Weekend Box Office (10/31/10): Saw 7 3D rules over one last Halloween weekend.

The Saw series has been a Halloween weekend custom of sorts for the last six years. It debuted in third place on Halloween weekend 2004, where it opened with $18 million behind the second weekend of The Grudge and the opening weekend of Ray. From 2005 until 2009, Saw ruled the annual Halloween roast, with $30-33 million opening weekends in the Halloween or pre-Halloween weekend. Last year, it didn't quite go as planned. Fueled by viewer antipathy over the dull and listless Saw V, and the wide-release of the slow-building Paranormal Activity, Saw VI (ironically the best film in the Saw series) crumbled over the weekend before Halloween, opened with just $14 million before ending with just $27 million. This year, Lionsgate went back to the safety of Halloween weekend, and declined to open directly against Paranormal Activity 2. With ads (trailer 1 and trailer 2) touting the 3D gimmickry and alleging that Saw VII would be the final chapter in the series, could the long-running franchise regain some of its lost box office luster. The answer? Not really...

Review: Saw VII 3D (2010)

Saw VII
2010
91 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Saw VII is an unnecessary epilogue to a series that already had a pretty satisfying finale. Saw VI succeeded in returning Tobin Bell to the center stage, while devising a compelling story that brought the story full circle and tied up every reasonable loose end. Saw VII adds nothing of value to the universe, aside from a last-minute 'twist' that anyone with half-a-brain could see coming from the first reel. It also may very well be the worst film in the long-running franchise. It is sloppily plotted and abysmally-acted. Worst of all, it seemingly goes out of its way to avoid every element that made the series unique and worth defending. This is a Saw picture that makes one embarrassed to have enjoyed the prior installments.

Goodbye John. A farewell to Saw, as Jigsaw lays his last trap.

For one half a decade, he has thrilled us with his adventures, amazed us with his discoveries, and inspired us with his courage. His traps were beyond imagination. His name has become legend, his cohorts the finest ever assembled. We have traveled beside him from one poorly-lit warehouse or factory to another. He has been our guide, our protector, and our friend. Now, you are invited to join him, for one last game...

Chris Evans as Captain America debuts in Entertainment Weekly.

For a sneak peak at the actual article from tomorrow's issue, click here. No complaints here, it's a surprisingly solid look that combines a certain period-realism with the gee-whiz aspect of the character. Purists may carp over this or that detail, but Matt Salinger wore a costume EXACTLY like the comic book version back in 1990, and it didn't make that movie any better. This should be a fun time for geeks, as we'll soon start seeing real screenshots and actual trailers for the geek-centric films of next summer. We already know that we're getting a Green Lantern trailer before Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I, and there's a good chance that we'll see trailers for Thor and/or Captain America before Paramount's Megamind or Morning Glory (or everyone could just pile on behind Mr. Potter). Captain America is arguably the biggest question mark of the comic pictures. It's the best known property but also faces an uphill battle with its period setting and it's release date smack in the middle of July, a week after the Harry Potter finale and a week before Jon Favreau's Cowboys vs. Aliens. Once again, why oh why didn't Paramount schedule Captain America to open over July 4th weekend?

Scott Mendelson

Wow, actual Batman 3 news! The Dark Knight Rises will be 2D, with no Riddler.

Maybe it's because I'm getting older, or maybe because the rumor mill has gone into hyper-drive over the last few years, but I've spent quite a bit of time rolling my eyes at the nonstop onslaught of false rumors and non-news regarding Chris Nolan's third and theoretically final Batman picture. Some random blog posts a random rumor, and every other site runs with it and offers their subjective commentary before said rumor is debunked. So, when actual news turns up, straight from Chris Nolan himself, it is a somewhat noteworthy event. Long-story short. Chris Nolan revealed in an interview with the LA Times that the third Batman film will not be shot in 3D. It will not feature the Riddler. And it will be titled The Dark Knight Rises. Oh, and there's looking for a female lead of some kind, but that's not really news.

Farewell to Arms...

