Rumor commentary: Joseph Gordon-Levitt may be playing Batman in the Justice League movie.

HitFix broke the story late last night and while I generally try to avoid commenting on rumors, McWeeny is a pretty trustworthy source for this kind of thing.  Anyway, long story short, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is allegedly in talks to reprise his role as John Blake (cough-Tim Drake-cough) in Warner Bros.' upcoming Justice League film.  Said superhero team-up is set to open in summer 2015 (July 17th, I'd presume), where it will square off against The Avengers 2 and Star Wars Episode VII.  So if the rumor comes to pass, it looks like John Blake will be the man in the cowl, as opposed to a new actor playing a new Bruce Wayne.  Also of note, John Blake (as Batman?) will allegedly make a post-production cameo in Zack Snyder's Man of Steel, which comes off of Snyder's comments stating that Man of Steel won't be as closed-world as he had previously indicated.  So presuming this is all true and not just a rumor or a gambit to drum up interest in next week's DVD/Blu Ray release of The Dark Knight Rises, what do I think?  Well, it's both not terribly surprising and incredibly shocking.  

Paramount attaches Star Trek Into Darkness IMAX sneak to The Hobbit, screws over Warner Bros. yet again.

Paramount just loves using IMAX to screw with Warner Bros.  For the third time, Paramount has put Warner Bros. in a somewhat awkward position.  As you recall, three years ago a scheduling conflict between Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince left the sixth Harry Potter picture without IMAX screens for the first two weekends of its run.  The loss certainly didn't hurt the box office much (HP6 was the first HP sequel to cross $300 million domestic), but it was an embarrassing scheduling snafu.  This time last year Warner Bros somewhat shot itself in the foot by allowing the IMAX preview for The Dark Knight Rises to premiere in front of 'true IMAX' prints (about 40 screens) of Paramount's Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol even as the film opened in limited IMAX release against Warner Bros' Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows.  Again, no real harm, no real foul, although the fourth M:I picture got tons of free publicity that otherwise would have gone to Sherlock Holmes 2 had *it* been the only place to see new The Dark Knight Rises footage.  Warner Bros did Paramount a favor last year and it seems that it's payback time.  Ironically said payback will end up hurting Warner Bros yet again. 

Weekend Box Office (08-26-12): Obama's America not withstanding, summer ends with an epic whimper.

Oh my, another film explicitly targeting an under-served niche did exceptional business almost exclusively with that niche.  In a sane industry that would be called smart business, but the studios tend to treat it as a *shock* and write it off as a fluke.  It was no shock to anyone paying attention during the week, especially when the film was announced to be expanding on over 1,000 screens this weekend.  With the weak slate of new releases and little holdover interest, the market was primed for a solid debut for something preaching to a very devoted choir.  First as foremost, 2016: Obama's America earned about 1/4 as much this weekend as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 did over its opening weekend on about as many screens eight years ago.  As not-president John Kerry can attest, even the most obscenely successful political documentary of all time ($23 million opening weekend, $119 million domestic total) didn't help John Kerry defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 election (even if we can dispute the results in Ohio, Bush won the popular vote by three million).  So no, the fact that a directly-targeted group of anti-Obama moviegoers gave 2016: Obama's America $6.2 million doesn't mean anything more than the piss-poor box office of last year's The Undefeated (essay) in terms of predicting an upcoming presidential election.  

Weekend Box Office: Dark Knight Rises tops, Total Recall flounders, Diary Of A Wimpy Kid 3 opens ok.

In the face of two relatively non-mighty openers, The Dark Knight Rises (review/spoiler-review) topped the weekend box office again with $36 million.  As has been the case throughout the film's much-debated run (which is really only 17 days old), it's doing pretty spectacular by any logical standard but must be defended from those who think it automatically should have topped The Dark Knight and/or challenged The Avengers.  The film has $354 million after three weekends, versus The Dark Knight ($393 million) and The Avengers ($457 million).  It's the third-biggest 17-day total of all-time, closely surpassing Avatar ($352 million) as the third-fastest film to reach $350 million.  It will crack $400 million in two or three weekends (surely the fourth-fastest movie to do so if it can in less than Shrek 2's 43 days) and anything after that is merely bragging rights.  It may or may not crack $1 billion worldwide, with around $700 million so far and holding up relatively well.  Despite my concerns following its Harry Potter/Twilight-esque opening weekend, it's already having a leggier run than any recent Harry Potter or Twilight Saga sequel, as well as Spider-Man 3 (2.2x its weekend) or Iron Man 2 (2.4x times its weekend).  It'll out gross Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ($380 million) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($381 million) around next weekend.  It will probably outgross Transformers 2 ($402 million), Spider-Man ($403 million), and The Hunger Games ($405 million) by the end of the month, with Toy Story 3 ($415 million), The Lion King ($422 million), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($423 million) waiting on tap if it can keep those non-IMAX screens during the end-of-August deluge.  So relax Bat-fans, it's doing just fine.

