The Hot Blog Archive for June, 2010
Trailer – The Green Hornet
That’s a well-cut trailer.
Who knows whether Sally Menke actually did save the fat from the fire?
But… they did find a simple, clear story to sell. Seth Rogan is a fuck-up son of a great rich guy who is The Green Hornet by night. Manservant Kato was an equal to the father… and the guy who keeps the son from getting killed/humiliated. Very Bullwinkle.
It doesn’t look like they made very good use of Christoph Waltz. But lots of stuff blows up… in 3D!!!
This trailer doesn’t sell me that it will be good… but it doesn’t make me think it is sure to be crap either. I wish I could be more hopeful…
Cohen & Mischer Next Up For Oscar
From Condon to Shankman to Cohen, the parade of gay producers living the Oscar dream continues with this afternoon’s announcement that Bruce Cohen (the one with the curly blond hair) will front The Oscars after years of hoping to nab the gig.
If you are wondering why The Academy is trying for a second time in a row – in spite of general dislike of last year’s show – to team a talented, young-ish, gay producer with an older, straight, not-in-any-way-related veteran, the answer is clearly Don Mischer.
29 Emmy nominations… 13 wins… a true legend. And he’s never directed or produced The Oscars. He’s done The Tonys. He’s done the Super Bowl. Remember the moment when Michael Jackson became a brother-less superstar on the Motown 25th Anniversary? Don Mischer calling shots.
I loved what Bill Condon and Larry Mark did. I was disappointed by Shankman and Bill Mechanic’s show. But one thing is for sure… The Academy landed a true TV special superstar this time.
Cohen will bring an enormous amount of energy to the table. But Mischer… great call.
DP/30 Emmy Watch: Jared Harris, actor, Mad Men
BYOB Tuesday 62210
I actually have to check what day of the week it is when I post these now…
79 Comments »Stupid Me
So…
On April 1, there was an Oscilliscope press release about the re-release of Woody Allen’s Bananas… kinda.
Was it an April Fool’s Day stunt? A funny announcement?
A couple of days later, this landed:
We, the staff at Oscilloscope would like to formally apologize to the
board of trustees for unintentionally sending out a working draft of a
press release of the acquisition of Woody Allen’s Bananas. We are
taking great strides to rectify the situation and ensure that it does
not happen again in the future.
Rest assured that the person responsible for this will be punished.
Bruce Farnsworth, Head of H.E.O.S.O.C. Committee
Well, as LAFF came into view here in LA, there were more announcements: CONTROVERSIAL FILM
OSCILLOSCOPE ACQUIRES RIGHTS TO RICHARD SHEPARD
I’ve moved the actual press release to our Press Release blog, but I didn’t want to disappear Stella Boy’s comment….
4 Comments »The Trouble With Catching Lightning In A Second Bottle
David Carr takes on Larry King’s exit from CNN in this week’s column. And it struck me that CNN faces a similar problem to Hollywood trying to replace movie stars.
Real stars cannot be manufactured.
You can push them and push them hard. They can have some success. But talent that sustains, on the biggest or the smallest level, is a freak occurrence, not something the studios or producers can control. But you have to take some real chances in order for the freak occurrence to happen.
I had a conversation with Jared Harris the other day – DP/30 will be up this week – and we touched on the idea of Stars vs Actors. He smartly observed that a lot of it is just the happenstance of this movie or that movie turning into a big hit… or not. And things grow from there.
I always think of Sandra Bullock, who got chance after chance after chance. The casting agents in town knew she had something… and kept pushing her… and the projects kept failing. And then… Demolition Man and Speed… and all of a sudden, she has a chance to be a real movie star, depending on her choices from there. But the platform to have the chance came from many opportunities, many failures, and then, a couple of hits.
Long-form interviewing, which is what Larry King does and did on radio for decades before going on TV on CNN, is a dead form. There is plenty of radio out there, but it’s mostly people talking and not listening, not really interviewing. Terry Gross and some others at NPR. Katie Couric is now doing her version of DP/30 (though I am not claiming any connection) for CBS online.
But mostly, a dead form.
