Friday Estimates by Ghost Klady 2
What can one say? Expectations continue to be the most stupid way of writing about box office… followed closely by “reporting” on which film will be #1, #2, #3, etc. (Don’t get me started on last weekend’s non-record-breaking “record breaking” weekend.)
Two problem movies, one at Sony and one at Fox, rolled out to decent, but “disappointing” numbers. We’ll see how these films play out over the next couple of days, but the problems both studios are having with audiences were apparent weeks ago to anyone paying attention… and were not corrected. It’s sadly simple. It’s almost impossible to fix a bad first impression. It’s even harder if you don’t have the goods with which to work.
Meanwhile, The Vow will become Screen Gems’ biggest domestic grosser by the end of the holiday weekend. Rachel McAdams reasserts her dominance over Amanda Seyfried. And we’re reminded of just how powerful women can be at the box office when inspired.
And Denzel is having a good Denzel movie, still out ahead of The Book of Eli, looking like it may become one his top 5 grossers ever… perhaps his 4th $100m domestic movie.
Chronicle will pass $50m domestic this weekend… off of a budget under $20m. Not quite Paranormal Activity, but quite a success.
The Woman In Black is now CBS films’ biggest grosser. It is a pick up, as is their next release, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen. These are now exercises in pure marketing. And that’s probably the best potential future for this company. A sidebar company like this just isn’t built for being a successful production house. There are some tremendous marketing minds in-house and consulting there. Stick to what you know. There’s no better time to be a company picking up movies funded by others. Step by step.
Isn’t THIS MEANS WAR a Fox release? I think this is the weekend where the crowded marketplace is finally getting stretched too thin…though GHOST R2 should have never been made in the first place.
Yes, Ethan… corrected now… Len is being beaten in the back room.
I think based on this 2nd weekend, Safe House is definitely a $100m grosser Dave. It should be above $75 by Tuesday.
I didn’t expect Star Wars EP1 to drop this much, but maybe the family crowd could save it Sat&Sun. The same family audience could also propel Journey 2 passed $100m as well. Journey 1 had the week day summer grosses to help it out, so I think it’ll be close.
Ghost Rider 2 opens to half the numbers of GR1, and with 3D ticket prices to boot. Ouch. GR1 made 39% of its total gross on opening weekend, which is actually better than I remember. I don’t think GR2 will even double it’s opening weekend, so we’re looking at a topping out at $45m. Double ouch.
The only (kind of) saving grace is it supposedly cost $35m less to make
DAVE: re GR2, with 91% males under 25 aware according to Reuters, what was the problem that was visible weeks ago? If anything, wasn’t the marketing pretty good given the “eye popping tracking”? I feel like they did a good job of marketing the film in a “so bad it’s good” type way. The film failed to deliver on that promise. Do under 25s listen to critics or was the marketing so revealing anyone could see/understand how bad the film is?
EDIT: I haven’t seen GR2 but the critical consensus seems to indicate the film has few (if any) redeeming qualities (be it Cage, the Crank duo’s approach, SFX, etc).
Yeah, GR: SOV has a sense of humor about itself and it’s star. It’s also an incredibly well shot 3D movie. If people can’t appreciate it’s silliness like some geeks out there, then they most definitely lack a sense of whimsy.
JSP: I’ve seen enough Nicolas Cage tax-bill movies to know when he actually gives a shit. He did in this one. (“Scrapin’ at the door! Scrapin’ at the door!” was a truly awesome moment of batshit Cage.) I was surprisingly entertained, although I didn’t see it in 3D. Didn’t think I’d be missing much.
Nick, the hand held camera work in 3D is pretty damn impressive. The depth of field it gave things, especially the scenes in the DARKNESS were pretty damn trippy. Seriously, it’s camera work like this and what Scorcese did in Hugo, that gives me hope that more director’s will use 3D for regular film-making in the future. Which is why I cannot wait to see the Great Gatsby in 3D!
JS Partisan:
Ghost Rider wasn’t shot in 3D. It was post-converted.
I saw GR:SOV in 2D. It’s not great but it’s not terrible.
