower), with the best per-screen average (other than Devil Inside) for any picture this weekend in more than 11 theatres.

WIDE HOLDOVERS:  The smallest drop in the Top 10 was for THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (Sony), with a mere 24% fall as it tries to hack its way to $100M.  Then MI4 (Paramount) and SHERLOCK HOLMES 2 (Warners) continued to hold well with declines in the 30-35% area.  Sherlock also won the weekend internationally, with $43M in 50 territories that Warners says puts the film almost 20% above its predecessor at the same point in its release overseas, while MI4 was in 3rd place overseas with $28M.  This was followed by the more family-oriented CHIPWRECKED (Fox) (which was in 2d place overseas with $30M), TINTIN (Paramount), WAR HORSE (Disney) and WE BOUGHT A ZOO (Fox), which all fell 36-42%.  Bringing up the rear of the top 10 was NEW YEAR'S EVE (Warners), with a 49% drop.  

LIMITED RELEASES:  THE IRON LADY (Weinstein) managed to keep its per-theatre number at $34K by adding a theatre (that's a 25% increase when you only start with 4).  CARNAGE (Sony Classics) went from 12 to 15 theatres and had a $7500 average.  PARIAH (Focus) increased from 4 to 11 theatres, with a $10K average.  A SEPARATION (Sony Classics) doubled its theatres to 6, with an excellent $16K average.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE (Warners) also had a $16K average in 6, which was a tiny 13% decrease from last week.  IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY (FilmDistrict) went from 2 theatres to 7, with only a $4500 average.  SHAME (Fox Searchlight), meanwhile, lost a few theatres, and had a $4500 average at 45.  MY WEEK WITH MARILYN (Weinstein) also lost some houses, and is at a dismal $1400 average in 584, while stable-mate THE ARTIST (Weinstein) had an OK $6500 average at 172 (the latter number includes a projected miniscule 7% decline on Sunday).  A DANGEROUS METHOD (Sony Classics) had a $4800 average at 64.

Everyone wanted to go to the movies on the first full weekend of 2012.

PARAMOUNT:  The studio went straight to its Paranormal Activity playbook to launch THE DEVIL INSIDE (pre-release screenings, months of buzz), and it all worked:  the picture should gross at least $30M in its opening weekend, and with a $1M production cost and relatively minimal marketing, that means serious profit.  No one expects the movie to last long (from all accounts, its abrupt non-ending has patrons all but storming the concession stands), but at those prices, who cares?  Meanwhile, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE - GHOST PROTOCOL held very well (as did virtually everything in the week's Top 10) and could bully its way to $200M in the US.  THE ADVENTURES OF TINTIN had a so-so hold and its US result will be negligible compared to its international success.  HUGO and YOUNG ADULT, though, were on the low end of the weekend's holdovers and are shedding theatres and boxoffice potential.

FOCUS:  TINKER TAILOR SOLDIER SPY expanded to 809 theatres and made its way into the week's Top 10, with a likely $5.5M and the highest per-theatre gross in the group (other than Devil Inside).  For a cerebral thriller, these are great numbers--if the Academy can just see fit to bless it with some nominations, the movie could become a mainstream success.  PARIAH expanded slightly to 11 theatres, and should get to a decent $10-12K per theatre for the weekend.

WEINSTEIN:  THE IRON LADY added a theatre for a total of 5, and that cushioned its Weekend 2 fall to a somewhat misleadingly low 25%.  THE ARTIST held well with only a 22% decline, but its likely $6K average at 172 theatres (adding 5) continues to be underwhelming, and eventually the studio is going to have to expand it beyond a tiny number of art-houses.  The perils of that are shown by MY WEEK WITH MARILYN, in 584 theaters (a loss of 46) with a lousy per-theatre average that won't hit $1500 for the weekend.

FILMDISTRICT:  Angelina Jolie's IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY expanded a bit to 7 theatres, and held pretty well on a per-theatre basis.  Unfortunately, it's holding at a low $4K per theatre.

SONY:  THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO had the lowest drop in the Top 10, but that still means a hold at a much lower level than the studio was hoping:  with perhaps $11M for the weekend, the picture will still struggle to get to $100M in the US.

WARNERS:  SHERLOCK HOLMES:  A GAME OF SHADOWS held fine, and continues on its pace to approach but not match its predecessor's boxoffice.  NEW YEAR'S EVE, not surprisingly, crashed now that its holiday is over, and won't reach $60M.  EXTREMELY LOUD AND INCREDIBLY CLOSE is still 2 weeks from national expansion--word of mouth is clearly good, as it had the lowest drop on the board while remaining in 6 theatres.  But its $15K or so per-theatre number is unexciting, and the strategy to keep it out of wide release for a full month is looking like a disaster in the making, unless the Academy notices that it exists.

FOX:  ALVIN AND THE CHIPMUNKS:  CHIPWRECKED had a fine enough hold, and still won't get within $85M of either of the franchise's other entries.  WE BOUGHT A ZOO could make it to $75M in the US, which while far from great, could allow it to hit profit if the picture finds an audience overseas. 

DISNEY:  WAR HORSE isn't looking at much more than $75M in the US unless its probable Oscar nominations can lift it up.  (Wins are considerably less likely.).  THE MUPPETS took a big hit for the weekend, and won't get to $90M.

FOX SEARCHLIGHT:  THE DESCENDANTS continued as it has been, with a mediocre $3500 average in 737 theatres despite all the buzz and awards attention.  It may well win the Golden Globe (it won't face The Artist because of the way the Globes are structured), and the question is whether that and Oscar nominations will spur the film to break out later in the month.  SHAME dropped a few theatres, and is headed for a $4-5K average in 45.

Next week, the Martin Luther King Day holiday weekend brings out a few relatively major releases:  Universal's Mark Wahlberg thriller CONTRABAND (which it's been marketing for months), Fox's Tuskegee Airmen story RED TAILS (from producer George Lucas), and Warners' Dolly Parton/Queen Latifah family music drama JOYFUL NOISE, as well as Disney's 3D wide re-release of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.