By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Weekend Wrap-Up
Who’d a thunk it?! Forty-one point nine MIL-lion dollars! For Deep Impact! Must be something about Paramount. No other studio seems to make me drop my jaw in shock at some of their numbers, but my jaw has been hanging there since Saturday morning when I saw that the film reported a $13 million Friday. That was about what I expected this dud — please someone write me and tell me you disagree — to total this entire weekend. Chew on these numbers. Deep Impact, if these numbers hold, will become the highest grossing non-Memorial Day opening ever, over Twister, which seemed to have a lot more people anxious to pay to see those effects. The per screen average of $13,276 is the highest recorded since Men In Black last summer. Yes, better than any weekend of Titanic. (Titanic did beat $13K a few times, but never hit $13,200.) Also better than Air Force One, Liar Liar and Tomorrow Never Dies. The only other films, in 1997, that had a better per screen weekend were The Lost World and Batman & Robin. So, here’s the rub. If Deep Impact can do $42 million in three days on 3,156 screens, what will Godzilla do over five days on 6,000-plus screens? Anything less than $125 million will be considered a disappointment. Now, THAT’S scary!
As for the rest of the films, why even talk about them? There are some highlights below, but the no. 2 picture was under $5 million.
THE GOOD: City of Angels passed the $60 million mark. Woo did poo ($2.5 million), but it did manage $4,052 per screen average with Jada doing her thing on just 617 screens. And Tom Cruise was at the Laker game on Sunday, so I guess Stanley Kubrick gave him a Get-Out-Of-Production-Free card for at least a few days.
THE BAD: Warren Beatty and Fox (in that order) delayed the wide release of Bulworth by a week. Why? Apparently the buzz wasn’t strong enough for Warren. That might work moving, say, March to April, but one week isn’t enough time for the soundtrack to catch fire, critical mass to build (which is unlikely given the very mixed reactions reviewers have had to the film) or for Fox marketing to heat things up any more than they have. About the only move Warren could use to really drive business would be to stunt Letterman or Leno every single night this week or next. That would show the kind of self-deprecating sensibility that might make this WB seem hip (or, more to the point, not old). The other story floating about is that by delaying, Fox ended up with Bulworth in a one-week exclusive at Century City’s AMC 14 theater. As a result, Mann’s Chinese backed out of being the home of the premiere and the attending footprints-in-cement ceremony that goes with that. All things considered, that 10-second film clip would have gotten Bulworth more free publicity than a week of ads can match.
THE UGLY: Black Dog dropped an impressive 56 percent this weekend, but that shouldn’t surprise anyone. What scared me was finding out that Black Dog was originally a Kevin Sorbo movie. If Hollywood careers are about ebb and flow, Patrick Swayze is now wading in the warmest part of the kiddie pool.
THE CONTEST: This weekend’s box office contest is over. Results tomorrow. But if you want a chance to go to the Godzilla premiere in NYC, go to the home page and click on the reel.com logo on the black bar on the left. There, you can enter their Godzilla contest. Meanwhile, next Monday at rough cut, make plans to join me for the first Hot Button live chat, complete with news and views from the Godzilla junket I’ll be attending next weekend. Keep an eye out for more details.
TWO BAD MOVIES EQUAL: Woo + Deep Impact = Deep Woo Impact. Jada Pinkett Smith does a film so bad that a movie columnist who really thinks the world of Jada feels compelled to say something that might offend Will Smith’s pregnant wife. Will doesn’t think it’s funny and refuses to work for Warner Bros. until said columnist is made to watch The Big Hit and The Replacement Killers over and over until his eyes and ears bleed. On the edge of bad movie death, the columnist is saved by Harry Knowles who nurses our hero back to health with a steady diet of movies John Woo actually directed. Indebted to Knowles, the columnist dyes his hair red, gains 150 pounds and starts using “ain’t” and “shucks” in most of his sentences.
JUST WONDERING: Are you a Harry Knowles lover? Maybe a Harry Knowles hater? Either way, you will probably enjoy checking out Mark Ramsey’s parody of the Texas Rumor King’s site, Ain’t It Cruel News.
BAD AD WATCH: Deep Impact’s ad starts with Gene Shalit and ends with Richard Schickel, but in between, it’s Sixty Second Preview, Ron Brewington, Jeanne Wolf’s Hollywood and someone named Mike Cidoni from an unknown ABC-TV outlet. Brewington is especially grating with “One of the most important films you’ll see this summer!” What will he say for Saving Private Ryan? “You’ll love this movie so much, you’ll wish you were in World War II!?” (Of course, he’d then have to add, “WWII kicks WWI’s butt! Better Nazis! Faster airplanes! Puts the concentration in concentration camps!”)
READER OF THE DAY: There were a number of letters like this one last week. From Jshih: “You said you haven’t heard from anyone who really loved City of Angels; well, I’m one moviegoer who loved it. Maybe it’s because Nicolas Cage is my favorite actor and Meg Ryan is one of my favorite actresses, but the story was interesting (not cheesy, like I thought it would be when I was going to see it) and the acting was nothing short of extraordinary. I have to agree that it’s either a ‘love-it’ or ‘hate-it’ movie since it appeals to a small audience, but I loved it.”
