The Hot Blog Archive for June, 2009
When In Vegas
Maybe it was a subconcious move (not likely) but the bag that didn’t end up in the car to Vegas, I realized on my arrival, was my computer bag. So… no… not a Twitter-thon. But for the rest of the week, I will be iPhoning it in, 100%.
The worst part, for me, is that you will have to wait until the weekend to see a few new DP30s that I quite like, including a very passionate Shohreh Agdashloo on her new movie and it’s painful ties to “modern” Iran. She is a great actress and a passionate activist. Also, Soul Power’s Jeffrey Levy-Hinte and the director of the classics Diva and Betty Blue. All this weekend and early next week.
Please excuse my limiitations and, hopefully, enjoy another variation on modern media.
LexG's Latest
This one has been sitting in the inbox for too long… and I enjoyed the read, so I am going to share it as I head onto the road for a day of driving. I’m letting it loose – no editing – for your perusal. I would prefer it if y’all took it on for content rather than on any issues you may have with Lex’s boner posts.
DP
======================
MISSING BIG CITIES IN MOVIES by LexG
I recently engaged in a whirlwind attempt to belatedly school myself on the classic films of Peter Bogdanovich, the only legendary American
Crazy Nikki Has A New Gossip Daddy
It’s completely fitting that Nikki Finke lied about her absence from posting for days, claiming to be ill, and then erased the lie, and added her “sale” to an ambitious, if not yet successful web gossip conglomerate. (And oh yes, they have the mail.com url squat too.) This is Nikki’s idea of journalism. And so it goes.
What exactly did Mr. Penske buy? Well, he bought Nikki. That’s all that’s there, for better and for worse. Apparently, he has agreed to pay for a full-time east coaster – Roger Friedman? – who can suffer daily screaming that makes Harvey Weinstein look medicated and pump out – what else? – more gossip.
The hire is terrible news for the guy at Movieline, who not only will be forced to pull their punches and promote Nikki’s agenda under threat of hysteria. But given the balance of dollars on a world where Nikki doesn’t sell a lot of ads on her own, they will also be under immediate threat of losing their jobs… or worse… being the monkeys who dance at the end of Nikki’s rope if they want to keep their gigs.
The good news is for LA Weekly, where the distraction of a tabloider in their midst and the constant grind of servicing the demands of Nikki’s fragile ego is over. Obviously, they were not willing to pay what Nikki wanted. If losing her was a notable kick to VVM’s bottom line, they would have kept her.
Anyway… glad she got what she wanted… glad she’s in the appropriate kind of company now (a wannabe web “syndicate” with no tether or even a claim to anything journalistic)… glad to see VVM and its journalists clear of her… nothing much has changed… new people for Nikki to scream at… same URL… same gossip…
I only hope that the guys at Movieline will actually be given a mission statement, now that the gaping gig is filled with another site, that befits their more lofty personal skill sets.
Hey-Ooooooooo
Ed McMahon made being a sidekick into a starring gig. There has been no one to turn that trick before or after, though Andy Richter made a good run at it, more so when he was on the first years of Late Night with Conan O’Brien than now on O’Brien’s Tonight Show.
It’s sad when anyone loses their life, but I have to say, McMahon had an amazing run, doing more with less than one could ever reasonably expect. 86 years is a life. May he rest in peace.
A Christmas Carol
There was a little preview effort today for Bob Zemeckis’ Disney’s A Christmas Carol in 3D on IMAX… and all I can say is, “Wow.”
11 minutes of footage covering two scenes, a clip reel, and the trailer that will land on July 1.
Carrey, playing four roles and Gary Oldman playing three, dominate the action we saw… with a little Colin Furth thrown in.
The faces still look animated, not too far from Beowulf. But the detail work is often breathtaking, from hairs on the nose to the bony fingers of Scrooge. And the huge advantage for Zemeckis here is that he has a nearly foolproof story to work with. The film looks dark and tough and thrilling, likely to become The version of the film that a generation (or more) thinks of when they think of this story.
I still make sure to DVR Scrooge with Albert Finney every year. But ironically, this Disney version looks to be the scariest version yet, not unlike the creepy Alice in Wonderland that the recently Burton pictures suggest.
MB3
Just to be crystal clear… theories about Moneyball abound… they are, aside from the studio position, well represented by the trades and elsewhere, just theories.
