You may think that Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Hugo Weaving and Emily Blunt star in Universal’s long-delayed reboot of the classic monster tale The Wolfman. While they all deliver enjoyable performances, del Toro is hopelessly miscast as Brit noble Hopkins’ returned “prodigal son,” who was sent away to be raised by an aunt in America. Del Toro looks uncomfortable in 19th century tweeds as he chases corseted beauty Blunt. If the guy can’t pull off a British accent, then don’t cast him. The star of the monster movie which opens Friday is make-up effects master Rick Baker. The movie is over-labored and may not make back its budget (it should open in the number two spot behind Valentine’s Day) but the R-for-violence wolfman transformations and action scenes are superb. UPDATE: Reviews are not good. Tomatometer: 35%, Metascore: 44.
Universal clearly greenlighted theThe Wolfman with no “big idea” behind it—a strong hook for a remake or reinvention. Del Toro’s manager Rick Yorn sold the studio on a remake of the 1941 Lon Chaney, Jr. classic, a fave of his client. So the studio went back to the original and set the film in the 1800s. That helped to make the movie hugely expensive—Universal also plowed through two directors, two composers, two editors. Check out the LAT’s account of the film’s misadventures, featuring hapless director Joe Johnston (Honey I Shrunk the Kids).
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Franchises, Genres, Horror, Studios, Universal/Focus Features, Video, Trailers on February 10, 2010 at 2:04pm PST | Permalink | Comments (4)
The Daily Beast asked Martin Scorsese to list his scariest movies. He came up with 11 and his scariest is my scariest, and always has been: Robert Wise’s 1963 The Haunting, based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Nice to be validated.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Martin Scorsese, Genres, Horror on October 29, 2009 at 12:13pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (0)
Weekend Box Office Winners
Spike Jonze’s Where the Wild Things Are led the weekend box office. While an estimated $32.4 million was a studio record for October (the movie was on some 3700 screens), the number wasn’t as big as some expected after its stellar Friday. The studio aimed the PG-rated film at a general, not family audience. But will the $90-million movie make its money back? Finally, Warners backed filmmakers working outside of the box, and that’s a good thing.
While I may have underestimated WTWTA a tad, I was right to be optimistic about F. Gary Gray’s Law Abiding Citizen, starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. Its robust action trailer pulled in males to the tune of about $21.3 million. That was good news for The Film Department which financed the film, and for Overture which badly needed a hit. As Overture sits on the edge of its future, key backer John Malone will be glad to see the mini-major score its biggest opening to date.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Fall, Genres, Action, Horror, Independents, Thriller, Headliners, Keira Knightley, Independents, Overture, Studios, Warner Bros./New Line on October 18, 2009 at 11:05pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (10)
From the start, Paramount online marketing executive Amy Powell knew that she could sell micro-budget horror thriller Paranormal Activity on the Internet.
Friday, October 16, Paramount will open the haunted-house flick on 1000 760 screens; last weekend it grossed $7.1 million on 160 screens. The studio allowed Powell to perform her web-marketing experiment, daring her to deliver butts in seats before they’d release the film in theaters. She delivered by promoting the film primarily online, asking moviegoers to demand via eventful.com that the movie play in their local town. The towns with the most votes would win a booking. The studio agreed that if Paranormal Activity scored one million votes, they would release the movie nationwide. Paramount is delivering on that promise: “The first-ever film release decided by you.”
The strategic decision behind Paranormal Activity‘s success was to avoid trickle-down marketing, where a studio hard-sells audiences on what to watch, in favor of a grassroots movement propelling its own decisions about what to see. President Obama’s online bid for the White House, where he let the people own his campaign, was Powell’s initial inspiration.
Paranormal Activity could promote a new marketing approach where less costly, long-term brand-and-buzz building from the ground up replaces mass-market saturated ad blasts at moviegoers. Tired of information overload, movie fans are seeking authenticity, as movies with no stars, from District 9 to Zombieland, keep scoring at the box office. Word-of-mouth has always been the most potent way to sell a movie. Now the Internet spreads it with the speed of a click. Paranormal Activity demonstrates that power.
Of course it only works with a movie that plays!
