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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Box Office Hell – The A-Kid

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37 Responses to “Box Office Hell – The A-Kid”

  1. Bodhizefa says:

    Am I the only one that thinks Karate Kid has a very excellent shot at not only winning this weekend, but having good legs, too?

  2. Stella's Boy says:

    It’s getting pretty good reviews and it certainly looks like that is possible Bodhizefa.

  3. chris says:

    Only one? No. I mentioned in here a week ago that it’s going to be huge and I probably wasn’t the first one.

  4. William Goss says:

    I think it’d be leggier if not for Toy Story 3 next week, Grown Ups the week after, and The Last Airbender the week after that. It certainly plays like gangbusters, though, that’s for sure.

  5. Harry Medved says:

    hey David: “Bodhizefa” has a good point…as of 2 pm PT/5 pm ET on Friday, THE KARATE KID still leads today’s ticket sales on Fandango by a wide margin. KID represents 54% of today’s ticket sales, with A-TEAM representing only 14% of today’s sales…now, I’m not saying there will be that kind of ridiculously wide spread between the two when the weekend box office estimates come in on Sunday morning, but it is surprising that not one of your box office experts expects KARATE KID to win the weekend…

  6. Jeffrey Boam's Doctor says:

    I called it a year ago. KARATE KID will do near $70m this weekend. It will appeal to two generations who grew up with the series, along with their kids and Jackie fans.
    It’s that very rare beast: a full cinqrant movie.

  7. Chucky in Jersey says:

    As today is Friday the daily papers have ads for new and semi-new releases. One ad is for “Killers” and it includes the phrase that pays, inserted after the less than stellar opening for that pic …
    From the director of “Legally Blonde” and “The Ugly Truth”
    I would like the firing squad, please.

  8. djk813 says:

    There were several busloads of kids for The Karate Kid at the theater this afternoon so it was an end of the year field trip destination and/or summer camp destination.

  9. jeffmcm says:

    Chucky, considering that the likely four biggest movies at the box office this weekend will be a remake, an adaptation of a TV show, a sequel, and ‘From the director of Forgetting Sarah Marshall’, I think that, as usual, you are incredibly wrong.
    Not to mention that The Ugly Truth and Legally Blonde made a combined $347 million worldwide, yeah, I’d choose to market it the same way. What would YOU have done instead?

  10. IOv2 says:

    A Team should win this weekend going away. I would get the Karate Kid making 33 something million if it were not for Will Smith’s Kid. He seems more like a heat-getter then someone you want to watch on a screen for 2.5 hours. If that film earns 20m this weekend, someone should be bought a cake at Columbia and they should also thank their Chinese overlords for the funding of this propaganda film.

  11. Telemachos says:

    Early reports from various box-office forums is that KARATE KID is doing huge business, much moreso than THE A-TEAM.

  12. hcat says:

    Anyone willing to predict a 40+ opening for the Kid?

  13. IOv2 says:

    The Chinese Overlords must be very happy about their propaganda film making money that it will probably not make once next week comes along. BRING FORTH… THE WOODY!

  14. Bodhizefa says:

    hcat, I think the film has a legit shot at $120+ million in business. So yeah, I also think it has a chance at a $40+ million opening weekend. We’ll see.

  15. Stella's Boy says:

    Deadline:
    Karate Kid – $52 million
    A-Team – $27 million
    Wow.

  16. IOv2 says:

    Teenagers had a choice between the A-Team and the Karate Kid and it seems they may have picked The Karate Kid. Yep. I am calling it. This generation is whack.

  17. Chucky in Jersey says:

    @jeffmcm: When your 2nd-week advertising references a movie that opened 2 months before 9/11 you’re bound to get slaughtered.

  18. Foamy Squirrel says:

    “This generation is whack.”
    So apparently 21st Century action moves too fast for the 21st Century generation?
    Yeah, cheap shot, I know… feel free to ding me on this one, but I couldn’t resist.

  19. hcat says:

    And didn’t people stop useing “whack” in 1998?

  20. Foamy Squirrel says:

    I’ve never stopped using “whack”.

  21. IOv2 says:

    Hcat, seriously, you are wiggidy wiggidy wiggidy wiggidy wack. Also it would be like the early 90s and no one stopped using it in the… know.
    Foamy, what’s the action have to do with it? It’s the lameness of this generation of teens that are going to see Karate Kid and probably find Jaden cute. Yuck.

  22. leahnz says:

    why am i having a hard time picturing actual ‘too cool for school’ teenagers wanting to see a movie about a 12yr old kid? maybe if they’re dragged as part of ‘family night’, but otherwise it seems to me ‘kung fu kid’ (because calling it ‘karate’ is RIDICULOUS) is more likely to appeal to children and bedraggled parents

  23. IOv2 says:

    Teens and tweens. Read between the lines dear Leah. It’s the girls. The girls who like a kid who can stretch. I knew a kid that could stretch like that once. He had the USS Flagg, his parents had Laserdiscs, and he feared standing in front of the microwave in fear of getting radiation poisoning. Yeah he had some wackiness but he kicked my ass time and time again at tournaments, until I Karate KIDED his ass. Fun times. Fun times.

