Weekend Estimates by ArArArGo Klady
Argo deserves a lot of credit for being there when the top spot became available for a $10m gross or better. Ben Affleck, besides being a talented director, is a director who makes movies for adults. That means that will all the momentum of this film, $100m domestic may not happen. Flight, Skyfall, and Lincoln won’t kill Argo, but they will slow it down. But $90m is a great success for a film that doesn’t pander to the biggest moviegoing audience, the under 20s. Huzzah.
Hotel Transylvania, now Sony Animation’s biggest domestic grosser, has another five days – including Halloween – before Disney’s Ralph tries to wreck it. Hotel T is the #5 animated film domestically this year to date, behind the three big summer releases and the March release (this year from Universal). T has an outside shot at #4, though Wreck-It Ralph will probably keep it from adding another the full $30m between them, especially with Halloween behind the monster comedy. But another big step for Sony Animation. Huzzah.
Now, the bad news…
Cloud Atlas is estimated not to hit $10m domestically this weekend. Ouch. Makes Larry Crowne look good. I wrote yesterday about why I think the film isn’t selling. Sigh.
Silent Hill: Revelation couldn’t top the second weekend of a disappointing Paranormal Activity 4 (off 70%). ‘Nuff said.
And then there are Fun Size and Chasing Mavericks. Combined, they couldn’t match Weekend Four of Taken 2. ‘Nuff said.
Was I distracted the weekend everyone got excited that The Dark Knight Rises passed the worldwide gross of The Dark Knight, becoming the #7 all-time grosser and the #3 non-3D all-time grosser?
Samara and Searching For Sugar Man are running neck-n-neck, both docs currently around $2.2 million. Solid numbers for both. Sugar Man will probably pull ahead next week, but really strong numbers in theaters for docs in this era.
Long Shot: The Kevin Laue Story led English-language indies with $10,500 per on 1 screen. It got 4 paragraph review from a freelancer in the NYT.
Three Walden Media features (assuming “Parental Guidance” is as bad as it looks) may totally cancel out Fox’s haul from “Taken 2” this fall.
Summmit left money on the table with “Perks.”
A bit surprised that End of Watch will wind up around the $40 million mark. Mind you, I’m sure that’s enough for the film to turn a profit. And, yes, the film got made, it’ll be around forever in ancillary streams, everyone involved can be proud of it, and blah, blah, blah. But I expected it might get a lot more asses in seats. Maybe not $100 million worth of seats. But more than $40 million. Maybe I, too, have gotten too wrapped up in the numbers game.
I don’t mean to quibble, but I’d argue that the dopey airport chase at the end of “Argo” is exactly that: pandering to the under 20s.
Chris: I would strongly disagree. If it is “pandering” — that is, any more than any suspenseful scene in any thriller ever made, which I doubt — then it panders to audiences of all ages.
Put it another way: I don’t think Hitchcock was pandering to the under-20 crowd when he sent that crop-duster after Cary Grant.
This can’t be right–“Flight” is only debuting in 1,800 theatres? Zemeckis’s smallest rollout in 24 years???
et… it’s the smallest film – in current dollars – of Zemeckis’ career.
And the idea that the close of a movie is pandering to 20something is just bizarre. Seriously… think that through. Affleck made a slow, chatty thriller only to sell-out in the last 20 minutes because somehow younger people were going to find out about one scene and show up?
Nah.
I predict “Chasing Mavericks” will become the sort of movie people discover in years to come–on dvd; on cable–and fall in love with.
Curtis Hanson is too good a director (and has too much taste) to make a crappy “Karate Kid” knock-off like the lazier crix claimed.
Sure, the narrative trajectory is boilerplate, but the surfing footage is spectacular and the relationship stuff (Butler and the kid; the kid and his mom; the kid and his childhood sweetheart) is genuinely, surprisingly affecting.
Put it this way. Even though I knew going in how this was going to end (spoiler alert: not well), I actually found myself choking up during the final moments.
But I’ve always had a soft spot for films about the water. (“The Big Blue” is one of my all-time faves.) And movies about athletes who die at a young age have always had a profound effect on me for some reason, dating back to “Bang the Drum Slowly” and, yep, “Brian’s Song.”
Et: It continues to astound me that “The Master” will outgross “Perks.”
The marketing campaign/release pattern on the latter was so unspeakably bad you’d swear it was Millennium (hey there, “Paperboy”) rather than Summit.
