April 25, 2024
Box Office
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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?
So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.
And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.
There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.
I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.
So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.
But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”
My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher
“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.
~ David Simon
Larger drop for DMC than most people expected, I suspect.
When you’re opening day was over $50 million, a 67% drop ain’t bad.
Hell, there are films that would kill for a $18.7 million opening Friday, let alone a second Friday.
Is a 60+ mil weekend still a shot? Seems like it right?
I think I’m most impressed that piraters can’t seem to find a good copy of POTC2 to pirate. Someone is doing a good job.
I’m seeing Little Man today and maybe Poseidon or Silent Hill or even MI3 at the 2nd run theaters for $2 tomorrow morning. I think I’d watch almost anything for $2.
well you get what you pay for, considering the prints are torn to shit by the time they hit 2nd run theaters.
^ That’s only if they last that long. These days, they could be in that state after a week.
That is, if there are any second-run theaters still around.
OTOH “A Scanner Darkly” could easily crack the weekend top 10 based on the early projection. Don’t be surprised if WiP takes that pic mainstream.
i watched a third of scanner online already. I enjoyed it, but their marketing tactic of placing 1st 24 mins online is questionable, almost feels like you’ve seen a substantive portion of the movie already, why pay $8 for the rest?
Still beat Sith’s second Friday by $3.5 million. Sith did about $55 million its second weekend so in the $60s seems pretty plausible. Might not get as a big a Fri-Sat bump as Sith though since POTC’s Friday was a summer day. Running $14 million ahead of Sith and $12 million ahead of SPidey 2 after 8 days. Those did $390 and $373 domestic so the greater than $400 million predictions seem on target.
“That is, if there are any second-run theaters still around.”
Yep.
if Superman doesn’t make it to $200 million, does that mean no sequel?
The issue of a Superman sequel has been, since the day of release, a question of budget and little else. There is a large audience out there for this character, but if you can’t make the movie for under $150 million, you can’t make money on it.
The budget really does come down under $250 million because the insane development costs fall away automatically. But For Singer to do it, it would have to be a step backwards in terms of freedom. He’d have to, I imagine, agree to give up some marketing approvals. And he’d probably have to guarantee the budget with his salary as collateral.
If he
Warners threw $40 more million in marketing, but only kept SR with 50-55% drops in weeks 2 & 3? Doesn’t seem like a great investment.
“He’d have to, I imagine, agree to give up some marketing approvals.”
Dear God, I hope so. I’ll take it a step further, how about NO marketing approvals and let the WB do their job, which some of them are now going to lose because Singer had marketing approvals to begin with. Ugh!
Jumping ahead to next week, what’s with the 4-way jam? I’m actually interested in all four, but not on the same week-end!
I’ve actually seen CLERKS II already (one of the best movies of the year so far IMHO) and I’m going to the LADY IN THE WATER all-media Wednesday night… So I guess my money will go to MONSTER HOUSE, though Uma is tempting.
Anyway, what I mean is that if MY SUPER-EX GIRLFRIEND was opening late August, it would have more space to attract folks who are mezzo-mezzo about wanting to see it.
Nikke Finke really is a terrible writer. I hadn’t heard of her before coming here, and she was linked on Drudge, talking about Pirates 2 ‘sliding’. It’s worthless ‘journalists’ like her that just piss me off.
She says that Pirates’ estiamated 58 million dollar weekend is “way off” from it’s 70 million dollar projection.
Earth to uppity bitch…i wouldnt call 11-12 million way off. I don’t know who came up with that projection, but with the massive weekday hauls its been taking in, one would think the second weekend would dip a little bit below expectations. Pirates is what any studio would want, a consistent, day to day earner.
These industry doom and gloom fuckers are really starting to wear out their welcome. The sky isn’t falling… not yet anyway.
Good news I suppose for all involved, except Superman. That dude just can’t catch a break (Pirates of the Caribbean = kryptonite?).
Glad to see The Devil Wears Prada hold so well this weekend. I suppose that’s the very definition of “legs” for a summer release that’s not The Notebook.
