Weekend Estimates by Klady – August 30
Well, 3D advocates, The Final Destination is good fodder for you. The series opens went up 60% from 1 to 2, 19% from 2 to 3, and now up 47% from 3 to 4 when you would expect a drop, not a rise. Assuming that 25% of that is 3D pricing, that’s still a healthy 10% – 15% rise in actual attendance for the fourth movie in the dying franchise.
The question remains… 3D: novelty or trend?
Others have Inglourious Basterds holding even better than Klady does… but either way (and even if it turns out to be 52% in the “finals”) the hold is about right for the opening and the genre.
Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2 gave The Weinstein Company – pronounced dead by much of the media just a week or two ago – two of the top three films for the weekend. And maybe that was the point. If you have a company that has been treading water for 7 months, barely showing a public face, and you want to tell your investors that you are serious about your future, what more could you ask than two of the top three at the box office, plus a record-breaking launch for Project Runway on your TV side?
The answer to that normally rhetorical question is: #1 and #2 at the box office instead of #2 and #3. Had Zombie’s H2 opened like his H1 and TFD opened like FD3, it would have been a 1-2 punch for Harvey.
These are also the #2 and #3 openings EVER from The Weinstein Co/Dimension on its own and #4/#5 for The Weinsteins since Disney, MGM or not.
Still, the statement, albeit a tiny bit gentler than they might have liked, has been made.
(I hate to say this, but I must… it is often when companies seem to be coming out of the woods like this that the other shoe drops. Last summer, for instance, WB laid off 300 in Burbank shortly after Dark Knight broke box office records. This is also how the media often misses the story both coming and going. For the sake of the staff at TWC, let’s hope that the smiling public face matches the inside face right now.)
Julie & Julia had a great hold… est. 20%… as it continues to make a play for $100m… which is probably out of reach. Thing is, Sony got the movie to the oldster release period… the older audience that doesn’t go for the first few weeks, but finally gets there on word of mouth. A mini Big Fat Greek Wedding if you will. They must have been patterning on Mamma Mia! numbers, which had drops in the 20s in weekends 5 and 6 and then a 25% positive bump over the Labor Day 4-day. If Sony can pull that off, the film will be near $85m at the end of next Monday.
Also working that leggy chick flick thing, The Time Traveler’s Wife is becoming a major surprise movie. It probably won’t get to the $81 million of The Notebook, but this drama is steaming along towards the high 60s/low 70s. Few people would have put this one in their Top 20 of Summer 2009 movie grossers and it is heading there.
A bunch of landmarks this weekend… The Ugly Truth passes $85m, The Hangover passes $270m, Up is just two days shy of $290m, (500) Days of Summer passes $25m to become the #3 release by a Dependent this year (behind Focus’ Coraline and Searchlight’s own Notorious), Trannys 2 will hit $400m by this time next week, Harry Potter 6 could hit $300m by the end of next weekend’s 4 days and if not, will get there by the weekend after.
Only a 6% Friday-to-Saturday drop for The Final Destination. That’s pretty good, especially compared to the 27% drop for Halloween II.
That 49% drop for Tarantino is pretty impressive considering the front-loading last week, no?
“Also working that leggy chick flick thing, The Time Traveler’s Wife is becoming a major surprise movie. It probably won’t get to the $81 million of The Notebook, but this drama is steaming along towards the high 60s/low 70s.”
I’d chalk that up to the fact that there isn’t anything better out there in the same vein; because if there were, this one surely would’ve sunken below the horizon tout suite. I can’t really recall a more passive and treading water movie than “The Time Traveller’s Wife”. It’s like a romantic drama on horse tranquilizers, where the screenwriters/book adapters laid out the premise and then just stopped writing. Every time it looks like its going to create some kind of tension in order to, gee I dunno, foster actual DRAMA, the film simply declines with a droopy-eyed sigh of disinterest.
Now granted – those moment were pretty rote and certainly didn’t deserve the story’s investment in them (the long time roommate of the girl who’s secretly in love with her; the snobby family that doesn’t think her lover is good enough for her; the alcoholic parent who blames the son for his wife’s death); but if you’re going to sidestep the same old same old, you still have a responsibility to do something else. ANYTHING else.
