Weekend Estimates by Turkeys-R-Klady

So the story of the box office weekend is Creed… but not just because it did really well, but because box office writers are now overcompensating by overhyping the weekend. The movie is deserving, but The Perfect Guy opened to $26 million in September. Just saying.

The story of Creed will be (or won’t be) in the legs (I think it will be). #100 million is a big hit. $125 million domestic is the boundary for it being one of the year’s big overachievers. If it can get to $150 million, then Creed is a phenom, kind of like a more muscular District 9 and may well, if that is the case, get the Best Picture nomination in the way D9 did. Also, the chance of Michael B. Jordan getting a Best Actor nod would grow exponentially in that case.

Went in depth on Mockingjay yesterday. It’s fine.

I was being lenient about The Good Dinosaur yesterday. It’s not a great opening for Disney, but not ugly. For Pixar, it’s ugly. Only the original Toy Story, 20 years ago, opened worse. And even if you give the film its full 5-day opening number, it still only bests Ratatouille‘s opening 3-day. But, like The Rat Who Cooked, legs could make a weak start look a lot better. Only time will tell.

Spectre reminder… the #2 Bond all-time domestically and the #2 worldwide by more than $150m over #3 and still adding $s.

Solid expansions for both Spotlight and Brooklyn. Now the challenge is to navigate the month of December until award season creates or fails to create magic. This is where the December nomination/award period can actually have an effect on the hopefuls. These films are going to need to float through December, spending as little as possible on traditional marketing, probably not expanding further, and hoping that NY, LA, BFCA, and HFCA can lift the water line while Star Wars eats the big picture box office.

Carol and The Danish Girl are the per-screen heroes of the weekend, nearly identical with each on 4, Carol a nip better while also disadvantaged by being in its second weekend. Q&A screenings for regular audiences took place this weekend in LA, NY, and even Paris.

Here is a look at the awards hopefuls currently in theaters, arranged by total gross as of today.

The Martian – Fox – 3.3 (2,310) – 1420 – 218.6
Bridge of Spies – BV – 1.4 (2,190) – 635 – 67.6
Sicario – LGF – .16 ($1416) – 113 – $46.1
Creed – WB – 29.3 (8.610) – 3404 – 41.8
Steve Jobs – U – .05 (750) – 66 – $17.7
Spotlight – Open Road – 4.4 (4,940) – 897 – 12.3
Brooklyn – Fox Searchlight – 3.9 (4,580) – 845 – 7.3
Suffragette – Focus – .25 (1,140) – 217 – 4.1
Room – A24 – .31 (1,750) – 177 – 3.4
Trumbo – Bleecker Street – 1.5 (2,500) – 615 – 2.6
Carol – Weinstein Co. – .20 (49,500) – 4 – 0.58
The Danish Girl – Focus 18 (45,640) – 4 – 0.18

OUR OF THEATERS
Inside Out – $356m
Straight Outta Compton – $161m
Mad Max: Fury Road – $154m
Black Mass – $62.5m
Mr. Holmes – $17.7
Love & Mercy – $12.6

NOT YET OPEN
The Big Short
Concussion
The H8ful Eight
Joy
The Revenant
Youth

Friday Estimates by Still Hungry Dino Creed Klady

So, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 2 is going to be the lowest domestic grosser of the series. Get over it. It will be the eight $200 million domestic grosser of the year by Friday morning and will be the #6 movie of the year by the end of next weekend, where it will linger even though it will likely get to or very close to $300 million domestic. Boo-hoo.

Internationally, the final Hunger Games movie will likely come up short of all but the first film, though that “disappointment” will likely be about $350 million… could be more. More tears.

There will be 9 movies that gross $600 million-plus worldwide this year. THG:MP2 will be on that list. The cost of production and distribution (including marketing) will be about $250 million… maybe $275m. The rentals coming back to the distributors (across many territories) will be about $350 million. What is Jennifer Lawrence’s deal? Is she slicing $50 million of that off the top above and beyond her 8-figure salary? She should be. As I keep saying, anything less and she should be firing her agents. Still, even if she takes that money off the top, the film will be in profit from theatrical alone. And because of the nature of the franchise – which is my personal thinking on why this last one is so limited… big bar to entry for people who haven’t followed the series – the post-theatrical will be extremely strong, sold forever as a complete series, whether on DVD or by the streaming companies of the world.

Splitting the last book into two will ultimately make Lionsgate (and its partners of all territories and job titles) literally hundreds of millions more in profits than a simple third film would have. It’s not debatable.

The Good Dinosaur isn’t doing badly. But it’s a mediocre number for Disney. It’s not as small as The Peanuts Movie, but it’s not anything close to Tangled or Wreck-It Ralph, much less Frozen. The land of Lasseter is heading into the most dangerous period of his tenure. Big hits are expected. The team did a great job making Shinola out of what apparently was a big pile of mess on this film. But the Pixar sequels parade is coming and there will be fewer originals, which means those originals had better work because otherwise all there will be are sequels… and very few franchises are meant to get past #3 without box office becoming #2. There are many great minds in those buildings, here in the valley and up in Emeryville. But the expectations are of two Inside Out level films a year, not one. Heavy pressure.

