Weekend Estimates by Klady
Not a lot of change from Friday numbers. It does seem that Mr. Popper’s Penguins didn’t make the case that it was a family movie to enough families… too much Jim Carrey, not enough, “Mommy, I NEED to see those funny penguins.” The estimate is just below Yes Man, which was the first JIM CARREY movie (meaning, a broad live-action comedy with a wide release focused on Carrey as the lead) to fail to gross $100m in a decade. The only worse JIM CARREY opening in the last decade was Fun With Dick & Jane, which opened in the often-slow movie week before Christmas (and got to $110m domestic).
The question about Carrey’s career – aside from the fact that he can still open a movie to double-digits with his head on a poster – is answered by looking at his movies. He hasn’t really had a break out since 2003’s Bruce Almighty, which was a big surprise at the time with near $500m worldwide. For Carrey, a $100m domestic gross is a double. The guy needs some triples and homers again. It’s been a while.
Solid hold from Super 8, but nothing suggesting that we have a phenom.
X:Men: First Class continues to be in sync (a few million behind) the original X-Men. That’s domestically. Internationally, though it is hard to be sure how much is left in the tank, it looks like First Class could improve on the first film significantly… but still not enough to put it in the class of the other sequels.
The Hangover: Part II continues to hang on, moving ever closer to my guess at what the sequel would do. It closes in on $470 million this weekend worldwide. Ironically, after Todd Phillips’ rant, the most accurate guesses I made going into the summer seem to be on the three WB movies so far, as I was pretty close on Something Borrowed and Green Lantern (so far) as well.
Midnight in Paris ended up being off an estimated 12%, which is not a tragedy – as some seem to think I claimed yesterday – but the natural course of things on films this size. This expansion was only 10% and it mitigated a bigger drop this weekend. SPC could go for one more expansion, though my guess is that this last one was a bit of a stunt, wanting to promote the widest Woody release. In any case, the film will pass Priest in short order (domestically only) and will likely pass Jumping The Broom to become the top Dependent release of the summer so far.
I still don’t quite know what’s going on in Searchlight’s mind. It seems like they have decided to stay out of the business of competing with the majors at any time other than Oscar time. The Art of Getting By has a brutal title and now has a brutal opening to go with it. The Malick is doing pretty well. But Win Win, with just over $10m, is looking like it may be the division’s big grosser for the year before the awards frenzy in late fall. Next up, Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, then Another Earth, then Martha Marcy May Marlene. They can be proud of the film in the line-up, but they can’t really expect much attention at the box office with this slate… until they bring the Payne and the Madden at year’s end. Sony Classics has one film that has outgrossed the entire 2011 line-up at Searchlight so far.
There are three new indies on 4, 2, and 2 screens with five-figure per-screens… the new math of indie.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been a story written (that I’m aware of) on Fox’s near total shift to international box office focus in the last 8 or 9 months. Other than “Diary 2,” it seems content to consider domestic box office as secondary….”Gulliver’s Travels,” “Narnia” and “Rio” have taken in 82%, 75% and 71% of their box office from foreign territories respectively. Hell, even the seemingly American-focused “Love and Other Drugs,” “Big Mommas 3” and “Water for Elephants” took in 68%, 53%(!?!), and 49% internationally. “XMen: First Class” will have by FAR its highest share internationally of the franchise, and I’m sure “Popper’s Penguins” will rely on outside grosses as well, with Carrey acquitting himself far better outside of the U.S. as of late. That being said, have any of those films really end up more than marginally profitable other than Narnia?
This really may be a summer of sequels created by the international marketplace…Pirates 5, First Class 2, Rio 2, even Panda 3….all will probably happen, and because of the international marketplace.
“Bridesmaids” has $150 million in its sights…topping “Knocked Up…” and maybe, the first “Sex and the City.”
The other brutal thing about “The Art of Getting By” is the wretched, contrived movie itself.
“this last one was a bit of a stunt, wanting to promote the widest Woody release”
Keep selling lies, Poland. And keep pretending anyone in the world really cared if this was a wildest release or not. They just loved the movie and it’s playing to packed houses.
Following up on foreign…Pirates 4 is officially going to be the 3rd biggest international grosser behind “Avatar” and “Titanic”…wtf?!? Worldwide, Pirates is now the 4th biggest movie franchise of all time behind Bond, Potter and Star Wars…..
