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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Friday Estimates by Klady – 4/11/09

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The Hannah Montana Movie had twice as big a Friday opening as Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both World Concert Tour. What that will mean by the end of the weekend, who knows? But the base for this film – the niche – is cleaner and stronger for the film based clearly on the Disney Channel series, whereas the concert had all the fear elements that conservative parents bring to the idea of a concert… which seem to have hurt the Jonas Bros concert movie even more after word-of-mouth of the overt subtextual sexuality broke.
Fast & Furious‘ drop is no surprise given the massive opening. Look for the weekend drop to be more in the high 50s.
Monsters vs Aliens going up a little is a bit of a surprise. Probably a lot of people going to the 3D after being afraid of being shut out – or being shut out – in weeks past.
Observe & Report opens about a third behind I Love You, Man, about 50% off of Paul Blart: Mall Cop, about $300k ahead of both The Uninvited and Confessions of a Shopaholic, and at double the opening day of Zack & Miri Make A Porno.
Dragonball Evolution devolved.

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35 Responses to “Friday Estimates by Klady – 4/11/09”

  1. Direwolf says:

    MvA clearly benefited from Good Friday with all kids off school. It has held well all week thanks to lots of spring breaks and now looks like it could get comfortably north of $180 million in North America. Where it looks light is overseas. Granted KFP and Mad 2 were exceptionally overseas but MvA is way behind those in many markets.
    Separately, I read an interesting theory from a Wall Street analyst that DVD sales may be hurt by the 3-D focus as people may forgo the DVD since it will only be 2-D at home. Seems plausible. Agree?

  2. yancyskancy says:

    I’ve been assuming that all these 3D titles will will also be 3D on DVD. I recently rented the “Journey to the Center of the Earth” DVD and it came with glasses. Of course the effect was rather diminished on a 36″ screen, but it worked okay. Glad I caught it in the theatre though.

  3. martin says:

    Direwolf, to me the 3D movie is the same as the IMAX movie. If I’m going to see it, I’m going to see it in a movie theater that’s properly equipped to show it. IMAX movie on my home tv? Yeah, uh no thanks. 3D blockbuster in 2D on my home tv? I don’t think so.

  4. jeffmcm says:

    When I was in school (public schools in Colorado) we never had Good Friday off because it was a religious holiday. Have things changed somehow in the last fourteen years?

  5. jeffmcm says:

    Oh, and Observe and Report actually managing to open reasonably well must be heartening to the people making The Green Hornet, right?

  6. Eric says:

    Jeff, I think a lot of districts skirt the rules by relabeling it “spring study day” or somesuch.

  7. Chucky in Jersey says:

    New Jersey and New York schools have always been off for Good Friday. Presumably jeffmcm went to school before Focus On The Family moved out to Colorado.
    “The Mysteries of Pittsburgh” opened in NYC and based on the critics it looks like an early contender for the Razzies.

  8. a_loco says:

    I have a feeling O & R will be a big hit on DVD. The final chase scene will become infamous, anyhow.
    For what it’s worth, Good Friday is a holiday in Ontario, but Easter Monday isn’t. It’s the opposite in British Columbia, though.

  9. chris says:

    “Mysteries” opened in way more than New York and it is, indeed, bad, but it’s not even the worst movie opening this week. (That would be “Dragonball Evolution”)

  10. LexG says:

    Re: “Mysteries of Pittsburgh.” Is this Sienna Miller’s new lot in life, for all her films to get one-week token limited runs in America before disappearing entirely? I guess “Factory Girl” got a couple weeks, but that Keira/Sienna “Edge of Love” (which I very much wanted to see) had ONE WEEK in one theater in L.A. Theater being the Nuart, which is a terrific theater but all but impossible for Valley or Hollywood dwellers to get to 90% of the time.
    Will “Mysteries” be gone by next Friday?
    I like Miller a LOT, but she’s definitely one of those decidedly BRITISH “superstars,” in that she tops the WENN-based IMDB gossip column and is all the rage over THERE. But here she’s C-list at best.
    See also, Jude Law (increasingly), Posh and Becks, Russell Brand, Sadie Frost. Seriously, is anyone in this country buying the Russell Brand hype?
    Dude’s more like the next Mr. Bean.

  11. yancyskancy says:

    I figured Mysteries of Pittsburgh was in for some rough critical sledding when I saw Armond White’s rave.
    I assume they’re not advertising it as “from the writer/director of Dodgeball.”

