The (shoulda been) 2007 Oscar winner for Best Actor - Gordon Pinsent

Gordon Pinsent, a little known Canadian actor, damn well should have won the Oscar last year for his leading role in Away From Her. Julie Christie got most of the buzz and a Best Actress nomination for what clearly was a supporting role. But Pinsent was the heart and soul of Sarah Polley's brutally effective Alzheimer's drama, easily the best live-action film I saw all last year. In terms of subtle power, Pinsent drank Daniel Day-Lewis's milkshake, a statement that Day-Lewis may agree with (at least Pinsent won the 'Genie' for Best Actor).

"Daniel Day-Lewis - the eccentric British actor whose manic milkshake-slurping performance won him this year's best actor Oscar - sent him a message saying he was "totally in awe" of Pinsent's performance."

Anyway, here is a fascinating conversation with a terrific actor whose work absolutely devastated me last year. So much was my admiration for the film that I bought the DVD despite the fact that I don't think I could bring myself to watch the movie again. You owe it to yourself to see it once.

Scott Mendelson

Friday Numbers roll in... ($20 million for Kung Fu Panda)

Once again, Deadline Hollywood and Fantasy Moguls were the first to report the Friday numbers, and once again they were off by a decent margin. At least Finke corrected herself in the morning, after posting super-early Friday evening estimates (Moguls did late in the afternoon too). I'd rather be right than first, but that's just me.

Anyway, Kung Fu Panda pulled in a whopping $20 million on Friday alone, suggesting that it'll top $55 million even if it doesn't play like a kids film. If it does, then $70 million is not out of the question. Finding Nemo and The Incredibles both parlayed $20 million Fridays into $70 million three-days. If it beats $74 million (unlikely, but possible), it'll be the biggest opening weekend for a non-sequel cartoon ever and the third biggest cartoon opening period. Obviously I should have taken those $49 million openings for Madagascar and Shark's Tale and adjusted them for inflation. Oh well, if I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather it be because a good film did better than I expected.

This may be the third summer in four years where a Pixar film is defeated at the domestic box office by a DreamWorks cartoon (ironically the one off-year is 2006, where Over The Hedge deserved to crush the atrocious Cars but came up in a distant second-place). Wall-E now has its work cut out for it, so it'll be interesting to see whether the seemingly off-beat and arty robot tale can hold its own against the more traditional (but very good) family adventure film.

For the record, Wall-E does not have to break any records or fend off any competition to be considered a success. If Wall-E is good, it'll make its own boatload of money and play all summer right alongside Kung Fu Panda, and that's the best result for everyone. If anything, how wonderful would it be if they manage to co-exist with DreamWorks/Paramount as the place for high-quality traditional animated product while Disney/Pixar becomes the artier, more experimental cartoon factory? For DreamWorks that's gonna have to mean more Over The Hedge and Kung Fu Panda and less Shark Tale. For Pixar, that means more Meet The Robinsons and Ratatouille and less Cars.

Don't Mess With The Zohan did a terrific $15 million, which means it'll end up with about $42 million. It may just top the $42.2 million of Anger Management that represents Sandler's best three-day stand-alone number (Longest Yard pulled in $47 million in the Fri-Sun portion of a $58 million four-day Memorial day opening). Nice work to all involved, as there was some fear that this offbeat Sandler project had a Little Nicky vibe. Obviously the lesson isn't 'don't make Sandler weird' but 'don't make him ugly'.

Indiana Jones 4 drops a reasonable 47% to $6.5 million. Assuming matinée business kicks up again, expect about $24 million for the thirdd weekend and a $255 million 21-day total. It's still running neck and neck with Pirates 3, so the $300 million mark is still likely.

I keep giving Sex And The City the benefit of the doubt and it keeps kicking me in the ass. "Don't worry, it won't be a one-weekend wonder!" "Oh wow, that $26 million opening day will lead to a $70 million three-day!" "Wow, those strong weekday numbers mean that the second weekend won't have a huge drop!" Anyway... Sex And The City dropped a whopping 73% from Friday to Friday to $7.3 million. To be fair, last Friday was insanely front-loaded, so the total weekend drop could be a more reasonable 60%. Still, come what may, it'll likely cross the $100 million mark by Sunday.

