Box Office Hell Story 3
Next week, Boxoffice.com joins Box Office Hell.
This week, they project Toy Story 3 @ $120m, The Karate Kid @$30m, The A-Team @ $14m, Jonah Hex @ $9m, and Shrek Forever After @ $8.1m.
May 2, 2024
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Review: Little Women (no spoilers)
Why You Should Be Afraid Of The End Of The Paramount Decree
Review: Frozen 2 (spoiler-free)
Review: Marriage Story (spoilers only in the broadest sense)
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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
Only $120mil? Wow, the folks at Pixar must be disappointed…
…excuse me, my Sarcas-o-tron seems to be on the fritz again.
A world where ADULTS would rather go watching TALKING TOYS than Brolin, Fox and Malkovich = the end can’t come soon enough.
Someone on HE posted that a theater owner was surprised by how little interest there actually was TOY STORY 3, and that no one’s pre-ordering tickets for it.
If you told me TS3 came out six years ago, I’d totally believe you, because, really, who even remembers TS2 coming out? Isn’t it the same bullshit as SHREK?
LEXSTIMATES:
TOY STORY 3: 35 MIL.
HEX POWER: 28 MIL.
ZARDOZ SPEAKS.
Of course “Toy Story 3” is going to win the weekend, World Cup or not.
Every review has included an obligatory mention of Disney and/or Pixar in the first paragraphs. Even the Associated Press pulled that crap its review. Such pimping reeks of product placement.
Chucky, you’re really topping yourself with that one. I don’t even know how to explain how profoundly silly and nonsensical that comment is.
I’m not sure if there’s any reason why a responsible article should not mention who made the damn movie in the first few paragraphs.
It’s like saying that a can of Pepsi shouldn’t have ‘Pepsi’ on the outside.
Jeffy Mac going on about Pepsi being in a Pepsi can reeks of product placement. It’s disgusting.
That aside, Karate Kid getting 30 million seems a bit of a stretch to me. I smell a hit coming but I have no clue with that flick, so your mileage may vary.
Oh yeah, Lex, how dare you insult the awesomeness that is Toy Story 3. Seriously. Do not mock the awesomeness that is tangoin’ Jesse and Buzz.
@jeffmcm, @Foamy: Once you see that in every publication, people with a brain are gonna ask how much was the paper/magazine/wire service/website paid to mention the studio involved. Given the sorry state of the liberal media it’s not a stretch to suggest they’re whoring for Hollywood.
Ha! Ebert Twittered yesterday that the 100% RT rating on Toy Story 3 was just awaiting Armond White. And wouldn’t ya know he didn’t like it. Am I right in thinking he’s not ever been big on Pixar?
Cole Smithy panned it, too. No surprise. But I’m slowly beginning to admire Armond for just simply being, ya know….an unapologetic prick.
Also, happy 35th birthday to my all-time favorite movie (although Carpenter’s Halloween is really really really close), JAWS. I still remember being 4 years old, and seeing the movie at the Pic-17 drive-in in my hometown of Jamestown, NY. Ground zero for every bit of my movie-loving flesh.
Watched not 2 weeks ago, and I still find it thrilling and frightening. The Alex Kitner sequence is probably my favorite single stretch of film ever.
Here’s to swimmin’ with bow-legged women.
Um… I’m guessing they weren’t paid anything? The same way Justin Bieber doesn’t pay people to namedrop him when they review his songs, nor Sony for Playstation, nor Damien Hirst for his paintings, because THEY MADE THEM.
It’s like reviewing a movie and saying “the lead actress was good” without naming her.
I rarely get in on these sort of things but even I think Chucky is reaching here.
There is a certain level of sycophantic hyperbole thrown at Pixar in some places, but I think it’s genuine. People fucking love them. I do.
With that in mind, along with the sustained success they have had it would be almost irresponsible to not give them a line or 2 in every review. Just like you can’t really review a Scorcese or Spielberg without noting, ya know, it’s fucking Scorcese here.
