Box Office Archive for August, 2006

Weekend Estimates by Klady – 8/27/06

Another weekend without much worth discussing.
The Devil Wears Prada finally cracked $120 million.
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man

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Friday Estimates by Klady – 8/26/06

A fairly ugly weekend heating up

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Box Office Hell – 8/25/06

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Sunday Estimates by Klady – August 20

The battle over the weekend

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Friday Estimates by Klady – Aug 18

Not a huge surprise, really. Even my $22 million BO Hell Snakes on a Plane estimate

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I'm not ready to get off of this yet…

So WB was the winner in the X3/SR showdown?
And the X-Men franchise is worn out because… uh… it beat Superman Returns domestically, internationally and on opening weekend – against much stiffer competition – by almost double?
And why is anyone doing a Bryan Singer suck up story? Well, I guess they were done sucking up to JJ Abrams for the failure of Mission: Impossible III, whose final numbers will almost exactly match the numbers on Superman Returns… except it cost no less than $50 million less to make and marker.
WORLDWIDE THIS SUMMER
POTC: Dead Man’s Chest $860m (and rising)
The Da Vinci Code $750m
X-Men: The Last Stand $441m
Mission: Impossible III $392m
Cars $376m
Superman Returns $348m (with 2 major territories left)
Over the Hedge $300m
And gee… isn’t M:I3 the impetus to throw Tom Cruise – who have 5 times as many $200 million-plus worldwide grossers on his resume than Bryan “2 X-Men & A SoaperMan” Singer and 4 $400 million grossers to Singer’s 1 – off the Paramount lot?
There is a likelihood that Superman Returns will gross less than Godzilla. God-muthafuckin’-zilla.
Bryan Singer has no history as a tentpole director. He is an arthouse director. And the only reason that there was an X2 was because Bryan was “handcuffed” by Tom Rothman’s restrictive budget on X1… or that franchise would have died right there.
And where the HELL did WB dig up Cheo Hodari Coker as The Journalist for Anne Thompson to talk to and to defend Bryan Singer? Is that a joke? Did Anne dial those digits with a straight face?
I love Anne. I think she is pushing a strong, progressive agenda for journalists. But geez, girl

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Box Office Hell – August 18

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Long Legs… If You're Deep Roy

There is a sub-class of releases that open decently, but then have unusually weak legs. Someone brought one of these titles up in another entry

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Friday Estimates by Klady – 8/12

So the answers on Step Up are:
1)Tracking continues to be a mess
2) Teen girls continue to do what they want when they want to (see Take The Lead

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WTC Opens

Only two summer releases this year

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That Wacky International Box Office

Excerpted foreign box office info from Variety
It was the biggest overseas weekend yet for “Dead Man’s Chest,” which has cumed $392 million in foreign coin, exceeding the domestic gross by $12 million to hit $772 million worldwide.
With 17% of foreign markets not yet open — including Spain and Germany — “Chest” will likely pass “Finding Nemo” at $865 million worldwide in a few more weeks to become Disney’s top performer in combined grosses.
“Superman Returns” remained on a far lower trajectory, with $7.1 million from more than 5,100 prints in 55 markets, lifting the foreign cume to $146 million and the worldwide take to $336 million.
“Superman Returns” had been expected to provide a one-two punch with “Dead Man’s Chest” in foreign markets, but the Man of Steel has shown only modest traction and the international cume for the pricey tentpole is now just 37% of “Chest,” while the worldwide is 43% of “Chest.”
UIP’s first major foreign launches of “Miami Vice” put the arm on $7 million at 1,275 playdates in 11 markets, led by a respectable first-place U.K. opening with $4 million at 406 and 20% share. Debuts were more moderate in Mexico with $950,000 at 336, good enough for third place, and in Russia with $750,000 at 230.
“Vice” has 44 foreign markets left, with Australia next on Thursday, followed by France Aug. 16.

ADD, Sun, 10:48p – A Reader writes in to say, “The article you just posted about Pirates International box office numbers from Variety has an error. It says ” With 17% of the foreign market not yet open- Including Spain and Germany.” I believe they meant Italy as it has already opened in Germany as of July 27th.”
I don’t actually know what the answer is, but it seems reasonable to note the question mark on the detail. DP

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Sunday Estimates by Klady

Not a lot more to say, is there?
Miami Vice

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Klady's Friday Estimates – 8/4/06

Country will kick the pundit

13 Comments »

Box Office Hell – August 4

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31 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