Weekend Estimates by Klady
The only real chance from the Friday numbers to today’s estimates is the move of Rise of the Guardians from #4 to #2 and the strong Saturday showings being estimated amongst all of the top pictures.
Seems like a good time to pull out a list of Best Picture contenders and to consider that… though recent years since the expansion to 10 or as many as 10 nominees have clearly changed the game in terms of box office results as a factor in the nominating process. Still unreleased are Zero Dark Thirty, Les Misérables, The Hobbit, The Impossible, and Promised Land.
With Argo having been in release the longest of this group, it’s now losing screens, but all of the grossers over $15m are or have been in wide release. All are in stable, good domestic gross deterioration mode now.
The second group, all in under 450 screens, has been poked at a bit in the media, but assuming continuing efforts by each studio and perhaps a few more cities added, Anna Karenina and Silver Linings Playbook are both likely to better the domestic gross that The Artist was at when it got nominated last season. Silver Linings is already bigger than that number ($12.4m) and looks like it will be at double The Artist’s nominations morning when this year’s noms are announced (2 weeks earlier than last year). So, let’s not be too dramatic about box office at this step.
Obviously, the box office on The Hobbit will be top of the group… if it gets nominated. Les Misérables is opening wide on Christmas Day. Of the five best opening weekends coming off of a Christmas Day opening, four were on a Thursday or Friday. Only Catch Me If You Can was earlier… on a Wednesday. What does this mean for Les Mis? Who knows? My guess would be in the mid-20s for the weekend with $22m or so in the bank Tu-Th and maybe another $8m on New Year’s Day. So when Oscar nominations close on January 3, they could be around $60 million at the box office. That’s a great number, especially considering that it would put it in the class of musical winners immediately. Even if the number is more like $50m, it would be a very successful number for a musical.
This may all be irrelevant to the Oscar nominating vote, however, because the profoundly confused leadership at The Academy have made voting a confusing mess this year. So I don’t expect a large percentage of the vote will come in on the 2nd and 3rd this year. They are already having problems with the new procedures over there, trying desperately to educate those who have been understandably confused, and I fear a significant percentage of potential voters will miss out on nominations as a result. (I have been told by one young, tech-savvy Academy member about their problems trying to sign up for the electronic voting.)
Anyway…
Zero Dark Thirty is skipping the Christmas surge and going NY and LA only on Dec 21, waiting until January 11 to go wide… the day after nominations are announced. This is actually a fairly unique play. Dreamgirls, for instance, expanded to 800+ screens on Christmas Day. There Will Be Blood expanded a bit 10 days in, but remember, back then, there was a much longer wait for nominations. My guess is that Sony is looking at the model they used in 2001/2002 for Black Hawk Down, which opened on 4 on Dec 28 and expanded 21 days later and had a $28.6m opening weekend. They’re expanding ZD30 21 days after opening day as well. The question is, do they have a more commercial movie than they think they do? Or are they doing the smart thing and protecting the film by wrapping it in Oscar nominations? If things keep going the way they have been with critics groups, I think Sony should probably be looking at some kind of expansion for its second or third weekend… maybe to a few hundred screens. Word of mouth has to be a winner before going wide. Oscar nominations – by then expected for weeks – are not the big play here. And remember, Black Hawk had a commercial release, not an awards-focused release.
And so it goes…
Is Skyfall an anomaly due to the Olympics and the 50th year anniversary? Hmmm…
If I was Aeon, I would film the next two films back to back(a la Lord of the Rings).
Somebody explain those Lay the Favorite numbers to me. Stephen Frears with an all-star cast? $320 per screen for the weekend? That’s less than four tickets PER SHOW.
Haven’t thought about ‘Skyall’ being an anomaly. Of course, the movie delivers. But it’s an interesting theory. As an example, I didn’t see the two previous films on a movie theater. And my whole family went to see ‘Skyfall’ on its debut weekend in Venezuela.
Gus: Perhaps Lay the Favorite wasn’t helped by its VOD availability?
Lay the Favorite – nobody seemed to do any interviews for this movie – so that doesn’t help either. this seems like a movie that can be run on cable tv a dozen times per month… the movie deals with gambling so one of those
poker sites should advertise or do some sort of deal ….
win a 100 dollars in poker online get the free dvd ..
