Box Office Archive for March, 2007

Friday Estimates by Klady

Not too many surprises here, though estimates of the TNMT flick were pretty high considering that it is an old phenom having to face two, count ’em, two strong pictures right in the same demo.
Blades of Glory at about $32 million is a nice piece of marketing. It

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Box Office Hell – March 30, 2007

Updated – Friday @ 11a
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The Earlier Chart

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Friday Box Office

Not too much to say. The 300 drop is not surprising. The only real surprise this weekend is the strong opening of Dead Silence, which theoretically is right up against the 300 audience.
Decent reviews for Premonition seem to indicate that Wild Hogs will still be able to advertise “#1 comedy In America” for a third weekend.
I am rather disgusted by the spin that Variety continues to put on the “300 vs The Critics” thing. But I am equally irritated by critics who are fighting the issue as well, giving it more life. Even the great and wise Joe Morgenstern wrote about it in the WSJ Weekend Journal. And the fact is that this stuff happens every year and though the number was and is massive, we are a long, long way from any indication that anything has changed because of this movie… as in, “Didn’t we have this discussion last July when Pirates 3 opened?”
It is, simply, idiotic to argue that saying that this film is like a videogame is wrong either in conceit or detail. Rarely has a film so accurately embodied that accusation, whether you think “it’s a videogame” is praise or an insult. It is equally foolhardy to argue that all CG-heavy movies are the same as videogames. It is equally idiotic to start the “critics are out of touch” schtick again… yes, they are out of touch… they are in the business critical analysis of films. Real audiences don’t have that responsibility. And we don’t know what real audiences think of 300 yet. Based on that opening, when it hits $300 million, I will start writing about how the film really has become a cultural event. Until then, it’s chasing Night At The Fucking Museum.
So where are the trend stories about America wanting more movies about museums?
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Box Office Hell

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Desperately Seeking Slumpin'

I haven’t really had the urge to call EW’s Joshua Rich an idiot. He’s hardly a savant, but there are no sharp edges that slice dangerously close to any ugliness. Until today.
In a PopWatch piece called “Hollywood’s box-office year: Good news, but for whom?,” he continues to argue the false notion that “The business is still struggling.”
Of course, it does struggle. But not in a way that this guy is equipped to even consider. He opines further:
“We’re the ones who stand to pay

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Sunday Estimate by Klady

Well, It looks like my little Wild Hogs theory was right. The Saturday bump suggests that pretty clearly. It’s a family film, not a middle-aged comedy. Ya gotta give that one to Disney.
Amazingly, it looks like The Number 23 could sneak up on Jim Carrey spring vehicle Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind ($34.4m/d), which had so much positive energy and media love compared to this year’s release. I’m not sure what that says about the movie world, but I doubt it’s good.
The Oscar bumps are pretty much inconsequential.
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Friday Numbers by Klady & BO Hell

Wild Hoggies couldn’t drag me to it
Wild, wild hoggies, they went to that shit
What can you do? People still eat a lot of Big Macs, they want to read about Britney

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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