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Fall, Exhibition, Genres, Horror, Marketing, Studios, Paramount, Web/Tech, Facebook, Twitter on October 15, 2009 at 1:48pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (21)
Lessons learned from the weekend box office:
The Internet is steering audiences away from bad buzz and toward movies they want to see.
Sony smartly debuted its $23.5 million horror comedy Zombieland at Fantastic Fest and the positive WOM virally worked its way through the Internet. The movie scored $25 million as Sony continues on a b.o. roll. Marketers posted five clips which got their message across in a way the critics couldn’t. But it didn’t hurt that the movie scored even better reviews than the Coens’ A Serious Man (which opened well in limited release.)
Michael Moore is a force unto himself, showing yet again that the smart play in today’s world is to establish an online brand and an avid following. Moore showed up on just about every talk show, sent out countless emails to his gargantuan mailing list, and posted frequent updates on his website. (Scott Bowles profiles him in USA Today.) This weekend Capitalism: A Love Story (which Moore calls C:ALS!) broadened to almost 1,000 theaters and earned $5.3 million. “My 2nd best national opening ever,” tweeted Moore, “will end up in top five grossing docs of all time (along with F911 & Sicko)!!”
The Internet also spread the word from Telluride and Fantastic Fest on Oren Peli’s scary $15,000 home video Paranormal Activity, which Paramount tentatively booked on 12 screens in college towns. Now thanks to positive audience response via eventful.com/demand (despite lively debate on the new ending, suggested by Steven Spielberg), it’s getting a wider theatrical release (33 screens and counting).
Movies aimed at women are having a tough time gaining market traction.
Cinetic Media’s Matt Dentler asks on Twitter: “After the very poor starts for “Whip It,” “Jennifer’s Body,” and “Bright Star,” what does that mean for the future of young women’s movies?” I argue that each movie faced its own set of issues.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Fall, Directors, Michael Moore, Genres, Comedy, Documentaries, Horror, Independents, Period, Independents, Apparition, Overture, Studios, Fox Searchlight, Sony/Screen Gems/Sony Pictures Classics, Twentieth Century Fox on October 4, 2009 at 2:49pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (6)
Austin’s Fantastic Fest is under way. The movie to fly out of there with the greatest buzz (besides Toy Story 3, which debuted a trailer) is Zombieland. Will this R-rated zombie parody starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson break the horror comedy curse?
My instincts say yes. That’s because, unlike Sam Raimi’s PG-13-rated Drag Me to Hell or the femme comedy Jennifer’s Body, Jimmy Kimmel vet Ruben Fleischer’s movie delivers guts, gore and laughs, in the tradition of micro-budget zombie comedy sleeper Shaun of the Dead, which scored $30 million worldwide. Guys love the idea of hacking one’s way through piles of zombies. Don’t they? Sony opens the picture October 2.
YouTube has five clips:
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Festivals, Genres, Comedy, Horror, Marketing, Video on September 27, 2009 at 10:39am PDT | Permalink | Comments (5)
by Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Fall, Genres, Comedy, Horror, Marketing, Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, Writers, Diablo Cody on September 19, 2009 at 2:03pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (11)
The reason why film festivals pick movies like Creation for opening night is that they have all the right credentials: respected producer (Jeremy Thomas) and director (Jon Amiel) and two major stars (Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly) willing to show up for the gala TIFF screenings and party. But Creation was DOA tonight.
Flat, dull, and painful to sit through, Creation brings none of the excitement, energy and radical thought that went into Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species. I’m sure that book was difficult to write, but that’s not what we want to see in a movie about Darwin. Put some exotic exploration, science and ideas up there! Let him debate his theories with his friends, religious wife and minister, not mope around looking for a water cure and imagining his dead daughter. This movie bears all the earmarks of a group of people trying not to churn out yet another biopic, desperately searching for drama and conjuring up nothing but flapping boredom. The actors do their best. This is a question of how writer John Collee (Master and Commander, which featured Bettany) conceived and structured the material. Bill Condon’s Kinsey tackled a similarly tricky subject with far more inventive flair.
