Movie stars aren't an endangered species, they are more vital than ever in the $200 million fantasy tentpole era.

There are $200 million fantasy spectaculars opening within two weeks of each other at the moment.  If the $400,000 10pm/midnight figures for Jack the Giant Slayer is any indication, Warner Bros. is about to have its very own John Carter/Battleship ($25 million debut, $65 million finish, around $250 million worldwide at best).  Conversely Walt Disney has let the embargo wall fall for its Sam Raimi-helmed Oz: The Great and Powerful, which is allegedly tracking to open at around $75 million.  There are a number of reasons why Sam Raimi's fairy tale-redux is prime to perform better than Bryan Singer's such attempt. For one thing, I can take my daughter to the one that isn't PG-13 and doesn't involve giants biting peoples' heads off and/or setting them on fire.  Also helping is the strength and confidence of Disney's marketing versus Warner's "we know we laid a financial egg" trepidation.  But perhaps most importantly, Oz: The Great and Powerful has actual movie stars.  What?  I thought the era of the movie star was gone and the proverbial movie star was a relic of a bygone era?  Well... it's actually only half-true.

The Lone Ranger gets a 90-second Super Bowl tease.

I'm not sure 'good enough' is quite what Disney wants to hear in regards to their very pricey summer tentpole, but that pretty much sums it up.  This Gore Verbinski film looks like solid fun, with a nice blend of humor and myth-making.  It's a bit odd to hear what I presumed is the villain (Tom Wilkinson) telling the 'comforting' story of the Lone Ranger, but I can't fault an ad for my own confusion.  The action looks grand and seems to have quite a bit of personality, and I'm partial to an action film that feels like a genuine 'jumping and swinging' adventure.  Will this set the world on fire?  I have no idea, but Disney can always just demand a Pirates of the Caribbean 5 at a reduced rate if this flops.  For those who like the western, this seems like the real deal, a genuine bit of western action-adventure on a modern tentpole scale.  And yes, on that note, it looks a lot better than Wild Wild West.

Scott Mendelson   

The Lone Ranger gets a new poster...

No, I'm not posting a 21-second preview of a 90-second Super Bowl trailer.  But I will post this rather nice new poster, which seems to the be the official theatrical one-sheet.  So yeah, along with Iron Man 3 and Oz: The Great and Powerful, Disney seems to be going full-steam ahead with this Sunday's game.  I know G.I. Joe: Retribution has a preview debuting during the game as well, along with Oblivion, World War Z, and allegedly Star Trek Into Darkness.  But the big teaser debut will be for Universal's sixth Fast and the Furious film.  This clip will be notable both because it's the first footage anyone has seen of the film and because we might finally find out what the title of the fifth sequel is going to be.

Scott Mendelson

The Lone Ranger gets a, um, Lone Ranger-centric trailer.

What's interesting about this second and somewhat more plot-centric trailer is how is seems to follow the 1981 film The Legend of The Lone Ranger pretty closely for at least the first two acts.  I saw that film several years back and noticed how perfectly it fit what is now the standard superhero origin story template, even if it was hobbled by bare-bones production values (at least Christopher Lloyd made a great villain).  Anyway, the other thing of note is how little time Arnie Hammer apparently spends actually in costume.  Obviously he doesn't don the mask for at least the second act, and it appears that he is basically dressed 'normal' during at least one of the major train-centric action sequences.  Aside from those little details, this looks like fun, even if it looks a bit generic thus far.  Perhaps its the absence of specific villainy, as baddie Tom Wilkinson is nowhere to be found this time around (although Helena Bonham Carter shows up and Ruth Wilson seems to be quite imperiled).  I believe in Gore Verbinski, especially when working with Ted Elliott and Terry Russo (cause them f**kers wrote The Mask of Zorro!) so I'm optimistic until I'm given a very good reason not to be.  Anyway, so far, no cause for alarm.  The Lone Ranger opens July 3, 2013.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger gets a gorgeous and grounded trailer filled with trains and more trains.

Disney certainly isn't selling whatever supernatural elements survived the temporary shutdown from late last year.  This looks like a straight-ahead western adventure centered around the newfangled railroad, and it frankly looks pretty sharp.  Gore Verbinski is nothing if not a visual stylist and this looks gorgeous.  But the most promising sign is the fact that the trailer emphasized its time and place while all-but hiding Johnny Depp in the shadows.  You get a few glimpses of Depp and Arnie Hammer, but most of this tease is just Tom Wilkinson (the villain, natch) talking about how much he loves trains with bits and pieces of what is allegedly an insanely elaborate train-set action sequence.  Whatever you may think about the need for a Lone Ranger picture or whether it was wise to spend $200 million on it, this does look like something at least attempting to be a real movie, which I'd argue is the Verbinski touch.  Anyway, this one drops July 3rd, 2013.  As always we'll see, but I'm officially intrigued by the restraint and relative realism on display.  This certainly *looks* closer to Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl than Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.  Your thoughts?