I think back on Eric Bana’s character and I genuinely despise his inert, disconnected and fatalistic dolt of a time traveller.
i haven’t talked to a single person that didn’t like/love inglorious basterds.
i haven’t talked to a single person that had one positive thing to say about Halloween 2.
“i haven’t talked to a single person that had one positive thing to say about Halloween 2.”
Then you’re talking to DOUCHEBAGS because it is AWESOME and nearly as good as Carpenter’s original, just like the ’07 film improved upon the original. In HALLOWEEN II you get:
Lots of white trash chicks, lots of tits, lots of white trash chicks SWEARING (HOT), white trash chicks with GREASY AND FRAZZLED HAIR that’s caught by Zombie’s awesome lighting, more tits, white trash chicks dressed as trannies dressed as hot chicks, MASKS, awesome music, STRIP CLUBS, Chris Hardwicke, more tits, a rockabilly Halloween party with STROBE LIGHTS (greatest thing ever), a hot chick with one stocking on and one stocking off putting her feet on the roof of a van (MEGABONER), more MASKS, a dinner table full of masked freaks, a WHITE HORSE, Sheri Moon, HALLOWEEN DONE AS A REMAKE OF HIGH NOON, HOWARD FUCKING HESSEMAN, Malcolm McDowell making fun of people, awesome cinematography, more awesome music, LOIS LANE, more tits, a fat guy banging a stripper, and Michael Motherfucking Myers.
The only two things this movie is missing are a cameo by Michael Sarrazin and a lesbian scene.
So if Lex could direct a movie it would be Halloween II?
Jesus man the remake is better than the original? Yikes. I can’t even argue with someone who believes that. Just shake my head.
That’s like saying Attack of the Clones is better than The Empire Strikes Back. It’s so wrong as to go beyond difference of opinion into complete misstatement of fact.
Yeah exactly. Well put.
Has anybody else been seeing the TV commercial for that new medical series “Trauma” before their movies? And did anybody else laugh out loud at the shot directly after Cliff Curtis’ helicopter medic says, “I love my job!”? Nice editing…
I imagine that if Sony can hold off the DVD release until after the Oscars, then Julie and Julia can use the inevitable Meryl Streep nom to crawl to $100 million.
In defense of LexG, it is possible to like a sequel or remake better than the vaunted original. I actually think that Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is the best Texas Chainsaw film ever made. I like the sympathetic characters, I like the draft-dodging subplot, the violence is scary and sad, and R Lee Ermey steals the show. It’s not a perfect movie, but it works for me far more than the original series. Of course Jeffmcm, for that matter, take away the groundbreaking nature of A New Hope and the anticipation of The Phantom Menace, and I rather like both of them equally. One has better special effects, better action scenes, and a more complicated plot, while the other has the novelty of being first, more charming characters, and slightly better pacing (both are paced and plotted similarly, but the pointless pod race cripples the middle act of Phantom Menace). I think all six Star Wars movies are pretty great, I just order mine a little differently than most.
And I think TCM: Parts 3 & 4 are better than TCM: The Beginning, which I found to be weak on just about every possible level. Oh well. I suppose it is possible, but I have to believe there are exceptions, and believing Zombie’s remake to be better than Carpenter’s original is an exception.
To: Chucky in Jersey
From: Wrecktum
Issue: Ponyo
Now that Ponyo has made more money than any other Miyazaki in the U.S., do you really think a Japanese subtitled version and a different marketing strategy would have helped? Seriously, how much more boxoffice do you think could have been made??
I like Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead better than Romero’s original…though the Romero version was breaking relatively new ground and deserves respect for that.
cliff curtis is in a tv series?
scott, i liked the new texas chainsaw films. but for pure freakiness, it’s hard to top the original.
“a fat guy banging a stripper”
Come on Lex thats the real reason you loved it.
And Savini’s NOTLD better than the original LTY. I think you just got banned from superfriends forever for that statement. Thats up there with my T3 is better than T2 statement.
And Scott Mendelson has to go and top all our retarded opinions by stating under his real name that TCM the Beginning is better than TCM the original. Just even saying that is like taking a dump on Gods face. I am ashamed to be even the same species as you.
Though TCM3 had the best teaser of any horror films in the past 30yrs. Jeff Burr rocks. His Eddie Presley is one of the great undiscovered gems. Clu Gulager rules you all.