It could easily overtake Superman at the end of the weekend too! Whod’ve thunk that a month ago.
Follow the money, Anghus.
Besides Drudge anxious to link to whatever is most negative about Hollywood, let’s try to imagine where Nikki gets her all of information, since she clearly knows nothing about box office herself.
When did Nikki start “being told” about box office? What movie was she touting? Who has she hyped up lately who is related to one studio? Who has an interest in lowering the Pirates story while pushing their top 3 movie?
Hmmm…
Hey DP, I’ve noticed some comments concerning the screen counts. When we read that, for example, that POTC is on 4,133 screens, does that mean actual screens or does that mean theatre complexes. I always assumed it meant screens but some comments I’ve read confused me.
Last night I saw Pirates in the suburbs of Chicago. It was on two screens at the same theatre location. Is that 2 of 4,133 or something else? Or is there another explanation for my confusion beyond my own general state of confusion?
Re: Nikki Finke –
Dupree? (you did say top 3.)
Dave,
i realize Drudge is a Hollywood hater. I don’t know Finke enough to know what studio she shills for. I’ve read 2 or 3 of her pieces, and it’s enough to know how little she knows.
4,133 is the number of theaters. Figure at least 9000 actual screens, probably a couple hundred more.
The difference between the theater and screen counts is why you see per theater averages and per screen averages.
For Finke, I’m guessing it’s Prada Dave is implying she’s shilling for.
9000 screens was possible last weekend… doubtful this weekend… It’s actually pretty blurry, Dire.
Box office reports list about 35,200 screens. There are more than that, but not a massive number more.
I will ask around and try to get a better answer.
Prada is #5 at the box-office right now. Typo? Obviously they’re the number one movie from the evil Rupert Murdoch’s studio…
Thanks, Blackcloud and PR for answering aobut screens and theatres. So if you could get an accurate screen count daily box office would be number of screens times seats per screen times sellout ratio times showings per day times average ticket price.
Theatres are alway quoted including on Mojo. Is there a place that compiles screen counts publicly?
From Wall Street research I have read 35,200 screens is close to what is usually quoted. I recall it got as high as 37,000 at the time the theatres all went bankrupt.
From the Natl Association of Theatre Owners:
# of movie sites:
http://www.natoonline.org/statisticssites.htm
# of movie screens:
http://www.natoonline.org/statisticsscreens.htm
Studios keep info regarding screen and print count pretty much to themselves.
I’m not sure just yet that $400M is a foregone conclusion for Pirates. It’s running slightly ahead of Sith at this point, but the parallel weekend for Sith was Memorial Day, which meant it did $33.5M on Sun-Mon. Not having a holiday, Pirates is likely to earn more like $20M on those days, which will bring it even with or slightly behind Sith. It should make up some ground during the week (Sith did $4-4.5M per day, Pirates should be around $6-7M), but with 4 big titles entering the market next weekend, Pirates could be hard pressed to do better than the $25M Sith did in its following weekend. All of which is just to say Pirates may not get out of Sith’s $380M neighborhood… which is hardly a bad place to live. (A counter argument would be that after this point, Sith faced the meat of the summer tentpoles, while Pirates will be up against the comparatively softer August titles, and may pull away again–that may or may not be true.)
I think the Nikki Finke reference is to Sony–she started by touting Da Vinci Code, and this weekend the theory would be that by doubting Pirates, she’s helping Little Man, although I’m not sure how a small shortfall in Pirates does much to help a film that’ll make 1/3 as much this weekend. (Of course, Hot Button has been flogging Sony’s Monster House as The Next Big Thing for weeks now… presumably without ulterior motive.)
To be fair to Singer palmtree, “marketing approval” doesn’t neccessarily mean “tells them how to market”, does it? It’s probably case a director who spent the last year being insular looking at the ads and saying “Sure, whatever, I don’t care” to a staff of people who, especially in the last three years, have kind of been shitty at their jobs. (WB has been having such a poor year in general, maybe they deserve to lose it)
David, you say 1,000 screens, but for all we know, it lost that amount when Pirates opened as theatres made room for the demand for that movie. Right now, it really hasn’t lost that many whole theatres, and I think it could hold that the number to over 3000 next weekend. I’m more worried about it losing IMAX screens on Friday because isn’t Monster House going to be playing in IMAX 3-D when it opens?
