Midnight Box Office (06/16/11): Green Lantern grosses $3.35m in 12:01 showings, heading for probable $61 million opening weekend.

The midnight money is apparently tallied already.  So once again, we have a decent idea of what a major film's opening weekend will be before the first Friday shows on the West Coast even begin.  Fascinating... Anyway, Green Lantern grossed $3.35 million in midnight screenings last night.  That's ahead of the $3.25 million earned by Thor at midnight, and just under the $3.4 million midnight gross earned by X-Men: First Class two weeks ago.  So at this point, it's just a matter of anticipating just how anticipated Martin Campbell's superhero saga is.  It is an original property, so it won't be as front-loaded as X-Men: First Class (which pulled in 6% of its weekend at midnight).  Reviews are pretty lousy (unfairly so in my opinion), which may or may not make a difference (remember, audiences for movies like this generally don't care about reviews).  So basically the question is whether it pulls 5% of its money at 12:01am (like Thor) or 6% of its money at 12:01am like X-Men: First Class.  For the moment, Green Lantern is apparently heading for an opening weekend between $55 million and $67 million.  Let's split the difference, give it a 5.5% midnight take and call it for $61 million.

Scott Mendelson

Review: Green Lantern (3D) is not as great as we had all hoped, but it's not nearly as bad as we had all feared.

Green Lantern
2011
105 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

I kept waiting... I had read the earlier reviews, which seemed to confirm all of the worst fears stretching back to last November.  But the hate never came.  Martin Campbell's Green Lantern is a deeply problematic comic book adventure, with structural and character development issues that should damn-well have felled the film.  But like its title character, it overcomes its own weaknesses and embraces its inherent flaws.  The picture has signs of tinkering and studio interference.  But it also has several fine action scenes, a strong visual style that feels like a living comic book, and arguably the best 3D conversion yet achieved in live-action.  Oh, and it also has Peter Skarsgaard, but more on that later.  I have no idea how Green Lantern purists will react, but the film as it is  remains a weird combination of ghee-whiz kid-friendly superhero antics and truly disturbing horror elements.  That the film is not quite the triumph we wanted may be tragic.  That the film as it stands works at all may qualify as a miracle.

Another week, another Green Lantern trailer: this one in 3D. Well in theaters it's 3D, here it's just 2D (but with a decent amount of new footage).

Apparently the 3D effects for this trailer looked pretty spectacular in theaters.  That makes me awfully happy, as I really want to see this early but don't want to settle for an inferior presentation.  There is actually quite a bit of new footage here, even if we seem to be seeing much of the finale (including the apparent death of a major villain) right there in the trailer.  There are a few new bits of Reynolds actually doing the whole superhero thing in costume, so that's a relief.  Still, the actual 'Hal makes a glowing green car or a glowing green machine gun' scenes are going to be where dramatic credibility is lost (or absolutely affirmed).  This one has just under a month to go, which means Warner has time for at least a half dozen more trailers.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Updated: Green Lantern gets extended TV spots, sells cosmic scale to general audiences.

This TV spot ran over the weekend in various high-profile locales. It's 120 seconds long and, unless you're a nerd who looks up Wondercon footage, this is the first you've seen of the film since the disastrous trailer back in November 2010. As such, this extended spot is all about selling the scale of the picture and the intergalactic stakes. And on that note, it is a success. Reynolds is featured prominently, but mainly as an observer. In fact, the main problem with the spot is when the narrative returns to Earth for the last action montage, it feels less impressive than what came before. The only shots of Hal Jordan in action both come from the same scene of him beating up Peter Sarsgaard in a lab. Obviously this is marketing and Warner may be hiding at least some of the third act stuff (we already see what appears to be the death of a major villain) so we can hope that Jordan does more than stop a crashing helicopter and beat up a deranged scientist. I'm still impressed and cautiously optimistic thus far. As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson