By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Friday Estimates by The End of The Klady
So… Should we start by discussing the new movies? Are you worried about the numbers on House At The End OF The Street? They are mediocre at best.
End of Watch? Open Road’s 2nd best launch… a good little movie that is a bit lost in the midst of the post-TIFF, presidential season slot. There’s no way of knowing how the timing will work out in the real world, but the TIFF trip didn’t pay off because there was just too much higher profile content jammed into the first few days up there. It helps to have Liam Neeson telling wolves that he is very good at his job and he’s coming for them.
It will be a matter of debate as to whether Trouble With The Curve was seriously damaged by Trouble With The Chair. Even if people aren’t off of Clint Eastwood right now, they may be saturated… and not about the movie… which would be a marketing problem for anyone. See: Gigli. The reviews for Trouble are pretty good, Amy Adams is supposed to be quite wonderful, and this feels like one of those fall movies that find a loving, growing audience looking for solid, simple, unchallenging entertainment. I personally think that WB was screwed by The Chair more than Romney was… since they actually have something worth selling long-term.
Dredd is one of those classic Lionsgate movies that looks so cool, but pushes away the mass audience. Geek audiences love the Karl Urban of it. Non-geek audiences have to be told, “It’s that guy you never remember seeing before because there were so many gruff accented dudes in the Rings movies who you loved as Doc McCoy in that Star Trek movie with the kids playing a hard-ass jerk who is so hard ass that you’ll love him this time.” But what we got was “DREDD,” which fewer people can identify than even The Spirit ,a movie I quite liked on many levels, but also got caught selling to the .5% who know the name Will Eisner and those who might get sexually aroused by posters of known, oft-unclad actresses in various Bettie Page-era poses. This is a hard-R splat movie with some terrific, non-box office actors leading the way. Honestly, I left the midnight screening at TIFF halfway through because I was tired, had a 9a shoot, and felt like I was watching a more ramped up version of The Raid: Redemption. Maybe it got kinky. This movie needed some kinky. Mad Max had The Wife and then, The Kid. If people knew what Judge Dredd wants, maybe more people would have been in the theater this weekend.
Now… The Master.
Let’s start with last weekend. The problem with hyping up the “biggest opening ever” stuff with 5 theaters really meaning 12 screens is that you have to expand. And then, the jig is up. The actual $61k per-screen from last weekend was pretty terrific. A win. it doesn’t matter that The Perks of Being A Wallflower will outdo it this weekend. Take the win. This weekend, on 782 screens, the per-screen will drop to about $5200 per. That’s also a win. It’s slightly behind the number on the initial 885 screen expansion of There Will Be Blood. But Paramount Vantage, back in 2007, waited to expand until after the film’s Oscar nomination. Master is doing this business with Oscar months away. A win.
The question is, does it look like a loser because of the drop, especially from the hyped-up number?
It is misguided to try to fit The Master into the standard boxes of current cinema. It’s not really any of our business how much money Megan Ellison makes or loses on the film. Bless her heart for wanting to be in business with artists and making their work more likely to get made. Sometimes, she hits a box office winner, like True Grit, and sometimes she will lose money. And Paul Thomas Anderson, much beloved by the cinema-obsessed niche, is not Mr. Box Office. $40.2m is his career-best domestic gross… and that was with his first Best Picture nominee, There Will Be Blood.
I think there is true greatness in The Master, though I do not think it is about to become a mainstream audience favorite. It should be just over $5m after this weekend… and a domestic gross of $25m would be quite a success, in context. I think The Hurt Locker was a lot more of a populist entertainment than this film is, so comparing those grosses is a bit silly. But people need to keep in mind that crunching numbers is not a mechanical event. Perspective counts for a lot… and if it doesn’t, the numbers don’t mean shit.
PS: Nice number for The Perks of Being A Wallflower. That’s a movie that could break out and do $50m with a heavily teen, female audience. We’ll see if it does.
Wow is Dredd a bomb. Not expecting a world beater, but high teens should have been doable. Doubtful it can bring much in overseas to cover the stench of this.
At this point, I’m guessing there won’t be a b.o. turnaround until the weekend of October 5th when “Frankenweenie” and “Taken 2” open.
