Movie Box Review

Deadline has some early updated weekend numbers, and there are no major surprises from the Friday results.  The top 3 are DOLPHIN TALE, MONEYBALL and THE LION KING with $14M, $12M and $11M respectively, with the family pictures garnering the benefit of stepped-up Saturday matinee business.  

After that, 3 new titles--50/50, COURAGEOUS and DREAM HOUSE--are bunched together between $8.7-9M, meaning their actual rank won't be clear until Monday's actuals are annonced.  Courageous was the most front-loaded with Friday business, which is no surprise given the nature of its appeal, nor is the fact that 50/50 had strong word of mouth on its second day; what's odd is that Dream House seems to have also done well on Saturday, despite how bad it is.

In the third echelon, holdovers ABDUCTION, CONTAGION and KILLER ELITE, as well as the new WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER? are all between $4.8-5.7M, representing indifferent holds for Abduction and Killer Elite, nice continued business for Contagion, and a wretched start for the Anna Faris vehicle.

Stay with SHOWBUZZDAILY for more detailed numbers and analysis as additional boxoffice figures become available.

Deadline has updated early Friday numbers, and it's looking like another too-close-to-call weekend:  all the movies in the Top 5--MONEYBALL, THE LION KING, DOLPHIN TALE, COURAGEOUS and 50/50--have Friday grosses between $3.2-3.8M.  Courageous is probably the most front-loaded, due to its focused church-based audience (although it's per-theatre number will be very impressive), and while 50/50 should have good word of mouth and a higher multiple, it's still unlikely to have the Saturday bump of the holdovers.  Dolphin Tale is considered to have the best chance to narrowly take the weekend, as it seems to be heading for only a 30% Week 2 decline, better than Moneyball's (which itself should only go down around 40%, an excellent hold).  But it could still work out otherwise.  

DREAM HOUSE wasn't too far behind the leaders on Friday, but will probably have a terrible weekend multiple and end up with $7M or so for the weekend, while WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER? appears to be a complete disaster, headed for not much more than $5M for the weekend.  Last weekend's also-rans ABDUCTION and KILLER ELITE should both see 50% drops.

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

The new KILLER ELITE takes little from Sam Peckinpah's 1975 action movie apart from its title (Peckinpah used "The" in his) and the general notion of mercenaries and ex-spies double-crossing each other.  This isn't a huge loss, as the 1975 version was part of Peckinpah's "fascinating but not good" period that also included Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid and Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (he essentially turned the movie into an allegory about Hollywood), which occupied the years before his career entered its final decline.   The 2011 reboot, directed by Gary McKendry in his feature debut, is considerably less fascinating and no better.

The script, written by McKendry and Matt Sherring, is based on a non-fiction book called "The Feather Men" by Ranulph Fiennes (in what was presumably a shared joke, that name is given to one of the assassins' targets in the film).  The fictionalized premise is nothing if not convoluted.  in 1980, Danny (Jason Statham) is a mercenary who's had a crisis of conscience and retired to a farm in Australia, where he re-meets a comely lass (Yvonne Strahovski, from Chuck) he'd known as a boy.  Of course, no movie mercenary is allowed to stay retired for long, and soon a sheik has kidnapped Danny's best friend Hunter (Robert DeNiro), and the ransom is that Danny has to perform the task Hunter was originally hired to do:  assassinate 3 British ex-SAS agents who had each killed one of the sheik's sons in the Oman war years earlier, but not before getting each of them on tape confessing to his particular killing.  Oh, and each murder has to look like an accident.

Danny, with the help of 2 associates (Dominic Purcell and Aden Young), gets to work eliminating the killers of the sheik's sons.  But the killings soon arouse the attention of the "Feather Men" (because their touch is light as--figure it out), a fellowhood of former SAS agents whose enforcer is Spike (Clive Owen).  Spike sets out to track down and kill the assassins.  

None of this, as directed by McKendry, is very exciting.  There's one rote action scene after another (the one fun scene, where Statham has to fight while bound to a chair, is showcased in the trailer), and the attempts to juice things up in the last reel with a succession of double-crosses doesn't help.  Also, the third act hinges on Danny, who had previously been completely honorable in all his actions, doing something sneaky that's both unconvincing and stupid, because inevitably he's going to be found out.  Danny is the only character who gets any kind of development, and his story is completely cliched; Spike is a complete cipher, making the duel between the two one-sided.  The nature of the plot means that Statham's talent for grim humor is rarely in play, and while Owen seems committed to his role, he only shares one scene with Statham in the first two-thirds of the film.  DeNiro seems to be enjoying his paycheck in a small role, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbale is pungent as the mercenaries' untrustworthy agent.  

Killer Elite is competent enough, but it mostly feels as tired as its characters are of the grind of killing and chasing other killers, and it's hard to feel very gripped by the proceedings when the only stakes are whether the expressionless Danny will get his fairy-tale girl.  The picture doesn't have the spark of Statham's Crank movies, much less the quality one associates with Owen or DeNiro (we do still associate DeNiro with "quality," right?).  The first movie to be released by the new distributor Open Road is hardly an auspicious start; Killer Elite couldn't be more skippable.

No doubt the enormous success of THE LION KING hasn't been lost on anyone at Disney, and we can expect to see 3D reissues of more classic animation over the next few years, leading into yet more homevideo editions.