Speaking of Potter, thank god WB has number 8 this summer, because “Green Lantern” had a worse overseas debut than here.
And “Panda 2” continues to kill overseas, now at $420 million worldwide it looks to top “How to Train Your Dragon” and end up close to “Despicable Me.” Considering those movies spawned sequels, and Dreamworks Animation nearly made a sequel for Monsters vs. Aliens (380 million worldwide), it’ll be very interesting if they turn down a third one, especially with Fox greenlighting “Rio 2” already…
Good hold for Super 8. Better than i thought. If can eek out 2 or 3 more 15 million dollar weekends it could end up aroung 135 million.
Green Lantern will drop 60% or more next week. Here’s something from Box Office Mojo that may put some perspective on Green Lantern.
“Green Lantern’s start landed behind X-Men: First Class’s $55.1 million and Thor’s $65.7 million. It was also less than The Incredible Hulk and the two Fantastic Four movies, and the attendance disparity was only greater. Green Lantern’s estimated attendance was even lower than Daredevil and Ghost Rider.
3D presentations at 2,711 locations accounted for 45 percent of Green Lantern’s gross.”
Ouch.
Monsters Vs Aliens should have gotten a sequel but apparently you let marketing people into fucking meetings, and they kill off sequels. Bastards. Nevertheless, Hiccup will ride again and the fine people from the rest of planet earth will lead to more Po, so that’s something.
Finally, Proman, come on! How dare you question a man who has no motives or agendas, and basically is just a straight shooter?
ETA: Well you know, idiots that do not understand the power of Will didn’t help, but now I need the September reboot of DC to work, just so Geoff can get some FUCK YOU, SEQUEL collateral out of WARNERS!
Nice hold for Super 8. I’d go see it again.
Remarkable numbers for Tree of Life.
Art of Getting By = BEST MOVIE OF 2011.
I cried like a little girl at the end. FIVE stars, EASILY hands-down BEST MOVIE OF 2011 (so far.)
Emma Roberts = OH MY GOD LOOK AT HER. Cute. CUTE! *Almost* reaching K-Stew levels in this; Every time she was on screen, I didn’t even BLINK.
Also HIGHMORE POWER. Masterpiece.
It’s weird that Freddie Highmore looks like like he’s aged 10 years in just over 3 years…remember Spiderwick Chronicles?
Highmore is clearly aging on the Ethan Embry/Nick Stahl cycle.
Embry was 12 in DUTCH in 1991 when I was 19; Nine years later on TV’s DRAGNET, Embry was completely bald and looked 42; On BROTHERHOOD he looked about 47, even though mathematically he couldn’t have even been 32.
And Stahl went from EIGHT-YEAR-OLD kid in that Gibson face movie… to being romantically partnered with Marissa Tomei in under eight years.
Occasionally it works that way for young women, too: Mandy Moore was a 15-year-old bubble-gummer pop tart in 1999; She could pass for 36, easily, now; Aguilera did the same deal, whereby people who start young seem to bypass their 20s in a bizarre, supernatural way.
I don’t know about Moore. She still looks in her 20s in the promos for that aweful wedding movie with the blond Twilight dude….Aguilera, yes…just like Britney Spears. All major non-black female singers age at a much faster rate though….except JLo and Avril Lavigne.
It’s distressing to see some child actors from like 5 years ago though….Frankie Muniz is balding, bearded and looks like a 15 year old who has partied for 20 years….Demi Lovato looks like she’s done as much coke as she’s rumored to have done….Tom Felton (Malfoy from the Potters) looks like he’s losing all his hair….Hollywood stars, they’re just like us!
I personally have not seen that many Woody Allen movies. I don’t know why his movies don’t appeal to me that much. I have tried and have been bored. But there are two I really liked. The Purple Rose of Cairo and 1965’s What’s New Pussycat (although he did not direct the latter, he did write it).
My cousin, on the other hand, will see any Woody Allen movie and loves just about anything he does.
We used to have long disagreements about him, especially how successful he is. Reading some of the back and forth here about Midnight In Paris (not much in this post, but in other posts as well) reminds me of those discussions.
I think Woody Allen is very polarizing in his professional and personal life and he has a rabid fan base. I think those that love his work sometimes view it’s success through rose colored glasses. I do think he is successful in his niche, and he still is able to get financing for his movies on his name alone (according to IMDB, he had a $30 million budget for MIP plus marketing). MIP may surpass Hannah and Her Sisters $40 million, but, H&HS was 25 years ago, so, I wouldn’t view it as something to shout from the rooftops.