Creed is the hot movie of the moment, even if the box office isn’t super hot. It will play brilliantly through December. But it’s opening is in the Tomorrowland, Taken 3, Get Hard territory, which means less than $100 million domestic total. As I say, I think this film will break through that wall and be more like a $130m – $150m domestic movie. But WB should ramp it up and go after the #1 slot next weekend, when HungerJay should fall off to about $23 million. If Creed can pull off a 10% – 15% hold, it will own the hype machine’s capacity for anything other than Star Wars in the first half of December.

The Night Before is holding well, even if the numbers aren’t overwhelming.

Expansions for Oscar hopefuls Spotlight and Brooklyn are doing well, as is the move into second run by The Martian.

And joining the awards party is The Danish Girl, which will be in the per-screen neighborhood of Carol, Sicario, and Spotlight… which is great, but not clear in terms of longterm gross prospects.

Thankful 2015: Episode 19 – The Farce Continues

2015 has been a challenging year. They all are, I guess. But this one had added stresses of my own creation. So I will be thankful to see the end of the year.

I thank God (or the deity of your choice) for the movies that reach for something. And not just for the great ones. There is often greatness in deeply flawed films that gets lost on the rush to stamp a category and a judgment on everything these days. There have been few years in which I have been as often reminded of the value of imperfection… of the beautiful limitations of a form that captures moments… aspiring, flawed, and never to be repeated. I take no joy in a film that doesn’t come together, but often revel in the moments within it that do.

I am thankful that people who I talk to every week for DP/30 and Celebrity Conversations still show up to talk to me. What I do is not the most challenging thing in the world for talent. I’m not grilling them like they are witnesses to a crime. But what I do isn’t not what they have become used to either. And the vast majority of actors, directors, writers, cinematographers… filmmakers… have been willing to engage in an open, honest way.

Thanks to the movie gods for a half-year of movies that are truly wonderful, even if few of them fit the classic award season template. Room and Spotlight and Brooklyn and Grandma and Youth and Carol and Sicario and Creed and Love & Mercy and Mr. Holmes and 99 Homes and Straight Outta Compton and Ex Machina and Time Out Of Mind and Kingsman: The Secret Service and McFarlane USA and I’m sure I am missing titles, but who the hell saw THAT coming? Who saw The Martian coming? And this doesn’t even include documentaries or animation! Amy! Fucking Amy… perhaps the most significant documentary about the arts and how we deal with artists in decades.

I am thankful for my health and the health of those I love… and those I like… and even those I don’t much care for. Now in my 50s, I am having more losses each year. I have a group of friends in their 70s and 80s and when things turn, it is painful. But when I lose a friend to cancer at 50, it is devastating… no so much because it reflects on my own mortality, but because she was just getting to the fun part of a life that has been full of challenges and joy. She created a foundation for a great future for her two kids and husband. That is all one can really ask from a life. But to not be there to see it all come together or fall apart or, most likely, both repeatedly… just sucks.

I give thanks to fellow journalists, whether they love or hate me, are honest with me or talk behind my back, whether they are straight players or thin-skinned babies. I don’t expect anyone to enjoy being criticized or challenged. But I expect pros to take criticism professionally, not personally. Not everyone signed up to be critics of the industry, but in this era of the web, we have all become exactly that, whether we are qualified or not, whether we have done our full homework or not. If we feel okay about criticizing this industry, we must be willing and able to be called out when we come up short as well. I thank those who can roll and even more, I thank those who challenge me, whether I am wrong or right about something. No one grows from complacency.

I am thankful to the entire team at Ovation TV, led by Rob Canter in my case, who have embraced what I do and worked hard to create a new platform for it. They leapt into this craziness and our first shoot was cancelled because an actor didn’t want to be on TV and the second included an interview that will never be seen, which was a first for me… on my first day with a new partner. But they have stuck with me and the show, even when the proliferation of “shooting suites” made Toronto into a mostly indie experience for the first time in my career, which was great for me, but not so great for them.

I thank Twitter for unexpected friendships and even unexpected disconnections that have come from my tweeting. There are many horrible things about Twitter, but one think I have come to love is that people show themselves, for better or worse. Twitter is, for me, a concentrated view of my worldview. It is not a complete picture. It rarely gets to be a full idea. But I am satisfied that I come across when my tweets are read in context of one another. Interestingly, Twitter has become about extended images and not about speedy commentary to me. I have learned so much about people by sticking with them over time. A part of me wishes I was not so insistent a Twitterer, but as time passes, I take comfort in aspiring to clarity. Whether I fail or succeed is for others to determine.

I thank all the people who contributed to this last 20 years in journalism, from Cable Neuhaus at Entertainment Weekly to Scot Safon and the late great Andy Jones at roughcut.com to Laura Rooney who started Movie City News with me and to all the writers who have written for and supported the site over the last 13 years, especially Ray Pride who has been the master of MCN headlines for years now.

Thanks to Jane Fonda, Robert Redford, Ridley Scott, Harvey Keitel, Lily Tomlin, Mary Steenburgen, Sam Elliott, Norman Lloyd, Blythe Danner, Don Johnson, Scott Glenn, and John Boorman, film biz veterans who made their first appearances on DP/30 – Celeb Conversations this year and were part of my early love of film. Every one of them was a gem and a pleasure.

