Friday Estimates by MerKladyS Benz
So Cars 2 is the best Pixar opening day with the exception of Toy Story 3, which bodes well for a $75m-plus opening, which would also be the #2 behind TS3. Of course, we all know that Cars is not the leggiest of the Pixar titles, but even with an overloaded animation year, this suggests that we will finally get a $200m domestic animated movie this year and another smash for Disney in the liscencing department.
Bad Teacher is going to be Cameron Diaz’ biggest opening in the lead by a significant distance. It will beat all of her rom-com openings and end up behind the Charlie’s Angels openings and Green Hornet (which I really didn’t know she was in). It will likely top Knight & Day‘s opening by 50% or so.
In terms of the summer comedies, the question today is whether it will be a Bridesmaids-like date movie success (meaning an upswing on Saturday night) or not. Hard to say. Diaz is the inverse of what is often said about male movie stars… women like her and want to be her and men want to sleep with her. So maybe. Sony hasn’t really exploited the goofiness of Justin Timberlake’s turn in this film, which I would think would get some play with women.
Green Lantern takes a big hit, which probably ends up being mid-to-high 60%s off by the end of the weekend. This is about the traditional level of a rejected effects movie.
Everything else is about average, though Kung Fu Panda 2 took it coming and going, losing a lot of 3D screens and dropping more sharply than usual against Cars2n.
Midnight in Paris dropped out of Len’s Top Ten for the day. The film lost 80+ screens and will drop, as it did last weekend, about 10%. Still, considering the lost screens, a strong result. Look for the film to get an extra marketing push this week and maybe pick up a few more screens in hopes that it will be a true alternative option over the July 4 holiday. Even losing screens, the studio is finding that the film is playing better in some markets that have never been kind to Woody. So they won’t be shy about experimenting.
It’s also worth noting that according to Klady and others who follow world box office aggressively (not BO Mojo), both Match Point and Vicky Christina Barcelona did over $100m worldwide. Midnight in Paris is expected to surpass them both, perhaps even passing $100 million in international alone.
So I saw GREEN LANTERN yesterday, and I have to say I’m a little confused on why it’s reception is so poor. Yes, it’s far from perfect but there’s quite a bit about it that I think they got right, particularly the casting (Reynolds and Sarsgaard are great. Lively and Reynolds have great chemistry, and the romance actually worked and was involving.) and the action sequences, which are actually exciting, different and neat. It’s main trouble is that the screenplay is imbalanced and off-kilter, particularly the second act, which doesn’t escalate in quite the way it should. It uses short hand, particularly exposition and speeches, when it should be showing. But there are elements that are particuarly rousing and make it worth while. The last ten minutes or so is, frankly, spectacular. It’s weird because it’s very similar to THOR, which I think is more consistent overall while suffering from similar ailments, but it seems like some are much more taken with that movie. Oh, and the 3-D, while not essential, was well done and did add to the theatrical experience, in my opinion. In short, a fun, if pretty flawed, movie that I hope gets a chance at a sequel, where the kinks could be worked out, while keeping the excellent cast and effects in tact.
With a drop like that one there’s no chance of a GL sequel. I still haven’t seen it, mostly because I know I’ll probably leave the theater in a funk. I adored the GL character when I was younger — it was my fav action figure. Not having read the comics, I don’t know anything about the mythology of the character as all I know if Hal Jordan/GL I learned from Super Friends cartoons. However, the character and world blew my imagination away, what with his power-ring and alien buddies. And the fact that SO MANY PEOPLE have said SAVAGE stuff about the film really killed any expectations I had based on the fun but too-CGI trailers. I wonder if I should just wait for the Blu Ray…
Men want to sleep with a woman after that much plastic surgery? Methinks not.
Speaking of Bad Teacher, was I imagining things or was Sony actively trying to downplay Timberlake even being in the movie. Every TV spot I saw was some combination of Diaz mistreating students and Segal having the that Lebron/Jordan argument with the kid. I can’t recall a single spot that showcased Timberlake. Maybe I just wasn’t watching the right channels, but it seems like he’d be one of the film’s main selling points.
I saw Cars 2 and, like Wilmington, I’m a bit mystified by the vitriol greeting this film. I thought it was charming and beautiful and that Michael Cain RULED. Does it have the emotional depth of TS3, of course not, don’t go in expecting as much. The whole is somehow less than the sum of its parts, but the kids I was with LOVED it and I consider it well worth the price of admission.
