Disney unleashes the terrific opening credit sequence from Oz: The Great And Powerful. Watch it now (or whenever)!

The best thing I can say about the 3D work in Oz: The Great and Powerful is that I could tell, even in my 2D screening, that it probably looked spectacular in 3D.  Anyway, Disney has released the terrific opening credit sequence for our viewing pleasure.  Obviously it's spoiler-free.  Yes, I'm basically killing time until I get the chance to finish my Olympus Has Fallen review, but so be it.

Scott Mendelson

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?

See it early? See it at midnight? See it on DVD? On how we see movies and how those choices affect our critical analysis.

The word leaking out from last weekend's screening of next month's Evil Dead remake is generally positive, with tepid enthusiasm blending in with absolutely insane raves and foaming-at-the-mouth excitement.  Of course, there was equal amounts of chatter that the venue for this premiere, a packed crowd of demographically perfect horror junkies on opening night of the SXSW Film Festival, had something to do with the uber-positive reception. I can't imagine a more receptive audience than the one that saw the picture in Austin last weekend and I can't imagine the frenzied anticipation and the whole 'I saw it first!' mentality didn't affect the reception. I had a chance to see Oz: The Great and Powerful at the All Media screening on Monday night but passed because I knew my kid might want to see it and I didn't want to keep her up until 10:30pm on a school night. So I waited until Friday. I bought two tickets to a 2D 7:15pm showing and picked up my kid from school acccordingly.  She liked the movie, and the packed audience went nuts for it too.  I'd be lying if the circumstances of said viewing didn't perhaps allow me to paper over the film's very obvious storytelling issues. I got to see a big event movie on opening night with a packed audience with my excited daughter in tow, which for a film nerd like myself is the very definition of having your cake and eating it too.

Weekend Box Office: Oz: The Great and Powerful summons $80 million, with all signs pointing towards a leggy run.

I've said this before, but one of the problems with modern box office analysis is that it treats studio tracking numbers, which are supposed to be internal figures that can be used to adjust marketing in the run up to release, as ironclad box office predictions.  More often than not, pundits use tracking in a way that creates a preemptive doom-and-gloom scenario where a new release is painted as a box office turkey before it even opens *or* its used to give unrealistic expectations to a new release so that studios are then forced to defend what is actually a solid debut.  Such is the case with Oz: The Great and Powerful (trailer/posters).  The $215 million Disney prequel debuted with a strong $80.3 million this weekend.  Alas, due to rumblings and arbitrary presumptions that the film would open with as much as $100 million over the weekend, mostly due to the project's token similarities with Alice In Wonderland, Disney may now be forced to defend what is easily the biggest opening of 2013 by more than double and the third-biggest March debut ever behind Alice In Wonderland ($116 million) and The Hunger Games ($153 million).

The good news/bad news regarding the decidedly un-feminist female characters in Oz: The Great and Powerful.

Full-on spoiler warning...

Unfortunately pretty much everything I feared about Oz: The Great and Powerful, right from the second trailer, turned out to be true, at least from a gender perspective.  It is indeed about three seemingly powerful women sitting around and waiting for a random man who fell out of the sky to not only attempt to save Oz but, more importantly, shape all three of their respective destinies.  The film also equates beauty with virtue in a rather explicit fashion, with somewhat laughable scenes of Rachel Weisz's Evanora complaining of jealousy over Michelle Williams 'pretty face' seemingly oblivious to the fact that said evil witch is played by *Rachel Weisz* (spoiler: Rachel Weisz is insanely hot). It's not just that Mila Kunis and Michelle Williams play seemingly strong female characters who constantly yap about needing some prophesied male wizard to swoop down and save their asses. The biggest problem in the film is that it allows its feeble and somewhat selfish male hero to basically define them and their actions.

Dumb parent worries: Will my kid get spooked by PG-13 trailers like After Earth in front of PG-rated movies like Oz?

I made an offhand joke a couple days ago about all of the big summer release trailers being dropped online and presumably into theater this week.  I'm taking my daughter to see Oz: The Great and Powerful tonight and I'm curious to see which trailers are attached to PG-rated Disney family adventure.  Obviously The Hangover part III is probably not going to make an appearance.  But what about the more mainstream PG-13 entertainments like Iron Man 3 or After Earth?  So will the first 15-20 minutes or so of my daughter's moviegoing experience consist of a series of trailers for big summer releases that she can't see?  Will I have to explain that "No, sweetie, *this* Iron Man movie is for adults."  I've had to do that before, like when when she spotted the DVD of Snow White and the Huntsman at Best Buy, and I always feel like an idiot when doing so.  The other thought that comes to mind is a 12 year old news story, one which I gave little thought to at the time.  

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  

Bigger isn't always better. Why Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters may represent the future of big-scale studio movies.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how something released this year or perhaps last year might be a signal for the future of the would-be blockbuster, a film whose respective success would spawn a decade or so of like-minded would-be tentpoles. What if I were to tell you that a possible template for future would-be blockbusters had already arrived this very year?  What if I were to tell you that the future of big-scale filmmaking may be none-other than Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?  Laugh if you wish, but let's take a look at what the film represents.

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.

Oz: The Great and Powerful gets an FX-packed Super Bowl tease.