“he still is able to get financing for his movies on his name alone”
He is able to get financing for his movies because his movies usually make money.
That’s true. All of his recent films have likely turned a profit except for “Tall Dark Stranger” and “Cassandra’s Dream.”
It helps when Midnight in Paris is actually a really good movie, that Owen Wilson’s style serves as a perfect Woody doppelganger, that L&O’s Corey Stoll is freaking hilarious as Hemingway.
Hemingway is priceless in MIDNIGHT IN PARIS.
Midnight in Paris should get another expansion. It may ultimately hit 50 million domestic, a bit better than the original brilliant 5-10 million prediction made here (only off by, oh, 80-90 percent).
David: Don’t. Take. The Bait.
I know everyone is elated the “Midnight in Paris” has become Woody’s biggest b.o. hit since…..”Hannah and Her Sisters”?!?!
But I think it’s time to stop browbeating Dave Poland for his lowball projection. I’m not even certain whether he’d seen “MIP” before making his prediction, and/or realized how well it played with audiences. Even if he had, was it so unreasonable to assume that it would perform no better than, say, “VCB” or “Match Point” on the high end of recent Allen films?
Woody lovers should be celebrating the fact that the director of “Annie Hall” and “Sleeper” is suddenly relevant to American audiences (at least those outside of NYC anyway) again. I know that I am.
Beating up on Dave for assuming there was a finite ceiling on Woody’s domestic grosses seems like a waste of energy.
I know everyone is elated THAT…
Hobbette: Woody has his rabid fans but I don’t think anyone here would argue about his potential box office based on just how much they like him. I don’t think anyone was thinking Whatever Works was going to be a big hit or that Vicky Christina Barcelona was capable of more than it made. Most of us can disconnect their likes and see what the potential is. Plus starting out in limited release makes it much harder to predict.
And one thing about the $30 million number that you mentioned (and I am not sure how good a source IMDB is). SPC didn’t pay anywhere near that amount. That was split up by territories all over the world. The marketing costs will be reflective of the potential BO gross, they don’t work like a major that pushes out $50 million months before the opening.
And instead of comparing it to the gross of a film 25 years ago, it would be better to judge its success against his more recent work or the other releases from the studio. If MIP makes it to 30 it will be SPC’s second biggest hit in their nearly 20 years, second to only Crouching Tiger.
What’s stupid about beating up on DP (and DP’s defense) is this won’t even come CLOSE to being as big a movie as “Vicky Cristina” at the box office….hell it won’t even top “Match Point.”
Congrats guys…Woody’s best reviewed film in 25 years will come somewhat close to his first collabo with the magical Scarlett Johannsen at the box office…..zzzzzzzzzz
just got back from Midnight in Paris. Best movie i’ve seen in ages. Why is it that Woody Allen has managed to make his 3 best pictures in the last 15 years set in Barcelona, London, and Paris.
His European tour is turning out some wonderful films.
Lex Likes Everything:
Mr. Popper’s Penguins was surprisingly pleasant and delightful. I am a huge animal fan and always, always enjoy even Jim Carrey’s paycheck comedies… Maybe it’s because I don’t usually see kids’ movies and thus don’t have any frame of how to judge them, but found it cute and innocuous and it BREEZED by. Nice movie.
Ethan, I think Midnight in Paris will almost certainly beat Vicky Cristina Barcelona & Match Point at the box office. By next week, it’ll have done more than either of those films domestically and it’s only opened in two foreign territories so far, so there’s plenty more to be made on that front. It’ll clear $100 million worldwide easily.
And for what it’s worth, the main reason why I thought Poland’s prediction for the film (i.e. less than $10m) was off from the start is that the recent trend with Woody films is that they do well when they draw critical favor. His last two films to get good reviews have been his two biggest recent hits, so I saw no reason for Midnight In Paris to be any different.
EthanG, Match Point and VCB both barely scraped by 23 million total domestically (admittedly, they were much more popular overseas). Midnight in Paris will be nearing 25 million after this Thursday. It is plateauing, but it may expand once more. It may be around thirty million after the upcoming weekend.
