The Hot Blog Archive for July, 2007
Late Entry Stat Of The Day (aka The Lost World Thread?)
It suddenly occured to me that there was an odd circumstance that allows us to look at Transformers not only 3-day vs 3-day (est 49% drop), but Week One vs Week Two.
Of course, the opening Monday was only shows after 8p… though that actually works for the film’s benefit in this stat as it assured that the second Monday would be bigger, assuring less of a drop. But here we go…
You can do the math, but that’s a 56.5% drop, putting Transformers more in line with most big opening drops. I expect pretty much the same (or marginally worse) for Harry Potter V, which should be right around the same 7 day number as T-Fo.
Further extending the analogies, the second week drop for T-Fo was about the same as Shrek The Third‘s 2nd weekend and after two weekends amd a day, T-Fo will be about $10 million ahead of S3. Six weekends later, if T-Fo paced S3 further, it would stop at about $325 million.
However, that would suggest Potter at over $300 million also, which only happened on the first film. And I don’t expect that to happen.
Again… at these heights, stats (and the marriage of reality & perception) go out the window…
A Fascinating Book Review
In this week’s New Yorker, Louis Menand reviews Bryan Caplan’s Democracy; Voters, Voting; Elections;
7 Comments »Friday Estimates by Klady
The box office story of Summer
41 Comments »Getting Right To It
It’s been interesting to watch Universal squirm just a bit with the sale of I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry… which now seems to be going with “Chuck & Larry” as a marketing title.
I just caught an ad that I hadn
Lunch With… Patrice Leconte (And Fred)
The Great Leconte has My Best Friend coming out… see if you can find him in the distance (and through his translator) in this week’s LWD.
Part 1
Part 2
The Hairspray Review
The funny thing about Hairspray is that it stayed very specifically in the Waters oeuvre. It was a period film – his norm – about outsiders – his norm – with the outsiders overcoming long odds – his norm – with an untraditional hero – his norm – and a shockingly loveable drag queen at the heart of the thing. But it wasn’t just Divine in this case. Expanding the base, he had a young, fat, female at the center and mixed race in as a theme. They shall all overcome.
The film also spoke to a theme very popular at the movies. What was at the heart of the National Lampoon-era films, like Animal House, Stripes, Caddyshack, and Ghsotbusters? The nerds have their day over the mainstream. Revenge of the Nerds, Footloose, The Goonies, Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Cocoon, and Beetlejuice were among the most popular of them.
The rest…
Box Office Hell – Friday The 13th
(Updated, Fri 1:50… to include EW’s #s)
Odd…
The thing that really struck me about the E3 convention I wandered through yesterday was how small the community was and how few new games were there.
I am out of the videogame community loop enough to find the initiative by Wii to make an interactive weight loss and exercise game fascinating. But I would probably encourage kids to embrace the idea
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…
OMFG
I have to run out the door, but I wanted to open up the floor to a conversation about the report from Michael Cieply that the studios (film and television) had a conclave this morning and they are going to press to completely revamp the residual system, really down to the concept.
Obviously, both sides preen and posture before the battle begins. You have to have something to give back. But sweet oogly moogly, this is a serious problem and could become the basis for the longest labor stoppage ever.
The unions already got themselves bent over and reemed with the DVD residual system and the rank & file already feel that the current residual system is a pittance compared to the huge dollars coming in for negotiated deals with stars and even worse, with packaging agents, who may eat 8% of a TV deal, for instance, simply for the one “packaging deal” that puts their clients into a show at the very beginning of the process.
Of course, the idea of anyone waiting for net profits to share in the revenue is a laugher on the face of it. But even if it is just a dance to get the unions to move toward a set percentage of gross revenues to be pooled and distributed, the many oportunities to monetize films in unresidualed ways is what is growing ahead of everything else right now. If ABC is playing Ugly Betty on the web with Pfizer covering, essentially, the streaming and design costs, as an added value play, how does the union get paid on that? If Fox sells Live Free or Die Hard to a Fox cable property instead of generating more cash at, say, Disney’s ABC, how does a union chase that money? Etc, etc, etc.
I actually agree that the studios need to be able to adjust to a shifting media universe with some flexibility that has currently meant simply disregarding the unions. But there is a lot of money out there. And the acting middle class is already hurting pretty bad. (No, it’s not garbage collection… it pays less and has worse benefits.) Somehow, I don’t think the studio side’s goal is a more democratic system to enrich the people who aren’t at the top of tv shows and above titles in movies, but who are the lifeblood of this industry.
More to come… but please, speak up…
Back In L.A.
The Button has landed.
Not a lot seems to be going on. Hairspray premiered, Potter released, Xanadu raved… and returning to L.A. means nice cool weather… compared to NY.
More to come…
Pretty F
I really have no intention or urge to review Harry Potter & The Order of The Phoenix. How does one review #5 in a series? I will offer up these few notions:
1) I think Warner Bros figured out that this franchise will gross between $750 million and $950 million worldwide each time out and it would take a massive blunder to damage the golden egg laying goose and a miracle to make any more than they regularly make
Happy Monday
My time, this time, in NY is near done and my schedule has heated up with more business stuff that won’t be very interesting to many of you, understandably.
I did return to the Kwik E Mart one more time and found that Buzz Cola, KrustyOs and some new product, bobbleheads, had landed… but the crowd that showed up for the novelty of at all last weekend was not there this weekend, though the products were getting more than their share of attention.
The IMAX version of Harry Potter V, with 20 minutes of 3D (so I am told), screens tonight.
Michael Moore went nuts on CNN’s Wolf Blitzer this afternoon… and even better, he was in a sports jacket, a button shirt, and a good haircut… time to develop the new look. And look for the footage on YouTube (and probably CNN.com). It’s a fun watch.
More later…
Klady's Sunday Estimates – 7/8/7
So Transformers made it to their $150 million six day, now the third biggest opening of the summer and the second best July 4 opening ever, after Spider-Man 2. $300 million domestic is now likely inevitable… as suggested by the same history that suggested that Transformers would have a hard time pulling off the 150/6.
Ratatouille is pulling up to Cars, now just $4m behind after starting $13 million behind. Could The Rat catch up and surpass the autos next weekend? Perhaps.
For a movie written off, $17 million in six for License To Wed is not so horrible. A lot of people would have assumed $30 million was out of range for this title.