Box Office Archive for January, 2006

And About That Revolutionary Day & Date Release…

Let’s see how they spin this…
And I don’t just mean at 2929 or Magnolia. The media outlets that have invested enormous space and support for Steven Soderbergh’s Bubble have a lot of ‘splainin’ to do.
Klady estimates $72,300 on 32 screens or a $2260 per screen average. That is the worst per-screen of any of the ten new releases this weekend… by more than 50% in the closest case.
And I didn’t see 1/20th the media attention to Roving Mars or even Tristam Shandy.
The question that now has to be asked – ironic as hell – is why the investors wasted money releasing the film in theaters at all. The $40,000 in rentals could not have covered the print ads, much less anything else.
There is nothing wrong with a small movie or the notion of a direct-to-DVD qualiy, big name film. The only good reasons for Bubble to be in theaters this weekend were hype and ego.
But I am expecting a more clever response than that. Bring on that Pirates of The Caribbean 2 day and date release!!!!

56 Comments »

Momma's Got A Gun

Update – Sunday Estimate by klady
3-Day Estimates / Weekend / % Change / Cume
Big Momma’s House / 27.4 / – / 37.4
Nanny McPhee / 14 / – / 14
Underworld: Evolution / 10.8 / -60% / 44
Annapolis / 7.5 / – / 7.5
Hoodwinked / 7.3 / -30% / 37.6
Brokeback Mountain / 6.3 / -16% / 50.7
Glory Road / 5.1 / -42% / 34.7
Last Holiday / 4.9 / -44% / 32.7
Chronicles of Narnia / 4.3 / -31% / 277.7
Fun with Dick & Jane / 3.6 / -37% / 106.3
============================================
Why is it that MAtrin Lawrence with breasts is so eternally funny? Well, Fox did the right thing here. The bathing suit campaign took an old idea that people liked and made it look fun again.
Nanny McPhee smelled bigger to me, though the limited advertsising probbaly assured otherwise. It we be interesting to see what kind of legs the old girl has.
You do the rest… my computer battery is running out.
Big Momma’s House 2 / 7.7 / – / 3261 / 7.7
Nanny McPhee / 3.6 / – / 1995 / 3.6
Underworld: Evolution / 3.4 / -66% / 3207 / 36.6
Annapolis / 2.6 / – / 1605 / 2.6
Brokeback Mountain / 1.8 / -16% / 1654 / 46.3
Hoodwinked / 1.6 / -24% / 3020 / 31.9
Glory Road / 1.5 / -41% / 2397 / 31.1
Last Holiday / 1.4 / -42% / 2442 / 29.2
Fun with Dick & Jane / 1.1 / -37% / 2132 / 103.8
Chronicles of Narnia / 1 / -27% / 2170 / 274.4
The Matador / 1 / 789% / 885 / 2.6

52 Comments »

Sunday Box Office

I don’t have the numbers yet, but an on the run, so I will leave it to you all to check out Klady and have the discussion.
From the Friday numbers, it looks like a solid expansion for Brokeback Mountain. And as expected, great marketing overcomes crappy movie just like the first time on Underworld: Look At Kate’s Ass Some More.
Underworld 2/ Screen Gems/ 27.1 ((8460) / / 3207 / 27.1
Hoodwinked / Weinstein Co. / 16.7 (6,960) / – / 2394 / 16.6
Glory Road / BV / 16.4 (7,400) / – / 2222 / 16.4
Last Holiday / Par / 14.9 (5,940) / – / 2514 / 14.9
The Chronicles of Narnia / BV / 13.1 (4,050) / -35% / 3224 / 264.3
Hostel / Lions Gate / 11.7 (5,010) / -40% / 2337 / 36.9
Fun with Dick and Jane / Sony / 10.4 (3,220) / -27% / 3239 / 94.3
King Kong / Uni / 9.2 (3,280) / -40% / 2814 / 204.7
Tristan & Isolde / Fox / 7.9 (4,260) / – / 1845 / 7.9
Brokeback Mountain / Focus / 7.1 (10,380) / 3% / 683 / 32.1
Cheaper by the Dozen / Fox / 6.8 (2,450) / -40% / 2773 / 74.7

136 Comments »

Friday Estimates By Klady

Not a lot to say. Glory Road and Last Holiday are both movies aimed at specific niches and should remain strong in those niches. Even off 58%, Hostel has done fine for Lions Gate and continues to do okay with its niche. And Hoodwinked, which has barely been advertised or touted, could do $9 million in its niche market, which while even behind the $12.2 million weekend for Derailed, has to be considered the Weinstein Company

93 Comments »

Weekend Estimates 1/2/06

Why do I find the box office so boring right now?
Probably because the boundaries are already pretty well defined and now the jostling is simply for position.
There is no reason to think that King Kong won

144 Comments »

Quote Unquotesee all »

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