Brokeback Mountain plateaued when it expanded from 1196 to 1654 theaters yet it was expanded the next weekend to 2089. It remained at over 1000 theaters for four more weeks and made about twenty million more dollars. MiP isn’t going to expand anywhere near that far but it wouldn’t surprise me to see it get another expansion. I originally hoped it might make it to 1500, we will see.
Granted, this is small potatoes compared to mass consumption cinematic junk food like, oh, Green Lantern, but for Woody Allen this is huge. This is his biggest domestic hit since Hannah and Her Sisters (his last best picture nomination) and it will outgross his last film by more than ten times.
I’m the first to admit that most of Woody’s films from the last decade have been autopiloted rehashings of earlier, better films. But he pulled himself together for this one. When he got raves and his film made 600,000 over its opening weekend in six theaters and then two million over the next weekend in 58, it was a clue something unusual was going on in Woody World.
That’s when I wrote it would make over thirty million domestic and that’s when Poland was making the 5-10 million prediction. It’s not like Woody Allen cares or anything, but it’s hard to imagine worse box office analysis than Poland gave for this film.
So how much is your robot movie going to make, Mr. Van Dough?
In not sure that’s Don – afaik Don doesn’t like using pseudonyms, and the syntax doesn’t read like him.
Besides, Don has two robot movies coming out.
Yes, Ethan, that was a ridiculous comment. Midnight in Paris is already poised to pass both Match Point and VCB.
Remember, snark should always have some basis in reality.
This is entirely beside the point, and an argument I don’t feel like starting where everyone posts their LISTS and whines about their favorite and least-favorite Woodman movies of the post-Sweet and Lowdown era…
BUT, as much as I liked Midnight in Paris (a lot), I think a lot of fair-weather Woody fans are acting like it’s MILES above his recent output, whereas I think it’s maybe the first inside-the-park homerun since Match Point, as opposed to his usual perfectly solid doubles and triples.
I’ve never thought a SINGLE Woody Allen movie was less than a three-star, B-minus experience, EVER. Just talking about “post Renaissance” recent Woody: Melinda and Melinda, Match Point, Scoop, Cassandra’s Dream, VCB, Whatever Works, Tall Dark Stranger: Liked all of them just fine, some of them almost as much as MiP.
I know, the LIST YOUR HATED AND BELOVED WOODY threads are always pointless and arbitrary, just saying this MEME where everyone’s acting like this is first masterpiece in 20 years and he’s been phoning in since ’89 is TOTAL BULLSHIT, and if anything, it’s the one place where I kind of feel for Poland on this; He was a little mixed on the movie, which, fair enough, but at least in that ambivalence he’s one of the few critical voices NOT acting like this nice, cute little movie is somehow some EPIC ACHIEVEMENT after decades of hackwork.
While MIDNIGHT IN PARIS is probably my “favorite” since SWEET AND LOWDOWN, I would agree that the quality is not neccessarily higher than any of his recent output, which as Lex says, is usually always top-shelf. Even his least well received recent movies, like STRANGER and DREAM, I find to be pretty fantastic and way above the vast majority of movies released in their respective years. This is just an uneducated guess, but maybe the reason people are reacting so favorably is because the movie is such a straight forward comedy, whereas his most recent output has been dramas or dramedies. (I thought WHATEVER WORKS was pretty great and funny, but that one had an almost DECONSTRUCTING HARRY/STARDUST MEMORIES mean streak hidden in it for a lot of its running time.) But I really love MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, and I’m very glad people are enjoying it so much.
Lex: Don’t know if you saw them, but Dave actually did a “Ranking Woody” thread on May 12, with a results thread on May 13.
I don’t think that’s Don. I think it’s someone who is much, much smarter than me because he was right making a guess on one film and I was wrong.
Congrats to you, sir/madam.
Was there any reason to think that Midnight in Paris was going to be a breakout hit? Why this one? Is it really that much better than Allen’s recent work? Is the marketing campaign any different?
I see most Woody Allen’s movies in a theater with some exceptions (Cassandra’s Dream, Whatever Works), I can honestly say MiP is the most enjoyable movie experience I’ve had with Woody Allen since Sweet & Lowdown. It’s simply enjoyable. The cast, the music, the scenery, the gimmick. Not high-minded or deep, just pleasant. And it’s connecting in that small way with audiences.
The Fast Five, $200M gross is the big shock for me! Jesus H.