My family deserves thanks for putting up with me… full stop. I don’t even know who to thank for my son, Cameron, who is the bright part of every day (between being a 5-year-old pain in the butt). And my wife. She’s spent this last year chasing a dream and has not always had the luck that I have had. But it is a good dream and a generous dream and hopefully it will come to full fruition in the spring.

Endless thanks to the many behind the scenes, whose names are meant not to be spoken aloud, but who make everything possible, for me and for the talent. Their generosity towards me and my work continues to amaze at times and I can only hope that I deliver on their faith. I am sometimes a jerk in the process of getting things booked. Sometimes I am jerked around. But on the whole, this symbiotic relationship seems to work, not only in the moment, but for years to come, as these interviews continue to be a source of insight for many people, young and old.

I am thankful to Universal for picking up and making Steve Jobs, to Disney for making McFarland, USA amidst all their “tentpoles,” for A24, period… but mostly for letting Alex Garland loose, Oscar Isaac dance, and Vikander be in Ex Machina this year, to Paramount having enough time on its hands to try to mainstream Anomalisa, for WB/NL rolling the dice with MGM on Creed and not trying to turn it into something wrong, to Fox for having the most schizophrenic line-up of films in history from Fantastic Four to The Martian, auteurs and amateurs, and to Sony for moving on (it was time, hack or not).

I thank a parade of women who have helped educate me about the trouble with being a woman in Hollywood. Male that I am, I want to fix the inequity right now. I don’t want to talk it to death. But how the transition occurs is clearly as important to some as the change itself. Three films at every major directed by a women in 2016. Make it a demand. Repeat it in every corner. The industry wants to change… really does… but it doesn’t know how to change. Everyone knows there is a problem. Educate those in power about how to make it better.

I’m thankful for retro when it works… and there was a lot of 70s and 80s nostalgia this year and not too much of it did work. Mad Max: Fury Road, Creed, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, Straight Outta Compton… all winners. Lots of losers. But when it did work, it was a ton of fun. And there is anther bullet in the barrel, just a few weeks away.

I thank the guy who dragged me into shooting video. (I’d name him, but not sure he wants responsibility.) I go to this work every day that I go to this work not knowing what is coming. I know who will be sitting across from me, but I have no idea quite what way it will go. And then it happens. And I am truly alive, whether it’s going well or poorly (which has thankfully been rare). Even actors and directors who I’ve shot before… one never knows. I don’t even quite understand what I am doing at times. And that is glorious… because it is real… real in the way, I think, that so many actors explain to me is their experience in the moment on a set. I’m not a character. All I’ve got is me… only character I’ve got. And when it’s real and in the moment and true, I am blessed that it is a good thing. And when it is a bad thing, I am doubly blessed, as I get reminded that I am not just playing a parlor trick that I have learned and can repeat over and over.

And as always, I thank you for indulging me. I know that it’s not always easy. I know that I am not delivering the kind of content that some of you want in the quantity you want. I know that my current great work love is not what all of you want from me. But for all the aggravation of process, there is a lot of joy. And you bring more value, in a worldly and emotional way, to that joy. I thank you.

The Magic of Creed (non-spoiler)

Creed is a very good movie. A movie-movie.

There are lots of things one can point to in the film, from Stallone bringing back the mumble to the 3-round fight in one shot to the mature performance of Michael B. Jordan and on and on.

But what interests me is the alchemy created by co-writer/director Ryan Coogler and his co-writer Aaron Covington in blending the oh-so familiar and the new, the raw, the class movie that surprisingly supplants race as a central theme.

The original Rocky was steeped in ethnicity and race. There have been many words written about the White fantasy that is Rocky… overcoming the “uppity” Black success story. But I don’t think that this was what Stallone was after, at least consciously.

Rocky, “The Italian Stallion,” was not so much a reflection of the Italian immigrant story (told so masterfully just years before in The Godfather, Part II). Sylvester Stallone happened to be Italian. He wanted to be a movie star. And so Rocky, who could have been virtually any breed of Palooka from Palookaville, was Italian. He was trained by an Irishman. He fought, in the middle of the 35-year run of Black heavyweights dominating the championship belts, a Black man.

Yes, Stallone flipped things with the White guy trying to raise himself up against an ascendant Black man. He was seen by some as The Great White Hope. It was, in a way, an early commercial for Ronald Reagan’s successful presidential run.

But again, I would argue that the heart of the movie was about class and not about race.

Rocky did not care about his opponent’s color in the first film. Some around him did. But that was never a Rocky issue. And this this film, Adonis Creed, while fully aware of the significance of color, doesn’t seem to much care about color. In Rocky, Apollo Creed and his people were very aware of fighting a man of an “opposite” race and the value of that at the time, as is Adonis’ eventual (very White) opponent in Creed, though he couches his racism in the idea of “legitimacy,” as we have heard so often about President Obama.

Coogler and Covington find a way of creating an opponent who is an outsider, who we won’t root for, without screaming in our face. And while our leads, in both films, are steeped in their own cultures, they are utterly uninterested in the cultural subtext of their opponent. A tricky line that can’t just happen by coincidence, beautifully walked here.

Of course, Stallone went on, in Rocky III and Rocky IV, to make the series about cultural expectations, whether the “street Black guy” that Mr. T played with Apollo in Rocky’s corner or the Russian who would (30-year spoiler alert) kill Creed and have to be taken out by good old all-American Rocky Balboa. Of course, in both of these films, Balboa and Creed had become true friends, barely seeing color at all.