Weekend Box Office (07/28/12): The Dark Knight Rises continues to dominate as The Watch and Step Up 4 open soft.

In the next couple days you're going to hear a lot about how the Aurora, Colorado shootings had some kind of negative effect on the box office this weekend.  You're going to hear about how The Dark Knight Rises (non-spoiler review/spoiler review) is some kind of disappointment and that it surely left money on the table due to the aftermath of said mass murder (some thoughts on that, natch).  So without getting too pompous about discrediting such malarky, let's get something out of the way right now.  After ten days, The Dark Knight Rises has earned $289 million.  That's the third-best ten-day total of all-time behind only The Dark Knight ($313 million) and The Avengers ($373 million) and a good $10 million ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($373 million) without the 3D advantage.  Yes, the third Chris Nolan Batman film dropped  60% from last weekend, but it still earned $64 million in weekend two, the sixth-biggest second weekend of all-time (The Dark Knight earned $75 million in weekend two, a 53% drop).  In short, the threequel is playing like a normal insanely anticipated but also heavily front-loaded genre sequel that has its fan-base firmly entrenched without picking up many new viewers this time around.  In other words, it's playing a bit like a Harry Potter/Twilight sequel.  The Dark Knight Rises merely isn't the pure phenomenon that The Dark Knight was, and anyone that told you it would be was probably delusional or lying.  The Dark Knight was an event.  The Dark Knight Rises is just a heavily-anticipated genre sequel.  

No better moviegoing memories: A defense of and celebration of midnight movie screenings...

"I want you to know that, if I did have a son, and the opportunity presented itself to wake him up to watch a baseball game or to listen to the president on the radio, or for absolutely no reason at all..."

The Colorado theater shooting happened just over a week ago, during a period when I was out of town and thus unable to churn out any immediate thoughts.  In retrospect, I may be grateful for that.  Mass shootings are an all-too common occurrence in America, but this time felt different.  I've long argued that one of the problems with American society is that they tend to make every major tragedy and/or scandal about them, something that arguably goes back to the death of Princess Diana Spencer in August 1997.  Yet this time I couldn't help feeling like I had been specifically targeted.  After all, these weren't just moviegoers, but midnight moviegoers.  They weren't just midnight moviegoers, but midnight moviegoers watching a Batman film.  Whether by random decision (Holmes had allegedly intended to attack a shopping mall but changed his mind) or explicit targeting, the assailant this time around specifically picked people like me and you.  The readers of this site are arguably not general moviegoers per-se, but just the sort that flock to midnight screenings as a matter of habit.  And James Holmes, for reasons that may or may not become apparent over the next few months, didn't just commit mass murder in a place I consider sacred.  No, he opened fire and shed blood during a midnight screening, of a Batman film no less.  And as the week has seen all sorts of the usual finger-pointing, much of it being the usual 'the movies made him do it' nonsense that we haven't seen much of since Columbine.  But more than a little of the blame-game has been directed at the very institution of midnight screenings and the fevered anticipation that makes them so enjoyable, however absurd that seems on its face. Intentional or no, Mr. Holmes has sullied and bloodied an institution that I hold very dear, an institution that I someday hope to share with my children when the opportunity presents itself.  As such, right or wrong, I'm taking that just a little bit personally.

In an age of preordained marketing and spoilers, an ode to an age of not knowing and the thrill of unexpected discovery.