Midnight in Paris is off those films’ numbers in EVERY country outside of here it’s played in…including France. The MCN researchers need to bone up. In Spain, traditionally Woody’s 3rd biggest market, it underperformed “Scoop.”
Can someone parse those numbers for “Better Life”? Is that good or bad?
While I’ll be utterly thrilled not to have to sit through the trailer anymore every time I go to the Arclight Hollywood (where I’ve seen the BL trailer at least 20 times), it’s totally one of those movies I can’t muster the “FUCK YEAH I’m going to see A Better Life today!” enthusiasm required to drive across town for.
I can’t tell if it’s one of those deals where the “limited” audiences won’t wanna see a “Latino” movie… OR if all the Grove/Arclight rich middle aged white milquetoasts will go see it because they’re such forward-thinking liberals and they want to learn a LESSON, like with “Crash.”
But what a twisted world we live huh…Panda2 was critically embraced, kids and parents loved the first one, and underwhelmed on opening weekend. It had about a month without direct competition, found a bit of legs but it was always going to drop significantly with Cars2 came out, but just could not find that forward momentum. Now it’ll top out at about 160/165.
Cars2 was savaged by critics, (as compared with other Pixar fare.)much like Cars1. Parents for the most part hated Cars1, but showed up with their kiddies for the sequel while they didn’t show up for Panda sequel. Weird business.
Bad Teacher’s opening is great by any standard. It opened larger than Bridesmaids, and who would have thought that Diaz by herself opens bigger than Diaz and Cruise. These simple premise movies when sold right get people in the doors the first weekend.
As for Green Lantern, stick a fork in him, he’s done. Look for another huge drop next weekend when Transformers obliterates everything in sight. Yeah people didn’t like the last one, but everyone I talk to say almost exactly the same thing, “yeah, I didn’t like the last one, but I’m willing ti give it one more try, and besides, that trailer fucking rules.”
Actionman, I think if you go into GREEN LANTERN with those reasonable, low expectations, you will probably end up digging it.
DIAZ POWER.
Though I’m sorta PISSED it’s a hit; I figured that was gonna be a nice, pleasant LOVE GURU-level day at the cineplex, by which I mean I’d see it at a noon matinee tomorrow and there’d be six people spread across the 300-seat theater.
Now I’m gonna have to sit near people. I fucking hate blockbusters. Bring on the September and October movies where there’s no crowds. I wish every movie would bomb.
Ethang,
According to BO Mojo, Mid in Paris has ALREADY outgrossed Scoop in Spain (roughyl 7.9mil to 7.5 mil) and is still going strong making nearly 500k last week which seems to suggest it will at least break 10mil there.
I think, and again this is based on BO Mojo, it looks like MIP is well on its way to outperforming Match Point and VCB.
Not being snarky, genuinely curious when I ask where you get your numbers from… and if your source is more accurate…
I’ve seen a ton of bad movies this year, but I don’t put Green Lantern among them. It’s a little forgettable, but the venom directed toward it is officially by a bunch of drama queens. It’s silly to call it a terrible movie because there’s a lot that works. This comes from someone who has zero emotional attachment to the flick, but hoped when I saw the trailers that it could be special. It wasn’t, but that’s fine.
But, it’ll be nominated for a few Golden Rasberries and probably win because there’s always a movie or two that people choose to overreact to for no particular season.
This has been said elsewhere but little kids (under 6) LOVE “Cars” with a fanaticism bordering on the cultish. I don’t have kids (& I’m not a gearhead) so I won’t go anywhere near “Cars 2”. I might break down and see “Green Lantern” just to see what all the (bad) fuss is about.
Does Green Lantern have any bearing on further DC movies? Ordinarily, I’d think the studio must shy away from making more, but OTOH the performance of Marvel movies must be encouraging. So, I don’t know. What is in WB’s head now?
when will there be TF3D reviews?
Green Lantern has been deemed the scapegoat for bad comic book movies this summer, so once the disappointing box office numbers came in on top of that, it was open season time with an elephant gun on every little aspect of the movie whether it deserved it or not. It sounds like a passable two and a half star movie that’s getting “WORST SUPERHERO EVER” treatment as if it took a dump on the bible and wiped with an American flag.