Rocky and Rocky II are, to me, about class (or lack thereof). And Creed is about class. Confusion about class has replaced stereotypes, as befits 2015 vs 1975. But in spirit, the same as the original. (And interestingly, I think that is what David O. Russell’s Joy is going to be able as well.)

Coogler and Covington manage to successfully play both sides of things. Adonis Creed is both from the underclass and the upper class… which ties him to living-legend-who-still-lives-in-his-old-house Rocky in a way that I don’t think Rocky is even meant to understand. Adonis is beautiful, but a bit awkward with women. Adonis is full of rage, but that tone has gotten out of his system by the end of the film’s second scene (replaced by pained resolve).

And beyond Adonis Creed himself and the dozens of specific callbacks to the Rocky films, the writers manage to make it feel of the same ilk, though through Maryse Alberti’s lens, it doesn’t look much like the original at all. It feels like an indie… or if you will, a film from the early 70s.

It’s almost as though the writers came up with an idea to flip most of what was in the original inside out… except for the emotion. And the power of that emotion reminds us that nothing else really matters.

Beyond the movie joys of the film, there is something powerful about a movie that is so unabashedly full of race and ethnicity on its face while, at the same time, it is not about those things much at all. It forces you to think, but it doesn’t lecture or berate. It is comfortable in its own skin, whether that skin is Black or White, old or young, whipsmart or a little slow. And then it just slides in next to your heart and takes you where it wants.

It feels like The Future. Or at least the future many of us pray to come to pass.

I’ve only seen the film once. I am pretty sure this feeling about Creed will deepen in the weeks to come. But for a film to feel so familiar and so surprising is a glorious thing indeed.

Weekend Estimates By Whining About A $101m Opening Klady

I saw a funny one last night in one of the trades that Lionsgate might have been better off not making Mockingjay into two movies. A head-scratching comment, since even without working the numbers, it is pretty obvious that two highly profitable movies are better than one. My assumption is that whoever floated this idea (not sure why anyone would publish it) is thinking that records and which film’s number looks best next to the others is the objective. That is how a lot of box office is analyzed these days. It’s just dumb.

The last Harry Potter movie, in 3D, was the biggest of the series by 38%. It was also the final book split in two, but let’s disregard that for the moment. If you applied this enormously unlikely leap onto the top Hunger Games movie, the fantasy solo finale could have grossed $1.2 billion. Mockingjay grossed $755m worldwide & #2 will gross, at at absolute worst, $645 million. $1.4 billion total. So with the added costs of making and distributing a second birdcall, given all the venue outside of just theatrical, the two films, at worst, are more profitable. But the reality is that Mock 2 will likely, thanks to a continuously growing international market for this series (growth every episode, unlike domestically), equal or pass Mock 1 worldwide, making the split massively profitable.

Another film that has taken a hit for not being as big as the biggest in the series ever is Spectre, which will become the #2 Bond all-time by the end of next weekend, both here and worldwide. The fantasy that Bond was now going to be a billion-every-time franchise is broken. But it’s still a cash machine.

The Peanuts Movie is just doing mediocre business. Not sure how else to say it. It’s no disaster. But…

The Night Before opened soft. Discussed yesterday in some depth. Sony’s move now.

The Secret in The Eyes ain’t no The Gift. If you want to know what happened to Julia Roberts… the answer is that she’s been in semi-retirement for a decade, since Closer, really. People don’t remember that long. She’s taken supporting roles (not equal) to Tom Hanks twice, she did the one two-hander with Clive Owen, she took a backseat to Meryl Streep even though her role was the lead in the story, she did the “evil version of my image” role, and Eat Pray Love (back in 2010, which seems forever ago). On paper, it’s 12 movies in 10 years. But it’s all been in-the-pocket or miscast. Someone like Reese Witherspoon, who also took some time off game for a while, makes a terrible movie like her mismatched road comedy last year… and still, flop or not, it feels like she is going for it. (Of course, this was on the heels of Wild, another box office miss, but man, was she going for it there!) Same with Bullock, who feels like she is in the game, even if her movies aren’t working at the box office. We just kinda lost Julia Roberts as JULIA ROBERTS.

It happened a couple weekends ago, but The Martian became the #6 film of 2015 (for the moment) and is at the top of the $200m club… since everything that else that has made over $202m domestic has made over $300 million domestic. Not really shocking. This year we will have seven films gross over $300 million domestic, which beats the all-time record by 2 or 40%. Looking at the broader picture, $100 million domestic grossers, the number of them has been between 30 and 35 most years for a while now… and should be in that pocket this year too with at least 5 and as many as 8 coming in the last 6 weeks of the year, added to the 24 we’re now at (including Peanuts).

Excluding Hunger Games, Spotlight easily had the best per-screen amongst films on more than 500 screens. Likewise, Brooklyn had the best per-screen amongst films on more than 100 screens (except THG). Trumbo is doing well with $5380 per on 47.

Legend entered the ring with a strong $20,700 per on 4. But it had its ass kicked by Carol, who did $61,530 per on the same 4 (best of the week at any weight class).

Mustang, a wonderful film that is competing for France in the Foreign Language race, also had a nice outing with $6170 on 3 screens.

