Mendelson's Memos

Monday, March 4, 2013

Holy sh*t!! Harrison Ford signs on for Anchorman 2...

If you watched Conan O'Brian over the years, you know that Mr. Ford is actually a pretty funny guy. He has a droll and rather deadpan sense of humor that generally came out best on O'Brian's couch, probably because Conan never pried into his private life. He's made no secret of his desire to do comedy and I've spent the last 15 years or so wondering why he never got that call from the Farrely Bros or whatever dominant comic filmmakers were occupying the industry at a given moment. Hell, the serio-comedic melodramas of Judd Apatow would be a perfect fit for someone like Ford. But it appears that the call has finally been made and answered, because Ford is in fact joining the cast of Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues.

As most of you know, Warner Bros. intended to release Bryan Singer's Jack the Giant Killer in June of 2012 before pulling it from release, ordering reshoots and the like, and calling it a more kid-friendly Jack the Giant Slayer. I don't know what the film's budget was prior to the date change and related reshoots, but it was probably a lot less than the $195 million that they ended up with. And for what? The film opened this weekend to $28 million. If patterns hold for this kind of release, it'll likely top out at $70 million domestic at best and around $250 million worldwide as a best case scenario. But point being, how much better of an opening could Warner Bros. expecting for a half kid-friendly/half dark-and-violent retelling of Jack and the Beanstalk starring absolutely no one of any box office worth? How much worse of an opening would Warner Bros. be looking at had it just gone ahead and opened it in June of 2012 as they intended? Is it really worth the extra tens-of-millions of dollars that they ended up spending on the picture? Delaying the inevitable oftentimes merely gets you the same result at a greater cost.

Weekend Box Office part II: Stoker scores in limited while three wide newbies tank.

The best film of the weekend also had the best per-screen average of the weekend. Fox Searchlight's Stoker earned $22,689 on each of its seven screens for a $158,000 opening weekend. Now any number of films can open strong in limited only to tank as it goes wider, so now it's just a question of whether Fox Searchlight even bothers to expand it and how larger audiences react to what is clearly not a mainstream thriller. But for those in the mood for what it offers, it's delicious. The other three newbies were, um, The Last Exorcism part II, 21 and Over, and Phantoms. Let's make this quick. The Last Exorcism part II was a case of CBS Films picking up a franchise that Lionsgate smartly knew was a one-and-done affair. The original, which opened to $20 million in late 2010, was actually quite good, arguably among the best found footage horror films of the modern era. But it wasn't something that demanded a sequel and its $8 million opening weekend should be a giant warning sign to the financial backers of Insidious 2 and Sinister 2, although if both films can keep their budgets similar to the $1-3 million that their respective predecessors cost, then they'll be profitable regardless. Even this new one cost just $5 million, so it will still make money.

Pretty much everything I said last March about John Carter applies to Jack the Giant Slayer. There are a few differences. Jack and the Beanstalk is technically a well-known property and Bryan Singer had the live-action track record that Andrew Stanton did not. But otherwise it is pretty much the same fallacy with pretty much the same result: $200 million cost plus who knows how much in marketing for $27.9 million on opening weekend. No stars, source material no one really cared to see onscreen, marketing that didn't convince them that they should, a release date that put them within one week of a likely juggernaut, and mixed reviews. Like John Carter and Battleship, Jack the Giant Slayer was basically a $200 million variation on 'Generic Blockbuster: The Movie'. Unlike Disney and Universal respectively, Warner Bros. seemed to see this one coming well in advance. They changed the release date from June 2012 to this weekend and changed the title from Jack the Giant Killer to 'appeal to families'. Yet they still spent $200 million on a would-be family film that I can't take my daughter to because it's PG-13 and (allegedly) features slightly toned down Lord of the Rings type violence. To be fair, some of that $200 million cost was due to reshoots and the date change, but why bother? Warner spent untold extra millions to get the exact same terrible result they got this weekend. And really the film's cost is as usual the prime offender.

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.

Why bitchy 'fanboys' are the film fan equivalent of Bill Kristol.

