By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Friday Estimates by Klady The Buzz Killer
It has not been in a good first quarter in MovieVile this year… well, 2 months, really. And not helping at all is Jack, The Giant Slayer, aka The Movie That Got Bryan Singer Back To X-Men.
Jack is, really, just another victim of The Twilight Saga… the move towards fairy tale thinking with a twist, meant to thrill and inspire ticket purchases the young and/or romantic at heart who also want a bit of a thrill. The last cycle, before Twilight, of chasing this female-heavy audience were the series of Asian horror film remakes, which finally died off. This “genre” is close to dead on arrival, with Warner Bros taking a double load of buckshot already this year, with Beautiful Creatures and now, Jack. Paradoxically, Nicholas Holt, who was at at the center of Summit’s #3 hit all-time that was not a Twilight film, Warm Bodies, enjoyed that success just a month ago. But WB (acronym pain) cost about 1/7 what Jack has and opened too $500k more on opening Friday alone.
Think of it like shopping for clothes with your teen daughter. You may think you know what she’ll want, but as a parent, you’ll really only get it right 5% of the time… some of the time, you’ll just be “wrong” so she can tell you you’re wrong. That is what studios look like, flailing around these days, looking for the next Twilight or Potter.
21 and Over, Relativity’s attempt to recreate Project X, opened to a little worse than half of the original.
The Last Exorcism II, a title that is comically stupid, is about 60% off the first Last… and this one moved from Lionsgate to CBS Films. This is not brain surgery. There is a reason why it was available and not at Lionsgate this time.
Interestingly, the fourth new release, Phantom, is produced by a father & son team that has made a business of picking up mini-franchises that no longer interest the originating studio enough to produce themselves. Rui Costa Reis (RCR) did Ice Castles in 2010, Wild Things 4, Stomp The Yard 2, Lake Placid 3, 30 Days of Night 2, Quarantine 2, S.W.A.T. 3, and Hostel 3. The Reis’ are branching out now, but once you’ve been in the knock-off business, it’s hard to move out of it.
I am a big fan of Stoker. I don’t think it’s world beating, as many don’t, but as thrillers with broken teen girls go, it kicks ass. It’s cinema. And sometimes, that is enough for me.
Perhaps the only real news in the chart today is the length of the list of small new releases. When everyone is doing a theatrical, no one is doing a theatrical.
What a horror show. JACK is probably going to be a $100 million write-off assuming it does so-so internationally. LEVIATHAN and WAR WITCH deserve a lot better. Surprisingly strong debut for STOKER, at least.
PHANTOM is putting up OOGIELOVES numbers…
And who would have thought DIE HARD 5 wouldn’t top JACK REACHER at least?
Fox really blew it with DIE HARD 5, this could’ve been a major franchise but they skimped on the development of the franchise, the script, choosing a mediocre, at best, Director and so forth.
Irrespective of how much it makes internationally, sluggishly making it to 70 million domestic is not good news.
The reviews were brutal and they do hurt box office – you’ve got a generation of people know who hit ‘Rotten Tomatoes,’ see ‘11%’ or whatever low score it was and take a pass on the flick.
Why set it in Russia? What’s with the weak villains? Why does Willis keep yelling ‘I’m on vacation’ even though he travelled to Russia to bail his kid? Movie doesn’t make any sense, its badly scripted and edited, a bunch of short, erratic action beats disconnected from any logical plot progression, tension or high stakes.
It’s a real pity because there are a couple of well shot action scenes with nods to the original film.
This was a 1:85 ratio, 90 minute flick devoid of any scope – at least Len Wiseman’s LFODH looked and sounded like a large screen actioner.
Right there with you on the “Exorcist” title. And “A Haunting in Connecticut 2: Ghosts of Georgia” may be even more tortured and nonsensical.
I never thought the day would come when I would have zero interest in a Die Hard movie, and yet here we are. Sigh.
The Fast and Furious people showed everyone how you revive a franchise, and it’s amazing that with the cache that the Die Hard name has that it wasn’t given the big treatment. Die Hards are always big, big building, big airport, big cities, and big villains. Even the trailers make this one look like a low rent knockoff.
