Press Release – Animation Goes To 5 Nominees

20 Animated Features Line Up for 2009 Oscar

BYOB Monday

It’s not that I don’t care about you… but the day got away from me… trying to work through some of the upgrade issues that some of you so desire.
Anyway… your space…

Another Exit From The Mouse House

Sadly, this will surely not be the end.
But it does seem to explain why the studio kinda laid down for the Christmas Carol disappointment spin.
Mark Zoradi was part of the old team. As great a politician as Oren Aviv is, one would have to think he is either next to go or will assume a right hand role with Rich Ross. There appears to be no middle.
By the time all the blood has dried, I expect this transition to be seen as the most extreme philosophy shift at a studio without an ownership/top leadership change in history.
At Universal, we have seen changes through all the owners that have mostly led to people in the system rising up. At Sony, there have been changes to what kinds of movies they want to make, but the general philosophy has remained the same under the entire Sony run. Fox has been stable under Murdoch, even in the transition from Mechanic to Rothman/Jim G. Paramount was too stable for its own good with Redstone’s ownership and Lansing’s leadership. And even under Brad Grey, there hasn’t been any real paradigm shifting… just the choice to build the studio, which was in a bit of a shambles, by buying DreamWorks, which was a bit short-sighted. And Warner Bros didn’t change at all on a macro level when its top managers exited and Horn & Meyer came in.
What we are seeing at Disney is pretty much a wholesale turnover in the movie business. And it’s not just the executives. It is a philosophy. Disney is becoming a service business for major production companies with significant internal funding. I expect that the only element of Disney movie production that will be left in place is some sort of Disney Channel-heavy low-budget family line about the size of Sony’s Screen Gems, likely run by someone out of the cable division. Pixar/Disney-by-Lasseter/DreamWorks/Marvel/Disney Channel and maybe one more production business seems like a full boat.
The big question will be Jerry Bruckheimer, whose Confessions Of A Shopaholic, G-Force, Prince of Persia are all problem children for the studio and who can not be f-ed with as long as he has Johnny Depp in Pirates 4 and The Lone Ranger, both of which could just go away if the game is played wrong. My guess is that Bruckheimer, who has expressed dismay over the Dick Cook exit, knows exactly what’s coming… even before the company-wide memos are forwarded to Nikki Finke. He’s like the Jack Nicholson anchor character in broadcast news… there to pat a back or too and to tell people he’s worked with for years how sad it is that times change, all the while remaining unassailably on top of the world.
There is little chance that these exits were not planned out on the day that hands were shook on the DreamWorks deal… and then delayed until DreamWorks got its money from Reliance and the Marvel deal moved forward. It’s not chaos in the executive suite. It is a full out coup… by Bob Iger.
The funny thing is, Iger is fearlessly recreating what Brad Grey had at Paramount with the major additions of Lasseter and Bruckheimer. Really.
It’s DreamWorks, but with funding. It’s animation, but with John Lasseter as a bigger player than Katzenberg. It’s Bruckheimer as their Spielberg, but with a more clear commitment to the studio than Spielberg had at Paramount (though it is also possible that Bruckheimer will go… which is why I believe that he has to know what the score is… too risky to be embarrassed by an ugly divorrce). And Marvel, which has its success for Paramount distribution with its in-house funding of Iron Man. Add to that a small family movie division that will never lose money, but could generate as much as a couple hundred million in profits in a good year.
And Rich Ross as The Ringmaster working for Iger’s Ringling.
Interesting times…

