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By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

Posted Saturday, March 30th, 2013 - 4 Comments »
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Friday Estimates by G.I. Klady

G.I. Joe: It’ Not Really A “2” Because We Changed All The Characters Except One Who We Kill Off Pretty Early Because Unless He Was Going To Strip, We Didn’t Think He Was Worth The Pay Raise For The Sequel is opening okay… just behind where the first one did.

This is The New Normal for sequels. It used to be that a massive hit would be followed with a sequel, expecting a 30% drop-off at the box office. Then we had a DVD-era period when the expectation was that a sequel could outperform the original by a significant margin, especially overseas. The overseas expectation lives on. But now, a lot of sequels are being made with the anticipation of a similar or smaller domestic box office number and the prayer of a higher international number. Many, like G.I. Joe, attempt to cut budget to make the modest box-office success (or even small money loser) of the original film work for the sequel (all the whole hoping that “those suckers” overseas will go in bigger numbers).

G.I. Joe/Cobra hit $150m domestic. G.I. Joe/Rock & Willis looks more like $125m. But even for G.I. Joe, the story of domestic just ain’t the story that matters.

Temptation is looking like Tyler Perry’s 2nd best opening ever for a non-Madea film, right after Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? Perry doesn’t traditionally do the 3x Friday number that is often expected. More like 2.5x. Easter probably won’t be a huge factor, as opening weekend tends to lean heavily on Fri/Sat for Perry. Look for about $22.5 million for the 3-day.

The Host has a to be a bit of a disappointment for Open Road. One just never felt the big liftoff of the new Stephenie Meyer series that others have had. But it will be the 2nd biggest opener for the young AMC-affiliated distributor. And we’ll see whether this one gets leggy.

Speaking of legs… and asses… and boobs, oh my!, The Host will pass the total domestic gross of Spring Breakers today. I wonder what Host‘s box office would look like if it got 1/3 the drooling, self-congratulatory media attention that SB has gotten. (And keep in mind, I like Spring Breakers. I’m just embarrassed by the level of discourse on this film by so many who take themselves so seriously.)

In the arthouses, the new Derek Cianfrance/Ryan Gosling film is doing nice numbers that will be wildly overtouted by indieWIRE and others. I hope for Focus/Derek/Ryan/Bradley that $75k per on 4 screens doesn’t get so overblown as a GREAT NUMBER that the return to earth on expansion seems disappointing. Blue Valentine did almost $10m… with sex to sell and an award season as propulsion. I’d love to see The Place Beyond The Pines do over $10 million, which would be a big victory for a tough movie to market to audiences who haven’t quite decided that Cianfrance is the next Malick or Almodóvar or some other such master of the indie universe. Ironically, like a blockbuster, the future box office for this guy’s work will likely be driven by international, I suspect (wasn’t on Blue V), perpetually a $6m – $13m player in domestic, but with the potential to do even better in territories that love ambiguity and edge. Big name actors will line up to work with him.

The Croods is still a question mark. Will it slog its way to $200m? Seems unlikely, but you never know. If it lands on a Megamind $150m, will people take to animation cobblestone with pitchforks and torches? The biggest question to me is whether DreamWorks’ plan to go to 3 films a year is already a carwreck idea seeking its first wall to smash into.

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4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Friday Estimates by G.I. Klady”

  1. movieman says:
    March 30, 2013 at 9:49 am

    So much for non-Madea TP movies not opening.
    Looks like even my lowball estimate for “The Host” (that it would do “I am Number Four” biz) was overly generous. It’ll outgross “Beautiful Creatures,” but even $60-million seems highly unrealistic.
    “Twilight” and “Hunger Games” are looking more and more like lightning-in-a-bottle aberrations.

  2. etguild2 says:
    March 30, 2013 at 2:34 pm

    Dreamworks may already be abandoning its 3-pic a year strategy. They already have this year, and production on “Happy Smeckday” has yet to get started for next year.

    Paramount looks like it’s salvaged two troubled pictures already this year…can they make it 3 for 3 with “World War Z?”

  3. Gustavo H. Razera says:
    March 30, 2013 at 5:53 pm

    Thanks for the spoiler, mate! At least it is not an important film.

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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