Box Office Archive for September, 2008

Friday Estimates by Klady

By David Poland - Saturday, September 27th, 2008

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The Shia-Getting-In-Trouble franchise continues to grow, from a $22 million opening for Disturbia to what looks like a somewhere-near $30 million opening for Eagle Eye, an inferior retread with some excellent ads.
Lane & Gere are doing about what they do. The last time out was Unfaithful (the movie that convinced college girls to have stairwell sex for a few months), which opened to $14.1 million.
Another boring week at the box office…

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Weekened Estimates by Klady

By David Poland - Sunday, September 21st, 2008

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Friday Estimates by Klady

By David Poland - Saturday, September 20th, 2008

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Lakeview Terrace‘s start has to be a little dissapointing for the once can’t-miss Screen Gems team. The thing that strikes me is that the movie is genre, but it’s not Screen Gems genre, which is to say horror, girls, teen splat, and black/hispanic/urban. What teen wants to see a thriller about suburban angst? What black audience is running to see Sam Jackson terrorize the nice white guy next door? And how can a quick turn studio division think that the adult audience, who this movie really is after, will show up before weekend two?
Dame Clunk may finally be going away, with this weak’s release looking at half of what last year’s Jessica-Ablba’s-skirt-twirls-up weak shite did.
Igor did not convince the kiddies that this was a must see… not a shock… one actually has to spend TV dollars to do that.
And the not-so-shocking shocker is Ghost Town, which reminds us that America has no idea who the f Ricky Gervais is, no matter how wonderful a performer. WB has him next and I expect to see them lay down a much thicker base coat than Paramount – in one of their weakest efforts on outdoor and print images that I have seen in a long time – did. How ugly is it when Tea’ Leoni can’t get a second of TV-spot time and Greg Kinnear just slightly less? Maybe someone had a bet that they couldn’t open a Gervais movie and was trying to win… probably not.
Of course, it’s good to keep in mind that we are still in the studio Dump Zone for movies… which ends next weekend with Eagle Eye and Nights in Rodanthe… we hope.

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It's Crappy… But It's Box Office!!!

By David Poland - Sunday, September 14th, 2008

Klady’s Weekend Estimates…
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This is actually quite a good number for The Coens… though one should keep in mind that even Leatherheads opened to almost $13 million and it’s the worst wide opening for a Brad Pitt film in nine years. Mixed bag. Focus, I imagine, will be pleased.
11a- This just in… This is not only The Coens’ best opening (by around 50%), but Focus’ best opening ever (by $10 million). Do keep in mind that both entities release most of their product via platform, but still, very much worth noting.
The Tyler Perry is a little low for him, but he is close to unrecognizable in the ads and he shows once again that even without a Madea in his films, he can open in the $20m range (if not $20m this time).
Righteous Kill‘s opening shows that even if everyone can see that it’s a pig in a poke (with lipstick), they want their beloved actors to be there.
And Tropic Thunder closes in on paying for its domestic marketing with its domestic box office. Foreign release has barely begun, but conservatively, the film will have to significantly improve on its domestic number overseas (at least $250 million total ww) to not be in the red when the books are closed.

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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