Friday Estimates by The Dregs Of Summer Klady
I’ve been dealing with a sinus infection the last few days… almost over… like the summer… like my will to write about failure.
There isn’t much to say about this week, aside from wrapping up the summer. And I need a clearer head for that.
Everything is perspective. There are six $600 million+ worldwide movies this summer. There were only five last summer. There were only six in the massive summer of 2015. This notion that the entire industry is operating on only high-octane is wrong. And the business of high-octane remains as treacherous as ever. (Same with medium and low octane.)
Is there franchise fatigue? Yes. And no. Of the Top 10 films this summer, only Dunkirk was an original… and amazingly, by Nolan standards, it did better in the U.S. than the rest of the world. His film passes $400m worldwide today.
Was Pirates a disappointing gross for Disney? Sure. But it still will make (a little) money.
Alien: Covenant will find a road to breakeven. The Dark Tower could still make it to black ink… or more likely, some red, but not dead red. Valerian was pre-sold so that it won’t kill anyone. Really, King Arthur is the only major disaster of the summer. And (somehow), Guy Ritchie is on to remake a Disney classic. (When a female director can make that kind of recovery, we will know things have gotten better on the equality scale.)
The summer was blah. Wonder Woman was the only big positive surprise at the major studio level. Everything else was pre-packaged and carried great expectations that were mostly undelivered. But not disastrously. Even while Dunkirk could have gone terribly bad, it went well… but not well enough to be a great positive surprise worldwide (and worldwide grosses are the only grosses that matter).
Anyway… giving myself a headache… literally.
See you tomorrow. Go to the indie cinemas… terrific stuff out there.
I wonder what Death Note would have made if it had been released in theaters this weekend. It’s too bad the movie is so terrible (SPOILERS follow). I have no familiarity with the source material but I look forward to whatever Wingard directs. It seemed like it would at least be a fun late-summer watch. It’s not even close to that. Light finds the book literally 30 seconds into the movie. The demon shows up a minute or two later. And then suddenly he’s Kira. I had whiplash trying to keep up. They gloss over everything that could have made for a compelling story. Who is this kid? How does he adjust to having this power? How does he decide who lives or dies? What qualifies him to make those choices? How doe he cope with killing people? There’s potential for an interesting horror flick there, and the filmmakers do nothing with it. An hour in I was bored silly. Doesn’t help that Wolff is really bland and not a good lead, and the romance is laughably stupid. The supporting cast is strong and there’s some decent gore, but on the whole it’s a really bad movie and a huge disappointment.
Has anyone seen T2 3D? Is it worth a trip to the theater?
This is guaranteed to be the slowest weekend since the weekend after Labor Day, 2014. I’m glad I looked this up, because that weekend featured an IMAX re-release of FOREST GUMP…
and my favorite, “holy shit what were they thinking and what drugs were they on” wide release of the last few years, the Elvis Presley pseudo twin movie that rewrites rock and roll history, and pretends that the Civil Rights Movement and Vietnam were of secondary concern in late-Sixties America to Israel’s Six-Day War. THE IDENTICAL. As my beloved Dave White said “The truly memorable bad film, the kind you return to and urge like-minded friends to witness just so you can watch their jaws drop, is one in which each set-up of the camera, each line of dialogue, contains a fresh opportunity for the filmmakers to make the wildest of wrong choices.”
Labor Day and the weekends bookending it have featured some uniquely memorable film experiences for me that have been lacking the last couple years:
2014: The Identical
2012: Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure
2009: All About Steve (given the reputations of Sandra Bullock and Bradley Cooper now, it’s one I’ve stumbled upon this multiple times and watched with bug-eyed disbelief on cable)
2006: The Wicker Man
Hopefully Charlie Sheen restores order with 9/11 this year, without making me want to burn the theater down.
I’m trying to seek out T2 this week and the Close Encounters restoration on the big screen next week. Nostalgia sure beats contemplating the present.
The girlfriend and I are going to see Wind River next Saturday, providing it’s still playing. I work this weekend. WR or Ingrid Goes West.
When a female director can make that kind of recovery, we will know things have gotten better on the equality scale.
So true, and so very sad.
The top movie next weekend might only make $5-6M or so for the 3-day. Insane.
all the theaters are closed in Houston until further notice … sad
oops