Not so thrilling was By The Sea, which expanded 12.6x to 126 screens and did $180k or growth of 55%. Mrs. Jolie Pitt is, in this case, suffering the weight of her fame. She should not be discouraged from making movies. But she should make something that comes with lowered expectations as she develops. She clearly has things to say, but you don’t become a master overnight, even if you can afford A-list crews and cast.

The biggest box office story this week was Creed, which has become a favorite to be a big moneymaker now that WB has started showing it in earnest. They’ve had a very tough year over there and this feels like the updraft for which they have been praying.

Friday Estimates by Kiss The Katness Goodbye Klady

I have been doing this long enough to have had arguments about films grossing $100 million domestic and being seen as disappointments. I was relatively new in writing about box office and the veteran box office people waved off this silly notion. This weekend, I suspect we will hear rumblings about a $100 million+ opening that is, somehow, disappointing. Silly. (Amazingly, if Star Wars: The Force Awakens doubles the best opening ever in December and opens to $170 million domestic in a few weeks, that will somehow be seen—in this case, only by fools—as a disappointment.)

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, unlike the final Harry Potter, is a franchise film that will be seen almost exclusively by the series’ hardcore base. And Lionsgate seems fine with that, as the advertising makes little, if any, effort to push the “come see the climax of a series that is about xxxx” agenda. It’s much more geared to people who are already invested. And they will be fine with that. As someone who bailed after the first film—even though I am a Francis Lawrence believer—I don’t feel welcome, even though the relatively positive critical hum has me intrigued.

Still, even with the feeling that you shouldn’t be going to see this film without having seen all the previous films, this THG-MP2 is heading to just under or just over $300 million domestic and carries the hope that it, like the Twilight finale, can keep expanding overseas. $400 million international seems like a lock. $500 million would make this the #2 film of the franchise, even if it’s the softest domestically. In this case, the movie will land in China, which Twilight never did… legally.

The other openers this weekend are Sony’s The Night Before and newly-minted distributor STX’s The Secret in Their Eyes. Neither is a happy story.

There are many things about The Night Before that seem flawed, starting with the very cool, but very uninformative stained glass ad campaign. The movie is a variation on After Hours and you really don’t know that from the ads. You get the classic comedy ad pitch, obsessed with the three or four jokes that did best in test screenings. I don’t care how hard the laughs in testing… vomit jokes are not a great sales tool for a wide release movie. Ironically, it is the quality of this film that is revealed in the fact that the jokes—as seen on TV—are not as strong as the laughs that come out of story in this film. That is one of the things I really liked about this movie. It’s a journey into taking the next step in life for these three old friends. They all have ideas of what they want on this holiday and they all need adjustment… and the world is there to adjust them, with a little help from (a little too much of a spoiler).

Now, it is possible that the filmmakers were the ones who wanted to hide the salami here (the salami, for all intents & purposes being Michael Shannon and his character). You’ll likely see new ads with him and the actual premise of the film in the next couple of days. But it may be too late… depends on the specificity of the ads and the size of the buy.

As for The Secret in Their Eyes… this is a remake of the Foreign Language Oscar winner of 2009… meaning, great foundation about which no one knows or cares. Julia Roberts, who is about ready for a second act of her career to begin, hasn’t really opened a movie in at least five years. Still, you have to go back almost 20 years to a wide opening as week for a picture led by Roberts… the dreaded (career-wise) Mary Reilly.

(Corrected for mistake about this being first STX release. Apologies.)

Carol opens on four screens and will do a solid $55k per screen or so.

And now, my first look at Oscar season box office…

RELEASED WIDE
Inside Out – BV – n/a – 356
The Martian – Fox – 2086 – 210.3
Straight Outta Compton – U – n/a – 161
Mad Max: Fury Road – WB – n/a – 154

Bridge of Spies – BV – 1532 – 63.8
Black Mass – WB – 232 – 62.4
Sicario – LGF – 285 – 45.6m
Steve Jobs – U – 326 – 17.5
Grandma – SPC – n/a – $6.9

STILL NOT WIDE
Mr. Holmes – Roadside – n/a – 17.7
Love & Mercy – Roadside – n/a – 12.6
Spotlight – Open Road – 598 – 3.3
Suffragette – Focus – 396 – 3
Room – A24 – 133 – 2.5
Brooklyn – Searchlight – 111 – 1.3
Trumbo – Bleecker – 47 – est 360,000
Carol – TWC – 4 -78,491
Beasts of No Nation – Netflix – n/a – .1

NOT YET OPEN
The Big Short
Concussion
Creed
The Danish Girl
The H8ful Eight
Joy
The Revenant
Youth

Weekend Estimates by Pre-Thanksgiving Nap Klady

Friday Estimates by Bond, James Bond, Bond, James Bond

What can you say about this weekend.

Love The Coopers, miss. The 33, practically dumped. By The Sea, sunk.

Spotlight expands to 61 screens and will do a very solid $18k per or so for the weekend.

Brooklyn expands to 23 and will do about $16k per.

Did You Know: Paranormal Activity 6 will drop about 40% from Paranormal 5, which is about what 5 dropped from Paranormal 4? In other words, nothing really changed for the film at the box office because of the short VOD window… now the question will be how it does/is doing in that VOD window.

