Movie Box Review

IMMORTALS is claiming the same drop for Sunday as it had on Saturday, so that total may come down in actuals.  Even so, as long as the final amount is over $30M (which it certainly should be), that's a win for Relativity, no matter what the movie's budget actually was.  Immortals also launched widely overseas, including in such important territories as China, the UK, Germany, Italy, Japan and South Korea, and should hit a solid $36M there.  

JACK AND JILL's $26M opening is the lowest for any Adam Sandler comedy vehicle since The Wedding Singer in 1998.  Sony seems to be counting on a multiple like the one that got Bedtime Stories over $100M in 2008, but this picture will likely be long out of theatres before the lucrative Christmas week bonanza kicks in, and J&J will be one of Sandler's lowest-grossing pictures ever.  Is that meaningful, or did audiences just sense what a stinker this one was?  We won't know until Sandler's next movie opens (I Hate You, Dad in June).

If you want to know what "older-skewing" means, look no further than J. EDGAR:  two-thirds of its audience was over 50 years old.  Although an $11.5M opening is nothing to cheer about, that audience is generally in no rush to get to theatres (it takes a while to maneuver those walkers), and Warners is hoping for a slow build that lasts through the end of the year.  Last year's Hereafter dipped 47% in its second weekend, and that was the end of it, as it only reached $33M in total--J. Edgar will need to hold better than that.

PUSS IN BOOTS had another great hold in its final weekend before kiddie movie competition arrives.  TOWER HEIST's 45% drop seals its fate as a money-loser, unless overseas audiences take to it in a big way.  A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS was, as expected, a one-weekend-and-out proposition, and despite the 3D ticket prices, it may not even get to the $38M grossed by the last picture in the series.  PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 went over $100M, and has a shot at exceeding $108M and becoming the highest-grossing of the franchise.

In limited release, ANONYMOUS plummeted, and is unlikely even to reach $5M on a $35M budget.  MARGIN CALL expanded a bit more to 199 theaters, and should have an average of around $3K.  It could get to $5M in theatrical alone (not counting VOD), which would be a triumph for a picture that cost $3.5M and has spent very little on marketing; in addition, distributor Roadside Attractions has decided to make a well-deserved awards run for the film, so it's all good.  

MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE almost doubled its theatre count to 183 and saw little incremental income with a $2700 average.  LIKE CRAZY widened to 70 theatres at a promising $7500 average.  THE SKIN I LIVE IN increased to 91 theatres at a $3400 average.  TAKE SHELTER seems to have reached its limit (barring a strong showing by Michael Shannon in critics' awards) with a $1600 average at 82.  

The only notable indie opening was Lars Von Trier's MELANCHOLIA (also on VOD and HDMovie Net), which did a very nice $14K in each of 19 theatres.  Werner Herzog's death-penalty documentary INTO THE ABYSS had a $4200 average at 12.  These will likely be dwarfed next week by the arrival of THE DESCENDANTS, which will open in 5 theatres on Wednesday and then go to 27 on Friday.

The tiny 3% drop in PUSS IN BOOTS' second weekend is truly remarkable, and could well lead to studios adopting DreamWorks' strategy in the future of opening an animated movie on Halloween weekend and then having a de facto 2d opening the following week.  (However, the picture is still running $13M below Megamind's 10 day total.)

Despite all the money Universal spent to turn TOWER HEIST into an event, audiences just weren't buying.  The initial overseas numbers of $9.5M in 23 territories aren't terribly promising either.  Interestingly, exit polling showed the audience for the picture skewing rather old; this could be a byproduct of Ben Stiller and Eddie Murphy's decisions to spend much of the past decade in family movies--they're now perceived as stars only by little kids (not the audience for this one) and their parents.  

A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS, even with 3D ticket prices, couldn't match the opening of the series' second installment, and with an Adam Sandler movie opening next week, it's unlikely to get much beyond a $30M gross.  Warners would probably have been better off using it as counterprogramming during the real holiday season.

In the absence of compelling new openings, holdovers mostly did very well, although the only Fall opening (besides Puss) likely to get to $100M is PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3.