Another Critic Moves Into The Fest Game

This morning, it was announced that David Ansen, who took a buyout at Newsweek and has continued filing reviews their in anticipation of whatever would be next. found his next at the LA Film Festival. The job is Artistic Director. This is, as it turns out, not a direct refilling of Rachel Rosen’s slot, which Director of Programming. Teaming up with Ansen is Doug Jones, who has been with LAFF as Senior Programmer and now becomes Associate Director of Programming.
I don’t quite know how this will work out. Film Independent (FIND) is getting more and more top heavy in a very festival unfriendly universe. The top dog remains Dawn Hudson. Rebecca Yeldham came aboard a few months back to top the film festival. David Ansen is one of the nicest, most peaceful, intelligent guys you could ever get involved with the festival. And Doug Jones is there to help him as he learns the ropes of actually building a film festival slate.
But while Hudson and, presumably, Yeldham, continue to push the festival towards the more popular highbrow middle, whether by adding more studio movies to the schedule of what was once an independent festival or by reconceptualizing The Independent Spirit Awards as a Friday night event in downtown LA, you have to wonder how Ansen’s style fits.
I am completely open to let the organization sort itself out as it sees fit before doubting them too much. But I am not really sure that there is a clear vision, aside from gathering smart, attractive people into leadership roles.
Meanwhile, the just-ended AFI LA Festival had its first year with long-time Variety critic stalwart Bob Koheler at the center of the programming team. And we are likely to soon see Scott Foundas exit LA Weekly and Los Angeles altogether for the festival world to become second-creative-banana to Richard Pena and likely top-creative-banana when Pena retires from The New York Film Festival.
The question of how well suited quality film critics are to run festivals is an interesting one and as more of the top fests are taken over by some of the great out-of-work critics, it will become a hotter topic in our tiny community.
Congrats to David. Congrats to Doug. And let’s hope that they and Rebecca work with Dawn and the FIND board to bring something fresh and vibrant to LA, breaking through the cultural clutter.

Cieply Math

The lead is head spinning – “Can a movie studio make money on a film based on an original and unfamiliar story, with no Hollywood superstars, a vanishing DVD market and a price tag approaching $500 million?”
$500 million.
Okay, Mr, Cieply. How do you get to $500 million?
“the estimated half-billion dollars spent on its production and marketing”
Yes, we get it. Please explain. I am wiling to go there with you, but I need some numbers that fit together, please.
“Published reports have put the production budget at more than $230 million.”
Okay… hardly shocking these days. Less, in fact, than many of the rumors. It’s less than 10% more than Star Trek, Transformers 2, or Harry Potter 6.
But the price tag would be higher if the financial contribution of Mr. Cameron and others were included.
Well, that’s true of the aforementioned trio as well, all of which have some heavy backend players. On The Hangover, which is probably the #2 most profitable movie of the year-to-date, the director took 10% of the worldwide gross… which is a lot more comfortable when the movie is so (relatively) inexpensive.
“When global marketing expenses are added,

Defining Success & Failure

I was writing a response to a comment in another thread and I realized that the issue was bigger than one person’s idea of what is an accurate analysis of box office success and failure.
This is how I see it…
Expectations are a minor issue. I don’t care what the spin is. I care what is realistic based on the history of films. Obviously, there are spectacular outliers, like The Dark Knight or All About Steve. And there is the issue of budget. And there is the issue of future income streams as well.
So on a weekend in which A Christmas Carol to an estimated $30.7 million, how do you determine whether that it “disappointing” or not?
What you do not do… what you should be fired for doing… is to lead a story on the gross, “‘It just might be a little too early for the Christmas stuff,’ lamented a distribution executive at a rival studio, who had predicted a $40 million-$45 million opening for ‘Disney

