Screener

Box Office Outlook: Can Hannah Montana Win It All?

By Katey Rich

It's looking like that kind of weekend. All the new release titles are movies you've never heard of, starring people who sound vaguely familiar and with concepts that sound either way overdone or completely absurd. We have the ghost of a woman who haunts her ex-fiance as he tries to find new love, another woman who can suddenly see ghosts following eye surgery, and a bunch of guys who go off into the woods and get into accidents involving wild animals and drug use. One of the smallest releases of the weekend may turn out to be the biggest hit, though, as Hannah Montana hits the big screen in the 3D movie of her hit concert tour, Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds. Apparently 12-year-olds can't get enough, and if they can convince a parent to drag themselves away from the Superbowl long enough to drive them to the multiplex, they could make the first big hit of a 3D concert movie.

THE EYE. Opening in 2,200 theatres.The widest release of the weekend hasn't been screened for critics. As a remake of a Japanese horror movie starring Jessica Alba, it's not hard to see why. Alba's last films were Awake, which earned a Metacritic rating of 33, and Good Luck Chuck, which got an even-lower 19 rating. These two films earned her a Razzie nomination for Worst Actress of 2007, though she'll likely be beaten by Lindsay Lohan thanks to I Know Who Killed Me. Anyway. In The Eye Alba plays Sydney, a concert violinist who has been blind since birth. When she receives a corneal transplant, she begins seeing things from the past of the woman to whom the eyes once belonged. When the ghosts and the spirits start appearing, Sydney becomes involved in the supernatural world. I'm not entirely sure at what point the hand starts crawling out of the eye.

Today's Film News: Cloverfield Monster Takes Another Whack at Manhattan

By Katey Rich

Even for a movie where most of the main characters are dead at the end, a sequel is always possible. That's what's happening with Cloverfield, now that Paramount has signed director Matt Reeves for a follow-up to the smash hit, as well as a chance to direct his own script, The Invisible Woman. Producer J.J. Abrams and screenwriter Drew Goddard will be back for the monster movie sequel, Variety reports; the first film has grossed over $65 million in just under two weeks of release. Shot on digital video with a cast of unknowns, Cloverfield cost $25 million to make.

Jared Hess, who made the breakout hit Napoleon Dynamite, has secured a cast for his next project, Gentlemen Broncos, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Michael Anganaro (Sky High), Sam Rockwell (Joshua) and Jemaine Clement (one half of HBO's "Flight of the Conchords") will star in the film, about a high school outcast who attends a sci-fi convention and discovers a well-known writer has ripped off one of his stories.

Just weeks after the death of the legendary chess champion, Kevin Macdonald will direct Bobby Fischer Goes to War, about the young American's match against Russian grand master Boris Spassky in 1972. Macdonald's feature directing debut, The Last King of Scotland, earned an Oscar for its star Forest Whitaker, and he's currently at work on the star-studded State of Play, an adaptation of the British miniseries. Variety notes that Macdonald will make the film for State of Play studio Universal.

New production studio Overture Films has struck a deal with the WGA, according to The Hollywood Reporter, that will allow production with union writers to resume at the studio. The Weinstein Company and Lionsgate have already established similar deals. Film Journal International featured Overture just a few months ago; you can read all about the studio here.

Finally, Variety reports that writer-director Paul Haggis (Crash, In the Valley of Elah) has established a production company with Michael Nozik and set it up at United Artists. The new shingle, Hwy61 Films, will take on the project Haggis already set up with the studio, which was one of the first to cut a side deal with the WGA and allow union writers to work on its projects. The first film will be Ranger's Apprentice, based on the fantasy novels about a young man training as a ranger in order to protect a mythical kingdom.

Brendan Fraser Honored With ShoWest Award

By Katey Rich

Brendan Fraser was almost poised for a blockbuster triple-header in 2008, with Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D, The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor and Inkheart all slated for release this year. Now that Inkheart has been pushed to early 2009 his schedule is a little clearer, but that hasn't stopped ShoWest from presenting him with the award for Distinguished Decade of Achievement in Film.

ShoWest, organized by the very same Nielsen Film Group that produces Film Journal International, is the annual convention of theatre owners that takes place in March in Las Vegas. There will be much, much more reporting on ShoWest in this space, including updates from the show floor from my editor, Kevin Lally. A key part of ShoWest is the final night banquet, where Fraser and other honorees will be presented with their awards. There will be a number of other announcements about who will be joining Fraser at the banquet in the upcoming days, but first let's take a look at what earned Fraser his honor.