No knock against the PTA film which I love. I totally get why the hoi polloi either detested or simply ignored it, though.
Yet “Perks” had the potential to a true breakout hit (e.g., the vastly inferior “Pitch Perfect”), and should have been a wide release from the start.
I wouldn’t say that for sure based on the muscular marketing campaign DP. And c’mon,it’s Denzel. No excuse for opening on par with a Wu Tang Clan kung fu flick.
Agreed movieman. Summit’s last minute boost of “Cold Light of Day” was bizarre also. I saw TV ads for “Perks” for weeks and it played in one theater for a week here (packed btw).
$40m+ for END OF WATCH is insanely good. Joe get off the crack pipe. That film looked like something like THE GANG TAPES. END was in the black day one. Huge success. Why you thought it deserved to do $60+ is bewildering. You going all Larry King on us Joe?
CLOUD ATLAS failed because the general public were given no fucking clues as to what all that arty farty saccharine shit was about. It forgot the simple art of capturing your audiences attention. Pretty CG shit means nada to the masses. LIFE OF PI anyone?
Someone should mashup the beginning plane crash in Flight with the ending chase/take off in Argo to create a 15 minute thriller for the under 20s.
PERKS is my #2 movie so far this year, but, frankly, I’m impressed it hs done this well. Summit may have left some money on the table, but I doubt not a lot. Teen-oriented movies like this don’t do HUGE numbers. LUCAS, SAY ANYTHING, DAZED AND CONFUSED, MAN IN THE MOON, WELCOME TO THE DOLLHOUSE, ADVENTURELAND all wind up finding their widest audinece on TV and DVD. The teen movies that break out usually have a comic hook to them. I’m glad that smart teens are seeking it out, but there are still a lot of teens who prefer PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4 or FUN SIZE or PITCH PERFECT.
END OF WATCH oding $40 million is pretty impressive. It lacks the pulpiest of a TRAINING DAY (and the star power), and I’m sure its gimmick put off some people. Cop movies seem to be out of fashion these days. It’s not the ’90s anymore , I guess. I mean, DARK BLUE should’ve been as big as TRAINING DAY, I think.
And the so-called “action climax” if ARGO is actually a classically staged suspense sequence. The fact some hip critics and moviegoers reject because it’s “too Hollywood” is just weird. The entire movie is a throwback to the kind of politically aware movies that these same hip critics and moviegoers claim they wish they were still making.
Don’t get me wrong: $40 really is, I agree, pretty damn impressive for a small-budget, R-rated cop movie. But I actually thought End of Watch had the potential to reach a wider audience, with the mostly positive reviews and, yes, the possibility of grabbing a big hunk of the Hispanic market. I was wrong.
i saw end of watch only for the ending . can they possibly do something different that other cop movies haven’t done before …plus Anna Kendrick – LOOK AT HER!!
“Broadway and off-Broadway went dark and most movie theaters throughout New York City were shut down Sunday as the East Coast prepared for the onset of Hurricane Sandy.”
I know it’s next weekend’s #1 movie, but I gotta say that I pretty much detested “Wreck-it-Ralph.”
It begins fairly promisingly, grows increasingly tedious, then becomes flat-out annoying. It just may be the loudest–and longest (at 102 endless
minutes)–Disney cartoon ever.
I did, however, enjoy the sweet, breezy 6-minute b&w animated short that precedes it.
P.S.= The racing scenes were infinitely superior in “Speed Racer.”
Joe, End of Watch probably could have got there if Looper hadn’t come out the same weekend and sucked all the “cool adult” movie buzz for about two weeks until Argo came along and sucked whatever buzz was left.
OK, then why did “Argo” sell itself out in the last 20 minutes?
Knocking ARGO’s “sell-out” climax is like lobbing jeers at The Parallax View or All The Presidents Men for the ‘action’ in those films. Moronic.
God I detest 99% of all modern film critics/bloggers/beardos.
Mike- “EOW” opened a week before “Looper.”
My only gripe w/ “EOW” was the ending: it felt like both a cop-out and a cliche.
Otherwise, a really strong film with tremendous perfs by Pena and Gyllenhaal whose chemistry was crazy good.
you think cloud atlas can hit #1 on itunes – by the time it comes out millions of people will have ipad minis … will
people want to watch it on that ? 8 inch display…
Movieman – my bad. Sorry about that.
I remember them coming out at the same time, but Looper being the one everyone was talking about. Let me amend my argument to that when Looper came out, it cut off the legs for EOW.
