MCN Originals Archive for March, 2018

Friday Box-Office Estimates

Ready Player 15.2 Million.”

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The DVD Wrapup: Last Jedi, Behind the Mask, Executioners, King of Jazz, Sacha Guitry, 1:54, Nicholas, Peyton Place and more

Whew. I’m exhausted just trying to summarize the first 20 minutes.

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The Weekend Report

The debut of Pacific Rim Uprising led weekend viewing with an estimated $28 million. The session was rife with new releases but short on commercial dynamism. Animated Sherlock Gnomes charted fourth with $10.6 million while faith-targeted Paul, the Apostle failed to catch the I Can Only Imagine wave with a $5 million launch. At the back of the pack were YA romance Midnight Sun, which grossed $4.1 million and the low-budget thriller Unsane with $3.7 million.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Pacific Rim Uprising will land in first place, but only because of timing, off 25% from the original. Black Panther falls to #2 while passing The Last Jedi and Avengers domestically. Tough weekend. Sherlock Gnomes was left on the lawn… no one saw the dog. Soderbergh’s iPhone epic, Unsane, has the double-trouble of a still-unsettled marketing formula and Claire Foy as another Netflix star who can’t draw American audiences to a theater. (Universal would have opened this, regardless.) Wes Anderson arrives on 27 screens to about $60k per, which marks the first time a Wes has opened on more than five screens since Bottle Rocket and suggests a frustrated distributor.

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The DVD Wrapup: Downsizing, Small Town Crime, Baal, The Church, Images, Daughter of the Nile, Ichi, ’Burbs… and more

Downsizing doesn’t get more involving than a final choice between survival and love, and the solution to that dilemma is preordained. The humor is mostly invested in the excellent visual effects, but, at a certain point, our eyes reflect the reality that these are normal-sized characters in a fabricated environment. The novelty of the conceit wears out by the time we reach the fjord, whose majesty isn’t amplified by the optical gag.

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The Weekend Report

It was close as the debut of Tomb Raider bowed with an estimated $23.5 million. However, Black Panther led the frame with $26.8 million. Two additional films had national openings including the musically inspirational I Can Only Imagine that opened with an unexpectedly strong $17 million and the gay teen comedy Love, Simon with $11.5 million.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

WB’s Tomb Raider takes Friday from Black Panther, the first time it’s dropped to second in a month… but look for Panther to strike back over the weekend, in line with its weeks of over-performing on Saturdays. It could be close in Sunday estimates with both films near $26 million. But the surprise of the weekend is the big number for I Can Only Imagine, a religious family drama released by Roadside for Lionsgate for LD, another reminder of an under-served audience that is white and middle-class, likely grossing most of its dollars outside the major markets on just 1,629 screens. Love, Simon opens modestly, but not embarrassingly so, given the lack of movie star power.

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The DVD Wrapup: I Tonya, Serpico, Assistant, Pastor Paul, Children of Corn, Starlight Ends, Birdboy, Sensitivity Training and more

If Nancy Kerrigan hadn’t been assaulted by members of Jeff Gillooly’s posse before the 1994 U.S. figure-skating championships, it’s likely the tabloid press would have invented a rivalry between Kerrigan and Tonya Harding, leading into the Lillehammer Winter Games. The perceived difference in their economic backgrounds would have been too tempting to avoid.

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The Weekend Report

Black Panther led weekend moviegoing for a fourth weekend with an estimated $41.1 million. Four national releases opened for the session but only the long-taught A Wrinkle in Time proved competitive at $33.4 million. Other freshmen included a fine start for chiller The Strangers: Prey at Night of $10.3 million and early-year casualty status for Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures’ The Hurricane Heist and STX’s Gringo, with respective bows of $3 million and $2.6 million.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time launches just ahead of Disney’s Black Panther, which will be the story over the weekend. Wrinklehas the upside of being a family movie, which should offer a Saturday bump, but Panther has had Saturday family bumps of 65% and 85%, which Wrinkle may not match. And then Sunday…

Also opening, Aviron’s second release, a picked-up sequel to a 2008 Rogue-Focus release, The Strangers… which will likely open to about half the original. And at the $3 million opening level, STX’s Gringo and Entertainment Studios’ The Hurricane Heist.

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The DVD Wrapup: Thor, Gintama, Novitiate, White Sun, Faces Places, Voyage, Paris Opera, Strangers, Moveable Feast and more

Comic books are said to have existed in America since the publication of the hardcover book, “The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck,” in 1842. Newspaper comic strips and panels became a phenomenon in New York at the end of the 1890s, with “The Katzenjammer Kids” and “The Yellow Kid.” It wasn’t until the 1930s that comics in the print and visual media came of age, with Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s “Superman,” which opened the door for a legion of superheroes to come. It’s been something of roller-coaster ride for comic books, strips and movies, ever since. Anyone born since the advent of the digital age might think that studios have always been buoyed by the fortunes of their comic-book franchises. Until recently, though, they’ve been anything but a sure thing. Expensive to make and subject to the whims of fickle fan bases, comic-book movies now flourish commercially because of the extraordinary emergence of modern theaters in foreign markets and audiences hungry for CGI thrills. Unlike comics, storylines are incidental to a movie’s performance.

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The Weekend Report

Black Panther held sway at the multiplex with a third weekend estimated tally of $66.3 million. The session’s two new national releases followed with Red Sparrow opening to $16.8 million and a resurrected MGM debuting Death Wish with $12.8 million.

Hindi Pari was off to a good start of $171,000. And best of the exclusive entries was the Israeli foreign language Oscar submission Foxtrot that grossed $35,300 from four locations.

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Friday Box Office Estimates

Get Out opened to $33 million Oscar weekend last year, and goes to the wire with a Best Picture nomination this Weekend. Red Sparrow, not so much. Jennifer Lawrence held the mantle of Biggest Star In The World for a moment, but an under-$20 million open for this film argues that she needs to make better non-franchise choices. Also not opening, Death Wish, which didn’t make an argument about why it was more than a day at the White House. Black Panther stays on the prowl, getting to $450 million domestic in 15 days and maintaining expectations of a $600 million-plus domestic total, which has only happened only five times in box office history.

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Gurus o’ Gold: Final Guesses

The Gurus are nearly exhausted, predicting 11 unanimous selections, including all four Acting categories, Directing, Original Screenplay and Animated Feature. The most competitive categories? Best Picture and Best Documentary.

The Gurus also pick three potential upsets each, with Get Out as Best Picture leading the way, followed by both screenplay categories and Supporting Actress.

And with that, The Gurus head back to the mountain to hibernate until September. May The Show Be With You.

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The DVD Wrapup: Darkest Hour, Coco, Tom Jones, Basket Case, Hangman, Godard+Gorin, Hallelujah Trail, Tyrus … More

Oldman shines throughout, delivering inspirational oratory, displaying an unexpected sense of humor and the tenacity required to rally the nation in its, yes, darkest hour. The picture is further enhanced by key performances in supporting roles by Kristin Scott Thomas, Lily James, Ronald Pickup and Stephen Dillane. Of six nominations, the other likely winner is in the Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling category.

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MCN Originals

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