A problem from (cinematic) heaven: There are just too many high quality adult movies in the marketplace!

As most of you know, the ambitious and expensive Cloud Atlas will be opening this weekend with around $10 million for the weekend.  Even with Warner Bros. merely on the hook for distribution and marketing and even with the film's $100 million budget covered by foreign pre-sales, this is not a pleasant figure for a rather impressive movie.  There will be finger-pointing and blame to go around over the next few days.  But I would argue that the primary reason for its box office failure is actually a net positive.  In short, Cloud Atlas had the bad luck to open during what can only be called a plethora of adult films.  I've talked quite a bit about the slow and steady comeback of adult cinema in an age of non-stop tentpoles, but there is one downside to the current deluge.  It can be argued that there is actually too much adult product out there in the current marketplace.  And as we all know, a large majority of adult moviegoers aren't quite as frequent as the younger crowd.  The stereotypical adult moviegoer, the one with a family and a job and various responsibilities, maybe only goes to the movies once a month.  And if they went to the movies this weekend, they probably went to see Argo.

Weekend Box Office (09-23-12): Four new releases cannibalize each other as The Master whiffs in wide release and Importance of Being A Wallflower explodes.

As always, for background and historical context for all the weekend's new movies, check out John Gosling's obscenely detailed weekend preview HERE.

It wasn't so much a 'something for everyone' weekend as it was 'multiple things for the same general audience' as four wide releases aimed at thrill-hungry moviegoers and/or adults debuted on the same day, creating a clear case of mutually assured destruction.  The top three movies are basically tied, but as always rank is irrelevant next to the actual hard numbers (why rank doesn't matter).  For the moment, the top debut of the weekend may be End of Watch, a 'found footage'-style LA cop drama, parlayed strong reviews into a solid $13 million opening, which is the second-biggest debut for Open Roads outside of The Grey ($20 million) back in January.  The $7 million film (purchased for $2 million) had a marketing and distribution cost of around $20 million, so even a $40 million final total will get this film in the black before home video.  It also proves that Jake Gyllenhaal  is a decent mid-range opener.  He's useful when the film you're selling doesn't cost $200 million ala Prince of Persia.  End of Watch is yet another installment in writer David Ayers's 'two volatile men in a car' sub-genre, which includes the likes of The Fast and the Furious, Training Day and Harsh Times (an underrated Christian Bale vehicle which he also directed).  He wrote but did not direct the the LA Riots-set cop melodrama Dark Blue while directing but not writing the frankly mediocre Keanu Reeves cop melodrama Street Kings.  Among films he directed, End of Watch should easily top the $26 million gross of Street Kings while it will be fifth (out of seven) if it can merely surpass the $9 million gross of Kurt Russell's Dark Blue. Fourth place is the $76 million-grossing Training Day, which is too far a bridge to cross at this point.

John Gosling previews the week's new releases (09-21-12)

The House at the End of the Street is the new film from director Mark Tonderai, who made his debut with the 2009 thriller, Hush. The idea for the film actually originated from a short story written by Jonathan Mostow (director of Terminator: Rise of the Machines), which was then expanded for the screen by David Loucka. It sees recently divorced mother Sarah and her teenage daughter, Elissa, move into a new place, unaware that the house next door was witness to a double murder in which a young girl killed her parents while they slept. After the crime was committed, the girl vanished, leaving her brother, Ryan, as the only survivor. Elissa and Ryan (who still resides in the neighboring house) form a relationship but it soon becomes apparent that the evil that was present in the house at the end of the street may still be there. Elisabeth Shue takes on the maternal role of Sarah, with Jennifer Lawrence as Elissa. 

Why did no studio move their upcoming action films to September 7th after The Gangster Squad split?

Yes yes, last weekend's box office was the worst since after the 9/11 attacks.  Normally cumulative weekend box office doesn't mean a damn thing, but this weekend deserves study as a prime example of missed opportunities.  The actual reasons for this are interesting for two reasons.  A) Just like 9/11, the six degrees-of-separation reason is once again rooted in an act of mass violence.  Had the Aurora shootings not occurred on July 20th or had Warner Bros. shown a token amount of backbone, The Gangster Squad would have been the big opener of the weekend and surely would have delivered a better debut than The Words, which turned out to be the sole truly wide release.  Moreover, the weekend shows us how much we've become accustomed to weekly blockbuster opening weekends each and every frame.  But the real question of last weekend is why didn't any studio bother to move a token major action release onto the September 7th slot.  Yes, I know Lionsgate randomly dumped The Cold Light of Day onto 1,500 screens with next-to-no advertising, but considering the coming storm of major genre fare over just the next three weeks, you have to wonder why a studio, any studio, didn't think to jump into the near-vacant slot and avoid the coming storm.