Separated At Mirth?

Box Office Hell, Update – 8/24

EW and BO Prophets added….

Lunch With… Director Rod Lurie

Earlier Lunches…
Nikki Blonsky & Elijah Kelley from Hairspray
David Stenn, director of Girl 27
Don Murphy, Part 1, Part 2
Patrice LeConte, Part 1, Part 2
Ondi Timoner (Join Us) and Stephen Walker (Young @ Heart)
Scott Foundas, Anne Thompson and Jeremy Smith – Part 1, Part 2
Ratatouille composer Michael Giacchino
Sarah Polley
Olivier Assayas (with guest Ray Pride)
Documentarians Michael Tucker & Petra Epperlein (The Prisoner/Gunner Palace)
Richard Dreyfuss – Part 1, Part 2
Mike Binder
John Pierson
Manufacturing Dissent directors Debbie Melnyk and Rick Caine
Paulo Costanzo & Steph Song
Peter Reigert
Paul Verhoven for Black Book
Jesus Camp directors Heidi Ewing & Rachel Grady
USA Today’s Susan Wloszczyna
Oscar Nominated Borat writers Anthony Hines & Peter Baynham
Oscar Nominated screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga
Oscar Nominee Jackie Earle Haley

Spider-Man 3 Superset… With Awesome Forgiving Action!

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Even on that first day, there were the questions: 1. Did I need a column if I had a blog, and 2. Would the blog get in the way of the column?
I have always argued that the answer to 1 is “yes” and 2 is “no.”; But that argument has suffered over the years. Indeed, the column, the blog, and the website headlines are very different muscle groups. But the demands of the blog and the website have distracted from the focus of a daily column … and then, from the focus on three columns a week, which I switched to about six months ago.
My best advice to all media outlets that feel under pressure from alternatives is to stop, think it out, consider what you really can deliver well, and move forward, even if it requires a great deal of change.
The rest….

Is This GOOD News?

From The Bay Of Blogs
Last night at dinner I was having dinner with three blu-ray owners, they were pissed about no Transformers Blu-ray and I drank the kool aid hook line and sinker. So at 1:30 in the morning I posted – nothing good ever comes out of early am posts mind you – I over reacted. I heard where Paramount is coming from and the future of HD and players that will be close to the $200 mark which is the magic number. I like what I heard.
As a director, I’m all about people seeing films in the best quality possible, and I saw and heard firsthand people upset about a corporate decision.
So today I saw 300 on HD, it rocks!
So I think I might be back on to do Transformers 2!
Michael Bay

DreamWorks' First $1 Billion Year

2004 was the best domestic box office year in the 10-year history of DreamWorks as a standalone company, led by Shrek 2, totalling $937.1 million.
This year, the studio, now technically under the Paramount banner, is at $987.5 million, their best year ever with four more movies on the way. The Heartbreak Kid, due October 5, should have them over the $1 billion mark by that Saturday at latest.
Meanwhile, Paramount w/o DreamWorks has had three more releases than the DW side (9)… and a total domestic gross of just over $200 million.

DreamWorks desperately needed a white knight to bail them out and Brad Grey took the bait. He’s gotten a few good stories out of it. But not only has he tweaked his #1 producer of product over and over again, but the newly muscular DreamWorks is getting cockier and cockier.
They say never to lend money to a friend because the friend will end up resenting you if they can pay you back or if they can’t. Not only does Team DW dislike Grey for being a glory hog, but even as they now do pretty much as they see fit with their movies, they even kind of resent him for bailing them out… because they are obviously so good, they didn’t really need the help.
Well, they did. But it is a very, very talented group and the Stacey Snider hire was quite a coup… especially as she now does exactly what she is best at and has less corporate weight on her shoulders to distract her.
It’s also looking like we will have the first year in history in which 5 studios cross the $1 billion mark domestically (also WB, Dis, Sony, and Universal, the last of which is only $255m away with 8 movies left to release). Paramount is already there, technically. But come October, you might want to revise the list with the real billion dollar company on Melrose.

Almost Blu

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Funny Or Die Delivers A Weak SNL Sketch

But this is pretty f-in g hillarious… especially to D.O.R

And Superman Wept…

Yes, it’s time to be amused by

Batman: The Musical: The Website… songs by Jim Steinman… inspiration by God.
And yes, you can download the demos of all the songs.
God bless the internet. Mission Accomplished!

LOVE This

When I posted about box office this morning, I thought I was kind of splitting hairs with the stat, “Superbad’s opening is the 2nd best 3rd weekend of August opening ever… behind Freddy vs Jason.”
But now I have seen the light!
In a Reuters story was the following nugget – “”Superbad” grossed $31.2 million, breaking a 12-year-old record for movies that opened after August 15, said Rory Bruer, president of distribution for Sony Pictures.”
Wow! Freddy vs Jason opened ON August 15… the same third weekend of August that Superbad, which opened on August 17.
So I guess the record is now on a day-to-day basis.
The record for August 16 is Blue Crush with $14.2 million.
The record for August 18 is Mortal Kombat‘s $23.3 million (the record that was broken).
The record for August 19 is The 40-Year-Old Virgin with $21.4 million.
So you know, the record for the best opening on Friday the 22 or later in the month, meaning the fourth weekend of the month, is Hero with $18 million.