“Warners is rumored to have thrown another $40 million or so into TV spots in support of the 2nd and 3rd weekend of the film against Pirates, et al, which is an encouragement to exhibitors.”
40M? Assuming that’s not a typo, what does that bring the marketing costs to? I thought it was close to 100M already…
E-Douglas, you make a good point about the loss of the IMAX 3-D screens being damaging to Superman. I finally saw the movie today in IMAX and the presentation was stunning – razor sharp digital clarity on a screen the size of a jumbo jet. The boat rescue looked great in 3-D too. AND the theater was full. This may be Superman’s best hope of geting over the $200m mark, given that i thought the movie was nowhere near perfect. Keep in mind that Polar Express tanked in regular theaters but the leggy IMAX screenings got Zemeckis and Warner out of the box-office hole to the tune of $160 million.
That sounds a little exagerrated. I know that Polar Express was helped a lot by IMAX, but are you saying that $160m of its $174m domestic gross was from IMAX? I don’t think that’s even possible.
Well, I’m not going to take a chance that it’s gone when I get back from San Diego–making plans to go see Superman again in IMAX 3-D on Tuesday. I wouldn’t credit it for *that* much of SR’s box office returns, but the higher ticket price, larger theatres certainly must have helped it a bit against Pirates, which wouldn’t be playing on those screens.
By the way, I don’t understand why DP would think that calling Kate Hudson a ‘white chick’ would bother anyone, even the hypersensitive PC types he’s thinking of.
I’m not sure that Drudge is always looking for the “negative” hollywood angle. But he does tend to look for the “unique” story that he can break, and lately his hollywood “breaking news” has been misleading at best. But Finkie seems happy to supply him with “faking news” for the watercooler folks. This week’s story was a new low for her.
Jeff, I’m pretty sure Wally was just taking a stab at remembering what The Polar Express made in it’s entire run, not saying IMAX was $160mil by itself.
Remember, it was re-released last year aswell and made a small fortune, I believe.
If this Nikki Fenke chick is touting Little Man then she really is a crazy bonkers weirdo.
Monster House is not in IMAX 3D… in its own 3D houses, much like Chicken Little was
So the bad word of mouth did hurt Pirates a little after all. Interesting. Then again, I’m sure the Superman folks wouldn’t exactly mind being “hurt” like that.
Where are these 3-D houses? This is the first time I heard of this, although I vaguely remember something about DIsney setting up 3-D theatres… are these special projectors and does it require wearing glasses? I”m just wondering cause I think I was invited to a 3-D screening in San Diego… the day after I’m planning to see Superman in IMAX 3-D… better get the aspirin ready…
CHeck out NIkki Finke’s latest blog post… I’m beginning to veer more towards the “crazy” explanation myself.
there’s no specific evidence that pirates or many other movies have significant dropoffs 2nd week due to bad word of mouth. Some movies are marketed so effectively that they are able to drive a huge percentage of their total audience into going opening week. Pirates made $200 million before its 2nd weekend, that’s 2/3rds as many people as saw the original movie in its entire theatrical release. Word of mouth at these numbers is really hard to determine.
Also, I’m not sure how accurate it is, but the studio word of mouth tracking-firm called cinemascore has Pirates 2 with an A rating from audiences (90% recommend) it polled. Again, not sure how accurate it is, but I think 3rd and 4th week will give a much better idea of WOM than 2nd. A 2nd weekend total of $58 mill is gigantic, and only crazies would say it’s disappointing in any way.
Skyblade, I doubt it.
