MCN Originals Archive for January, 2017

20 Weeks To Oscar: The Simple Case For Moonlight

The phenomenon of Moonlight was on full display at the Telluride Film Festival. Audiences were not only screaming and standing on their feet when the movie ended, but many walked the intimate streets of Telliride in a kind of shock, rocked to their core. Men and women. Straight and gay. Some were black… but it is Telluride and well… most were not.

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The Weekend Report

The Split held sway at the box office with a second weekend estimate of $26.2 million. Nipping at its heels was newcomer A Dog’s Purpose that wow bowed at $18.4 million. Also debuting were a fond farewell for Resident Evil: The Final Chapter, slotting fourth with $13.5 million and pure pyrite for Gold that opened to $3.4 million.

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Friday Estimates

Split becomes a monster for Universal, likely to hold off the family film, A Dog’s Purpose, also from a happy Universal, scoring early in 2017 with 2 non-franchise films, reminding the industry that IP is not the only way. Resident Evil 6 doesn’t care much about the soft US opening. Their grosses have been 80% international the last 2 films, both over $195 million. La La Land and Hidden Figures both pass $100m domestic this weekend, buoyed by Oscar noms. Even with a nice expansion bump, Team La may be a little disappointed that the bump isn’t bigger. They’ll live. And the weekend bump may well be bigger than the Friday. Gold fools.

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Gurus o’ Gold: First Take At Ranking The Nominees

The Gurus ranked every Oscar category except for the shorts (even Gurus need to catch up with those nominees). And according to the Gurus, La La Land won’t break or tie the record for most wins. The film will have to settle for nine wins. The category in which The Gurus are the most indecisive? Make-up and Hair, with all three nominees ranked within two points of each other.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: The Simple Case FOR La La Land

How can anyone claim that a musical that opens with scores of people getting out of their cars to dance and sing on the freeway is “easy” “obvious” or “made for Oscar voters?” If audiences didn’t fall in love with that 5 minutes, the whole picture probably goes down. That is a massive risk.

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The DVD Wrapup: Inferno, Handmaiden, Light Between Oceans, Black Girl, Man Who Fell to Earth, Monster, Takashi Miike, Korean War … More

On the plus side, the action carries us, along with Langdon and Brooks, from Florence to Vienna, Budapest and Istanbul’s magnificent Hagia Sophia and Basilica Cistern. If Nostradamus had compared notes with Dante, viewers are led to believe, we might have been able to avoid 9/11, the 2008 Depression and the Trump presidency.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: Right Before The Noms

This has been, perhaps, the most boring Oscar season in modern history.

But the other truth is, this has been a great award season for movies. Everyone has their personal preferences, but man, what a high quality line-up of product for awards this year. High and low.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Last Guesses Before Nominations

The Gurus are making their last group gasp before nominations arrive on Tuesday. (A couple Gurus, stuck in Sundance, may add to the charts.) Not a lot has changed in Best Picture, but some long-expected nominees have been pushed out in Actress. If the Gurus are channeling a true vibe, La La Land will lead the way with 14 nominations, followed by Arrival with 10. Dive in. Every category except for shorts is there this week. And after nominations, The Gurus will return with rankings of the nominees.

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The Weekend Report

The Split decision was a knockout as M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller doubled the box office of any weekend contender with an estimated debut of $40.1 million. xXx: Return of Xander Cage was in a distant second with $20.1 million. The Founder had a disappointing national franchise of $3.5 million, while comic faith tale The Resurrection of Gavin Stone sputtered to $1.3 million.

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Friday Estimates

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The DVD Wrapup: Girl on the Train, Whole Truth, Dancer, Death Race 2050, Train to Busan, Fox and his Friends, Something Wild,and more

My biggest problem with the movie derives from an early confusion of blond actresses and a subsequent lack of interest on my part in the plight of their characters and their marriages. Eliminating their points of view from the narrative made Anna and Megan seem more distant to me. (Or, am I prejudiced against pretty blonds living in nice homes?)

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FIFTY-PLUS FILMS FOR 2016

In 2016, I saw as many movies as most years (even if when I couldn’t review them all on first release), and I took an additional month to catch up and make room for some second and third look-sees. May the coming year reveal distribution and exhibition creativity to match the grand diversity of movies in 2016.

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The 4-Day Weekend Report

Not a lot changed from the 3-day estimates to the 4-days. Hidden Figures stays out front, cracking $60m cume. The 2 family films, Sing and Monster Trucks (first and last time you will see them mentioned in the same sentence) both are estimating stronger days today than the adult fare. And La La Land stays bullish, breaking past $75m domestic 8 days before Oscar nomination morning.