As another annual San Diego Comic Con ends with another week full of preordained previews, announcements, and sizzle reels, this seems as good a time as any to talk about something that has been lost in the saturation-level media coverage that surrounds each and every remotely major studio release these days.  I am talking of course about the element of surprise.  I'm not talking about plot spoilers regarding upcoming films, or even the obsessive need for news outlets to report on every plot detail of an upcoming film so that one has to literally live in a cave to avoid knowing too much.  Those are indeed issues, but I'm talking about something even more basic.  I'm talking about the idea of discovering the very existence of a film the old fashioned way.  Be it through a trailer that you didn't expect, or a poster that you didn't see coming, something very precious has been lost over the last fifteen years as the mainstream entertainment press has turned into a full-time, year-round Comic-Con.  We don't discover films we were hoping we might see via actual pre-movie trailers, or even through movie magazines like Premiere or Starlog.  Now they are preordained, with their posters and trailers given online *premieres* that are treated as actual news by film sites the world over.  Maybe it's the cranky old man in me talking, but there is something very special about discovering these films at the theater.  Which brings me to the question: When was the last time I was truly surprised by a piece of film marketing?  

The Amazing Spider-Man gets one last trailer. In summer 2012, it clearly suffers from the 'middle-child syndrome'.

This frankly isn't nearly as impressive as the first teaser, mainly because it doesn't add much other than to reveal some pretty big third-act spoilers (including two massive hints about the film's finale).  The interplay between Garfield and Stone is still pretty solid, and it's nice that the film A) has them get together pretty early on and B) apparently has her learn his secret at least by act three (again, why spoil that?).  Dennis Leary barely gets any dialogue this time around, which is good since he seems to be giving the film's worst performance.  The focus this time around is on the official super-villain, The Lizard (Rhys Ifans), with plenty of meaty shots of the green-skinned menace.  The web-slinging action still looks pretty terrific and the film looks visually dynamic (it has a richer and crisper picture than the relatively flat The Avengers).  At its core, the problem with The Amazing Spider-Man at this point in the game is two-fold.  First of all, it still doesn't look different enough from the Sam Raimi trilogy to justify a corporate-mandated reboot.  Second of all, it is sandwiched between what is arguably the 'ultimate comic book movie' (The Avengers) and the 'ultimate comic book film' (The Dark Knight Rises).  In comparison, the Marc Webb picture just seems like a kids' flick in comparison, a young do-gooder not fit to play with the grown-ups in tights.  Anyway, The Amazing Spider-Man opens on July 3rd.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

For those who care - a truckload of The Dark Knight Rises photos...

I'm shocked... SHOCKED that Time Warner's biggest summer movie has made the cover of Time Warner-owned Entertainment Weekly's annual summer movie preview issue.  I'm just happy that I don't have to keep using that same 'Batman aims his laser-gun' shot every time I write about the movie.  Anyway, I'm not going to dissect these to death, and I presume that Nolan and company aren't releasing anything that could be over-analyzed anyway.  But I will say that Bane looks not terribly intimidating in action and it's a little silly to see Batman wielding what appears to be an IPad (minor carping I know...).  Anyway, while most of the Internet was buzzing about Anne Hathaway's ass earlier this week (the promo image was an apparent unauthorized leak and has been removed), I was all about that 'Ella-Enchanted-quality' hair.  But that's no surprise if you know me well enough.The rest are after the jump.   Enjoy.

Scott Mendelson

Box Office Speculation: With few real competitors, why The Hunger Games will likely end 2012 as its second highest-grossing film.

I made an offhand comment in yesterday's box office write-off stating that The Hunger Games was all-but certain to end the year as among the top-three grossing films (domestically) by the time 2012 ended.  To be fair, it inspired more chit-chat on Twitter than it did here (my twitter followers really ought to comment here more often), but there were a number of 'what about THIS film?' and what-not.  So let's take a few moments to really examine the theoretical box office potential of the would-be box office giants of summer 2012 and the Thanksgiving/Christmas season.  This will be focusing on the biggest-of-the-big, so films that will merely be solid hits (Battleship, Snow White and the Huntsmen, anything and everything released between July 21st and November 9th) need not apply.  What is the plausible box office verdict on these films, and what real chance do they have against the likely $375-$400 million final domestic cume of The Hunger Games?  To put it bluntly, with one obvious exception, the odds are not in their favor.

Summer 2012 is the unofficial summer of IMAX domination...

Simply put, during the first twelve weeks of summer (May 4th to July 20th), there are six, maybe seven major movies all debuting in IMAX for at least the first week of their respective theatrical runs.  Three of them are in May, one is in June, and two or three are in July.  What are they you ask?  Well...

Audiences seeing film trailers in THEATERS first? Ye speak SORCERY! Lionsgate to debut Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II trailer with The Hunger Games.