Scott Mendelson   

Weekend Box Office (05/13/12): Dark Shadows no match for The Avengers as the Marvel pic earns $103m in weekend two.

I've long said that, generally speaking, any would-be blockbusters slotted for the second major weekend of summer are doomed to somewhat under-perform, unable to break out of the spotlight hogged by whatever film kicks off the summer.  Since 1996 (when Warner Bros. officially kicked off summer with Twister in the first weekend in May), only two times has a film debuting on this very weekend actually topped the box office, and both times were due to a Hugh Jackman franchise film so disappointing audiences that moviegoers were more-than-ready to lap up whatever came next.  In 2004, Troy opened with $44 million against the second weekend of Van Helsing while Star Trek rode a wave of good publicity to $79 million against the crash-and-burn second weekend of X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Other than that, the second weekend of summer is littered with either smaller films that didn't need to reach blockbuster status (The Horse Whisperer, Daddy Daycare, Monster-In-Law, Bridesmaids, etc) or would-be blockbusters that crashed hard on opening weekend (Dragonheart, Battleship Earth, Poseidon, Speed Racer, etc).  Falling into the 'close-but-no cigar' category would be Robin Hood from 2010 (which opened with a solid $37 million but still needed massive overseas dollars to recoup its $200 million budget) and this weekend's Dark Shadows.

Review: Confused, rambling Dark Shadows (2012) sucks the life out of longtime Tim Burton/Johnny Depp fans.

Dark Shadows

2012
113 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Dark Shadows is a movie with pretty much nothing to say.  It uses its culture-clash and fish-out-of-water narrative not for any kind of social meaning or parable, but purely for cheap offhand laughs.  It is filled with wonderful actors who all look spectacular but have little or nothing to do.  The film tries to play around with mixing supernatural horror, cheap comedy, and genuine soap opera theatrics, but nothing really meshes as it should.  It looks gorgeous as most Burton films do, the actors do what they can with very little, and the 70s soundtrack is filled with a mix of well-known classics and lesser-known hits.  Whether it is better or worse than Planet of the Apes or Alice In Wonderland is a moot point, it's simply yet another very bad Tim Burton film.  In short, Tim Burton's Dark Shadows can best be described in the same manner in which Alfred Hitchcock derogatorily referred to Ingrid Bergman: So beautiful... so stupid.

Tim Burton's Dark Shadows gets a quirky and goofy trailer.

Well, this looks like somewhat of a return to a smaller scale for Tim Burton.  Yes there are stars galore, period decor, and various vampire/witch-related special effects, but this is a lighter and smaller picture that feels more like Beetlejuice than Sleepy Hollow.  Most of the 'fish out of water' humor falls flat, although Chloë Moretz earns the biggest laugh with her deadpan reaction to the climactic drug joke.  I could carp about a somewhat generic 'evil woman scorned' narrative, but I don't know enough about the original television show to protest what may be a faithful plotline.  Besides, if I may speak pruriently, Eva Green looks absolutely drop-dead gorgeous (pun intended I suppose), even if I prefer brunettes.  Frankly, the idea of a single and unattached bachelor spending an entire movie trying *not* to have sex with Eva Green verges on the ridiculous, but the movie does seem to have a goofy offbeat charm.  The best news is that this looks like less of a studio product and more of a somewhat idiosyncratic little flick.  It's still Tim Burton playing in someone else's sandbox, but it feels far-less mechanical than Alice in Wonderland (or Planet of the Apes for that matter).  Warner Bros. opens this one on May 11th.  Cursed release date aside, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Why The Lone Ranger was always a smarter bet than John Carter...

Well, um, this does look like Arnie Hammer a The Lone Ranger and Johnny Depp as Tonto.  Here is your first official look (congrats on getting it online before cell-phone photos were leaked) at Gore Verbinski's The Lone Ranger.  If you recall, the film was almost shelved last year over budgetary concerns.  Disney only put the project back on the table when costs were trimmed from $250 million to $215 million.  Ironically, it was this story that first brought to light the insanely high price tag for Andrew Stanton's John Carter, which (barring a miracle) is set to open to pretty lukewarm numbers tomorrow.  I've long argued against the ever-rising budgets of big-scale would-be blockbusters, arguing that studios shouldn't "spend Return of the King money on Fellowship of the Ring".  But it is beyond odd that this film was the one to make Disney finally come down hard on budgets.  Even if $215 million is still a bit much to spend on a Lone Ranger film, it is surely a far-safer bet than a complete unknown entity like John Carter (which has no stars, cult-level source material, an untested live-action director at the helm, and - in hindsight - isn't a good movie).