I didn’t say it IS better. I said I liked it better.
Carnival of Souls, one of my all-time faves which explicitly inspired NOTLD, holds up far better over time…maybe because it’s one of the most ripped-off horror movies ever.
1)H2 is awful by unfathomable human standards. I cannot explain, rationalize or understand one creative idea or theme or point. It looks good but always thought Zombie had visual chops. He simply cannot write or tell a story beyond a 10th grade level. It’s all adolescent level violent/sex/horror wish fulfillment. He needs to be restrained post haste. Put on medication. Taught discipline. And never be allowed to write any film he directs again. Or cast them, for that matter. The party sequence is good, but all his films have 1 good sequence, and they stop me from giving up on him. Actually, his first HALLOWEEN grew on me to the point that I own the 3 disc dvd. It has about 45-50% of good stuff, or stuff I like. Otherwise he needs to be stopped.
As for “better than Carpenter’s”? I simply refuse to take that seriously at all. Carpenter’s –for me, along with JAWS– is ground zero for all of my cinema love.
2)TCM; THE BEGINNING is almost good. Just can’t forgive the stupidity of the ending, and essentially I hate prequels as a rule. But to say one likes it more than the original? Good on ya, friend. But I’ll take the flat-out hilarious scene of Leatherface stressing out after the first kill, looking out the window and wondering what the fuck is going on.
3)Off topic, but I had no expectations for SUNSHINE CLEAING but quite liked it. I grow more and more in love with Amy Adams every time I see her.
Yeah, I love Attack much more than Empire. Never been one of those Empire boys. So, yeah, McDouche strikes again!
You’ll apreciate this, LYT: Carnival of Souls co-stars Sidney Berger, who has been a grand kahuna at the drama department of University of Houston for several years — and who was on my master’s thesis committee. Also: It very likely inspired Sixth Sense, doncha think?
Also; I must admit to having a soft spot in my heart for another Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie. It wound up being released as Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Next Generation, but when I originally saw it at SXSW:
http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117909922.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0
“I actually think that Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning is the best Texas Chainsaw film ever made.”
“I like Tom Savini’s Night of the Living Dead better than Romero’s original”
What planet have I stumbled upon?
bizarro world
I prefer Savini’s Night of the Living Dead for one simple reason: it makes more sense. Barbara not freaking out is a plus. You add Tony Todd to the mix, and you got yourselves a hell of a film. Seriously.
It doesn’t have that ending that still whomps you today.
night of the living dead does have an awesome ending.
carnival of souls is awesome. freaks is still appropriately scary.
Tom Savini’s movie looks horrible and has the cheesiest music ever. It’s overlit and Tom Towles is fairly awful.
I never understand how people say Barbara going catatonic is unbelieveable. Has no one ever seen someone completely lose it under stress? I have.
It’s a fucking 60’s sexist take on women dealing with stress. If you think the 1990s remake is cheesy. Even though George wanted it to happen, supported Tom, and even helped produce the film. That’s you. I simply hate most horrour films because the women in them are written to be moronic half-wits. Excuse many of us for enjoy the hell out of film where Barbara stands the fuck up, makes some good social commentary, and kicks ass.
speaking of the end of romero’s ‘night of the living dead’, i finally let my son watch the film after years of nagging on his part, and the end really knocked him for a loop.
it was fascinating to watch him go from flabbergasted to disbelief to denial to anger and finally sadness that it should all end that way, and then he huffed off to his room to pout about the injustice of it all. i guess such is the power of that tragic ending that we tend to forget after having seen it a few hundred times
“Excuse many of us for enjoy the hell out of film where Barbara stands the fuck up, makes some good social commentary, and kicks ass”
Because Romero’s film utterly failed at social commentary.
I said this elsewhere, but let me clarify again:
Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN is basically “my Star Wars.” But anyone who’s been okay with the low-rent, Utah-shot cheapskate middle sequels (4, 5 and 6) specifically) HAS to know that there IS no way to really blaspheme the original or make it lose its power.
It’s a “series” with a chronology, continuity and atmosphere so hopelessly fucked up, characters have been killed and brought back to life in movies that WHOLESALE rewrite the rules of previous entries, even IGNORE previous entries. In 4, Laurie Strode was dead. In 8, she’s alive and 4-6 never happened. Myers was blinded and blown to bits (along with Loomis) in II; In 4 they have a couple of scars and proceed like nothing happened.