In addition to his busy slate of movies this fall, Fraser is being recognized for his diverse body of work over the last decade-- it's fair to say he's come a long way since 1992's Encino Man. "From his roles in action-packed blockbusters such as The Mummy, The Mummy Returns and George of the Jungle, to his critically acclaimed roles in such independent films as Crash and Gods and Monsters, Fraser has delivered many inspirational performances over the past decade," said ShoWest's co-managing director Mitch Neuhauser when announcing the award.

Ten years ago, after a series of small supporting roles in the wake of Encino Man, Fraser broke out as a dramatic actor in Gods & Monsters, the critically acclaimed drama about Hollywood director James Whale, played by Ian McKellen. "The real surprise is Brendan Fraser as the guarded but vulnerable yard man," wrote the San Francisco Chronicle at the time. As Whale's gardener and love interest, the Washington Post wrote, Fraser brought "unexpected depth and nuance to his portrayal."

After a starring role in the sublimely silly comedy Blast to the Past the next year, Fraser truly rocketed into stardom with 1999's The Mummy, the adventure epic that made nearly $400 million worldwide. The movie, co-starring Rachel Weisz, inspired a 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, which fared even better-- $433 million total worldwide.

But Fraser didn't settle for being a big-budget star. Immediately after The Mummy Returns Fraser starred alongside eventual Oscar-nominee Michael Caine in The Quiet American, Philip Noyce's period drama about two men caught up in a love triangle in Vietnam in the 1950s. Again, the critics were enamored with Fraser's talents.  "Fraser is funny and effective as a foil to the old pro," wrote the Chicago Reader. Fraser's biggest critical success, though, was to come a few years later, when he and a huge ensemble cast joined an independent movie that was to become the Oscar-winning Crash. Playing a Los Angeles district attorney whose relationship with his wife suffers after they are held up at gunpoint, Fraser again had the opportunity to stretch his acting skills in a new direction.

This year Fraser is back in action mode, with the Mummy sequel and the high-tech adventure movie Journey 3D, but he can be seen in a dramatic role right now, in Jieho Lee's The Air I Breathe. There are few stars out there who can headline an ensemble independent film and two big-budget blockbusters in one year, but as Brendan Fraser has proved in his last decade-plus of acting, there aren't too many kinds of roles he can't take and make his own.

Today's Film News: New Line Restarts Old Franchise

By Katey Rich

New Line, the studio famously searching for a new moneymaking franchise after the end of The Lord of the Rings and the utter flop of The Golden Compass, is restarting one of the oldest franchises in their library: the Nightmare on Elm Street saga. The trio behind a similar Friday the 13th relaunch--Michael Bay, Brad Fuller and Andrew Form-- will take charge of the remake. According to Variety it will overhaul the franchise in a way similar to the recent remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

As reported here yesterday, Mark Romanek has stepped down as director of The Wolf Man, a remake of the 1941 horror classic starring Claude Rains. The Hollywood Reporter now says that Romanek departed over budget disputes; he wanted more money, and the studio was intent on keeping the production under $100 million. Universal is now looking for a new director, and the start date has been pushed back to March.

Two of the stars of this season's romantic comedies will team up in The Ugly Truth. Katherine Heigl, star of the hit 27 Dresses, will be joined by Gerard Butler, who played opposite Hilary Swank in December's P.S. I Love You. Heigl plays a TV news producer forced to team up with a chauvinistic co-host (Butler) to prove his negative theories about true love. Robert Luketic directs the script by Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith; all three were behind the mega-successful Legally Blonde.

Oliver Stone, whose Pinkville project fell apart in the wake of the writers strike, is back in business for his George W. Bush biopic. He announced last week that Josh Brolin would play the President, and now he has secured financing from the production and financing company QED, according to Variety. This could put the movie in theatres as early as this November, just in time to shake up the Presidential election.

'Wolf Man' Director Makes Baffling Decision To Abandon Project

By Katey Rich

Even with the well of projects ready to start production drying up thanks to the writer's strike, Universal's The Wolf Man has been good to go. Now the project's director, Mark Romanek, has dropped out, leaving stars Benicio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins and Emily Blunt hanging and the project itself in limbo. It's the second time Universal has seen a project stumble like this in recent months, as Variety points out; there was a scramble late last year when Brad Pitt and Edward Norton dropped out of the big-budget adaptation of the British TV miniseries "State of Play." Their roles were recast, with Russell Crowe and Ben Affleck respectively, but you imagine it was a nasty couple of days over there.