Rebecca Hall Power – she’ll be in Iron Man 3 …
I dug the fuck out of Killing Them Softly. Brilliant film. I so hope Dominik ends making an adaptation of The Crossing or Cities of the Plain. A fusion of Dominik and McCarthy would be something to behold.
I’m guessing that’s a (French) Canadian opening for “Worlds Away”?
Not a very auspicious bow.
I wonder if Paramount will curtail the # of screens they were planning to open it on December 21st–a wide enough release to open in my podunk town.
It always seemed like an iffy wide release proposition anyway, especially with all of the holiday competition.
Felt more like an Imax-only “special event” type of movie.
Caught Silver Linings Playbook.
When will a filmmaker be brave enough to have a thyroid cancer survivor (with no thyroid) decide to throw away their meds and miraculously cure themselves by falling in love?
I love how brave Russell was to fetishize the throwing away of meds (I lost count after ten iterations of the hero triumphantly stating that he’s off his meds or doesn’t take them) and promote a good old fashioned story of love-conquers-all. Love how it reinforced all the cultural prejudices and mistrust of medicine for the brain, scientology for the win!
I’m with Monco.
Movielocke: Never really thought of it in those terms before, but I wonder if some of the movie’s more impassioned supporters/admirers are indeed interpreting Silver Linings Playbook” as having a “throw away your meds and let love cure you” message.
Whether or not you actively conceptualize the film after you see it, I don’t think there’s a way to read the events of SLP any other way than love trumps the meds. And ML is right that it’s far from the first film to go down that road.
Hard to believe the VOD thing was THAT stacked against LTF… I get a bit of the edge taken off, but a $320 average? That is insane for that cast. There have been far too many counterexamples to say that VOD cannibalizes things to this degree.
Any specific reason Django has been left off the contender list? An assumption it’s more a genre-bound geekfest than Basterds was?
“Whether or not you actively conceptualize the film after you see it, I don’t think there’s a way to read the events of SLP any other way than love trumps the meds. And ML is right that it’s far from the first film to go down that road.”
It’s definitely not the first film, every film or television program I can think of has taken the SLP approach to meds.
I actually cannot think of a single film that has a positive approach to medicine for the brain–everything I can think of is the same as SLP.
It makes these diseases and disorders seem less real or legitimate if they can’t be healed by medicine but can be healed by love. It’s interesting that a movie that tries to realistically represent the disorders in question also insists in its representation that the disorders can be cured by magic. That tension between realism and magic is very interesting to me, an embedded hypocrisy I think most are blind to.
Interesting. Never occurred to me the SLP was suggesting love conquers meds. What I saw at the end were two people with continuing issues that will never go away on their own, but at least they understood what they were getting into.
I mean, the DeNiro dad was still dealing with his issues all his life, and that is what the son will go through.
Damn. While correcting my earlier post, I accidentally deleted it. Whatever. Anyway…
ML: Actually, I can think of several Law & Order episodes that most assuredly took the opposite route, and warned that people who did not take their meds would be more homicidally inclined.
OK, now my earlier message is back. Without the edit. Never mind.
What does “and so it goes” mean?
Serious question, is there some sort of editorializing I’m not understanding when you close a piece with that phrase as you seem to do from time to time?
Also, Django is dull dull dull.
Straightforward plotting that is almost shockingly banal.
Any awards traction would be a surprise.
This ain’t no Basterds let alone Pulp.
A sad yawner. So disappointing.
As Lincoln passes $100m next week, it’s actually kind of hard to believe that this will be DDL’s first $100m grosser of his 28 year old career.
It seems that the guy has never made one film, just for the money. What’s even more surprising is that according to Mojo, in those 28 years, he’s only been in 15 films. He’s only once done two movies in one year, and that was truly a squeaker in 93 when his second film opened on 12/31. He’s like the Terrence Malick of acting. It’s really hard to find another still relevant actor who works less than he does.