Creating stars… well, there are still the platforms being created. Every time a Zac Efron or Taylor Lautner or Josh Lucas comes along, “they” try and try hard to make them bankable stars. But it’s not the same as the past. For one thing, studios are out of control of it. The personal publicist has taken over, for better and worse. For better… stars have more direct control over their situation and work with people who hold their interests first. For worse, many personals don’t have the big picture perspective that conservative studios, who see the talent as investments, have.
The obvious case is Tom Cruise, before and after Pat Kingsley. Stars like Travolta, Murphy, Costner and others are brilliantly handled by Paul Bloch and Arnold Robinson… in that you just don’t ever see them getting slaughtered… they keep them and their stardom safe. ID/PR, amongst other interests, have a long list of young, hip, and often press-shy talent for whom they help find the balance.
Please don’t be offended if your company is not named in the graph above, but these are just a few examples to make the point. It’s a more personal situation than studio marketing, but in many ways, it is very much the same, if your client is going to be and remain a star. Whatever the truth is or is not, you have to define the story of the person and then, the publicists and agents and the talent have to serve that story.
But I digress…
CNN is left guessing, the ways studios are left guessing – and not unlike the way Disney was guessing when Gene Siskel died… though that was an even more complicated chemistry thing – about how to replace a star. Most of the rumors have been about media stars filling the slot… which is where everyone looks first… until they can’t find one that can work under the limitations or end up with Pat Sajak or Chevy Chase. Think about what Larry King does… around 200 days a year in studio. Plenty of time for a real life, but not much flexibility in terms of other career interests.
It seems to me that CNN needs someone who actually would love to have that responsibility as their life. it seems to me that CNN needs someone with a true interest in a wide range of topics. It seems to me that CNN needs someone who actually cares about listening (much as Larry seems to have checked out of listening in recent years).
It’s not completely unlike The Tonight Show situation. Conan O’Brien was championed by Lorne Michaels and a completely out of the box idea. He grew into being of real value. But what he brought to The Tonight Show was a niche, not a new voice or style, not an interest in being accessible to more people. There isn’t anything inherently wrong with that… it’s just that The Tonight Show has made a ton of money on mainstream.
If a celebrity, of whatever kind, comes into the Larry King Live slot, he or she will bring the baggage of their celebrity to the show. And the audience will adjust to fit that personality. But isn’t the point of that show to highlight the guests? Of course, the host becomes a celebrity. But you don’t tune in to watch Larry King. You tune in to the idea of the chat show… and then stay or leave depending on the guest.
And where is the next generation of broadcasters who will get out of the way of the guest?
Where are the up-n-coming stars who can keep their upskirts and fake marriage plans and arrests out of the tabloids?
And in a flash , you see why Disney is swinging so wildly at the future… because recreating the past over and over and over again seems painfully futile at times.
Armond and Toy Story 3
It’s funny. I sometimes feel Armond White really is doing a sideshow act with his contrarian opinions. But oddly, his Toy Story 3 review doesn’t bother me at all.
He doesn’t like family movies that don’t involve dark psychosis. Big Baby is the only highlight of the film for him.
Okay.
So what?
Some people don’t like ice cream. Some hate chocolate. Others think that Sarah Palin is smart, in a book learnin’ way.
I don’t think White’s take here is unclear or freakish. His need to insult everyone who does like the film is a little pathetic. But that’s really a different issue, no?
http://www.nypress.com/article-21357-bored-game.html
Weekend Estimates by Klady
For me, the lead needs to be, from Klady’s analysis, “Weekend revenues climbed 31% from both last weekend and the comparable frame in 2009.”
Irrelevant number. Just as irrelevant when it’s up 31% as when it’s down 31%. I am an equal opportunity “bullshit” caller. Ironically, this is the same problem I have with the ticket counters and the adjusted grossers… it’s not that history has no value, but when offered as some kind of strict interpretation of the broad idea of what is happening in the industry, it’s a load.
I continue to anticipate, in a few weeks, the stories – that I don’t think will happen – about how the bottom has fallen out on ticket pricing. A few idiots will likely do the story with the angle that the studios and exhibitors got scared and lowered prices, when in truth, story of ticket prices “rising” has little to do with normal tickets and everything to do with 3D and 3D IMAX pricing and what percentage of tickets sold those premium tickets represent.