Personally, it’s the whining about 3D that I am finding tiresome. I no longer care if you like it or don’t like. I no longer care if you think it’s a gimmick or not. I don’t care if you think it’s superfluous. The movie is in 3D. Tell me how you think it looks AS IT IS BEING PRESENTED TO YOU.
I’m so bored with the whining that I am starting to wish everything WOULD be in 3D, just out of spite.
In Chucky’s utopia every movie would be only identified by generic black box type on white background and called MOVIE. No other information would be allowed to ever be released about the movie and you would just show up at the theater and buy a ticket for MOVIE.
Chucky, the liberal media are not out to get you. If they were then we would know, it would be on the sheet, and right now you are not on the sheet. What’s on the sheet right now? The New 2 Dollar Meals from Taco Bell by way of YUM! Brand Foods, the new and improved Wild Cherry Pepsi Can, and the new expansive wing pad from Depends.
Maybe Chucky has those special sunglasses that makes him see the “CONSUME. OBEY.” messages underneath the name-checking and Oscar whoring.
No, I don’t wear a tinfoil hat and no, I don’t have delusions.
Armond White called out “Toy Story 3” as a 90-minute advert with a generous amount of product placement. 25 years ago it would have been seen not in cinemas but on Saturday-morning TV. Think it’s innocuous?
Back in 1991 NBC cut a deal with Walt Disney World — free hotel rooms and airfare in exchange for two days coverage on the Today show. The network reimbursed Disney World when the deal was exposed. (The Walt Disney Co. purchased what was then Capital Cities/ABC in 1994.)
“A world where ADULTS would rather go watching TALKING TOYS…”
What, like transformers?
Chucky: I didn’t know about this 1991 deal. Ok, you’ve convinced me. Toy Story 3 is crap!
“A world where ADULTS would rather go watching TALKING TOYS…”
“What, like transformers?”
And I guess REAL ADULTS would rather go watch the live-action comic book that is “Jonah Hex” (with the talking SEX TOY that is Megan Fox).
“Every review has included an obligatory mention of Disney and/or Pixar in the first paragraphs. Even the Associated Press pulled that crap its review. Such pimping reeks of product placement.”
Most of the damn characters are products! You can’t review the frickin’ thing without naming something that you can buy or rent somewhere.
(a) I think there’s a liiiittle difference between getting extended coverage on a platform for a deal that’s potentially worth millions of dollars, and trying to get thousands of websites and papers to insert a sentence that would normally be included anyway in the normal course of reporting.
(b) The same argument can be used for ANY summer movie. Ironman? Product placement. Batman? Product placement. Kick Ass? Product placement. Ghostbusters? Product placement. Back to the Future? Product placement. If there is shit that looks cool, there is opportunity to sell that shit. It’s how the world works.
Why are we even trying to make sense of Chucky’s ramblings? The dude lives in his own world of Northeast theater going existence and nothing we throw out there will change the fact that the LIBERAL MEDIA IS REAL, and IT’S OUT TO GET US WITH IT’S REFERENCES TO OSCAR WINNERS, OSCAR NOMINEES, AND THE COMPANIES WHO MAKE THESE FILMS! HOW DARE THEY? HOW DARE THEY! How dare they?!
“No, I don’t wear a tinfoil hat and no, I don’t have delusions.”
Chucky has never looked in a mirror. He also thinks Koman Coulibaly is the best soccer referee in the world.
“In Chucky’s utopia every movie would be only identified by generic black box type on white background and called MOVIE. No other information would be allowed to ever be released about the movie and you would just show up at the theater and buy a ticket for MOVIE.”
Having a name is product placement. In Chucky’s utopia, no objects would have names at all. That way they can never be identified, so they can’t be name-dropped, product-placed, Oscar-checked, or anything. Even calling something “Thing” or “That” is forbidden in Chucktopia. Or as it’s more commonly known, Cloud-Chuckoo-Land.