Unless they wind up underperforming, too.
Geez.
Great limited bow for “Wallflower,” though.
Let’s see whether Summit can parlay that into a mainstream (say, “Moonrise Kingdom level) success as it widens in the next couple of weeks.
I’m thinking it has a (much) better shot than, say, “The Master” of connecting w/ non-arthouse auds.
I have a hard time seeing LOOPER bombing…anecdotally it’s the only thing I hear people talking about, and the marketing push has been strong. But yeah, the box office is looking incredibly weak lately so who knows.
Stoked for PERKS…my favorite contemporary book about the High School experience by far.
Caught “Hotel Trans” at a promo this morning and was pleasantly surprised. The 3-D is completely non-essential, but it looks good and is generally (and genuinely) amusing throughout, even without any real belly laughs.
In any other b.o. climate it would be a slam dunk.
But right now? Who the hell knows.
Maybe the kids (and their parents) will just wait for “Frankenweenie” the following weekend.
I do wonder how familiar today’s tykes are w/ the classic Universal monsters of yore, though. But as someone who loved the Wolf Man, Frankenstein and Dracula as a kid, I would have been in hog heaven if somebody had made this back when I was 7-8.
It did seem like a missed opportunity not to incorporate groovy ’60s novelty tune, “Monster Mash.” Especially since the movie is basically an expansion on the “narrative” posited in the song (i.e., all of the legendary monsters get together for a blow-out party).
Maybe someone could have recorded a new version (a rap re-do, perhaps?) and they could have played it over the closing credits.
When I first learned that “Wallflower” was being platformed and (initially) opening in arthouses, I flashed back to fall 2010 when Focus did the same thing with the (comparably teen-skewing) “It’s Kind of a Funny Story.”
That strategy didn’t work at all, despite “Funny” being a damn good film that was also based on a popular YA novel.
Maybe casting the “Potter” chick will make all the (marketing) difference and it really will break out.
I could not agree with you less on “Hotel Transylvania,” another crass, loud and obvious showcase for Sandler and his unfunny posse.
With a few exceptions (“Grown Ups,” “That’s My Boy,” “The Water Boy”) I’m generally pro Sandler, Chris.
Maybe I was just predisposed to liking it more than you.
I’m not saying “Hotel Transylvania” is a ‘toon masterpiece or anything, but I had a better time than I did at the snoozy “Brave” this summer.
WALLFLOWER is considered a generational cult classic, and has courted quite a good bit of controversy over the years so I’m sure that helps…
At this point should I assume that BACHELORETTE is not going wider? I have no issue with renting movies on VOD but I always hold out, if I can, if there’s a chance I could see a film theatrically.
Also, THE MASTER is incredible, and Phoenix gives one of the best performances ever in it.
The number for House at the End of the Street isn’t exceptional, but it will end up making more than I anticipated over the weekend. It’s been delayed, what, 3 years, and felt like a dump since the moment TV spots started airing if not sooner. Dredd picked the wrong release date. Isn’t it targeting the exact same audience as End of Watch? Not to mention going up against two other wide releases.
And Looper feels like a bomb to me, right on the heels of two other R-rated action movies. Johnson’s name doesn’t mean anything to general audiences. We’ll see if Willis has any draw left.
“House” was awful. WOM should be brutal, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it drop 60% or more in its second weekend.
“Curve” and “Watch” should have reasonably OK legs, though. Two satisfying adult movies released in the same weekend? Go figure.
I still think WB dropped the ball (no pun intended) by not slotting “Curve” in their vacated “Gangster Squad” spot on September 7th.
Eastwood & Co. might have run away w/ the b.o. that weekend since they would have essentially been the only game in town.
I think Hoyel Transylvania will do better than Frankenweenie. More kids want to see the former. Haven’t heard much support from kids about weenie.
