Friday Estimates by Klady The Okay & Canadian
Oz is fine. There has to be a little discomfort at The Mouse House that the film is looking like it could open a bit short of expectations. But the story of this movie, as with so many, is international, where Disney will be looking for Oz to at least double the domestic.
Would it matter if the movie didn’t suck? Ah, there’s the rub. Probably not. If the movie was a real crowd pleaser, this would be a different conversation. But “okay” versus “not good” is not much of a distinction in the marketplace these days. Even “good” vs “okay” isn’t much distinction. There are movies, like The Avengers, that just plain turn audiences on. And aside from that, the box office trajectory is pretty clearly laid out… except for the cases when the media gangs up and declares something D.O.A. That can put a stench on a movie that is every bit as powerful as word of mouth. But it only happens a few times a year… but it does happen every year.
The greatest thing than ever happened to Oz was Jack, The Giant Slayer. It got hit so hard that everyone is too tired to do anything but smile and wink about Oz.
One hates to smack Dead Man Down. Weak opening. Will make its money back internationally. Its stars are quality, but not openers.
Silver Linings Playbook should pass $120m this weekend. Someone bet me the weekend it opened to what seemed like soft business that it would never get to $30m. It will do more than 4x that figure… another fine lesson on how quick judgements in box office can be a huge mistake.
Nice number for the barely-sold Emperor. Hardly earth-shattering, but the movie seems to be drawing an audience in spite of itself.
It didn’t seem to matter that Alice in Wonderland was a truly wretched film, although audiences did seem to like it for whatever reason. I see no reason why the general public would like Oz any less. It also has zero competition in the family film department for over a month, apart from The Croods, but if you were a parent which film would you rather take your kids to?
Wow, what a crash and burn opening for “ABC’s of Death.” Isn’t it a rule by now that horror anthologies must go directly to VOD?
“Beyond the Hills” is fantastic, and deserves better.
And I guess Journey fans aren’t totally buying into the band’s rebirth….
“Snitch” is getting great word of mouth, anecdotally, and it seems to be translating into face-saving box office….
DP, I’m not sure that OZ is getting the “smile and wink” treatment. Absolutely scathing reviews by WaPo and Manohla Dargis can’t help. If you look at the disparity between the Tomatoes and Metacritic ratings, you’ll see that critics feel really strongly about the film.
ABC’s of Death is a direct to VOD release and has been available on VOD for a month. The theatrical release for it (and many others you see on the “Also Debuting” list each week) is just token. I’m sure it’s only playing on digital screens to avoid print costs, and I bet it’s to get some reviews because I think some places will still only review “theatrical releases.” The NY Times review appeared this week, for example, even though they could have reviewed it upon the VOD release.
At $500 a screen, there’s no benefit to a theatrical release, period, especially for a mediocre film that won’t generate word of mouth. A quick glance at V/H/S’s theatrical should have gotten the filmmakers to pull the plug ala’ TRICK ‘R TREAT. And 17 theatres?
Dead Studio Down. FilmDistrict fairly clueless.
I found this sentence interesting:
“The greatest thing than ever happened to Oz was Jack, The Giant Slayer. It got hit so hard that everyone is too tired to do anything but smile and wink about Oz.”
I have two separate thoughts in this subject.
1. Wasn’t everybody’s mind in the press already made up about Oz well before now? John Carter was having it’s coffin polished a month before release. I think everyone in the press knew that Oz wasn’t going to be another John Carter and had already laid their gloves on the counter. There wasn’t going to be any swings taken on this one. That was evident well before Jack landed with a thud.
Sure, some critics have taken to spearing Oz, but werent most entertainment/box office writers fairly certain this one was going to be fine and pretty much expected 75-100 million.
The assertion that writers were winded after taking swings at Jack seems kind of dubious. If there was blood in the water, they would have pounced.
2. The beat down given to Jack’s performance seems so pointless. Who expected this movie to do well? 200 million dollars plus a total unknown and a director with a track record that could only be described as “questionable”. Like John Carter, no one can be surprised when your overbudgeted epic with no known quantity opens soft.
Jack the Giant Slayer was a shit investment from the get go. Bryan Singer must be thanking every and any diety he believes in that he was able to fail backwards into X-Men. That’s one hell of a net.
I guess maybe people were so quick to bash Jack because it’s one of those few times everyone who writes about film can declare TOLDJA! and feel as though they saw it coming.