I don’t think it did.
I think they made a choice you don’t like in the name of adding some more visceral excitement. Happens all the time.
Fair enough.
‘That means that will all the momentum of this film, $100m domestic may not happen. Flight, Skyfall, and Lincoln won’t kill Argo, but they will slow it down.’
Wrong and Wrong.
Loved, loved Cloud Atlas.
Since it’s all about international these days, I thought this was worth passing along:
Internationally, “Skyfall,” the 23rd picture in the James Bond series, got off to a massive start. The film grossed $77.7 million from 25 territories, including $32.4 million from the U.K. (where the film set a new attendance record on Saturday), $9.1 million from France, and $8.6 million from Russia. According to Sony, Skyfall‘s start was 76 percent bigger than the launch of “Casino Royale,” and 30 percent bigger than “Quantum of Solace”‘s debut.
Loved Cloud Atlas.
I think some of the problem of the film failing was that PA4 gobbled up much of the IMAX screens that this film would have benefited from having. The closest IMAX screen from my vicinity was over 100 miles away. A shame, considering I can’t imagine that PA4 looks any good on a giant screen.
Also, imo Cloud Atlas had a horrible release date. I saw a couple of trailers and some tv spots, but otherwise a horrible marketing job for the film. I am sure it will find an audience on home tv/cable, but the film deserves to be seen on the big screen.
For whatever it is worth, the B.O. actuals now show Cloud Atlas at #2 over the weekend with a slightly higher than estimated figure.
I loved CLOUD ATLAS as well but my “take” on why it’s floundering a bit is….it was marketed badly and, more importantly (and I could be crazy) it’s a huge comic book geek film. Isn’t it? I mean, it’s more akin to SCOTT PILGRIM than say, CRASH was. The people praising it online are by and large the bloggeratti and that never, ever equals box office money.
I loved it for the comic geek leanings (and because it’s awesome) and for the fact it AVOIDED schmaltz and the lame CRASH-esque idea that we’re all connected for *powerful* reasons. Here, some people fall in love, others become servants, some meet for 5 minutes, others share a lifetime….I loved THAT rather than some heavy handed thing where everyone meets their destined soul mate.
I’m also surprised that neither DP or anyone here brought up the Variety film editors tweet that “all 3 hour movies are too long.” I dunno what was dumber, him saying that or how he couldn’t figure out why everyone was calling him a dummy for saying it to begin with.
Don, few if any of the things you attribute to Crash are actually true. Crash is about what is exposed when people are taken out of their comfort zone. It’s not about sameness or destiny. It’s about connections people make and what these connection reveal about those people and their worldviews can be complex and contradictory. I found it very, very powerful and not at all schmaltzy. There is plenty in that film that is very real and revealing.
FWIW–and this is not a spoiler–you don’t think HOTEL T was “pandering” when a movie whose entire conceit is about characters who are mentally stuck in the 19th Century ends with said characters jumping on stage and RAPPING??
ARGO SPOILERS (I guess)
With regards to Argo, I don’t think it’s about “selling out” or anything in the end. To me the problem is a near-complete compromising of the reality that has been set. The runway chase is cartoonish. We’re asked to believe this movie is based in reality (and the movie to this point really delivers on this) and then this scene happens which makes no sense in even a movie version of the real world. A shot suggests they are moments from “shooting out the tires” of an Austrian 747 hurtling down the runway, probably killing many on board? When a simple radio call from the tower would turn the plane around in minutes? And the pilot of said plane is completely oblivious to it all? It bummed me out because it cheapened my investment in this film which I enjoyed as a whole. Had the opposite effect than intended. Plenty of ways to hold the suspense until the wonderful “you may now drink alcohol” beat without going full A-Team.
That expresses my feelings beautiful (and it’s exactly why I think the movie sold itself out).
Proman-
I only saw it once and really disliked it. It felt heavy-handed and like some kind of liberal guilt fest. I was never inclined to see it again so my original take- “off” as it may have been- has stuck. My feelings were more about how I liked CLOUD ATLAS because it didn’t leave me feeling like CRASH had (seemingly?) tried to; it didn’t link everything together neatly or try to have some heavy ANSWERS!!! to everything. It felt more loose, fun and with some added depth. But again, I only saw CRASH once so I could be off on my take on it.
breaking news – Disney to buy Lucasfilm for 4 billion
DP – your the biz guy – good deal or what ?