Friday Estimates by Klady – 6/7

Kung Fu Panda might well be DreamWorks Animation’s first non-Shrek entry into Pixar numbers, which would also make this the studio’s biggest non-Shrek starter ever. (The only non-Pixar movie bigger other than the Shreks to go this high is Ice Age 2.)
Not much of a surprise in Sandler landing right in the middle of his list of successful releases with the Friday number.
The Friday-to-Friday drop for Sex & The City will soften significantly as the weekend progresses. That Friday last week was a freak.
Iron Man is now looking at pushing past the $300 million in the weeks to come. but the headline is that Indiana Jones IV will not. $237m in 16 days is amazing… about $25 million more than Iron Man was at in the same period. But there is a lot less open space for Indy to run and Iron Man was running about 30% hotter by the third weekend.
Also worth noting… 5 weeks into the season and there is just one true bomb at the box office, Speed Racer. There are other disappointments, but Narnia’s $130m+ and even Made of Honor’s $45 million, while not what was expected, aren’t meltdowns. They are, actually, what might have been anticipated had cool heads prevailed. (Narnia, obviously, had higher expectations as a sequel, but did about what a lot of us thought the first film would do. Expect a lot more Aslan in the ads if Anchutz doesn’t cut and run on the third film.)

A Little Somthin' Somethin'

Just Wondering… Why Doesn't Anyone Seem Concerned About A SAG Strike?

I am sincerely asking for your thoughts here…
My sense of it is that SAG leadership is telling their friends – “leadership” = individuals who gossip just like everyone else – that they don’t want to go on strike and it is unlikely they will go on strike. The AFTRA deal makes it even harder, though SAG membership that doesn’t worry about the threat of AFTRA lowering the bar endlessly should get medical attention. And the leadership and the membership all can see that the industry is having a major regression and that any work they lose may well never be made up.
I didn’t think that the WGA Strike would affect the industry too much. But it has been more damaging than it seemed, by achieving its goals… the strike pushed forward the then-still-percolating reality of a media landscape that becomes less and less limited by traditional delivery schedules and means each month. The cost to the studios will be more subtle than media tends to measure, as the most successful shows will pay the price more than the failures… or how do you get people excited about Grey’s Anatomy when they left off with the show in a sophomore slump?
In any case, with opportunities dropping away in an already problematic market for actors, going on strike seems nothing but self-destructive. If I were strategizing with SAG, I

BYOB – Weekend

Not the first or last entry of the day… but someplace for y’all to purge before rushing to the cinema to experience Kung Fu Zohan…

48 Hr Diaries – Pt 3

We’re up to the third week of Larry Gross’ 48 Hr Diaries… here’s a conversation between Gross and Walter Hill…
“What you and your pathetic European intellectual friends who make films don’t realize,” he was saying today, “is that you have to put motion into these movies.”
“These Europeans you disdain, or who you, in fact, are only pretending to disdain for the purposes of this conversation, know this,” I reply. “There’s tons of motion in the frame in say, an Antonioni movies.”
“Antonioni makes dull movies.”
“Not his good ones” I respond.
“I do remember being impressed with the soundtrack on that one where they went to the island. That one shot I remember of the helicopter landing, he made that sound just awesome.”
“Antonioni