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.

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  

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

2012 in film: The female-driven blockbuster is no longer a surprise, no longer written off as a 'fluke'.

2012 isn't just the year where we saw one female-starring and/or female-centric blockbuster after another.  2012 was the year when such a thing no longer merited any real surprise.  Back in 2008, we also had a solid run of female-centric smash hits.  Sex and the City, Mama Mia!, and finally the initial Twilight installment.  But we also had endless hand wringing about what these successes meant to the industry and/or how these various films (especially the first and last) were oh-so harmful for their target demographic.  What a difference four years can make.  This year we had The Hunger Games, Snow White and the Huntsman, Brave, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part II, and what looks to be a surefire smash in Les Miserables in a couple weeks.  And you could certainly make the case for the likes of the male-stripper dramedy Magic Mike, The Vow, and Prometheus (which of course starred Noomi Rapace and Charlize Theron), as well as the rather successful Pitch Perfect which slowly grossed $65 million.  What's important isn't that these female-centric films all were pretty huge hits, with several achieving genuine blockbuster status.  What's important is that nobody really gave a damn.

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        

No girls allowed? On the value of *not* arbitrarily inserting token love interests into male-centric genre films.

Let us for a moment highlight two of the many would-be Oscar bait pictures rolling out in the next couple months. Ben Affleck's Argo, which opens today, has instantly shot up to the upper-levels of many filmgoers' 'must see' list for the Fall.  Also pretty high on the list for film buffs is Andrew Dominik's Killing Them Softly.  Aside from the strong reviews that both films have already racked up prior to even being screened for most critics (ah, the festival circuit!), the one thing that sticks out about both films is the near absence of females in major roles.  The trailer for Killing Them Softly was notable for its complete absence of females.  Argo has few women in its trailer and seemingly only has female characters where they would make sense, be they among the Americans caught in Iran during the 1979 hostage crisis or people in the government who just happen to be female (the most notable seems to be Adrienne Barbeau).  Point being, having now seen both films, both are very very good and neither of these films felt the need to shoe-horn in female characters in otherwise all-male stories, and both films are better for it.  

Weekend Box Office: Bourne Legacy tops while The Campaign and Hope Springs debut well and The Dark Knight Rises presses upward.

To the surprise of no one, the top film of the weekend was The Bourne Legacy.  With $38 million, the fourth entry in the ten-year old franchise opened well above the $27 million debut of The Bourne Identity during June 2002, but that's mostly due to ten years of inflation as The Bourne Identity's opening would equal $38 million today.  It's below the $52 million debut of The Bourne Supremacy back in July 2004, and understandably well below the $69 million opening weekend of The Bourne Ultimatum back in August 2007.  This spin-off/reboot of the Matt Damon-led Bourne series showcased Jeremy Renner as a totally different government assassin in the same world as the three prior Bourne films.  Helmed by Tony Gilroy (who had a hand in writing all three prior adaptations), Universal sadly spent $125 million on this quasi-sequel.  So if the film 'merely' approaches the $121 million gross of the first film and earns about that much overseas ($92 million for a $214 million total), it won't be profitable.  The endless loop on USA starting in 2015 won't hurt. The second and third films grossed $176 million and $227 million in the US respectively while earning $288 million and $422 million worldwide respectively (Bourne Ultimatum basically doubled Bourne Supremacy's overseas take).  If the film excels overseas, which it now must, matching the $288 million gross of Bourne Supremacy isn't out of the question (it opened in a few markets this weekend and earned $7.8 million overseas).

Review: The Bourne Legacy (2012) not only fails to reboot the franchise but retroactively poisons what came before.

The Bourne Legacy

2012
130 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson
While Tony Gilroy's The Bourne Legacy is being touted as a spin-off from the Matt Damon-starring spy franchise, it actually functions more as a retroactive prequel.  Rather than expanding the story or going off in a different direction, it spends an unholy amount of its screen time explicitly explaining the history and science behind a completely different 'super assassin' program from the one that once bred Jason Bourne (imagine if The Phantom Menace was primarily *about* midichlorians).  Instead of telling a story of relevance or creating interesting characters that happen to exist in the world established by Doug Liman and Paul Greengrass (and of course stemming from Robert Ludlam's original novels), Tony Gilroy takes a proverbial pick-axe to the series, undoing much of the prior narrative while retroactively turning Jason Bourne (of course played by Matt Damon and occasionally seen here in still photographs) into not a conflicted anti-hero but a force of chaos.  All of this would be forgivable and possibly intriguing if the resulting film weren't so bloody dull and unengaging.  But The Bourne Legacy makes me want to apologize for every mean thing I ever said about The Bourne Ultimatum.  The third film may have been a dumbed-down and amped-up remake of the superb Bourne Supremacy, but it at least had a pulse and sheer entertainment value.  The Bourne Legacy makes one yearn for the comparatively high-quality thrills and chills of Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker. 

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

Watch/Discuss: The Bourne Legacy depressingly casts Rachel Weisz as neither hero or villain, but 'the girl'.

The most annoying thing about noticing gender issues in films and television is that you can't *not* notice them when its inconvenient.  So while this second trailer for The Bourne Redundancy, err The Bourne Legacy, has a crap-load of great actors, some solid stunt-work, and a time-twisty narrative that seemingly takes place at the same time as The Bourne Ultimatum.  But couldn't the screenwriters think of something more original than "Jeremy Renner rescues his hot doctor from bad guys and takes her on the run with him"?  Rachel Weisz is an Oscar winner and one of the better actresses of her generation, but whenever she treads into big-studio productions she almost always finds herself as the 'tag-along girl'.  Whether in Chain Reaction (one of her first films back in 1996), Constantine (ironically both with Keanu Reeves), and now in this production, she's the pretty face who gets caught up in the hero's peril and gets dragged along and periodically rescued from scary bad guys.  Yes the first film had a 'drag-along girl' (Franka Potente), but the film went out of its way to emphasize just how much danger Jason Bourne was putting her and her family in by virtue of his intrusion.  It's a big difference: potential menace versus lily-white savior.

If The Dark Knight Rises ends up being based on 'Prey', which lucky leading lady will get this choice role?

Who should get this plum role? Anne Hathaway? Blake Lively? Rachel Weisz? Keira Knightly? Naomi Watts? Or how about Natalie Portman, fresh off her Oscar win for Black Swan? Her name is Catherine and she's the mayor's daughter. She has two or three scenes in the first two (of five) chapters of "Prey" where she engages in debate regarding the usefulness of Batman in Gotham City. Then she gets abducted in chapter three, as part of a plot by Hugo Strange to frame Batman and turn the city against him. Catherine spends literally the entire remainder of the five-part saga stripped to her bra and panties, gagged, and chained to a bed. Oh, and as for Catwoman, she's barely in it. And we wonder why it's so hard to get females to start reading mainstream superhero comic books...

Scott Mendelson