If not for Lion King being in the market, DOLPHIN TALE would almost certainly have won the weekend, so Warners' decision to stick with its opening date (because it was the same week they'd released Legend of the Guardians last year?) may have been misguided.  Dolphin gets one more weekend (which one has to assume it'll have to share with Lion King again, since it's hard to believe Disney will really pull that from the market as planned), then it'll have to face Real Steel for the family audience.

MONEYBALL didn't quite get to Social Network's $22M opening, even though Brad Pitt is an infinitely bigger star than Jesse Eisenberg.  The baseball subject matter may have turned off some potential audiences (although one wouldn't have thought the corporate infighting at Facebook would pack them in), and although Moneyball got rave reviews, they didn't quite have the "this is an instant Best Picture frontrunner and you have to see it" vibe.  It's going to face competition quickly, from 50/50 next weekend and then Ides of March, so we'll see how it holds up.

ABDUCTION does seem to have made it to $11M (pending actuals tomorrow), for whatever that's worth to the Lautner team.  KILLER ELITE will make whatever real money it's going to make overseas.  

Although DRIVE had the best hold of last week's openings, a virtual 50% drop for a film with 92% on Rotten Tomatoes is disappointing, reinforcing the fact that audience response was not in line with the critical acclaim--not a shock, since Drive's limitation is that it seems to have been made for film critics.

In limited release, MY AFTERNOONS WITH MARGUERITTE expanded from 2 theatres to 27 and did a not-much $2700 per theatre, while Gus Van Sant's RESTLESS went disastrously from 5 to 17, with barely $1K in each.  MACHINE GUN PREACHER premiered with a good $11K in each of 4 theatres, but until Gerard Butler and Michelle Monaghan stop doing Q&As, we won't know the movie's real strength.  PUNCTURE, which also had some Q&As for opening weekend, pulled a decent $9K in each of 4.  Most impressive, though, was the gay romance WEEKEND, which got stellar reviews in NY and made $25K in one small theatre there; it arrives in LA next week.

MONEYBALL's debut looks to be in line with the opening weekend of The Social Network ($22.4M) just about a year ago.  That movie rode the Oscar race to a $97M gross.  Moneyball is more likable but less incisive than Network, and while it's going to be part of the Oscar conversation, it's less likely to be a frontrunner; we'll see if it can build as well on its opening.

Disney is supposed to withdraw THE LION KING from circulation on Thursday, because its new blu-ray of the picture goes on sale the following Tuesday.  But will they really leave millions on the table in additional boxoffice by sticking to the plan?

DOLPHIN TALE's opening day is about 12% better than the one Warners had with Legend of the Guardian, their 3D family movie on the same weekend last year.  If that comparison holds, it would give Dolphin around $18M for the weekend and an ultimate gross in the mid $60Ms.  

The Taylor Lautner spin machine is strong enough to operate power grids in 3 states, but the fact is that a $10M opening weekend doesn't justify a big-time movie star salary.  At best, Lautner is a lap behind Jason Statham's level:  KILLER ELITE looks to open at the lower-end of Statham's wheelhouse, with a $10M opening that compares to the $11M he had with The Mechanic and $12M with Transporter 3 and Death Race. 

Among holdovers, DRIVE, CONTAGION and (of course) THE HELP held well, while I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT and STRAW DOGS didn't.  And THE DEBT now seems like it won't get past $32M, not quite at the level of The Constant Gardener ($33.5M) or The American ($35M).

In limited release, MACHINE GUN PREACHER should do around $9K in each of 4 theatres, but that number is hyped by Q&A sessions with the stars, so it may be misleading.

The Hollywood Reporter has fresher boxoffice numbers.  MONEYBALL's start isn't quite as high as it had looked, but a Friday close to $7M is still excellent, and should lead to a $20M or so weekend, especially since exit polls indicate audiences are in line with critics on this one.  THE LION KING, entering what's supposed to be its final pre-blu-ray weekend, is right behind with a $6M Friday that could actually put it in 1st place when matinees are counted.  Still in the race is DOLPHIN TALE, with a $5M Friday, but also the first A+ Cinemascore since The Help, which may buoy its weekend multiple to the same $20M level.

Among the also-rans, try to duck if you're in the path of the massive amount of spin being thrown by Taylor Lautner's reps:  a $4M opening day that will probably lead to around a $10-11M weekend means that outside his vampiric franchise, he's no movie star.  KILLER ELITE is one notch behind, with a $3.7M opening that should also land it in the neighborhood of $10M.  


DRIVE fared best among the holdovers, and should fall less than 50% in its second weekend.  I DON'T KNOW HOW SHE DOES IT will slip by half, and STRAW DOGS is likely to fall by 55% or so.

Deadline has some preliminary numbers for the day, and MONEYBALL seems to be having a very strong start, with $8M or so.  Given the quality of the picture (a stellar 94% on Rotten Tomatoes), good word of mouth should be assured, and the weekend could reach close to $24M.  That will probably put it in a tight race with DOLPHIN TALE, which is only headed for $6M on Friday, but should have strong Saturday family matinee business; that could put it in the low $20Ms for the weekend.  A notch below is ABDUCTION, which is also looking for $6M on Friday, but with star Taylor Lautner's notoriously front-loaded teen girl fans, it may not get much above $15M for the weekend.  Bringing up the rear is KILLER ELITE, which is headed for $5M on Friday and probably low teens over the weekend.