Weekend Box Office (01/06/13): Texas Chainsaw 3D tops the first weekend of 2013. Promised Land tanks.

Texas Chainsaw 3D topped the box office this weekend with a robust $23 million.  That's a bit behind the $33 million opening haul for The Devil Inside, but it's still easily the top horror debut for January.  Moreover, the picture earned more, even adjusted for inflation, than the last go around, the painfully underrated Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (retrospective essay).  The 2003 remake took in $28 million way back in October 2003 ($36 million in today's dollars, not even accounting for the whole 3D bump), but this under-hyped and frankly somewhat undersold quasi-sequel to the original 1973 film was never going to reach those heights. Said Platinum Dunes remake was exceedingly well-marketed, with a pioneering trailer (think how often it gets ripped off ten years later), and it basically kicked off the return of the hardcore horror film (along with the mostly ignored Wrong Turn from that May). Of course, the best weapon a new horror January film has is the October release of a new Paranormal Activity sequel, as it's a piece of prime demo-friendly marketing.  The Devil Inside attached its trailer to Paranormal Activity 3 back in October 2011 while Texas Chainsaw 3D had its trailer viewed by those attending Paranormal Activity 4 this October.  Of course, the fourth entry made about half what the third one did, so that probably didn't help.

Weekend Box Office (12/30/12): Les Miserables and Django Unchained neck and neck while The Hobbit tops again.

It's frightening sometimes how accurate the math can be.  Before this year, there were only a handful of movies that have opened on a Christmas day that happened to land on a Tuesday over the last decade (Ali and Kate and Leopold in 2001, Alien vs. Predator: Requim, The Great Debaters, and The Waterhorse).  Ali, AvP2, and the Denzel Washington drama The Great Debaters were pretty front loaded ($10m/$34m and $9.5m/$26m, and $3.5m/$13m respectively) while the smaller films (Kate and Leopold and The Waterhorse: Legend of the Deep) had smaller opening Christmas days but longer legs over the six days ($2.5m/$17m and $2.3m/$16.7m).  I use these prior examples because the three major wide releases this weekend pretty much matched up those patterns to a tee.  So when I tell you that Les Miserables opened on Christmas Day to $18 million but did "just" $28 million for the weekend and "only" $66 million for the six-day holiday (a 3.67x weekend multiplier), that doesn't mean anything other than it played like a normal high-profile film that happened to have opened on Tuesday the 25th.  Or that Django Unchained pulled in $64 million off a $15 million Christmas Tuesday opening, that means that it's actually the biggest legs of any would-be blockbuster to open on this specific Tuesday the 25th date (4.2x weekend multiplier).

Christmas Box Office: Les Miserables and Django Unchained blast off, but how frontloaded will they be?

The box office for Christmas day is huge (Les Miserables $18 million, Django Unchained $15 million, The Hobbit $11 million), but the best day may be behind them. The last time Christmas fell on a Tuesday, the major releases (National Treasure: Book of Secrets, Sweeney Todd) opened the Friday before while leaving Christmas day for relative lightweights like Alien Vs. Predator: Requiem and The Great Debaters. I don't recall any recent times when a major film opened on Christmas Day which was a Tuesday (when Christmas fell on a Tuesday in 2007, nothing opened that day) since the severely front-loaded Ali back in 2001.  Looking over those two respective weekends, the pattern is clear.  Even with six days to play with, all three of the above films saw massive front-loading, doing anywhere between 38% (Alien v. Predator 2) and 28% (Ali and The Great Debaters) of their business on Christmas day.  So for the respective debuts of Les Miserables, Django Unchained, and Parental Guidance (which earned $6.5 million), the bad news is that it's probable that none of these films will make more than 3.5x their Christmas number by Sunday, to the extent that it's "bad news".  The outlier among Tuesday Christmas openings is the Meg Ryan/Hugh Jackman rom-com Kate and Leopold, which did 6.8x its $2.5 million Christmas debut by the 30th of December for a $17 million long weekend (it did 15% on Christmas day).  A relative lightweight like Parental Guidance is likely to benefit more than the far-more anticipated (read - front-loaded)  major openers.  So doing the math, Les Miserables and Django Unchained is looking at a six-day opening of $48 million-$63 million and $41 million and $53 million.  Parental Guidance is much harder to peg and could land somewhere between $20 million and $40 million, with obviously a lot of wiggle room in between.