Chucky hit his head on a copy of Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” and has never been the same since. It’s not his fault.
http://www.vuvuzela-time.co.uk/thehotblog.com
VUVUZELA TIME!
In Chucky’s world things work the way he wants. It’s easy, you can do it too!
Since Chucky doesn’t talk to people or go out, things are more abstract. Like for dinner he picks a random can out of the cupboard…he doesn’t know what it is because he has peeled all of the labels off. So, that can is “food.” He has fifteen snakes but hasn’t named them, so they are “friends.” And when he cracks open the shade and looks outside and sees a woman, that is “unfamiliar object.”
Suffice to say that Chucky’s thoughts are incoherent and nonsensical, and that he refuses to provide arguments in favor of what he’s thinking because on some level he knows that he’s incapable of convincing anyone except though brute-force repetition.
I think with my brain, I don’t breathe through my mouth. Some who comment here want me to be a star****er. Well, I’m not.
What is “incoherent and nonsensical” is Hollywood becoming a self-centered bunch of hacks, cronies, star****ers and limousine liberals. They’ve seriously injured the arthouse sector and if they’re not careful they could mortally wound the mainstream side as well.
FWIW, I saw Slovenia-USA on an evening replay and that third USA goal should have counted. Perhaps Blackcloud is an England supporter.
What’s incoherent and nonsensical is starting from the premise ‘Hollywood sucks’ which most of us don’t generally disagree with, and extrapolating that through a series of bizarre cognitive leaps to ‘Toy Story 3 is bad because critics mention the name of the companies who made it’. These thoughts don’t connect rationally.
Hollywood does not suck. Some of it’s employees suck and that clarification needs to be made.
“becoming a self-centered bunch of hacks”? It’s BEEN a bunch of self-centered hacks since… oh… the 20s. It’s also been a bunch of incredibly talented artists at the same time. There’s a lot of people, so of course there’s going to be a variation.
The one thing I don’t get (and it’s entirely possible you’ve explained before, but I can’t be bothered searching through the archives) is why you assume that a lot of this is bad for the industry. If I make a new drink and someone asks “How does it taste?”, the easiest way to describe is “It tastes like Banana”. If someone asks “Is that movie going to be any good?” I can say “Well, it was made by people who were in other really good movies, so the chances are that this will be good too”.
That’s how humans work. We compare things. We have schema world-views in our head – it’s how we can tell a chair is a chair whether it’s made out of metal, wood, leather, or plastic, whether it has 4 legs or 1, whether it has armrests or not. Trying to tell anyone about anything new with no basis of comparison is… just stupid.
“Well, a Dingo has 4 legs, fur, a long snout, ears, paws, a tail, lives in the wild and is known to be vicious, and makes barking sounds…”
“So it’s like a wild dog? Why didn’t you just say that?”
Actually, I’ll amend the “just stupid” remark – that’s entirely too generalized, and oversteps the mark.
It is possible to tell someone about something new… if the comparisons are fairly self-evident. For example, people flying in space and blowing stuff up with lasers will bring up comparisons to Star Trek/Star Wars etc. without anything needing to be said. Likewise, riding around in a desert on a horse with cowboy hats and 6-shooters will automatically invoke the requisite comparisons to Westerns.
However, if the comparison isn’t readily evident (such as in my dingo example where a picture isn’t available), then bringing them up is the fastest way to communicate the the salient qualities of the subject.
“Perhaps Blackcloud is an England supporter.”
Now we know you’re delusional!
England 0-0 Algeria … Wayne Rooney says the F-word on live TV … manager to get the sack if England do not win.
At least the latest “Toy Story” sequel and “The Karate Kid” remake are doing better.
Whew. For a minute there, it looked like Chucky was engaging in the conversation. But the world is right again.
What is the F word you’re talking about Chucky? Did he say “Flower?” I mean so what? There are plenty of gardening shows on tv, I’ve heard them say flower thousands of times (not that I watch gardening shows, I’m all man).