The Audacity Of Change

I caught the last 20 minutes or so of By the People: The Election of Barack Obama and relived the events of a year ago, a bit.
What really hit me, at one point, was the shocking idea of John McCain and Sarah Palin being in office right now. Dear God… really scary. And incredibly scary for the Republicans. As troubled as the party is right now, completely earned, one can only imagine what Year One of McCain/Palin would have brought… and not brought.
Meanwhile, Obama continues to get slammed for not doing enough fast enough… a short-term notion his presidency that I don’t expect will be a happy place to be in the perspective of time. It’s indicative of where American culture is right now that We are – and I include Democrats – so obsessed with what hasn’t been done and so unappreciative of what has been done.
In all these years, including the Clinton era, I have never noticed how completely unconcerned the right wing media is with the best interest of the nation. This wouldn’t require being Obama sycophants or agreeing with any of Obama’s choices. It would simply require an effort to engage in real discourse about the choices and not just trying to find any excuse to kick the administration in power.
I hated the obsessive beating on George W from the left. It was always shrill and over the top, no matter how bad he was as a president. But it was never as vicious in the face of positive events as things are from the rather desperate right at this moment.
I listened to Dennis Prager – the professional Jew who only believes when it is convenient for his personal standards – mocking, “We are the change we have been waiting for.” How hateful do you have to be to intentionally misunderstand the philosophy that the individual has the power to make change? How confused do you have to be if you are Republican, a group that forever talks about not being reliant on big government and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps, and you are mocking the theme of self-empowerment?
Some other idiot was on the air mocking – for at least 15 minutes while I was in the car – Obama for getting the niceties out of the way at an event he was appearing at before speaking about the shootings last week. Seriously. That is a point of outrage? The idiot was Tim Conway, Jr. who went on to say that he really didn’t believe that Obama cares about this country. Really? I mean, I wouldn’t say that Sarah Palin doesn’t care about this country. I think she is self-serving climber who is too ignorant about the world to be trusted with a leadership role. But I do believe that she cares about the country.
Why is the idea of hope and the ambition of real change so upsetting to some people?
Electing Obama was a great moment for this country. And it is completely fair to say that the significance of this piece of history is best reflected on after Obama leaves office. While in office, forward motion is what is necessary. And in spite of all then negativity out there, I see the future coming together from this administration. I never expected the economy to become rosy in a year. The best I hoped for was for some real change in that regard at the end of two years.
Anyway… rooting for failure is pathetic. And hope can’t be the only thing you believe in if you want change. But hope is fundamental to healthy human spirit. And I am still thankful to Obama for being strong enough to keep offering hope when so many in his business are so cynical and so relentless in selling that cynicism.

Weekend Estimates by Klady – Carolling, Goating & Precious, Oh My

So A Christmas Carol becomes the second target of “it’s soft” b.s. b.o. chatter in two weeks with an opening right in range with the best Christmas film openings ever, save only The Grinch That Stole Christmas, which opened to $55m the week before Thanksgiving in 2000. The hold over the weekend was good and the minimum for the film, domestically, now looks like $120 million… it’s high about $160 million… with Avatar in the way of any real chance to become all-time #3 for the genre, beating Elf and behind The Polar Express and Grinch, as most of the the 3D screens will be gone two weekends before Christmas.
#2 at the box office, by estimate, is last weekend’s false whipping boy, This Is It, which held much stronger on Saturday than on Friday. Domestically, the film will be the #1 concert film of all-time domestically and the film already has that honor overseas, where Sony estimates this weekend to take it to $128.6m over there. That puts this “disappointment” at more than 2.5x the Miley Cyrus concert film worldwide, the previous record holder and well past Woodstock, whose numbers seem to be a bit blurry, appropriately.
No new notions on The Men Who Stare At Goats. It’s a solid opening for a Clooney film without mega-marketing or a superstar ensemble.
The hold on Paranormal Activity, at 49% this week, is impressive to me. For the film to be doing $8.4 million at this point, it needs to be drawing in people who are still curious enough to pass on the big new titles, including The Fourth Kind, which did a little better in its opening than this week of PA, but to me, PA is more impressive.
Some may see $7.7m for The Box as a disaster, but not I. Warners was fairly conservative in budgeting the marketing… which might have been a misstep. But for Richard Kelly, this is a big number… a mainstream number. And regardless of what the movie is, the broad concept of this film was, to my eye, marketable. Truth is, Warners shouldn’t be doing movies like this. It’s just not a strength.
The Precious number, per-screen, is truly unique. The comparable numbers, beyond the animated films that have been opened exclusively just before massive wide releases, are Dreamgirls and Brokeback Mountain… but those screen counts were 2 and 5, respectively. And even the animated openings were all 6 screens or less. So to do over $100k per-screen on 18 screens is a singular event.
What does it mean? Well, obviously, the heavy publicity push via Oprah and a willing media corps has reached the core audience and made this a must-go this weekend. But what is also unusual about this film is that they rolled it out so early in the season… that is, the holiday season. Both of those other giant per-screen openers opened in December and went on to get strong results over the MLK weekend holiday and then again, with Oscar noms, extending those runs. The timing of the Precious release puts a bit more pressure on the film to perform and maintain in a crowded field going into Thanksgiving.
Slumdog opened a weekend later last season – presumably, the template for Lionsgate on this – stayed under 100 screens until December, then under 1000 screens until nominations. The film did 68% of its business after those nominations. But Precious has already busted out of that paradigm, grossing more this weekend than Slumdog did in its first 14 days. So that comparison doesn’t seem likely to hold either.
Bottom Line: I don’t know. No one knows. The history of heated openings like this zig zags between box office smashes and box office not-bads, Oscar nominees and the Oscar forgotten. The good news, commercially, is that no film with a per-screen over $75k on opening weekend has grossed less than $40 million domestic.
The less thrilling news is that when you look at American Beauty, No Country For Old Men, and Dances With Wolves, the three Oscar winners with the biggest per-screens at opening, they also opened on more than 10 screens (16, 28, 14, respectively) and all opened to less than half the Precious per-screen. How can it be bad to do better than those films, you ask, especially when No Country and Wolves both opened in early November? Well, the answer is that this kind of overwhelming launch can suggest a well-sold, hard core of interest, but not necessarily the kind of wide popularity that wins Oscars.
But again… I don’t know. These numbers are singular and only time will turn speculation into even a well-educated guess.

