Hot Button Archive for December, 1997
Is it Irony or is it Memorex?
The irony part is that I Know What You Did Last Summer will be leaving the Top Ten for the last time just as Scream 2 (the Memorex part) comes into the number one slot that Kevin Williamson and his “summer job” (IKWYDLS) held for so many weeks. This is one sequel that should have a lot more opening bite than the original. Look for a massive $33 million weekend. Amistad has very little negative buzz, but still carries the very real limitations of being a lengthy historical drama, Spielberg or no Spielberg. And though the plagiarism lawsuit shouldn’t discourage moviegoers, it clearly knocked the DreamWorks media campaign off center. Hard to imagine more than $15 million for the film this weekend.
For Richer or Poorer and Home Alone 3 are kinda the same movie for two different age groups. Who knows what will happen? Home Alone 2 opened big despite plenty of negative buzz, as did Jungle 2 Jungle on Tim Allen’s appeal. I think both films will do somewhere between $9 million and $12 million, but that’s as far as I’m willing to stick my neck out here. (If either is going to stiff, I’d bet on HA 3.) Brushing up against these two should be the only other comedy on the list, Flubber, which should take fifth with a 40 percent drop to $6.8 million.
The Rainmaker should fall softly (35 percent) to fifth with $3.7 million, passing Alien: Resurrection, which should drop 50 percent for a sixth-place, $3.3 million weekend. (In last week’s final tally, Alien 4 did $6.66 million — more demonic irony!) Anastasia should forget another 40 percent for $3.1 million and seventh. The Jackal will bite off another $2.4 million for a 40 percent drop off and eighth. Warner Bros. fired its marketing president, misplacing the blame for misses like Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil. Marketing was good. Distribution plans were evil. Midnight will take ninth place with $1.9 million, heading for a total under $25 million and no Oscars. And Mortal Kombat: Artistic Annihilation will grab tenth with $1.3 million.
Lots of room for opinions with this week’s openings (read: David could really be wrong!) Join the growing crowd of box office guessers by e-mail.
The National Board of Review
The National Board of Review wins the award for first major film awards given out this year, weeks before many of the films are released. In fact, all the major awards except the Oscars will announce winners or nominees by next Thursday. The N.B.R. picked L.A. Confidential for Best Film and Best Director. Helena Bonham Carter got best actress in Wings Of The Dove. Anne Heche received Best Supporting Actress for the combo of the upcoming Wag The Dog and Donnie Brasco. (Funny, they didn’t mention Volcano) And As Good As It Gets, the James L. Brooks film due Christmas Day, won two; for Jack Nicholson snagged Best Actor and Greg Kinnear Best Supporting Actor. The Kinnear choice strikes me as a Golden Globe-like mistake-ination. But I haven’t seen the film yet. Coincidentally, this week’s The Whole Picture is all about the second lap of the Oscar race. Vote with your mouse.
Local jails are overflowing out here. First, Robert Downey Jr. doesn’t pass drug test, doesn’t win 200 hours of community service. Now, Christian Slater gets 90 days for his rampage last summer during which he bit a cop. Maybe if he had been wearing panties like Marv Albert the state would have let him plead to a misdemeanor. Of course, if I were a conspiracy nut, I’d say that this is all Oliver Stone’s way of getting the boys close to the Menendez Bros. for a few months, prepping his saga on the misunderstood shotgun murderers. With Glenn Close as Leslie Abramson and Andy Garcia as Jose Menendez. (Yes, I made that all up. Thank God!)
Last week, The Hot Button covered the high-rent marketing for James Bond. This week, it’s the low-rent deal that New Line has made for Lost In Space. Long John Silver has come on board for a cross-promotional effort. Yuck! Is that fish’n’chips or chicken or what? Somehow, I don’t see New Line convincing Gary Oldman and William Hurt to slap on the trademark eyepatch. Maybe that’s why the mini-major’s original promo deal with Little Caesar’s, fell through. No togas. That one’s still in litigation.
Hey! Come on and e-mail me. It’s low-rent fun!
Robert Downey Jr. is Headed to Jail for Six Months
Nothing is sadder than watching someone who has it all throwing it away.