Oy.
Solid number for Toy Story 3, second best opening of this summer and has a real chance to be the #1 grosser for Summer 2010, though the $310m (or so) for Iron Man 2 reminds us yet again about how powerful being first is in the summer when you have a movie that is capable of opening huge. As noted yesterday, not doing 3x Friday is not unusual for Pixar’s summer films. But 4x the opening weekend isn’t unusual either. The only mysteries are whether TS3 will be the first Pixar film to rack $340m domestic and if it can bear Nemo’s other Pixar record of $530m overseas. The film is opening in many markets internationally this weekend, but the big money markets are all waiting at least two weeks, some, like the UK, four.
I made a mistake yesterday when saying that Jonah Hex would be a worse studio opening than MacGruber. Apologies. It’s the #2 worst of the summer. That said, Universal didn’t pay for MacGruber, Relativity did. And WB only will eat half of Jonah Hex.
Why did Hex open soooo poorly? Well, the studio clearly gave up on it. Happens 2 or 3 times a year at each studio. They weren’t going to push the marketing, throwing more good money after bad. But what happens in many of these cases, as it happened here, is that it feels like the exasperation gets into the crevices of the film’s marketing plan… in this case, not even making a real choice about what the story they were going to tell the public about this movie was. Is it a straight action movie… and let’s pretend Brolin isn’t scarred up? Is it supernatural? Is it a western? Is there sex to sell with Megan Fox? There is only one thing worse than picking the “wrong” thing to sell (which you find out as the movie fails to get traction)… it’s not picking anything to sell.
If I was inclined to see Jonah Hex, for whatever reasons, I would not be able to anticipate what I might see in that theater from any combination of the trailer, the TV spots, and the clips shown on TV. It’s movie hash. And people tend to be more resistant to going to movies when they have no idea what they are getting themselves into than when they don’t quite like the idea being sold.
And I have to say, beautiful as all the materials on Inception have been so far, if WB keeps hiding the foundational idea of the movie, expect a surprisingly weak opening. If the film is great and great fun, they can make it up with legs. But with all respect to Chris Nolan, the fact that he had a mega-movie with Dark Knight doesn’t assure him more than $20 million or $30 million for this next opening weekend. You can’t just expect audiences to come see trippy, beautiful images because “The Director Of The Dark Knight” directed the film. And you don’t have to give away the twist. You just have to make it clear to audiences what kind of ride they are in for… and “trippy” isn’t an answer and “you know this guy” isn’t either. And yes, I know that virtually everyone reading this is anxious to see this movie. But we are part of that core, 75% of which were going to see this film without any marketing push at all… for Nolan.
I am amused that some would make virtually the same drop for Karate Kid and A-Team good… and then bad. Both are okay. Neither is world-beating, though Kid had a bigger problem with the Toys landing in town. One thing I imagine is true… the folks at Columbia have to be kicking themselves for their release date on Kid now. It will still be a great success, but the competition of TS3, followed by Airbender, will likely shave $30 million or more off the final domestic gross of the film.
Get Him To The Greek is running about $3 million ahead of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.
Shrek 4 took the biggest hit from Toys 3, off an estimated 65%. Ouch. And Prince of Persia had an inexplicable 19% drop. Hmmm…
Iron Man 2 doesn’t seem likely to catch its predecessor domestically, though it will get within a stone’s throw. But it’s already topped the first by over $35 million overseas.
Fox is claiming that Knight and Day drew “85% overall capacity.” I’m not sure what that really means, but it is a chance for the film to get some needed word-of-mouth for a movie that works pretty darn well. What they have to feel is a Six Days, Seven Nights opening (circa 2010… $27million?), which should be improved on by Cameron Diaz over Anne Heche, but carries the same danger of an aging (and tabloided) Tom Cruise. (For was 56… Cruise “just” 48) They are quite unlikely to do less than $150m overseas… and could a lot do more. But there is pressure all around on this one. Fox got the movie that can relaunch Cruise for another strong box office run. Will it?
A nice opening for Cyrus, though I am always fearful of 4-screen openings coming off of full-on national campaigns. What it assures is that there is a run of, probably, $6 million – $10 million in this film. Could always be more. Could always be less. The dream is that it turns into Amelie or One Hour Photo, doing more than $30 million domestic. But we are really weeks from knowing how real that could be.
Friday Estimates by Toy Klady 2
It’s hard to figure what this Friday start will mean for the Toy Story 3 3-day. Last year, Up did $20m more than 3x Friday on its wide opening weekend. Before that, most Pixar films haven’t done 3x opening Friday. So…
Either way, this is at least 30% better than any previous Pixar launch.
On the film side, Jonah Hex was relegated to hell. It looks to beat out MacGruber as the worst studio opening of the summer. I guess it’s nice to have some kind of record!
Box Office Hell Story 3
Next week, Boxoffice.com joins Box Office Hell.
This week, they project Toy Story 3 @ $120m, The Karate Kid @$30m, The A-Team @ $14m, Jonah Hex @ $9m, and Shrek Forever After @ $8.1m.
DreamWorks At Disney… One More Time
It’s always interesting to see a story I wrote six months ago come out again as new news.
But more to the point, the “new” piece is in need of some editing.
“(T)he power trio of Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg took $500 million from Paul Allen to create the entertainment company of the future.”
The trio also put in $100 million between them. And “took” is an odd word, as the process of paying back Paul Allen’s investment is one of the most significant drivers of DreamWorks’ history over the last 6 years.
“Paramount sold off the controlling interest to the library to a group led by George Soros for $900 million shortly after it purchased DreamWorks in 2005”
As it has now been explained, Soros didn’t buy the library for $900 million, but took a 51% equity position and after five years, Paramount paid him $400 million to acquire the stake, leaving him whole with some small profit and Paramount with 100% of the library as of February this year.
In other words, he floated them the $900 million against library revenues and when the revenues didn’t return his $900 million and the value of the library was set well below $900 million, Paramount made him whole. Was this the agreement in 2005? Probably. But the ever-stock-price-vigilant Viacom didn’t want to be perceived as paying $1.5 billion for DreamWorks. So they muddied the waters with a bet Soros didn’t really win on, but couldn’t lose.
“The studio has modest goals to produce about half a dozen movies a year, a few of them tentpoles, the rest of the slate filled out by genre movies.”
This is more of a clarification than a correction, but according to the principles, the studio is not planning for what would normally be called tentpoles… if you define tentoples as expensive films… say, over $100 million. If DW ever decide to do a mega-movie/tentpole, like a Transformers-type film, they will have to find a financial partner to take on a significant part of the risk. It should also be noted that the studio is not expecting to be up to six films a year until 2012, though it is possible they could rev up to that in 2011.
“Spielberg will retain a producer credit on
Ronald Neame Passes: There's Got To Be Some Mourning After
You know, passing away at 98 is not such a bad thing. But Ronald Neame left us with some great movie memories in his seriously productive years as a director, from about age 45 to a ripe old working 70.
He started out as a cinematographer and screenwriter for such notables as David Lean and Michael Powell. He was nominated for the Oscar three times in this period. Twice for writing (Lean’s Great Expectations and Brief Encounter, and a third for Effects for Powell/Pressberger’s One Of Our Aircraft Is Missing.
The first title of his as a director that I am really familiar with is 1958’s The Horse’s Mouth, which he also wrote, starring the great Alec Guinness. But it was really the run that started with Gambit in 1966 and ended with back-to-back Walter Matthau films, Hopscotch and First Monday In October in which he built a legacy as a sturdy filmmaker of quality films. Prudence & The Pill… The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie… the Albert Finney musical Scrooge (a personal favorite)…The Poseidon Adventure… The Odessa File…
He last directed 20 years ago. But a 57 year career for anyone in this business is a massive achievement.
Doubling Down w/ David & Anthony – Episode Four: June 17, 2010
This week on a doubly long Doubling Down, we discuss Toy Story 3, Jonah Hex, Megan Fox, and start discussing The Killer Inside Me in Part 1.
In Part 2, the Killer Inside Me conversation continues, then we discuss Cyrus, 8: The Mormon Proposition, and The Smurfs Movie
Short Reviews:Toy Story 3, 8: The Mormon Proposition, The Killer Inside Me,
Toy Story 3
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