Bryan Singer movies: Two hours of persecution complex and sexual identity angst topped with 45 seconds of an action set piece.
Those are his movies in a nutshell.
‘The Usual Suspects’ was a long, long time ago.
“It didn’t seem to matter that Alice in Wonderland was a truly wretched film”
It wasn’t anything great, but it was perfectly enjoyable until Johnny Depp started break-dancing to some synthesized musical gloop. I may yet see JTGK at some bargain matinee – like CLOVERFIELD, if I set my happiness threshold at “seeing giant creature(s) eating people,” I’m likely to have a pretty good time.
@Spaceship — None of that has anything to do with “Jack” but I guess that’s a creative way to say you have a problem with Singer being gay?
@Chris – it’s mostly due to the X-Men movies, as mutations are used as a proxy for homosexuality.
“Have you tried not being a mutant?”
(yes, I know the mutant/gay theme was developed prior to the movies)
“Bryan Singer movies: Two hours of persecution complex and sexual identity angst topped with 45 seconds of an action set piece.”
I was going to ask about the “sexual identity angst” in VALKYRIE, but I guess maybe the star qualifies?
Michelle williams saves oz from being awful. Some idiot cast james franco who is always too spiteful and ironic looking for a film that mostly tries to be sincere but occasionally makes the mistake of following idiot exec notes to make it more actiony modern and ironic which constantly undermines the film. Neil patrick haris would have been divine in this role that franco is so terribly wrong for. And theyre called wicked witches, giving them backstory and an arc just takes away from the real focus and story and clutters the narrative, we dont need to se how or why they became wicked theres another story with that. And the tory of how the one becomes wicked is pretty fucking sexist
The story presented in “Wicked” ain’t much better, movielocke–the Wicked Witch of the West’s mom is a dim junkie who essentially roofies herself into pregnancy.
(There was more sex in the first 40 pages of that book than you’d find in your average porno flick.)
Chris, nope, – was agreeing with Anghus who stated “Bryan Singer must be thanking every and any diety he believes in that he was able to fail backwards into X-Men. That’s one hell of net.”
Even ‘Superman Returns’ (a drab, tedious film) was not immune to Singer’s cinematic methodology.
Seriously, how does VALKYRIE, a well-made film that suffered from Scientology overload, fall into this supposed oeuvre? Singer has a specific wheelhouse for sure, but to imply that it has to do with his sexuality…
Hasn’t the Bryan Singer bashing gone far enough in the last 6 years? OZ is no better or worse a film than JACK, and I don’t see Raimi being dragged over the coals, despite the fact OZ has a greater burden to fulfill, and fails. Sure, Singer falling into X-Men is a good stroke…but people forget that Bryan Singer fought tooth and nail to get “X-Men” made, and Hollywood owes him a huge debt of gratitude for championing a genre that has kept theatrical box office vibrant.
Singer rules, and even IF this harebrained complaint had merit, OOOH what a tragedy that a director would insert some personal passion or sex or point of identification or sweaty paranoia into a genre film and liven it up. There’s like a zillion male directors who use their movies to splash their fetishes all over the screen, and rightly so. That’s what film is, expression. Then when fanboys or geeks or antsy movie nerds find out some director or writer may or may not be gay, they go on some fucked-up crusade to nitpick every little moment looking for “overtones” so they can act all put out or above it…
Really, Singer’s about as ASEXUAL a director as humanly fucking possible… JACK is a cute, clearly shot, if overly CGI’d family adventure movie. ABSOLUTELY NONE of that “persecution complex/sexual identity” stuff applies to it in the LEAST. Er, other than I kinda zoned out once the giants all come down to lay siege and it goes on for way too long.
Crystallization. Email me sometime Lex. Let’s get you on Grantland or SOMETHING before it’s too late.
I’d rather see Lex take over WWTDD.
Re: “we dont need to se how or why they became wicked theres another story with that. And the tory of how the one becomes wicked is pretty fucking sexist”
So what you’re saying is that all a wicked witch needs is a good deep dicking?
Re: ” and I don’t see Raimi being dragged over the coals”
I can’t speak for everyone else, but i am so dissapointed in Raimi. He gets lost in this eye-fucking nightmare of a movie. Just like all directors who seem to lose their individualism in grotesquely large CGI spectacles.
And what’s more, the fact that this movie is pretty much a toothless Army of Darkness.
It’s a painfully mediocre film and a sad reminder of what Raimi used to be capable of.