Set in the early 90s, Steven Soderbergh’s The Informant! is a slightly sour comedy that launched in Venice and screens in Toronto September 11 in advance of WB’s release September 18. Imagine that Matt Damon’s character in the Oceans series—the slightly dim, hard-working guy everyone likes to kid—is the star of a comic version of The Insider, only instead of being smart and tortured about doing the right thing, like Russell Crowe’s Jeffrey Wigand, this guy is a doofus, a buffoon, a bumbling idiot.
Based on the true story of Archer Daniels Midland exec Mark Whitacre, a whistleblower for the FBI who saw himself as a secret agent hero but at the same time liberally skimmed millions of corporate funds for himself, The Informant! is a smart, witty comedy that makes fun of dim-witted bipolar midwesterners. This is not one of those movies where the clever young hero outwits the corporate villains. While Soderbergh paints a nasty picture of ADM, The Informant! left a bad taste in my mouth. Warners says the movie is tracking well for a strong opening, but I can’t imagine that moviegoers between the coasts are going to warm up to it. I hope I’m wrong: Soderbergh needs a commercial hit.
Jennifer’s Body is great fun. It’s exactly what it sets out to be: an unpretentious send-up of coming-of-age horror movies with a delicious lesbian edge. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried strike just the right tone as two best buds, one hot and popular, the other nerdy and cute. (In real life, Fox is more uptight about screen nudity than Seyfried, who bares all in Chloe.) When Fox absorbs a nasty demon with a thirst for human blood, Seyfried has to deal. Like most studios, Fox is wary of marketing a smart horror comedy (after all, look at what happened to Sam Raimi’s Drag Me to Hell). Producer Jason Reitman and writer Diablo Cody delivered a red band trailer (below) that captures the tone of the movie, but Fox went ahead with a straight-ahead horror take. I have to think that audiences will sniff this out.
UPDATE:The movie might have been better served by Fox Searchlight (whose now defunct sister-division Atomic developed this property.) Tracking is not good for Jennifer’s Body to open big. It may be too late by the time Fox hosts the season opener of Saturday Night Live September 26, with an appearance by U2.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Steven Soderbergh, Festivals, Toronto, Genres, Biopics, Comedy, Horror, Period, Marketing, Reviews, Studios, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros./New Line, Writers, Diablo Cody on September 10, 2009 at 6:38pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (8)
Israeli emigre Oren Peli’s microbudget haunted house film Paranormal Activity is one scary movie. Thanks to producer Jason Blum, Paramount picked up the $11,000 movie after some re-cutting and has set a September 25 release. Paranormal Activity scared the bejeezus out of the crowds at last weekend’s Telluride Film Festival. (It’s five-review ranking on Rotten Tomatoes is 100% fresh.)
Paranormal Activity borrows admiringly from the Blair Witch playbook. Peli makes his picture as real as possible by casting unknowns who can improvise. He eschews gore, and scares audiences with homevideo verite style. And he builds suspense by not showing everything.
Peli faced a steep learning curve in mounting his first film. He arrived in the U.S. at age 19 and pursued a career as a videogame programmer. Terrified by The Exorcist as a 10-year-old, he studied graphics and animation but never film.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Festivals, Telluride, Genres, Horror, Studios, Paramount on September 8, 2009 at 5:08pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (1)
The Final Destination got a major lift from premium 3-D ticket prices as rivals cried foul, “no fair.” The Weinstein Co. inexplicably competed with itself as Rob Zombie’s Halloween II came in third after strong second-week holdover Inglourious Basterds.
Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock was predictably soft—why else would Focus open it on more than 1300 screens; if it was a strong contender they would have let it grow on word-of-mouth. I liked Lee and writer James Schamus’s off-kilter sidelong look at the epic concert. But it was not a crowdpleaser. (You need better than a 55 on Metacritic these days.) The target audience boomers don’t go to the movies much anymore, and their kids didn’t give a damn. Other indie opener R.J. Cutler’s glam Vogue unveiling The September Issue scored the fifth best opening for a doc ever. Vogue editrix Anna Wintour was the model for Meryl Streep’s character in The Devil Wears Prada. Folks are still interested.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Summer, Directors, Quentin Tarantino, Genres, Documentaries, Horror, Independents, Independents, Weinsteins on August 30, 2009 at 5:53pm PDT | Permalink | Comments (0)
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