Friday Estimates by Captain Klady
Captain America is doing… pretty much what second-tier Marvel movies do. It ran almost exactly with Thor on opening day. Studios are projecting the same opening as Thor… $65m. And Thor‘s $180m domestic is likely where it’s headed. The real question, on the balance sheet, will be foreign. Thor will do about $270m international. It is said that Captain America cost at least $40m less to make, so that’s a big impact item as well.
The consistency, for better or worse, is pretty remarkable. As noted before, take the numbers on The Incredible Hulk and add a 3D bump and you pretty much have the same domestic result as both of these films. Will the presence of Downey push The Avengers to the $650m range? Higher? And how will those number be affected in the summer of both Spider-Man and Batman, not to mention, Alien Redux, Star Trek, and Will Smith. They do have the advantage of being first and having an open 2nd weekend of summer.
Cap’s win this weekend is really more about the front-loading of Harry Potter. If you include the late-Thursday/Midnight numbers it’s a remarkable 83% drop… almost 84%. Funny thing is, it’s still the Potter series’ best Second Friday number not aided by Thanksgiving weekend. $1b stil seems likely, but not much more than that very impressive landmark.
The fifth R-rated comedy of the summer, Friends With Benefits, is one of the best reviewed and also the weakest launch of the group. Timberlake & Kunis are getting raves, but the reality is, so far, neither has ever opened a movie. Bridesmaids was a marketing-driven opening… people got really excited about what they were seeing. Horrible Bosses loaded up on strong known talent to open. Cameron Diaz. But as Twitter-friendly as Kunis & Timberlake are… just not driving a big number.
Eh.
I have a vague feeling that Sarah’s Key could break out a little bit.
Hey! Where’s The Undefeated? What kind of Commie-Pinko site is this?
Forget Captain America’s strong opening – the BIG story is that Midnight in Paris has ZERO fall-off this weekend, THAT movie is a dynamo!!!!
BTW: Not exactly movie news, but R.I.P. Amy Winehouse. If there’s a lesson to be taken from this — well, maybe now is not the time for such a discussion. But, as always: One of life’s greatest tragedies is a promise forever unfulfilled.
Damn right Joe. God damn right.
Mourning a great voice lost due to sheer fucking enabling by those people in her life, Captain America may have a ridiculous front-loaded weekend, but that opening is still pretty impressive.
Hey, who was the moron who predicted CAPTAIN wouldn’t make it to $100 million? Oh, yeah, it was (gulp) me.
Hey, Cadavra: I, too, may be eating crow next weekend, though of a slightly different variety, if Cowboys & Aliens ISN’T the hit I have predicted it will be. But I think the marketing has been savvy enough to ensure that, like Captain America, it will at least stand a chance of reaching out beyond one specific demographic. I’m amused to see the cover tag on the new Entertainment Weekly. But I also think that’ll be the key to hitting the older audiences as well as the fanboys.
http://popwatch.ew.com/2011/07/21/cowboys-and-aliens-harrison-ford-daniel-craig-this-weeks-cover/
Meanwhile, Rhys Ifans has guaranteed that right-wing commentators will be pre-emptively dissing the new Spider-Man movie for the next year or so. Damn.
http://www.thewrap.com/movies/article/exclusive-spider-man-villain-rhys-ifans-arrested-battery-comic-con-insulted-us-police-say-29
MIDNIGHT IN PARIS will gross more this weekend that every movie that grosses less! Woody Allen will put more butts in seats this weekend that the Lumiere Brothers, George Melies, D. W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, John Ford, Hitchcock….oh, you get the idea.
KUNIS POWER ALL SHALL BOW TO HER.
In Exhibit #9 Billion of “Straight Guys Sure Do a Lot of Gay Things,” the fact that the sausage-fest movie blogosphere will see Captain America but not FWB falls somewhere on the chart around the mystery of guys would rather watch sweaty meatheads collapsing on each other for nine hours in a stupid fucking football game instead of looking at female models.
I’m looking forward to FRIENDS WITH BENEFITS, although I probably won’t get around to seeing it until during the week. I did, however, finally get around to see BAD TEACHER, which had me consistently laughing out loud to a degree that’s pretty rare. From a joke by joke basis, it was really on fire, and I loved Timberlake so much in it that, along with Kunis, it solidified me buying a ticket for FWB. I don’t see how this opening is remotely anything to look down upon, as David kind of does in his analysis. It’s going to be above the PG-13 EASY A, and right in line with NO STRINGS ATTATCHED. I love that these R-rated comedies continue to do well.
