The Hot Blog Archive for May, 2010
The Unspoken Story From The Networks…
In a story on network advertising spending, which included details of NBC’s new line-up without mention of why NBC announced it officially prematurely on Sunday afternoon, the New York Times’ Bill Carter and Brian Stetler confirmed the fears of many of the SAG members who didn’t want to settle the strike…
(V)iewers, however, who will see more new shows in general as the networks reduce the in-season repeats that now carry almost no value.
How Does This Internet Thing Work?
I missed it in the NYT Magazine last weekend, but Andrew Rice wrote a story about the financial nature on the online beast that was about the best single piece I have ever read on the subject.
Sure, he may have let a few people get away with some spin, but overall, he completely gets the joke.
One quote in the piece, from Henry Blodget (whose names sounds made up as a web pun of some kind) sticks with me:
The Next Desperate Step
The trades are pretty much over.
There is still a market for trade news, but it’s small and it has become a fast and furious fight to be “first,” regardless of how that goal is achieved. And the trades now have chosen to fight on that formerly unthinkable level.
Peter Bart wrote a column about it last week and he was right to say that the internet has forced Traditional Media and its reporters into a wake-up call they never wanted or asked for. But like so many, in making this call – as he had made the call to treat the web like a disabled child to be hidden in the basement for the last decade – he didn’t bother to calculate the cost.
So shouldn’t it be a surprise to anyone that The Hollywood Reporter’s James Hibberd ran, as an EXCLUSIVE, NBC’s fall schedule some hours before its intended announcement – they released it officially later in the day – by way of wandering into a hotel ballroom and “reporting” the details available in the tech run-through of the presentation.
It’s certainly not reporting, this scoop. But is having unnamed agents and publicists plant stories all day long reporting either? Is one actually less honorable than the other?
Like so many things, who cares? Right? It’s a network TV schedule. Sure, someone might get a nasty surprise a little early… some deal might not be closed and get reconsidered by premature public exposure… but really, does it matter?
Does anything matter?
Are we just settled into the “if you can get to it, you can publish it” mindset… no standards, no honor, no common bond except for the lowest common denominator? Is that journalism 2010?
To Catch A Predator leading every newscast… but since we’re a little bored, let’s hire some 18-year-old hookers to play the underage girls and let them actually commit the sex act before Brian Williams walks in. Why not? The excuses from the guys would be HILARIOUS!
I feel like a Luddite sometimes. I actually still believe in the rules and the honorable pursuit of the truth. And I am forced to wonder, more and more, from the journalists’ side and from the industry that indulges the increasing ugliness of how we are all expected to do business, if I am just a fool for thinking any standard other than my own bottom line – money, fame, vanity, power – matters.
Perhaps it’s time to get into producing, where at least the sharks are honest about the intent of their bite.
(CORRECTED 1:58a – NBC apparently intended to announce this afternoon because of other scheduling issues… making the “exclusive” even shorter.)
Weekend Estimates by Klady (Actuals Will Look Different In Rear View Mirror)
A remarkable 43.7% jump from Friday to Saturday in the second weekend… without a holiday Monday in support. Wow. Very impressive. And it was when iron Man did it two years ago. So imagine my surprise when Iron Man 2 jumped 48.7% from this Friday to Saturday, according to the studio.
After a brief study of the last decade of Mays, the other films I can find that can match this feat are Spider-Man and Star Trek… neither one of which had nearly the Friday-to-Friday drop of IM2.
I guess all I am saying is, look for the “actual” to be closer to or under $50 million.
A Polanski Addition: The Media Starts To React
Let’s start again with the fact that no one in the media knows – unless Gloria Allred has a story working with someone – the full extent of Charlotte Lewis’ accusation against Roman Polanski.
But I am already smelling a tone of “another victim” changing perception for some.
All I can say is, “Disgusting.”
A (possible) second victim should not change a moral stand on the first victim. It is a poor compass for any moral judgment.