As for Singer, he’s a Director with an identity crisis. He’s Mr. Obvious Allegory. There’s so little nuance to his work. He’ll get you from a to z, and he’ll make the subtext so obvious that it feels disingenuous to call it ‘subtext’. The guy lacks depth. I think that’s his greatest creative detriment.
Superman Returns should be a master class on how not to adapt a property. Horrible script. Terrible fundamental choices. Awful casting. Every instinct he had for the character was wrong. I’m amazed at how much praise people gave that film when it first came out. It’s like Lex said: technically, he made a fine film. But everything within the framework of the film were just poor choices.
Please. There’s no need to pile on Raimi here..he has a desire to please, and that will always remain. You could forecast OZ’s mediocrity and DRAG ME TO HELL’s brilliance when Raimi’s name was attached in 2008.
As for Singer’s SUPERMAN….it was too much period. And it could have been much, much worse. Singer had respect for the characters, even if he didn’t interpret them the way fanboys would like. Calm down.
Yeah, wow, some of you are really sour on both Singer and Raimi.
The reason Oz the Great and Powerful works well enough, and better than Jack the Giant Slayer, is that Oz DOES, actually, reflect Raimi’s personality. I think there’s just an assumption here that Raimi’s personality shouldn’t be showcased in anything bigger or lighter than a Spider-Man movie (and I’m sure the hardcore fans would rather it be all Evil Dead/Drag Me to Hell, all the time, with the occasional Simple Plan thrown in there). But Raimi’s sense of humor is all over this movie — the fact that it shares some qualities with Army of Darkness to me makes it seem more like a Raimi film, not like a watered-down version of same. I love Army of Darkness but I also find anghus’s description of Oz as a “toothless” version pretty hilarious. Yeah, you know what movie had some real BITE and INTEGRITY to it? Fucking Army of Darkness. It’s so ADULT and EDGY. No way some stupid fucking little kid would enjoy it!
Do I want to see Raimi do a whole trilogy of Oz movies or something? No, not particularly, though it sounds like he doesn’t particularly want to either. And the movie is far from perfect, but Franco makes a good Ash-style dope-hero, the comic relief is actually funny much of the time, the visuals are neat, and although it appears as if it’s going to indulge a lot of big-fantasy cliches (the epic CGI battles, etc.) it actually sidesteps a lot of that stuff quite nimbly. If you don’t think it plays to Raimi’s strengths, then you probably wish he only did movies where people get killed.
Jack, meanwhile, is enjoyable enough, but the lack of any actual wit in the script (for what’s supposed to be, apparently, sort of a jaunty fantasy-adventure) really highlights how Singer by himself isn’t particularly well-suited for that particular shade of lighthearted fun. It’s competently made and I actually had a pretty good time with it, but Singer does better when either the characters or the story have a bit more actual soul to them. I know it’s fashionable to bash Superman Returns, and that will only become more of an also-ran if Snyder does even a halfway decent job this summer, but think back to the summer of 2006, when you’d just finished watching fucking X-Men 3 minus Singer, and the Superman movie he did. To me, even the imperfect Superman Returns perfectly illustrated what Singer brings to those types of movies: there’s a warmth and understated humor to those characters (I really quite liked Brandon Routh’s Clark Kent) that a lot of journeyman-at-best directors like Ratner just can’t summon — Ratner had this whole cast of people playing characters we already knew and liked from the first two movies, and all he had to do was steer the ship, and the movie still has a flatness, an abbreviated, perfunctory nature that completely sinks it. Singer’s Superman movie has some beautiful images in it; it has silly moments and stuff that doesn’t work, but it never goes for cheap jokes or empty FX money shots.
Jack doesn’t hit those highs, and I suspect it’s because the story is such a hodgepodge of elements, rather than something with a real human interest. Singer isn’t really that good at winking goofiness; the funny bits of the X-Men movies aren’t as superficial as that.
Anyway, I don’t know what it is about big-budget fantasy movies that gets people enraged. I never really got the hate (on the internet; I’m sorry, if you pretend that a movie that made a billion dollars worldwide is widely disliked, you’ve got delusions) for Alice, either. It’s definitely minor Burton but it’s not such a fucking affront.
Identity Thief hit over 100 million ? not bad at all for RT score of 23% – usually DP can predict these things ahead of time…seems like somebody from the movie would have gotten a dp30 out of it …cause it actually seems successful. DP and Jason Bateman must hate each other and Mellisa M is way too popular since Bridesmades.