Yes, as expected by everyone and their cat, Lionsgate will indeed unleash the first trailer for The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II two weeks from tomorrow, attached exclusively to prints of The Hunger Games.  It's an obvious move, using one massively popular franchise to prop up a new franchise that shares at least some core demographics.  But what is most heartening about the move is that Lionsgate will in fact be keeping the trailer offline that entire opening weekend.  That's right, Twi-hards, there may be crummy YouTube bootlegs popping up online on Friday morning, but if you want to see a quality copy before Monday, March 26th (at 3:00am PST... really guys?), you actually have to buy a ticket to The Hunger Games over its opening weekend.  What a novel concept!    

Classic Marketing: Universal teases The Flintstones a year in advance...

It was no secret that Universal was planning a big-screen adaptation of The Flintstones for the summer of 1994.  I remember actually being on the Universal lot while visiting a cousin in the winter of 1993 so I could shoot portions of a Bar Mitzvah movie (long story... another time) and being told by the Universal guy that if we got caught to say "We're here working on stuff for The Flintstones... nobody knows what the plot is yet anyway."  But a six months later, as my dad and I watched the lights go down for our advance-night 10:00pm screening of Jurassic Park (arguably the best single movie going experience of my life... ask me about it next summer), we were stunned that Universal had already cooked up a teaser for the seemingly un-shot and certainly unfinished Flintstones feature.  As you can see, it was basically just a bouncing ball version of the theme song, climaxing with an in-costume John Goodman screaming 'Yabba-dabba-doo!' at the top of his lungs.  Let me tell you, the entire audience roared with applause and I admit I was caught up in the infectious excitement for a project I couldn't really care less about.  That was the start of something new.

Read it and weep! The Phantom Menace is about to out-gross The Dark Knight! Or: What the onslaught on 3D reissues means for the all-time grossers list.

With just $1 million separating the two films, today or tomorrow is likely the day when one of the more reviled films in geek-ville, Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace, will surpass one of the more openly worshipped geek film in recent years, The Dark Knight, at the global box office.  As of Wednesday, Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace crossed $1 billion, becoming the eleventh film to do so and the first Star Wars film to cross said benchmark.  Obviously there is inflation and 3D price-bumps to figure, but just remember that The Phantom Menace's adjusted-for-inflation grosses from 1999 would equal about $664 million in domestic grosses alone (it earned $431 million in the summer of 1999, the second-largest grossing first-run film behind Titanic at that point).  And don't forget that a number of major fantasy films, chiefly the first three Star Wars films, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial, have had several theatrical releases since their initial respective debuts.  In the days before VHS became mainstream, it was not uncommon for popular films to show up repeatedly at a theater near you.  With the apparent consumer appeal of 3D-converted re-releases, we are seeing a return to what may be a revolving door atop the list of all-time box office champions.

Follow the bouncing bat! A simple way to deal with that pesky "What the hell did Bane just say?" Dark Knight Rises issue...

There have been rumblings in the blogosphere today that Warner Bros. may or may not have stealthily replaced the Dark Knight Rises IMAX prologue audio tracks with a new mix of said sequence, one with allegedly cleaned-up audio.  This follows two weeks of breathless debate among the geek-squad about whether Chris Nolan should or shouldn't alter the vocal performance of Tom Hardy's Bane (presumably with Hardy's ADR-assistance) in order to appease fans who were unable to hear the primary villain's astute monologuing.  Nolan's position is that the muscle-bound cult leader/terrorist/Mary Sue was always intended to be slightly difficult to understand, so paying audiences can  suck it.

The 2011 movie year in box office trends part II: 3D matters, except when it doesn't.

I generally dislike trend pieces. I'm a strong proponent of the idea that how well a film does is specific to the movie itself.  That having been said, there were a handful of interesting patterns that did rear their ugly or not-so ugly heads this year.  These pieces will be more about box office trends and what they may mean for the future.  Without further ado, here we go...

3D matters, except when it doesn't!

I wrote about this back when summer ended, but the last four months of 2011 reiterated the same message: It's the movie!  3D cannot make a would-be flop into a hit.  But where it can (and did) help this year is in getting predestined blockbusters to greater heights of would-be box office glory.  Without 3D, it stands to reason that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides would have barely made it past $200 million, that Green Lantern would have struggled to top $100 million, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon would have ended up closer to the first film's $319 million gross.  Thor and Captain America ended up with $175-180 million at least partially due to the 3D ticket-price bump, without which they would have ended up closer to the $130-155 million grosses of Ghost Rider, Fantastic Four, and/or The Incredible Hulk.  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II broke the opening weekend box office record partially because of the 3D-bump, as even just 43% of opening weekend ticket-buyers making that choice was enough to put it past The Dark Knight's $158 million debut (in just 2D, barring other variables, Harry Potter 7.2 would have debuted at just over $150 million, or good for third place on the list).