Sources inside the Scorsese camp say that despite taking a public position that it wouldn’t allow the Chinese to influence its release of Kundun, Disney is planning on pulling the film after four weeks and not spending much in its Oscar promotion. Of course, it’s possible that the studio just isn’t enthusiastic about the film. People angered by the lack of a distributor for the new Lolita tend to blame the sexual politics and forget that R-rated sex-themed films don’t do much box office.
Speed Racer is back on track at Warner Bros. with Alfonso Cuaron, who has the current-day version of Great Expectations on tap, at the helm. The expectations aren’t that great, with budget cutting becoming the primary factor in generating a green light on the film. So much for the CG Chim Chim.
Tori Spelling continues to warp reality. In Scream 2, she appears as the butt of a joke from the original film (Neve Campbell‘s Sydney jokes that Tori would play her in the movie — and in this one, she does) and now she plays a college student who’s kidnapped by mistake. The bad guys were looking for the daughter of a millionaire and they get a chemically unstable Tori.
George Clooney has left the West. The Wild Wild West. The project, which stars Will Smith as the heroic Jim West just wasn’t fitting Clooney’s image of himself as Artemus Gordon. Or something like that. All I know is that Clooney, Smith and director Barry Sonnenfeld are some of the easiest-going people in Hollywood, at least interpersonally. Something really interesting must have happened. But more importantly, who will play the evil little person, Dr. Miguelito Loveless?
Don’t forget, I’m always open to e-mail.
The More Things Change…
The more things change, the more the Japanese moneymakers get the crap kicked out of them by Hollywood. Buzz has it that Peter Guber is preparing to relocate his Mandalay Entertainment to Warner Bros. in 2000 when his deal with Sony runs out. As you might remember, Guber and his then partner, Jon Peters, were brought to Sony in 1989, bought out of their Warner Bros. producing base at a cost of over $500 million. Peters was soon dumped, but under Guber’s tenure, Sony wrote off billions. A deal to start Mandalay was Guber’s reward for failure when he was kicked upstairs in 1994, leaving Sony in the hands of former WB film topper, Mark Canton. More losses. Flash forward. Peters is already back at WB, pushing the Superman Reborn train along. Canton, after the summer of Striptease, was dumped for the legendary John Calley and he went back to a Warners’ deal, leaving M.I.B., My Best Friend’s Wedding and Godzilla to embarrass Calley (as in, story after story reminding everyone that the hits weren’t Calley’s). And here comes Guber back to the WB fold. Kismet, baby!
Another film being blamed for another tragedy, a.k.a., another sick kid shifting responsibility to avoid a life sentence. This time, it’s The Basketball Diaries, a movie that could well have inspired moviegoers unable to get a refund to shoot the theater manager. Kentucky high school rampager Michael Carneal (killed three, wounded five) was asked by prosecutor Timothy Kaltenbach whether he “had ever seen this before, ever seen anything done like this,” reported Kaltenbach, “and he said, ‘Yes, I have seen this done in Basketball Diaries.'” I guess that the school’s principal, who reported that Carneal was a regular victim of intense ridicule was missing the point. Excuse me now, I saw Starship Troopers recently and I have to go kill a bug.
Did I miss anything? Oh yeah. The remake rights to Piranha have been sold for $2 million. But that’s not the funny part. They were sold to Fox Family Films. As I recall, Piranha (directed by a pre-Gremlins Joe Dante and written by a cash-poor John Sayles) was filled with violent attacks on naked swimmers by fish with razor-sharp teeth. Now that’s family entertainment. What’s next for F.F.F., a remake of Flesh Gordon?
So, people, what’s on your mind? E-mail me your thoughts and questions.
An Overtly Predictable Weekend
An overtly predictable weekend at the box office with no new meat available. What surprised me was that meat from a week ago was a bit more stale than expected. Flubber took the top spot, dropping a massive 56 percent from the previous three-day total, adding another $11.8 million to its formula. Alien: Resurrection took the acid bath, dropping 62 percent to $8.2 million. The Rainmaker lost 42 percent, leaving an award of $5.2 million for third. Anastasia continued to fade; this week by 61 percent to take $4.6 million for a total of just over $37 million. And in fifth, it’s The Jackal added $4 million to the Swiss bank account.