First of all, holy crap on PERKS OF BEING A WALLFLOWER’s debut. I’m genuinely shocked, in a good way. As far as per-screen vs. per-theatre, I’d argue most high profile releases have some gimmick when going limited, be it multiple screens per theatre or uber-high prices (IE- DREAMGIRLS in 2006 or the Disney animated debuts back in the day) that pretty much even the playing field somewhat. Second of all, any one of the several major adult-skewing or R-rated action entries should have moved to September 4th rather than cannibalize each other over the next two weekends. Be it TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE, DREDD, LOOPER, etc, some studio should hhave moved *something* of note to that basically empty weekend and I imagine they will pay a price and leave money on the table for not doing so.
And yeah, my daughter really wants to see HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA while she has zero interest in FRANKENWEENIE, for whatever that’s worth. Heck, as a lifelong Burton fan, FRANKENWEENIE is the first Burton film I have no real interest in either, so we’ll see how that pans out.
This seems like the most wide open year for Best Animated feature…ever? What’s the front-runner at this point, ARRIETTY? PARANORMAN will probably get a nod, but unless WRECK IT RALPH or GUARDIANS breaks out, you’ve got to think an indie will sneak in and grab the award.
I think my favorite animated feature so far this year is “Madagascar 3.”
But I can’t see the Academy bestowing their top prize on a movie with “3” in the title.
Unless that “3” is preceded by “Toy Story.”
I wish a domestic distrib would pick up the astonishing Korean bullying drama THE KING OF PIGS and qualify it for the animation Oscar. Grim, intense stuff, but what a kick in the gut that film is.
“The Master” looks more and more like a money grab. Weinstein Co. is running ads for that movie on New York TV; I saw one during the Jets game last Sunday and the ad featured the required pullquote from Mr. Quote Whore himself, Peter Travers.
DreamWorks handled “American Beauty” much better in 1999 than Weinstein is handling “The Master” now.
Yeah that’s a brilliant comparison.
YAY YAY YAY! for Emma Watson. Also: YAY!
End of Watch was really good. I hope that movie gets legs. I believed 100% that Gyllenhaal and Pena had been best friends for years.
I do wonder if it broke the record for the most F-words in one movie.
I’m a big horror fan and House at the End of the Street looks really uninteresting and generic. I’ll see it eventually, but definitely not in theaters.
I will check out Dredd though after hearing so many raves about it, now I just know there won’t be anyone else in the theater with me. Shame it is tanking hard, 5 million is such a small number.
Both of my parents (who go to the movies maybe twice a year) went and watched End of Watch today and both liked it. My mom watches a lot of movies on DVD and HBO and such, my dad not really. But he likes cop movies. They said it was entertaining and interesting, good number for it since it was so cheap.
I expected Trouble with the Curve to do better just because of Eastwood. I think movieman is right, opening on that empty weekend Curve would have done better.
I’m doubtful THE SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY is even eligible for this year’s Oscars, because it was released in Japan in 2010.
Frankenweenie will win the Oscar. Burton is due, and the reviews have been good (so far).
@Joshua, SPIRITED AWAY was released in Japan in 2001, but won the Oscar in February 2003 for animated feature, and HOWL’s MOVING CASTLE was released 2 years before the Oscar ceremony it was nominated in, so unless the rules have changed ARRIETTY is eligible.
The reviews for FRANKENWEENIE are good, but not great, but I guess it could win given how bad animation is this year. I could even see BRAVE sneaking a win by default.
ain’t nobody care that Frankenweenie is in black and white and animation is usually better in full color ?
I think if Wreck It Ralph is 3/4’s as good as Toy Story, cause the trailers seem to reveal some heart in it, then it has a decent shot.
FRANKENWEENIE would be utterly wrong in color. This shouldn’t even need to be stated.
As you all know, I’m no fan of Sandler and his crowd, but HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA is a charming outlier–they’re playing actual characters, not their usual “types;” the script is co-written by Robert Smigel, and it’s directed by the great Genndy Tartakovsky. Plus it cleverly celebrates the classic monsters while gently poking fun at them and their “outdated” status. It skews older than most animated features (the monsters may not mean much to generations raised on Freddy, Jason and Jigsaw), but kids should like it.
My pick for best animated feature so far this year is PARANORMAN, but I acknowledge I’m in the minority on this.
Persepolis was black and white.
SECRET WORLD OF ARRIETTY was fucking borrrrrrrrring. And that animation look does nothing for me. At all.