The Hot Blog Archive for November, 2010

Weekend Magic Estimates by Klady

No real surprises on Potter. The same question I posed yesterday will linger as we go through the next few weeks… how much of the domestic audience showed up for the opening 24 hours and will the domestic total be in significant way larger than the rest of the series?

It’d actually a shame that C. Nikki Finke disappears her earlier content, even if incorrect, because as the unfiltered mouthpiece for many studios, she tells us all what they really were thinking, in this case on Friday afternoon. I don’t mind Nikki’s spin today that this is what WB was after because, in a sane world, it is. These numbers are right on target and probably a little more frontloaded than in past, as happens with most franchises these days. It may end up being the biggest Potter and then topped by the final finale, but low-mid 300s and possibly breaking the tape on $1 billion worldwide is not out of line with the rest of the franchise, one of the greatest of all time without having to see a $145m opening, for instance.

And I am impressed with Fandango’s press release that they sold 17% or about $21 million worth of tickets to Potter this weekend. We forget when talking about the 3D bump that a significant percentage of people are willing to pay a pre-sale bump of 10% or more.

The drops, as expected, flattened out as Potter did over the weekend, still carrying what I guesstimate to be an extra 5% or more from the Friday onslaught, meaning I think that #2, #3, and #4 would have all dropped nicely in the 30s if it weren’t for the elephant in the room on Friday.

The Next Three Days would still probably have come up short of $10m with the campaign it had and without Mr Potter it its way. LGF was probably after counterprogramming, but adults had little interest in going to the theaters with hordes of Potterites on Friday and were likely wary on Saturday too.

127 Hours‘ expansion was good, but not as good as the movie. And Made in Dagenham showed some potential with a nice 3 screen weekend.

28 Comments »

Friday Estimates by Harry Klady

So Klady is $600,000 lower than most estimates. It’s a bit more interesting that WB told Nikki to estimate $4 million over what everyone else has this morning. No doubt that number will disappear. But it speaks to the odd nature of numbers like these. Massive MIdnights, mega-Friday… but still, 8% less than the studio thought at 9p last night. This, Harry Potter’s best launch, may lead to his best gross… or maybe it’s just all the more frontloaded. No way to know until we get down the road a bit. Regardless, another giant Potter, even without 3D. Good for WB.

The Potter Effect is pretty clear on the chart. When 48% is your strong hold for the wide releases on your Top Ten, you can’t really put that on the movies. Actually, I would say that the Unstoppable hold is quite strong in the face of Potter, but it will be clearer as the weekend progresses. The film faces new films between now and Tron Legacy, but every one of them skews either young, or more so, female, unless The Tourist turns out to be tougher than it looks from here. So they could play strong into mid-December.

Megamind hist $100m today. It’s DWA’s 9th such film with Paramount, where they have never missed the $100m domestic mark together. The animation side of DW had 4 $100m domestic hits before Paramount… and 5 under $100m. You has to give Paramount a lot of credit for the growth of DWA, though Katzenberg has also, clearly, found a template that works, even if they are still not doing PIxar numbers. Given all the excellent marketers around town who have not proven that they can be as consistently successful in animation as the DWA/Paramount combo, one wonders whether leaving is in DWA’s best interest, whatever the feelings between the two management teams.

The Next Three Days smelled of flop in the marketing, or lack thereof. And so it came to pass.

73 Comments »

Evolution Of A Black Swan


And the good news for some of you… the opening on Dec 3 is now expanding to 8 cities instead of just NY and LA… Boston (Boston Commons, Kendall Square), Chicago (River East, Century Centre, Evanston), San Francisco (Metreon, Kabuki), Washington DC (Bethesda, E Street, Georgetown), Dallas/Ft Worth (Magnolia, Angelika, Plano), and Toronto (Varsity)

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I Kinda Love This Promo (Even If I Don’t Get EPIX)

EPIX invites you to celebrate the Festival of Lights with Woody Allen!

EPIX honors the holiday of Hanukkah with eight nights of Woody Allen films.

HD re-mastered double features of Woody Allen’s most celebrated titles will air from December 1-8 beginning at 8:00pm.

It’s 8 nights of stars. 8 nights of drama. And 8 nights of sophomoric sex jokes.

December 1: Interiors and September

December 2: Zelig and Stardust Memories

December 3: Manhattan and Bananas

December 4: Crimes and Misdemeanors and Shadows and Fog

December 5: Hannah and her Sisters and Alice

December 6: The Purple Rose of Cairo and Another Woman

December 7: Manhattan and A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy

December 8: Hannah and her Sisters and Radio Days


Get comfy on the couch while you enjoy some latkes, and celebrate the “Oy” of the Season

on EPIX with the always masterful Woody Allen.

Tis the season to EPIX!

3 Comments »

Excellent Choice

Liam Neeson is tall and stoic, but Daniel Day-Lewis offers the possibility of a Lincoln of real complexity, above and beyond the screenplay and direction. I can’t think of an actor of his stature who I would be more excited to see in this role.

You?

12 Comments »

“Jesus is BACK… and coming to a theater near you!”

