MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, December 31st, 2011 - 12 Comments »
Be Sociable, Share!

Friday Estimates By New Year’s Baby Klady

So… “The 10% Principle” worked on the smaller films… not so much on the bigger ones,in this case, M:I4 and Holmes2. Those two ran between 35% and 40% off of Monday’s number all week. What does it mean? (shrug) People didn’t stay as excited about them as they did for Avatar or the first Holmes movie.

Trying to do box office analysis in the situation of a holiday and shifting days of the week connected to holidays and so forth is a bit maddening. So I’m not going to kill myself today with it. But I did think about perspective and that led me to last year’s numbers. These are the Top Ten numbers at the end of the holiday weekend of New Year’s 2010 into 2011.

Little Fockers – 103.1
True Grit Par – 86.7
Tron: Legacy – 131
Yogi Bear – 65.7
Narnia: Dawn Trader – 87
The Fighter – 46.4
Tangled – 167.9
Gulliver’s Travels – 27.1
Black Swan – 47.3
The King’s Speech – 22.7

Note that this year’s holiday movies still have 3 more days of holiday in which to add to their coffers.

Mission and Sherlock surely surpass Fockers and Tron. Chipmunks kicks Yogi’s butt. There is no True Grit in this year’s group, with Dragon Tattoo running about 30% behind it. Tangled clearly held much better than any November movie this year. Titnin won’t end the year with Narnia numbers given very different release dates, but in the end, they could well be fairly close. Zoo should be at Fighter/Black Swan numbers by Tuesday and War Horse will be pretty close… even though last year’s two films had a big head start.

Overall, I’d say this December is looking a lot like Last December. No big break-out. Last year, two sequels and two remakes were on top at this time. This year, it’s 3 sequels and 1 remake. The only animals last yer were animated or medicated. This year, we have animated, medicated, owned, and miraculous. But last year did have surprise on its side. People were genuinely surprised by how well True Grit did, as well as Black Swan and The Fighter. This year, even the underdogs are overdogs, whether they were directed by Spielberg, Scorsese, Crowe, or Fincher.

More year-end box office digging to come…

Be Sociable, Share!

12 Comments »

12 Responses to “Friday Estimates By New Year’s Baby Klady”

  1. Dan says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:09 am

    Where’s the article we can see on the front page?

  2. David Poland says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:10 am

    What does that mean, Dan?

  3. Rob says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:16 am

    I’ve made peace with Young Adult crawling to $15-16 million. If you’ve seen the movie (and I love it), you know that’s not actually a bad number.

    My Week w/Marilyn and Shame really hit the arthouse wall. It’s going to be tough for those two to stick around until Oscar night.

    The Artist also seems a little soft, considering. At my local arthouse theaters, the largest screens/sellouts are all going to Tinker Tailor.

  4. Rob says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:18 am

    Wow, just realized I wrote that comment after looking at BOM’s Friday chart. Sorry!

  5. EthanG says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:26 am

    “We Bought A Zoo” has recovered nicely…too bad it cost $50 million(?)

    Who would have guessed that MI4 would be the 2nd biggest post-summer film this year behind Twilight, and be bigger than the last couple Bond movies?

  6. David Poland says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:47 am

    Uh, me.

    Of course, foreign is still the bigger issue for the film and its context in the year.

  7. David Poland says:
    December 31, 2011 at 9:49 am

    Rob – Tinker Tailor remains the per-screen king of the limited releases so far. It’s been written off by a lot of people, most because of the confusion issue, but there still seems to be enough word of mouth in this limited number of communities to push it ahead of the stuff being positioned as awards leaders. Odd and interesting.

  8. Jarod says:
    December 31, 2011 at 10:06 am

    TGWTDT is being reported at 5.3 million elsewhere.

    Interesting that TGWTDT is being spun as a failure.

    I wouldn’t call War Horse a failure at this point, but a total of less than $50 million through Jan. 2 is a disappointment, so far.

  9. LexG says:
    December 31, 2011 at 10:11 am

    Is it true IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY has been pulled from pretty much everywhere? It’s 100% gone from LA after what seemed like less than a week; Is it coming back in a month, or is it completely gone until DVD?

    W.E., same question. I’m also not holding my breath for the returns of other one-week wonders The Lady, Coriolanus, Sleeping Beauty from earlier in the month.

  10. EthanG says:
    December 31, 2011 at 11:24 am

    You thought MI4 would finish ahead of Sherlock 2, Alvin 3, Puss, etc domestically?? Really? Well kudos then DP…the only thing I predicted right this fall is Happy Feet 2 bombing…

  11. movieman says:
    December 31, 2011 at 12:17 pm

    I’m pretty sure “Coriolanus” and “Blood & Honey” will both return for regular engagements early next year in LA. (Like “W.E.” and “The Lady,” they were just one-week, “Oscar-qualifying” runs.)
    Not so confident about the others returning to a theater near you, however. I’ve seen better movies fall into distribution black holes after failing to accrue any serious awards mention after their one-week “Oscar-qualifying” runs.

  12. Dan says:
    December 31, 2011 at 1:21 pm

    What’s your take on the War Horse numbers, David? It seems a bit soft compared to the raised expectations following its opening.

The Hot Blog

Comments Most Recent Archives

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon