Weekend Estimates by Captain Klady
Captain Phillips opens right behind The Departed, which did a little under 5x opening. How the captain plays in the word-of-mouth market we will soon find out. But a strong opening… ironically on the heels of Marc Weinstock’s exit from Columbia. Odd how that almost always happens.
Gravity is a phenom. It will soon be the #1 non-holiday fall opener of all time. It just goes to show that when you have the goods, you can come out at any time and score big.
Machete Kills is a wait for Home Entertainment title, even for most Rodriguez fanboys.
The Saratov Approach was the big winner in the arthouses, with just 23 screens. Ukrainian in English. #2 arthouse movie, the Christian faith film, Unlimited, on 5 screens. I had never heard of either until the numbers landed.
The great Blue Is The Warmest Color did just under $2500 per on 17 screens. Escape From Tomorrow did $1320 per on 30. Lots in the $1k per to $3k per range… which is about 100 to 300 people showing up over the course of the weekend. Rough terrain.
So DESPICABLE ME 2 saw the only increase in sales…which is odd considering the local megaplex will be hosting a weekend of free showings two weeks from now.
Just saw EPIC there, for free, which wasn’t bad as long as you can overlook the horrible title and the CG necromancy. I wonder if Joyce has this movie playing on an endless loop in his daughter’s room.
And Amy Kin slagged audiences for not turning out for ESCAPE FROM TOMORROW, even though it’s in only 30 theaters? Bad audiences, BAAAAD. How dare you not drive hundreds of miles to see something sure to be out on DVD any day now?
(I just checked Google Maps; the closest showing is 360 miles away. Sucks to live in a flyover state, eh?)
Again David, I’d note that BLUE IS THE WARMEST COLOR is a Quebec exclusive, and not only that, it is not even publicized as being released there this weekend. Montreal Cinema claims it opens in November.
We’re The Millers has now blown away The Heat in worldwide box office numbers. Aniston is really making herself a star worldwide, not just in the US
I watched “escape from tomorrow” on VOD after the best theater in town cancelled it’s screening on the seventh at the behest of the distributor. It is now “premiering” on the 20th in Philadelphia at a venue primarily for music. Not that it’s even half as good as the hype surrounding it.
I’d buy it as long as it has plenty of relatively high-def imagery of the Magic Kingdom. Haven’t been able to afford the pilgrimage for years and I die a little bit more inside every year we are apart.
Is that “Bastards” the Claire Denis movie?
If so, I’m guessing it’s another French-Canadian bow a la “Blue is…”
Yeah, that “Blue” per-screen is flat-out terrible for such a wildly acclaimed artflick; and one that reaped so much advance publicity.
Unless, of course, those figures are wrong….*
*(Hey, it’s happened before!)
i found ‘escape from tomorrow’ to be a pretty big disappointment… sort of david lynch lite… aside from a couple of good moments, i think its strongest suit was just the audacity of poking a stick in disney’s eye…
I don’t really expect ESCAPE to be great shakes but the numbers for it this weekend truly are shocking to me. What else could it possibly take to break out a little bit? This movie seems to have everything going for it, as far as small scale releases are concerned. Kinda kills me to think about.
Gus it has everything going for it except it’s pretty horrible and doesn’t work at all. It’s two movies, a mid-life crisis movie and a surreal horror and neither one is good.
Captain Phillips will have legs definitely. Saw it at a packed house on Saturday night and you could sense how well the film worked. Gravity certainly was a more satisfying view – but once the Pirates board the boat the suspense holds and does not let up.
Looks like Disney’s strategy of ignoring it is paying off.
Sam: DM2 must have hit the bargain houses this week. An increase of venues playing it will naturally boost the gross.
That’s why discussing event phenoms like Gravity as 2nd biggest this, biggest that, is just knob twiddling and redundant. If my friends wife says this film Gravity sounds good based on seeing her FB friends and their kids posting about it then I know it’s 4 quad crossover phenom. I don’t need other stats.
The numbers on the incredibly niche flick ESCAPE are shocking to some? Really? A b&w art film that a few cineastes and bloggers got woodys over is doing little business in todays brutal arthouse market.
You’re shocked? Saddened I can believe. But shocked?
You do realize the arthouse market is kinda dead right? Especially when it comes to releases from small distribs. Add to that some extra niche sprinkles and it’s dodo land out there.
The only limited release films doing any high per/scrn are bollywood titles.
stoked to see Gravity doing well – i can’t help but wonder if there’s a small percentage of people akin to the ‘i’m-gonna-barf-shakycam-syndrome’ of Blair Witch viewers who get queasy from all the POV space tumbling and turning, it made me googly-eyed and disoriented a few times and stuff like that doesn’t usually affect me. maybe the mr. magoo travelling-at-the-speed-of-a-snail space float intervals are enough to keep it at bay. (what actually happens if you upchuck in your space suit, is that a death sentence?)
Also saw the rather lengthy trailer for FROZEN during my freeshow…so anyone besides me think it looks like a clusterfudge?
Aside from the blatant misogyny, I thought the snowman is an irritating distraction that needs to go, and it feels like the writers can’t commit to making the ice witch…the one that happened to freeze the town…into the story’s villain.
Simply put, the trailer left me feeling confused and annoyed.
FROZEN looks horrible. I saw it in a mostly full theater. and total silence greeted it. Hard to believe, that 12 years into its existence, Walt Disney Animation has not won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature yet. The path is pretty clear this year, but FROZEN looks cringe-worthy.
Enough with the tired pop-culture references and obnoxious talking horses!
Well, most years Pixar wins, and since they’re owned by Disney, it’s not like the corporation walks away empty-handed. It’s kind of like Chevrolet always losing Car of the Year to Cadillac.
I actually felt Disney deserved it last year for Wreck It Ralph over Pixar’s Brave.
I have not seen The Croods and Monster’s University but thus far none of the animated movies have really impressed me. Despicable Me 2 was entertaining and cute, but beyond that not much else. Frozen really does look disjointed. Thus far a very light year quality wise for animated movies. They’ll just give the award to Pixar again.
Wreck It Ralph was far superior to Brave (and many of the live action nominees for that matter).
Still cadavra, it seems odd that the animation house that defined the format for decades doesn’t have an Oscar.
WRECK IT RALPH was fine, I just didn’t think its clever premise sustained the whole feature…guess I just don’t have the Gen Xer arcade nostalgia that fueled the film for 30 somethings. CROODS starts strong but the last 15 minutes completely collapse into a mass of generic treacle that is truly painful.
I don’t think Pixar will win, but Disney is giving WIND RISES a limited run. Hopefully they won’t try to campaign too hard for FROZEN if it’s no good, and give Miyazaki the career-capper he deserves.
I’ve always felt WRECK-IT RALPH and BRAVE were switched at birth; the former has been watched and enjoyed dozens of times in this Pixar-loving household, the latter…uh, sometimes it gets played, and I still haven’t seen more than a few minutes worth because it gets boring pretty darn quickly.
Disney is pathologically incapable of putting a female in a cartoon without turning her into a princess. Rapunzel: princess. The grungy, punkish Vanellope: princess. And I’m sure that witch who should be the villain in FROZEN will turn into a misunderstood princess.
Gag. Didn’t Disney receive the bad news that the princess craze had died right around the time they broke ground for the princess-tastic expansion of Fantasyland?
As for THE CROODS, it took me a week to realize that the nonsensical geology in that movie was actually an attempt to argue that a couple billion years of continental drift occurred over the course of a week. And I guess the prehistoric teens are Adam and Eve?
The thing about WIND RISING is it’s bound to cause controversy because it’s about the guy who eventually went on to design the Zero kamikaze planes used against the Americans in WW II. Sure, from what I hear from the people who’ve seen it, it notes the creation of the Zero as a very unfortunate offshoot, but people have tried to massacre and bury films for less, and people still post things like, “How’s that karma for Pearl Harbor, ya’ bastards?!” when the earthquake happened. So, yeah, I have a hard time not seeing at least one person or group try to make a big deal out of it.
That, and the people I know who’ve seen it don’t seem particularly passionate about it. SPIRITED AWAY, people loved the HELL out of it. Everyone I badgered until they saw it LOVED it. Not getting the same vibe here. Of course, it’s a very different movie doing very different things, so…. *shrugs*
As for WRECK-IT RALPH, I think it was more for the Gen Y people (Or whatever we’re called these days) who grew up in the 80s with the Atari and NES and matured along with the video game industry. Yeah, it’s heavily based on the arcades of the 80s, but it has a lot of things like the “AERITH LIVES!” graffiti that are more geared towards people like myself who were born with a Pac-Man baby blanket (true story) and went from there.
The thing with RALPH is it was made with the love and care that usually gets associated with Pixar. It has problems (Multiple “THIS IS BLATANT PRODUCT PLACEMENT, SHEEP!” moments, for instance) and I understand my friends who felt bait-and-switched when it becomes so much like another movie in its second half that it was actually ADVERTISED as a different movie in some places, but there is a level of craft that you can tell when people who are very good at what they do are really digging in and giving a full effort, and I got that feeling with RALPH. BRAVE…… it seemed content with being a simple fairy tale and not being anything more. Nothing overtly wrong with it, but there’s a higher gear Pixar movies usually shift into, and BRAVE…. doesn’t.
If you dig into the extras on WRECK-IT RALPH you’ll see they storyboarded the first draft AND IT WAS AWFUL. A completely different movie entirely (that begins with Ralph breaking out of prison, for example), which makes you wonder how they managed to make the great movie that wound up on the screen without firing everyone involved with that horribly botched attempt.
My guess is that FROZEN never made it past the first draft.
Haven’t caught up with Ralph yet and only see about 60% of the animated releases but have to say that I thought Tangled was probably the best Disney animated release since Alladin, and above all but a few Pixar. All the other product is starting to feel the same, and with the rate that its being released it feels exhausting just actively ignoring it.
I haven’t heard (or read) a single solitary complaint from anyone regarding Gravity in regards to motion sickness. I suppose that’s a testament to the visuals being clear and the shots being smooth. No shaky cam nonsense and a wonderful amount of lucidity to it all
Wreck-It-Ralph > Brave.
“Haven’t caught up with Ralph yet and only see about 60% of the animated releases but have to say that I thought Tangled was probably the best Disney animated release since Alladin, and above all but a few Pixar.”
TANGLED over THE LION KING? String him up! I didn’t really get the love for that movie…it was okay, but I thought it was because everything Disney has done since “Lilo & Stitch” has been so mediocre by comparison.
Always thought the Lion King was a tad overrated, though I love that opening sequance leading to the title. Thought Disney lost more than a few steps when they stopped making the animation musicals, I always saw that as the big draw to get adults to see them, and one of the aspects of Tangled I liked most.
And I will admit I get a little choked up when Stitch gives his little ‘this is my family’ speech at the end of the film.
But as far as animation and superheros and the like, just tired of everything being aimed directly at the kid or kid at heart market. Seems luxurious to have two weekends in a row where movies were released with adult themes and actual bona fide movie stars in them. Shame we couldn’t have gotten Phillips or the Counserlor in the summer when there were such a drought of grown up films.
We’re a month away from the “release” of “Wolf/Wall Street,” and Paramount still has yet to confirm or deny they’ve moved it to 2014.
Ammunition for an imminent announcement that it’s being pushed back till next year?
Paramount’s awards office website lists only four movies “for your consideration:” “Nebraska,” “Labor Day,” “WWZ” (?) and “Star Trek Into Darkness” (??).
No mention at all of Scorsese, DiCaprio, “Wolf,” et al.