  12. movieman says:

    Yancy- The NY Press review of “Mysteries of Pittsburgh” was written by a fifth stringer (an intern possibly?), not the Almighty Armond.
    I can understand your confusion, though, since it’s as clueless, misinformed and windmill-tilting as a standard-issue Armond screed.
    Ironically, Pittsburgh wasn’t among the handful of cities that opened “Mysteries” yesterday. Lucky them.
    On an unrelated front: is there something wrong with me for thinking that Miley Cyrus may actually have an adult career ahead of her if she doesn’t fall into the Lohan/Britney trap?
    “Hannah Montana: The Movie” isn’t anything remotely special (still trying to figure out where the Chelsom touches were buried), but I kind of liked her. (Hannah Montana? Not so much.) The husky, throaty voice reminded me of the young Demi Moore, and she’s really quite charming and, surprisingly, natural and unaffected. (Her hunky cowboy boytoy is a perfect match for “Jr.: The Early Years” whenever they get around to doing a Dale Earnhardt Jr. biopic on CMT or ESPN. Or have they already
    done that?)

  13. movieman says:

    ..shoulda read: “MIGHT actually have an adult career ahead of her….”
    …started imbibing the vino a tad early today, gang.

  14. Wrecktum says:

    Apropos of nothing, but MCN’s front page identifies Maine senator Olympia Snowe as a Democrat. She’s a Republican.
    Not that this is a political site, but still.

  15. Wrecktum says:

    “the concert had all the fear elements that conservative parents bring to the idea of a concert… which seem to have hurt the Jonas Bros concert movie even more after word-of-mouth of the overt subtextual sexuality broke.”
    The hell? Do you have any evidence at all that the Jonas brothers movie suffered because of word-of-mouth on “subtextual sexuality?” Or are you making this up to fit some sort of weird ass theory you have?

  16. jeffmcm says:

    Hey Chucky, you don’t have to address me in the third person. I’m right here.
    Also, as I clearly stated before, I was out of Denver Public Schools 14 years ago, and Focus on the Family has been in Colorado Springs (not where I’m from) for its entire existence (32 years). Also, I checked and Apr. 10 is still not a vacation or teacher planning day in this system.
    Perhaps different parts of the country simply do things differently? A hard idea to process, I’m sure.

  17. mysteryperfecta says:

    “Apropos of nothing, but MCN’s front page identifies Maine senator Olympia Snowe as a Democrat. She’s a Republican.”
    She could have fooled me. 😉

  18. Eric says:

    mysteryperfecta– funny that you would say that, because I’m about as liberal as you seem to be conservative, and I’m not an Olympia Snowe fan either. To you, she seems to be working with the enemy; to me, she dilutes perfectly good legislation in the name of arbitrary bipartisanship.
    Those types, such as Snowe in Maine and Nelson in Nebraska, repel both sides. It’s a wonder they get reelected, but I suppose voters just like to see their senators’ names in the national press.

  19. LYT says:

    “Is this Sienna Miller’s new lot in life, for all her films to get one-week token limited runs in America before disappearing entirely?”
    She’s got one coming out soon that ought to stick around. I think it’s called “G.I. Joe.”

  20. Funny Off-Topic Story: On the last day of my NYC trip (that’d be Friday) I got very sick and while I managed to get to LA from NY the airline refused to let me fly from LA back to Australia. And while they put me up in the Hilton for the night (quite nice but the shower was horrible) I had to check out at 1pm and now I’m at LAX for over eight hours until my flight leaves at 11.10pm. And my travel partners had to continue on without me so all alone. Althought luckily I’ve been using this “relax lounge” thing for nearly two hours and nobody has come to tell me to move since I only paid for an hours. Bonza!
    The moral of this story though is this: Don’t eat the pasta dishes at Cafe Metro. They gave me food poisoning. Also: I’m surprised by having seen more billboards/posters for “Observe & Report” than I have for “Hannah Montana: The Movie”.
    That’s a good thing since the key art design for that movie is woeful.
    Question for Americans: Did anybody here actually see “Knowing”. I’m interested to see if you thought the locations actually looked like America and not the Australian standins that they really were.
    I’m bored.

  21. leahnz says:

    kam, you’re sounding weirdly lex-like (travel delirium, i assume, hope you get home ok)
    i don’t know about the locations in ‘knowing’ but i can always spot the nz locales in everything shot here (except ’30 days of night’, which is like snow in the dark, so that one stumped me)

  22. gradystiles says:

    “The Hannah Montana Movie had twice as big a Friday opening as Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both World Concert Tour.”
    Yeah, and it was playing on almost 5 times as many screens, and the Friday that the Concert Tour movie opened on wasn’t a holiday. Not sure that a direct comparison is even all that valid.

  23. Mr. F. says:

    Wrecktum: did you happen to see the recent episode of “South Park” featuring the Jonas Bros.? Matt and Trey didn’t just come up with all the talk of their “subtextual sexuality” themselves… anyone who’s seen the Jonas shows, or their movie, knows what they’re all about… it’s hardly even subtext. And parents DO talk about it. That’s where S.P. got the idea from!
    The bit on South Park where the Jonas Brothers spray thousands of gallons of white foam from long, handheld guns, onto all the young girls in the crowd? That, uh, wasn’t some wacky “bit” Matt and Trey came up — that’s what the Bros. do in every concert:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcytnWsaCeE
    Don’t know just how many parents didn’t relish the idea of taking their kids to a movie to have 3D jizz shot at them… but like Dave, I’m guessing it was a fair number.
    (Genius episode of South Park, by the way.)

