Heading into its second weekend, Disney’s Alice in Wonderland will continue to score big numbers. According to Flixster, the Tim Burton fantasy (which has a Tomatoscore of 52%) is pacing about five times ahead of this week’s new releases. That’s not hard, because none of the newcomers are crossing over from their target demo. (Trailers are on the jump.) UPDATE: Box office watchers can now place bets on their predictions.
Universal’s long-delayed Iraq-war thriller Green Zone, which reunites the director-star Bourne team of Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon, will appeal to men. Unimpressive marketing materials have stressed the film’s relationship to the Bourne movies; it’s more like Michael Mann’s angry Big Tobacco expose The Insider, which earned rave reviews but tiny box office. Green Zone isn’t tracking well, but will likely earn a range of rave to mixed reviews as it opens on 2999 screens.
Written by Brian Helgeland, inspired and shaped by Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone,” the material will be familiar to anyone who saw the Iraq documentary No End in Sight. The villain of the piece is the Coalition Provisional Authority’s Paul Bremer-figure (Greg Kinnear), who allowed the disbanded Iraqi army to transform into deadly armed insurgents. Damon plays a warrant officer searching for WMDs who rather unbelievably allies himself with a rogue CIA officer (Brendan Gleeson) to track down an Iraqi general. Amy Ryan’s WSJ reporter resembles the NYT’s Judith Miller.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Spring, Franchises, Twilight, Genres, Comedy, Drama, Headliners, Matt Damon, Rob Pattinson, Independents, Summit, Marketing, Reviews, Studios, Paramount, Fox Searchlight, Universal/Focus Features, Video, Trailers on March 11, 2010 at 6:21am PST | Permalink | Comments (7)
In his first TOH Sunday domestic/international box-office report, ex-Variety numbers analyst Anthony D’Alessandro checks in with the studios behind this weekend’s b.o. juggernaut, led by Disney’s Alice in Wonderland—-which proves yet again why studio marketers keep chasing the perfect match: branded family title + proven visual master + global movie star=blockbuster.
Read MoreDisney execs had every reason to be grinning like Cheshire Cats Sunday morning as Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland broke box-office records, most prominently, the highest non-sequel domestic opening ever, surpassing such superhero summer bows as 2002’s Spider-Man ($114.8 million) and 2008’s Iron Man‘s $102.1 million gross. Mushrooming a colossal $116.3 million at 3,728 venues, Alice easily benefited from its 3D sites, earning record highs for the format in its 2,063 locales and 180 IMAX hubs. 65% of Alice’s dough stemmed from 3D situations. Worldwide, Alice consumed $210.3 million.
For Alice to earn the best pre-summer bow, particularly in early March, is quite a feat. Typically R-rated films such as 300 ($70.9 million) and Watchmen ($55.2 million) excel during this part of the month, with distributors saving family titles for the mid-to-late part of the session.
On Tim Burton’s resume, Alice easily marks a career high, outdistancing his previous best bow, 2001’s Planet of the Apes, which generated $68.5 million. Alice marks the second biggest opening for Disney and studio star Johnny Depp, who both share the same No. 1 record opening weekend for 2006’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($135.6 million).
Touting an estimated budget of $200 million, Alice’s first weekend comes as a sigh of relief for Disney which began promoting the film late last summer with sneak preview photos online of the film and a trailer attached to G Force. “We knew from our midnight shows on opening day that this film’s audience was as broad as we expected, literally ranging from ages five through 96,” said Disney distribution president Chuck Viane about Alice’s four-quadrant appeal.
By Anthony D'Alessandro , posted to Box Office, Winter, Directors, Martin Scorsese, Tim Burton, Headliners, Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio, Studios, Disney/Miramax, Paramount on March 7, 2010 at 10:07am PST | Permalink | Comments (2)
The thing to remember about Shutter Island is that it’s closely based on the novel by Dennis Lehane. James Cameron collaborator Laeta Kalogridis wrote the adaptation that lured Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese. Read the book and you will see how closely she hewed to the original. Whatever the movie’s strengths or weaknesses—and it has both—they come from the book. I’d argue that as cinematic as this paranoid thriller is, it works better as a book than a movie. That’s because Scorsese faced the challenge of making this high-wire reality vs. fiction puzzle into a plausible, believable narrative that didn’t throw the audience for a complete loop. Some buy it, some don’t.