Déjà vu all over again. Warner Bros hides Tim Burton's Dark Shadows just as they hid Tim Burton's Mars Attacks!. And why it's a good thing...

There's a new Tim Burton coming out from Warner Bros. in just over two months.  Aside from a couple stills and some half-hearted interview statements from the cast and Mr. Burton, we haven't heard or seen a thing from it.  No posters, no trailers, no TV spots, nothing.  It's October of 1996, and I'm of course referring to Mars Attacks!.  Many of my readers are too young to remember way-back-when, but the near-absence of marketing materials for Tim Burton's $80 million private-joke (which today plays like half-blockbuster deconstruction and half-right wing political fantasy) was a source of frustration for a 16-year old Tim Burton fan who was eagerly awaiting that first preview.  Today we stand in the same boat with another Warner Bros-funded Tim Burton 'comedy'.  But just over fifteen years later, what was a source of frustration is now a pleasant surprise.  Nine weeks to go, and I really don't need to see an onslaught of spoiler-filled marketing materials for the upcoming Dark Shadows.  Ten weeks to go, and I have absolutely no idea what kind of film Tim Burton and his merry band have delivered.  I don't know what it looks like, what the tone is, or all-that much about the plot.  And in this era of 'spoil the movie a year in advance', that's a special thing indeed.

Tim Burton's stop-motion Frankenweenie remake gets a trailer.

It's beyond ironic that Disney is giving Tim Burton money to make a stop-motion animated feature based on a live-action short film that he helmed back in the early 1980s that more-or-less got him canned from Disney.  For those who don't remember, Burton made a 25-minute black-and-white feature about a young boy who brings his dead dog back to life.  It was intended to be shown before the 1984 re-issue of Pinocchio, but was pulled after Frankenweenie got slapped with a PG rating.  After that, Burton left Disney, ended up getting a shot at Warner Bros directing Pee-Wee's Big Adventure the next year and the rest is history.  

Weekend Box Office (10/30/11): Puss In Boots makes muted (for Dreamworks) number-one debut, while Timberlake/Seyfried's In Time and Depp's Rum Diary underwhelm.

 

Dreamworks seems to have paid a price for their risky release date, as Puss In Boots (review) debuted with a comparatively soft $34 million over the weekend.  We'll find out for sure on Monday if it broke the Halloween opening weekend record (Saw III grossed $33 million on this weekend in 2006), it's still a pretty disappointing number and well below the norm for major Dreamworks cartoons.  The studio has had a healthy run on the first weekend in November for the last several years (Megamind, Madagascar 2, Bee Movie, Flushed Away), but the decision was made recently to move the film back one weekend right into the heart of the kid-friendly holiday known as Halloween. As it stands for the $130 million production, the debut is the lowest opening for a Dreamworks cartoon since Flushed Away, which debuted with just $18.8 million in November 2006 (an Aardman Animations production, it nearly doubled its $64 million US gross overseas).  While a massive snowstorm on the East Coast likely kept moviegoers indoors on Saturday and possibly Sunday, the film's $9.6 million opening day was below par as well.  As it is, the film played 59% female and 55% over-25.  It also played to a 35% Hispanic audience, while 51% of the tickets were in 3D and 7% were in IMAX.  The comparative uptick in 3D sales makes sense, since it's some of the better 3D we've seen to date.

Weekend Box Office (10/23/11): Paranormal Activity 3 scores record October debut with $52.6 million (but it's not the top horror opening).

Despite what everyone else is reporting, Paranormal Activity 3 (review) did not set a record this weekend for the biggest opening for a horror film.  Lest we forget, Hannibal (review) opened with $58 million in February of 2001, which was actually the biggest R-rated opening ever at the time.  Anyway, Paramount's threequel/prequel will have to settle with merely being the second- biggest horror debut ever, the eighth-biggest R-rated opening, and the top October launch.  Tragic, I know. The $5 million film grossed a massive $54 million this weekend, which is a 29% jump from Paranormal Activity 2's $40.6 million opening this time last year.  The film had a massively front loaded weekend, the ninth-biggest on record, with a mere 2.02x weekend multiplier.  Still, that was better than the 2.01x weekend multiplier for Paranormal Activity 2 last year (the sixth-smallest such multiplier).  The picture played 53% under-25 and 54% female.  Considering the film pulled just in $1.7 million more at midnight, the $26 million opening day (around $6 million more than Paranormal Activity 2's $20.6 million Friday) and $12 million jump in total opening weekend compared to the last film, there is a clear growth in this series.