No one in the media or in the industry was more than a Google search away from Samantha Geimer’s extemporaneous testimony under oath or from knowing that Polanski was with Natassia Kinski when she was 15.
(Note: She now claims their relationship was not romantic. Here is what she told People Magazine in 1981…
Friday Estimates by Klady Man 2
As obnoxious as it is that Universal’s boss man is still trying to blame Marc Shmuger for all and any of his company’s iffy choices and overfed budgets as though American Gangster and State of Play hadn’t gone down nearly the same exact road and Ron Meyer let this get greenlit anyway (thanks, Nikki, for always being there to tell us what your keepers want us to believe), Robin Hood is not going to be a disaster… not on the Wolfman level, not on the Green Zone level, not on the State of Play level… not even on the It’s Complicated level. (Yes, of course I know that a movie that is primarily shot on a stage with a week’s location shooting in New York and another in Santa Barbara should cost $100 million-plus. Way to take a cash cow and turn it into a marginally profitable film.)
Klady’s estimate of Friday is a whopping $1.7 million off of the studio estimate being pushed out by their Brentwood flack. Expect the weekend final to be more mid-30s than 40. That said, there is still a real chance of this ending up being a $300 million-plus worldwide movie, which would get it – once all the other streams come in – a near breakeven proposition and maybe even slightly profitable for Universal, given that they get their distribution fee off the top and sucked in Ryan “How Much Can He Lose Before The Well Dries Up?” Kavanaugh to eat the losses.
It’s almost sad, but mostly it’s funny. There is one movie that went out looking for outside money late… and had Kavanaugh gotten on that train, no one would have been talking about his losses for a long time. That movie was Avatar. It’s almost like Fox knew – though if they really knew, they wouldn’t have brought in anyone else’s money – and said, “Let’s get some new fish on the hook… after this win, they won’t stop paying for junk until they have lost every dime and mortgaged their future hoping for another one like it!”
But I digress…
In the end, Robin Hood‘s P&L sheet will look a lot like Public Enemies… a very high profile narrow escape.
Iron Man 2 is off 65%, which isn’t bad. That should level off to the high 50s and a second weekend in the mid-40s will have it over $200 million in 10 days and just over $300 million in total domestically, probably short of the first film. But thanks to international markets, where sequels can be explosive even if the movies aren’t as strong at home, I still foresee IM2 in the $700 million worldwide range of the first Transformers, enjoying a similar uptick (about $125m in gross) at the worldwide box office from 1 to 2.
If I were Disney – and God knows, lately, I am definitively not – I would insist on an Iron Man 3 before taking a chance with The Avengers. Let Favreau do it… not do it… whatever. But have a meeting and agree that the IM3 budget will be $150 million with more back end. Limited P&A too… heavy emphasis on partners. And then, just squeeze that payday out of the thing before the reboot with all parties aware that they are simply playing for the easy cash. Use Downey on Avengers in 2014. Or cancel Avengers when Thor stiffs. Avengers could work or it could be Batman & Robin Redux. But let’s not pretend that there is anywhere to go with the franchise they have – other than down – and go steal some candy from some children. They know they wanna.
Letters To Juliet is Summit’s fourth widest release in company history… and will be the company’s #4 opener of all time. Dear John, which opened to at least twice as much as this one will, did 2.7x opening, so projecting that onto this one, look for a maximum $35 million domestic gross (also at #4 for Summit). The hope for this film is that it will be bigger overseas, with Vanessa Redgrave and the little-mentioned-in-the-US Franco Nero doing their best geriatric Brangelina. But Summit only has domestic.
Somehow Fox managed to even miss the Black money in the Queen Latifah franchise with Just Wright. I mean, they weren’t selling it to me. They weren’t selling it to the people who went to go see blonde-haired-blue-eyed Amanda. But even Beauty Shop and Last Holiday opened to $12 million each. This opening is by far the biggest misfire of the weekend, even if there is a lot less at risk.
