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)
The Hurt Locker producer Nicolas Chartier insists that he is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. Late Wednesday night, drink in hand, pool side at Andaz above Sunset at a pre-Oscar party for The Cove, Chartier wasn’t acting like a Hollywood pariah.
Far from it. If The Hurt Locker wins on Sunday night, Chartier cares less about not being able to go up on stage —the Academy rescinded his invite to the ceremony after he broke their campaign ethics rules—than being an Oscar winner with a statue to prove it.
Chartier has never gotten so many e-mails, mostly supportive. His multiple Voltage Entertainment projects are moving forward with speed and alacrity. He’s now known all over the world. Amazon DVD sales of The Hurt Locker jumped in the last week (the DVD is currently ranked at 22), Chartier believes, not due to Oscar nominations, critical acclaim and multiple awards—but to Chartier’s viral global notoriety. Chartier can get into any Oscar party he wants now, and is delighted to be having one thrown for him on Oscar night (by WME’s Graham Taylor and producer Lynette Howell).
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by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, Kathryn Bigelow, DVDs, Independents, Summit, Writers, Screenwriters on March 4, 2010 at 10:23am PST | Permalink | Comments (3)
A fellow-Hollywood scribe (who tends to like a lot) has seen Summit’s Rob Pattinson romance Remember Me and says it’s strong. (I’ll see it soon but can’t write about it yet). This “family” trailer (below) is much better than the last one.
How the movie opens March 12 will be a true test of Pattinson’s marquee power outside the Twilight franchise. Will women flock to see him playing a regular guy who isn’t Edward Cullen? The fact that it’s a sincere romance with father/son conflict (and not a formula romantic comedy) should work in its favor, along with a solid ensemble including Lost‘s Emilie de Ravin, Pierce Brosnan and Chris Cooper. I don’t have a handle on director Allen Coulter, who fumbled Hollywoodland but boasts strong TV credits (Damages, Rome, Nurse Jackie, The Sopranos, Sex and the City). While I have always been on Team Pattinson, so far his extra-curricular work has been in the less than inspiring European art films Little Ashes and How to Be.
UPDATE: New Details cover on the jump.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Franchises, Twilight, Headliners, Rob Pattinson, Independents, Summit, Video, Trailers on February 11, 2010 at 5:19pm PST | Permalink | Comments (13)
Nothing is certain until it’s over. And that’s especially true for the Oscar race.
While it’s hard to imagine anything dive-bombing Christoph Waltz and Mo’Nique’s Oscar chances, Sandra Bullock is not a lock to beat Meryl Streep—although Bullock’s Santa Barbara tribute probably wowed the local Academy members on hand. Many older Academy members are rooting for Hollywood’s most-nominated actress (16 to Jack Nicholson and Katharine Hepburn’s 12), who channeled her mother to play Julia Child, and hasn’t won an Oscar since 1983’s Sophie’s Choice. And The Hurt Locker‘s Jeremy Renner, who actually played the piano and sang on The View (clip on jump), is challenging veteran Jeff Bridges, whose singing in Crazy Heart not only makes the movie, but should win him his first Oscar. Does Renner have a shot? Most folks didn’t call Adrien Brody’s win for The Pianist. But, as Mark Harris writes in his Oscar cover story in New York Magazine, it’s Bridges’ turn.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Oscars, Directors, James Cameron, Kathryn Bigelow, Franchises, Avatar, Headliners, Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock, Independents, Summit, The Hurt Locker, Marketing, Media, Studios, Fox Searchlight, Twentieth Century Fox, Warner Bros./New Line, TV, Video on February 9, 2010 at 3:16pm PST | Permalink | Comments (3)
At the jam-packed Paramount pre-Golden Globes party at the Chateau Marmont, I was talking with Jodie Foster, who is editing her Summit drama The Beaver, starring old pal Mel Gibson—“you’ve never seen him like this before,” she promised. She also insisted that she will never change the title, which refers to a Beaver hand puppet who tells the Gibson character what to do.