Fun fact - they are test-screening both The Women and He's Just Not That Into You this coming week around Woodland Hills. Do I see another Spring Break test screening around the corner?

Scott Mendelson

Slightly old news, but still good news...

Glad to see that Obama's first major decision was to keep Howard Dean as head of the DNC. Whatever errors Dean made in regards to prolonging the primary fight and issues with Michigan and Florida, his '50 State Strategy' was instrumental in the Dems taking back Congress in 06 and leveling the playing field for all future national elections. And, in my opinion, it was also instrumental in Obama winning the nomination, since many of the smaller or redder states that Obama triumphed in were the very states that needed a strong localized Democratic network that had been lacking or absent beforehand.

For what it's worth, I saw the infamous Dean scream speech live as it occurred on the night of the Iowa caucuses back in January, 2004. When I watched it live, with all the microphones turned on (not just Dean's) it seemed like a normal high-energy political speech, meant to raise the spirits of supporters who expected Dean to triumph in Iowa. Later broadcasts played the video with only Dean's audio audible, making him sound like a delusional madman rallying a silent crowd (to be fair, it may have also been the fault of his unidirectional microphone, which filters out crowd noise). Even Diane Sawyer and CNN more or less apologized for overplaying this non-story. Granted, that's not what doomed his campaign. Dean made several rookie mistakes in Iowa and his whole campaign wasn't nearly as professional or as well-organized as everyone assumed. Plus, the Democrats were so desperate to find someone, anyone to call their candidate against George W. Bush that they would have rallied behind whomever won Iowa and New Hampshire, be it John Kerry or Dennis Kucinich.

Dean has been a key figure in rebuilding the Democratic Party following the shattering 2000 debacle, and the 2002 mid-terms (in which Democrats were encouraged to run as pretend Republicans). Despite the super-delegate stand-off and the issues over Florida and Michigan, he has concentrated on building the party for the long run, not just for the next election. Obama choosing to keep him where he is shows good judgment and good taste.

Scott Mendelson

How Tony Rezko is a 'bipartisan' problem...

Here's a nice, detailed article (from The Chicago Tribune's John Kass) concerning how slumlord and now convicted felon Tony Rezko is pretty tied up to the GOP, perhaps more so than with Obama. We'll see if this gets any play, but the article has useful talking points for political debates amongst friends and family.

My favorite bit - "While campaigning in Illinois, (Mitt) Romney made it clear that he'd get rid of U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald, who authorized the prosecution of Rezko." Another earlier column on just that can be found here. Fitzgerald was of course also the 'left-wing hatchet man' who prosecuted Scooter Libby for obstruction of justice and perjury in relation to the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame. Obama isn't super-duper innocent in regards to Rezko (nothing illegal, just somewhat mediocre judgment), but it looks like the GOP is swimming in much deeper waters.

Scott Mendelson

Worse than I thought...

This link below is a three-page excerpt from the new book: Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove, from the top-notch news website Salon. Specifically, it deals with Rove's and, by proxy, George W. Bush's response to the Katrina disaster almost three years ago. And here I presumed they were merely incompetent and/or indifferent...

Dear God...
I'm pretty sure the actions stated here rise to the level of second-degree murder (depraved indifference to human life). Assuming this is true, this is clearly Karl Rove and Bush Jr. intentionally withholding lifesaving aid to the people of New Orleans in order to play a game of political 'gotcha' with a Democratic swing-state governor. Countless people drowned so that Rove could delay the response and blame Democrats.

Barack Obama has stated that he plans to continue whatever investigations the Democrats currently have going on the Bush clan even after George W. leaves office. Let's hope Rove and company go to jail purely for this. And, no, McCain's record isn't much better in the aftermath.