Romanek's departure has been attributed to "creative differences," which would mean pretty much anything. But as one "insider" noted on Nikki Finke's Deadline Hollywood, "He just blew the chance of a lifetime." Romanek's only major feature film to this point was One Hour Photo, the tiny, dark and very good drama starring Robin Williams as a slightly-deranged photo shop clerk. He had a long career in music videos before then, including directing the video for Johnny Cash's cover of the Nine Inch Nails song "Hurt." Wolf Man, clearly, was going to be an entirely different direction for him.

But how many directors have gone from obscurity to directing a big-budget movie and had it fail them? Peter Jackson is the primary example of making the leap to the big time with one project, but how about Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer, who can pretty much do whatever they want thanks to their massively successful superhero movies? And in a world where Spider-Man mopes while swinging from building to building and even Paul Thomas Anderson is calling There Will Be Blood a "horror movie," directing a genre picture doesn't mean making one with all plot and no soul. Granted, a newcomer handed a $100 million budget wouldn't just get to run away and do whatever he wants, but if Romanek is as canny as his earlier work demonstrates, there's plenty there to work with. Plus he's got Benicio del Toro and Anthony Hopkins in his cast-- there are many, many places you can go from there.

My bet? Script problems. I know that's been the boogeyman of every casting change since the strike began, but it's otherwise inconceivable that a man with everything to gain would drop out of this kind of project. We'll probably never hear the full story, since I imagine there are 10 lesser-known directors knocking down doors at Universal this very moment.Will the studios fess up that script problems are destroying their biggest projects? Given how negotiations seem to remain at a standstill, they'd likely rather die.

Wolf Man will be OK, unless del Toro for some reason bails as well. As for Mark Romanek, he may just be another unintended victim of this never-ending strike.

Weekend Roundup: Meet The Latest Insulting Parody

By Katey Rich

 

Well, I hope we're all proud of ourselves. After spending last weekend boosting January box office to record levels and paying money to see a monster movie that, while not a great work of art, was at least original, we're pretty much back to our old ways. Meet the Spartans, a parody exactly like all the other parodies that have come in recent years (Epic Movie, Date Movie, et al), took the #1 spot at the box office this weekend, with $18.7 million. That's less than half of what Cloverfield made when it topped last weekend's charts, but virtually identical to the take from Epic Movie a year ago, which proves that we as moviegoers never learn. There was no critical roundup for this movie on Friday, since there were no press screenings (obviously), but The Hollywood Reporter can tell us what we missed: "To relieve the deadening tedium, viewers can amuse themselves by counting the product placements." Wow.

Coming in at #2 was a hero who resembles those 300-parodying Spartans, Rambo, whose latest vigilante outing in the jungle slid in just under Spartans with $18.1 million. That's actually significantly more than Sylvester Stallone made with his last nostalgic retread of an old character, Rocky Balboa, which pulled in $12 million on its opening weekend in December 2006.

The weekend's other wide release, Untraceable, came in at #5, just under holdovers 27 Dresses (#3, $13.6 million) and Cloverfield (#4, $12.7 million). The Diane Lane cyber-thriller made $11.2 million. The switcheroo between 27 Dresses and Cloverfield is interesting, given that the monster movie was the box-office behemoth last weekend. Given that all the fervent fanboys likely faned out to see it on opening weekend, though, Cloverfield will probably continue sinking quickly in the box office rankings.

In perhaps the happiest news of the weekend, Juno crossed the $100 million mark, coming in at #6 with another $10 million. It was joined in the top ten for the first time by another Best Picture nominee, There Will Be Blood, which expanded to nearly 500 new theatres and earned $4.8 million, good for 8th place.

In-between the Oscar nominees was The Bucket List, hanging in there with $10 million at #7. And rounding out the top ten were National Treasure: Book of Secrets, at #9 with $4 million, and Mad Money at #10 with $4.6 million, miraculously hanging on to the top ten despite being virtually ignored in its release last weekend.

A number of other Oscar nominees made wider expansions over the weekend to cash in on the publicity, though none managed the same leap that Blood did. You can see their rankings in the full top 20 after the jump, courtesy of Box Office Mojo. The biggest movers were No Country for Old Men, which expanded to 289 more screens and doubled its box-office take, and Michael Clayton, which barnstormed 1,000 extra theatres to boost its revenue by 4,000%. Atonement, on the other hand, added 100 screens but saw its box-office take drop. Expect more craziness from these movies as they try to capitalize on Oscar success, especially if we get word that there will actually be a ceremony. Fingers crossed!