Long story short, Zombie could’ve given Michael Myers a fucking Yogi Bear costume and had him sing “It’s a Small World” with a chorus of fucking munchkins, and he couldn’t harm anyone’s opinion of Carpenter’s immortal original any more than has long, long since been tried for 20 years.
I love the ’78 flick but Zombie’s remake and now II are like some sinister, grained-out refracted “reverse world” version of a movie we know inside and out. I think it’s an interesting and valid approach, like if some visual genius took a sacred cow like “Citizen Kane” or “The Shining” and fashioned some nightmare-vision rethinking, basically shot from the INSIDE OUT, all the details just a little off, a little unsettling and with a genuine sense of unpleasant dread.
He’s a great director.
actually now that they’ve remade uno and dos the way is paved for a Halloween 3: Season of the Witch remake.
H3: SOTW was one of the best non Carpenter non Romero horror films from the 80s.
‘He’s a great director.’
maybe in your eyes, lex. from where i sit zombie is mediocre at best (and that’s me being charitable)
Okay I’ll be more charitable:
ZOMBIE IS THE GREATEST DIRECTOR WORKING TODAY.
Or at least in the Big Ten: Bay, Mann, Ridley, Tony, Clint, Spike, Marty, Zombie, Lynch, Woody.
Hey, with all the H2 back and forth here, anyone else take in FD4? Mendelson? Lou? Rubinstein?
I kind of enjoyed it… David R. Ellis is like the neo version of Larry Cohen. So goofy and disarming without being precious, kind of gleefully semi-incompetent. Nick Zano’s performance as HUNT is the stuff of Oscar gold, and who was that cute firecrotch who played the lead dude’s girlfriend?
Chick was a straight-up K-STEW wannabe, and I didn’t mind AT ALL. More of her, please.
I would put Spielberg instead of Zombie, otherwise I agree with that list.
Joe: “Also: It very likely inspired Sixth Sense, doncha think?”
That, Jacob’s Ladder, Soul Survivors, a couple of the Hellraiser sequels, and many, many others. Though “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” is probably the first common usage of that ending.
Haven’t seen FD4 yet but plan on hitting it at the Chinese where they have the d-box motion chairs. Seems like those would work best with 3-d to create a total carnival ride effect.
And it’s already been announced — Halloween III will be in 3-D and not be directed by Rob Zombie.
“Now that Ponyo has made more money than any other Miyazaki in the U.S., do you really think a Japanese subtitled version and a different marketing strategy would have helped? Seriously, how much more boxoffice do you think could have been made??”
It’s not about the money, Wrecktum. It’s about A) respecting Miyazaki as an artist, and B) respecting those adult fans who want to hear the film as he originally recorded it.
Again I ask: would we be having this conversation if Sony Classics were releasing a new Almodovar or Zhang Yimou film dubbed?
IO, I guess for me if I’m going to see a really scary movie, I’d rather the protagonists be scared instead of “kick ass.” Because then we’d have Resident Evil.
Also, in the original movie we can all say that Barbara is sexist because she’s useless…but then again, what characters in that movie aren’t? The married couple bicker and the guy is an asshole, the young couple is stupid and accidentally kill themselves, and Ben essentially leads everyone to their deaths. No one in that house was really worth a shit.
Lex, I hit up FD4, and it was pretty awful. I say that as a kinda-fan of Ellis — dug Snakes on a Plane, dug Cellular even more, and enjoyed Final Destination 2, though I think I prefer the Morgan-Wong team who did FD1 and FD3, plus WILLARD and THE ONE and a bunch of awesome X-Files episodes. But jesus, FD4 played like the direct-to-video version. A couple of the kills were up to the first few movies in terms of fun — the car wash thing was actually suspsenseful, how about that, and I liked the stupid meta-3-D bit towards the end — but these fourth-rate CW rejects really sunk it, as did the sloppy regurgitations of the script. You ever watch a movie where it sounds like they were just trying to write the most rote/boilerplate/get-us-through-this-to-the-good-parts dialogue possible, and they actually sort of fail at it, and it doesn’t even sound like bad expository dialogue, but something far more awkward? That’s basically the FD4 experience.
