MCN Blogs
David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Friday Estimates by Kladyniss

What can on say and why would one say it?

There is a part of Hollywood that is now much like Broadway has been… people love musicals for which they can enter the theater humming the score. The Hunger Games is much better made than the early Twilight movies (I stopped at #2, which was #2), but it is getting the “it’s not as bad as it could have been” bounce for a piece that is still pretty by the book and tone deaf about its own content.

Dragging Jerry Lewis into this… if you call The Bellboy sophisticated, you are a moron. Skillful, yes. Sophisticated, no. The Nutty Professor also has some very broad comedy as well as some very heavy-handed drama… but it is somewhat sophisticated. Apparently, Jennifer Lawrence being the strong, balanced center of this film primarily by being Jennifer Lawrence is enough for some to see it as sophisticated… especially in combination with the next book.

But I haven’t really heard this from many people who didn’t go in humming the book. Godfather 1 it ain’t. Star Wars it ain’t. But to be fair, those were genre retreads as well, right? In both of those cases, they expanded their universe. In Hunger Games, as seems to have been the case with Twilight, this is a product aimed at a fixed universe of fans that will expand with time, but not as a percentage of the current possible audience.

And so my rant ends.

Congratulations to Lionsgate. May you be sold in 3 years because some bigger company wants to eat your library and this franchise finally causes someone to lose their mind and wildly overpay.

In other news… you’re kidding right? In the Top Ten, a 53% estimated drop was the low.

Sony Classics got The Raid: Redemption (first of a trilogy) off nicely with almost $5k per screen on 14. The film is actually a lot like Hunger Games… 20 or 30 or 50 cops go into a building, will any come out?… but in this one, the audience actually deals with death, even if it’s in a cartoonish way.

Be Sociable, Share!

34 Responses to “Friday Estimates by Kladyniss”

  1. movieman says:

    Everybody else has “HG” a little higher than $66-million. But nobody’s really sure how it’s going to wind up when the final dollar is counted Monday A.M.
    Terrible opening for the Davies film. What a shame.
    Maybe it wasn’t such a great idea to open day-and-date in the suburbs. That’s surely dragging the per-screen average down.
    Absolutely wretched bow for Seidelman’s ballroom dancing flick.
    Guess her comeback will have to wait.
    Nice bow for Sony Classic’s rock ’em/sock ’em actioner, though.
    I’m curious to see just how wide they eventually take it.
    And how soon.

  2. Krillian says:

    Where’s October Baby? Mojo had it at #6.

  3. bulldog68 says:

    A movie based on a new literary work aimed at young adults makes more in one day than another movie has made in three weeks that was also based on another piece of literary work that has formed the basis for many of the great sci fi epics of all time. Disney must be pissed.

  4. palmtree says:

    I think I might wait for the crowds to die down before I see HG, but I’m more excited to be seeing THE CLOCK this weekend!

  5. actionman says:

    does anyone know when/where The Raid will be expanding? 14 fucking screens for a movie that SOOOOOO many people have been jizzing over seems a bit stupid…no?

  6. kbx says:

    the only people praising the Raid are geek blogger types and those visiting those type of sites—actually a very small amount of people

  7. cadavra says:

    My DVD of BATTLE ROYALE just arrived. I will leave the malls to der kinder.

    As he who must not be named might say: TAKESHI POWER. BOW.

  8. Joe Straatmann says:

    The Hunger Ganes…… The follow-up to Garth Brooks’ alter-ago’s first album? I kid because I have the same horrid problem with proofreading.

  9. chris says:

    Not sure how much, actionman, but “The Raid: Redemption” definitely expands to more markets next weekend.

  10. LYT says:

    David, you always say quality makes no difference at all to opening weekend, where it’s all about the marketing. So even if this film is as lacking in quality as you believe it to be…nothing to do with this gross, right? The marketing has been handled very well, I think indisputably so.

  11. JS Partisan says:

    LYT or Lou or Larry, HI LARRY :D, David goes against that whole “OPENING IS MARKETING” thing all the time. Seriously, when it suits him, he ignores his own set principles and it’s one of the reason he’s fascinating as a reviewer and box office prognosticator to read.

  12. actionman says:

    thanks for the head’s up, Chris. I am holding out hope it hits one particular theater in CT.

  13. David Poland says:

    I’m not sure what you are really asking, Luke.

    Yes, opening weekend is 98% marketing… in this case, a premarketed book is part of that… as it was with The DaVinci Code.

    And when the numbers hold relatively well next weekend – and I suspect they will – it will be, on great part, because of word of mouth.

    We’ll eventually find out whether this franchise is capped, or not.

  14. David Poland says:

    Uh, bullshit, JSP.

    When?

  15. Dan Tayag says:

    actionman,

    Here are the theater dates for the Raid: http://www.sonyclassics.com/theraid/dates.html

  16. Joe Leydon says:

    I swear this is true: MSNBC just announced that Mitt Romney took his son to see The Hunger Games today.