The bottom five was also pretty much according to Hoyle. Midnight in the Garden ff Good and Evil lost 44 percent of its party friends, leaving $3 million in favors for sixth. Mortal Kombat was annihilated, dropping to $2.5 million. The only surprise on the list is the ongoing staying power of I Know What You Did Last Summer, which took the softest fall — only 29 percent — to add $1.4 million to its push for the $70 million mark. And Bean tied with Starship Troopers for ninth/tenth with $1.3 million each.
We had strong prediction efforts this week from Rob Strong (no pun intended) and Marc Andreyko, though none of us saw the top of the list being smacked around like a weatherman waiting for El Nino. Try it out. E-mail me your Top Ten this week.
Impressed with the $36 Million Opening of Flubber Last Weekend?
Impressed with the $36 million opening of Flubber last weekend? It couldn’t begin to compare to the continued summertime heat of Men In Black. Not only is M.I.B. still drawing almost half a million a week at the box office (more than the third week of Mad City), but its video release grossed over $100 million in its first week. This figure included the biggest rental numbers ever, pulling in $13.5 million, which alone would place it fifth in last week’s box office race. Add in sales of five to six million copies of the video, averaging $17, and voila: $102 million. And it occurs to me that M.I.B. is one of those rare smash hits that offers the very real possibility that the sequel will improve on the original. With the origin “problem” out of the way, producers can probably concoct a story much more interesting than Chasing Mikey.
Kirstie Alley is pissed off again and it’s not just because she isn’t getting “The Big One” from Parker Stevenson any more. Kirstie was forced to audition for her role in For Richer or For Poorer, opposite fellow TV star Tim Allen. Why? “There was a certain person at Universal, who shall remain nameless, who told me that I wasn’t box office,” Ms. Alley admits. Well, Kirstie, you aren’t box office. But I don’t understand what doing a screen test could ever do to make you box office. B.O. pull has a negligible connection to talent. Either you is or you ain’t.
Alley also appears in Woody Allen‘s upcoming starfest, Deconstructing Harry, which is being described as everything from an Oscar-worthy film to a piece of crap. We’ll soon find out for ourselves. But another piece of Woody history was recently pulled out of the wastebasket at New York’s public TV station, WNET. The film, a 25 minute mockumentary spoof of the Nixon Administration entitled Men of Crisis: The Harvey Wallinger Story, was made on the fly by Allen in 1971 and was summarily round-filed by the WNET brass for being too politically dangerous. In the film, Allen plays Wallinger, a top Nixon aide with a Harvard Ph.D. in needlepoint, graduating 96th in a class of 95. The film can’t be shown unless Allen agrees, but his management says that it’s unlikely. The film is 26 years old. Way too old for Woody to enjoy.
Will Alien: Resurrection rise from the dead box office week to take top spot? Will Flubber flub its box office break and drown under The Rainmaker? E-mail me what you think.
Box Office – Nowhere But Down
This weekend the box office is all trussed up like a prize turkey with no place to go but down. There are no new wide releases due this week. Everyone was scared off of the date by Flubber and Alien: Resurrection. Oops! Scream 2 should do stellar numbers next week, but could have had clear sailing for two weeks, pushing the new Alien out of the ship early. Oh, well. Soft word-of-mouth should drop the three-day weekend total for Flubber by 40 percent with $16 million, still enough to take first. Alien: Resurrection should keep the two spot, despite what I’m guessing will be a steep 50 percent drop to take in $8.2 million. As stable as it is slow (though I liked the film), The Rainmaker should drop about 25 percent, still enough to pass Anastasia for third with $8 million. Thus, Anastasia, dropping a reasonable 35 percent, should be in fourth with $7.7 million.
The Jackal is likely to be on the other side of a wide b.o. gap, dropping to fifth with a 40 percent drop to $4.5 million. Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil should skulk about with a 25 percent drop to $4 million for a sixth place finish and no hope of surviving the mid-December onslaught of serious films. Mortal Kombat: Annihilation should hit the skids to the tune of 60 percent, kicking up another $2.7 million for seventh. The bottom four of the Top Ten gets the benefit of Disney’s withdraw of The Little Mermaid. Her disappearance (authorities are questioning Roman Polanski) allows Bean to take eighth with a 50 percent drop to $1.5 million. And Starship Troopers moves up a notch to ninth with another 50 percent drop to $1.4 million.
