Sony Pictures (a.k.a. Columbia/Tri-Star) has broken the box office, passing the previous record of $1.2 billion in domestic grosses for one year. The studio hit the record high six weeks earlier in the year than the previous record-holder, Disney, leading the box office pack for the first time in over 25 years. How’d they do it? Bugs! Men In Black‘s aliens were pretty buglike. Julia Roberts went buggy in My Best Friend’s Wedding. And Starship Troopers proves that bugs and tight pants mix just fine. Just one fly in Sony’s ointment. The run of hits is the product of the past administration and the deja-vu will continue until next Memorial Day Weekend’s release of Godzilla. Well, at least next year’s monster is a reptile. Thank goodness for evolution.
Former b.o. king, Walt Disney Studios, is going through its next evolution. Studio chief Joe Roth says that the studio will cut back to 22 releases next year after putting 40 flicks in theaters this year. By 1999, he says Disney will release only 15 films. As Roth told The Hollywood Reporter, “You have to make your shots count.” All of this would seem to make a lot of sense since no matter how cheaply you make a film, releasing the film costs at least $20 million and close to $40 million on average these days. This year, that’s about $1.2 Billion (with a capital “B”) out of Disney’s pocket before you even pay for the movies! If they cut 25 films from the schedule, saving $800 million, even missing one Men In Black-size hit and a few other moderate hits would leave the studio in better financial shape than they’re in now.
Finally, studio-moguls-to-be, Charlie Sheen and Bret Michaels, have started production on No Code of Conduct, their latest venture as Sheen/Michaels Productions (The first was a cheesecake calendar). Michaels will direct the film that he and Charlie wrote, with Charlie acting his butt off as a former vice cop. How original! One novel thing. The boys will be served legal papers in a few days that claim they refused to make good on their oral contract with Alexander Tabrizi and Anthony Esposito, a couple of producers who helped initiate the project on this, their maiden voyage.
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Posts Tagged ‘Julia Roberts’
Sony Takes the BO Lead
Saturday, November 15th, 1997Tags: Bret Michaels, Charlie Sheen, Joe Roth, Julia Roberts, My Best Friend's Wedding, Sony Pictures, Starship Troopers, Walt Disney Studios
Posted in Hot Button, Old MCN Blogs | Comments Off on Sony Takes the BO Lead
ARE YOU MOCKING ME?!?!
Friday, September 12th, 1997Combine the hip L.A. wannabes from Swingers with Sling Blade‘s Karl “Killer” Childers and what do you get? A blood-soaked lounge act or a job directing a big Hollywood movie. Nicholas Goodman got the former, landing a directing gig for Paramount based on his three minute-long parody Swing Blade. I wonder whether Paramount would have hired him if he’d mocked the studio’s summer misses and missing blockbuster, Titanic, with Addicted To The Event Movie On The Horizon.
Speaking of Swingers, writer/star Jon Favreau is giving up his “Friends” dream of being the Ultimate Fighting Champion to go back to the typewriter to adapt the Po Bronson book about the early days of Silicon Valley, The First 20 Million Is Always the Hardest. Seems like no one can make a career out of sleeping with Courtney Cox. Michael Keaton hasn’t been seen in a while, Favreau’s back behind the typewriter and Tom Selleck‘s playing second banana in the closet comedy In & Out.
Art Brown and Tracy Fraim are also trying to ride the parody train to the director’s chair. In their parody, Eating Las Vegas, the hero goes to Vegas to eat himself to death. In Vegas, the buffets never close. His hooker girlfriend in this one is bulimic, leading to some explosive (and messy) love scenes. The creators of the film already have a foot in the Hollywood door as writers of an upcoming Drew Barrymore movie, but like their parody’s female lead, what they really want to do is project.
Finally, Julia Roberts has agreed to keep smiling in movies, this time opposite Hugh Grant in an untitled project from the team that made Four Weddings and a Funeral. Roberts will spoof herself, playing “the biggest movie star in the world” who walks into Grant’s quiet bookstore-owning life. Hugh’s second-most famous date’s asking price is around $10 million — about 500 thousand times more expensive than his most famous conquest.
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Tags: Jon Favreau, Julia Roberts, Michael Keaton, Swingers, Tom Selleck, Tracy Fraim
Posted in Hot Button, Old MCN Blogs | Comments Off on ARE YOU MOCKING ME?!?!