At the party, Star Trek‘s Anton Yelchin stepped up, who stars in The Beaver, followed by Claire Danes (she starred in Foster’s Home for the Holidays, and took a break from her acting career in 1998 to attend Yale at Foster’s behest). Foster asked Danes about her recent marriage in France to Hugh Dancy, and Danes giggled with delight, sounding like any recent bride who hopes the blurred rite-of-passage she just endured worked for all concerned.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Headliners, Jodie Foster, Mel Gibson, Independents, Summit, TV, HBO on January 20, 2010 at 12:07pm PST | Permalink | Comments (1)
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)
A lot of people are scratching their heads over the whole Twilight phenomenon. When I made a fuss about it before Comic-Con in 2008, many fan boys didn’t have a clue. By July 2009 there was a raging Twilight backlash at the male-dominated Con. Even last week, I was amused by all the clueless Dads at the Twilight: New Moon premiere who’d rather be shot than admit to reading one of the books. Why were they there? To check it out.
Rubber-necking is a key explanation for why the second movie did twice as well as the first, opening to $142.8 million, the third-biggest opening ever. Curiosity post-Twilight film and DVD, plus extraordinary marketing on the part of Summit, pushed New Moon into must-see, event-movie, check-it-out status—even though Chris Weitz’s film is arguably worse than its predecessor.
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Fall, Franchises, Twilight, Genres, Sequel, Headliners, Rob Pattinson, Independents, Summit on November 23, 2009 at 11:40am PST | Permalink | Comments (53)
Based on the torrid rate of Fandango and MovieTickets.com advance online ticket sales, it’s not a huge surprise that The Twilight Saga: New Moon broke the midnight ticket sales record set last summer by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince , reports the LAT:
According to four people close to the movie, “The Twilight Saga: New Moon” sold more than $22.2 million worth of tickets in midnight shows last night, the all-time record set this summer by Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Box Office, Fall, Franchises, Twilight, Headliners, Rob Pattinson, Independents, Summit on November 20, 2009 at 9:59am PST | Permalink | Comments (0)
When new distributor Summit left behind Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke in its rush to push through the second film in their windfall franchise, they took a calculated risk. Abandoning a silly Twilight script that had been passed on by Paramount, Hardwicke and writer Melissa Rosenberg went back to the heart-pounding first-person intensity of the Stephenie Meyer original, which wound up selling 70 million copies worldwide. The dream that inspired Meyer—chapter thirteen in the first book—is a scene in a rain forest between a lovelorn young girl and a sparkling 109-year-old vampire who is restraining himself from biting and killing her. That tension is the heart and soul of the Twilight series.
Meyer always knew that New Moon was an odd book, as Edward abandons Bella, who is depressed and bereft for much of the movie. While the book makes clear why Edward leaves Bella—to protect her—the movie leaves his motivation murky. Forlorn Bella, well-played by Stewart, turns for support to muscle-bound Jacob instead. There’s a reason that Summit is pushing Taylor Lautner as fresh bait for tweens. There isn’t enough of the central relationship between Stewart and Pattinson to hold this film together. The device of having Edward hover and disappear as a protective warning to Bella is risible. While young girl moviegoers gasp whenever Lautner removes his shirt (which is often), the film’s parallel vampire vs. werewolf structure also begs credulity.
[Clips of Stephenie Meyer on Oprah on the jump.]
Read Moreby Anne Thompson, posted to Headliners, Rob Pattinson, Independents, Summit, Reviews on November 18, 2009 at 12:37pm PST | Permalink | Comments (26)
At the start of the awards season, I had The Hurt Locker at the top of my top ten picks list. But right now quite a few other movies are getting more noise. That doesn’t matter in the end. Finally, the Academy voters will dig back to all the films they saw this year, especially when they don’t have time to see all the marginal indies in their DVD stack. It’s more likely that they will remember the movies that the critics pick for their top ten lists at the end of the year, or that other awards groups like the Gothams, Critics Choice or Golden Globes anoint as must-sees.
Finally, though, screeners are the best reminder. So where are those The Hurt Locker DVDs? At the New Moon party, I asked Summit’s Rob Friedman, who denied that director Kathryn Bigelow was refusing to send out screeners because she wanted people to see the film on the big screen. (Ideally, that’s where it should be seen; it’s still playing in NY and LA.) Summit will send Academy screeners soon; they’ve already gone to the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
by Anne Thompson, posted to Awards, Golden Globes, Oscars, Independents, Summit on November 17, 2009 at 3:34pm PST | Permalink | Comments (11)
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