First of all, it had to be Singer’s decision to allow cameras into his process for his short behind the scenes film clips on bluetights.net. Second of all, it had to be Singer who approved a teaser trailer that did not much more that show complete reverence for the Donner films (Williams’ score, Brando’s voice) and avoid any of the cool shots that any good marketing department would probably show. Third, judging from the wounded ego, Singer’s ego was running the show and an ego that size doesn’t just say, “Yeah just do whatever.” The poster was not the cool flying through the city they’re using now, it was Supes hovering in space above Florida…which I railed against at the time and still think was Singer’s idea of what his brooding Superman movie was about.
As a rule, I have little sympathy for a petulant director who can’t let experienced marketing people market their movies to an audience. I know Singer’s movie was really a unique entity (sarcasm), but still, when the marketing fails because of a director, the last person to lose his shirt is the director and the first is the marketer. Remember when Paramount got rid of its loyal marketers in favor of the Dreamworks crew…obviously it was the old marketers’ fault for all those flops.
Palmtree is right.
The initial teaser was underwhelming and a tad too pretentious; it was also remarkably close to an amateur fake trailer that had been doing the rounds on the ‘net weeks or months before (using comic.con footage).
There were no “money shots” in any of the trailers (with the exception of the last one which showed the bullet hitting the eye).
The Florida poster we mostly liked here, but I think in retrospect it didn’t work.
I loved the Donner references, Brando, the Williams score and the credits, but overall the film was light on the action and heavy on the romantic aspect.
What did Warners expect? $300 million domestic for a comic book hero who was more lovestruck than heroic? (the fourth SUPERMAN made 17 million or so domestic in ’87)
It’s very hard to market a film that is light on the f/x and action and heavy on the romantic shmaltz.
But don’t most petulant artiste types not really concern themselves with the business aspects?
And in any case, I stand my decision that even if WB’s marketing staff is a scapegoat, the studio doesn’t seem to have a crack team. Remember–Batman opened with even less. They would have got fired for something else.
Dave, can you explain what you meant by this: “If you are heading to Date Night tonight and you haven
Be careful, Sultry, he’ll call you part of the PC brigade (even though you are completely right).
Sky, I should hope not…unless they have experience like Spielberg. If Singer had approvals over marketing, that means he negotiated for it in his contract. I hope WB would not hand that over unless they needed to. Mr. Poland, can you shed light as to how Singer got those approval rights?
Batman Begins cost a lot less to make and market than Superman. I don’t think hitting $205 m domestic ($371 worldwide) is bad for a franchise that had become a laughingstock.
Looks like they are posting over $62 million for the second weekend of Pirates. So much for that $58 million figure.
Good to hear Direwolf, that means we’ll be getting a retraction from Nikki Finke.
Or not.
anyone who spins a 60+ million second weekend as a failure has drank too much of the Kool Aid.
I think at this point, we should be looking to the foreign receipts, as it’s already a bona fide hit domestically.
I wonder how Superman Returns is faring overseas.
Yes Jeff,
There are no hard core PC’ers at all who post on this blog.
None at all.
If Superman makes it to 200+ it will thanks to the Imax 3D factor, which will help it make a couple million consistantly deep into August.
Anyone want to see the vein in DP’s temple throb? Watch this..
Copied from Nikki Finke’s blog:
“Hollywood’s hot, hot, hot box office cooled this weekend, slumping for the first time in 9 weeks: down around 5% compared to last year’s disastrous summer.”
OH NO!!!!! We’re down this weekend from one of last summer’s strongest weekends!!! The slump is back!!!
heh heh… just kidding, but I found it kinda funny that what would be considered a decent weekend ($100 million for the Top 3) is being colored as a “down weekend.”
Hmmmmmm, the dumbass of the week is ……Nikki!!!
i dont think i’ve ever read someone so stupid claiming to be an expert.
seriously, did she win her website in a contest?
if not, what correspondence school did she acquire her journalism degree?
does she have a degree?
idiocy makes me sad.
http://www.lukeford.net/profiles/profiles/nikki_finke.htm
Fascinating read. Clearly she lives for scoops…not analysis.
Ooooh, Nicol, I wonder what you mean.
“Borderline” Nikki is at it again.
“does she have a degree?”
Yes. She graduated top of her class at Nikki Fenke’s School of Gossip and Conjecture.