The Ten Spot will likely offer a three way tie, with I Know What You Did Last Summer (dropping 35 percent), Eve’s Bayou (dropping just 20 percent) and The Wings of The Dove (suffering its first drop with 15 percent) all camping out around the $1.2 million mark.
Will Alien: Resurrection rise from the dead box office week to take top spot? Will Flubber flub its box office break and drown under The Rainmaker? E-mail me what you think.
The March Of The Superhero Movie Continues
This time, it’s Will Smith starring as The Mark, the hero of an original script from comic book superstar Rob Liefeld, which he created specifically for Smith. Liefeld’s comic characters, Avengelyne and Badrock, are both on the New Line schedule, but guess which of his three projects will likely make it to the soundstage first? Hint: It’s the one with the superstar attached. In other comic book news, Harry Knowles is reporting that Nicolas Cage confirmed to a fan he met in a video store that Superman Reborn is still a firm “go” project. Apparently, Cage has one of the biggest comic book collections around, so this is more than an acting job. The latest rumored meeting for the role of Lois Lane? Sandra Bullock.
Turnabout’s fair play. After recommending a read of a good Variety feature, here’s a really stupid one about the “demise of sequels.” Variety writer Andrew Hinde engages in the kind of simple-minded clich�-building that has made entertainment journalism such a weird profession. As evidence of the end of sequels, Hinde sights Speed 2, Batman & Robin and Alien 3. Problem is, all three of his examples were terrible movies! He sights the failure of Alien: Resurrection by comparing its first weekend to sequel Mortal Kombat: Annihilation. But, though Alien 4 was soft, MK:A will be a big profit center for New Line, probably prompting a third sequel that will again drop the budget and the overall quality. And it will probably make money as well. When Scream 2 opens to massive business, look for the articles about the success of the horror genre and the return of the pulp sequel, using MK:A as a positive example. Don’t y’all love show business?
After pushing the boundries of political correctness with Half-Baked, a comic romp through the life of a pothead, comic-turned-actor, Dave Chappelle (Men In Tights/The Nutty Professor), is playing the race card with a comic flair in Rufus. The project from DreamWorks is, I believe, the first slavery comedy. The laughs, of course, come from the fact that the slave gets the better of the master. Ever the trend-setter and flush with the success of its TV-to-screen hits such as McHale’s Navy, Universal is prepping the comedy version of their Schindler’s List, called Schindler’s Grocery List, about a wacky, cannabalistic Nazi who gets sick from undercooked … no. Not really.
Matt Bailey, from Ohio State University, offered up “Alien Dog Craps on Box Office” as a reaction to a wacky movie headline idea. Yes, your e-mail can make you a star too.
When Are Rights Wrong?
Well, that’s going to be up to a judge. The fight is over two competing movie versions of The Bang Bang Club, a real life group of four photographers known for their death-defying war photos. Movie rights are breaking up that old gang of theirs. Emilio Estevez is prepping his version, acquiring rights from the survivors of the two dead members of the club (one died in action, the other committed suicide). Meanwhile, the other two members, still quite alive, sold their rights to a South African filmmaker. Geez. When I saw The Bang Bang Club on the production charts, I assumed it was the story of Emilio’s brother, Charlie Sheen.
After switching locations from Israel to Morocco for security reasons (go the distance), Phil Alden Robinson’s Age of Aquarius is being held up for a more traditional reason. Money! Universal’s Harrison Ford drama is suffering the same problem as their John Travolta starrer, Primary Colors. Universal (and pretty much every other studio in town) won’t spend anything over $50 million on anything other than action (if you build it, they will come). Travolta and director Mike Nichols deferred most of their salaries to bring their $70 million budget down to a more reasonable $50 million. At $80 million, Age of Aquarius will demand a lot of concessions from $20 million-plus man Ford if the love story set in Sarajevo is ever to make it on screen. The buzz is that Ford’s interest is already waning (feel his pain). Did I mention that Robinson made Field of Dreams?
For those of you who want to know how the business really works, check out the upcoming One Track Mind. A recently sold spec script by Ben Queen, the script tells the story of one script tracker, a studio assistant who finds the perfect script and is ready to claim it for his own after the writer mysteriously dies in a Universal Studios tour tram accident. That is, until other trackers who’ve read the script turn up. Then he has to kill them too. If you think that’s far fetched, how do you think I get my Hot Button copy every day?