“Does Green Lantern have any bearing on further DC movies? Ordinarily, I’d think the studio must shy away from making more, but OTOH the performance of Marvel movies must be encouraging. So, I don’t know. What is in WB’s head now?”
It’d be nice if the bearing it had was “here’s what happens when you make a comic book movie by committee, and the Batman franchise is what happens when you trust a handful of creative and talented filmmakers to do their job”, but who knows, that’s probably just crazy talk.
ActionMan, There is at least one review of T3 from a newspaper in New Zealand, but it reads almost as if it were written from press notes rather than a screening.
So anyone want to jump on the CARS 2 bet I have with Anghus?
We’ll do good odds both ways.
What’s the bet again?
Anghus do you remember? I think from memory if CARS2 does over $225 I win. I’ll wait to Anghus clarifies but I think that was it.
Hallick – That doesn’t really work either, as seen in Superman Returns, which made my blood boil in anger in the moments where I wasn’t stupefied in boredom. WB gave Singer free reign and to spend as much as he wanted. In reaction to that Snyder seems to be on a short leash. Reading between the lines of his early interviews, it seems like Snyder wanted script rewrites, including no Zod. But after the bomb of Sucker Punch he quickly found he had no power to affect any such decisions. He is working with a new crew, which seems foisted upon him to me. Superman 2 seems to be committee making at its finest. We’ll see how that goes. It’s impossible to turn out any worse than Superman Returns to me.
Jerry,
The studio itself has “Scoop” at 8.1, but also is wrong about “Paris.” Good call. Regardless, “Paris” is off about 15% from VCB and “Match Point” internationally where it’s opened. Perhaps the U.S. will make up for it, but I still don’t see it.
What’s Cars 2 doing internationally?
The vitriol leveled against Cars is unsurprising now that I’ve seen it. It’s quite specifically an Anti-Ratatouille. Ratatouille was right in the wheelhouse of the critical audience and they embraced it without reservations (which is what all humans do when art flatters and confirms our preexisting viewpoints). Rather than playing to the critics, like Ratatouille, Cars 2 instead challenges the critical audience to an argument: can you engage in a dialogue with a film that challenges your natural assumptions of elitism and condescension, that challenges you to find acceptance instead of Ivory Towered dismissal? Considering the RT and Metacritic scores, its evident that critics like lessons aimed at mainstream audiences (Ratatouille, WallE) but hate it if the film aims at lesson at them instead. “How dare a movie like Cars have something to say, it has a Larry the Cable Guy main character, it is ipso facto trash, and I’ll just pretend there are no arguments in the film because if I pretend they’re not there, they’ll go away.”
And because Cars 2 is effectively praising and flattering the mainstream audience, confirming their viewpoint, I fully expect them to embrace it, and the film to perform very well, easily outpacing the original domestically and internationally.
Wow, just saw “Green Lantern” (not in 3D) & while it may not be the worst superhero movie ever made (not by a long shot), it is relentlessly mediocre. Every aspect of it screams GENERIC! I felt like I was watching a very expensive pilot for the WB in 1994. Depressing, really.
There are probably some good examples of committee filmmaking that works and auteur filmmaking that fails, but I think the auteur route would come out successful more often that the million cooks in one kitchen route, with the caveat that the studio holds a semi-restrictive perimeter in order to keep the filmmaker from going completely nuts a drowning in total freedom. A little adversity is a pretty nice mother of invention.
“…completely nuts AND drowning in total freedom”.
Wait, didn’t “Ratatouille” take critics to task for having habitually negative methods and attitudes? The critic character was a dick and a villain until he got knocked on his ass by the lowly protagonists. “Ratatouille” is a love letter to following your heart in the face of preconceived expectations (familial, social, and species-based among others), not to the livelihood of the critic.
1) Gi Joe, if you ever gave a crap about Green Lantern, then you should enjoy the movie just fine.
2) Cars 2 is fucking tremendous. That’s right, I cursed, whoopidy doo. It’s a great spy flick that’s not too much for little kids and also has a great message in it. Why the critics decided to turn on Pixar for this film, just shows that they are a waste of space this time of year.
3) I finally got around to seeing Super 8. It’s easily the best film I’ve seen all Summer and surpasses the awesome 13 Assassins for my number spot. Tremendous film but leave it to the heartless crowd of geeks to not get that ending.