Decent holds for Spectre and The Peanuts Movie. The Martian passed $200 million domestic on Thursday and is over $450 million worldwide as well. Bridge of Spies continues to run about 15% behind The Terminal and War Horse as Spielberg movies go, but it’s doing better than Munich, which got nominated for Best Picture.

DP/30: Where To Invade Next, Michael Moore

Weekend Estimates by Ernst (& Not So Young) Klady

Interesting Spectre result this weekend. It is more like the traditional Bond-to-Bond growth we have come to expect over decades… but only if you take the surprisingly outsized numbers of Skyfall out of the equation. The Pierce Brosnan foursome of Bonds started by more than doubling the opening numbers of the previous films… then saw a significant leap in the opening number of his last film, Die Another Day. Daniel Craig’s first Bond, Casino Royale, actually was a step backwards in its opening gross… but made up for it with strong word-of-mouth and legs to match. Than a $27m opening leap… then $21 million. Of course, part of that is how movies are released these days. But Skyfall seemed a real game changer as it almost doubled (increase around 85%) any prior Bond film both in the U.S. and worldwide. Why? Who knows? The leap for Quantum of Solace made sense because of the love of Casino Royale. But Quantum was not so loved and BOOM! Skyfall was quite well liked… but now it looks like we will see the franchise go back to being major league, but not in that billion-dollar range. If I had to guess today, I’d say $700m – $800m worldwide this time… easily the biggest non-Skyfall Bond, but not close to that $1.1 billion anomaly. (Worth noting – China was only $60 million of the Skyfall international windfall.)

Fox had its second best non-DreamWorks Animation, non-Ice Age opening for an animated movie with The Peanuts Movie, topped only by the $74 million launch of The Simpsons Movie (and just 2 of the DWA releases, Home and Dragon 2). Not bad at all. But not close to Pixar or the current Disney run or Universal in the last 6 years. But everything is relative in this arena. Like Sony, Fox’s bar of success is a bit lower than the big boys of animation. Solid start. Legs will be interesting.

The Martian continues to be a killer app. The film passed the domestic total of Interstellar this weekend and seems to have a lot left in the tank. Expect the film to pass $200 million on Wednesday and likely to become the #6 grosser of the year on Thursday (if not, on Friday).

Interestingly, there is a big gap in the domestic box office this year between $202 million and $335 million. No films in between those amounts… until The Martian. All five films that opened to $90 million or better got to over $335 million. None that opened to less got higher than $202m (until TM). Also worth noting, Fifty Shades of Gray did do a big number, but it is the only film this year that opened to over $20 million domestically and failed to at least double its opening. It’s numbers overseas are what makes it a cash cow and likely to stay one for the next two outings.

Also having holds in the 20s were Goosebumps, Bridge of Spies (which has dropped gently in the 20s every week of its release), and The Intern.

In Weekend 5, Universal takes Steve Jobs down to just 421 theaters from 2493, essentially pulling it out of the market as quickly as possible, surely strategizing a compelling reintroduction of the material as we move into awards voting.

Suffragette does a decent $3500 per on 222, also biding its awards time.

A24’s Room is still on just 87 screens and manages $5610 per.

Then there are the three new exclusive players, each on 5 screens. Open Road’s Spotlight does a muscular $60k per. Searchlight’s Brooklyn does a solid $36k per. And Bleecker Street’s Trumbo enlisted $15k worth of viewers per screen.

Nice per screen numbers for docs In Jackson Heights and Peggy Guggenheim: Art Addict. But the doc story of the fall so far is Meet The Patels, which has quietly become the fifth biggest doc grosser of the year so far, behind only DisneyNature’s Monkey Kingdom, Amy, Searchlight’s He Named Me Malala, and the Everest-climbing Meru. And Patels has never been on more than 101 screens, many fewer than those above it on the box office charts. One wonders what Fox Searchlight, which has picked up rights to remake the film into a narrative feature, could have done with this doc had they taken its distribution chores on as well.

Friday Estimates by Klady, Len Klady 24

Proposed: The Mathematical Argument About Gender Equality In Hollywood Is Holding Things Back

I had an epiphany while looking at the Vulture 100 Women Directors Hollywood Should Be Hiring story, which I instantly felt in my gut would be worthless. (It is, pretty much.)

The reason I keep having a bad response to the now relentless repetition of the stats about how few women are directing feature films for major motion picture studios and top indies is that those stats, once there are believed, are a meaningless slap in the face of those who hire in Hollywood, with no purpose greater than creating shame. There is a great deal of pleasure in shaming others when one has been abused. I get that.

But are we at the point where we are now, collectively, seeking to improve the situation? Or do we want to keep shaming The Industry? Because they require different strategies, whether those who are so passionate in rolling out the shame want to believe it or not.

This is the point where I get accused of “mansplaining” because I have a penis and I don’t fall in lockstep behind whomever on strategy. That too is a form of shaming. But I am not ashamed. I legitimately want to see serious growth in the number of women directors hires by studios starting immediately. My penis is not a barrier to being able to strategize in an effective way. So please take the “mansplaining” argument to someone who doesn’t respect you because of your gender.

The Vulture piece is well-intended as a response to the claim that there are not enough female directors out there to hire. And the overall claim – that this is bullshit – is true. But that is where the reality ends and mythology begins.

I could expand that list of 100 to 150 in the next 10 minutes if need be. It’s not challenging, based on the list’s criteria.