Paramount obviously made the right call pushing the HItchcockian suspenser into February—and selling the movie as a nasty R-rated psycho-thriller. Shutter Island delivered a boffo $40-million weekend, the best ever for both DiCaprio and Scorsese. Earning diverse, mixed reviews (here’s The New Yorker) and a B+ Cinemascore, the question remains how well Shutter Island actually played for audiences. The second weekend will tell the tale.
After initially resisting Hollywood—it took Clint Eastwood calling him on the phone to land Mystic River—Lehane has settled in for a pretty smooth movie ride. “I’m still not sure I’ve capitulated to Hollywood per se,” he says by phone from his native Boston. “My three films were made in odd non-conformist ways within the system.”
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Directors, Clint Eastwood, Marketing, Reviews, Studios, Paramount, Writers, Critics, Screenwriters on February 24, 2010 at 5:34am PST | Permalink | Comments (3)
While the deal for Paramount to acquire George Gallo’s Middle Men, starring Luke Wilson and James Caan, was closed late in the year, details are just emerging. Essential Entertainment started handling sales for the Oxymoron Entertainment-funded movie at Cannes, reported Screen:
Middle Men is based on a true story and follows a straight laced businessman who builds the first online billing company dealing exclusively with adult entertainment. He finds himself caught between the Russian mob, a 23-year-old porn star and the FBI in his bid to make money.
It’s a worldwide distribution service deal: Paramount grabs a fee and recoups its costs, and the filmmakers kick in initial P & A money. This is the new norm. Studios acquire indie projects for a distribution fee, while movie backers supply prints and ad coin.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Studios, Paramount on February 19, 2010 at 1:22pm PST | Permalink | Comments (0)
It’s no surprise that gravel-voiced Hollywood mogul Robert Evans—a one-time actor, studio head, memoirist and documentary subject—should inspire a stage play. Famed West End, opera and film director Sir Richard Eyre (Notes on a Scandal) is directing the Broadway production, which will be adapted from Evans’ memoirs The Kid Stays in the Picture and The Fat Lady Sang by Jon Robin Baitz (The Substance of Fire). Smuggler Films has acquired the live stage rights.
Besides being a wily businessman and canny raconteur, Evans turned out to be a terrific writer. Both books are must-reads. And he’s a great subject for a play, because he’s a larger-than-life character. He escaped the New York garment industry, acted in Hollywood, became a producer and Paramount chief very young, produced Love Story, Chinatown The Godfather, wooed and won gorgeous actresses, including wife Ali MacGraw, who he lost to Steve McQueen, played footsy with the mob, got in trouble with drugs, faced bankruptcy, and was saved by friends like Sumner Redstone and Jack Nicholson.
“How could one resist telling the story of a man who is part Casanova/part Don Quixote/part Horatio Alger,” asks Eyre, “who produced some of the best films of the twentieth century - particularly if the story was written by Robbie Baitz?”
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Moguls, Sumner Redstone, Studios, Paramount, Writers on February 10, 2010 at 12:05pm PST | Permalink | Comments (0)
As Mark Gill and Neil Sacker’s Film Department seeks new funding via an IPO, they’re announcing that they’re plunking down some of their remaining cash on a new script produced by Michael De Luca, the original action-comedy True Memoirs of an International Assassin, written by Jeff Morris. Why telegraph this news?
During trying times, many companies are using PR to signal to the industry that they are actively in the game.
Timing is key. While he had long closed a deal, Apparition’s Bob Berney waited until he was preparing to enter the Sundance buying fray before he alerted the indie film community that he had acquired all North American rights to The Square (the first feature from Australian stuntman-turned-director Nash Edgerton and actor/writer Joel Edgerton) for a planned April 9 opening (complete with Nash Edgerton’s internet hit short Spider). Similarly, Paramount reminded Indiewood of the still-extant Vantage label and its new low-budget film division by announcing the buy of Davis Guggenheim’s education expose Waiting for Superman at the start of the fest.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Independents, Apparition, Overture, Weinsteins, Studios, Disney/Miramax, Paramount on February 3, 2010 at 3:33pm PST | Permalink | Comments (0)
Ex-Variety.com staffer David Lewis reports on Paramount Vantage pick-up Waiting for Superman and the Q & A:
Read MoreThe buzz around Davis Guggenheim’s latest documentary “Waiting For Superman” was already at a fever pitch by its Friday premiere, following Thursday’s news that it had been acquired by Paramount Vantage (the same studio that scored with Guggenheim’s previous “An Inconvenient Truth”). Waiting in line for the screening, the anticipation only increased as the rumor spread that the screening’s Q&A would include a very special guest: Bill Gates.
