What does the estimated $114 million start for Spider-Man mean?
Why beat around the bush by writing about anything else first, even if Mike Ovitz’ exit from AMG is a bigger story in the overall framework of the industry? Of course, your never-modest correspondent might point out that the Spider-Man story is really just an extension of the ongoing insanity in this industry as covered in this column for the last couple of years in particular.
The story of this weekend is not likely to be one that lasts very long. It’s not so much a matter of Star Wars: Episode Two beating the Spider-number in two weeks. The truth is, it is really up to George Lucas and Fox to decide whether the record falls. Yes, I am saying that George Lucas can decide for himself whether he wants to have the next record-breaking opening. All he and Fox has to do is to allow enough theaters enough flexibility to show Attack of the Clones on more than 6000 actual screens, just as Sony did on this opening weekend. (The screen count/per-screen statistic is now the most abused number in box office analysis.)
Everything else that LucasFilm and Fox have done in preparation for Clones is right on target. Besides masterminding the buzz on the supposedly independent internet and newsmagazines, they have now taken the amazing step of opening the media floodgates by screening the film for the press this Tuesday, more than a week before opening night and close enough to the Spidey opening to shift the buzz a full week ahead of schedule. There have even been reports that Fox has released the embargo rules – something they have since denied. However, the fact that the alleged memo freed the press to review as of this Wednesday – the day after the press screenings – suggest that it was real… and that Fox is expecting the door to open regardless of what the rules are.
After all, what else can be expected after last week’s Time Magazine review by Jess Cagle, which misleadingly suggested that Time’s film critic, Richard Schickel, had seen and approved the picture, and the parade of internet reviews that has started appearing, as per LucasFilm’s plan (they all saw the film weeks ago). Don’t even get me started on the most clever (ab)use of Ain’t It Cool since DreamWorks used the site to beat the Gladiator drum early.
But what about Spider-Man? Oops… I already forgot about the record-shattering weekend. Spider-Man is a good movie. The most amazing part of this weekend’s record-breaker – and I know some of you will get a quizzical look on your face when you read this – is how quiet it was. Yes, there was a whole lot of cross promotion and hype. But it was nothing in comparison to the Harry Potter hype… not even close. More pointedly, I was floored by how easy it was to get into the movie this weekend. My nephew, who went to see Spidey as part of a birthday party on Sunday, was amazed by the line that snaked down the street. But it was a third the size of the lines for Episode One and a quarter the size of weekend lines for Batman. And seats were available for a 4:15 show. You’ll notice that most of the “look at these sell-out” stories are about Saturday.
Sorry, Spider-Man just isn’t one of those industry-changing franchises. Of course, it’s not X-Men either… solid but not stunning. It’s a terrific franchise. To my mind’s eye, it’s a better franchise than the Harry Potter franchise (fewer percentage players with smaller percentages for the those who exist). In some ways, it is better than the Lord of The Rings franchise (it’s not limited to three films and the sequels don’t inherently have to feel like continuations).
But it’s just not Star Wars or Indiana Jones or even a Batman. It just isn’t. The $411 million worldwide scored by Batman thirteen years ago would likely be over a billion these days. Of course,
the production and P&A costs would be treble as well.
Remember, the film whose record Spider-Man just broke, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, had a hard time passing the $300 million mark domestically after a $90 million opening weekend and no major franchise opposition (Lord of the Rings) for over a month. And while Lord of the Rings opened with a little better than half the number that Potter did, their final domestic tally will be separated by less than $10 million total.
Titanic, the highest domestic and worldwide grosser of all time, opened to under $29 million. And Star Wars: Episode One, which opened to less than $65 million, a number that lingers in the record books behind four separate openings from last summer (Pearl Harbor, Planet of the Apes, The Mummy Returns and Rush Hour 2), but still became the fourth highest grossing film domestically, the
second highest domestic grosser ever if you don’t count re-releases and the third highest grossing film of all time worldwide. We can all whine and bitch about Jar Jar Binks, but understand something… audiences did not turn their backs on The Phantom Menace and its box office was not a phenomena of a massive opening weekend. Episode One was the leggiest franchise movie since Jurassic Park hit in 1993… back when second-run houses actually made money and a film could run for over a year in first and second run.
Of course, I feel a little silly dissing Spidey just as it becomes the first film with a $100 million weekend. But it’s about perspective. Sony execs are quite smart not to start guessing, as Warner Bros. execs did, that Spider-Man could end up doing Titanic numbers. They know that a domestic haul of $350 million is more likely and that $400 million would be a stunning triumph in today’s (or any day’s) marketplace. Chasing Titanic’s $1.8 billion theatrical haul will require a true freak of movie nature. Harry Potter is now #2 all-time, coming just short of the billion-dollar mark. Think about that. The number two film of all time is more than 44 percent behind number one.
So, does Spider-Man have a legitimate shot at $1 billion worldwide? Not really.. Attack of the Clones is the only film with a legitimate shot at the billion mark this year. My bet is that the next Harry Potter movie will drop slightly and the next Lord of the Rings movie will rise slightly. If there really was
a disappointment factor on The Phantom Menace and if Attack of the Clones is really that much better, making up the $78 million that TPM was short of a billion shouldn’t be that difficult. Additionally, Clones has the advantage, as did Spidey, of a 50 cent ticket increase across much of the nation marking the start of summer. When you are talking about these numbers of tickets sold, the increase can account for $5 million to $7 million in additional gross on opening weekend and as much as $50 million in total gross numbers.