With the exception of ANONYMOUS (a dull $2500 in each of 513 theatres), most of the weekend's indie expansions were fairly successful.  MARGIN CALL, now in 178 theatres, should be close to $4500 in each, just slightly below its average last weekend.  MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE went to 98 theatres with about a $5K average, a notch above THE SKIN I LIVE IN, which is in 78 with about $4K in each.  TAKE SHELTER is in a holding pattern with an OK $2K or so in each of 91 theatres.  LIKE CRAZY is still in very limited distribution, but widened to 16 with about a $16K average.

DreamWorks Animation can blame the weather for diminishing its PUSS IN BOOTS number--although there seemed to be little effect on the weekend's other openings--but $34M is awfully low for a major animated release.  (And no one will be surprised to see the actual figure fall tomorrow by $400K or more, which is the margin by which it's claiming a Halloween weekend record.)  With only 2 more weeks until Happy Feet 2 arrives to take over the market, there's even the possibility that it won't get over $100M in the US. It's off to a good start overseas, though, with $17M in only 3 territories, mostly from Russia, enough to tie PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3's take from 48 territories.

Overseas, in fact, was where all the action was this weekend.  The most impressive boxoffice number this week was  Steven Spielberg's ADVENTURES OF TINTIN, which won't open in the US for almost 2 more months.  It had a splendid launch in 19 territories with $55M. (Those are major territories, so the estimate is that they come to over 50% of the film's international potential.)

Meanwhile, IN TIME was also more of a success story overseas ($14M from 35 territories) than in the US, where it only managed $12M.   THE RUM DIARY doesn't seem to have opened overseas yet, although it would take quite a bit to offset its dismal US performance.

Back in the US, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3's weekend hold was unexceptional, but its opening was so huge that it's still running well ahead of the second chapter in the series.  MONEYBALL, THE IDES OF MARCH and DOLPHIN TALE all lost large chunks of their theatres, accounting for their largest weekend declines to date, while REAL STEEL was battered by the arrival of Puss In Boots into the family market. (Real Steel has gone over $100M overseas, only a moderate number these days.)

PUSS IN BOOTS will have 3 weeks in theatres without serious competition for its target audience (until Happy Feet 2 opens on November 18), which is why DreamWorks moved the opening back a week.  The picture can use the help, since its $35M opening is far from overwhelming.  However, it should perform well overseas--especially in Spanish-speaking territories--so it's likely to end up in decent shape. Whether it will be strong enough to launch a new franchise, as the studio had hoped, is less clear.

Not much to say about IN TIME and THE RUM DIARY.  Neither has much chance of earning back its production and marketing costs.  In Time is a step back for Justin Timberlake and Amanda Seyfried, neither of whom seem able to carry a movie that doesn't have something else to sell.  Rum Diary was basically a vanity project for Johnny Depp, undertaken because of his veneration for Hunter S. Thompson (Depp is also a producer of the film), and studios that finance vanity projects do so at their own risk.  (After Rum Diary and The Playboy Club, Amber Heard should probably avoid projects set in the 1960s.)

With Puss In Boots in the market, all the holdovers took major hits, although considering the front-loaded nature of the horror genre, PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3's hold was fine, and it's running far ahead of  Paranormal 2's pace. 

Sony's cut-back opening of ANONYMOUS was unimpressive, with perhaps $3500 in each of 265 theatres. Paramount launched LIKE CRAZY well in the traditional 4 theatre NY/LA prestige film pattern, and should hit just about the same $35K per theatre that THE SKIN I LIVE IN and MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE did in the past 2 weeks.  

Both of those movies expanded their runs this weekend to 32 theatres, which represented a tripling of Skin's release and a jump from 4 for Martha.  Martha is doing somewhat better, with probably $7K in each, while Skin isn't too far behind with $5500.  Additional widening in the next few weeks will tell the tale on both.  MARGIN CALL has had a more aggressive release strategy than either, and broadened to 140 theatres this weekend while remaining available on VOD.  It's headed for a healthy $4500 per theatre and has already grossed $1.4M (not counting VOD revenues) and seems able to get to $3M+.

Next weekend brings comedies of different stripes:  Universal's all-quadrant TOWER HEIST and A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR 3D XMAS.  The latter is likely to be more front-loaded, which could make for an interesting first couple of days.