  24. Geoff says:

    Well, Dave – you called is several months ago, but Karate Kid just exploded yesterday. It made about $19 million and will probably break $50 million, this weekend – wow, I did not see that coming.
    Sony just marketed the hell out of this thing, Will Smith also deserves a lot of credit for nudging this thing along with his son – whatever hype we are hearing about Tom Cruise in a few weeks, sorry, but Will Smith is STILL the biggest movie star in the world when he can even launch his own son at this level.
    A-Team underperformed and will probably just make around $30 million – I would have thought Bradley Cooper and Liam Neeson would have guaranteed more. Just goes to show that guy-based action movies, not starring Shia LeBouf, are just not dominating like they used to. Wonder if Lionsgate is going to shift its strategy a bit for Expendables, now.

  25. The Big Perm says:

    Liam Neeson never really opens movies by himself, and I don’t know who thinks Bradley Cooper is a real star but apparently Hollywood does. I’m still surprised A-Team didn’t make more than that though. Did it look too cheesy, I don’t know. A lot of people were complaining about shooting the gun on the tank while parachuting, but I’d figure if I was going to watch an A-Team movie that’s pretty much what I’d want to see.
    But Geoff you’re totally right about Will SMith…if the guy can make his son a star just by default of being Will Smith’s kid, can anyone out there beat that?

  26. IOv2 says:

    Geoff, the Expendables is the Expendables and it’s going for a much older audience than the A-Team. Hell, the Expendables features people being ripped apart so it’s definitely a different hard R audience and that’s grown up not the teens who skipped the A-Team for The Karate Kid.

  27. Stella's Boy says:

    Do that many older viewers really want to watch Sly tear people’s limbs off? Didn’t Rambo do well with younger viewers who are into hard-R action flicks? Or by older are you talking people in their 20s?

  28. IOv2 says:

    Fella you might be right about the older audience not wanting to watch Sly and Co. rip off arms and what not, but they may want to see all of those stars together in one ridiculous old timey action film. I also do mean 20 somethings and older not the tweens/teens that made the Karate Kid.

  29. IOv2 says:

    Made the Karate Kid’s weekend is what that should read.

  30. hcat says:

    Isn’t Expendables contemplating going for a PG13? There might be significantly less arm ripping than first expected.
    The plot for Expendables seems to be a team of specialists go native and help the locals against the better equipted enemy, so I’m suprised we aren’t hearing months of ‘Dances with ‘Roids’ fanboy snark. Perhaps that type of ire is just reserved for projects with actual talent behind it.

  31. Foamy Squirrel says:

    Apparently Stallone is pushing for the hard R…
    http://www.aintitcool.com/node/45409
    …although it’s AICN so take it with a grain of salt.

  32. Stella's Boy says:

    I think you’re overestimating The Expendables appeal IO. My father-in-law, in his 50s and a huge Rocky and First Blood fan, has no idea who anyone is outside of Sly (and of course Arnie and Bruce but I believe those are cameos). Statham, Jet Li, etc., no idea. He also doesn’t really think the ultraviolence of Rambo, which is more like Saw when compared to First Blood. The guys in their late teens and 20s who liked Rambo, sure, I can imagine them being excited about Expendables. Everyone else not so much.

  33. The Big Perm says:

    Expendables has gotten the R, I believe. Doubt it will be too hard core of a movie, although I hope it is. My feelings on the movie is it will be really generic and not be too much fun. The trailers make it looks like a cheap b-movie, which is fine…but not a cheap b-movie with the amazing moments you expect with all of those guys. Someone get McTiernan out of jail or wherever he is, he needs to reshoot this movie STAT.
    Weird in that I’m usually so-so on guy’s movies, but Robert Rodriguez has the ones I’m most geared for…Predators and Machete. The fact that he only wrote Predators is great news, because as a writer I think he’d stay true to what you want from a Predator movie…and by not directing he’s keeping his cheese out of it. Machete looks like Once Upon a Time in Mexico but hopefully not so shoddy. He can cheese that one up all he wants, I want to see Seagal playing a villain after all these years…with his inherent smarminess and greasy ego, he seems made to play a great villain.

  34. Stella's Boy says:

    Expendables also has some competition for young males with the second weekend of The Other Guys as well as Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (which I believe you suggested might break out IO).

  35. christian says:

    “it’s the lameness of this generation of teens that are going to see Karate Kid”
    You’re getting old and out of touch, IO, baby.

  36. The Big Perm says:

    Scott Pilgrim will hope to make a little over Kick Ass numbers. If anything, I think The Other Guys may be a bigger hurt for Expendables.

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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.

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