Might as well throw out that I saw CAPTAIN AMERICA, and it’s so much fun, the very top of what Marvel has done as a studio but also just super hero movies in general. Evans is perfect, optimistic and un-ironic and noble. The romance subplot works like gangbusters, and I’m now officially a charter member of the Haley Atwell Fan Club. The Red Skull is one of the best villians so far in these comic book movies, and from the period flavor to the action to the attention paid of the ensamble (T. L. Jones is awesome) Johnston did a helluva job.
Ifans IS the villain, after all. When was the last time a theater crowd hissed at a villain?
And who predicted a major Potter drop? Ha ha.
I’m pretty sure STAR TREK 2 is not going to be done/released in summer 2012, as implied in the article.
I notice that James McAvoy and Joseph Gordon-Levitt have an uncanny resemblance. When they are both scruffy, they are indistinguishable twins. Furthermore, as Anton Yelchin has grown up, he and Michael Shannon are converging into the same person. What mad science is going on in the labs underneath Hollywood?
Midnight in Paris will not only outgross every other movie in the top 10, it will anally penetrate them with its financial girth.. So deep itll put their ass to sleep… economically speaking.
Madam Pince: Maybe it’s just me, but 9 times out of 10 when people make those kind of “separated at birth” claims for celebs, I don’t see it at all. Maybe I’m not looking at the right pictures, but I see zero resemblance between McAvoy/JGL, with maybe a slight chance of the Yelchin/Shannon morphing you posit.
yancyskancy, right up until Phantom Menace I would have said there was zero resemblance between Natalie Portman and Keira Knightley. Sometimes I still have a hard time wrapping my head around it, because the mental space they occupy is so separate. They have very different and defined persona, but an uncanny physical resemblance. Sometimes it just takes the right film to see it. First Class was that film. McAvoy = JGL. McAvoy used to carry some baby fat on his face, but he is leaner now. Same downward tilt to the eyes, same thin lips, same narrow chin. The biggest difference is in the shape of their eyebrows. And the Yelchin/Shannon thing is just plain eerie.
Haven’t see First Class yet. But Portman/Knightley — there’s another one. I see zero resemblance (although my niece looks a lot like Knightley).
@LexG – to paraphrase Connery: “Losers always whine about feet and jailbait. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen after watching these films.”
Here endeth the lesson.
@yancyskancy
I don’t know about separate, but this one could be Gave Birth To: Helen Hunt and Leelee Sobieski. Can’t believe no one has ever cast them as mother/daughter.
Paula Marshall and Carla Gugino pretty much look the same ..
Paula does way more tv acting and somehow is 47 years old and Carla well she was in Sucker Punch…
DP/30 – Is Carla Gugino A Sex Bomb?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCWJfhxLx1c
I get Jennifer Garner and Rachel McAdams confused whenever I see one of them in a trailer.
Keira Knightly = Winona Ryder. I have to remind myself in which decade the film I’m watching was made. Watched THE JACKET recently and really had a hard time remembering that it wasn’t a 1988 film.
Paula Marshall and Carla Gugino are HOT. Sorry, Lex; that’s how I roll.
Loved Captain America. Evans, Jones, Weaving, Atwell, Tucci, all of them were good. Nice to see a sincere hero.
I’ll be interested in seeing Cap’s Saturday numbers, because I just got back from a 90% full 3PM showing. It’s never even CLOSE to that busy that time of day at my local theater.
I always thought Mary McCormack and Maria Bello looked eerily alike.
It wasn’t until Bello broke the shackles of her TV roots and began doing raw, occasionally nude work in indies that I was finally able to separate the two of them in in my head.
And you can probably add Jennifer Lawrence to the Helen Hunt/Leelee Sobieski gene pool.
Captain america is the only of these avengers movies to measure up to iron man 1. now looking forward to the avengers. Really well made. The 3d experience was horrible. the glasses were tinted yellow, so the image was tinted and that wrecked the really gorgeous cinematography and color palatte. I kept pushing the glasses up to better appreciate the look from time to time. Probably the worst 3d experience I’ve ever had. I wouldn’t have done 3d but this was the same theatre as I saw Transformers in 3d and that was so incredible and perfect and amazing that I was sold on the tech again, I think they were using a different system for captain and transformers as the glasses were very different. but wow, fast reversion to shit storm 3d. I dunno why studios think we want to see urine soaked prints, but that’s what the glasses make it look like. Apparently only Michael Bay and James Cameron can do 3d that isn’t utter shite.