Django has linear storytelling Jerryishere? Thank fuck for that. Aren’t we all over films manipulating straight forward stories with chronological and flashback fiddling. When did telling a straight story become shockingly banal. Didn’t realize it was a requisite for awards consideration.
J – I’ve seen it.
Finally caught up to Flight this weekend (With a pretty decent crowd considering how long it’s been out). I’m sure there’s been miles written about this, but it felt to me like a Cameron Crowe movie about alcoholism and addiction with Zemeckis guest directing the flight sequence. It’s really weird. The wall-to-wall songs in a lot of the introductory scenes, the John Goodman character, the scene in the hospital stairwell, and even the final shot feels like Crowe’s work. That’s neither good nor bad. It’s a fine movie with fine performances. Just an odd thing I noticed.
DP which J is that.. me, joe L, Joe P, Jerry etc?
Straightforward and linear are different things
Boring is boring
And awards have nothing to do with anything, but since the question was posed my opinion — not that anyone cares — is that because Django is dull I doubt it will get awards.
Because it is long and boring I doubt it will do much BO. Some but not at Basterds or Pulp level.
Believing straightforward means linear is a common mistake amateurs make. The key to storytelling is being interesting, however you achieve that.
QT does not succed, IMO, in the case of Django.
He has before, just not with this movie.
I just saw a “J’ with “heartona*****” e-mail, JBD
Jerry I said linear because you were referenced works that feature non-linear plotting is all. Oxford dictionary describes linear as straight forward narrative. I’m not arguing about whether Django is dull or not as that’s your opinion and you are possibly right on the money. You can have gripping straight forward narrative that is not dull. Some of the best films of all time feature straight forward narratives. It’s everything else on top that makes the difference.
Anyone who was DJANGO off their top movies of the year list has shitty taste and doesn’t love cinema. Period. Find a new hobby.
I remember someone else mentioning it, but I was to believe that in “Silver Linings Playbook,” Pat actually begins to take his meds again. It’s quick and I think they do play that down (which speaks to the aversion at large we’re talking about anyway), but I thought he did start taking his meds eventually.
“Straightforward plotting that is almost shockingly banal.”
Can you explain that a little more? As in it’s just Django saying “I’m going to do this,” and then doing it? I can see how that may get boring (Kill Bill V. 1 anyone…?) but I’m also a little surprised to hear how straightforward the plotting is with how many characters, cameos, and epic storytelling have been hummed about in the press. Anyway, would like to hear more of your thoughts.
I wasn’t really looking forward to “Django” but I gotta say I was a bit charmed by Jamie Foxx on SNL this weekend…
FWIW, I enjoyed the hell out of Django Unchained, and so did my son. And we’re probably going to bring his mom to see it on Christmas Day — along with my brother, if he’s game.
pretty sure spassky’s right – pat goes back on his meds after his late night meltdown and i don’t think there are any references to him going off them after that point.
way late to the discussion on this one, but i caught End of Watch on its re-release this weekend. good lead performances – gyllenhaal and pena are great together, and their chemistry definitely makes the finale tense and emotionally draining, but i was expecting something a little better overall. it was like watching the director’s cut of the ninth best episode of Southland. really hacky plotting and the found footage conceit was so half assed and random.
“pretty sure spassky’s right – pat goes back on his meds after his late night meltdown and i don’t think there are any references to him going off them after that point.”
Well look at the balance, first scene of the movie, pat taking his meds and immediately being tricksy and spitting them out. This is balanced out by one scene of pat taking his meds and we’re supposed to presume that he did not spit them out despite being shown earlier that he is tricksy about this.
So we have one scene of him spitting them out and one scene where he ‘supposedly’ takes them (but the first scene of the film deliberately undermines the later taking of the meds), that is ‘somewhat’ balanced, but don’t forget there are about 10-20 pieces of dialogue throughout the film about how he’s off his meds or won’t take his meds or meds are inherently bad or meds are inherently untrustworthy–the film chooses to be extremely vocal about being off the meds and then becomes ludicrously silent about being on the meds, so as spasky said, it speaks very strongly to the medicine-aversion of the film.