The 2011 movie year in box office trends part I: Sequels drop domestically, but soar internationally.

I generally dislike trend pieces. I'm a strong proponent of the idea that how well a film does is specific to the movie itself.  That having been said, there were a handful of interesting patterns that did rear their ugly or not-so ugly heads this year.  These pieces will be more about box office trends and what they may mean for the future.  Without further ado, here we go...

Sequels grossed less here, but much more over there!

Back in the 1980s and 1990s, with a few exceptions, it was generally a foregone conclusion that sequels would cost more than the originals but gross a bit less.  Normal were sequels like Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ($184 million versus $242 million for Raiders of the Lost Ark) or Batman Returns ($162 million vs. $251 million for Batman).  Yes, you occasionally had a break-out franchise like Lethal Weapon ($65 million for Lethal Weapon, $147 million for Lethal Weapon 2), but the franchise growth pattern was generally closer to the likes of Beverly Hills Cop or Gremlins.  But sometime around 2001, starting with The Mummy Returns ($202 million versus $155 million for The Mummy) and Rush Hour 2 ($226m/$141m), we started a ten-year trend of sequels generally out-grossing their predecessors domestically.  You could argue the first big example was Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, which out-grossed its predecessor in just its opening weekend in June 1999, but the general rule quickly became that a well-marketed sequel to a popular original could be expected to out-gross its immediate predecessor in America.

How 2001 was a film game-changer V: Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter influence a decade of blockbusters.

This is the final entry in a handful of essays that will be dealing with the various trends that were kicked off during the 2001 calendar year, and how they still resonate today.

Yesterday (the 19th) marked the tenth anniversary of the US theatrical release of The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring.  It was just over a month after the US theatrical release of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which had debuted with a record-breaking $92 million opening weekend.  Debuting with a December-record $72 million five-day haul, The Fellowship of the Ring parlayed superb reviews and splendid word of mouth to break a number of Christmas and New Year's season records and show off some of the best legs this side of Titanic and The Sixth Sense. These two films, which closed out the year, would directly or indirectly pave the way for the next full decade of would-be blockbuster filmmaking.  At last, we had reached a point where basically anything was possibly onscreen if you had enough money and (ideally) enough talent.  The culmination of every trend discussed in the prior essays (the gutting of the R-rating, the explosion in opening weekend box office potential, the emergence of overseas box office dominance, the mainstreaming of 'family entertainment' etc) was personified in the massive success of these two big-budget fantasy pictures.  Whether based on a novel, a comic book, or a theme park ride, big-budget fantasy spectaculars were about to become the dominant tentpole of choice.

The Dark Knight Rises gets a moody and refreshingly cryptic trailer. It stills seems to be pointing at Chris Nolan's version of The Dark Knight Returns.

There was absolutely no way that this trailer was going to excite me as much as the first glimpse of The Dark Knight four years ago.  As I've written before, that was basically THE Batman movie that we had been waiting our entire geek-lives to see, a street-level crime epic pitting Batman, Gordon, and Dent against The Joker for the moral soul of Gotham.  So what is this one exactly?  Well, Nolan is obviously going for a pretty grand-scale finale, and the scope is relatively impressive thus far.  I could carp that the attack on the football field is the kind of implausibly weird thing that happens in a C-rate episode of Justice League or in a Transformers movie, but oh well.  Football fanatics, does that still count as a legitimate touchdown?

The fire sputters! About that Dark Knight Rises IMAX prologue...

It should be noted that I wasn't a huge fan of the bank robbery prologue for The Dark Knight four years ago.  It was the traditional trailer that got be uber-excited.  I will concede that the bank robbery sequence worked better in the film than it did as a stand-alone preview (as gorgeous as it looked, the dialogue was a little wonky and it was 'just a bank robbery').  Having said that, the seven-minute sequence that allegedly opens The Dark Knight Rises is actually somewhat terrible.  Whether or not it was a rush job (as I've heard), the sequence fails in several seemingly basic ways that leaves a very poor first impression about the otherwise unseen film.