Amazing Spider-Man sets Tuesday record with $35 million opening day. Six day weekend: $140m-$162m.

The Amazing Spider-Man ended up almost as amazing as Spider-Man 2 on the first day of its respective six-day Independence Day holiday weekend.  With $35 million per-Sony, it broke the record for the biggest Tuesday gross ever and the biggest Tuesday opening day ever (both held by Transformers, grossed $27 million over its first day ($4 million of that, or 11.4%, was from IMAX engagements).  But, as you recall, Transformers had $8.8 million worth of 8pm-12am sneak previews on Monday that year, giving the film a 1.25 day total of $36 million.  So Transformers needed 1.25 days to do what The Amazing Spider-Man did in 24 hours.  But The Amazing Spider-Man has 3D bumps and inflation to reckon with.  Inflation alone would put Transformers's opening 1.25 days at about $42 million, which is about what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made ($43 million) on its first 1.25 days this time last year.  So it appears offhand that The Amazing Spider-Man will perform, in terms of weekend multipliers, somewhere between 4x and 4.6x its opening day number, or about what Transformers (4.3x - $155m/$36m), Transformers 3 (4.1x - $180m/$43m), Spider-Man 2 (4.5x - $180m/$40m), Hancock (4.6x - $112m/$24m), and Superman Returns (4.6x - $97m/$21m) did over their respective July 4th six-day "weekends". The outlier is War of the Worlds, which opened with $21 million on a Wednesday and made it to $112 million by Monday, a 5x weekend multiplier. As such, expect The Amazing Spider-Man to gross between $140 million and $162 million by Sunday night, with an off-chance of it earning as much as $175 million.

Scott Mendelson
 

Midnight box office: The Amazing Spider-Man earns $7.5m at 12:01am. Will it fall closer to $112m or $155m by Sunday?

The official numbers are in, and The Amazing Spider-Man is off to a decent if-not amazing start.  The reboot earned $7.5 million in midnight screenings.  $1.2 million of that came from IMAX alone, giving each IMAX theater a $4,000 per-screen average.  For comparison sake, Spider-Man 3 debuted with $10 million worth* of midnight showings five summers ago.  While said threequel debuted on a Friday as opposed to Tuesday, it also was in the middle of the school year and didn't have the benefit of 3D ticket prices and expanded IMAX opportunities.  To be fair, there wasn't nearly as much 'rush out and see it' factor this time around, as it wasn't a sequel to a popular series and didn't have the debut of a fan-favorite villain (Venom, natch).  As it is, $7.5 million is the same midnight number that Iron Man 2 pulled in two years ago on its way to a $128 million Fri-Sun total.  But it's difficult/unfair to compare Fri-Sun openings with extended week openings, so let's look at more relevant stats.

In a film-culture seemingly entitled to spoilers, simple concealed narrative become "PLOT TWISTS!"

Under normal circumstances, this post would require a 'Spoiler Warning(!)'.  But what I'm discussing aren't some shocking plot twists or stunning third-act reveals, which is kind of the point.  This Friday finally brings about the US release of Ridley Scott's Prometheus.  A major part of the marketing campaign has centered around its somewhat cryptic beginnings, the idea that Fox wasn't revealing the whole film in the trailer as is often the case.  This in turn led to speculation that there was some plot twist being held in reserve, be it a specific connection to the Alien franchise or some kind of stunning third act reveal.  We've seen this game before, as Paramount successfully sold the idea last summer that Super 8 had some kind of climactic reveal and/or plot twist.  Without going into spoiler-y details, this is not true for either of the above films.  Prometheus certainly has some narrative threads that haven't been revealed in the marketing, while other pretty major details have been blatantly spoiled because they contained 'money shots'.  But at the end of the day, and this is not a criticism per-se, Prometheus unfolds in a somewhat predictable manner, as did Super 8.  What's interesting is that in this day and age merely not revealing the entire narrative arc and/or every money shot in the film qualifies as 'hiding plot twists'.

Review: Chronicle (2012) is a compelling character drama, a visual dazzler, and a thoughtful deconstruction of the 'chosen hero' myth.

Chronicle
2012
83 minutes
rated PG-13

by Scott Mendelson

I've written a lot over the last couple years about how, if superhero films are going to survive, they are going to have to be able to be about something other than the generic tropes of superhero comic book adventures.  Captain America excelled because it was a World War II period action drama, while Green Lantern mostly faltered because it wasn't about anything other than its own conventions.  Chronicle (written by Max Landis and directed by Josh Trank) is a shining example of a powerful emotional tragedy that involves certain comic book conventions without really being about them.  At heart, the picture is a fierce rebuttal of the now-cliche 'with great power comes a superior destiny' motif that has been central to the last ten years of big-budget fantasy pictures, both those based on comics and those based on young-adult fantasy novels.  More than just a deconstruction of fantasy tropes, Chronicle is a thoughtful and empathetic story of  three disparate teens who end up with special powers and how it does or does not change them.

Battleship gets a teaser, feels very Armageddon-ish.

I could go on and on about how this represents the pinnacle of what is wrong with the 'tentpole' portion of the film industry at the moment.  But truth be told, I'm more depressed that Peter Berg chose THIS as his follow up to Hancock (arguably one of the best original superhero pictures of the modern superhero era) and chose not to fill the cast with quirky character actors (think The Core).  But no matter, the finished product basically feels like an original (though contrived) invading aliens vs. the US Navy film that slapped the name 'Battleship' on its marquee purely for brand name recognition.  Which, frankly, if you're going to adapt a board game (or a theme park ride for that matter), that's how you do it.  I'm less annoyed at the whole 'let's make a movie out of Battleship' concept that I am at how contrived and generic the picture feels.  Peter Berg (who showed real action chops with The Kingdom) seems to be mimicking Michael Bay.  The alien threat feels like something out of Transformers (the red and yellow peg-shaped missiles are a nice touch), while the core storyline is pure Armageddon.  The only question is not whether Liam Neeson will die at the end (after giving Taylor Kitsch approval to wed his daughter, Brooklyn Decker), but whether Neeson's last words will be "You sunk my battleship!"  This one comes out May 18th, 2012, which is actually prime summer real estate, in apparently glorious 2D.

Scott Mendelson    

Yesterday's News Today: Will Smith teams with M. Night Shyamalan. How they can help each other...

The news is brief and relatively vague. But Will Smith and Jaden Smith are apparently headlining an original science-fiction adventure film for none-other than M. Night Shyamalan. The Sony picture is untitled and the plot details are sparse ("Set 1,000 years into the future, a young boy navigates an abandoned and sometimes scary Earth to save himself and his estranged father after their ship crashes."), but the idea of the biggest star on Earth teaming with one of the more iconic filmmakers in the modern age remains an interesting one. Point being, it may well be a mutually-beneficial relationship for both of them.