Scott Mendelson

Weekend Box Office (12/23/12): Hobbit tops, Jack Reacher leads new releases in pre-Christmas pile-up.

 As I have been warning about for months, 10,000 releases all opened in this very weekend, with another 5,000 coming on Tuesday.  Let's just get right into it.  The top film of the weekend was once again The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (review), but it actually took a massive dive from last weekend.  The film earned $36 million, or down 59%.  It's tough to compare this to the previous Lord of the Rings films because they all opened on *this* weekend and had the unbeatable holiday cushion to keep them afloat.  Still, the film has $149 million in ten days, or well below the respective ten-day totals of The Two Towers ($168 million) and Return of the King ($190 million) and very much behind where they were at the end of their second weekends (IE - 12 days as they all opened on Wednesdays - $168 million and $200 million respectively).  It's not bombing, but it's already proving that it's not the box office second-coming ala Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.  Come what may, just with this year's Spider-Man reboot, what was once the biggest franchise of all is now just another large fish swimming in the blockbuster pond.

Weekend Box Office (12/16/12): The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens with an expected (and record) $84 million.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (review/teaser/trailer) basically opened like a Lord of the Rings film, give or take various variables.  Its $84.7 million estimated debut clobbered the December record, which is the $77 million earned by Avatar ($77 million, $80 million adjusted for inflation) and I Am Legend ($77.2 million, $89 million adjusted for inflation) in 2009 and 2007 respectively.  It soundly thumps the various other Lord of the Rings films, but this is where it gets tricky.  The prior Peter Jackson Middle Earth pictures opened on the weekend before Christmas week, which I've long argued is the best weekend of the year to open your picture.  So the fact that The Hobbit opened a week earlier makes this number a little more impressive, although the pre-Christmas weekend is more about legs than opening weekend.  On the other hand, the prior films all opened on a Wednesday, meaning that their would-be opening weekend was spread out of five days.  And of course, we have to take into account nine years of inflation and the whole 3D/IMAX price bump. So purely looking at inflation and comparing the Fri-Sun portion, this opening is about on par with The Two Towers ($62 million, but $84 million adjusted for inflation) and well ahead of Fellowship of the Ring's ($72 million, but adjusted-for-inflation $66 million) and King Kong ($50 million, and $62 million adjusted for inflation) for what that's worth. It's a bit behind the $72 million/$95 million opening of The Return of the King.  

Review: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012) bores and blunders at 48 frames-per-second.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

2012
165 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

I don't know if seeing The Hobbit part 1 of 3  (teaser/trailer) in the much-discussed 48 frames-per-second diminished the viewing experience, but it certainly didn't help.  Since it's the way Peter Jackson intended the film to be seen, it very much counts when judging the overall motion picture.  It's neither the great savior of cinema that the likes of Peter Jackson or James Cameron would have you believe, but nor is it a bell weather of the 'death of cinema'.  It is *different*, that's for sure.  You get an unparalleled clarity of vision and a certain lifelike presentation, akin to looking at a window at 'real life'.  The various CGI creatures look arguably more lifelike and the 3D is pretty flawless (although the screen looked even more vibrant when I took off the glasses, making me wish there had been a 48 fps 2D option).  But for that clarity you lose a certain cinematic grandeur.  Yes, certain introductory scenes look like live theater and yes there is an inconsistency of speed, as any number of moments will make one wonder if they're watching the film on 1.5x speed on their Playstation 3.  Moreover, even during the action sequences, a few of which are indeed still impressive, resemble not so much epic struggles but rather like watching a staged recreation akin to Civil War reenactors.  Especially during battle scenes set in open fields, it feels more like the finale of Role Models than a tent-pole action sequence.  Ironically, it's a technology that may actually be better suited to character dramas that big-scale action.  Your eyes do indeed adjust to the whole 'speed play' issue pretty quickly, but you never do become 'used' to the effect during the entire 165 minute running time.