4) GL is not out of 1994. It’s out of 2010. It’s Alice in Wonderland with Hal Jordan. Good lord you people and your awful analogies :P! While the drop may end a GL franchise. You can all put money down that Reynolds gets put into the JLA movie.
Lex been reading your excerpts. Well done for getting this stuff down somewhere. Please keep it up. Lots to enjoy in there. My only criticisms are that some of the pop culture references are just jammed in and feel like overkill. I didn’t know where else to drop you a line and just wanted to say keep on keeping on brother.
I dont remember the exact number I picked on Cars 2, Ill have to check the post.
Obviously the opening is fantastic. Ill ne eager to see the hold but with 4th of July 3 day weekend next week I imagine it will be at 150 million by next monday.
I prefer my crow with a bernaise sauce.
JBD:
Thanks for reading them/feedback; I wish I had a more visually appealing place to put them up than some depressing-looking blank blogspot page, which is a buzzkill, so thanks doubly for making the effort. And I don’t disagree about the overload of references, which is inching into Dennis Miller territory and could get old fast.
Ever get tired of making a fool of yourself, Ethan? “Paris is off about 15% from VCB and Match Point internationally where it’s opened”, you claim. Really? In the real world, it doubled VCB’s opening weekend in Brazil, will surpass its gross in France and probably match its gross in Spain.
All up, it’s just about to hit $50 million worldwide from just 6 countries.
Tree of Life continues to do well. Love seeing that. Even if half of the audience wimps out before it’s over.
Is Cameron Diaz really someone guys WANT to sleep with or is she merely someone guys WOULDN’T MIND sleeping with? I would’ve thought Kelly Brook, Tina Fey, Penelope Cruz, Olivia Wilde = Want to sleep with. Whereas Diaz would fall more under the Rachel Ray, Kelly Ripa, Stacey Dash, Emily Blunt = not exactly fantasizing about but not about to say no to, either.
Not to say she hasn’t looked good in the Bad Teacher spots, I’ve just never known anyone to forward a link where she’s been the object of some NSFW anticipation. I know she’s way up on Maxim’s list but any list that puts Jennifer Lawrence above Megan Fox and Eva Mendes I consider seriously flawed.
TINY FEY?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA What guy in the WORLD wants to sleep with Tina Fey over Cameron Diaz? And you think Fey is sexier than EMILY BLUNT? HAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
INSAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANE.
I’m speaking of more than looks here. Fey hip, smart, sexy, funny chick-ness makes her fantasy material much the same way Gillian Anderson rated so high for actively playing out geekspeak.
EDIT: ADD – You never heard or read any comments from other guys when Fey was playing Palin say, “Damn, I wanna do Tina Fey”? I sure heard and saw a lot of it. A LOT!
I don’t even find women over 30 to be attractive, but a select few have what is known in Lex parlance as a Jolie Pass: Jolie, Theron, Witherspoon, Stefani, Diaz.
And that chick who plays Boreanz’s girlfriend on Bones. More like Boner.
I’ve heard the Fey and Anderson things before. It makes me shudder, so I try to block it out. I know this is perceived as sexist, but how could anyone ever in any case ever look at a young, fresh, 18-25 year old, then turn around and, “Nah, I’d rather have Tina Fey.”
I also don’t like women who are smart, political or funny. I like it when they talk about their shoes and pedicures and lollipops and stuff.
Diaz would be a lot hotter if she laid off the botox and plastic surgery. She’s starting to approach Meg Ryan “uncanny valley” territory and it’s sad, because she’s so naturally beautiful. Megan Fox, too, which is even weirder, since she’s only in her early ’20s — have you seen recent pictures of Fox’s face lately? She’s starting to have that weird puffy quasi-Eric Stoltz in MASK Heidi Montag thing going on. WHY CAN’T THEY LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE!?!
Speaking of puffy faces, Jennifer Lawrence’s ballooned face distracted me all through X-Men. It looked liked post-surgery swelling of some sort, and I kept wondering, “Why is this young girl getting work done on her face already?!” It took me out of every scene she was in.