(also note how our culture treats medicine for the brain, we don’t call it medicine, we automatically call them meds. Meds. Denigrating and diminutive, the equivalent of calling a black man boy and so fucking embedded in culture even making this inflammatory comparison will outrage some because of the implication fo participation in such a system)
It’s important to bring up pat sr (deniro) in this system as well, he’s clearly also suffering from undiagnosed mental problems as his son was, why didn’t he get diagnosed? for his generation and social class it’s because of the stigma of therapy and medicine. But we are SO PROGRESSIVE now that there isn’t stigma on therapy, so it’s okay for a person of Pat jr’s generation and class to go to therapy; but for some reason culture has not let go of the stigma on medicine, and films like this actively promote and facilitate the spread of that stigma.
My girlfriend is bipolar and has borderline personality disorder, and I still have a hard time convincing family members that most of her ‘issues’ are a result of her condition, and not something she can just decide to ‘get over.’ She’s been on medication for a few years now, and the difference is night and day. It took a fair amount of trial and error to find the right combination, and of course nothing is 100% effective 100% of the time, but I firmly believe they have saved her life, with minimal/manageable side effects.
What’s love got to do with it? Well, you’ve really got to love someone to be able to stick it out when the disease is at its worst, or when the combination or dosages of the medications need adjustment. But love alone can’t fix a chemical imbalance of the brain, except perhaps in certain moments when endorphins are running high.
We haven’t seen SLP yet, but look forward to seeing how the disease is handled. I’m open-minded, and Jennifer Lawrence is, um, very watchable. I’m hoping to find merit in the film even if the depiction of these diseases is off the mark. Even an inaccurate portrayal may help destigmatize mental illness a bit.
movielocke – i don’t know – is it really russell’s job to counter anti-science know nothing-ism in the culture? you’re right that there are lots of scenes of pat decrying medication and saying he doesn’t need it, but isn’t it pretty clear in the context of the film that he’s wrong? it was clear to me. before he goes back on his medication, he’s erratic, prone to violent outbursts, clearly needs to be on medication. afterwards, he’s more stable and able to make constructive steps toward improving his life, including letting go of his ex, etc. i guess if you’re anti-medicine you could look at that and say that the medical side was irrelevant and that it was jennifer lawrence’s sex appeal and dance instruction that saved him – but for me, watching the movie, it was pretty clear that him going back on his medicine was the prerequisite to every other positive thing that happened to pat in the second half of the movie.
you notice how the ending of Breaking Dawn part 2 is exactly like the ending of Savages
Yancy, part of my sensitivity to the whole issue is an ex girlfriend with BPD who refused her meds and refused to experiment to find the mix for all the cultural issues at play and the lame excuses offered in the film (“I’d be on the floor if I took them”)
“is it really russell’s job to counter anti-science know nothing-ism in the culture? ” Is it really Pixar’s job to counter anti-princess know nothing-ism in the culture? Yet they did, in spades, brilliantly making a princess film unlike any other that has come before it. Pixar took on the existing culture of Princess Movies and challenged everything about them, they didn’t just make another princess movie apologetically. (I was spamming this article on every friend’s facebook feed this summer if they dared to make a derogatory comment against Brave: http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/just-another-princess-movie/ )
of course, all this SLP stuff is moot and minor compared to Bigelow revising history to say that waterboarding led to the capture of OBL: That is necessarily and inevitably going to lead to more torture and more aggressive and awful torture by the United States government and other governments. I’m sensitive to this issue of responsibility by the film and television industry in promoting pro-torture art, having worked in some small capacities on 24 in 05; in retrospect it’s disheartening how much we changed the cultural attitudes towards torture with that show.
Art doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and artists have to take some responsibility for the dialogue their works engage in with audiences–particularly a medium of art like cinema that has as a prerequisite a communal aspect to its proper viewing (in a dark theatre with an audience on the biggest screen with the best sound).
ZD30 is about to go on a monster January February run racking up more than 200 million and winning half a dozen or more Academy Awards and sweeping ever (even liberal) critics award available. It is going to have a powerful, immediate impact on short term and long term policy, and it going to tilt the ball back into the favor of pro-torture Cheneyites. Note that the Cheneyites had 7 years of torture and were unable to get bin Ladin, tailing the driver that led to bin Ladin was an affair totally separate and removed from any torture.