Yeah you folks need to realize that your 3D experience sucks because of your theatres, and not because of the 3D from the film. I had tremendous fun with the 3D and much like with the Potter post conversion, this one really stands out as quality use of that one buck 3D surcharge.
Seriously, you people go to shit movie theatres. Hell the Archlight is a piece of shit compared to the theatre I go to all the time. Seriously, scream at your theatre chains and not at the moviemakers for shitty 3D!
Based on the comic con coverage the one 3-D movie that I’m now increasingly looking forward to is Tarsem’s IMMORTALS. Also very curious about how HUGO and TIN TIN are going to use it.
I have to say I’ve been very selective about what I’ve seen in 3-D, so I haven’t been burned yet. MY BLOODY VALENTINE, AVATAR, PIRANHA, JACKASS 3, DRIVE ANGRY, GREEN LANTERN. GL was the only time I’ve seen a purely converted, after the fact production, and it was well-done, if not crucial. Although JSP, in many parts of the country the surcharge is much more than one dollar. I think it can get up to four dollars or maybe more. Considering the allegedly iffy quality and the questionable nature of many of the movies it is applied to, I’m not surprised at all people are either irritated or passing on the format. I decide purely based on a film by film basis, and that’s worked out well for me so far. CAPTAIN AMERICA looked beautiful and perfect in 2-D.
I have to say I thought it was pretty hilarious when J. Katzenberg bemoaned the tragedy that is less people paying for 3-D tickets, citing the worst summer movies we’ve had in years. I’m pretty sure this has actually been the best, quality-wise, summer slate in a good while, between a few pretty great big action movies and some really fun comedies and the counter-programming (I’ve heard some movie called MIDNIGHT IN PARIS came out, was liked, and did well…If only there was someone to inform me on this.). I’m sure his statement had nothing to do with KFP2 being slightly down at the box office domestically…
Actually, Midnight in Paris was up 5% on last Friday, despite losing about 90 screens. And it’s added Larry Crowne to its tally of victims. It’s quite extraordinary, really – Crowne has made $10 million less than MiP even though it opened in triple the number of theatres Woody’s film was showing in at its widest. LOL!
Poor Tom! Still, if he’s lucky Woody might cast him in a supporting role in a couple of years’ time.
Is there anyone else on earth who’ll agree with Kevin that Winona Ryder and Keira Knightley are dead ringers for each other? ‘Cause maybe I need to get Lasik surgery. I’m always fascinated by this kind of thing, because it seems like it should be a totally objective issue. And yet.
Captain America was pretty damn not bad. I would have liked fewer digital composites and more physical sets and locations, and many more shots of The Red Skull cruising around in that 30 ft long car. That was the best visual in the whole movie.
Jkill, were you at the immortals panel? I was chilling in hall h most of the day
Anghus, no but I wish. My anticipation was purely based on coverage from those who are.
Seen/heard anything cool?
Captain America made me drowsy. Joe Johnston’s drab, hazy, brownish hue and TOTAL LACK OF SEX in his movies always lulls me halfway to sleep. Generic action, drab looking, such a two steps forward, two steps back experience– every time it starts to get some energy (the war bond montage, any scene in snow or with heights), it drifts back into generic Marvel dull mode. Atwell didn’t wear any LITTLE OUTFITS and the colors didn’t POP. It was solid, Evans was good, Weaver is fine though I never knew or cared what he was trying to accomplish…
SNORE.
On the other hand, FWB was DEEEEEELIGHTFUL. I had a boner almost the entire 109 minutes. KUNIS POWER.
I have to disagree with the ‘it’s the theater, not the film’ 3D argument, if only based on my personal experiences. I saw Transformers: Dark of the Moon in the same Paramount lot room where I saw Captain America just over two weeks later, and it was still a night-and-day difference. Same with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II*, where I witnessed screen-darkening and blurry 3D that made the film look like it was shot on video, in the same Burbank IMAX theater where I saw the splendid 3D work of Avatar 1.5 years prior. And when I’m watching Alice in Wonderland in IMAX 3D in the IMAX corporate building (where Tim Burton personally viewed it for approval, so they claim) and the 3D work is still mediocre, I have to conclude that, as we like to say, ‘it’s the movie’.