That said, those who cannot be quoted at places that can not br quoted want you to know that “It’s Brad’s fault” or “Brad is backdoorong Steven” is NOT true.
I believe that I have been clear that I believed that to be true from the start.
No doubt, there is more to come…
But right now, I am heading into a screening that can’t be discussed… until others snap the embargo in… counting down… t minus 3 hours…
More Moneyball…
As alluded to, but perhaps not with direct intent, the new spin out of the Sony camp on Moneyball is that Brad Pitt disliked the new script as much as Amy Pascal and that he is the one who secretly sunk the ship, though he didn’t want to be seen as doing it.
This is, actually, a more plausible bit of spin than the previous efforts. But one still has to wonder, what is the real truth? Is Amy Pascal willing to eat millions now because Pitt has privately committed to moving forward with another director? Would she be willing to eat millions to be Pitt’s beard on this one?
The connection being made to State of Play logically fits Pascal’s wish… that someone will take it off her hands and make the movie, so she is in the clear in every way. No risk.
Also, all the chatter about all the things that are wrong about the film… all were in the script delivered long before last week. This doesn’t mean that expectations of ‘fixes” were not in play, but the “the entire idea is a problem” means the movie should never have been greenlit in your opinion, but really doesn’t speak to what happened in recent days.
Keep That Head Buried, Folks
Ad Age’s Simon Dumenco on the dark truth about HuffPo’s journalistic intent, another source of the infection that threatens to shred journalism while distracting the crowd by occasionally breaking news or having something real to say…
What it comes down to is this: What is the Huffington Post, really? It likes to pretend that it’s a respectable voice in the mediasphere, but it shamelessly pumps up its traffic by being just as trashy as, say, Maxim. It also likes to masquerade as a forward-thinking, paradigm-shifting journalistic institution, but it pays only a handful of actual journalists, and its idea of “journalism” is often downright parasitic of the work of real journalistic institutions.
And it gets worse: On the day, last week, that a Norwegian journalist interviewed me about why Arianna Huffington is so controversial, the most popular story on HuffPo was “Heather Graham: Tantric Sex ‘Works For Me.'” I decided to do some math so I could explain to this journalist why HuffPo’s brand of blogging and “aggregating” is so often problematic. By HuffPo’s own tally, more than a quarter million readers viewed the Heather Graham post, which quoted 13 sentences, totaling 142 words, from Britain’s Daily Mail — a paper that (stupidly, naively, I suppose) pays its entertainment reporters. HuffPo’s contribution to the, uh, discourse? Just 58 words of its own — which simply set up the Daily Mail’s interview with Graham and further summarized the article.
===============
There is more and you should read it all. My apologies for grabbing so much of this article, but I want you all to see it and think about it… and note, I have not generated a single additional pageview in the process.
The serious objection to how HuffPo and others do business is not that they aggregate, but that they steal the content, make it a page view for them, and deny the source any value at all. The spin that it is all about aggregation and not about the outright theft of page views is cover for that simple truth.
Also, for clarity’s sake, there is this article from paidcontent.org that interviews the company’s new CEO: “Hippeau stressed:
What Is Really The Story On Moneyball?
I don’t have an answer. But I am 98% sure that the simplified line being floated out there that Amy Pascal was either asserting herself or just couldn’t find it in her heart to back the script changes is not the full story.
Financially, Pitt’s success in foreign countries is undeniable… and in Moneyball, he would be playing a major charismatic, chiseled, former athlete. Looking at a $58 million budget for this film, take this into account: Since 1994 – fifteen years – Brad Pitt has been in One movie that didn’t gross $50 million internationally. ONE. He has been in Two movies that grossed less than $100 million worldwide. TWO. And one of them was Snatch, made for under $15 million, grossing $84 million worldwide, a profit before DVD of at least $15 million, probably more.
This leaves ONE financial argument against betting with Pitt… The Assassination of Jesse James, which WB sat on for a year before dumping it domestically, and not releasing it foreign until after the US flop had registered against it, tainting the film everywhere it went.
