Box Office Archive for September, 2007

Klady's Sunday Estimate – Sept 30

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Klady's Friday Estimates

If you are looking for history this weekend, the last weekend of September will find you The Rock in The Rundown ($18.5m start) and Disney releasing The Guardian ($18m start) . Or perhaps you like Remember The Titans ($20.9m) and Open Season ($23.6m) and The Corpse Bride ($19.1m).
Actually, last year it was Open Season vs The Guardian

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Box Office Hell – Sept 28

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(updated Fri night with EW and BO Prophets)

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Sunday Estimates by Klady

First note, A Correction – Len Klady’s Friday Estimates had The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford at 15 screens when today, he is at the 5 that has been reported elsewhere. Our apologies to our readers.
And then…
Nothing a whole lot else to talk about.
The big exclusive openings of Into The Wild and Jesse James are very nice

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Friday Estimate by Klady

As is so often the case, both tracking and box office weight guessers underestimate the junk and overestimate the quality stuff. If there is anything consistent about tracking and its misuse, it is this.
Look for the Resident Evil sequel to open a bit better than the last sequel, assuring

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Box Office Hell

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Sunday Estimates by Klady – Sept 16

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Klady's Friday Estimates – Sept 14

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This will be Jodie Foster’s weakest mainstream opening of the last decade aside from 1999’s Anna & The King, which opened the week before Christmas, which is traditionally a grower slot, not a show-er slot. The question over at Warners will be whether they played this one right. The film is not actually “Death Wish With A Chick.” It is more complex than that. But how to sell more complex? More importantly, how do you sell to women, for whom Foster is an embodiment of power? Power is great, but do they really want to see her shoot bullets? After all, she is a strong woman in previous films who doesn’t end up firing the gun. Interesting.
Meanwhile, what is The Weinstein Co getting out of Mr. Woodcock? Damned near the same thing they got out of School For Scoundrels. Even The Bad News Bears didn’t open much better. Clearly there is an audience who wants to see Billy Bob Thornton hit people in the balls… but it is a specific and limited group. The difference with Bad Santa? It turned out to be a really good film. But at the start… similar numbers.
I guess someone knew Dragon Wars was opening… not me.
As for Across The Universe and Eastern Promises, you’re going to have to find more than 250 people per screening on fewer than 25 screens each to impress me that you have anything other than high profile talent that people have some interest in seeing.
The Taymor/Beatles film has some good ammunition in the Fab Four and the thumbed Ebert, who raved the film. I expect to see a lot of towns like Toronto, where the critic at one paper gave an absolute rave and the other nearly threatened to burn down the cinema. Sony has a challenge on its hands and whether the movie is actually good or bad (it’s both, actually) has little to do with it. Is there an audience that will pay to see a really complex, beautiful, star-free (domestically, at least… the stars of significance are mostly European) film… will the teen girls show up… or are they just going to wait for that DVD? I don’t get the feeling that this is MTV’s movie of the season… but then again, I have been in a country where MuchMusic dominates MTV for the last couple of weeks.
In the Valley of Elah is the sad story of the weekend, drawing fewer than 100 people per screening of the film on Friday. It is a film for adults, who are notoriously slow to get to the theater, so it will do a little better as the weekend progresses and perhaps over its run. But the must-see is dusty. Crash, by the way, opened on 1864 screens back in 2005. So comparisons are impossible.
I bow to the holding power of The Bourne Ultimatum.
And the quick death of Shoot ‘Em Up once again proves one of my favorite theories… The Geek 8. Unfortunately, this time it was The Geek 5.7. However, the film’s marketing never found a single reason for a woman or non-geek adult to show up for the film. And unless you are happy grossing under $20 million, you HAVE to find another segment, no matter how strong you feel in the geek universe. (I’d be curious to hear from AICNers about why they think that even the geeks didn’t show up in full force for this one.)

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Box Office Hell – Sept 14

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Sunday Estimates by Klady – Sept 9

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Friday Estimates by Klady – 9/7

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Monday Estimates by Klady

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Friday Estimates by Klady – 8/31

Halloween is doing well, though it is a little behind industry expectations based on tracking this last week (except at the studio advising one drudgey blogger what to think). As of Wednesday, the buzz around town was of a $30 million 3-day and a $37 million 4-day. Given that horror films often lead off strong on Friday and drop on Saturday, as date night overwhelms boys night out, the numbers should be more like $26m/$31m. But still… excellent for a film that was mostly written off earlier this summer. I would imagine that this remake of a classic will turn out have had a much higher interest from young women than would seem fitting for a Rob Zombie film.
Balls of Fury will open to an “a least it opened to something” number, but no surprise power play there. And Death Sentence is about… anyone… anyone? Hard to find an audience without really selling the movie. And though I haven’t seen the film, my understanding is that a lot of people think it deserved better.
And yes, for those who seem to think that my earlier comments were equal to a nuclear disaster of some kind, it is clear that The Bourne Ultimatum, which continues to hold remarkably well, is going to hit $200 million, getting to about $198 million by Monday night.
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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