Scott Mendelson

Thursday night Box Office Bingo...

I'll have to make this brief as I'm a bit tired.

Kung Fu Panda - $50 million. It's been getting the best reviews for a DreamWorks cartoon since Shrek 2, and the marketing has been saturation-level. Expect this one to play all summer long, even in the face of Wall-E, as audiences discover that it is in fact a far better film than it needed to be.

You Don't Mess With The Zohan - $40 million. It'll be at the higher end of the Sandler comedies. The reviews are 'interesting', as even the negative reviews note that the film is surprisingly thoughtful in regards to the Israel/Palestine conflict (makes me want to see it, and I've never seen a Sandler comedy in theaters in my life).

Sex And The City - $28 million. A 50% drop-off. The insanely front-loaded weekend parlayed into strong weekday sales (about $5.5 million per day), so this probably is not the feared one-weekend wonder (plenty of women I know want to see it and plan to see it but haven't gotten around to it). Expect this one to play like (ironically) an Adam Sandler comedy. Those usually experience a big 50-55% drop only to level out for a month or so as they become the safe second-choice for general moviegoers. Expect the same here as there are no specifically 'female-targeted' films until Mama Mia opens on July 18th. It'll likely end the second weekend with a little over $105 million, which is a terrific total.

Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull - $23 million. A slightly under 50% drop as it becomes the safe second choice for kids who were sold out of Kung-Fu Panda or teens who didn't make their screening of You Don't Mess With The Zohan. As with last weekend, expect huge matinee business to compensate for a weaker Friday night. Expect Indy 4 to end its third weekend with about $253 million. That means that it officially out-grosses the non-adjusted $242 million gross of Raiders Of The Lost Ark and becomes Spielberg's highest grossing film since Jurassic Park back in 1993 ($359 million). And as soon as it crosses $261 million, it'll become Steven Spielberg's third-highest grossing film ever, behind ET: The Extra Terrestrial ($434 million) and Jurassic Park.

The Strangers - $9.5 million. Down 51%, this is already well into the black and everything in this film's short remaining life is pure gravy.

Iron Man - $9 million. Down another measly 35%, this'll end with the weekend with a fantastic $292 million. This and The Strangers could switch places on the chart.

Scott Mendelson

Boy am I gonna look stupid if The Happening is lousy...

A detailed and well-written detailing of the current witch-hunt against M. Night Shyamalan by Brad Brevet is up at Rope Of Silicon. It goes over some of the points I've made and a whole boatload of others, but it emphasizes two worthy notes:

Much of the criticism comes from the automatic assumption that every M. Night Shyamalan picture must be a thriller and thus is a failure if it doesn't scare you or quicken your pulse. Never mind that Unbreakable was a meditative comic book deconstruction, The Village was a thoughtful political parable, and Lady In The Water was a fairy tale for children. Hell, The Sixth Sense was only scary because we sympathized enough with Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) to feel his terror and empathize with his fear. Signs was really his only out-and-out thriller/horror film/suspense yarn/etc.

Brevet also suggests that maybe the reason that Shyamalan has a bit of an ego is that, until Lady In The Water flopped, he pretty much had a Midas touch. The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs all got decent to excellent reviews and made tidy, if not explosive profits. The Village, fair or not, got lousy reviews but still ended up with $255 million worldwide. Only Lady In The Water, around which the story about Night's ego and controlling nature developed, underperformed both critically and commercially. On this we agree.

By this rationale, Tim Burton should have been tarred and feathered after Mars Attacks, which bombed critically and commercially in 1996, eleven years after he hit the scene with Pee-Wee's Big Adventure in 1985. Up until that point, every Tim Burton film had gotten mixed to good reviews and succeeded mightily at the box office. The lone box-office bomb was the critical darling Ed Wood (still his best film), which won Martin Landeau an Oscar in 1994 for Best Supporting Actor.

And, by golly, I'm sure glad that Spielberg kid was driven out of town after 1941, his first flop (having earned a reputation as an overtime, over budget, egocentric, under disciplined punk). I can't imagine his next film after that stinker would have been anything worthwhile.

Scott Mendelson

The Bad Buzz Trio...

"Sad that the most vicious wrath is always reserved for those who try and fail instead of those who simply try to fail."

-- Posted by 'p.Vice' at June 4, 2008 10:43 AM on Jeff Wells' Hollywood-Elsewhere blog, in response to this Defamer article, detailing the three big summer films that are indeed getting hit by the lousiest buzz.

A perfect summation of the wrath inexplicably thrown at M. Night Shyamalan over the yet unseen 'The Happening' as well as the wrath tossed at the Wachowski Bros. over 'Speed Racer'.

The Happening may be terrible (and the defiled poster is stupidly funny), but the mass ganging up on M. Night is starting to resemble that of a school bully picking on the smaller, smarter kid who's more ambitious than you.

The other two films that are targeted are Mike Myers' The Love Guru and Get Smart, both of which are set to open on June 20th. It is a turning point in the marketing of The Incredible Hulk that it is not included on said list. The trailers have gotten better and the mass invite of geek gossip sites (AICN, Dark Horizons, etc) into the editing bay was a great way to build positive buzz.

The buzz on Get Smart since its inception was that it was a slapdash and lazy attempt to cash in on a brand name that few if any of the target demographic has ever heard of. The script got terrible reviews and the initial trailers felt forced and desperate.

The film had and still has the whiff of assembly-line film making, probably more so than anything coming out this summer (according to an early script review, female lead and romantic interest Agent 99 is the same age as 46 year old Steve Carell, but she undergoes plastic surgery so she can look like demographically desirable 26 year old Anne Hathaway). Still, I'm expecting a decent opening weekend as the marketing campaign has been varied and saturation-level. It looks shiny and effortless and Carell, Hathaway, and Dayne 'The Rock' Johnson each have a small and solid fan base. Ironically, the same $32 million opening weekend that doomed Evan Almighty last year would probably seem like a healthy result for this (hopefully) cheaper and less pressured entry.

The Love Guru just looks atrocious and egotistical, and the buzz reflects as much. Never mind the silly attention-hogging interest groups who are protesting the unseen film for its alleged slandering of the Hindu faith, Myers has no goodwill left after trashing the Austin Powers series and defiling our childhood memories via The Cat And The Hat back in 2003. Heck, Myers hasn't had a solid live-action outing since the first Austin Powers, back in 1997 (to be fair, he was good in the studio-butchered '54').

So yes, of those three, I'll take Shyamalan's noble failure over Peter Segal's or Mike Myers' lazy success any day of the week.

Scott Mendelson

The Headline Says It All...

The following headline just appeared on Yahoo News:

Democrats split on whether the party is energized or divided

Um... yeah.

Carrie Bradshaw 'whip'-lashed by front-loading and Indiana Jones continues to raid the box office.

Apologies for the delay... but the Sunday numbers seemed so tenuous that I thought it best to wait till the final numbers were released today.

Alas, it would seem that Sex And The City did indeed prove to be front loaded, perhaps the most front loaded movie I have ever witnessed. A $26.8 million opening day leading to a $56.8 million opening weekend portends to very, very troubled box office waters ahead (ironically, my $50 million guess, which I lambasted myself for yesterday, turned out to be pretty darn close). Now it has been stated that the film collected $3 million in midnight showings on Thursday night. If you don't count those, then the film merely has a lousy 2.4 multiplier that renders it similar to previous television turned movies (Simpsons and X-Files-Fight The Future). However, there is a reason that studios schedule those advanced screenings at 12:01am. Counting those, as we ought well should, Sex And The City ends up with a shockingly terrible 2.1 multiplier. This is the lowest multiplier that I can remember seeing for as long as I've been tracking box office. In other words, this was a Friday night event, and it may not be much more than that. But that doesn't mean it's anything less than a solid hit in the long run.