Right or Wrong, The Hangover 2 does not need Mel Gibson.

Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, Ed Helms and the rest of the cast just plain didn't want Mel Gibson in The Hangover 2. That much we know, as his cameo role as a crazed tattoo artist was announced, then retracted and recast with Liam Neeson in just a few days last week. Since then, there has been much speculation and discussion in the blogosphere, much of it centering on the alleged hypocrisy of allowing a convicted rapist (Mike Tyson) to appear in the original Hangover while crying foul at casting a man who is an occasional drunk driver and periodic anti-Semite/racist asshole. But sometimes it's really not that complicated. What if the disapproval over casting Mel Gibson in The Hangover 2 had nothing to do with morality, but with simple business sense?

Weekend Box Office Review (10/24/10): Paranormal Activity 2 scores record $41.5 million. Hereafter nets $12 million. Holdovers hold strong.

Paranormal Activity 2 blasted into the record books over the weekend, grossing $40.6 million in its first three days. That's the biggest opening ever for a supernatural horror picture, the second-largest debut for any kind of horror picture (behind Hannibal's $58 million debut in 2001), the biggest horror debut in October history, the fifth-biggest October opening on record, and the 19th-largest R-rated opening ever. Costing just $3 million, the Paramount sequel capitalized on the much-buzzed about original, which had a stunningly successful platform release over last September and October. If you recall, Paranormal Activity grossed $7.9 million on just 160 screens over the second weekend in October, and eventually went wide over the weekend before Halloween, where it famously kneecapped the long-running Saw franchise. If the original film's box office run slightly mirrored the run of the original Scream (small opening weekend, slow jog to $100 million+), then Paranormal Activity 2 is definitely Scream 2 (the Wes Craven sequel also came out a year after the original and scored an eye-popping $33 million debut in December 1997).

Friday Box Office (10/22/10): Paranormal Activity 2 grosses $20.1 million while Clint Eastwood's Hereafter grosses $4.1 million.

After scoring a record $6.3 million in midnight showings alone, Paranormal Activity 2 ended its first day with $20.1 million. For what it's worth, that means that Paranormal Activity 2 had one of the lowest 'midnight-to-opening day' multipliers in history. Only Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ($22m midnight/$58m opening day), The Twilight Saga: New Moon ($26m/$72m), and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($30m/$68m) had a larger percentage of their opening day grosses from their respective midnight debuts. So there's a good chance that this horror sequel will end up just as front-loaded as, ironically, the Saw sequels. Still, a $3 million sequel with minimal advertising just scored $20 million in a single day, or about what the original made on its first weekend of wide release ($21 million) exactly a year ago. I'm sure no one at Paramount is shedding tears over the math regarding midnight sneaks. The film bested the $14.8 million opening day of The Ring Two (the previous record holder for supernatural horror), and scored the biggest opening day in history for an R-rated horror film. 2.2x weekend multiplier would give the picture about $45 million, which sounds about right. Anything above $39.1 million would top The Grudge and give Paranormal Activity 2 the biggest opening weekend for a supernatural horror picture.

Paranormal Activity 2 scores $6.3 million in midnight screenings, a record for an R-rated film. What does it mean for the opening weekend?

Beating a week-old record, Paramount's Paranormal Activity 2 grossed $6.3 million in midnight screenings last night. That beats the R-rated midnight record set by Watchmen ($4.6 million). Using midnight totals to tabulate a film's opening weekend is a risky gambit, but here are some numbers to chew on. Midnight showings can run around 5-8% of the opening weekend take (Jackass 3D, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, Spider-Man 3, and Iron Man 2). But more frontloaded films can mean more frontloaded midnight showings, as suggested by Watchmen (8%) The Dark Knight (11%) and The Twilight Saga: New Moon (18%). Not helping matters is that many of the more frontloaded pictures to do significant midnight damage (the last two Harry Potter films, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse, The Last Airbender, the Transformers films, the entire Star Wars prequel series) did not open on a Friday, which makes them almost useless as comparative examples.