Midnight movie math: The Hobbit earns $13 million.

Initial reports show that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey earned $13 million from 3,100 screens at 12:01am last night, setting a record for December and surpassing the respective $8 million midnight gross earned by The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King way back in December 2003.  It opens wide on over 4,000 screens consisting of 2,000 different viewing options today.  Of course, said figure was nine years ago and without the 3D/IMAX ticket-price bump, but that's for another day.  What this looks like for the weekend is pretty simple.  The "prequel" is arguably heavily anticipated by hardcore-but less anticipated by the general moviegoer.  I was at the midnight showings for The Two Towers and Return of the King, but nine years later, I'm merely catching an after-work screening with a friend, as much to see the 48 fps as see the film that I'm not all that excited for.  Obviously some of that is me merely being an adult with a family and various adult responsibilities (four years ago, I ended up waiting until Saturday afternoon of its five-day opening weekend to see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull), but part of that is merely the fact that this new film is squarely pitched to the hardcore fans.  That's not a bad thing, it just means that the midnight screening (and opening Friday) will be more front loaded than the prior Lord of the Rings pictures.  So we're looking at a midnight-to-weekend percentage of 14-20%, with a possibility that potential bad word of mouth (obviously speculative here) gives us a multiplier closer to the 22% of the latter Harry Potter/Twilight pictures.  Realistically, The Hobbit is looking at an opening weekend of between $65 million and $93 million, with an off-chance of massive front loading giving the film something akin to a $59 million opening weekend.  So let's be realistic and give it $80 million for now.  

Scott Mendelson

John Gosling's weekend movie preview, featuring (of course) The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.

This will be John Gosling's final Weekend Movie Preview column for at least the immediate future.  I am quite thankful that we was willing to contribute his exhaustive and informative pieces for the last several months, and it is fitting that he finishes this up for an obscenely detailed run-down of the history of the lone new release this weekend (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey), as it was his educational historical essay on The Amazing Spider-Man that brought him to my attention in the first place.  If you have a moment, please take a second to thank him in the comments section below.  He already has my thanks and my gratitude.

The Hobbit was written by J.R.R Tolkien and first published in 1937, to great acclaim. The fantasy novel told the tale of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins and his adventures with a group of dwarves, alongside Gandalf the Grey. Hugely influential, not to mention successful, it led Tolkien to write the Lord of the Rings trilogy, further establishing the world, characters and history of Middle Earth. Essentially written for children, The Hobbit's short story nature seemed ripe for adaptation, and indeed, it has appeared in many various guises over the intervening years including (but not limited to) stage and radio plays, computer games, comic books and an animated feature in 1977.

Star Trek Into Darkness gets a very 'Dark Knight' teaser...

I don't know if this qualifies as a teaser for a trailer, but since this seems to be a complete piece in-and-of itself, I'll let it slide.  Obviously the scope looks huge, but jeez how badly do J.J. Abrams and company want to market this as The Dark Knight of Star Trek films?  From the 'I'm going to shake you out of your comfort zone!' monologue from the lone bringer-of-chaos villain to the Inception/Dark Knight trailer music, it's humorously clear what the marketing template is.  Of course, if the film turns out to just be 'making a Nolan Batman film, but with Star Trek', that may be an issue (Star Trek generally hasn't faired well when going 'dark/gritty'), but for now let's presume that it's just Paramount marketing.  Of note is the second Japanese teaser, which includes an additional final shot that A) may be very very spoilery and B) ends the teaser on a more potent musical note.  Watch at your own risk, although I can't imagine a film as top-secret as this one (we still don't know who Cumberbatch is playing) would tease something that major in the first piece of marketing.  Anyway, the full teaser-trailer will be attached to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on December 14th and Paramount is keeping it offline until December 17th, which would be cooler of them if they hadn't just released this online-only teaser.  And of course the 9-minute IMAX tease will be attached to IMAX prints of The Hobbit.  Star Trek Into Darkness (still an awful title, natch) opens May 17th, 2013.  As always, we'll see...