Add this to the equation… Pitt’s last nine films, starting with Ocean’s Eleven at the end of 2001, have all grossed OVER $100 million in foreign markets alone… with the one exception of Jesse James. And it’s not just Ocean’s movies… it’s Babel ($101m), it’s Burn After Reading ($101m), and its The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ($205m). Pitt hasn’t made a single movie that hasn’t done 150% of domestic since The Mexican in 2001.
You have to work long and hard to convince yourself that Brad Pitt playing a charismatic in a $60 million modern era, film is a bad risk. Meet Joe Black was a 3 hour long disaster with Pitt playing a zombie through most of the film and it did $143 million worldwide in 1998 box office dollars… which is the low end of the modern Pitt box office curve.
Thing is… this is, indeed, happening all over town lately. We’re not talking about overinflated comedies from solid box office players who want to time warp or Hawaii themselves into spending more than $100 million… or even $80 million on backlot set comedies. $60 million… Brad Pitt… unusual… but no more so than Burn After Reading ($161m ww).
Add this… Sony eats $15 million to $20 million on the movie if they shut it down. It will never come back to life, most likely, but if it does, not a dollar they spent aside from the book buy will go towards the film itself. If the film did just $160m worldwide, that’s $88 million in rentals against $58m in production and, say, $80 million in marketing. A $50 million shortfall that should more than be made up by DVD and other post-theatricals. But it’s really a $30 million shortfall from where they are today, so the choice to put the movie into “limited turnaround” is a choice to lose money on a project that is all but guaranteed to make money at this budget price.
Using the $20 million already laid out, how low would the worldwide box office have to be for this movie to lose a dollar for the studio? Estimate: about $120 million. $66m bo rentals, $35m post-theatrical, $20m against the film = $121m – $58m production – $63m marketing.
And note again, only 3 times in the last 15 years has a Brad Pitt film failed to top $130m worldwide. One, Snatch, made money. Fight Club, which did only $100 million in 1999, cost slightly more than Moneyball, though marketing was tens of millions lower on average in those days, but probably still lost a little money… not $20 million. The third was the infamous Jesse James.
The Devil’s Frickin’ Own did $140 million ww in 1997 with the most negative wave of media you can imagine!
But again… stupid choices are being made all over town, as they always have. But it is hyper-intense at the moment because studios are cash-strapped, credit-strapped, and under enormous pressure from the parent companies.
What’s the real story at Sony? They made The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 for $100 million. I like the movie (not everyone did) and it may catch up with its cost overseas, but it has a looong way to go. And this weekend, the $60 million Year One, signaled a domestic gross of less than $60 million and a foreign gross of $40 million or less.
So you tell me… is Amy Pascal being a hero and battening down the hatches against out-of-control superstar salaries or is she feeling the heat (Paul Blart seems like decades ago already) and wildly overreacting to a draft she doesn’t like as much as the last one, throwing away a smartly priced movie with one of the planet’s five biggest movie stars?
The irony is that Soderberg & Zaillian have not crafted what they see as “a baseball movie.” Soderbergh’s position on this film is not one like The Good German, a black and white dramatic experiment with another Ocean’s an easy next step for the studio. He said to me, “Moneyball has to work. This one has to work.” What was the context? That this was the opportunity to make a very successful film that would allow him to keep doing his smaller films for a few years until he needed to feed the commercial beast again.
The great lie of Hollywood, at the moment, is that actions are being taken for the best of the studio. The truths are “we can’t afford it,” “our egos won’t allow it,” “we f-ed up the last one and we don’t know if we can really make the next one work,” and “fire him, not me.” And as a result, an entire wave of really interesting, modestly budgeted movies are being dumped while over-budgeted car wrecks are being green lit because they fit the perceived idea of what has been successful.
Do you know that Spanglish made less than Little Nicky worldwide… the biggest fiscal loser of Adam Sandler’s career? Do you know that Jim Brooks is still casting up his next film at Sony?
Now don’t get me wrong… I don’t think Jim Brooks should be kicked out of show business because he made one massive stinker that couldn’t capitalize on a major movie star after so many wonderful and successful films. But if you want to throw stones at Soderbergh for making smaller films, look at the bottom line. Che’ made good money for IFC (and should have made more) and The Girlfriend Experience will make money for Magnolia.
