20 Weeks
20 Weeks Of Summer… That's A Wrap!
This summer being the biggest ever is just as insignificant a stat as The Slump stats were in 2005. To perceive this as a recovery by theatrical, you have to have bought into the absurdity of The Slump in the first place. And to sing to high heaven about two $250 million-plus productions and two $150 million-plus productions and none passing $350 million … that’s silly too.
Given the budgets of this summer and the security of the franchises – 8 of the current 13 $100 million grossers were sequels, two were based on TV cartoons, one was Adam Sandler, Ratatouille is part of the Pixar franchise and only Knocked Up really stood a unique, unfranchised, not-star-driven 9-figure films – we should have expected bigger numbers. Again, all five of the Top Five for this summer grossed $200 million in less than 12 days … and none cracked $340 million total.
Moreover, the only sequels to do under $97 million domestic were Hostel II, 28 Weeks Later, and the not-really-a-sequel sequel, Daddy Day Camp. Of the other nine sequels – the ones released by the majors – only Evan Almighty was under $110 million domestic or $250 million worldwide. So … does anyone want to ask the “Why do they make so many damned sequels” question again?
The Rest…
20 Weeks… Summer Settles In
There is a very good chance that this summer will be The Best Ever. (Half-Empties will trot out estimated ticket sales. Yawn.) But even if the record is gotten, the question is what was thrown into the marketplace to achieve the number.
We are at this odd place where studios are having fewer outright summer failures than ever … but are also unable to build even the most obvious franchises into bigger franchises. It’s not a syndrome of #3 or #2 or #4 or whatever. That is too simplistic an analysis to be worth making.
Surprisingly, the cost of these films is now so high that the “good ol’ days” of studios taking runners on someone’s ego are close to over. With $400 million-plus investments and each franchise film getting more expensive, the “what if?” of it all is big enough to bring a studio to its knees. When you make a movie and a $500 million worldwide gross means you will lose money, you are gambling with your life … even if you have Spider-security.
The rest….
The updated chart… Transformers moves into #2… The Simpsons rises…
35 Weeks To Oscar (Oy!)
You’ll notice no one is pressing their Oscar luck as of the end of June … not even DreamWorks Oscar powerhouse Terry Press. It’s no country for bold talk at 42 West, where Miramax and others get consultation. Charlie Wilson may be going to war, but Tony Angellotti is keeping it in dry dock while QE2 & Ridley’s Boys go at it. Karen Fried has 3 or 4 films to Focus on, but she’ll let Ang Lee translate himself before she starts doing it for us. And Paramount Vantage isn’t babbling in at all, even with four high profile films aiming at the gold ring.
Last year was the year of early hype Front Runner doing everything it was expected to do… except get nominated. So this year’s trend will be Silence Is Golden… until that fails some film that seemed inevitable, so next year there will be some other trend.
Make no mistake, Oscar’s elves are already well into their cobbling plans. Those named above will be cranky about being named and those not named will be quietly cranky about not being named, as the game is already afoot.
The Rest…
The Chart…
20 Weeks: The Sequel
The point of this column is not to shovel dirt on the past, but to look to the quite immediate future. There is an entire summer ahead of us that looks a lot like one of the strongest summers ever without The Big Three being any more than The Big One.
Last summer, it was Pirates 2 followed by Cars in #2 slot with $244 million domestic. In 2005, it was Star Wars 6/III followed by $234 million domestic for War of the Worlds. In 2004, it was Shrek 2 and Spider-Man 2 in the ether and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban with $250 million domestic in third.
The closest thing to this summer was 2002, with Finding Nemo and The Matrix Reloaded huge in May and Pirates of the Caribbean huge in July with Bruce Almighty at $243 million for #4 and X2 with $215 million domestic at #5. But that was so very different also. Nemo opened to “just” $70 million and did almost 5 times that opening. Bruce Almighty was a surprise with a $68 million opening and about 3.5 times that total domestic.
The rest…
20 Weeks… A Month In
Back to the suckage …
Spider-Man 3 … Shrek The Third … Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End …
The irony is that all three of the triquels suffer from many of the same diseases. The most significant one is the confused disease of trying too hard to be people pleasers. All three add characters that really have nothing to do other than to be new. The two non-animated films add massive special effects, some of which really don’t work, although they are well done in and of themselves. All three seem to forget what is at the core of why people love the previous movies.
The rest…
And the not-much-changed chart
Summer Preview
I do expect this to be the first $4 billion summer in history, beating the 2004 best ever.
We have never had more than two $300 million in a summer before. I expect three this year.
If my estimates are right, this could be the first summer with six $200 million-plus movies. We have had a few summers with five $200 million-plus movies in a summer before. But again, by my estimates this summer’s Top 10 will gross about 20% more domestically than ever before in the history of summer exhibition… nearly $2.5 billion.