  17. anghus says:

    So are we thinking Harry Potter/Twilight Numbers?

    275-300 million?

    Or is this one leggier? Less leggy?

  18. christian says:

    Well, Romney has to get some ideas for his vision of America.

  19. Ace says:

    I’ll probably check out Hunger Games Monday or something, want to see Raid. Closest it is playing to here (San Jose) is two theatres in sf, next week it is heading to downtown san jose and an art house cinema. Will go check it out then. And apparently 4/13 it’ll be at a big cinemark here, but I won’t be waiting that long

  20. Yancy Skancy says:

    Dave: I think maybe there’s some confusion about your reference to “the ‘not as bad as it could have been’ bounce.” I assume you meant it in reference only to the critical reception, but maybe some think you were referring to box office too?

  21. SamLowry says:

    If Romney’s son isn’t younger than 16, that’s one seriously yicky picture I’ve got in my head of those two entering a theater full of tween girls to watch THG.

  22. berg says:

    we need to talk about Katniss

  23. kbx says:

    the just reported 49M Saturday puts HG on course for 150

  24. JoeLeydon'sPersonalPornStar says:

    SamLowry, HG appeals to a far greater range than you may think: That theater would probably have been full of tweens, teens, and twenty-something girls AND guys, as well as lots of women over 30.

  25. movielocke says:

    I’d guess it’s getting about a 60% female audience and 50% under 25. that’d be great for Lionsgate. Harry Potter skews about 50% under 25 and 55% female. I’d say this is a bit more female oriented, but not the 75-80% female the twilight movies draw. I figure repeat business will be slightly above average and the film will hold relatively well, topping out around 300. Fabulous numbers, and good to see that the summer gets seriously started in March now. Soon we may be getting big movies all the year round. I guess next March we’ll be seeing if they can market Ender’s Game to a 100 million mark. That book is basically a gender inverted Hunger Games, so Lionsgate has set the benchmark. If Ender’s Game can’t hit 50% of Hunger Games opening, it’ll be seen as a massive failure, even though such an opening would be an insane success. On top of that, because they cast such a massive star in a supporting role, dumb pundits will be expecting Ender’s Game to outperform Hunger Games, so it will probably be impossible for the film to be seen as a financial success next year, considering the size of this opening.

  26. JS Partisan says:

    David, your response is the same response you give anyone who brings this up. Again, I am not annotating the hot blog because, seriously, who wants to read an annotated version? Nevertheless, you shy away from your own philosophies from time to time, and then call bullshit on anyone who brings it up :D! Again, that makes you interesting.

  27. arisp says:

    Sorry to change the subject here, but my piece of shit DVR didn’t record Fringe on Friday. What are my options? Hulu is subscription now. Fox.com says I don’t have the latest flash player (which I just downloaded twice, and the site is still not recognizing it for some reason), and new episodes are locked – it says I need to sign in to my cable account, which I did, but the ep on Fox is still locked (how does fox.com know if I’ve signed into my cable account). What is this shit? Isn’t online viewing supposed to be easier than this?? Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

  28. David Poland says:

    That’s a non-answer, JSP.

    “David does this and David does that” is easy when you can just shoot from the hip. Put up or shut up.

  29. JS Partisan says:

    David, no. You want to put some paper in my hand and make me an employee, then I will treat you like a boss. Until then, you do contrarian shit to your supposed STRONG AND PRINCIPLED stances all the damn time. It’s well documented on this blog because when you do it, like with Luke above, WE CALL YOU OUT ON IT! The strongest one that comes to mind, 3 years later, is the silliness with Inception. Go read your Friday and Weekend estimates and read how absolutely full of it you are over the four or five weeks that movie held #1.

    Seriously David, it’s not like you are a douche or anything, but you simply refuse to accept that you get as caught up in this as the rest of us. It happens and when it does, we will make sure to tell you about it :D!

    ETA: Arisp, see if your cable supplier has shows online like Xfinity or Uverse. If they do not, then try Side Reel.com. It’s the most logical thing to use if you miss a show. Oh yeah, just cause, use ITUNES if you want, but the TV side of things over there is stupid. If any part of ITUNES should be subscription based, as in paying a flat flee each month for something, that should be the TV side.

  30. cadavra says:

    Arisp, does your provider have OnDemand? It oughta be on there.

  31. doug r says:

    And I was right about the Simpsons movie, but I don’t rub everyone’s nose in it. Oh wait, I just did. 🙂

  32. SamLowry says:

    Ender’s Game will have a hard time taking off because a) it’s “old”, and b) you don’t see at least one student carrying a copy into each hour of each classroom in every school in the entire country.

    Hunger Games and Twilight and Harry Potter aren’t stories, they’re cults.

  33. cadavra says:

    Except that POTTER had a legion of adult fans as well; can that be said for the other two?

The Hot Blog

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