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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

The Weekend Wrap-Up

Hate to say I told you so, gang, but I got a lot of mail complaining when I suggested The Truman Show was a $120 million movie (domestically) at best. Welcome to reality. (Kinda like Truman, I guess.) Truman dropped 36 percent this week, three percent worse than this weekend’s drops by A Perfect Murder and Godzilla. Even if the outstanding weekday numbers continue, Truman won’t be hitting $100 million until the July 4 weekend. But keep perspective. A $120 million drama (my estimated total) is a rare and wonderful achievement indeed. Oh, yeah. Truman did $20.1 million this weekend.
Six Days, Seven Nights opened softly for a Harrison Ford movie. Sixteen million dollars isn’t chicken feed, but it will be pushing to pass the $50 million mark domestically… significantly less than its budget. As noted before, A Perfect Murder dropped by a third to $11.2 million. Can’t Hardly Wait, opening with $8.2 million, will have to fight to get into the black before hitting home video. The film actually had its gross drop from Friday to Saturday. A sign of serious word-of-mouth problems. Fortunately, Sony kept the film on a low budget and didn’t spend too much on TV ads. Godzilla dropped by a third, still just short of the $125 million mark. It doesn’t look like any of the summer films released so far will hit the $150 million mark domestically. Armageddon is probably the next best hope. (More on that film below.)
The second five is pretty much surprise-free. Hope Floats sunk 40 percent for the second straight week adding $5.1 million. Deep Impact takes a 33 percent hit (to $4.4 million) as it approaches $130 million. The Horse Whisperer falls just 27 percent, as it secures its title of the No. 2 non-monster movie of May, approaching $60 million. Dirty Work is hardly a world beater, but the film was not the worst embarrassment imaginable. It did only $3.6 million, but managed a $2,207 per screen average. In 10th, Bulworth breathes its last life, pulling in $1.2 million. Titanic, I Got the Hook Up and Quest For Camelot fell out of the Top 10, but don’t be surprised if Titanic returns to the list yet again sometime soon.
THE GOOD: Armageddon screened for the media this weekend. Ain’t-It-Cool-News offers a few extremely positive reviews from “spies” who were at the screening, not a big surprise given that the 18-25-year-old crowd was recruited to provide the screams and whistles that Disney wanted to set the tone. (Also, no surprise that Harry’s being flown to Cape Canaveral for the premiere of the film. The co-opting of Knowles continues.) But the geek buzz on the film seems pretty positive.
THE BAD: Canvassing the media that attended the Armageddon screening, the general tone was reserved. Yes, it was better than Deep Impact. Yes, it’s beautiful. Yes, the effects are very cool. No, it doesn’t make much sense. No, it isn’t all that different than Deep Impact in terms of story. No, you don’t really care about these characters. Armageddon is likely to be one of those critic-proof films. So, who cares what the media thinks, right? Disney does. The film can be a smash with the 18-25 crowd and succeed, but if it stiffs with the “over 30s” it will be a $150 million hit instead of a $250 million phenomena. We’ll see.
THE UGLY: Godzilla continues to take it in the chops. There is a billboard here in L.A. for a piece of miniature electronics that is in Godzilla green and screams “300,000,000 times smaller than the hype!” And in Armageddon, there is a rather deflating Godzilla joke. Of course, the most interesting part to me is how the joke, which was certainly there long before Godzilla opened, has changed meaning. When they wrote it and shot it, it was about one big movie wanting to top another. Clever. Now, it will be read as an attack on Godzilla‘s failure. And though it will get a big reaction from audiences this July, perhaps it’s a little unsportsmanlike to kick a movie when it’s down. Just a thought.
THE CONTEST: New odds for Dave’s Summer Race hit the site on Wednesday. If you are a player, check them out.Someone’s gonna win a DVD player.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: Armageddon + Can’t Hardly Wait = Can’t Hardly Wait For Armageddon. Jennifer Love Hewitt, Ben “Smirky” Affleck, Liv “Lanky” Tyler and Steve “Psycho” Buscemi sit around whining about the end of the world while calculating the money they may have made as movie stars had the world not come to an end. That is, until Christina “The Knife” Ricci comes in and slices their self-indulgent backsides to shreds with her sharp tongue. With a cameo by Bruce “Blonde Baldy” Willis as the guardian angel of smirky male actors who will lose their hair. Plus, Jenna “Wistful” Elfman as the chief of the drilling crew. Hilarity ensues each time she says her tag line, “Not that kind of drilling!”
JUST WONDERING: Did anyone even notice that Mulan is coming out next week? Maybe Disney got the hint. Let people get excited when the film exceeds low expectations instead of hyping it into the danger zone.
BAD AD WATCH: Disney is running pull quotes from someplace called Hangin ‘N Hollywood. I can deal with the small-town TV and radio stations. I can deal with the small-town newspapers. But what the heck is Hangin ‘N Hollywood, and in which donut shop can I pick up the publication?
READER OF THE DAY: From Bradshaw D.: “Hey, Dave, I came to The X-Files cybercast, and is was fun for awhile. I don’t know if any of my questions got answered in Yahoo! chat because I got mad after awhile because it kept stalling. The video part was pretty cool when it worked. It had some problems, though. Yahoo! always puts up transcripts of their chats, so I’ll know then if anything got answered. Being an X-phile, I had some pretty good questions. The thing that made me mad, though, was that The X-Files rooms were called Auditoriums, and at the beginning I was early and got into Auditorium #2, but then it stalled, and I ended up in room #15. That sucked. I thought it was pretty cool anyway. While I was in the chat room I was like, ‘Poland Rules’ and stuff like that. No one knew who you were but me.”

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Leonard Klady's Friday Estimates
Friday Screens % Chg Cume
Title Gross Thtr % Chgn Cume
Venom 33 4250 NEW 33
A Star is Born 15.7 3686 NEW 15.7
Smallfoot 3.5 4131 -46% 31.3
Night School 3.5 3019 -63% 37.9
The House Wirh a Clock in its Walls 1.8 3463 -43% 49.5
A Simple Favor 1 2408 -50% 46.6
The Nun 0.75 2264 -52% 111.5
Hell Fest 0.6 2297 -70% 7.4
Crazy Rich Asians 0.6 1466 -51% 167.6
The Predator 0.25 1643 -77% 49.3
Also Debuting
The Hate U Give 0.17 36
Shine 85,600 609
Exes Baggage 75,900 62
NOTA 71,300 138
96 61,600 62
Andhadhun 55,000 54
Afsar 45,400 33
Project Gutenberg 36,000 17
Love Yatri 22,300 41
Hello, Mrs. Money 22,200 37
Studio 54 5,300 1
Loving Pablo 4,200 15
3-Day Estimates Weekend % Chg Cume
No Good Dead 24.4 (11,230) NEW 24.4
Dolphin Tale 2 16.6 (4,540) NEW 16.6
Guardians of the Galaxy 7.9 (2,550) -23% 305.8
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4.8 (1,630) -26% 181.1
The Drop 4.4 (5,480) NEW 4.4
Let's Be Cops 4.3 (1,570) -22% 73
If I Stay 4.0 (1,320) -28% 44.9
The November Man 2.8 (1,030) -36% 22.5
The Giver 2.5 (1,120) -26% 41.2
The Hundred-Foot Journey 2.5 (1,270) -21% 49.4