The Microsoft chairman/philanthropist participated in the highly educational Q&A, along with Guggenheim, producer Lesley Chilcott and educator Geoffrey Canada (a major figure in the film).
by David Lewis, posted to Festivals, Sundance, Genres, Documentaries, Studios, Paramount on January 23, 2010 at 10:45am PST | Permalink | Comments (0)
Kris Tapley and I discuss the week’s frenetic doings: National Board of Review, parties for The Hurt Locker, Crazy Heart and The Lovely Bones, and the upcoming sci-fi monster Avatar.
MTV has posted last week’s MTV live stream with Avatar’s James Cameron, Zoe Saldana and Sam Worthington; here’s Time’s Avatar takeout By Rebecca Winters Keegan, who has also written a Cameron bio, The Futurist.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, Clint Eastwood, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Peter Jackson, Quentin Tarantino, Franchises, Avatar, Independents, Summit, Weinsteins, Studios, Paramount, Fox Searchlight on December 5, 2009 at 4:30pm PST | Permalink | Comments (2)
Friday I interviewed It’s Complicated writer-director Nancy Meyers by phone, Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner by Flip Cam, and went to a Paramount Lovely Bones cocktail party at the Four Seasons. There I talked to Stanley Tucci and photographed him with Peter Jackson, who I will talk to later this weekend. Then I ran off to the International Documentary Awards, which were taking place at the same time as the first screening of Avatar (Arrggh) for the Hollywood Foreign Press. Word on the street at the IDA party: Avatar‘s a 161-minute movie with fab visual effects and adolescent story. I won’t see it until the 10th, alas.
The announcement of the IDA winners was posted online at 8 PM PST, just as the ceremony was beginning. The big winner was Sacha Gervasi’s Anvil! The Story of Anvil, which won both music and best feature awards (the full list of winners is at indieWIRE.com), but did not make the Oscar short list. “We are living proof that dreams do come true,” said drummer Rob Reiner.
Here’s my impromptu low-light interview with Anvil:
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by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, Peter Jackson, Studios, Paramount on December 5, 2009 at 12:36am PST | Permalink | Comments (9)
Must-Sees:
Jason Reitman’s Up in the Air has been deemed a too-dark marketing challenge. But the movie’s strength is the way it skips past conventional genre cliches while deftly taking its characters through romantic escape and isolation—and the tough economy. Paramount Pictures is one of the few studios that can market both big and little movies. Up in the Air may be on its way to some Oscar nominations: it won four awards from the National Board of Review, including best picture of the year. It’s tied with Precious for number one on the Gurus ‘O Gold. Reviews are stellar: Tomatometer: 84%. Metascore: 81.
The period biopic about Leo Tolstoy’s tumultuous last year, The Last Station, played like gangbusters at Sneak Previews last night. The marital drama starring Helen Mirren, Christopher Plummer and James McAvoy scored a surprising five Independent Spirit nominations. Here’s EW’s rave. Tomatometer: 62%. Metascore: 71.
Bright Star, writer-director Jane Campion’s tragic period romance about Fanny Brawne and poet John Keats (Abbie Cornish and Ben Whishaw) is back in LA at Laemmle’s Royal for an Academy run. Subtle, precise, and gorgeously mounted, it’s my favorite movie of the year. Tomatometer: 83%. Metascore: 81.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Headliners, George Clooney, Jake Gyllenhaal, Natalie Portman, Sandra Bullock, Tobey Maguire, Independents, Apparition, Reviews, Studios, Disney/Miramax, Paramount, Sony/Screen Gems/Sony Pictures Classics on December 3, 2009 at 5:00pm PST | Permalink | Comments (2)
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