*Having said all of that, I’m shocked at the number of respected/intelligent peers that actually enjoyed the 3D work in the last Harry Potter film (your own Kim Voynar sang its praises). I personally thought it was the first time that 3D conversions were really distracting to a film I otherwise liked (IE – The Last Airbender would have stunk in any dimension), but I’ve read a number of 3D-Potter cheerleaders, so I suppose take the above with a grain of salt.
Not to beat this into the ground, but I CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE how C.A. looks in 3D; Even in 2D it’s shot in Johnston’s snoozy tan haze-o-vision. It was so dark and desaturated and DULL on the eyes, I can’t imagine watching THAT IMAGE through what are basically sunglasses.
God, Johnston, use some BRIGHT COLORS please. Though Cap’s shade of blue is MOST PLEASING. It reminds me of 1981 cake icing. Were only the rest of the movie in such interesting colors, and not fog-vision.
Oh, and I’m with yancyskancy on this whole “I NEVER SEE IT” when people make these bad celebrity comparisons (unless it’s me making the PINPOINT-PRECISE Tim Olyphant/Geoff Stults comparison. Or saying that Karl Urban is the death metal version of Brad Pitt. Or that Damon Wayans is the black version of Brad Pitt. And Del Toro is the Mexican Pitt in The Fan.)
The worst example of this, ever, was in the 90s when everyone had some TIRED Bill Pullman/Bill Paxton riff, two actors with literally nothing in common, either visually, career-wise, style-wise, charisma-wise, ANYTHING, just the name Bill and a P last name with two syllables.
What in your opinion is the difference in charisma between Pullman and Paxton?
I can see the comparison being made because their 90s performances had the same low-level energy. They both came off as very “beige brown”, from the hair, the skin, the performance, their public personalities (such as they were). I don’t think they were twins or anything, but don’t think it is a huge leap for others to see the commonality.
Jkill, I loved the immortals footage. It looks mental.
I dont think it will make a dime, but it is looking like a crazy action spectacle.
When the host of the panel asked Cavil about Superman and mentioned the delay, he kind of froze before taking a moment and saying “i cant say anything…. Im looking forward to starting” and said something about “an amazing script”. But
The Twixt panel was enlightening and strange. Some if the shots look so cheaply produced and staged youd swear you were watching a syfy original. I loved hearing Coppola speak and to hear him talk about how cinema is very much alive and capable of surprising us. But a lot of the footage failed to inspire me. It could be wonderful and weird or it could be an unmitigated disaster.
Very few people were wowed by Amazing Spiderman footage. The phrase “missed opportunity” was bandied about by people in the know.
All that footage and all that people talk about is Garfield being great and Ifans punching a cop. Thats not the signs of a panel that has people talking.
Wow, Lex, needs whores trotting around in a superhero movie. Good to know.
Scott, how’s your eye sight? That’s best thing I can figure out because out of all of the post conversions I have seen recently. All of them, absolutely every one of them, have been as good as any movie shot in 3D.
Bill Paxton is brilliant in ONE FALSE MOVE.
I think with Paxton and Pullman it was just name confusion. I doubt if anyone saw ZERO EFFECT and said, “Hey, isn’t that the guy from ALIENS?” It’s like the whole John Heard/John Hurt/William Hurt thing.
Yeah, or the old Marlon Brando/Marlon Wayans mix-up.
Harhar…
Moving on…Attack The Block is quite awesome. So go see it.
Captain America is opening in my neck of the woods tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it. Lex didn’t like it, so that’s a good sign right there.
Finally, I just caught up with Never Let Me Go…best movie I’ve seen for a very long time…got a bit misty-eyes at the end I must admit.
ANOTHER GREAT POINT FROM ME:
There needed to be an extra ten minutes in CAPTAIN SNOREMERICA where he explores his NEW SUPERHUMAN POWERS with any glee. He gets BULKED just in time for a big action scene, then next thing you know, he’s off on his war bond tour. No joy, no excitement, no trepidation, just one second he’s scrawny, one second he’s a god, and he shrugs that shit off like a guy ordering a quarter chicken dark at Boston Market.