However, in the real world, you could make a list of men who fit the criteria of the Vulture list and get to 900 without breaking a sweat. And not because women are not as good as men or don’t deserve equal consideration. It is because men have had the opportunities ahead of women for so long, in so many areas of filmed entertainment, that it is not a balanced fight.

Make a list of potential directors for a project with 90 men and 10 women and what are the odds that a woman on that list ends up with the job? (Rhetiorical question, right?)

I know… many will tell you – and many will be correct – that there aren’t even 10 women on that list in most cases at most studios on most projects. Yes. But this bit of math, like the others, misses the point.

It’s not about fair.

It is not an equal playing field and it has not been for a very, very long time (the entire last 50 years of the movie business).

Just because you can come up with 100 or 150 or 200 female directors who have shown skill as leaders on films and television in recent years does not fix the problem. Worse, a list like this almost makes it easier for anyone taking the “I just hire on quality and I don’t have enough female options to balance the field” line to make their case.

I don’t want to (or intend to) go through the entire list of 100, but let’s just look at the first 10.

Six of them are working right now or have a film or TV series coming out or have their next film or TV series lined up. (Ana Lily Amirpour, Andrea Arnold, Amma Assante, Elizabeth Banks in film and Jamie Babbit, Susanne Bier on television.)

Gillian Armstrong is 65 and just released a doc. Allison Anders is 60 and hasn’t had a domestic film release in 14 years. Debbie Allen is 65 and hasn’t directed a feature release in 20 years.

I have enormous respect for all three of these women as filmmakers and storytellers. But the fight against ageism in Hollywood is, while hugely significant, a different fight.

Lexi Alexander is, amongst that first 10, the person most due a chip on the shoulder. She is a legitimate action director. Punisher: War Zone was a financial bomb, but given her skill set, that should mean nothing. Green Street Hooligans was not only excellent, but highly acclaimed by critics.

I don’t know what Lexi Alexander says to employers, employees, agents, etc. But I do know that she is very outspoken when talking in public, whether about gender equality or filmmaking. That is a red flag for many employers when it comes to director hires of any gender in any genre. Yes, there are “lovable loudmouths” who get away with it and keep going. As you would expect, in a 90%+ male group of directors, the loudmouths who get away with it (and those who do not) are almost all male.

Is there discrimination against Lexi Alexander as a woman who works in an area of an industry in which women are rare and in a genre in which female directors are even more rare? Yes. Certainly. Is that why she hasn’t made another action film since 2008? Maybe. But I don’t know that. And the “well, there are guys who get away with (whatever) all the time” argument may be valid, but I would need to know the specifics of Alexander’s history and whatever male to whom you are comparing her in order to make a legitimate analysis.

Getting back to the first group, of working female directors, consider this… Ana Lily Amirpour and Andrea Arnold have not yet shown much (if any) interest in working in Mainstream Hollywood. Elizabeth Banks IS Mainstream Hollywood right now.

Susanne Bier has made some great foreign language films and two of her films have been Foreign Language Oscar nominated, with In A Better World winning. She has had opportunities at US studios which have not resulted in box office success, including a barely releasable film called Serena starring Jennifer Lawrence and Bradley Cooper.

Jamie Babbitt has been directing professionally for 16+ years, has made 5 features (3 theatrically released… 1 cult classic), and is certainly skilled enough to direct any straight drama or comedy a studio has.

Amma Assante is the rising star in this group (which is not meant to diminish the value of the other 4 already risen stars or the wunderkind, Ana Lily Amirpour). She had her second film released by Fox Searchlight (Belle), which did quite well. She has been a head writer on a hit UK series and has strong support from UK funders. And she has the political savvy and drive to go mainstream.

All 10 of these women deserve to work. None of them should be dismissed. The three who are 60+ have certainly, even with all their fame, been subject to an industry of aggressive sexism for decades. One (Bier) is working her way back into features and will likely make a foreign language film before her next English-language one. And one Alexander) feels like she has not been given her due, but may be suffering primarily from talking too loudly disease, which affects directors of all ages, genders, and races.

In the reality of Hollywood, there are two in the hot zone (Banks and Assante), two in the distinctly indie zone (Arnold and Amirpour), and there is one who the industry could not in any way call a “controversial” hire, though she is seen as a TV director primarily (Babbitt).

When I call, as I have for a couple of years now, for those who care to demand no fewer then three films per major studio releases per year to be directed by women, that means 36 films minimum in the next two years, which means that Banks (who will shoot at least one film) and both Assante or Babbitt, would (by my analysis) pretty much have to be amongst that 2016/2017 group in order to make that quota… and maybe another from this “first 10.”

My bigger point is… that list of 100 is probably, realistically, a list of 30. And that still wouldn’t be enough to fill the list of 36 that I am suggesting be the rallying point. Which is good, because that list of 100 is way too small and not accounting for the rising generation of young women (and women over 25 too) who should have opportunities to get films to direct from studios.

I love Alison Anders’ work. Her films still resonate with me, even the ones I had issues with. But getting Alison Anders work is not really what progressing into the future of female directors is about. There are exceptions amongst the ranks of older female directors, like Jane Campion, who has never stopped working. But “older” and “hasn’t made one in a long time” is a hard road for all kinds of reasons.