I can’t get into the details of some of the other projects that are being kicked all over town by paranoid execs who either have to pretend they have the money to proceed but just don’t want to or who are so scared of their own shadows that if there isn’t an animated vehicle or guy with a mask in it, they don’t want to know. But those films will soon be The Story of this industry. That is the next wave. “They” haven’t stopped making movies or started making better decisions… they have just returned to their holes in the trees to try to protect the nuts they have and not get eaten by the bear waiting for them outside.
The wet, drooly dream is that somehow, the financial setbacks will lead to more creativity. In this example, as with many others right now, the truth is the opposite.
There are plenty of situations in which saying, “No” to Brad Pitt would be smart and/or perhaps heroic. This is not that moment.
Weekend Estimates by Klady – 6/21/09
Pelham’s drop was not happy, though the opening was not out of line with either star’s history. And if it lands in the 70s, as it may, it will pretty much be in line with the two stars’ normal numbers. The certainly weren’t looking for Ladder 49, but…
Not only is this opening for Sandra Bullock double her best prior ever, but it looks like the film will be the fourth $100 million movie in her career. And it will put Anne Fletcher right in line with Adam Shankman and Shawn Levy as top comedy directors outside of the Stiller/Apatow/Sandler boy crews… whether you like it or not.
Year One is on the low end of the Apatow scale. If it gets to $60 million against a cost of $60m to produce (I am just trusting the studio-believing BO Mojo on this one… no insight of my own), they will lose some money on this one, given that Jack Black as Jack Black does not do foreign box office. As a Panda, yes. As a wild man, no. It will be a modest loss, but a loss nonetheless.
This is the first attempt to build out a Woody Allen movie from this few screens in 20 years. It’s okay. But it isn’t a big win until they can convert strong, nit not blow out numbers in NY and LA into a national release. My guess is that Sony Classics has invested less in this one so far than the cost of a month’s rent in their offices and will be perfectly fine just taking in DVD receipts. But they were probably hoping for better as well.
Friday Estimates by Klady – 6/20
The Proposal will be about twice as big an opening as any Sandra Bullock movie ever. It’s funny to me, since I feel like it’s another success for WB, since it smells of that studio’s product. But it’s not. Disney… where they seem to be on a mission to get into the chick flick business… not so successfully with Shopaholic, but much more so here and Last Song and When In Rome coming next year.
The dirty little secret of this movie is that it’s pretty good. Casting matters and both Bullock and Reynolds are top of their field in this genre and Betty White is turning out to be this summer’s Chris Walken.
Year One is pretty much your Jack Black/mid-range Apatow opening. Sony found that core. Now it will be up to the movie to build or bail.
The Hangover actually does look to have a real shot at $200 million now. Wow. And there isn’t anything coming up to fill the gotta-see void until Bruno lands in a few weeks.
Up continues strong and will become the summer’s highest domestic grosser just about in time to be swamped by Transformers 2. The film seems to be destined to fall into that Pixar sweet spot between $245m and $260m domestic with the target of #2 all-time Pixar film The Incredibles at $261.4m domestic.
Paramount Adds…
A couple of additional thoughts on the Paramount shift…
1. I forgot to mention that 2010 projects out to be the third summer that promises big grosses and little profit for the studio with Marvel’s Iron Man 2 as the big play. Could M:I4 be willed into a July slot? Not with Cruise needing the hit.
2. Peter Chernin. It would mean clearing the decks and probably reconnecting Viacom’s 2 sides. But if Redstone gave him the reins with potential to own 20% or more of the company, Wall Street would mess itself with love. And with absolute control, he mght actually do it.
3. Every story I have read on the transition has an unnamed source talking about “not enough films.” But again, I ask… when in the Grey Era at Par have there ever been enough pictures being made by the studio?
2006 – 9 films
2007 – 7 films
2008 – 6 films
2009 – 5 films
2010 – 2 films on the release schedule so far
2006 – DW, 5 – DWA, 2
2007 – DW, 7 – DWA, 2
2008 – DW, 4 – DWA, 3
2009 – DW,7 – DWA,1
2010 – DW, 0 – DWA, 3
Brad Grey has made fewer films in-house every single year he’s been in charge. (I’m not counting 2005 against him.)
4. Of course, Vantage staff is out. They have continued to be dumped, unreported on, since the big announcement. The same has been true of New Line staff at WB.
5. Didn’t anyone else notice that the story was placed on Finke after the closing bell in New York?