That was the very strong impression I go when I started seeing Fox’s outdoor for The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The second Naria movie dropped by more than half in the US and about 40% internationally. And many observers felt that the cause was the absence of Aslan, aka The Jesus Figure, in the film… that the first film found a very significant Christian audience – some of the same families that Passion of the Christ brought out and who don’t necessarily buy many movie tickets aside from events like these – and that the more teen-boy-action-hero focused second film didn’t draw that audience to the box office.

And so, without a word, who is front and center this time out? Aslan and his long flowing locks.

12 Comments »

DP/30 Sneak Peek: Darren Aronofsky on The Wolverine

Next week, the full-length Aronofsky and Portman Black Swan DP/30s. But with the official announcement of the deal for Darren’s next movie, here’s this clip from the chat…

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Hollywood Reporter On Chasen

10:50p – Corrected to reflect the Hollywood Reporter’s sourcing.

I just want to say… I don’t even mind that The Hollywood Reporter is covering the Ronni Chasen murder. They didn’t pay someone to TMZ them information from inside the Beverly Hills Police Department. They spoke to a Beverly Hills city official who, inappropriately, told the paper what he took away from his or her briefing on the matter.

But is that better or worse? They took second hand information that was, with the exception of one or two minor facts (thank GOD we dragged Buddy Hackett into it!), the entire story was conjecture… which is admitted throughout the story. So why run the story?

“The Hollywood Reporter has learned that police have video of a car pulling up to Ronni Chasen’s car and firing into it on the street.” That is the only real news here… though this story is not 100% clear on whether THR things that is a fully realized fact.

So why run the story?

The audience that really cares about this story are people who knew Ronni… and it is seriously irresponsible to take one tiny piece of information (the the gunfire came from another car that pulled up next to Ronni’s car) and a working theory (that this was planned) and to spin it into a headline much more salacious than the facts.

“Ronni Chasen Killing Planned” suggests some kind of direct intent to kill Ronni Chasen and not someone who was in the wrong car or in the wrong place at the wrong moment. It suggests more than a theory. Maybe this will turn out to be a planned killing, though few people seem to believe there is a candidate out there who would want Ronni dead. But right now, the theory, as reported, does not connect Ronni and the shooter in any way. And the 3rd paragraph acknowledges this… which is only neccessary because the headline is so misleading.

“Organized” is a much more accurate word. Assuming this report is accurate and they saw a car pull up next to Ronni’s car and fire the shots, it is an organized shooting. But unless there is a lot more made clear on that tape than this, there is zero insight into intent so far.

It may seem like semantics and it is. The Hollywood Reporter is maximizing itself by semantically overstating the tiny bit of information they have allegedly received from a source.

This distinction matters.

24 Comments »

Shortlisted Doc DP/30s

Lucy Walker & Wasteland soon to land…


Exit Through The Gift Shop


Inside Job


Client 9


The Tillman Story

15 Weeks To Oscar: Don’t You Forget About Me

(new charts to land on Thursday afternoon)

As we get to the real fight… DVDs flying, Thanksgiving choices about which film your family wants to watch, absent contenders showing their faces… we are seeing some last minute entries in the race, like Halle Berry, who could shake up the Best Actress race with her schizophrenic, multi-racial performance in Frankie & Alice.

As Disney is out there misstepping by openly declaring their intent to push Toy Story 3 to the winner’s circle – not to mention using the trendy Nouveau-Trade least likely to ask a real question of anyone who gives them information or access to push the agenda… advertorial is fun! – we should probably remember Seabis… uh… Secretariat, which the studio has pretty much abandoned now. (Disney would be well served by no longer declaring their intent about anything. If any weakness in the new regime has been exposed more profoundly in this last year, it’s their failure to lower expectations. In the Media Mayhem of Now™, there is no more valuable strategic skill.)

That’s how it goes. Yesterday’s Important Contender is today’s “Yeah, we’re sending out the DVD and we’ll buy some ads.” But there are some very special films that are suffering this hard reality.

Read the full article »

15 Comments »

BYOB Thursday, 101811

74 Comments »

Gurus o’ Gold, 11/16/10

Here are the charts

Black Swan & True Grit move up… Supporting Actress is looking wildly overloaded… and Supporting Actor is looking a little thin, though it still looks like a battle…

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Tobe Hooper, Spielberg, Herzog, Scorsese & More… 35 Years Ago

Lost in the Garden of the World
Tony Williams – Director, Editor
Television, 1975 (Documentary)

Cannes is the town in France where Bergman meets bikinis, and the art of filmmaking meets the art of the deal. In 1975, a group of expat Kiwis managed to score interviews with some of the festival’s emerging talents, indulging their own cinematic dreams in the process. Werner Herzog waxes lyrical on the trails and scars of directing; a boyish Steven Spielberg recalls trying to get a decent shot while shooting Jaws; and Martin Scorsese and Dustin Hoffman talk a gallon. Six years later Kiwi interviewer Michael Heath’s first feature script would be invited to Cannes.




Tobe Hooper talks Texas Chainsaw Massacre




Spielberg on Jaws

Read the full article »

1 Comment »

The Hot Blog

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It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon