Box Office '08
The box office in 2008 was healthy. But it was a better year in the upper middle class than it was for the blockbusters
April 19, 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
“That is exactly what the studio parents want to see. Consistency. Predictability.”
This seems like a comment that deserves to be elaborated upon in terms of things beyond mere business.
Also, for my own clarification, what is it that’s slipping re: DVDs – DVD revenues, or revenue growth rates?
An asterisk on the asterisk. The Dark Knight was never released in IMAX format in Brazil…but it is in conjunction with the US re-release. So if it does 3 million in Brazil, the asterisk will need an asterisk.
Any predictions for 2009? Film that I think will top $200 milliom domestically: Wolverine, Night at the Museum, Sherlock Holmes, Terminator 4, Star Trek, Up, Potter and Transformers 2.
Biggest box office flops? “Where the Wild Things Are’s” reported budget is 80 million, but it’s also supposedly way over. Avatar and GI Joe will be there due to their quarter billion dollar and 170 million dollar production budgets respectively. (and GI Joe will suck)
Dragonball and 2012 are other easy targets.
“But the dream of overstuffed DVD libraries being replaced with Blu the way DVD replaced VHS? Nah.”
Curious. Not ever or just not yet?
Very well said, Dave.
3-D “expert” Jeffrey Katzenberg has never actually released a 3-D movie, so I would ignore everything he says about the subject.
Excellent summary. Especially the cost-conscious studio gaining the upper hand. And as for Blu-Ray, you’re dead right. And the overseas issue gets more complicated when you factor the DVD market. Are packaged sales still even possible?
Nice piece Dave. I’m still kind of in awe about how much Dead Man’s Chest grossed.
Okay, it’s killing me. Who is the person Roger Friedman says you were caught with at Entertainment Weekly?
Isn’t that a multiple-years-old debunked smear, from somebody with a grudge?
Great piece; a nice start to the new year!
I liked particularly your point that many journos don’t have access to DVD and/or overseas’ revenues. Another thing that would most certainly help (in particular, because the shareholders are entitled), is the REAL BUDGET of films.
Hollywood has long since been one of America’s greatest exports. Certainly in terms of politics and culture, perhaps its greatest. So, I am genuinely concerned that out of all the scandals and financial fiascos that have been revealed so far, not one meaty one has come from Hollywood. We all laugh and shrug and the “creative’ accounting of the studios, but how long before Congress asks for the books to be opened? Hollywood has gotten so many tax concessions in so many States, and it is already protected in Trade Agreements.
“An asterisk on the asterisk. The Dark Knight was never released in IMAX format in Brazil…but it is in conjunction with the US re-release. So if it does 3 million in Brazil, the asterisk will need an asterisk.”
Not happening. It has no shot of doing 3m here in the whole re-release, let alone in IMAX.
Art… Roger’s response to this was, “This is a crazy person. I will fwd it to our lawyer.”
The posting is, indeed, another variation on a series of e-mails that were also posted on TMZ message boards last year (or longer).
I never worked in the office at EW. I have never even set foot in the EW offiices in New York. I am not gay. I am not HIV-positive. Etc, etc, etc.
The whole thing is very odd. When it keeps coming up, I assume that it is someone out to create problems for Roger… who by the way, I consider an wet turd on the shoe of professional journalism. So no love lost there.
Last time, I ended up posting the thread in the blog to simply get past it. This time, the thread includes some nasty personal stuff about Roger that I don’t have any way of confirming or denying in any real way. So I prefer just to stay out of it.
Many people – mostly other press – seem to like to lie about me. I don’t quite understand it, but since I have felt free to have opinions about the work of others in public and have a profile myself, I have to accept that shit happens.
There are now three people who seem to spend the most time obsessing on me, two almost exclusively in private and one in public. I would prefer there to be none. One never knows what people will choose to believe.
I do not invest in people’s personal stuff. I don’t write about it. I do not talk about it. I do not think much about it. Everything I say in private about people’s work, I have said or am willing to say in public and/or to the person’s face. That is how I roll.
And on I roll…
Want to hear something depressing?
The highest grossing film at the Thai box office in 2008 is The Mummy 3!!!
The Batman films have never made 50% or more of their gross outside of the U.S. That’s just how it goes with the character. The jump from 166 foreign for Begins to 465 for TDK is impressive no matter how you look at it.
Let us also not forget that most of the moviegoing audiences in some parts of the world, simply do not get the Bat. If anything; he’s more American than anything else. So he does not have the appeal Spider-man does. Why? Spidey is a universal story. While the Bat is a story only a bunch of gun loving paranoid whack jobs could love! WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
TDK could’ve easily passed that billion mark, without a reissue, if it had been cleared for release in China. (WB are claiming the decision was theirs, but nobody in their right mind believes that.) The three current members of the billion club all opened in China, although that was hardly the clincher for any of them.