  24. jeffmcm says:

    Kami, I saw Knowing last week (and mostly hated it). I couldn’t tell that it was Australia per se, but I definitely noticed that the locations weren’t American (I figured they were in Vancouver or some other part of Canada).

  25. Wrecktum says:

    Yeah, Mr. F, I saw that. I also saw an episode last week in which Kanye West became a gay fish. So what? Is South Park now the leading edge of conventional wisdow.
    I don’t think Matt and Trey craziness would lead to a word-of-mouth campaign that’d reduce the popularity of either the Jonas Bros or Kanye West. Sorry, need more confirmation than that.

  26. LYT says:

    Knowing had the worst fake New York I’ve seen in a while. Nothing particularly screamed “Australia!” to me, but then I remembered The Dish, which had similar looking countryside actually in Australia.

  27. leahnz says:

    jeff and lyt’s response to kam’s query about how the ‘knowing’ locations don’t look genuinely american brings to mind a bug that’s been up my butt for some time now:
    i think there’s a serious problem in film nowadays with america looking less and less like america but some vague, indistinct substitute instead, which makes perfect sense, what with america often ‘replicated’ overseas now (including here, and goodness knows i’m not complaining because we need the work), but more often than not it just looks ‘off’. as a consequence, a bizarre lack of authenticity is seeping into the overall look of american film, and i don’t like it one bit. watching ‘wolfen’ for the gazillionth time late last night, i was struck by the visceral feeling of time and place achieved by the magnificent exteriors of new york city (i can’t actually recall a movie with more shots of the world trade center twin towers looming in the background of the city scape, i’m sure there must be a few but i’m drawing a blank right now); the bridges, the parks, everything a visual ode to new york. that flavour, that fantastic feeling of place/history/country is being lost now and i think it’s a crying shame.

  28. LYT says:

    It does seem like you don’t see many movies actually shot in New York any more. No big studio ones, anyway — lots of indie comedies/romances that New Yorkers shoot at their friends’ apartments, but that’s obviously a different thing than we’re talking about.
    As someone who lives in Los Angeles, though, I see familiar locales onscreen A LOT. And after visiting Vancouver for two weeks, I’m getting pretty good at picking it out too — beautiful town, but really looks nothing like NY or LA.

  29. Mr. F. says:

    Wreck’d, you missed my point. It’s not that South Park was “the leading edge of conventional wisdom” — on the contrary, South Park is BEHIND the curve on this one. I’ve heard parents talk about the stuff that the Jonas Brothers do in their concerts since last year. Granted, I don’t have a ton of friends who have preteen girls, but each one who does has commented on the fact that the J. Bros get away with a ton because they’re a “Disney” act. It’s funny to me that my single and/or childless friends thought Matt and Trey were being “wild” with the “foam spray” gag from the episode… while everyone I know with kids has been making jokes about that for over a year now. Because it’s not a gag at all — that’s what they do at their shows.
    Again, small sample size. But in this case, what Dave mentions isn’t at all out of the blue.

  30. Ray_Pride says:

    Thanks for the Snowe call, Wreck. I actually know better and did a doubletake but not a doublecheck when the linked article had (and still has) the party designation wrong. My mistake; fix’d.

  31. LYT says:

    Matt and Trey are also way behind the curve on mocking Kanye for being arrogant, or Carlos Mencia for stealing jokes. But it was funny anyway.
    Best thing about the Jonas Bros episode was Mickey Mouse constantly swearing and laughing like Beavis and Butt-head at the end of every sentence.

  32. yancyskancy says:

    Been awhile since I saw any Mickey cartoons, but isn’t that little laugh something he always does (only elevated to a nervous tic)? I didn’t really think Beavis & Butthead. Anyway, good stuff.
    movieman: Thanks for the correction re the NY Press review of Mysteries of Pittsburgh. I normally check bylines, but I guess I just assumed that one was Armond because it was the first review that came up on the site that day (it’s second now) and, of course, the Armondesque contrarianism.

  33. Chucky in Jersey says:

    @jeffmcm: Focus On The Family didn’t move to Colorado until the early 90’s — and that’s a fact.
    On Good Friday and Colorado I stand corrected.

  34. jeffmcm says:

    Yes, you were right. Irrelevant, but right.

  35. Triple Option says:

    Jeff, how many Good Fridays were you actually in school. DPS used to always have spring break coincide w/Easter. You prolly don’t remember getting Good Friday off because you were already off that whole week.

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