The Hot Blog Archive for June, 2007
Friday Numbers by Klady
What is there to say?
Fantastic IV II will slightly outperform the opening of Fantastic Four (high 50s/low60s… the original opened to $56.1) proving for the second time that Fox knows how to repeat an image over and over to the point of exhaustion and opening weekend success. Expect a third film and another new character as the hook. Maybe they’ll trot out ol’ Thor… who knows?
Ocean’s Drop is not shocking and won’t be quite as large when the dust settles. The benefit of its so-so response is Knocked Up, which remains the one buzzy film of the pre-July summer.
Everyone else is dropping in the 40s and 50s… not too happy out there for a fatigued marketplace. Every studio will tell you that they know this summer was too dense for its own good… but they didn’t move any of the movies out of harm’s way. There are no real disasters so far, but it hasn’t been pretty. Will that be enough to turn heads? Probably not.
Finally, this tastemaker of America continues to get lied about by Mr. Roth, but nothing I could say would be as definitive as a 72% second Friday drop for Hostel II. And unlike the other films, horror plays on Fridays, so expect the drop to remain in the high 60s or 70s. You can lead a nation to self-loathing, but apparently you can’t make them drink.
However, in less smart ass perspective, Hostel II is a narrow market movie and The Geek 8 remains the number… geek love = $8 million opening. That isn’t what most movies are after exclusively, but the number is also big enough that the geeks remains a key marketing demo that needs to be worked… and if you rely on them as your primary audience for a $20 million opening, you are a suicidal marketing exec on a plane.
Lunch With… Anne, Scott & Jeremy
From Left to Right – Critic/Film Editor of the LA Weekly and Variety contributor Scott Foundas, Columnist/Blogger for Variety, Anne Thompson, and The Geek Culture Artist Formerly Known As Mr Beaks, Jeremy Smith.
Part I – Cannes & The Future Of Festivals
Part II – The Summer Movies
Another Print (And A Projectionist) On The Streets
Apparently, a clean print of Sicko is already on the streets of New York and on the web. The journalist who sent me notice of this says that he got a 30mb sample from his source, including the end (4:36p – corrected from “the opening”) in which the film is dedicated to Kurt Vonnegut (“For everything”) and to Moore’s mother.
Here is a screen image from a sharing website (I’ve removed identifying info of the site).
Unlike the Hostel II studio-stolen bootleg, which was a far inferior version visually with burnt-in names and timecode in the frame, this is a film that probably won’t be significantly damaged by piracy.. though the website claims almost 5000 downloads to date. We don’t actually know if Hostel II was much affected, but its target audience was far closer to the core group of people who download off the web and buy bootlegs on the streer.
As much as I disliked Hostel II, it is a shame that it was out there prematurely and certainly, the same is true for Sicko.
Of course, we live in a media culture in which the same studios that freak out over piracy have also gone into business with websites and other media that support test screening reviews, script reviews, and other similarly premature, supposed-to-be-workproduct. In spite of my step out of line – watching the DVD, not buying it, which was a journalistic endeavor – I remain an absolutist on these issues.
Furthermore…
I was also pointed to this entry from AICN’s Moriarty, who likes to accuse me of falsely accusing him of being soft on illicit behavior on AICN. To wit:
“Hey, everyone.
Interesting Marketing Turn
In the last couple of years, we have seen an effort by the studios to run red band trailers online, only to be thwarted by the MPAA, which has forced them to run the trailers only after 10p eastern with a sign in.
Sony seems to have come up with a solution. They are running red bands for The Brothers Solomon and Superbad with a sign-in that checks you against your DMV records. So you can’s make up a name or a birthdate and get in. (You could use your parent’s, I guess.)
So is this simply smart on their part… or will there be whinning about invasion of privacy?
The Trailers
Superbad
The Brothers Solomon
And did I mention… I find both trailers very funny, The Bros Solomon surprisingly so?
Best Of The 00s
A conversation started yesterday in Sunday’s box office entry comments about Top Ten’s for this decade so far. It seemed interesting, so I’m starting a thread.
