DP/30 Emmywatch: The Killing, actor Michelle Forbes

A Promo Poster For Cap

Oh That Klady!

It was an ugly weekend for Studio Estimates.

Mr. Klady would like to point out that his Super 8 estimate was a million lower than Paramount’s… but not low enough.

He was also closer to reality on Hangover 2, though he was higher than the studio estimate on X-M;FC.

(chart via Box Office Mojo)

And Klady’s Estimates…

As I have always said, fudging by less than 10% on Sunday will not cause a commotion.  It’s only when the promotional release of a box office number is more than 10% too high or directly infringing on someone else’s Top 3 finish that studios start backbiting each other in the press.

Has ComicCon Jumped The Shark?

I read the New York Times today, oh boy…

I have been saying this for a couple of years. And studios responded that as much of a pain and an expense as ComicCon is for them, it still is relatively cheap in a world of TV-driven marketing.

But with the exception of Kick-Ass, which would have sold without ComicCon, but may well have gotten a better deal out of Lionsgate because of ComicCon, there is not a single film that can realistically point to its fortunes being seriously improved by ComicCon. The only remotely viable connective tissue for another film would be District 9, which launched at ComicCon, but was marketed really well by Sony and if helped, was mostly helped because it encouraged the studio to push harder.

And as the NYT piece points out, there is some danger in San Diego. You can be given the bum’s rush by the geeks… fairly or unfairly.

Of course, it speaks to the weirdness of it all that there was a lot of negativity about Avatar from the media at ComicCon… which ended up meaning nothing. Fox and Cameron took the film to the people a couple of months later in preview clips screenings and while the geek press remained cynical, the paying audience started revving the engine.

So, NYT counts WB, Disney/Marvel/DreamWorks, and The Weinsteins out for this year.

Let’s check the facts!

Warners has Contagion, A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas, and Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows in the ComicCon wheelhouse the rest of this year.

Soderbergh ain’t going to do ComicCon without a gun to his head, the original Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle launched at ComicCon and then disappointed New Line at the box office, and doing Sherlock Holmes 2 has to be 100% contingent on Robert Downey, Jr showing up… and if he was willing to go to San Diego, would it be okay with Disney/Marvel, which apparently is not going with Avengers (and may have Downey working… no idea what their schedule is).

The Need The Star problem is even bigger for WB’s 2012 movies. PJ would shoot something for The Hobbit, greeting the audience, but there is no footage going out this early, Christopher Nolan is in production and is not going or sending people. And it’s too early for anything to come in from Dark Shadows. That leaves Clash of the Titans 2.

You can’t go to San Diego with Clash of the Titans 2 and little or nothing from what may well be the biggest 1-2 punch in one year in the history of any studio (Disney’s Alice/Toy Story 3 combo is the high bar now), not to mention no Downey and no Depp/Burton. It would be a fiasco.

So Warners not going this year makes sense.

Disney/Marvel did Avengers last year. They don’t have any effects footage to show. Nothing else matters. And Captain America still won’t be in theaters and even though he will be in Avengers, this movie isn’t their distribution product.

If DreamWorks/Disney takes Fright Night down there and doesn’t show the whole movie, they will get clobbered for “hiding it.” And they can’t take Real Steel down there without a bigger chunk of footage than they floated at CinemaCon AND Hugh Jackman. And would they really get anything out of ComicCon 3 months before release?

And all Weinstein has to take, if they took something, would be Apollo 18. I wouldn’t be shocked to see a “suprrise” screening at a San Diego theater out of the convention center.

So I am not shocked by the call by any of these studios.

The piece makes Scott Pilgrim vs The World the lynchpin of “what’s wrong with ComicCon,” but doesn’t Universal going back with Cowboys & Aliens negate that?

ComicCon has always offered plenty of excitement that turned unhappy…

2006 – Snakes on a Plane
2007 – Beowulf
2008 – Star Wars: The Clone Wars
2009 – Jennifer’s Body
2010 – Machete/Scott Pilgrim/Let Me In

I’m sure someone who spends more time at ComicCon each July could make a lot longer list.

Of course, the event gets the benefit of massive marketing by studios as well. Some people are crazy enough to point to Iron Man as having had something to do with their ComicCon event 10 months earlier. Or The Dark Knight. Oy.