Most of the characters are underdeveloped and it nearly goes to sleep during the expository scenes but the action scenes have some kick and Cage has his moments.
As LexG often points out, “wink-wink, so bad it’s good” isn’t really a selling point beyond a relatively small fanboy niche. The only Nic Cage movies in that mold that do super-well tend to be Jerry Bruckheimer productions marketed on more than just the star.
That said, I’m surprised none of the ads actually said “from the people who brought you Crank.” That franchise actually has its share of goodwill.
I look forward to seeing GR 2 asap, but am disheartened to read reviews by critics who actually like N/T and Cage saying it’s disappointing.
I was bored out of my skull at GR2. It was complete and utter shit. There was absolutely no redeeming qualities about it. All the wink winking and nudge nudging wont conceal the fact that this movie was garbage. Drive Angry fits into the so bad it’s good category, heck I got a major kick out of Con Air and even Gone in 60 secs had its moments. This was just a very bad movie.
JS I know you’ve taken some type of stand that you don’t bad mouth comic book movies, but one would think that if you love this genre so much, you’d be critical of it and call bullshit when you see bullshit. And this was bullshit.
Cage has finally jumped the shark. Whoever thought that pairing him with that other box office poison, Nicole Kidman, deserves an award for biggest balls in show business. Trespass made $24k last year. A movie that could boast that it had two academy award winners in lead roles.
Cage needs to go away for awhile, or keep making the Disney stuff that would at least make some coin at the box office off of the Disney brand name. He needs to get some supporting roles in a Tarantino or Scorsese or some above the title director and not be pressured with carrying the weight of the film on his shoulders.
Also, he’s almost 50, time to put the action roles aside and return to some off beat comedies. Cage, on his good days could play any of the roles that George Clooney has had. If John Travolta could come back, so can Cage, who definitely has more range. He needs to do it before his brand is damaged beyond repair. He’s pretty close to that IMO.
If by fun you mean in a VH1 style of whatthefcukhappenedto thisstar type of retrospect that sure….fun.
BD, what vow? Good lord people, I am not totally stuck up and can enjoy Nic Cage madness. Wow, sue me, but that doesn’t mean this is the greatest film ever. It’s wacky Nic Cage doing wacky shit as Ghost Rider. Violante Placido, Idris Elba, Johnny Whitworth, and Ciaran Hinds having fun as well adds to the experience.
Seriously BD, I’d rather call BULLSHIT on you and people who agree with you, all day and every day, before giving shit to Nic Cage or this movie. It’s ridiculous. Does that make it Academy caliber? Fuck no, but it’s a ridiculously silly and fun movie. If anyone is not down with that, then lighten the fuck up.
Also, stating Nic Cage needs to go away, ignores how fucking awesome he is. More crazy Nic Cage… THE BETTER!
HSX had GR2 projected at over $30 million for the weekend. I wonder what happened.
Loved Chronicle, Journey 2 was okay in a kid-movie way.
“Anything one man can do, another can type in all caps over and over again!”
– Anthony Hopkins, The Edge
My God, if this is what watching “Journey 2” does to a man, I’m not going anywhere near it…
Journey 2 will change a man.
Oy and vey…seriously man, stop doing whatever you’re doing that keeps you in this rut (and you damn well do know what that is) and change your life for the better. Fixating on all of those “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous Gangstas” dreams is doing more damage than anything in a bottle and a paper bag ever will. Just fucking stop with the bullshit AND the self-flagellation and dissect yourself and your life seriously for a day and make whatever peace you have to make with what you can actually expect to get out of life and go after that with the energy you’re pouring into your self-loathing and juvenile fantasies. You’ll never be “HAPPY!!!”, but christ you could get a lot happier on average for damn sure.
The first thing to do is just say fuck it to anything that has to do with your hair already. You don’t owe the world a fucking ounce of the concern you put into it. There are pretty girls out there that literally couldn’t care less about it, I swear to God. Not ALL of them, no, but you don’t need all of them, you only need one (or one at a time at least). And if it’s bizarre or weird that a girl wouldn’t give a shit about your pattern baldness, who cares, roll with it. Just make the concious decision that YOU don’t give a fuck anymore.
