Speculation: Disney's "Avengers" endgame for the current round of live-action Fairy Tale Theatre?

What do you get when combine the Wizard of Oz, Alice from Wonderland, the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella?  Disney has announced plans to produce a "darker" live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, currently titled "The Beast".  Now putting aside the alleged Guillermo del Toro Beauty and the Beast that was intended to star Emma Watson, this is yet another Disney project that basically takes one of their beloved animated films or (in the case of Oz: The Great and Powerful) a beloved family classic and make a Disney live-action franchise-starter out of it.  We've seen movement on a Kenneth Branagh-helmed Cinderella, which ironically was supposed to star Emma Watson until she dropped out over the last couple days.  Filming is underway on Robert Stromberg's Maleficent, which will star Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning in a villain-centric retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  Disney tried to do something with Snow White before bowing out due to the two other 2012 adaptations, but it may try again.  So what is the point, in the long-run, of these fairy-tale revamps?

Oz: The Great and Powerful earns $2 million at 10pm/midnight.

Let's do the quick midnight math, shall we?  Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful earned an impressive $2 million at 10pm/midnight last night.  Now this isn't a geek-friendly comic book sequel or young-adult literary property in the vein of The Hunger Games, so midnight frontloading should be pretty limited.  That's a bit less than the $3.5 million earned by Alice In Wonderland and larger than the $1.6 million earned by Snow White and the Huntsman.  If we were talking about Thor 2: The Dark World, a $2 million 10pm/midnight number would mean around $40 million for the weekend, with an expected 5% of the weekend represented in advance showings, with potential for even harsher front-loading   But for a 'normal' movie, we're usually looking at between 2% and 4% representing the midnight number.  And let's be honest, this thing is going to explode on Saturday if only due to the lack of family films in the marketplace.  So offhand I'd wager a 3% 10pm/midnight take for a $66 million Fri-Sun debut, as Alice in Wonderland also did 3% of its $116 million weekend at midnight (as did Snow White and the Huntsman in a $56 million debut).  But the lack of family fare could mean an even bigger growth during weekend matinees and the film arguably has less 'must see now' factor due to the fact that Burton is a more mainstream name than Raimi.  So let's just call it 2.5% at 10pm/midnight for a $80 million weekend take.  But don't be too surprised to see it flirting with $100 million by Sunday.

Scott Mendelson  

There as no slump then, there is no slump now! Why comparing cumulative weekend box office makes no sense and hurts our desire for better movies.

Brandon Grey at Box Office Mojo called the weekend box office 'listless'. Nikkie Finke at Deadline Hollywood called it 'a soft weekend'. And Brent Lang of The Wrap called it 'sluggish'. 'Weak' was the word as three mid-to-low budget films opened with both solid reviews and decent box office. Also on everyone's mind was the fact that this weekend was down this year by about 10% compared to this weekend in 2010. We've been hearing that talk quite a bit this year, as each weekend is considered a quasi-disaster because it didn't equal or surpass the respective weekend from last year. There is a reason I never discuss how well a respective weekend performed compared to the same weekend last year or the year before. It's irrelevant. Every year brings different movies and those movies perform in vastly different ways from the year before or the year after. More importantly, it feeds into the absurd 'this year must be BIGGER' mentality, even if the product doesn't justify that. Want to know why this year's first few months have been down compared to last year? A) Avatar and B) Alice in Wonderland.

2010 in Review: The 'Worst' Films of the Year.

I use the term 'worst' subjectively, both because I'm stating subjective opinions and because there are plenty of allegedly terrible films that I did not see this year (Yogi Bear, Gulliver's Travels, Sex and the City 2, Little Fockers, Grown Ups, etc). Sadly, this was the first year in as long as I've been doing this where it was easier to make up a 'worst of year' than a 'best of year'. Not because there were so few good films, but because there were so many astonishing failures from some of my favorite filmmakers. So, without further ado, and in alphabetical order, I give you my personal picks for the ten worst films of 2010.

Alice in Wonderland
It is a strange thing to see a director that you worshiped in your youth score by-far the biggest hit of his life from one of the worst films of his career. Yet Alice in Wonderland is easily Burton's worst film, give-or-take Planet of the Apes (the latter is duller, but I love the 'up yours' ending). The screenplay turns Alice into a passive character defined by predestination and what other people expect from her and then expects us to find the film a rousing piece of female-empowerment. The result is an equally passive film that contains no suspense and no driving force. The film is inexplicably ugly to look at, and the 3D only muddies the image that much more. This was an assembly-line paycheck job for all involved, and a sign that, traumatized by the box office failure of (the secretly right-wing?) Mars Attacks and the outrage over Batman Returns back in the 1990s, Burton may have given up any attempt to be a visual or narrative original. If this were any one else's artistic failure, it would simply be a very dull and uninspiring film. But coming from Tim Burton, it was just one of the heartbreaking failures of the year.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland crosses $1 billion worldwide.

As of yesterday, Disney's Alice in Wonderland is the 6th-biggest global grosser of all-time. At just over $1 billion in worldwide revenue, film is the third-biggest non-sequel grosser of all-time, behind only the James Cameron double-whammy (Titanic and Avatar). As is regularly the case these days, the film made around 67% of its cash ($667.7 million) from overseas dollars, with 'just' $332.4 million coming from domestic ticket sales. It is $1.8 million away from overtaking The Dark Knight on the all-time list, and $66 million away from Disney's biggest grosser, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. It's a bit of a slog for a film that comes out on DVD/Blu Ray next week, but the film is a mere $119 million away from surpassing Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King as the third-biggest film of all time. Not bad for a film that many expected to crash after its (record-setting) opening weekend due to poor reviews and lousy pre-release buzz.