I wonder if any of you giving crap to David over not being able to accurately predict the final Box Office neighborhood based on a six screen opening would like to give us an over/under on the exact final gross of Page One or Beginners? Both are in their second week so it should be quite easy for the Soothsayers to get within, what, 25% accuracy of its final gross?
Suggesting that there is a way to tell in the first weekend of a limited release what the final result will be is preposterous. Tree of Life opened on the same number of screens to a higher average than King’s Speech. Anyone want to guarentee that its going to gross anywhere near the same? Could we expect from the first weekend that MIP would expand to a thousand screens? A size that SPC has only done maybe a dozen times out of over 300 releases.
We all remember times when David was wrong before, and he will be wrong many many times again, but I don’t recall him ever saying he was infallilbe. This weekly demand for prostration is getting really boring.
Isn’t it more interesting to talk about how Warners might lose up to a hundred million on the Lantern?
I think it makes sense (though I never would have predicted it) for the Woody Allen movie to break out, as there’s usually one small indie/dependenet movie that breaks out each summer. Win Win only got so far and while everyone is talking about Tree of Life, the majority are talking about it being boring. Audiences looking for that small, fun movie for adults are finding Midnight in Paris and telling their friends.
Every few days on Twitter I’ll do a search for “Tree of Life” plus either “boring,” “sucked,” or “walked out.” The results are usually comic gold (shocker: 19-year-old Latino B-boy kids and Caucasian party girls are bored by it and say it’s the worst movie ever), but they’re certainly plentiful. There are DOZENS of threads on IMDB just devoted to walkouts, booing, snoring, people complaining and making comments during the movie…
Is this, literally, THE most mass-audience-HATED movie ever? I half-hope it opens at the big theater in Universal City or even Burbank, JUST so I can experience witnessing Malick’s profound vision with 300 texting L.A. kids rioting in their seats.
In a weird way, it’s almost perverse to be expanding the movie and wanting MORE PEOPLE to come and see it; It’s so particular and SO TOTALLY for only the small percentage of people who know exactly what to expect going in, it really is bordering on a bait-and-switch where potential audience members should be screened and interviewed before spending money on a ticket.
I like the idea Lex, for certain cereberal movies you have to pass a quick essay test and perhaps a simple square peg-round hole test.
“Sorry sir you are simply not intellectually curious enough for this particular film, we do have advance tickets to Bad Teacher on sale though, she swears a blue streak through the whole thing. How many can I put you down for.”
Lex, I think you’re pretty spot-on about Woody. Maybe I’m just getting older/crankier/more aware of it, but critical/fan hyperbole with this stuff has gotten pretty out of control over the past few years. I remember when Match Point was starting to make the rounds, it started off as “Woody Allen’s best in five or six years!” (Probably true.) Then it was “Woody Allen’s best in a decade!” (OK, maybe you don’t like Everyone Says I Love You or Sweet and Lowdown as much as I do? Whatever, rounding up.) Then someone, maybe Gleiberman in EW, called it something like “Woody Allen’s best in 20 years!” … I mean, I guess he just loved the shit out of that movie, but TWENTY YEARS? It came out in 2005. So it was his best since 1985?! So MATCH POINT is better than
Then Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which I wouldn’t even say is all that good, came out three years later and suddenly THIS was Woody’s best in years!
Now Midnight in Paris, which I liked a lot, is the new BEST WOODY ALLEN MOVIE IN 20 YEARS. I mean, personally, I’d say it’s better than Match Point or Vicky Cristina Barcelona. But not by leagues! And twenty years still brings us back to 1991. Woody made good-to-great movies throughout the nineties. There were some misfires in the following decade, but somehow a couple of middling (and really, his movies are rarely worse than middling) efforts gave everyone carte blanche to pretend he’s made five or six really good movies instead of, you know, two or three times that many.
I don’t know if many of you read record reviews, but that is totally how they read, at least with established artists: so-and-so’s new album is the BEST they’ve done in YEARS! Until the next one comes out, then it’s the real BEST they’ve done years which makes up for the DISAPPOINTMENT of the last few! So basically, everything is simultaneously getting exponentially better and more disappointing all at once, apparently.
It’s like Paul Simon’s new record: it’s quite good. It’s a little better than his last few, overall. But it’s neither as four-star amazing as Graceland nor as vastly superior to his post-Graceland albums as so many seem to be saying.