As for Diaz, all those years in the harsh California sun has worked its devastation. She was luminously beautiful in “The Mask”. There truly was something special about her in “There is Something About Mary.” And everybody would have dumped Julia Roberts for Diaz in “My Best Friend’s Wedding”. But, by the time of “The Sweetest Thing”, that evil Cali sun had left her looking a bit harsh. It just got worse from there. I am now worried about what that harsh sun will do to the perfection of Mr Welling’s face. The soft sun of the frozen north, has been very, very good to that perfect face. Now that he is in Cali that perfection is under assault by that brutal sun. My anxiety at this turn of events knows no boundaries. No! Not the face!
Yeah Lex, I’d prefer Fey to most. Seriously, you are just weird man. Totally weird.
I admit I don’t always have the best eye for this kinda thing, but I don’t think Diaz looks altered, except by natural aging (with help from the sun, as Madam Pince notes).
Fey can be very sexy. She’s got great legs.
actually, i’m sure the sun hasn’t done cameron’s face any favours and she looks to be a bit of a beach rat, but she’s been fairly frank about her skin and her struggle w/acne as a teen and an adult, that’s why her face has that vaguely rubbery look that just gets worse, from mild acne scarring that looks worse w/age and even with intervention like laser resurfacing and such, it’s hard to get shod of that ‘look’ (a rather extreme example: robert redford)
(who is ‘mr. welling’?)
I’ve heard of Diaz’s acne problems. Hadn’t thought about it in relation to aging. However, I still think most of it is that brutal California sun. Mr. Welling is he of the perfect face, Tom Welling, Smallville’s young Superman, and divine inspiration for a million Tumblr pics. Thank you, industrious young ladies, for those!
Which reminds me that I need to set up a Tumblr account. I keep getting redirected there from people’s Twitter streams. Social networking was supposed to simplify our lives, but it is just making me more busy. Once you get one platform set up to your liking, you discover everyone abandoning it for the next platform, and you have to start all over again. Myspace to linkedin to livejournal to blogger to Facebook, and now everyone is on Twitter and talking about their Tumblr posts.
i don’t know what any of those things are, but got welling, smallville superman dude. he does have ‘baby’s ass’ skin, now that you mention it.
another scartissueface that didn’t age well: tom berenger
(and no offence to the cali sun, but i’ve been there in the summer and your sun is like a 40watt bulb compared to the hole in the ozone we apparently sizzle under like radiation victims – ozzy too – for some reason it’s like living the last 5 mins of ‘sunshine’)
Yes, Welling’s perfect visage has been protected by the soft sun of the moose-lovers up north. That resource is so valuable, I’m surprised we haven’t declared war on Canada to appropriate their sun for ourselves. I always think of Oz and NZ as the birthplace of especially athletic and beauteous actresses and actors, who come across with the robust health of professional volleyball players. I have never contemplated you all may be slowly burning to a crisp. Yikes!
Hold up: Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz got married?!?!?!
What? Mind blown.
Lex, Friday was Minka Kelly’s 31st birthday. Time to re-think that over thirty dictum?
“You never heard or read any comments from other guys when Fey was playing Palin say, “Damn, I wanna do Tina Fey”? I sure heard and saw a lot of it. A LOT!”
And we can thank the deprived men of Alaska for putting Palin on center-stage since many admitted they voted her into the governorship only because they thought she was “hot”.
Considering other headlines on the MCN front page:
“Myspace’s inability to build an effective spam filter exacerbated the public impression that it was seedy. And that, says Boyd, contributed to an exodus of white, middle-class kids to the supposedly safer haven of Facebook—a movement she compares to the “white flight” from American cities in the second half of the 20th century. Myspace was becoming Detroit.”
Buuuuuurn. (Was that mentioned in the movie?)
And yet this mid-article hyperbole is confirmed at the end: “[Myspace] serves a very useful purpose, it is highly valued by a core of users—often Hispanic, African-American, often C and D counties, not A and B counties, economically.”
( http://www.businessweek.com/print/magazine/content/11_27/b4235053917570.htm )
I have to admit that whenever I looked over the shoulder of one of these stereotypical Lansing students just a few years ago (students who were supposed to be using a computer to do their classwork) they were always on Myspace checking out pictures of gang members flashing signs while posing with guns. Nowadays, they get their fix from Youtube but never go to Myspace (at least in public) or Facebook either, so the barrier against minorities seems to be holding.
Lex where can I read the commentary JBD refers to?
I absolutely think they touched on that in the movie. The conversation with the winkelvoss twins and the other guy with zuckerberg when they first talk about bringing him on. The goal was exclusivity. Selling the selective social experience.