Man…I had a Margo Martindale remark in relation to the “white pussy” request, but I just don’t have the ice to do that right now.
The only person that ever loved white pussy as much as Lex was Blofeld.
Aw Jeez…I came by for serious movie discussion and show up in time for another support group meeting.
So to repeat my question from last night, who was really dying in that hospital bed in The Grey?
HERE’S JOHNNY!!!!
If you’ve enjoyed this post and you’d like to see more of LexG’s psychological China Syndrome meltdown of the week, hurry on down to Hollywood Elsewhere and look for the “Best Witherspoon Ever” thread while supplies last.
Patrick Stewart is over 70 and completely bald, but women still go apeshit over him. And being rich and famous didn’t make Whitney Houston happy.
Stop making excuses, Lex. The grass is always greener, etc., etc., etc….
“To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself”
— Samuel Johnson
The more we comment about Lex’s rants, the more we enable him. And by posting this, I’ve enabled him too. See how this shit works.
Okay, if it’s a distraction we need, then let’s try this again:
Just returned from being dragged out to The Grey by the gf. Immediately hit the interwebs afterward to read up on it and was rather stunned to see the wiki page saying
SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS, all the way to the end
that it was Neeson’s wife who was dying in the hospital bed. (Call him “Ottway” if you want, but I’ll stick to the actor’s name to make recognition so much easier.) The IV didn’t appear to be hooked up to her, she looked amazingly healthy in a way never seen since Ali MacGraw’s final exit in “Love Story”, and I thought it was rather odd that we never saw Neeson’s face in those bed scenes. Despite the line that she was lost to him, all the other evidence seemed to indicate that HE was the one dying, and she was the one telling him to go gentle into that good night.
He, however, wants none of that and insists on fighting until he can fight no longer. Perhaps he thinks he had lost her at that point because he had become comatose and could no longer communicate, so he’s ready to give up. But then he hears the cry of the wolf and decides to fight the fatal enemy instead.
In short, I thought the movie was another adaptation of “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge”. The best post-credits scene I could imagine would reveal his wife shedding a tear when his heart monitor flatlines, and then she reaches up to close his eyes. (I thought it was odd that no one did that for the guy who died on the plane.)
If the whole movie isn’t a fantasy like Inception, then most of it makes no sense whatsoever, since so much of it relies on symbolism and dream logic. Each of the men who die represent a different way to go–fatal injury, foolishly leaving the group, foolishly falling too far behind, illness, really bad luck, giving up, fatal accident, and going down fighting. The snap decision to leave Diaz, the guy who gave up, should’ve led to a “we’ll build a fire and rest here for the night” scene, but instead they say goodbye and move on. The wolves, too, seem more symbolic than real, too big, too dangerous, too unrelentingly lethal, and eventually I was reminded of Norman Spinrad’s story “Carcinoma Angels” (described on its wiki page as “a humorous story about cancer”). The reddish-black blotch on Neeson’s face even seemed to grow more prominent as the movie wore on, and by the end it looked more like advanced melanoma than a burn or anything else.
So, I’m not quite willing to buy another ticket just to see who the IV line was connected to, especially because I don’t remember seeing it connected to anyone.
BTW, though this surely means nothing, “grey” and “gray” show up five times in “Owl Creek Bridge”, a story containing few colors. (Okay, I’ve reached the end and there’s also two whites, two blues and a black; ah well.) ( http://www.classicshorts.com/stories/owlcrk.html )
Lex, why would you try to get yourself banned this close to Dakota Fanning’s 18th birthday?
SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER
What is interesting is that Liam had a letter to his wife at the beginning of the film before the plane crash. So while the flashbacks seem to suggest that she was the one that was dying, to me the letter indicates that she may have been very much alive and in some undisclosed way was ‘lost to him’.
Otherwise it is very existential to be writing to a dead person, and may have been a form of catharsis for Liam’s character.
Lex’s caps rant is lazy bullshit, he just copied and pasted the same four lines over and over. If he had actually written a bunch of stuff that long, maybe he would earn some respect.