Box Office Outlook: Back to the January Doldrums

By Katey Rich

Last weekend was a strange one by January standards. Box-office records were set, people went to the movies in record numbers, and the kind of pictures that usually dominate the summertime multiplexes-- a romantic comedy, a monster movie-- had their time in the sun. This weekend, though, it's back to normal: a throwaway thriller, a sequel nobody asked for, a brainless parody, and a movie that seems to be entirely about hot people dancing. As you can tell, the advertising campaigns for these movies haven't exactly focused on the plots. There's a fair chance that Cloverfield will experience a huge drop in popularity now that all the die-hard fans have seen it, but there still may be enough people anxious to see New York destroyed that it will edge out the new competition. That said, let's take a look at the newbies, at least the ones that have been screened for critics.

RAMBO. Opening in 2,751 theatres. Man, remember this guy? We last saw him back in 1988, doing his mercenary thing in Afghanistan in Rambo III. He's hightailed it out of there since then, for obvious reasons, and is now in the Burmese jungle, helping two American missionaries against the evil Burmese army. Sylvester Stallone returns as writer and director to the franchise that, along with Rocky, made him a star. Julie Benz, Matthew Marsden and Paul Schulze also star. And, of course, blood, guts and guns star as well.

None of the critics seem terribly excited to see Rambo make his triumphant return. "Not as bombastic as its predecessors, which is both its blessing and its curse," writes Newsday, where they seem to miss seeing tanks fly into helicopters. The Portland Mercury is also not quite thrilled: "Rambo stays on the verge of being a rousing dumbass flick at all times�you've never seen so many mid-air organs�yet its combination of outrageous bodily trauma and beagle-eyed moments of reflection never quite makes it go over the top." Stephanie Zacharek at Salon.com is of two minds, writing, "There may be no real reason for this new Rambo to exist. Then again, what's wrong with a little animal brawn now and then?" And A.O. Scott at The New York Times is also ready to welcome Rambo back to the fold: "His face looks like a misshapen chunk of granite, and his acting is only slightly more expressive, but the man gets the job done. Welcome back."

U2 3D Opens Wide After Dazzling Sundance

By Katey Rich

 

In the Carpetbagger blog earlier this week, The New York Times' David Carr described the crowd outside a Sundance screening of U2 3D as "a massive crush." He goes on to describe the frenzy, explaining, "The guy next to the Bagger said that he had heard of offers of $1,000 for a $15 ticket. To a movie."

I'm not lucky enough to be in Park City this week, but all I can say to that is, well, of course. U2 3D, released exclusively in 3D today, is a spectacle beyond belief, a multi-layered, multi-dimensional concert movie that takes the old 3D format way, way beyond the red and blue plastic lenses of old. But perhaps the most amazing thing is that U2 3D is not alone, but part of what might be a new wave of 3D concert movies bringing the roar of the crowd to the multiplex.

"It's taking audiences someplace they couldn't go," said Mark Katz, president of National Geographic Cinema Ventures, which is distributing U2 3D."[It's] putting audiences in the concert like they're in the stadium. 3D does that brilliantly."

U2 3D was directed by Catherine Owens and Mark Pellington, the former a longtime collaborator with the band to create the visual look of the concerts. On their Vertigo tour U2 played before several giant screens, which featured abstract animation, images of the band and, yes, occasionally political messages (this is Bono, after all). In U2 3D, Owens and Pellington incorporate the animation into the 3D layers, creating at some moments four different dimensional layers: the screen, the band, the audience, and above it all, the animation. The effect is to sweep up the theatrical audience as much as a concert audience would be, making the experience even larger than the movies, if not larger than life.

Catherine Owens said about as much when I interviewed her for a Film Journal article about 3D concert movies: "It was less about making the film, because none of us are filmmakers, and more about extending the U2 live experience." She and her collaborators filmed several concerts over the course of the Vertigo tour, all of them in Latin or South America. Certain locations were dedicated to getting certain kinds of shots, and at the end of the tour the band agreed to one concert with no audience, so the cameras could capture some of the film's breathtaking close-ups. "The desire was to make a film that would capture [the band's] intimacy of how they are with each other, and how it extends out into the audience," Owens explained.

I laughed especially hard reading about the celebrity-studded mob outside U2 3D at Sundance, given National Geographic's plans for distributing the film. Suffice it to say, Bono and company ain't goin' nowhere. "This film can play everywhere. There's no reason why both the hardcore U2 fans as well as fans of 3D can't see the film again and again over time," Katz said. "We absolutely hope to and plan to have return engagements and make it as evergreen as possible."