The Hollywood Reporter has preliminary boxoffice numbers for Friday, and as expected, PUSS IN BOOTS will be the easy weekend winner.  Its $9-9.5M on Friday, if it holds, would probably mean $36-38M for the weekend, which would be a Halloween weekend record, but considerably below other fall animated films like Megamind ($12.5M Friday for a $46M weekend) and Madagascar 2 ($17.5M Friday for a $63M weekend).  Right now it's looking most like Bee Movie, which started the first week in November 2007 at $10M en route to a $40M opening weekend and ultimate $126M gross.  These days animated movies routinely make much more overseas than in the US, but that's still a soft number for a picture that probably cost over $300M in production and marketing costs. 

The other openings are at a much lower level.  IN TIME is meeting its low target with around $5M on Friday for a $12-13M weekend, and THE RUM DIARY can't even claim that, with about $2M on Friday for perhaps $6M over the weekend.  

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 plunged in comparison with last Friday, which was inevitable given that last week's included a huge Thursday midnight component, but the picture will still own 2d place for the weekend with around $20M.  FOOTLOOSE should take in another $5-6M in its 3rd weekend.

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

The Saturday drop for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 turned out to be very much in line with Paranormal 2's.  Paramount is estimating a better Sunday hold than the second installment had; if the result is instead the same as last time, the weekend gross will dip below $54M, but to a still-giant number.  Paranormal 3 also took in $26M overseas, so it's already in profit (including global marketing costs) 3 days into its run.

THE THREE MUSKETEERS began its overseas run in September, and has grossed $49M to date internationally.  Even if that doubles, though, with a US total likely to be under $30M, the picture isn't going to make back its $90M production cost plus marketing.

The worldwide outlook is brighter for JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN.  It's a throwaway in the US, but like the first film in the series, it's a genuine hit overseas with over $100M in the bank.

REAL STEEL, FOOTLOOSE and DOLPHIN TALE have been holding well, but PUSS IN BOOTS will be a real challenge for all of them next weekend.

MARGIN CALL had a strong $10K average in 56 theatres, a release that went well beyond the usual limited release territories--and that's not counting the film's VOD revenue.  Worth noting:  the Margin number included $32K at its main NY theatre, which made it more or less even with the weekend's showcase limited release, Fox Searchlight's MARTHA MARCY MAY MARLENE, which had a $35K average in 4 NY/LA houses. 

Sony Classics expanded 2 of its fall openings with decent results:  THE SKIN I LIVE IN averaged $12.5K at 21, and TAKE SHELTER averaged $3500 at 55.  In less high-visibility openings, LE HAVRE and ORANGES AND SUNSHINE both averaged about $4500 at 6 and 4 theatres respectively.

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.

Deadline has some preliminary numbers for Friday, and they suggest a $25M haul for PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 (including $8M from Thursday midnight shows).  This would compare to $20M (including $6.3M from midnight shows) for Paranormal 2.  That film made just about half of its weekend gross on opening day, so if these numbers hold, the third installment of the series (buoyed by largely favorable reviews) could be in the neighborhood of $45-50M this weekend.  

The other new openings are expectedly dismal.  THE THREE MUSKETEERS is hoping for $4.5M on Friday en route to $11M, while JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN may only do $1M on Friday, which with a family film multiple could bring it to a still-terrible $4M or so in total.

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

The PARANORMAL ACTIVITY franchise is a movie studio's dream come true.  The concept itself demands a no-star cast, a very limited number of settings and a bare minimum of special effects (the third and latest entry in the series cost a franchise-high $5M) and the storytelling gimmick is so clear and well-known by now that a relatively low marketing spend is all that's required.  All the filmmakers have to do is not screw the thing up, and fresh directors Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman (they were behind the internet documentary(?) Catfish) have managed that very neatly.

Until its last 15 minutes, Paranormal Activity 3 is much the same as 1 and 2, with just a few new twists.  Viewers of the earlier movies will remember that they revolved around sisters Katie (Katie Featherstone), and Krista (Sprague Grayden), and the spirits that mess up their houses and lives.  In Paranormal 3, a brief prologue set shortly before the events of the other two movies has Katie bringing a box of old VHS tapes from their childhood to Krista's house; the rest of the movie is what took place on those tapes, in 1988.