But what will really be interesting is the second wave, not the Big Three. Evan Almighty will be a big family film, more so than Bruce Almighty, which sold itself with T&A jokes. How big can Ratatouille be after Shrek 3 sucks the market dry and it faces Evan, too?
How big will Transformers be? Will any adults go? And how will they do with Harry Potter opening one week later? The same fate that War of the Worlds faced with Fantastic Four smacking it down in weekend two by a 46% margin could happen again.
The rest…
And the chart
20 Weeks 20 – Auld Lang Syne
“All last night, Fox ran promos for “Are You Smarter Than A 5th Grader?” and for those of us who are still revving our engines on this, the answer is not a nice one. A 5th grader knows he/she wants ice cream, cake, no bath, and an open bedtime. We have such an abundance of likeable films and likeable people that we don’t know what we want.
I gotta say, I am looking forward to the Independent Spirit Awards more than the Oscars for the first time in a long while. And it’s not just because Yerxa and Berger will get their awards along with the other producers at that event. (Oh
20 Weeks – Dead Horse Beating
Everyone liked something. Generally, the hate levels were down. And while nothing particularly unexpected is expected a week from Sunday, there really isn’t much opportunity for anything remarkable to happen.
Really
20 Weeks To Oscar – Tick Tock
It’s possible to make 20 different legitimate arguments along the lines of, “Letters From Iwo Jima, Babel, and The Queen split the serious vote, The Departed loses a little to both those and on the light side to Little Miss Sunshine, so LMS wins,” or “Letters From Iwo Jima is the only serious picture with prestige talent and people are finally looking at it,” or “The hardcore serious goes Letters/Babel and the hardcore movie joy people go Sunshine/Departed, splitting both and letting The Queen be the easiest choice for the undecided middle.”
But the truth is, no one really knows.
And did I mention, no one really cares?
The rest…
Column Corrections
As sometimes happens, there are some stats that I got wrong this morning
7 Comments »20 Weeks To Oscar – Pre-Noms
Of course, the greatest power of the New Media has always been the power to inform Traditional Media. No one has to agree with me or anyone else writing about Oscar or anything else on the web. But if they enjoy MCN, they are feeding on content that has been processed editorially. I never think that there is a direct cause and effect. But whether you are a civilian, an Academy voter, or a journalist, you can only consume so much content. And as a gateway, MCN has the power to move a movie business story as effectively as all but a handful of Traditional Media outlets.
The problem with most discussions about the influence of web sites on awards season or anything else is that people take it personally. Los Angeles Magazine decided to create a story about the gossip around “Oscar bloggers” instead of seriously exploring the influence that we may or may not have. Typical in an era in which printing the news always seems to lose to printing the legend. (There are many other factual errors, which simply aren’t worth discussing.)
The rest…
20 Weeks – Outside Looking In
Oh, that candy.
It’s right there. You can see it. You know the flavor, even if it was only described some other time by someone you are close with. But whether you have tasted it before or just heard about it, you want that flavor in your mouth. You want the invite to the ultimate party
20 Weeks – The Great Settling
The only titles that are not readily available on screeners are The Good German, The Good Shepherd, Monster House, and The Weinstein Company’s double dip of Factory Girl and Miss Potter. And if you are a screener recipient and are at all adventurous, there are opportunities like Sweet Land and Sherrybaby and A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints and Who Killed The Electric Car and others that might surprise and delight.
But that’s the screener rub. Getting voters to watch your movies when you don’t have Variety to beat them over the head with each day means you have to already have enticed them before they got on the plane to AspenMauiParisLondonMarrakeshBaliMilwaukee.
Ironically, any voter with young kids or grandkids are more likely to get an education on Cars vs Happy Feet vs Over The Hedge vs Flushed Away vs Charlotte’s Web than any single adult title. And if you don’t think that there won’t be notice taken of which one the kids watch for the fifth time, you would be wrong.
The rest & the charts…
(EDIT, 2:16p, Thur – It is the extremely rare occasion when I make a post-publication change on my charts, but thanks to Spammy, I spoke to Fox and indeed, they have changed their plan and decided to send Borat out to Academy members, shipping today. On the downside, they have a Peter Bart moderated Q&A with SBC on Jan 3, and if anyone can wrench the humor completely out of this film, it is Bart. Still, they have made one good decision and I hope that they can get things rolling for SBC in time for it to mean something.)
20 Weeks – The Search For Meaning
Please note that this column was written and posted before this morning’s Globes noms… and I feel no need to change a word. Likewise, the coilumns were posted before nominations… the only adjustment was to add a “GG” notation on the nominees and to add the Oscar-impossible noms at the bottom of each list.
The Golden Globe Nominations mean nothing.
Nothing.
Okay
20 Weeks – Inside Out
How many people will ever know who won at BAFTA
10 Comments »