So where does this leave the likely total box office? That is of course a huge guess at this point, as we do not yet know the general word of mouth or whether there will be repeat business. But, let's take what I think are the two lowest grossing films to open to over $50 million. The Village opened to $50 million in 2004 and crashed due to word of mouth, ending up with $115 million. Back in November, 2002, 8-Mile opened to $51 million off of a $20 million opening day (2.5x). It also proved to be a flash in the pan and ended up with $116 million (opening weekend was about 43% of their respective totals). Thus, if this is the worst case scenario and there is little repeat business, then the final gross of Sex And The City would be slightly over $130 million. That's still a terrific total based on its $65 million budget and the likely huge DVD/Blu Ray sales, but this means that any sequels would have to keep the budget the same or smaller or risk losing money.

Fun fact - during the opening weekend of the young teen skewered, but R-rated Eight Mile, the weekend to weekend drops for every non-R-rated film in the top ten was absurdly small, even for garbage like I Spy. Draw your own painfully obvious conclusions.

Speaking of young people buying tickets for PG-13 movies and sneaking into R-rated ones, Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull had a terrific rebound on Saturday and Sunday, owing to being the main choice for families, the main choice for men whose wives were two auditoriums down, and the main choice for under-age girls sneaking into you-know-what. Anyway, the film rode a $12.5 million Friday into a $44.7 million second weekend. It's a little behind Iron Man's $51 million second weekend, but Indy had $50 million book-shelfing its first three day weekend (great news - it made slightly more on Sunday than on Friday).

Regardless, this slightly under-rated adventure has now pulled in $216 million in eleven days (I saw it for the second time today, this time with my father - it's still terrifically flawed but terrifically fun). It's pretty much following a very similar pattern to Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World's End. So, at this point, unless it really stays strong as a family option, look for it to finish out at a more than acceptable $305-$310 million. Whether it will beat Iron Man, I cannot say, but it's going to be closer than anyone guessed two months ago, and I think that says more about Iron Man than about Indy at this point.

Speaking of Tony Stark, everyone's favorite bleeding-heart arms merchant dropped a scant 33% this weekend, ending up with $276 million after week five. This thing keeps on ticking and it's now a lock for $300 million. The Incredible Hulk is going to have to really tank hard to blemish Marvel's expense sheet at this point.

Regardless of who wins the domestic box office battles, Indiana Jones 4 has almost surpassed Iron Man's five week global take ($519 million) in about eleven days ($482 million). Just remember, in 1989, domestic champ Batman still lost the global trophy to Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade ($411 million vs $474 million). There likely isn't anything this year that can steal the global victory from Henry Jones Jr.

The home invasion bruised-forearm picture, The Strangers pulled in a surprising $21 million, owing it to a strong trailer, a simple and relatible premise, and the lack of horror films in the last several weeks. Considering this one only cost $9 million and has been on the shelf for ages, I'm genuinely shocked at this strong performance. Mazel Tov, Rogue Pictures.

Prince Caspian dropped 44% to 12.7 million, reaching $113 million after weekend three. Shockingly, this one won't make it to $150 million domestic, although overseas numbers could help cushion the $200 million budget (it's done $51 million overseas thus far). And poor, bedeviled Speed Racer has crossed the $40 million domestic mark and nears a $75 million global total. Come on, foreign countries... help this visionary wonder save some face by passing $125 million globally!

Next week pulls out Kung Fu Panda and You Don't Mess With The Zohan. Kung Fu Panda will likely open closer to the $47 million of A Shark Tale and Madagascar, as opposed to the $38 million of Over The Hedge and Bee Movie (it's swell, read my review then go see it... or go see it then read my review!). Zohan will probably open at about $40 million, as befits nearly every Adam Sandler movie that isn't a serious drama. The weekend after that is of course the battle of the two biggest question marks of the summer - The Happening and The Incredible Hulk. Stay tuned, sports fans, it's about to get bloody and someone is going to be very, very angry.

Scott Mendelson