A Teen-y Proposition

Inspired by Cad’s apparent hatred of Superbad, it occured to me…
If John Hughes was smart, he’d be getting his Apatow producer hat back on and finding the right filmmakers to remake his entire catalog, starting with The Breakfast Club with Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Emile Hirsch, Michael Cera, Charlyne Yi, and Kristen Stewart.
Adventures in Babysitting with Amanda Bynes.
Pretty In Pink with Martha MacIssac, Jonah Hill, and Zac Efron.
Dare I even suggest that a remake of a beloved Hughes film for adults, Planes, Trains, and Automobiles now with Seth Rogan and Steve Carrell or John Cusack would be soooo money?
Ironically, Drillnbit Taylor is an old John Hughes script that Apatow picked up to make with a Rogen rewrite.
Thoughts?

Sunday Estimates by Klady – Aug 19

The stat is a little silly, but Superbad‘s opening is the 2nd best 3rd weekend of August opening ever… behind Freddy vs Jason. Of course, Superbad could be retitled, Seth vs Vag (pronounces vashhhh).
And reviews had dick all to do with it… as they never have anything to do with a wide opening weekend. The tracking was, simply, poorly read intentionally. Had the evidence that the movie was strong with teens been emphasized and the film come in under 20, the trackers would have been embarrassed for overlooking the precious overall numbers… the ones that everyone who isn’t reading the tracking in great detail obsess on and end up being gossiped about. Or, in other words, overestimating the film would have been more problematic with the trackers’ employers – the studios – than underestimating.
Once again… all this tracking reporting is fool’s gold. It does give you the lay of the land in rough terms. Knowing awareness is important. How it translates is actual numbers is often unknowable… which is why each studio, exec, producer, director, star, and others still hold their breath that first Friday. I wouldn’t mind people reporting tracking if the context was emphasized. But it is not. Just as Sunday numbers barely use the word “estimate” anymore and almost no one reports “finals,” media wants to “report” tracking as though it is a different fact than it is, I think because it makes them look like they know something and people forget all about the incorrect information of any individual when the story becomes the “surprise” opening.
The much bigger story than Superbad this weekend, in terms of tracking, is tracking being 40% higher than the estimate for The Invasion. Again… it had nothing to do with reviews. It was a complete marketing failure… a dump by the studio, which hated the picture and the production of the picture. (Note: Rumors of The Wachowskis shooting on the film are apparently incorrect… it was their First AD.)
So… we have two movies opening this weekend… one is off by 50% of the tracking estimate and one is off by 40% of the tracking estimate… in different directions. And next weekend, people will still be talking about the tracking as though it is going to tell us everything. If the studios expected tracking to predict box office, they would stop paying for it. But in spite of the problem

Boyz (Not) 2 Men

From The Hot Button…
I am certainly not the first person to point out that this is the state of machismo in Hollywood these days. The top five movies of this year are male leads by Tobey Maguire, Mike Myers, Johnny Depp, Shia LeBouff, and Daniel Radcliffe. There might be plenty to love or lust at for any of these men, but machismo is not a part of the equation. They might outthink you, but don’t expect to see a fist from a-one of them.
Even with 300, we are led by the super-CG-ripped Gerard Butler … aka The Phantom. When Bob Zemeckis looks for his Beowulf, he gets the grand and macho Ray Winstone … and then makes his body young and ripped with the computer.
The only two stars who push the machismo button in films that have grossed over $50 million this year are Matt Damon as the moody, emotional Jason Bourne and Bruce Willis, still pushing a shaved head and a 3-day growth in Live Free or Die Hard.
It wasn’t much better last year, though we got a new, edgier Bond in Daniel Craig (who often goes against machismo in his other roles), a visit from Rocky Balboa, and Borat wrestling nude with a 350 pound dude. On the fop side, Leo tried to get tough in Blood Diamond, Colin Farrell burned off what seemed to be the last of his macho currency in Miami Vice, Jack Black in tights, Vince Vaughn emasculated by the former Mrs. Pitt, Tom Cruise emasculated by a weak script and an ancient Sumner Redstone, Hanks with comedy hair, and even the muscular Will Smith as a man scraping his life back together (though no one would ever call the real Chris Gardner anything less than stinking of macho, even in pastel shirts).
It kind of makes sense that Bond and The Departed were so successful last year. They were the last bastion of manliness in the movie universe.

Embargo: Theater Monster Edition

Interesting Variety piece on Young Frankenstein, which is now playing in Seattle in its out-of-town “tryout.”
The primary focus of the piece is on the $480 tickets available for the Broadway run. 480 bucks! But this is Broadway’s dance with EBay, StubHub, etc. The producers of the show also put the show in the much hated Hilton Theater, which is about 500 seats bigger and considered by many to be a modern equivalent to a barn.
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