Curious G – Awareness is an issue for some movies… less for others, especially sequels.
My guess is that idiotic analysis was via The Wrap, which has shown no insight into box office ever. I’m sure that Underworld without Beckinsale had the same awareness number that it did this year with Beckinsale. Awareness does not = ticket sales.
And no, no one in that demo listens to critics. Either they are drawn by the ads and trailer or not. The fire pissing gag got a lot of traction… but obviously didn’t replace the story that Sony chose not to explain.
Somehow, Neveldine & Taylor seem to make trailers that get people excited, but not into theaters.
Just to be clear… Lex is banned. He keeps changing IP addresses to get past it.
I’m done with this for the next while. I’m sure he’ll be in here soon under some other name.
If you get caught in the “moderation” net, my apologies. But I guess I’m going to have to expand the effort to keep him from shitting where I live.
I’m sure a marketing dept. would collectively pee blood if told to sell a movie based on my analysis, and decided instead to present it as “a manly movie for manly men”.
All of the reviews I’ve skimmed so far present it as nothing more than a wilderness survival movie, so it seems they didn’t think too hard about it, either. Kinda like the folks who thought Minority Report had a happy ending.
Minority Report did have a happy ending, Sam. So did Taxi Driver and King of Comedy. And no, Liam Neeson’s character isn’t experiencing a last-second fantasy/flashback throughout the entire length of The Grey. Lt. Gerard didn’t really kill Richard Kimble’s wife. And Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.
But if you prefer to believe otherwise, go right ahead. Me, I always have thought that Whitney Houston’s character and Kevin Costner’s character got back together after the events we see depicted in The Bodyguard.
And I firmly believe George W. Bush stole the election in 2000.
Thanks DP for taking the time. Excellent analysis as always.
I think this is how ‘awareness’ of GHOST RIDER 2 played out:
Some Dude: There’s a new Ghost Rider movie coming out.
Some Other Dude: So? I hated the first one.
with minority report it’s easy to misinterpret the ending because it’s Spielberg who seems devoted to the concept of indulging the protagonist and making sure they get everything they want before the credits roll. Not every single time, but in the vast majority of his films he makes sure the hero gets his/her way.
Saving Private Ryan is the best example. You can’t just have Tom Hanks die and have Damon understand the sacrifice. You have to cut to an old man declaring ‘DID I LEAD A GOOD LIFE?’ and everyone shouts ‘YOU SURE DID GRANDPA!’ before cutting to the shot of the god damned American flag waving in the golden sunlight.
So when Anderton defeats the villain, precrime shuts down, and you cut to a shot of him reunited with his estranged now-pregnant wife, why wouldn’t people think it was just Spielberg tying a tidy protagonist friendly ending?
The only films i can think of where Spielberg doesn’t deliver the protagonist a happy ending on a platter is Catch Me If You Can and Munich. I know the original Terminal ending was basically giving Tom Hanks’ character the resolution of his dying father’s wish and nailing Catherine Zeta Jones. Those are his instincts. He doesn’t often drag his lead character through hell without delivering a kind of karmic payoff to them at the end.
An example that pops to mind is something like War of the Worlds where EVERYONE survives. You think the son dies but then he shows up at the end unharmed and completely fine. Spielberg’s heroes have to win and win outright.
Could you ever see Spielberg doing something like The Departed where you off a main character at the conclusion? Does he have that skill in his wheelhouse?
Well, he basically did with Saving Private Ryan. Damon’s character was supporting at best. He basically killed off everyone we had followed the entire movie. Although he did wuss out a bit with Hank’s death, allowing him to go pecefully and telling Ryan to “earn it.” If he had stuck with the tone of the rest of the movie, he would have just had the top of Hank’s head blow off and that’d be it.
Hanks’ death in Saving Private Ryan is still fairly shocking, if memory serves, because he gets shot in the background in the midst of the battle. We don’t get to see whatever heroic thing he was doing at the time; he’s just another guy that gets shot. It’s kind of undermined by the dialogue afterward but it’s still confusing and surprising in a really effective way.
anghus, it goes back further than that. Listen to the jailer filling Anderton in on what they’ll be shooting him up with when they slide him into suspension: “It’s actually kind of a rush. They say you get visions; that your life flashes before your eyes. That all your dreams come true.” So what was his dream? Escape, retaliation, a happy ending. And so he got it, while he was still trapped in suspension.