Scott Mendelson

Paramount attaches Star Trek Into Darkness IMAX sneak to The Hobbit, screws over Warner Bros. yet again.

Paramount just loves using IMAX to screw with Warner Bros.  For the third time, Paramount has put Warner Bros. in a somewhat awkward position.  As you recall, three years ago a scheduling conflict between Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince left the sixth Harry Potter picture without IMAX screens for the first two weekends of its run.  The loss certainly didn't hurt the box office much (HP6 was the first HP sequel to cross $300 million domestic), but it was an embarrassing scheduling snafu.  This time last year Warner Bros somewhat shot itself in the foot by allowing the IMAX preview for The Dark Knight Rises to premiere in front of 'true IMAX' prints (about 40 screens) of Paramount's Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol even as the film opened in limited IMAX release against Warner Bros' Sherlock Homes: A Game of Shadows.  Again, no real harm, no real foul, although the fourth M:I picture got tons of free publicity that otherwise would have gone to Sherlock Holmes 2 had *it* been the only place to see new The Dark Knight Rises footage.  Warner Bros did Paramount a favor last year and it seems that it's payback time.  Ironically said payback will end up hurting Warner Bros yet again. 

Release date musical chairs: How to fix the upcoming November/December clusterf**k...

I mentioned this briefly last night, but taking a look at the release date calendar of the last two months of the year, it is clear that something is quite amiss.  It's not just a matter of too many movies being released at the end of the year, nor even a matter of too many "Oscar bait" pictures drowning each other out as is sometimes the case.  No, when you look at the release calendar for November and December, you notice an odd pattern.  There are nine weeks in the last two months of the year, during which we have a total of twenty-one (21) wide releases, counting the November 16th expansion of Spielberg's Lincoln.  Now you might think "Oh, that's about two per week, that's not so bad".  But the problem is the scheduling itself.  There are five of those nine weeks with just a single new release, leaving the fifteen other movies to fight it out over the remaining five weeks.  It gets even more dire when you look at the specific release schedules in question.  You've got four weekends with one (1) new release and one weekend with two (2) new nationwide releases.  That leaves fifteen movies fighting it out over four weekends, four weekends which now average 3.75 films a weekend.  Something's gotta give and/or someone has to have the good sense to move around a bit and spread the wealth.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey gets a gorgeous trailer.

Well this just looks like staring at an oil painting for two-and-a-half hours.  I won't pretend that this is even trying to approach the emotional highs of the prior Lord of the Rings trilogy, nor should anyone seemingly expect the scale of the earlier film series, which of course came *after* the original Hobbit book.  I read The Hobbit back in middle school and wasn't overly crazy about it, to the point where I never got around to reading the Lord of the Rings series.  But let's forget for a moment that I'm not that jazzed for a Hobbit movie and have at-best a grudging interest in seeing it.  Putting that aside, this thing looks unquestionably gorgeous.  For all the ink silt about the allegedly un-film-like nature of the 48fps cinematography, the images we see here are completely beautiful.  I can only hope that the film, even when shown in 48 fps 3D, looks this good, this unquestionably cinematic.  Now that Les Miserables has scooted to December 25th, Peter Jackson has December 14th all to himself.  Do I think this is going to have the emotional impact or sheer awe-inspiring grandeur of Fellowship of the Ring?  Nope, but it's high time I stopped being a grumpy-pants about it and welcome what looks to be an absolutely lovely return to Middle Earth.

Scott Mendelson