If the Rise of the Planet of the Apes footage is great, it will be great on the internet… and people will come. The only positive is that a month before opening, Fox can basically launch their release campaign in a room with their core audience. This makes some sense as a simple marketing play… direct mail in one room. The only risk is a universal distaste for whatever they show. Unlike Avatar, there is no time to rebound if it went that way. So Fox must be happy with the footage.

All Sony has to do – or likely will do – is to trot out Amazing Garfield, Stone, Rhys Ifans, and maybe Irrfan Khan, Sally Field, and Martin Sheen… outside shot, Dennis Leary to M.C… and show a few shots… maybe a suit… a logo… maybe a tease with a glimpse of Andrew and Emma swinging somewhere… and they are done. Home run.

And on Tintin, Paramount will test out a 3D trailer that will be released within a week of the event. (I am guessing. Haven’t asked anyone over there.) Jamie Bell and Simon Pegg show up. And they fight to get Daniel Craig to do a second panel he doesn’t want to do… and if he does, Steven comes. And if Craig won’t do it, maybe Steven doesn’t come. Or maybe he comes to fill in the flash gap. And PJ will send a tape from his set in NZ.

Like every other publicity or marketing opportunity, ComicCon is just a tool. It was probably overvalued – as in “if they are going, we have to be there too or we might miss out.” – in the last 8-10 years. It was undervalued before that. But the press’ imagination about what it was and how valuable it may have been or may be has always been skewed.

It’s really simple. How much will it cost? Is an intensive marketing event for 20,000 of your pre-sold base worth that amount? Do you have the goods to give them or are you going to get backlash?

If you have the goods and the price is right, great. If not, not.

There is one more cost that should be accounted for and is the tipping point for a lot of this… is getting your talent to do this worth what they will later turn down because you got them to do this?

As long as the event could be made to seem as it had enough juice that it could get your film to the next level, it was the Golden Globes to a lot of talent. They didn’t wanna… but they felt obliged if they wanted the big opening. Now, there is some real doubt whether this will move a marketing campaign much… so now it’s just another awards season appearance.

So if DreamWorks isn’t 100% sure that Daniel Craig will do the heavy lifting on Tintin in November/December with Dragon Tattoo also coming out that month, they may push him to do the ComicCon appearance now, taking what they can get. Conversely, if they think he can be talked into doing work for Tintin in the winter, they may pass on this event, keeping themselves in his good graces. Or some variation on those notions. It gets very political. But Universal can push Craig hard on ComicCon. that this is a part of the release strategy. Same with Fox and James Franco, where he is likely to be very wary of Oscar smack talk from the crowd. But he’ll do it because he kinda has to. But if he does get hurt by some audience smart ass, it could cost Fox some 1-on1s or some other bigger event appearance in the weeks to come.

Another Super 8 Snapshot

You make the call…

When I was thinking about how Super 8‘s opening is perceived, one element that I haven’t seen focused on finally hit me in the head. Steven Spielberg.

So I looked up the last 15 years of films he “presented,” whether as producer or exec producer. I narrowed it to summer movies. (There are 8 in the fall/holiday season, 4 of which opened in limited, and 2 of which were Best Picture nominees.) And I eliminated everything he directed himself.

Super 8 makes 10 titles. Of those 10, 3 are sequels, so regard them as you will. Of the other 7, Super 8 beat Monster House and The Mask of Zorro handily. That leaves Transformers, Deep Impact, Men in Black, and Twister all opening better, 3 of them opening 13 years ago or more. Of course, if Super 8 is as leggy as those films (3x – 4.9x opening), it will have acquitted itself quite well.

Weekend Estimates by Kl8y

I was wrong last week… X-Men FC didnt beat Super 8.

But what does this mean for Super 8? No one knows. There are some who see $200m legs… some see a struggle to get to $100m. I’m somewhere in between. $125m or so. Clearly there is an audience for this film, but I don’t see it as a love fest and I see a lot of competition coming.

X-Men: Full Frontal’s drop was not huge… or exciting. The film continues to run neck-n-neck with the first of the series.
H
The Hungover and P4 both hit $200m. Pirates will be bigger worldwide, but who’d have thought Hangover would be the bigger domestic grosser?

Midnight in Paris expanded 542% in screen count and 118% in gross. Screen count will likely start dropping next weekend, but $25m is possible.

The Weinsteins had one of the best reviewed indies of the year in Submarine… but it was soft on 17. Sadly, don’t expect them to double down.

Friday Estimates by Steven Kladyberg

Sorry about being so late today… Bar Mitzvah day.

