By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Weekend Wrap-Up
His box office drop is bigger than The Lost World’s. Not as big as Batman & Robin‘s, but close. Godzilla managed just $18 million this weekend. That was a drop of 60 percent from last weekend’s three-day number. Ding dong, the Lee-zard is dead. And for better or worse, you all killed him. With this crushing blow, Sony has become the victim of a revolutionary moment in the industry. Size doesn’t matter. Spending $50 million (and tens of millions in marketing-tie-ins) to launch a film can be more dangerous than helpful. Building up all the hype had better pay off, or audiences will not only be disappointed, they will now come after you with torches and guns like the villagers chasing down Frankenstein.
In a remarkable coincidence, The Truman Show, which covers the issue of how media fits into our lives, is on the way next Friday. Director Peter Weir told me the film was testing best with 17-35s because that age group “got it.” They understand media manipulation after growing up with it in the ’70s and ’80s. Godzilla proved that. (One last note: I am still sympathetic to Devlin and Emmerich and feel they made a good monster movie with weak human characters. In time, as the hype fades, I think that more people will like the film. We’ll see.)
Eighteen million dollars was still enough to take first place. As I predicted, Sandra Bullock was able to raise Hope Floats above water, but not high enough to open really big. Almost $15 million dollars and second place is a nice start. I don’t think the film is good enough to actually build on that number next week, but look for the box office to stay steady and to, perhaps, come in No. 2 to The Truman Show next weekend, leaving Godzilla to pick up the third place scraps. Deep Impact came in a strong third, continuing to pull in audiences as it passed the $110 million mark. It would now appear that D.I. will outrun Godzilla as the top May release of 1998. And The-Boys-of-Summers-Past stayed current, as Redford (The Horse Whisperer, fourth place with $7.4 million) and Beatty (Bulworth, fifth place with $5.1 million) showed that they could still get it up. The box office, that is.
The second five was led by Dimension’s surprise low-budget hit I Got the Hook Up. The film, which opened, as almost all black-themed films do, on Wednesday (an ugly reminder of the racial tensions of America), actually opened strong in fourth place during the week and ended up with a $3.3 million weekend. That kept it ahead of Almost Heroes ($2.8 million for seventh), Quest For Camelot ($2.3 and eighth) and the tie in the nine and 10 slots between Titanic (in weekend 24) and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (in weekend 2).
THE GOOD AD: Bulworth is running very clever print ads right now. Fox took a whole load of positive pull quotes from critics large and small and turned them into a background for their standard movie ad. The effect is powerful. Not powerful enough to make people who don’t care about Warren Beatty go see the movie, but very good. Also, I love the new ads for Small Soldiers which include the great referential tags “Size Doesn’t Matter” and “It’s a small world after all.”
THE BAD AD: Some theaters are running a Garth Brooks music video as a promotion for Hope Floats. I’ve seen it with audiences twice so far, and giggling was the primary reaction. Every 18 months or so someone gets the idea that a music video belongs in a movie theater. And every 18 months plus a day, we know they’re wrong.
THE UGLY AD: Well, this one was a variation on an ad. I got an e-mail on Friday tipping me to go take a look at the official Star Wars site. Hmmmm. When I got there, I found a teaser screen that shouted in Godzilla-like flaming green and yellow, PLOT DOES MATTER. (For those of you who were confused by my admonitions to see “the best Godzilla slam yet,” that was it. Sorry that I couldn’t get the link off the site earlier.) By Friday evening, the teaser was gone without a trace. Who exactly at Lucasfilm was responsible for this amusing, if cruel, attack on Sony, Devlin and Emmerich? No answer yet. But whoever it was must be pretty comfortable that their film will not disappoint when it’s in theaters next Memorial Day with even bigger box office expectations than the world had for Godzilla this year.
JUST WONDERING: Does it bother anyone else that Disney is using the exact same bus stop photo campaign for Armageddon that they used for The Little Mermaid? Okay, Liv Tyler is never that animated, but you get my point. A big close-up, a character name above it and the movie title below. Super simple. (There is, however, the creepy fun of seeing Steve Buscemi’s 4-foot-tall head staring out at us all over Los Angeles.)
THE CONTEST: The end of Dave’s Box Office Contest has come. But there will be two contests in its place. Win, Place & Show is the new weekly box office contest. It’ll be easier to play and should be fun, so check it out later this week. Plus, Dave’s Summer Movie Race will turn up tomorrow. Handicap the movies best, and you can end up with your very own DVD player. For those of you who are expecting prizes from Dave’s B.O. Contest, they will soon be on the way. I’ll be making a mass mailing later this week once the final week’s winners have been determined.
TWO MOVIES EQUAL: Almost Heroes + Godzilla = Almost Godzilla. Chris Farley dons the rubber suit in his final role and destroys Tokyo, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Corpus Christi, Texas, all by mistake as he bumbles his way across the globe looking for a really big donut. Godzilla fans hail the performance as “better than that *(&$@* Sony thing,” but fail to notice that Sony is the distributor of the Farley film, which goes on to gross $700 million worldwide, more than making up for the disappointing returns on Godzilla. Co-starring David Spade as The Smug Monster.
THANKS: I would like to offer thanks to the Jimanator, Mr. Pink, Sir Bubba and Jimmy 669 for participating in the Green Room. Can’t seem to get a critical mass going in there yet. I’ll keep begging. Also, I want to thank those of you who were nice enough to send me supportive letters re: Phil Hartman. And I’d like to thank all of The Hot Button readers. I didn’t get one e-mail begging for more ugly details. We don’t have the most readers on the net here at rough cut, but I like to think we have the best readers. Thanks.
READER OF THE DAY: After my story on Carmike Cinema’s claim of Godzilla-created poverty, I got this note from Jim, who really ripped the chain on a new auditorium: “Poor Carmike. Had the misfortune to live in a city dominated by this most pathetically cheap jack-of-all-theater-chains. Maybe the reason Godzilla isn’t doing so great is that in the Carmike universe, audiences can’t see or hear it. The underpaid teenagers who run the facilities can’t be induced to focus the projectors, put bulbs in them, or point them at the screen. Poor, poor Carmike. The sooner they go under, the better off a lot of moviegoers are going to be. What a bunch of jerks.”