I'm not going to get into the misogynistic aspect of the trolling centered around a few on-set photos of Shailene Woodley from The Amazing Spider-Man 2. To those saying that she's not 'pretty enough' to be Mary Jane Watson, I'll simply extend a hearty 'f*ck you' and merely offer to be, wedding vows and relative current marital bliss aside, the next guy in line at the bar after you turn down her advances. But while others will justifiably focus on the offense at the trolling of a young actress having the gall to walk around without make up, I'd like to offer a bit of silver lining to this whole affair. Now thanks to the Internet trolling, I can absolutely guarantee that not only will Shailene Woodley be insanely attractive as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man, but she will also be a terrific character, in terms of acting and all of that 'less-important' stuff too. Why do I know this? Because the trolling fans have told me otherwise. Trolling fans have been around for as long as I can remember. And they have become the Bill Kristol of film fans. They make noise, they attract attention and 'serious discussion', and they are always always wrong.

Any number of movies can bomb critically and commercially to the extent that they harm the star or director or even the writer involved with the respective project. But, 13.5 years later, the utter carnage reaped by Pay It Forward remains impressive and perhaps unprecedented. Yes the movie wasn't very good and yes it didn't make very much money at the box office. But the impressive thing about Pay It Forward, a would-be Oscar bait drama released in October of 2000, is how brutally it crushed the careers of pretty much all of its major players, inflicting wounds that have only just now started to wear off. The film was considered a major player prior to its release. starring recent Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Oscar nominee (and shoulda-been winner) Haley Joel Osment. It was helmed by Mimi Leder, fresh off the blockbuster success of Deep Impact. The film was not a critical darling, getting savaged by critics to such a degree that many outright spoiled the film's kinda-sorta twist ending purely out of spite. And it was not a box office success either, earning just $55 million worldwide off a $40 million budget. But more importantly, the negative reaction to the film was so severe that it iced the white-hot buzz around all of its primary players.

Review: Stoker (2013) delivers the gothic goods.

Stoker

2013
100 minutes
rated R

by Scott Mendelson

Park Chan-Wook's Stoker is a delicious hybrid of its influences, which mix into an engaging fable of its own. Written by Wenworth Miller (yeah, the Prison Break guy), the picture doesn't reinvent any wheels but offers strong genre pleasures for those who like 'this kind of thing'. To say it's well-acted is almost redundant when your film is toplined by Mia Wasikowska, Matthew Goode, and Nicole Kidman. Stoker is stylish, thoughtful and wears its influences on its sleeve while stilling spinning its own web. It is part Shadow of a Doubt, part Hamlet while finding new territory to explore in the somewhat well-worn road of 'a young girl's coming of age/sexual awakening'. It is a slow but ultimately hypnotic tale that is told with a certain tastefulness that makes its moments of misbehavior all the more jolting.

Funny or not, The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis tweet was effective satire that reflected back at us.

That so many were so outraged this morning is precisely the point. Satire at its best highlights the lesser parts of society, using amplification to reflect it back at us and make us take notice of our own behavior. Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point. Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine year old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination. It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures (essay). This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar. Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a "cunt". Because we do *that* all the time.

Weekend Box Office (02/24/13): Identity Thief tops Oscar weekend, Snitch and Dark Skies open "okay".

I can't confirm this offhand, but I'm pretty sure Snitch has the biggest opening weekend of all time for a film based on a Frontline documentary. The 'mandatory minimum sentences are evil' action drama debuted with $13 million this weekend. That's not a huge figure, but it's above the sub-$8 million debuts from Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jason Statham in the last two months. Lionsgate/Summit procured the film for just $5 million, so this is a solid win all-around. The picture played 77% 18-49 and 53% male, earning a B from Cinemascore. The solid 3.17x weekend multiplier, especially considering the predicted Oscar drop today, means that the film may have legs and an outside shot at $45 million. It's not a massive success, and it means that Dwayne Johnson needs a viable franchise to be 'box office', but for a film with nothing but The Rock to sell, this isn't a bad debut at all (it's higher than the $8 million debut for 2010's Faster, for example). Johnson still has G.I. Joe: Retaliation next month and the sure to be *huge* Fast & Furious 6 on tap for May, so this almost qualifies as his "one for me" art film. It's a good movie that I hope finds an audience and it's clearly a better choice for action junkies than A Good Day to Die Hard.