So we will find out whether Super 8 has super legs. It’s not a terrible opening, but it’s right in the middle of the pack of the 10 wide releases so far this summer.

The X drop isn’t terribly encouraging either.

DP/30 Emmywatch: Covert Affairs, actor Piper Perabo

Golden Globes interview with Piper Perabo

Super 8 Spoiler Thread

The review thread has become a spoiler thread, so let’s move that conversation somewhere that eyes that don’t want to know won’t feel stuck.

DP/30: Page One, director Andrew Rossi, subject David Carr (June 2011)

This is the second sit down with this dynamic duo. The first was at Sundance, in January 2011.

DP/30 Emmywatch: Glee actor/Shameless writer, Mike O’Malley

BYOB 6911

Dragon Tattoo Safety Pin-Pierced Nipple One-Sheet

It’s Not Safe For Work, so I will put the poster image after the jump.

The image is beautiful, whether people are comfortable with it or not, for p.c. reasons or not. Personally, I see the image as feminist, really. The man is hiding behind the woman. And after a second of being shocked by seeing her nudity, the power in the image is in her eyes.

Fincher is not sitting back on this one.

Others have misrepresented it a bit… don’t expect to see the poster with nudity in American theaters. It’s an international poster and there isn’t even a US website for the film as of yet. THIS you may see…

You may see a clothed version of this shot, perhaps with the safety pins indicated by bumps… or maybe it will be completely different. But
THIS (after the jump) is not going to get past MPAA…
Read the full article »

DP/30: Beginners, writer/director Mike Mills

But…

As I read some reviews and box office tap dancing around Super 8, I feel that we’re in for one of those Critics Overreaching moments of the summer.

There are two elements to this. First, it’s this group of reviews that is starting to cluster around the idea that the film is flawed, that it is obviously a Spielberg brown noser of epic proportions, BUT it is somehow the stand-in for “original” or “smaller” or “challenging” films this summer.

But didn’t you just say it was The Endless Homage? Do we really believe that the film cost only $45m (and are we disregarding the fact that the studio is spending more than that on domestic marketing… or that Spielberg’s name on it means a significant percentage is coming off the top?)? And challenging? Less so than putting together a Happy Meal toy.

But the question, I thought, was, “Is it good?” And most of the positive reviews I have read have hedged like crazy on this point, then returned to some childhood reverie of what it was like to see E.T. at 6.

Then there is S.T. VanAirsdale’s rather bizarre defense of the film’s box office potential, which starts by calling people who think the potential isn’t that great as “skeptics” and makes the deadly mistake of assuming – not even bothering to question the assumption – that the film is good enough to establish long legs… much less E.T. legs.

And if it doesn’t have legs, it must be the fault of the mean, cruel box office system of 2011, not because audiences may reject the film after a decent opening weekend driven by marketing.

Oy.

“If Super 8 can manage half (E.T.’s) profile, it will be a $200 million sweetheart — not to mention the summer Oscar probable we all know it was intended to be.”

Oscar is hardly sacrosanct… but are you FUCKING KIDDING ME?

I do not deny that it is possible that some audiences will enjoy this film. It’s isn’t a Reese’s Piece shat whole by E.T.’s alien digestive tract… but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have enough entertainment value to make it worth the $10 for many. But for this film to get to $200 million domestic would require that it open to at least $75 million. Not likely. (I will be disavowing my box office chart guess on the film shortly… and significantly raising my domestic guess on Bad Teacher.)

I had hoped that Super 8 was a great, sweet, happy ride into nostalgia. But it’s a box of a dozen hot Krispy Cremes on a hot summer night with no one to share them with… tastes great at first, okay after you’re half way through, and you’ve become sugar-averse and uncomfortable by the time you’re done.

But some people LOVE sugar.

And ironically, the most passionate audience for Super 8 may be the critics who take themselves most seriously… people who spend their time telling everyone how stupid and worthless sugary movies are… until they take up the cause of an unpopular one. And then, it’s spun sugar art.

I’m not saying that it’s an offense to like or love the film. The argument about what it is doesn’t seem to be much of an argument at all. Everyone seems to agree. The question is whether audiences will want to consume this concoction once word of mouth starts in its second weekend.

Frankly, the notion that I will spend more than a second debating this with anyone this summer brings back memories of the summer of A.I.… and with it, a sad, ironic sense that our standard for what we spend our time debating has been lowered dramatically.