As before, the setting is an entirely banal house, where strange noises and movements start to occur.  The contrivance justifying the "found footage" (there's little attempt to pretend that the footage we're watching was shot on a 1988 camcorder rather than digitally) is that Katie and Krista's stepdad Dennis (Christopher Nicholas Smith) is a wedding videographer, so his response to the mystery is to monitor whatever's going on by planting cameras in the bedroom he shares with the girls' mom Julie (Lauren Bittner), as well as in little Katie and Krista's room (as kids, they're played by Chloe Csengery and Jessica Tyler Brown)--and one more.  In a touch that pays terrific dividends for the movie, he rigs the base of Julie's oscillating fan with a camera, so like an old department store surveillance system, it verrrry slowly semi-rotates from the living room to the kitchen and back again, over and over.  This allows for Joost and Schulman to pull off some marvelously timed effects as we wait tensely for the camera to get back to the room where we know something is about to happen; throughout the picture, the directors do a great job of using silence and framing to set off the scares.  (In its simplicity and almost ascetic visual style, Paranormal is the haunted house antithesis of American Horror Story.)

Until the final reel, the events of Paranormal 3 are mostly the same jolts we're used to:  suddenly slamming doors, objects that bounce around without warning, lights that shatter.  The main innovation of Christopher Landon's script (he also wrote the second installment of the series) is that little Kristi, has an imaginary playmate Toby who's a good deal less friendly than Danny's invisible friend Tony in The Shining. 

This eventually leads to what will be the one debatable aspect of Paranormal 3:  the last reel.  When the studio and producers decided to make the original film's sequel about the same family, rather than telling an entirely separate story of another family with supernatural visitations, they had to develop a mythology for the events in the first film, and that mythology ultimately takes over this new installment.  For anyone who wants to apply logic to the series, this leads to all kinds of problems--for one thing, given the events in this picture, the portrayal of the adult Katie and Kristi in the first two movies makes almost no sense, even if they paper it over with "their memories were erased."  For another, the more inexplicable events are explained, the less irrationally terrifying they get (and this particular back-story is neither original nor all that interesting).  On the other hand, simply having the same things happen to the same family repeatedly without any explanation could only take the series so far, and there's no question that the last section of Paranormal 3 works.  

Since it's clear even from opening day grosses that Paranormal 3 will be more than successful enough to require a fourth installment, the interesting question will be where the series goes from here.  It may be time to expand the scope of the franchise, but that could create risk in what has been, until now, a virtual studio annuity.  We'll surely find out in just about a year; as long as they don't make it in 3D...

The new PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 3 is off to a good start:  its $8M boxoffice from midnight shows last night was 30% higher than Paranormal 2's midnight performance, and in a league with Hangover 2's $10.4M, which is the highest ever for an R-rated title.

It's always to the advantage of the new opening to own first place at the boxoffice, so if Paramount thought FOOTLOOSE could pull it out over REAL STEEL, they would have staked their claim today.  (Both pictures are reporting a 39% Saturday-to-Sunday drop.)

The Hollywood Reporter says Real Steel also made $23M overseas, which is slightly up from last weekend but includes an expansion into unspecified new territories.  Look for Mitch Metcalf's international boxoffice report later.

The rest of the US weekend boxoffice news was bad for the new openings (downright awful for THE BIG YEAR), and good for holdovers. 

 

It's easy to overreact to a lousy weekend like this.  On the one hand, bear in mind that last year's Jackass 3D was a huge overperformer, and that inflated the year-by-year comparison for this weekend.  On the other, anyone who thinks the overall small declines for this weekend's continuing films suggests anything other than desperate moviegoers unable to make themselves see the new arrivals and thereby forced to choose older ones is deluded.  (The trend may well continue next weekend for everyone who isn't a PARANORMAL ACTIVITY fan, since it's not clear what audience exists for THREE MUSKETEERS 3D and Universal seems to be sneaking JOHNNY ENGLISH REBORN into town.)  

The limited release of THE SKIN I LIVE IN was highly successful, with a $38.5K average in 6 theatres.  Emilio Estevez's THE WAY expanded to 100 theatres and did an OK $2500 in each, TAKE SHELTER held nicely after an expansion to 24 houses, with around $5500 in each.  Considering its years on the shelf, FIREFLIES IN THE GARDEN did a decent $6K in each of 5, but TEXAS KILLING FIELDS could only manage $3K in each of 3.  

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.