I bet every distributer with a November release date (excepting Lionsgate whose “Hunger Games 2” is locked in for the 22nd) is impatiently awaiting news so they can reposition their film(s) into its vacated (November 15th) slot. At present, the only wide release sure thing that date is “Best Man Holiday:” a sequel to a (14-year-old) modest hit. Personally, I think Disney would be foolish not to move up “Delivery Man” a week if Marty and Leo are out of the equation.
“I haven’t heard (or read) a single solitary complaint from anyone regarding Gravity in regards to motion sickness. I suppose that’s a testament to the visuals being clear and the shots being smooth. No shaky cam nonsense and a wonderful amount of lucidity to it all”
thanks for posting that anghus, i agree but was just wondering with the combo of some people’s physiological sensitivity to 3D and the (yes very clean) twisting and gyrating it might pose a problem for a small minority of viewers; i actually felt mildly disorietned a couple times after the tumbling ‘trying-to-grab-hold-of-something’ sequences but maybe i have an inner ear gyration sensitivity or something – but i loved it, i’ve never felt at all physically disoriented in a movie before.
(just to be a fly in the ointment, i enjoy ‘brave’ way more than ‘wreck it ralph’, yowza – plus i love me some scottish brogues, i’m forever trying to perfect my own)
Wreck It Ralph SPOILER ALERT (I felt silly typing that but thought it was necessary anyway.
When Ralph wrecked the car he built for Vanellope, it was surprisingly more moving than I thought it would be. Made my 12 year old cry. Nothing in Brave came close for her
movieman — fwiw: yesterday, disney moved the l.a. junket for ‘delivery man’ from the weekend of 11/8 to the weekend of 11/1 …. so you might be on to something with that prediction….
that said, while the ‘wolf of wall street’ n.y junket is still registered with the mpaa for the weekend of 11/1, NOBODY i know has gotten an invite….
Interesting, Scooter.
Another tip-off (for me anyway) that “Wolf” is probably moving to ’14 was that it didn’t get a work-in-progress “sneak” at the NYFF the way Scorsese’s “Hugo” (and Spielberg’s “Lincoln”) did in previous years.
Considering his relationship w/ Scorsese, I’m sure Kent Jones was counting on “Wolf.”
And he probably didn’t have a back-up film (“Monuments Men”? “American Hustle”?) in the pipeline. Hence, no NYFF “sneak” this year.
Christ, besides the constant threat of further downsizing it must be a little embarrasing for Paramount to be the gang that can’t shoot straight. They’ve only managed five releases this year and four of them were pushed back from the original release dates. I’ve been incredibly impressed by the last five films I saw of theirs (Flight, Reacher, Pain, Trek, and Z) and am very enthusiatic about most of their Christmas titles (I’ll pass on Jackass and Jack Ryan: Agent Danger). Its frustrating that one of the studios that actually makes decent movies can’t seem to get those movies into the theaters.
Yeah, Paramount really needs to get their production model back on track. They were banking on becoming a distributor only, and losing Dreamworks and Dreamworks Animation was pretty devastating.
That said, I think they’ve actually a year that’s on par with Fox or Sony if you factor in that Paramount got at least $50 million in pure profit from IRON MAN 3 (after 100 million in pure profit from Avengers last year). Sony had a string of bombs this summer, and Fox, aside from distributing CROODS, has only released a single film this year that’s more than marginally profitable (THE HEAT) in addition to several mid-level bombs (Broken City, Runner Runner, Internship). They haven’t had $200 million domestic grosser since 2009, as theyve banked entirely on foreign expansion, which seems to have finally hit a wall.
That $50 million is likely the only money they made. Trek and Z were both successes but were so expensive they are probably still in the red. Paramount faces the same problem as Universal, the higher ups seem to only be interested in the cable side of the business and the movie side just goes lurching around in fits and starts (though Universal seems to have found its footing in the last year, hope it lasts). Sony is more concerned with the hardware than the content, Disney is only interested in what they can turn into a park attraction or slap on a sleeping bag.
Thank God for Warner Brothers, they seem to be the only corporation with a film division that is in any way excited about making films.