More Weird Things
When you start looking around the web for Charlotte Lewis stuff, you run into the oddest things.
Please forgive the gentle vulgarity of this post, but both images are news of a kind…
First, the Playboy 3D centerfold… I have covered the key naked part with a 3D image… just for consistency. And I can confirm that the 3D works, c/o a set of red/blur glasses that came out of the Jona Bros concert Blu-ray.
And this… from the new Avatar cartoon… that also happens to be a porn parody…
A More Complicated Polanski Accusation
I feel like we are too early into the Charlotte Lewis accusation against Roman Polanski to feel certain about how significant her claims may be. In fact, from her press conference, we don’t even really know what she claims.
However…
Unlike Samantha Geimer, there is a much more complex set of issues here… one that is a lot more reflective of how Hollywood works on a regular basis.
Lewis was a 16 year old in 1983. Well, let me start there and use her imdB page to start pointing out the complexities…
Right after her DOB, a seemingly legitimate informational publication is offering her measurements.
Tasteless, but instructive.
When Charlotte Lewis became famous in 1986 for Polanski’s Pirates and Eddie Murphy’s The Golden Child, she and Kelly Preston were competing to be The Body of the moment. For a long time, Charlotte Lewis’ name on a movie meant there was going to be a nude scene from the remarkably beautiful young exotic-looking actress… just 19 when those two movies broke in 1986.
By 1993, she was appearing nude in a Playboy celebrity pictorial…
She would never appear in a studio film or wide release film of any kind again, appeared on network television only in a Seinfeld episode, and has not worked in film or tv (according to imdB) since 2003.
So the Polanski supporters will surely claim she is an out of work actress who never seemed to be able to keep her clothes on, who slept with Polanski in order to get her movie break, and is now complaining only to get some attention after being out of the business for 7 years.
Possible.
But the question that is more likely in the industry overall – not necessarily in this case – is that the ambitious girl with womanly curves from an early age was taken advantage of and once down that path, made a career based on that abuse. And of course, in so many cases, the abuse starts long before an acting career.
Was her self-image shaped by this 50-year-old man who may have taken advantage of her 16-year-old naivete, leaving her thinking that her only value was in her sexuality? Did she sleep with other directors she worked with… and if so, was it in the name of ambition or as a result of self-esteem limited to her sexuality because of an earlier incident? Does a woman, in this culture, have the right to scream “molestation” after a long career of working in the industry as an object of lust?
As you might guess, I have opinions here. You may think you know them. But I am genuinely curious about what you all think…
Review – Shrek Forever After
Shrek Forever After is, easily, the best sequel in the series.
It
DP/30 – Cannes 2010 – The Myth of the American Sleepover
The first American film invited to screen in Critics’ Week at Cannes, writer/director David Robert Mitchell’s The Myth of the American Sleepover may not be on your radar yet, unless you were at SXSW, where it premiered.
Here’s a trailer…
Here’s our conversation…
And here’s a mp3 of the interview
whatdoesitmeanwhatdoesitmeanwhatdoesitmean
It feels like the entire industry is asking this question daily… repeatedly… frustratedly… fearfully…
Does Cannes matter?
Roger Ebert got it exactly right… it matters to him. It still matters to people who want to be close to the latest in a specific realm of international film… a realm that has only rarely brought anything of weight to America in recent years, the repeated exception being filmmakers who already have a following that would bring their films to America regardless. And the irony? Many of those filmmakers were made by Cannes more than a decade ago.
Just look at Ebert’s list of filmmakers that were in Cannes in 1960: Fellini, Minneli, Bergman, Icjikawa, Antonioni, Jacques Becker, Dassin, cinematographer/director Jack Cardiff, Nicholas Ray, Bunuel.
Seriously.
And in 1960, one of their only possible roads to international prominence was through Cannes.
But here we are in 2010. And Cannes remains one of the greatest film experiences in the world from a seat in the screening room.
