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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Box Office Hell 12/15

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11 Responses to “Box Office Hell 12/15”

  1. Stella's Boy says:

    Eragon smells like a bomb to me. I think it will end up much closer to EW’s $14 million prediction than ComingSoon’s $27.2 million.

  2. Joe Straat says:

    Eragon is SO not making 27 million. I was dead wrong about Borat, but non Lord of the Rings fantasy rarely does well, ESPECIALLY dragon-themed. Remember the LAST Jeremy Irons fantasy movie with dragons in it? I’d say 12 mil.

  3. Wrecktum says:

    Dragon movies always underperform. Eragon is a miss.

  4. jeffmcm says:

    Yeesh, a Lord of the Rings wannabe with Jeremy Irons _and_ John Malkovich? The good news is, they both got paid.

  5. EDouglas says:

    Wow, and I’m high on everything again… except something good to get high on.

  6. luxofthedraw says:

    Pursuit will have the highest average, might even take #1 for the weekend if familes fight over Web vs Dragons and compromise to Pursuit

  7. Twain Swift says:

    Shocked at these predictions – Riders Wanted? Horrible, misguided, muddle of a campaign for a silly wannabe LOTR movie. It’s a tie between Charlotte’s and Web.

  8. Stella's Boy says:

    Looks like I was way off on Eragon. I really thought it would bomb. EDouglas, nice call.

  9. Joe Leydon says:

    Eragon is based on a very popular book. I mean, mind you, no one I know has read it, but it is a popular book. That could count for a lot. Just ask those of us who under-estimated the b.o. prospects of The Da Vinci Code.

  10. EDouglas says:

    Thanks SB…but boy, I ended up way overestimating Charlotte’s Web, and there was a time when I, like many people, thought it was the weekend’s one sure thing.

  11. ployp says:

    I saw Eragon. It felt way too long and it was too unrealistic. Come on, a 17-year-old boy mastering fighting in less than a week? The dialog is bad beyond description. There was a line, said by Eragon, before the Saphira and he soared into the sky for battle. It went something like this: ‘Fly high in the sky/ to win or to die’.
    It tries too hard to be Lord of the Rings, but it lacks the story to back it up. It was written by a teenager. And the score, I won’t even go there.

Quote Unquotesee all »

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