Since my analysis is being dismissed I don’t suppose I need to post a SPOILER ALERT, but even if we do assume that the movie is nothing but a straightforward action flick where the wolves don’t symbolize cancer or whatever it is that’s tearing Neeson’s character to pieces from the inside, there’s still one big problem:
His wife.
Okay, maybe we didn’t see Neeson’s face in those hospital scenes because they were a post-principal afterthought, he was no longer available and so they got a body double. Fine. But don’t you think it’s a bit odd that his wife looks amazingly healthy and chipper in those scenes? She doesn’t look like she’s dying, she looks like she’s ready to be interviewed by Joan and Melissa. Was this poor acting on her part, or poor direction by Carnahan, who forgot to say “By the way, you’re dying.”
And how about the scenes after the river? (Remember the end of the river scene, where a soaking wet Neeson just sat there in the snow while Les Stroud and Bear Grylls try to knife each other for the chance to tell us that he’s now moments from death unless he strips naked, rolls in the snow to dry himself off, and then builds a fire to warm himself before hypothermia kills him? We see none of that.) We once again see the hospital body double walking through the woods, wearing the same outfit he wore while lolling in the bed with his wife, doing his best to copy Russell Crowe dreaming of home in Gladiator. Then we suddenly see Neeson in the wolves’ den, going through wallets. If this isn’t a dream sequence, it’s a frickin’ odd transition.
Read it as a straight action flick if you like, but there are too many flashing lights indicating that something else is going on.
And though I know I have a slight touch of dyslexia, whenever I see “Salmon Fishing in the Yemen” written out in a single line (it’s broken into two lines in the poster) I see a word I am most definitely not supposed to see. Let’s just say that I’m wondering why the producers would go with a title that could easily make some of us with brain issues or immaturity issues think it’s gay porn.
“Then we suddenly see Neeson in the wolves’ den, going through wallets.”
what, are they like serial killer wolves, taking home trophies from their victims?…
(your urgent surrealist posts re: ‘the grey’ alone have me keener to see the movie than i was before samlowry, so kudos. i’ll keep an eye out for the too-damn-healthy wife and other weird symbolic, metaphorical stuff)
Thank you for the compliment, Leah. I try my best, though compared to Twin Peaks this one was a cinch to figure out. (And if you’re wondering, the Rosetta Stone for Peaks was “Lil’s Dance”, the scene in Fire Walk With Me where an agent half in the other dimension was trying to communicate with the FBI agents firmly in our own; it all made sense after that.)
The wallet collection in itself was odd. Before they abandoned the wrecked plane, Neeson said they should collect the wallets of the dead so they’ll have something to give the families. Considering the dead are stiff corpsesicles at this point, it’s strangely convenient that each and every one of them kept their wallet in an easily reachable chest pocket, so dozens of wallets are collected into a single backpack in a matter of minutes.
oh. i kinda like the idea of the wolves taking wallets back to the den clenched in their bloody jaws after tearing out throats, then making a little wallet bed for the pups to sleep on. go wolves
Anyone who thinks the last act of Minority Report is Anderton’s dream needs to watch the film again and take note of what he doesn’t know when they put the Halo on him.
Besides, what the hell is he obsessing on throughout the film? His missing son. If the climax was his “dream come true”, it would feature a reunion with his son and not an exposition-laden phone call to Max Von Sydow.
“What does he know” vs “What does he not know” is meaningless if it’s his fantasy; he can invent whatever he wants to make all the pieces fit together.
And I’m sure he’s cop enough to know that his son magically turning up, alive, would be highly unlikely–he almost certainly gave him up for dead long ago.
And really, it’s a Dick story. Do you seriously expect it to have a happy ending? A Scanner Darkly probably had the happiest ending of any Dick movie, and that one wound up with a mentally-destroyed Reeves working on a slave farm.