I'm still not uber-impressed, but I imagine I'll like the marketing more where James Franco talks less.  It's no secret that the current season is absolutely starved for kids-faire.  My daughter literally asked me today when there would be more kids movies for her to see. Whether or not I end up dragging her to this (my wife wants to see it too apparently), I imagine it will benefit mightily from the lack of such family-friendly fare in the first two months of the year, akin to The Lorax opening to $70 million last year for the same reason.  Come what may, it reminded me that I probably ought to show her the original Wizard of Oz, as I imagine she'd enjoy that one. It's also a fine education in the whole 'color vs. black-and-white' issue since she didn't end up seeing Frankenweenie.  This certainly looks visually impressive, with a sparse and less cluttered look compared to Burton's Alice In Wonderland.  The laughing at the end pretty much rules out Michelle Williams as the 'wicked witch', so now it's just a question of whether or not Rachel Weisz (who the laughing voice sounds most like) is the real villain or merely the red herring to hide Mila Kunis's true villainy.  Anyway, this is probably the last major tease we'll see until release, give or take the usual clips released online.

Scott Mendelson        

Oz: The Great and Powerful gets four new character posters. Why I might owe Disney a slight apology.

This banner dropped awhile ago, but I never got around to posting it so I'm using it at the top for convenience.  After the jump you'll get the four character posters that dropped on Friday but officially dropped from Disney on Monday.  In my essay last week about The Little Mermaid 3D, I included this film as a Disney property that was technically targeting boys but had female appeal.  I still stand by that statement, as the film is clearly James Franco's journey.  But it must be stated that the film also has three major female characters, all played by actresses of note and at least one of them playing something other than the love interest (I'm presuming some misdirection with Mila Kunis being revealed as the main 'wicked witch').  It doesn't mean I don't think the film looks a little iffy or that Franco seems to be attempting to give a bad performance, but it does mean that we'll get a major would-be tent pole where the major female characters outnumber the major male ones.  That frankly doesn't happen all that often so it deserves notice when it does.  Also of note is Michelle Williams's role in this, as it represents the acclaimed actresses's first tentpole appearance and her first major role in an overtly commercial picture since oh, Halloween: H20 in 1998 (you could say the superb Dick in 1999, but that flopped anyway).  Yes I know she cameoed in Shutter Island and did a voice in Where the Wild Things Are, but you know what I mean! Anyway, the character posters are after the jump.  And no, I will not be posting the 12-second teaser for this Sunday's Super Bowl commercial.

Scott Mendelson

Only James Franco can save the dames in second trailer for Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful.

Pretty much the same as the first teaser.  This thing looks pretty spectacular, and I can see where the $200 million went.  But the dialogue is painfully on-the-nose, the acting feels oddly stilted, and the narrative seems to center around a bunch of magical women who are helpless against the tyranny of a wicked witch until a random man arrives to save their ass.  One presumes that at least Rachel Weisz is revealed to be villainous and one hopes that the story ends on a somewhat somber note, as befitting Oz's somewhat crooked role in the classic Wizard of Oz story.  Still, what's being sold is a Mad Libs 'random white man must save us' story that made John Carter and Tim Burton's Planet of the Apes remake so dull, complete with the likes of Mila Kunis, Rachel Weisz, and Michelle Williams (plus possibly Abigail Spencer) treating Franco's clearly hapless visitor as the greatest thing since sliced bread.  The film may be more complicated than that, and I'd argue the talent involved implies that it may well work out.  But the film that Disney is selling is painfully derivative, arguably far more of a rip-off of Burton's Alice In Wonderland (which was of course a 'random white woman must save us, without the pre-adolescent fantasy present here) than any of the would-be copycats that we've seen over the last 2.5 years.  Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful opens March 8th, 2013.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson        

Watch/Discuss: Sam Raimi's Wizard of Oz prequel, Oz: The Great and Powerful, gets a badly acted teaser.

Not much to say here, as the first of I presume several Comic Con trailers comes online (The Lone Ranger screened for the convention, but it's not online yet). It looks like Disney and Sam Raimi are clearly trying to emulate Alice in Wonderland via The Wizard of Oz. Oddly enough, the acting is actually pretty bad in what little of it we see, as James Franco (Oz) ', Mila Kunis, and Michelle Williams (Glinda the 'Good Witch') come off as stilted and uncomfortable with the fairy-tale trappings. I'm sure Rachel Weisz will kick ass as Evanora (IE - the Wicked Witch) and the $200 million visuals will be a feast for the eyes, but the oddly 'off' lead performances should put up an immediate 'danger' signal. Anyway, Oz: The Great and Powerful opens on March 8th, 2013. As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Sam Raimi's Oz: The Great and Powerful gets a teaser poster. Is it the next Alice In Wonderland or the next John Carter?

It's going to be a slow week at Mendelson's Memos this week, both because I have holiday-related family stuff and because I have a slight case of writer's block (I don't want to incessantly whine about The Amazing Spider-Man and not much else is happening news-wise at least until I see Savages on Friday morning).  Anyway, Disney dropped this poster for Sam Raimi's $200 million (!!!) Oz: The Great and Powerful, which is apparently a prequel to the original Wizard of Oz.  Disney is opening this on March 8th, 2013, or the same weekend that Disney's Alice In Wonderland debuted in 2010.  Let's hope they have better luck with this James Franco/Mila Kunis/Zach Braff/Michelle Williams/Rachel Weisz tent-pole than they did with their last first-weekend-of-March entry, John Carter.


Scott Mendelson