A cast photo for Tim Burton's Dark Shadows.

From left to right, we have... Helena Bonham Carter as Dr. Julia Hoffman; Chloe Moretz as Carolyn Stoddard, Eva Green as Angelique Bouchard, Gulliver McGrath as David Collins, Bella Heathcote as Victoria Winters, Johnny Depp as Barnabus Collins, Ray Shirley as Mrs. Johnson, Jackie Earle Haley as Willie Loomis, Jonny Lee Miller as Roger Collins, and Michelle Pfeiffer as Elizabeth Collins Stoddard.  

Anyway, it looks pretty sharp, and Depp's make-up certainly looks less weird than the paparazzi photos that made him look like Michael Jackson.  I know nothing of the Dark Shadows television show and would prefer to keep it that way so as to judge this picture as open-mindedly as possible.  It's no secret that I'm not the world's most optimistic Tim Burton fan at the moment, but the horror-fan has never actually dabbled with vampires before, so it would seem that this is something more than a paycheck job.  It is probably too much to hope that Warner Bros. lets this out with an R-rating, but that would certainly be a step in the right direction.  Come what may, the picture will be released on May 12th, 2012 (alas, the second weekend-of-summer death slot), so we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides crosses $200 million in 22 days. It won't match its budget domestically, but it may hit $1 billion worldwide.

Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is the poster child for the overwhelming strength of overseas box office over the last couple years.  Here is a movie that is poised to become one of the fifteen biggest grossing movies of all time worldwide, yet it will likely not surpass its $250 million production budget in domestic grosses. But the film did cross the $200 million mark in 22 days, or merely three days faster than the first Pirates of the Caribbean back in 2003.  The prior sequels did it in nine days and eight days respectively, so this is indeed a franchise comedown on the domestic front.  Worldwide however, the film has already passed the $654 million grossed by Curse of the Black Pearl, with its sights set on the $963 million grossed by At World's End and the $1.066 billion grossed by Dead Man's Chest.  In terms of just foreign grosses, On Stranger Tides has grossed $615 million (the fourteenth largest total ever), and it's bearing down on the $642 million overseas total for Dead Man's Chest and the $654 million overseas cum for At World's End.  Obviously, we'll know in a week or so whether Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides becomes the first franchise to have two films reach $1 billion worldwide and/or becomes the first film to hit $900 million $1 billion while grossing less than $250 million in the US.  Fascinating...

Scott Mendelson

Thanks to dirty, stinking, good-for-nothing foreigners, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides becomes second-fastest movie to gross $800 million worldwide.

This is one problem for which you cannot blame America.  As of yesterday, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides sailed past the $800 million mark in just over 3 weeks.  That's the second fastest such sprint, behind James Cameron's Avatar.  Sadly this means that the really lazy and really terrible sequel will likely cross the $1 billion mark, if not surpass Lord of the Rings: Return of the King ($1.119 billion) to become the biggest-grossing film not directed by James Cameron.  Since $614 million of that is from overseas grosses, just who is to blame?  Well, the biggest offenders are Japan ($62 million), Russia ($49 million), and Germany ($46 million), and the United Kingdom ($43 million).  Oh, and don't forget France!  I've long defended France's reputation, since the French people fought off the Nazis long after their government surrendered (and they were pretty right about that whole 'stay out of Vietnam and don't go into Iraq' stuff).  But those 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' have surrendered $36 million to this soulless monstrosity so J'accuse!  But of course, I cannot ignore the biggest contributor.  With a contribution of $192 million thus far, the biggest worldwide offender for this particular film is... oh wait... damn.  Scratch that first sentence.

Scott Mendelson    

Weekend Box Office (05/22/11): Pirates 4 grosses $90m, Bridesmaids holds strong, Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris astonishes in limited bow

Just ten years ago next weekend, we saw pundits studio executives hand-wringing over the 'mere' $75 million four-day gross of Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor.  For some reason (oh, it's a three-hour period love story... it's EXACTLY like Titanic!!), studio executives were expecting a $100 million four-day total.  Nevermind that such a number had never been achieved before.  As I've written elsewhere, 2001 was the year that opening weekends went crazy, where $50 million became the new $35 million and $60 million became the new $40 million.  In the last nine years (starting in May 2002 of course), we've had 25 films with $100 million+ four-day totals and 18 films with $100 million+ three-day totals.  I bring this up because once again we are faced with a Disney blockbuster that is fighting off the assumption of failure because its opening weekend didn't approach record levels.  For the record, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opened with $90 million this weekend.  That may not be as huge as the last two sequels, but it's a fine haul for a franchise that pretty much everyone agrees is washed up.  Let this be a lesson to Disney's Chuck Viane (who actually predicted a $100 million+ weekend): it's your job to LOWER expectations, not inflate them!