SNL Does Twilight

Klady's Friday Estimates – Scrooged

Elf opened on November 7, 2003 to $8.96m and grossed $31.3m for the 3-day… and $173 million for the run. Does this mean that Disney’s A Christmas Carol will match that remarkable run? No. But we don’t really know. $150 million domestic off of this opening would not be surprising. Anything less than $110m domestic would be surprising.
Precious is going “exclusive” wider than Brokeback Mountain, but the results for the weekend are quite similar. BM did $38,309 on each of 5 screens on its first day. According to Klady, Precious is looking at $32,222 on each of 18. Given the wider berth, the Precious number is slightly more impressive to me. It is also opening a month earlier than BM, which is an interesting strategy, given that Brokeback waited all the way until nominations to go as wide as 1000 screens. It’s hard to imagine Lionsgate waiting so long.
Anyone who is surprised by the number on The Men Who Stare At Goats just isn’t looking at Clooney history. Aside from the Oceans movies and a slight uptick on the Pitt-led Burn After Reading, this is actually his best opening since The Perfect Storm in Summer 2000. It’s right where Leatherheads ($4.6m opening Friday) and Intolerable Cruelty ($4.1m opening Friday) opened.
This Is It is slowing, but it is still surprisingly strong and with the extension is not a bad bet to pass the Hannah/Miley Best of Both Worlds Concert’s domestic record of $65.3m after it is will end this weekend in the mid-50s.
(Edit, 2:47p – for Elf year error)

BYOB Friday

There is a certain joy in a week like this. Mortensen, Herzog, Harrelson, Ben Foster, Amy Gilliam, and Eva Mendes were just some of the very talented group I got to spend time with and chat.
The only problem with that is, I don’t get to spend much time doing the blog.
My apologies.
And now, you’ll have to excuse me again as I head off to speak to a first time filmmaker, a veteran documentarian, and Ms. Michelle Monaghan. And there’s more tomorrow, including a living legend. Yay.
I will be around more over the weekend.

Review-ish – Precious

I really had no intention of returning to Precious in a review of any kind. I saw the film for the first time since Sundance recently and did a couple of interviews with the film