Also, I love how these characters apparently are in their twenties, live in their own houses, and don’t appear to have jobs. Hell, wouldn’t these characters having jobs make it *more* fun to do a death-stalking-us-all thriller?! Also love, by which I mean sort of despise, the way the characters who think they’ve escaped death decide to not waste another day and to jet off to Amsterdam, live life to its fullest. Kids, you appear to be homeowners with no income. You’ve got it made. What, exactly, was holding you back before?
I know it’s silly to complain about characters in a Dead Teenager movie, but the first three movies, especially the first one, at least got me to half-care about the characters for the span of the running time.
Agreed Jesse. What baffled me about FD4 was that we don’t learn a single fact about any of the four leads. Are they wealthy, are they in school, do they have jobs? Dunno. What are their interests, ambitions, hobbies, likes and dislikes? Couldn’t tell ya. Not since Pearl Harbor have the lead characters been such complete blank slates. And yes, some of the laziest, half-baked mad libs dialogue I have ever heard (thanks for putting in words what bothered me about it). I cannot believe that this was directed by a real filmmaker (Snakes On A Plane was a well-made genre goof). I’m almost willing to bet that Ellis let some kid on the set take his shot at directing behind the dialogue scenes. And yeah, the first Final Destination was a potent, emotionally compelling tragedy. This is a tragedy of a different color.
Oh, and the D-Box just gently shakes you when characters are moving or stuff is flying at you. It’s fun, but not worth the trip to Hollywood or the $22 ticket price.
I’m pretty much with jesse and Scott on FD4. No story, no characterization — which might be forgiven in this genre if the set pieces were devilishly clever. But the filmmakers seem to have decided that devilishly clever was no longer necessary, since they had 3-D to up the ante.
“It’s not about the money, Wrecktum. It’s about A) respecting Miyazaki as an artist, and B) respecting those adult fans who want to hear the film as he originally recorded it.”
Miyazaki supports the English dub. He promoted it at Comic-con last month. If Miyazaki supports it, shouldn’t the fans?
“Again I ask: would we be having this conversation if Sony Classics were releasing a new Almodovar or Zhang Yimou film dubbed?”
If the original filmmaker supported the decision and if twice as many people would see the movie as a result, then I say, go ahead. Dubbed features are common in many territories. Why must Americans be so snobby to not accept what is commonly accepted elsewhere?
“I simply hate most horrour films”
Nuff said.
DESTINATION.
It was awesome when Zano was banging that naked chick and he goes, “I finished four minutes ago” HAHAHA You tell her, man. Then he goes outside and hits on more chicks like ten seconds later. GOOD SCENE.
Also (IO punctuation activate!) That LEAD CHICK. WHO IS A FIRECROTCH. Needs to be in more movies. She looked like a three-way cross between K-Stew, Evan Rachel WOOD, and Emily Blunt. More please.
“If the original filmmaker supported the decision and if twice as many people would see the movie as a result, then I say, go ahead. Dubbed features are common in many territories. Why must Americans be so snobby to not accept what is commonly accepted elsewhere?”
Sigh. Let me try this again.
My objection is not to the dubbing. My objection is NOT BEING GIVEN A CHOICE.
Well, I guess sometimes you don’t get everything you want. I’d like to eat bacon everyday and live in a Laguna Beach mansion, but the stars didn’t align properly for that to happen, and they didn’t align for a OV w/ subtitles for Ponyo either.
And “Scene.”
In regards to the TCM movies, having not seen the original in the way I saw the “remake” (since its not a real remake at all) – in the cinema and with the element of surprise – i actually think its nearly on par with the original. THe prequel, while nowhere near as good, impressed me somewhat. I was surprised at how violent it really was and, despite knowing the end was coming, those final scenes still shocked me. Hmmm.
They need to make a TCM movie in 3D, not Halloween. Speaking of which, Zombie’s film would have been better if it wasn’t an actual Halloween movie and was just a fucked up horror movie. Sheri Moon ZOmbie wearing kabuki makeup and riding a unicorn (or whatever) just looks ridiculous though.
The Ponyo DVD will probably have a Japanese 5.1 track and an English 5.1 track with subtitles in both languages, so y’all can mix and match to your heart’s content.