Not to take away from Midnight in Paris, which, as mentioned, I found delightful. I might even agree that it’s his best of the past ten or twelve years, although I like Scoop a lot, and found Melinda & Melinda and Cassandra’s Dream fairly underrated. But, yeah, Woody Allen is pretty much still doing what he’s always done; this movie is just connecting in a way that he hasn’t in awhile. Good on him, but why pretend he hasn’t been making interesting movies in years and years?! Is hyperbole that much fun?
Lex, also, I can kinda-sorta get what you’re after when you see Twilight movies instead of Pixar cartoons, even though I think that’s ridiculous, but if Mr. Popper’s Penguins gets a pass from you, I can’t imagine you wouldn’t actually wind up digging most if not all Pixar movies.
Cut myself off up there — I meant to say, early on, so Match Point is supposed to be better than Hannah and Her Sisters, Crimes and Misdemeanors, Bullets Over Broadway, Husbands and Wives, etc.
Plenty of smart people hated Tree of Life.
Pixar cartoons don’t have Jim Carrey (who’s kind of an idol of mine) and Jeffrey Tambor and Carla Gugino and Philip Baker Hall and Uncle Junior and ACTUAL PEOPLE.
Plus penguins are cute. CUTE!
Paul MD… I think Midnight in Paris is a breakout, by indie standards, for much the reason that people LOVE Super 8. It feels like Old Woody the way Super 8 feels like Old Spielberg. (And I would say that the comparison to the source is similarly soft, more so in Super 8.)
Plus there isn’t anything like it in the market… and there’s really nothing for adults (aside from docs) in the market. For adults with a yen, it’s pretty much Tree of Life and Woody and no other real choices.
Speaking of which… why the FUCK is Lionsgate releasing Devil’s Double in late July? Are they trying to kill it and Dom Cooper’s Oscar shot with it?
If you don’t like Malick, you don’t like Malick.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but caviar is not everyone’s taste. If you don’t like caviar, it’s not only “not good,” it’s gross. And if you love it, your brain never engages the idea of what you are eating.
But the smart people knew what they were getting into when they entered Tree of Life. They might have not liked it but not shouted at the screen or snored loudly. I don’t think Lex was saying that you would have to be dumb to not enjoy it (it sounds like he liked Poppers better than Tree), but that it will be certainly be a gruesome sit for people that are choosing the film because ‘Hey, there’s Brad Pitt.’
The “Devil’s Double” trailer is the craziest, awesomest, most insane thing ever. I CANNOT wait to see that.
Second that Lex. It looks amazing.
Also: I wish I could do an exit poll to see how many Midnight in Paris viewers really get all the references? I’ll be the first to admit, I know I didn’t. Christ, I have an English Lit degree AND a film degree, but seriously, does every Grove-packing hen REALLY get (or at least care about) all those literary allusions. Why… why… it’s ZELDA FITZGERALD! Hee hee, GERTRUDE STEIN! TOULOUSE LETREC!
Talk about a movie you need to study up beforehand like an 11th grade AP English essay; I find it hard to believe every posse of Botoxed Gals Night Out Carrie Bradshaw wannabes filing into the Arclight because they “heard it was good!” had any idea who ALL those people were.
“Man, dig those squares walking into BLOW-UP thinking it’s some kind of English murder mystery! They’ll be bolting for the exits! Crazy!” – The Hot Blog, 1966
Lex, that’s probably the allure of the film…and of Woody Allen in general. It gives the benefit of the doubt that people are cultured and knowledgeable, in essence flattering them. A respite from filmmakers who consistently pander to the lowest-common denominator.
In high school I had to read The Great Gatsby and a couple of Hemingway novellas, so that was enough to get most of their references I think. Gertrude Stein & Dali? I’m familiar with their names and pretty much nothing else. And I had no idea who anyone else was, but I don’t think it hindered my enjoyment to any significant degree.
This reminds me of the reception Robert Altman would get every few years. To read the reviews he got for The Player, you’d think he hadn’t made a movie that was in any way watchable since Nashville. And then came the reviews for Gosford Park, which indicated he hadn’t made anything worth watching since… The Player.
Some caviar tastes like rusty tin can.
Thought it was worth mentioning…Klady’s estimate on GL is low. Mojo is reporting actuals of $53.2, making Klady’s estimate $4 million short.