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides opening day collects $35 million, looks on course to $86 million weekend.

It's a $35 million opening Friday for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  That's expectedly below the opening Fridays for Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($55 million - a record at the time) and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End ($42 million, despite $13 million in Thursday night sneaks).  The film pulled in about 13% of its Friday total in midnight screenings ($4.7 million), which is slightly less than the 16% midnight haul of Dead Man's Chest ($9 million of its $55 million Friday), even though Dead Man's Chest obviously pulled in more midnight cash overall.  Considering inflation and 3D/IMAX ticket price bumps, it stands to reason that attendance was way down compared to the prior sequels.  As it is, the second film (the only prior entry up to now with a pure Fri-Sun opening weekend) had a 2.4x weekend multiplier, which led to a then-record $135 million opening weekend.  If the sequel follows suit, we get the predicted $86 million opening haul.  The third film is a more difficult comparison.  If you purely count Fri-Sun, it had a 2.7 weekend multiplier ($114 million for Fri-Sun), which would give the fourth film $96 million for the weekend.  But At World's End made $13 million on those Thursday night sneaks, meaning that it basically made $56 million on its first 1.25 days.  Using that, it means that the film pulled in over 1/2 its opening weekend in just the first 1.25 days (and then it did another $25 million on Memorial Day Monday).  So the safest bet is to split the pure Fri-Sun difference, hope for strong kiddie-driven matinée attendance (poor kids...), and guess a 2.55 weekend multiplier, which will give the film $89 million for the weekend, good enough for 2011's top opening haul thus far.  In better news for humanity, Bridesmaids only dropped about 18% from last weekend (about $6 million), setting it on course for a $20 million second weekend.

Scott Mendelson    

Review: Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - A 2D 35mm Experience

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
2011
137 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

Rob Marshall's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is arguably the movie most of us thought we were getting back in summer 2003 with Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl.  It is a weightless, thoughtless, undisciplined, and juvenile bore.  It replaces plot and character with non-stop frantic action that provides little entertainment value because there are no clear stakes.  Unlike the first picture, it gives us no characters worth caring about and no story worth following.  Unlike the bloated but surreal, challenging, and ambitious sequels, it lacks any kind of cinematic life, feeling less like a big-screen extension of the mythology than a made-for-TV pilot reboot.  It is the very definition of half-assed cash-in.  Eight summers ago, the initial exploits of Will Turner, Elizabeth Swann, and Jack Sparrow surprised us by being a real film that happened to be based on a Disney theme-park ride.  This fourth installment can't even hold a candle to The Haunted Mansion or The Country Bears.

Midnight Box Office (05/19/11): Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides pulls in $4.7million in 12:01am showings. Weekend total $72-104 million.

It's time to do that pesky midnight math yet again.  Before the first matinees even start on the west coast, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has pulled in $4.7 million in midnight screenings.  So, using the math that we've been playing around with for the last few weeks, let's see where we stand.  As I've written previously, midnight grosses generally make up around 4.5%-6.5% of the total weekend take.  So the best case scenario is a weekend take of $105 million.  But the question becomes just how anticipated and/or front loaded is this fourth installment of the series?  It stands to reason that the film is more front loaded than Fast Five (which pulled in about 4.5% of its take from midnights) being that its a sequel, but certainly less front loaded than The Dark Knight  (which pulled in 11% of its $158 million debut at 12:01am Thursday).  However, this number is less than the $7.5 million that Iron Man 2 pulled down in its midnight debut, totaling about 5.8% of its $128 million opening.  So let's say that Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides is about as front loaded as Thor (it's a sequel, but it's a less geek-skewing property than the Marvel Comics adventure), which puts the number at about 5%.  So, if the fourth film has already scored 5.5% of its weekend figure (word of mouth will likely be far worse than Thor or Fast Five), then the pirate adventure will pull down $85 million for the weekend.  So, the variable is between $72 and $104 million, with $85 million looking like the probable figure.  Okay, now I'm off to actually see the film in glorious 2D and review it.  Never thought I'd be able to accurately predict weekend box office before the opening day actually began...

Scott Mendelson