And I don’t need Ana Lily Amirpour to go mainstream and make a sex comedy for Universal. I don’t. She doesn’t… until she might want to and invest in such a direction in her work. Same as I feel about Kyle Patrick Alvarez.

I loved Desert Hearts… but you’re really putting Donna Deitch on a list of directors who Hollywood should hire? At 70? Do you know how many directors over 60 there were behind the Top 100 box office releases of last year? Two. Both were Clint Eastwood.

And to not to put too fine a point on it, 6 of the Next 10 of the Vulture piece are either in production, prepping, or about to release something.

The point of this is not to say that anything is okay. It’s not okay. Let me repeat, IT’S NOT OKAY.

But it’s not a math problem either. There are not enough women directors who fit what studios are looking for when compared to the long list of male directors to demand equality right away. There are not 100.

The point is… that doesn’t matter. The math is not the issue. More women need to be able to get into the door and prove themselves. And within a few years, the number of realistic hires for studio who happen to be female will multiply, perhaps exponentially.

This is not the right to vote or equal pay or whatever civil right you want to attach it to. This is an inequitable stuation that people who are responsible for large amounts of money need to be convinced is dead wrong and requires a legitimate effort to repair… not just more talk. Not “we love women and we’d love to hire them if we could find one” chatter. Not “7%… kill the men” chatter.

But lists with big, bold numbers, like this Vulture list make mockery of reality.

Used People is a seminal film in my life. I have quoted it for years. I love so many things in it. But Beeban Kidron is not only making a film for Univeral and Working Title right now, but she’s been busiy making docs since her last hit, released 10 years ago, Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason. The film was considered a miss in the U.S., since we only think of ourselves when we write about box office, but it almost matched the original smash worldwide. And who is she working for again? Working Title and Universal. She is a success story, best as I can tell. This doesn’t mean she has run into some asshole men. But if you are yelling at studios, demanding that they wise up, you should probably know that many of the women you are mentioning are, in fact, working.

And that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem.

Math does not win the day over morality or logic or a moment in which an idea of what is right is embraced properly.

Stop trying to beat everyone to death on math. Everyone who matters knows the math. Time to aim higher. Time to demand action, not to keep posturing.

Weekend Estimates by Ouch, That Wasn’t Pleasant Klady

Only one other “#1 Movie In America™” this year was as bad or worse than The Martian‘s fifth weekend $11.5 million for the win. That would be the Labor Day 3-day of War Room. This is, obviously, not an indictment of The Martian, which is kicking ass, but of the weakness of not only the newcoming films this weekend but of last weekend as well. And it’s not much of an endorsement for Bridge of Spies or Goosebumps, though logically, Goosebumps would suffer more from the trick-or-treat day landing on Saturday.

On Bridge of Spies, which I believe will deliver us our Best Supporting Actor winner, it’s looking to be right in line with War Horse, Tintin, and The Terminal… although it is behind all three of those three weekends in. It is ahead of Munich, which got the Oscar nomination in a five-film field, though that film never saw the high side of 1,500 screens in its entire run. Personally, I think Bridge should have waited at least until Thanksgiving, probably Christmas, to go into wide release. Its Oscar prospects, which are still pretty good for 5 – 8 nominations, would have been better and as an adult alternative of size in the December of Star Wars, it could have found a larger audience.

If Southpaw opened to more than 3x what Burnt did and is considered a flop… what is Burnt? Should have been a TV premiere somewhere… smelled of it from the earliest marketing.

What can one say about Our Brand Is Crisis? Warner Bros has been in crisis pretty much all year. I don’t know what happens in their marketing offices, but it feels a lot like Sue Kroll’s promotion sent the marketing department spinning off its axis. Ironically, the 2015 mess comes off one of the greatest WB box office triumphs of all time, American Sniper. I still feel as though there was some intention involved with this horrible year, whether shoving Jupiter Ascending onto the 2015 books or cramming Vacation into an already overloaded summer or getting distracted with sure-not-to-hit films like Water Diviner, Batkid Begins, and Lost River or ole’-ing We Are Your Friends. The biggest hit the studio has had in 4 – 5 months is The Intern… and as Nancy Meyers movies go, it will be a weak sibling. Too many WB films this year – shocking, given the previous discipline of the distributor – felt like they escaped rather than being released. Just going through the motions. And the Our Brand Is Crisis has been the most extreme example of this, for me, all year. Sandra Bullock. David Gordon Green is a hip filmmaker. Based on a well-loved doc. And the sell is pretty much Ms. Bullock making faces and showing a new hair color. Fail. Not a fail if you open that to $15 million. But fail if it opens to $3.4 million like some thing that got stuck on the bottom of your shoe and released on Labor Day.

I want to see a WB comeback… but the next five months is not promising… not because I assume the films aren’t good or even excellent, but because there is no “classic WB sell” coming until Todd Phillips and Batman arrive in March. The Creed trailer is tremendous. But it already feels like that train is losing steam, not gaining. I am excited about Ron Howard’s whale movie, shot on a lot of water. But will they sell it?

Paramount’s experiment with a short window for genre junk that would otherwise be direct-to-VOD is only half done. The theatrical side is, obviously, not a success.

Love has a solid two-screen start. Room is the strong player in per-screen on 49 screens. And Suffragette is a step behind with an equally good per-screen on about half the screens.