Oh yeah… Spider-Man. Look for a final number between $650 and $750 million worldwide. And there is nothing wrong with that. Anyone who writes about next weekend being a disappointment when Spider-Man slides to $52 million is an idiot. And when Attack of the Clones opens to $78 million – $97 million with Thursday included – anyone who writes about Star Wars being in trouble is also an idiot. I anticipate
that Lucas and Fox will plan a huge, but not record-chasing opening and plan on being the leggiest film of the summer, outgrossing Spider-Man by $100 million or more domestically and by $200 million or more in
foreign territories. That’s the plan I anticipate. The reality? Who knows?

When I started writing this piece, I found myself shredding the ever-shreddable Tom King. After all, King drags down the Wall Street Journal’s credibility column after column, week after week. And, once again, he took a non-story and made it into a needless attack this last Friday. (Read the column here
if you have an online subscription to the Journal.)
The primary victim was Doug Liman who, ironically, seemed far more credible after King laid out the basis for the attack… at least if the reader brought any insight to the table about the movie industry.
The second victim, far more unforgivably, was Liman’s soon-to-be-released film, The Bourne Identity. In the great tradition of quote whoring, King labels The Bourne Identity as potentially, “Summer’s Biggest Filmmaking Nightmare.”
Absurd.
The Bourne Identity was the film whose director talked openly about the difficulties of production, against
what I’m sure was better advice. And The Bourne Identity was the film from which emerged someone,
clearly, with a serious grudge against Doug Liman. But I’ve seen The Bourne Identity and I can tell you that Tom King is creating a problem where there is none in the most important of places… in the work.
The funny thing about seeing The Bourne Identity, particularly in light of King’s attack, is that Liman has made a wonderfully idiosyncratic, 1970s style thriller. Every issue that King suggested was definitive of an out-of-control , temperamental artist turned out to be the right call by Liman.
Could the film have been shot in Montreal instead of Paris?
Of course.
But it would have lost more than the money that was gained on the bottom line. Unlike some films shot on location, Liman really does use Paris as a backdrop to almost every scene. This is a real location movie and it has that feel.
Huzzah!
There are dozens of studio films now each year that shoot Montreal for Chicago or Toronto for New York and then insert a few shots here and there that are from the real location… and as an audience member, it is always obvious that they are shooting around the cities that are so familiar to us. (Let’s not even start on the discussion of
runaway production based on tax credits instead of creative decisions.)
By the end of The Bourne Identity, you have a feel for the Parisian view of the streets of Paris, not just
the familiar landmarks like the Eiffel Tower. And that is very refreshing.
King also slaps at Liman for working with his star, Matt Damon, instead of just sticking to the script or jumping to accept the script changes that had been made without Damon’s consent… consent that was apparently part of Damon’s agreement to participate in the film.
Liman and Damon’s instincts seem to have been correct.The sex scene between Damon and Franka Potente, discussed in interviews before the King piece, is discrete and fits the tone of the film perfectly. Getting the characters on the run out of town for a while makes perfect sense. And the exchange
between Damon and Clive Owen at the end of “the farmhouse sequence” is as lyrical and beautifully done as any action sequence you are likely to see this year.
Of course, King suggests that the sequence should never have happened and had Liman been more experienced, he would have dumped the whole thing and saved some money for the studio.
Liman was right. King knows nothing.
I haven’t seen the original ending of the film, which apparently inspired test-screening audiences to want more action at the end of the film. But the end sequence that they now have, which was apparently the cause of the delay of the film from spring to summer, works quite well. (King’s cheap effort to make the move from a May 31 date to a June 14 date seem like a problem is truly idiotic. Moving the film from May 31 to August 16 would be a bad sign. A two-weekend move is simple strategy.)
The idea that Liman, or any director, would be paranoid about going back to their film to “add action” after they
were done is healthy, not problematic.
And King talks about the process of developing that final scene as “exasperating.” Anyone who has been involved with a project as it tried to develop a scene, either in production or in post, which acts as an adjustment to the original story knows that “exasperating” is an insanely gentle word for the sensation.
I hate to write a whole review of this movie through the prism of this schlemiel. I’m sure we have Doug Liman and Matt Damon and Stacey Snider and a few others at Universal to thank for choosing Franka Potente to co-star in this film when they could have hired some better known American actress to do a European accent.We get the tag team of Brian Cox and Chris Cooper, two of the very best character actors working today. The opening sequences as Damon starts to search for his identity are subtle and smart.
Of course, there are, as ever, some things that I wish were clearer or somehow resolved differently. Some questions are left unanswered, such as why Damon’s character seems to have a dislike of guns or why Franka Potente’s car cannot be more effectively tracked after the bad guys have her license plate
number.
It’s a little distracting to have Julia Stiles playing a near cameo… she is, after all, Julia Stiles. And if I were the studio, I would move the film again, because to me, it feels like a real fall film… sometime mid-October.
But The Bourne Identity is a quality film that works and it fulfills many of the cinematic wishes that critics and audiences regularly complain are not being fulfilled by studio films. And if any journalist wants to write about
the bumps and bruises suffered along the road, more power to them. But to attack a film before seeing it, taking
sides on the kind of petty studio vs. director stuff that happens on virtually every film… that sucks.Especially
when you are wrong.
PUSHING TOMORROW’S HOT BUTTON: About A Boy, Ovitz’ Exit, More Spider-stuff and God knows what
else! Later this week, Attack of the Clones, Unfaithful and more…
READER OF THE DAY; Not The Great One writes:“Jump Tomorrow was my favorite movie last year and it’s not currently scheduled for video release.  I did some research and according to a poster
on DVDtalk.com forum IFC is not releasing many of their movies on home
video.  I’m just wondering if you’ve heard anything about this
and suspect it might lead to an interesting story for your site.”
E ME: Anyone know anything?And what did you think of the web head?

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