Oh yeah, Melissa McCarthy is kicking all kind of ass. Good for her.
Hoult you bloviator.
Moronic (or is that “oxymoronic”?) title aside, “Last Exorcism 2″ isn’t appreciably worse than the (mildly overrated) original.
Ashley Bell is once again terrific, and they make really nice use of the New Orleans locations.
Bell deserves to graduate from B-horror like Mary Elizabeth Winstead did in “Smashed” last year.
“21″ gets reasonable mileage out of its one-joke premise, thanks largely to Teller, Chon and (especially) Astin who’s, once again, the best thing about a fairly mediocre movie, just like he was in last fall’s “Pitch Perfect.”
“Giant Slayer” is just one massive train wreck, though.
“Warm Bodies” notwithstanding, it proves that Hoult (aka Hugo Weaving Jr.) is incapable of carrying a movie.
Not even Tucci’s amusingly foppish heavy or McGregor’s affable heroics can save the day.
Could they have really spent $200-million on this?
How?
Why?
Mary Elizabeth Winstead is beautiful.
Ashley Bell looks like an Amish Michael Cera.
Movieman, I am pretty sure you are at least my age if not somewhat older; When you go to movies like LAST EXORCISM in the PA/OH region, is it ALL Latinos like it is in LA? Anything supernatural, especially ghost or possession related, the audience in SoCal is 100% Latino. They love that shit, they take their kids like it’s a family event. More kids in SAW VII than I’ve ever seen at a family movie.
It’s been so long I can’t even remember or conceive of what it was like to see movies with normal law-abiding moviegoers. And then I’ll go to the “upscale” theaters to see something like STOKER, and the audience there in L.A is actually WORSE.
I don’t doubt NYC is worse than L.A., but there is NO WINNING in Los Angeles moviegoing. You either get Latinos, or old fucks, or cheesy white hipsters. Hard to remember that in PA or OH, you could go to see LAST EXORCISM on a Friday night 10pm, and there’d be like four people in a 100-seat auditorium, and they’d all be CAUCASIAN, aka the best people.
Gotta say… a truly racist rant by Lex. But it doesn’t seem gratuitous, just blaming entire groups for the acts of a small percentage. Leaving it up.
It was a Barry Nelson in “The Shining” reference, not actual racism. Before the Christian PD comes along though, I’ll delete the line about taco shells, which was the funniest part. Oy….
Lex- There were five other people at my matinee of “Exorcism 2” today:
all white and, oddly, two of them were senior citizens.
Go figure.
Btw, I didn’t say Bell was a raving beauty, only that she’s a fine young actress who deserves better than B-grade horror sequels.
No one ever cares about ANY actress’ actual acting talents.
Looks only.
“No one ever cares about ANY actress’ actual acting talents. Looks only”
I think you coined the title for Kristen Stewart’s autobiography.
How did DARK SKIES not do better? Doesn’t literally EVERY similar movie open to about 18-22mil if it has the SCREEN GEMS banner? I realize DS was a Dimension, but are audiences in ANY way cognizant of what studio makes a movie? Obviously not, but if Screen Gems had released that, it’d be a hit. (It’s also a pretty decent movie).
Two-thirds of Summit movies outside of Twilight tank. No idea why Lionsgate is keeping their division separate.
Speaking of Screen Gems, is Sony shuttering it? Two releases in the last year, with nothing on the slate until August.
You must cringe at the thought of a Black family in the White house Lex.
Funny you should mention that, Et.
For months now, I was under the assumption that “The Call” was a Screen Gems release.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered it was going out via Sony’s all but forgotten shingle, Tri Star, instead.
Which once again points out the mystifying demarcation (and lack thereof) between Sony’s various distribution compartments.
“…its badly scripted and edited, a bunch of short, erratic action beats disconnected from any logical plot progression, tension or high stakes.”
That could describe every action movie made over the last ten years. Bay made a load of money with that formula, so now everybody’s copying him.
Movieman: No confusion. Columbia makes Columbia movies. Screen Gems makes Screen Gems movies. TriStar is for straight pick-ups. Which THE CALL is.