Saying the lie is OK because the lie is more entertaining or the lie is more dramatic is ESPECIALLY not an excuse when what you are attempting to excuse is making the entire culture more comfortable, accepting of or enthusiastic about something as horrific and inhuman as torture.
If water-boarding did not play a role in finding and killing bin Laden, why did Boal and Bigelow add it to their story and insinuate that torture was instrumental in the effort? Does it enhance the drama? Does it represent their personal views? On the one hand they suggest that they took a journalistic approach to the film and insist they have no agenda, but then they tell a pretty huge fib by suggesting that water-boarding led to the capture and death of Osama. That seems to indicate an agenda.
UH — that’s awfully antagonistic, buddy.
I didn’t like the movie.
You probably don’t like my taste. As I imagine I would not like yours. But really — taking out agression there are we, pal?
And FWIW, cinema ain’t a hobby, it’s a profession.
But either way, I think there’s room for all tastes.
But if Django love is what you need to be a hobbyist, I’m glad I’m a pro.
But I truly am glad if anyone enjoys it. It’s good for business.
@Jerryishere:
I hope you weren’t referring to my posting when referring to the antagonism toward your viewpoint. I didn’t think I was being antagonistic, but inevitably things are going to be lost in translation here. So I will repeat:
I don’t know if I would like ‘Django’ though as any film enthusiast would be, I’m excited to see what it’s like. So I was just wondering how you felt the plotting was straightforward? Thanks.
Oooops, and now I see some troll took the name of ‘Uh’… and yeah Jerryishere: ‘Uh’ seems like a waste of space. He not only did what some in here may have accused you of doing (avoiding an explication of argument for sake of posturing said argument as the correct one), but he also belittled your viewpoint.
‘Uh’: people who make statements as coldhearted and general as yours are generally self-exceptionalizing know-nothings who don’t realize that film is a dialogue. TROLL.
@spassky no issues with you.
I love QT for the most part, so I was excited.
Found the movie dull.
The plotting was straightforward in that the “spine” was rather thin — and unlike most of QTs movies where I find myself happily suspending disbeliefe — in this case, I couldn’t help think about how one tiny tug at the thread holding the movie together would make it all fall apart.
There are some nice performances.
Some nice visuals.
But I found it ultimately empty and dull.
Some may love it, and that’s great, but I just wasn’t wow-ed. And fair or not, that’s what I hope for from QT.
Yeah, I am not sure ZDT is going on any tear. Django maybe, the Apatow movie if it connects with women, but ZDT is recent history. It’s recent history and that’s not really a draw as it once was. Everyone who reads this blog will go see ZDT but who is the audience? Seriously? It’s an action movie that’s not an action movie, it’s long, and it’s three different movies. That’s a hard sell for people. Stranger things have happened, but getting clear of 100m seems possible. Anything more than that seems like a clear stretch.
DP — “The question is, do they have a more commercial movie than they think they do?”
What do you think? Commercially viable in a major way or indie fare?
Maybe it’s the more serious mood of the country after a very political election season and now the fiscal cliff, but I think ZD30 might find a larger audience, a la Lincoln. It has the power to bring in ‘Merica folks as well as the arthouse crowd. And the awards will certainly drive up interest from everyone in between.
But yeah, it’s gonna be tough for it to clear 200…
Palm, Lincoln seems like a good benchmark for a recent history movie in 2013. Could be wrong but it’s not like January is a barren wasteland anymore.http://www.movieinsider.com/movies/january/2013/11/
Look at that weekend? Does ZDT even win that weekend? Sure, it will most likely have legs, and it most likely will be Les Miz competition but it going on a tear for 200m, just seems very unlikely.
ZDT has to win lots of critic awards and maintain momentum going into awards to become a “must see” for adults. Even then, I think it’s lucky if it cracks $100m.
I’m in the dull “Django” camp. And I bet the overkill violence — even by Tarantino standards — limits its audience significantly.
Started getting sleepy during Django, but maybe it’s because I’m feeling under the weather and it was a super-late screening.
But even then, the movie delivers. I felt absolutely no disappointment…