However… film festivals, including Cannes, Sundance, and Toronto, are faced with a growing dichotomy between glamor/commerce and art. The ability of the filmmakers, distributors, and media to convert art to more than niche interest is all but gone. So… The Today Show is live from Cannes on Wednesday morning with Russell Croww… and if there is a mention of the Palme d’Or winner on the Today Show when all is said and done, it will be a frickin’ miracle.
Maybe one or two films that do not already have US theatrical distribution going into Cannes will come out with said distribution. A few more will go with IFC or Magnolia or some other VOD/Digital Download loaded distributor with a screen in NY and maybe in LA and long shot, Chicago.
Why are exclusive conclaves like Cannes and Telluride still the best place to see films? Because they are exclusive enclaves with some great films. But what defines the “importance” of a festival is not the internal experience, but the external one. Your local festival in Small Town America can be your Cannes or Telluride. See 10 great, challenging films in 5 days and you are doing quite well. But that’s not enough for people… whether the media or the people who fund and are on boards of festivals.
Perhaps the question is not whether Cannes still matters, but whether Cannes and Sundance and Toronto and Berlin and Venice are actually good for independent film or if they create an artificial product cycle that is seriously damaging the future of the independent movement… at least here in the U.S.
Would having 10 film festivals, for instance, of similar stature, rolling out new, ambitious films, take the gambling nature of the big fests down a peg and lessen the pressure for 90% of distributorless big festival films that get lost behind the handful of films that draw festival heat?
Festivals around the world are struggling financially and artistically these days. And for the B-level of fests, one big reason is that there is no real demand for these festivals, making it harder for these films to become markets, which is how the industry tends to prioritize fests. What has sold in Tribeca, Seattle, Los Angeles, Austin, San Francisco, Toronto (Hot Docs), or Chicago lately? Not much.
In terms of the Cannes experience that Roger Ebert writes about, that commerical question really doesn’t matter. But in the real world of million dollar plus festival budgets and boards and sponsors, it really does matter.
Wouldn’t things be better if there weren’t just 2 North American market film fests and 3 European ones? Wouldn’t things be better if someone really decided to premiere their distributorless American indie somewhere other than Sundance? (Yeah… there are a few cases… but fewer than the filmmakers admit.) And wouldn’t it be nice for filmmakers who embrace the arrogance of desperation around the Palm d’Or to be able to get as excited about the NY Film Festival or Seattle or a festival that could thrive in December, when fests shut down to avoid the two month Sundance indie suction?
And what does the destabilization of the indie distribution companies mean?
Similarly, it means that the more the industry hangs onto its past – even its recent past – the more difficult getting to the future will be.
I had a conversation with a young producer the other day and her perspective was simple… just get out there, know you have all these different possibilities, and work your ass off to find a combination that can work for you. There are no set rules anymore.
Your theatrical, your DVD, your TV, your VOD, your digital download, your merchandising, etc…each one is there to be worked… each one can be a different answer each time.
A studio exec told me recently that the streaming of their studio’s movie was tied into a cable sale that was so fat that it was perfectly fine, financially, to give away the streaming. Great. But for how much longer?
Everything is perspective… both with fests and the business side. We are coming out of an era when it got a little too easy for the players, though many were still left broken on the side of the road. DVD money was insane. Studios getting into the indie game were throwing away money. If your film was In, it was ALL IN… and if out, ALL OUT. With very, very few exceptions, this is now over. But the lack of simplicity means opportunity as much as it means difficulty.
We just ahve to make choices and move forward.
Love Cannes… pay no attention to Cannes. Split those rights and find a way to make it work for growing distributors. Invest in different festivals. Get serious about self-distribution. Figure out new ways to maximize the deals that have been on the table for years, but have been shrinking.
it may seem obvious, but change is hard. And that, in the end, is all any of this really means. Enjoy being awake. We only live once… unless you’re making Bollywood movies.