And Universal must be really pissed that they sold the rights to Gravity to Warners. And think what Gravity would have been if Robert Downey Jr had not left the George Clooney role. Also saw that Natalie Portman and Angelina Jolie passed as well.
Wasn’t Natalie preggers? Would have been a big bellied spacesuit if she’d stuck with it.
There really have been, I think, only 10 very profitable films released this year at the box office (not factoring ancillaries which would help Man Of Steel, Star Trek, GI Joe, maybe even PLANES): Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2, Fast & Furious 6, Monsters University, The Conjuring, We’re The Millers, The Heat, Now You See Me, The Croods, Gravity. Insidious 2 might join that group as it’s still rolling out…
Wasn’t The Purge like, hugely profitable?
I don’t think it’s on the same scale. All of the films mentioned will probably make at least 100 million in profit once they’re on the home market. THE PURGE had a pretty mediocre international run.
The Purge was cheap to make but still required a 20 to 30 million dollar marketing buy right?
Downey would have been much more expensive than Clooney, and given how fast it has surged out of the gate I don’t see how Downey would have helped all that much. As for the lead, Bullock has been bigger star than either Portman or Jolie since she came back with The Proposal.
Yeah, with Gravity, Bullock has had four $150 million domestic grossers in four different genres, none of which are sequels or franchise films, since 2009. Pretty effing incredible.
Was not referring to Box Office necessarily with Downey. Just wondering if it was him whether he would have played second banana to Bullock, and if they did sign him, if that role would have been beefed up a bit more.
At this rate, I think Gravity is a lock to outdo the first Sherlock Holmes’ $209m at the box office. It would have been his biggest non Iron Man hit.
At this point isn’t it likely that Gravity can reach $300m? Figuring it is a must see theatrical experience at the highest possible ticket price and will play through the awards season? If it started dropping by 50% next weekend it would still top $200 by the end of its run, and there is nothing dropping soon that looks to pull that much interest away.
As for Bullock, how many of us had written her off as completely over, probably more than once? Its not avoiding the flops that makes them stars, its the ability to come back.
I seem to be the only one who thought RALPH was a big buncha of feh. It was just a TOY STORY knock-off with video game characters instead of actual toys, and a climactic chase ripped right out of CARS 2. (Small wonder the Pixar Brain Trust was given special thanks in the end credits.) At least BRAVE, which I liked very much, was something different.
But yeah, this has been a piss-poor year for animation, especially after the riches of last year. The only wide-release picture I’ve actually enjoyed was DESPICABLE ME 2–which surprised me, as I wasn’t all that thrilled with the first one. (MONSTERS U. was fun but skewed just a little too young for this grumpy old man.) And I loved POPPY HILL, though it only got a cursory art-house release (dubbed, of course). Hopefully Miyazaki will get a valedictory Oscar for WIND.
cad: You’re not the only one. I thought BRAVE was much better than RALPH, which I thought was a bit tedious despite inventive visuals a strong finish.
uh, fwiw i said upthread that i liked ‘brave’ way more than ralph, which i thought was thoroughly average and don’t get the adoration for at all, while ‘brave’ was lovely and beautifully animated – it does have a female sensibility with a female lead and directed by a woman, a refreshing change
I liked POPPY HILL (and waited for the subbed version on DVD…I got burned by Matt Damon in PONYO) quite a bit. And yes, BRAVE>Ralph
I wanted to post earlier to back leah up too but Brave is much better than Wreck It Ralph. I don’t think either are particularly great but I’ll take second rate Pixar any day. Wreck It Ralph was awful.
Leahnz: Sorry, I did overlook your preference for BRAVE over RALPH. But glad to know I’m not alone!
oh no worries, likewise i’m glad to see others in the ‘brave’ camp, it was a lonely camp!
Leahnz you liked Brave over Ralph, of course you know THIS MEANS WAR.
Well, not THAT lonely. It did beat out a shitload of worthier opponents for the Oscar!