Previous posters should feel free to repost their lists here.
A Sopranos Piece
Let’s all agree that this is a SPOILER ENTRY!!!
Commence.
Add. 9:35p – The finale of The Sopranos reminded me, first and foremost, of The Matrix Revolutions.
Huh?
Yes. In about two hours more airtime than both the Matrix sequels, David Chase did pretty much what the Wachowskis did with their sequels. He took the core, in his case seasons of the series, and went to the farthest reaches he could while still keeping hope (Tony) alive … and then, in the finale, he simply offered the Buddhist notion that, essentially, life does not end, but continues in other forms based on karma.
This is what so frustrated people about Matrix Revolutions … and now frustrates many about the Sopranos closer. I will admit, without any need to push, that Chase’s take on this ultimate theme was more skillful than that of the Wachowskis, who went over 5 hours to do it with far fewer characters, demanding a lot less clean up. Of course, they also felt compelled to offer major effects extravaganzas in each of the last two films that distracted from the themes, riffing on Christianity in Reloaded and then leaning more towards Buddhism in Revolutions.
But back to The Sopranos …
The column…
One Last Hostel-ity
Just thought some of you might like to hear the NPR piece on Hostel II in which I participated.
Here it is.
Klady's Friday Estimates
Well, it looks like the conflicts amongst predictors ended up reflecting confusion amongst moviegoers, who didn’t go as much as expected.
Ocean’s 13 will be under expectations while Surf’s Up may come in at the lowest of the BO Hell estimates and still be #2 for the week ahead of Knocked Up and Pirates 3, as Surf’s Up should get the biggest Saturday kick by far.
Hostel 2 seems to have gotten a pass by the critics, but not so much by the ticket buyers. It will open to less than half of the original. A big part of that could well be that this one was sold on Eli Roth’s name and though Tarantino was name-checked, it was not nearly as much a part of the push as the first time. Perhaps he was, appropriately, embarrased by Roth’s work. (I really have no idea, so let’s not make that snide aside into anything. If QT says how much he loves the work somewhere, someone please post it in comments.)
The happiest people about Hostel II are probably the team at Fox Atomic, who look to have had a better opening for The HIlls Have Eyes 2… so maybe the conclusion is that we are just at the end of this run of this incarnation of the genre. Couldn’t have squatted on a nicer movie…
Whatever holdover audience there was for Mr Brooks seems to have been eaten by Ocean’s 13 (starring such nice young men) and Knocked Up, which is going to ride high on curiousity this weekend.
The Hostel Free Zone
As fairly requested by one regular… here is a space to discuss anything and everything that is NOT Hostel 2 related.
Commence!
Box Office Hell
This is the most wildly varied set of projections I recall seeing this year. There’s a $13 million split on opinions regarding Ocean’s 13, $16.4m on Surf’s Up, $7.6 (or more than a third of the highest projection) on Hostel II, and a pretty even split on calls for whether Knocked Up or Pirates 3 will be on top of the other.
Perhaps The Worst Interviewee Ever!
And on Jimmy Kimmel
Just For The Record
There is a CRAZY person out there who keeps attacking Pirates 3, attempting to boost her home studio’s film… but for the record, her notion of “a quick and complete” collapse of Pirates 3 based on this week’s weekday numbers is a little sketchy, since P3 has been ahead of every second week weekday number of both Spider-Man 3 and Shrek The Third. (S3’s 2nd weekdays included Memorial Day Monday, which is much bigger, as expected)
It could well be argued that the “just beyond $300 million” trajectory for all three movies is still, crazily enough, a bit below studio hopes. P3 is not above this. Much like Spider-Man 3, the film will be a success financially thanks to international, but we are quickly learning that International is the last refuge of a limping franchise, just as DVD was only a few short years ago.
Regardless, when one studio mouthpiece uses her bully (and I mean “bully”) pulpit to keep repeating a lie with the clear intent of promoting one studio’s product while ripping into another’s (I won’t even get into the knowingly lies she spins about this site, feigning ignorance in the facts), it’s a good idea for someone to actually look at the numbers and offer some facts.