The reviews are in for U2 3D and the critics seem as enamored with the experience as I was. You can read more of what I learned about U2 3D, as well as fellow 3D concert movie Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana: Best of Both Worlds, in my Film Journal article "In Tune with 3D."

Weekend Roundup: New York Destroyed, Box Office Saturated

By Katey Rich

Yeah, yeah, Oscar nominations, whatever. Let's talk about what really matters: money. It may come as a surprise to you, but a movie that was heavily promoted on the Internet and that taps into a passionate sci-fi fanbase made money, a lot of it, this weekend. Cloverfield benefited from the hype-to end-all-hype and scored $46 million at the box office, almost $20 million more than the damn thing cost to make, which sets a new record for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday weekend.

Debuting just as strongly given its expectations was 27 Dresses, which came in at #2 with $22 million, possibly snaring all the girlfriends of the Cloverfield fanboys who didn't want to see New York get blown up for the zillionth time. It came in way ahead of #3-finisher The Bucket List, which netted $14 million over the three-day period. The only other new release of the weekend, Mad Money, brought in $7.6 million to land at #7.

Juno stayed healthy in its seventh week in release, bringing in almost $10 million for a fourth-place finish. Its fellow Best Picture nominee Atonement rounded out the top ten once again, bringing in $4.7 million by expanding wider once again. It just edged out There Will Be Blood, which gave up its top per-theatre average spot by venturing on its first wide expansion, but got $2.9 million and a #11 spot for its trouble (Cloverfield had the best per-theatre average this time, at a whopping $11,000; Blood came in second with a still-impressive $7,500).

The rest of the top ten was filled out with the usual suspect holdovers, with First Sunday bringing in $7.8 million and dropping to #5 in its third week. Right behind it was National Treasure: Book of Secrets, at $7.6 million in sixth place. Alvin and the Chipmunks and I Am Legend fell in at #8 and #9, respectively, with $6.9 million and $4.8 million apiece.

Check out the top 20 below, thanks to Box Office Mojo as always, where you can catch up on some of the Oscar nominees that were (No Country for Old Men, Charlie Wilson's War), and weren't (The Great Debaters, what happened?) Also, there are still more people seeing One Missed Call than Sweeney Todd, which defies everything all the politicians running for office right now are saying about America being a country worth fighting for. Trust me, Sweeney has more blood, more logic, and more Johnny Depp, which in any sane country would be an unbeatable combination.

Box Office Outlook: Fields of Clover

By Katey Rich

Hooray! At last we have a weekend in 2008 in which there is a movie that people are actually excited to see! Not only that, we have at least two, and two more if you count tiny movies with small but very dedicated fanbases. It's like December all over again, except now no one is competing for an Oscar anymore, which makes it even better. Though there are movies out there for all the demographics, even Woody Allen fans, we all know there's one monster that's going to stomp all over the box office as if it were the Woolworth Building. The Cloverfield monster doesn't have a name yet, but count on at least one clever nickname before the weekend is through.

CLOVERFIELD. Opening in 3,411 theatres. Is there even a need for a plot description at this point? Seen from the viewpoint of a handheld video camera belonging to a group of twenty-something friends, Cloverfield documents the destruction of New York City at the hands of a very vicious, very mysterious, very large monster. The monster's identity, as well as most details about the movie, have been kept under wraps for months as part of a massive online marketing campaign. The campaign worked; the excitement for this $25 million marketing movie trumps the buzz for the next Batman installment, and that's really saying something. It's been 10 years since The Blair Witch Project; ready for round two?

The critics are, for the most part, ready and willing. "A surreptitiously subversive, stylistically clever little gem of an entertainment disguised, under its deadpan-neutral title, as a dumb Gen-YouTube monster movie," writes Lisa Schwarzbaum at Entertainment Weekly, giving the film a B+ overall. The San Francisco Chronicle runs with the same YouTube metaphor, but seems to like the whole thing even more: "Even though Cloverfield isn't the Godzilla-for-the-YouTube-generation picture that everyone may have been hoping for, it's still a terrific movie, filled with spectacle and a surprising amount of humor, which makes up for its lack of terror or emotional impact." "There's something refreshing about a monster movie that isn't filled with the usual suspects, like The Hero, The Rebel and The Cynic," writes The Hollywood Reporter, predicting that the movie seems "destined to bring in plenty of youth-skewing green for Paramount this Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend." A dissenting voice is the Los Angeles Times, which found much to enjoy but quibbles with the handheld camcorder approach: "While it injects the film with a run-and-gun urgency, the device grows tiresome and ultimately leaves the film shortchanged."