Honestly, I get and LIKE the throwback cornpone Americana vibe, but there are no highs in the movie… it’s blanded down and snoozy and square and edgeless and clunky… Neal McDonough walks through with a ridiculous stache, and Derek Luke brings all the period verisimilitude of 2002… But it’s a sluggish snore…
Also I learned from seeing it in an L.A. multiplex that CORNPONE AW-SHUCKS GREATEST GENERATION NOSTALGIA is kind of lost on Mexican Emo Kids who moved to America in 1997. Sample quote from Latino Nation upon exiting: “DUUUUUDE, that shit was all fuckin’ gay and shit. That fuckin’ SUUUUUUUCKED.”
I can’t comment since I haven’t seen the thing yet (and not being American, any nostalgia factor is lost on me anyways). I just know that as much as I often enjoy reading your bullshit, it almost never resonates with me and I usually find your tastes baffling to say the least.
You’re a really reliable barometer for me…we have anti-tastes you and I.
“Captain America is opening in my neck of the woods tomorrow and I’m looking forward to it. Lex didn’t like it, so that’s a good sign right there.
Finally, I just caught up with Never Let Me Go…best movie I’ve seen for a very long time…got a bit misty-eyes at the end I must admit.”
Lex loved “Never Let Me Go” too, TD.
“What in your opinion is the difference in charisma between Pullman and Paxton?
I can see the comparison being made because their 90s performances had the same low-level energy. They both came off as very “beige brown”, from the hair, the skin, the performance, their public personalities (such as they were). I don’t think they were twins or anything, but don’t think it is a huge leap for others to see the commonality.”
Huh? Did you not see Paxton in “The Last Supper” or “One False Move” or “A Simple Plan” in the 90’s? Before that even came around the man had “Aliens”, “Weird Science” and “Near Dark” establishing a pretty strong on-screen reputation. Bill Paxton getting confused with anybody else back then is the kind of stretch that’ll tear the tendon’s right out of a young man’s groin.
Bill Pullman on the other hand was pretty forgettable up until “Zero Effect”, and then it’s suddenly like “Where in the name of holy fuck did THAT performance come from?!?”. Then his career shifted right back into unremarkable, which guts me to this day.
Yeah, I know he did. That’s why I used the words “almost never” and “usually”. The amount of film we see, there’ll always be a couple we agree on (although usually not for the same reasons).
Lex, that beige filter thing bugged me too.
There was a scene in Captain America that really summed up my thoughts on the pitfall of modern fx based filmmakng.
Theres this thirty second segment in an action montage where Cap blows up this gigantic tank and slow motion jumps off as it explodes. All the action in the movie feels like im watching the beginning and end of a sequence. Like the cut scenes in a video game where the boss battle is set up with a staged moment and then bookended by another scene after the player wins.
I saw Indiana Jones and the last crusade on tv last night and watched that great action scene where Indy takes on the tank. Cap could have used something like that. The first chase sequence made me think wed get some practical magic, but alas it turned into greenscreen redundancies. That shot towards the end where theyre chasing the plane with the car… Oh man that was some awful greenscreen stuff. It looks so fake
Anghus, that’s interesting about Spidey. Most of the coverage I’ve read has said that it changed opinions on the project favorably. I saw the trailer in front of CAPTAIN yesterday, and other than liking the look of Garfield as Parker, I didn’t know what to make of it.
On a totally different topic, I’m assuming THE UNDEFEATED did terribly this weekend in expansion, or otherwise its Friday number would’ve been released and its fans would be praising its success.
Anghus, that shot looked fine in 3D, and we all know that we don’t live in an analog world anymore. Which makes comments such as yours so weird because it’s all fake but you like a more practical fake, which could look even more fake than CGI.
Js, I realize that you dont do nuance, but if you watched any Indiana Jones film other than Crystal Skull and thought the action scenes looked “more fake” than the grenscreen blur-fest stuff we get in Captain America, I would call you mad.
There is one terrible bluescreen sequence in Last Crusade when theyre flying the bi-plane.
Other than having the same first name, I saw no similarities between Paxton and Pullman. Particularly Paxton has a very unique personality where I don’t think Pullman could have pulled off his role in Aliens of even True Lies without the character being significantly altered. If you confused Pullman with Jeff Daniels however, I could totally see why. Jeff Daniels could have easily been the president in Independence Day and Bill Pullman could have just as easily been in Speed and those movies would not have changed very much.
Anghus, I so do nuance but all of the Indy films have glaring FX scenes. If you did nuance instead of boring white guy from the 80s who hates CGI, then maybe we could talk about… figuratively… nuance :P!