(No Klady column today)

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The Weekend Report

Hidden Figures seemed an all-too-appropriate chart topper for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend with an estimated three-day $20.4 million box office. The first holiday of 2017 offered three new national releases and two limited releases going wide, to grim or bland response. The chief exception was horror The Bye Bye Man , slashing to a $13.4 million debut. The ticking clock Sleepless grossed a passable $8.2 million while the widening of Patriots Day was nearly a flag-waver with $11.9 million. The media has already had a field day with commercial pileup Monster Trucks, which revved up to $10.5 million. But the abject rejection of Ben Affleck’s Live By Night prohibition era gangster costumer hasn’t received its fair share of ink. It bowed nationally to $5.2 million.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

A big weekend for expansions and newcomers with one—Hidden Figures, Patriots Day, La La (which also adds IMAX screens), or the other, Bye Bye Man, taking up the top four slots plus another two openers (Sleepless, Monster Trucks) and an expansion (Live by Night) in the top 10. Sitting pat are the two big Christmas hits, Rogue One and Sing, and last week’s disappointing launch for Underworld 5. In limited/exclusive, if your film is in English, it’s not opening to 10k per or better this week.

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The Gronvall Report: Michaël Dudok de Wit On THE RED TURTLE

There are many animals among this year’s contenders for the Best Animated Film Academy Award, including Finding Dory, The Secret Life of Pets and Zootopia, but none as mysterious as the title character in the hauntingly beautiful The Red Turtle. This wordless fable shows how a man shipwrecked on an uninhabited island, far from any other land mass, copes with loneliness and his sometimes hostile environment. The arrival of a giant red sea turtle changes his life in ways he never could have foreseen.

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The DVD Wrapup: Deepwater Horizon, My King, Hickey, Fritz Bauer, Murderlust, Brad Paisley, Since MLK, Broad City … More

Typically, I don’t enjoy reliving disasters on film, whether they’re of the natural variety or manmade. By the time a movie gets released, we’ve absorbed enough actual reporting on the event to make most dramatizations superfluous, if not downright exploitative. Judging from largely unimpressive box-office numbers for recent movies based on such tragedies, I’m pretty sure that the public has grown weary of the instant-replay approach, as well. The producers of Deepwater Horizon had their work cut out for them, because the manmade catastrophe played out in three distinct stages, all well-covered in visual and print media.

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20 Weeks To Oscar: The 4 Kinds Of Best Picture Winners

I believe there are 4 kinds of Best Picture wins.

Big Love.
Big Obligation.
Big Avoidance.
Default.

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The Weekend Report

A definite horse race, but Rogue One edged out the national expansion of Hidden Figures with respective estimated weekends of $21.8 million and $21.7 million. The session’s sole new national release was the latest installment of the Underworld franchise, Blood Wars, with $12.9 million.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Christmas limited Hidden Figures goes right to the top of New Year’s hangover weekend with a solid $20m+ opening weekend. The return of Underworld arrives in the U.S. with a thud, but the hope for big returns on this are around the world, where the franchise broke through with its most recent episode (2012), doubling its previous best effort and giving hope that this will be a $100m+ grosser internationally. La La Land doubles its screen count weeks before Oscar nominations (and hours before winning Best Musical/Comedy at The Globes, which don’t drive business) and stays even… which might be disappointing for Lionsgate. But it will pass $50 million this weekend and will keep chugging towards $100m domestic, so cheer up!

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MCN Originals

Leonard Klady's Friday Estimates
Friday Screens % Chg Cume
Title Gross Thtr % Chgn Cume
Venom 33 4250 NEW 33
A Star is Born 15.7 3686 NEW 15.7
Smallfoot 3.5 4131 -46% 31.3
Night School 3.5 3019 -63% 37.9
The House Wirh a Clock in its Walls 1.8 3463 -43% 49.5
A Simple Favor 1 2408 -50% 46.6
The Nun 0.75 2264 -52% 111.5
Hell Fest 0.6 2297 -70% 7.4
Crazy Rich Asians 0.6 1466 -51% 167.6
The Predator 0.25 1643 -77% 49.3
Also Debuting
The Hate U Give 0.17 36
Shine 85,600 609
Exes Baggage 75,900 62
NOTA 71,300 138
96 61,600 62
Andhadhun 55,000 54
Afsar 45,400 33
Project Gutenberg 36,000 17
Love Yatri 22,300 41
Hello, Mrs. Money 22,200 37
Studio 54 5,300 1
Loving Pablo 4,200 15
3-Day Estimates Weekend % Chg Cume
No Good Dead 24.4 (11,230) NEW 24.4
Dolphin Tale 2 16.6 (4,540) NEW 16.6
Guardians of the Galaxy 7.9 (2,550) -23% 305.8
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 4.8 (1,630) -26% 181.1
The Drop 4.4 (5,480) NEW 4.4
Let's Be Cops 4.3 (1,570) -22% 73
If I Stay 4.0 (1,320) -28% 44.9
The November Man 2.8 (1,030) -36% 22.5
The Giver 2.5 (1,120) -26% 41.2
The Hundred-Foot Journey 2.5 (1,270) -21% 49.4