Weekend Estimates by Klady – Nachtmare Redux
Nightmare’s do-over is by far the biggest opener of the series and will be the biggest grosser of the series before next weekend ends. It’s not Iron Man… but it doesn’t have to be. It’s a piece of business. And if WB was really smart, it’s a piece of business that would have been done by Shaye/Lynne’s New Line, which would have spent even less on marketing than the big WB machine (which is big by its nature, not by any fault).
Dragon has been a big overdramatized as a phenom. It’s a success. And it is showing legs in an era of few leggy movies, by studio distribution design. The only real story to me is that DreamWorks Animation has gone from being a $150m domestic per-title company to a $200m domestic per-title company. The difference, by the way, between Dragon and MvA versus Panda is that Panda doubled its domestic overseas an Dragon, like MvA, seems on track to simply match domestic. The 1-to-1 has also been true of the Shrek series.
Pixar’s top 4 worldwide grossers are all over 58% foreign. Cars made up for being relatively weak overseas with merchandising. But the ability to play overseas is going to be a big issue for DWA moving forward. Ironically, the Disney non-Pixar films ARE playing better overseas than at home… pretty similar foreign numbers to a lot of the DWA films… but aren’t strong enough at home to match the number, or one might think, to grow the foreign number even bigger, as US success still plays a role in setting a “blockbuster coming” perspective in many overseas markets.
Furry Vengeance puts even more pressure on Amanda Seyfried’s first “big head” marketed movie, also for Summit, Letters To Juliet. Furry may become Summit’s sixth-ever $20m domestic grosser (and domestic is more relevant to Summit, as so many of their pictures are owned by others overseas), but these are the movies that need to be doing over $40 million on a consistent basis for Summit to be more than The Twilight Studio.
Honestly, the big move here would be to merge with Lionsgate, which could absorb the cash that Twilight is bringing in and secure the future for the Summit team. The downside is that there would be too many chefs… which would probably force Lionsgate to dump Joe Drake… which would in turn, calm Carl Icahn down. Both companies have what you would have to call “good problems.” But neither has shown that it can get out of the way of the success they have in order to deal with the less successful parts of the company. A merger would likely bring the Lionsgate stock price up – aside from Icahn inflation – to a legitimate $8 or $9 or even $10. And Twilight is still juicy enough draw Wall Street suckers. Rob Friedman and his partners could cash out… and probably end up with the Summit brand reverting to them after Lionsgate sold. Just a thought…
Another interesting box office note… almost identical per-screen numbers for Harry Brown and Exit Through The Gift Shop. The first is a more conventional movie and did some TV advertising. The second is a niche doc that did little more than social network marketing. What does that tell you about how to make money in arthouse?
Meanwhile SPC did solid numbers for their foreign language Oscar winner, The Secret In Their Eyes and the opening of Please Give, which brings the Nicole Holofcener audience into the theaters on the coasts for sure.
Four very different stories… and that, I think, is the future of distribution in that arena. No “answer.” Just a lot of decisions and a lot of hard work, really thinking through every movie every time. I know that people want The Answer. But the money is still out there… it’s just that the funnel into the pocket of the filmmaker and the distributor is not as formulaic as it has been and as makes people comfy.
I think either the total gross or the theater count is off for Harry Brown.
Wait, no: Never mind. Curse those tricky decimals.
“How to Train Your Dragon” could very well end up as the 2nd highest grossing animated non-Pixar/Shrek movie of all-time domestically (behind “Lion King). I’m not sure how it’s been overhyped unless you mean because internationally it’s been a bit softer than normal….but it still hasn’t been released in Japan, China, Korea, and other countries….meaning it still has a great shot at $500 million worldwide…best ever for an animated movie released in the first quarter.
Freddy vs. Jason opened to $36 million, DP, unless you meant the highest opener for a non-crossover in the franchise.
Also, The Secret in Their Eyes is quite the movie. I remember getting around to seeing Departures last year and being baffled that anyone would think it was better than Waltz with Bashir or The Class. Not so with this film; it holds its own with White Ribbon and A Prophet. All three are really solid.
DP not sure it’s that fair a shot at NL regarding perceived success of new Elm. I think time and distance plays a lot into these matters and NL really milked the Elm st franchise as much as they could within the timeframe (long gestation of Fri/Elm excepted) Their reboot (Heather returns) was a smart clever take that unfortunately didn’t catch on as much as it should have. Be interesting to see the overall spend on the new Elm and whether its in the black as fast as many NL versions were.
If that seems like a shot at NL, I wrote it poorly.
I am suggesting that this is yet another piece of evidence that shuttering NL was a mistake.
IFC dropped the ball with HUMAN CENTIPEDE. Should’ve been in 3000+ and maybe even converted to 3D and IMAX. Honestly, caught it this weekend on TV and, granted I read about it and knew the plot turns because I refuse to watch gore films without knowing how gross they are (learned my lesson after INSIDE), but I found most ofi t to be so over-the-top that it became funny. Laser’s perf was so great. My favorite bit was his kissing himself in the mirror and yelling “I did this.” Way to go, doc.
The problem with Human Centipede is that it looks like one of those shocking 70s movies that you’re all excited to see, all gory and sick, and then it turns out to have about three minutes of decent stuff with the rest being sort of boring. How can you make a feature length movie about a guy sewing people’s faces to other people’s asses? Sounds like it would have been an okay episode of Masters of Horror.
HUMAN CENTIPEDE looks like the Yank version of one of those repulsive Hong Kong 70’s/80’s horror films…not that I don’t love BLACK MAGIC….