Last Tango In Paris was recently sent to the ratings board again and unlike Midnight Cowboy, it’s still NC-17. The Hot Button should be so lucky. E-mail me your NC-17 buttons today!
And don’t forget The Whole Picture.
DreamWorks Continues to Break Weird Ground With Its New Slate of Films
This Christmas’ Mousehunt seems to be Home Alone with the rodent as McCauley Culkin. Next, it’s Alien Dog, the Terminator-esque story of two aliens chasing each other on earth, only the hero alien misunderstands nature’s hierarchy of earth and disguises himself as a dog instead of a human. Can you see the headlines on the reviews? If so, e-mail me a good one and I’ll print it Thursday.
The cool new gadget in the upcoming James Bond flick, Tomorrow Never Dies, is a mobile phone that blows stuff up, sees around corners, and operates a brand new BMW by remote. Of course, in Los Angeles, cell phones already make a trip to the market feel like a Bond chase scene. Ericsson’s phone is just one of what seems like a million Bond product placement and promotion deals. No “McDonalds Moneypenny Meals” for Bond. Bond has joined Bob Dole as one of the funniest and one of the least appropriate spokesmen for Visa. BMW has a major hit with the Z3 from GoldenEye, so budgets to promote the new Bond Beemer are soaring. And of course, there are the liquor ads. I guess Bond always was a whore. The whole thing leaves me stirred, but not shaken. I’m still looking forward to the film.
Finally, Meg Ryan tells People that she doesn’t see the resemblance between herself and the animated version of her in Anastasia. “Just some of the bad hair days,” she jokes. Kind of like trying to see the resemblance between Anastasia and Disney product. It’s occurred to me that the difference between the great Disney animated hits and the “misses” is the music. Do any of you remember a song from Hunchback? Did anyone love Michael Bolton‘s tepid version of Hercules’ “Go The Distance?” Likewise, I can’t think of a song I’ll remember from Anastasia. Pretty pictures though.
Thanksgiving Weekend Results
Interesting, somewhat disappointing results at the box office this Thanksgiving weekend. Flubber did pretty much what I expected, though it took first place, not second. An impressive $36.4 million five-day weekend is well short of 101 Dalmatians‘ $45 million take last Thanksgiving ($137 million total). Flubber, with $27 million over the Friday-Sunday period, looks to be more in the range of My Best Friend’s Wedding or Face/Off, hitting the $100 million mark domestically, but not passing $120 million. Alien: Resurrection snagged $27.2 million for second place, actually winning the Wednesday-Thursday battle with $10.1 million over Flubber’s $8.7 million, but losing the war as the weekend wore on. Look for a final tally in the high 60s (comparable to Dante’s Peak or Anaconda), placing it third in the quad-ology’s box office hierarchy.
Anastasia took third place with $16.7 million, but the breakdown shows that even though the film dropped minimally over the three-day weekend ($14.1 million last weekend versus $13.9 this one), its Wed-Thurs performance stunk the place up, averaging only $1.4 million each of those days, the weakest of the Top Five. To me, that says younger kids are going (with mom and dad) and those of Flubber age are passing. Pretty fine line, huh? If Anastasia hits $60-70 million, did they win the war against Disney? I say “yup.” The surprise of the weekend was The Rainmaker’s strong performance in fourth, performing well all week and adding another $14.5 million to Francis’ judgment. And The Jackal held on for fifth, shooting $10.3 million into its Swiss bank account.
Mortal Kombat: Annihilation fell like a stone, about 60 percent in a three-day weekend comparison, kicking up $9.5 million with a truly awful movie. Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evil is more the latter than the former, on-screen and at the box office, taking seventh with $7.3 million. Now, y’all say bye-bye to them Oscahs. The Little Mermaid got her fin kicked, adding just $2.7 million to her $25 million three-week total, a little more than her P & A costs. Bean slinks towards the $50 million domestic finish line, adding $4.2 million to its total for ninth. And, “The Troopers Are Going! The Troopers Are Going!” passing $50 million with $4 million for 10th.
Thanks for all of your weekend predictions. You’re all getting better every week. Way to use that e-mail.