I thought Klady would end up being more correct since these disappointing grosses are sometimes given higher estimates by studios who want a better headline. But alas, it was the higher number.
I know I’m late to respond, but I was talking about worldwide. And no, “Midnight in Paris” has opened on the majority of the foreign marketplace. It’ll come close to Vicky, but probably won’t top it. Snark intact.
EthanG —
” “Midnight in Paris” has opened on the majority of the foreign marketplace.”
Just going off the IMDB release page and not counting countries not mentioned (e.g. Austria, Greece, Switzerland) it still hasn’t opened in Italy, Denmark, Germany, Finland, Argentina, and Sweden. That bunch alone accounted for over a third of Match Point’s international gross. Another big chunk came from the UK and Australia. The foreign figures on boxofficemojo so far have come only from France and Spain, and haven’t been updated since June 5th. Where are you getting your data from exactly?
Boxofficemojo is not authoritative by any means and neither is any site regarding foreign box office. And by a majority, I mean territories that account for a majority of Woody’s box office as of late….his three biggest markets by a wide margin over the last 20 years. A variety of sites (mojo, the-numbers, Hollywood Reporter, Variety, Screener, the studio) have to be used in order to track box office.
“Midnight in Paris” should, for obvious reasons, have some special appeal to France. However, it’s fading fast there and looks like it will finish off at least 10% from Vicky. In Spain, it’ll be off about 25%. Is it possible that it eventually overtakes Vicky and this is just a verrrry slow rollout? (slower than any Woody film since Curse of the Jade Scorpian) Sure, but I doubt it’ll be more profitable than “Match Point.”
This Woody discussion led me to rewatch ANYTHING ELSE for the first time. I really enjoy that one. It feels a bit like a stage play in its structure but is cinematic and lush, and I like how Woody is playing more of a twist on his usual persona and allows (the very good) Jason Biggs to play his usual role. Like MIDNIGHT IN PARIS, it’s a sweet movie about living in the face of an uncaring universe. I know we keep talking about ranking one Allen against another, and are discussing whether MIP really is his best in a while, but I think his consistency and variety is quite remarkable.
JKill, yeah I really thought Woody seemed re-energized as a performer in ANYTHING ELSE. And even though some of the jokes seemed warmed over from his earlier work, I still enjoyed the film a lot. I do wish he’d do an extra draft or two before shooting, or maybe start writing again with a good collaborator.
HUGE fan of Anything Else. There’s one really obvious reason why I’d particularly like that one.
Well, two really obvious reasons, if you know what I mean.
“Well, two really obvious reasons, if you know what I mean.”
Jason Biggs’ testicles?
For what it’s worth, Quentin Tarantino listed ANYTHING ELSE as one of his top films of the last decade.
Ethan, you are so extraordinarily, galactically wrong. Up until now, MiP has been playing in the US, France and Spain. That’s it (and it’s already made over $40 million). It just opened in Belgium and Brazil (where it recorded the highest opening for a Woody film in that country ever, beating VCB’s record).
You got one thing right – this is a slow rollout. For instance, it’s not opening in Italy – another huge territory for Woody – until December.
I guess what I’m saying, Ethan, is that if you’re going to claim it’s opened in “territories that account for a majority of Woody’s box office as of late,” your math should probably add up. Using — once again — your base example of Match Point, France and Spain accounted for 31% of its international earnings. The countries I mentioned above accounted for over a third. There’s still another third out there, and Midnight in Paris hasn’t opened there either. So again, where is your data coming from?
As for your point about boxofficemojo not being authoritative — fine, but so what? My reference to it was just to say that only France and Spain had been reported so far. You countered that this data was limited, then referenced only…France and Spain. What am I missing?
When you do offer specific numbers, they’re off:
“‘Midnight in Paris'” should, for obvious reasons, have some special appeal to France. However, it’s fading fast there and looks like it will finish off at least 10% from Vicky.”
As of today, in France:
VCB — $14,995,044
MiP — $13,951,780
This is a 7% difference now, and MiP is in its fifth week. At this rate it would need to “fade fast” at a decline of about 85% a week to finish under, let alone 10% under, which it’s already surpassed.
All this to say, if your argument depends on numbers, they should at least be close to the right numbers.
There’s absolutely no question that MiP will surpass VCB’s gross in France. It’ll probably fall short in Spain, though, which is understandable, but US box office will more than compensate.