BIG TIME:  IMAX announced on Tuesday that they expect to have a studio action film released day & date in the IMAX format sometime in the next couple of years.  As reported here in February, IMAX is currently preparing an IMAX version of Apollo 13 for release in the IMAX format.  The argument was made that the $3 million expense for the conversion could easily be made up by revenue from the re-release.  And if Fantasia 2000 is the template, they are right.  During that film’s 18-week IMAX-only run, it generated $49.6 million or $2.8 million a week or about $50,000 per screen per week. 

But here’s the rub… 54 screens.    That seems to be the current max count for the IMAX release of a regular movie.   It’s a bit startling when you look at the numbers.  Fantasia 2000 is cruising along, still generating $2.1 million in its eighteenth IMAX weekend on 53 screens and splat, the next weekend, it is gone, replaced on every screen by Michael Jordan At The Max. 

This brings us to the chicken/egg issue with IMAX’s future.  There is no doubt that the format is capable of generating as much as $105,000 per screen each week and could be reasonably expected to generate $75,000 per screen on the first couple of weekends in a day-and-date release of a movie that does $50 million or more in regular theaters.  That $4 million weekly bump in revenue is definitely worth the effort to a studio.  But what will happen in weekend three of a day & date release, which is a different distribution mode than Fantasia 2000?  And if the answer is that movies are still generating $20,000 per screen, they won’t want to vacate the screens.  So, you build more theaters, right?  But what about, uh, February? 

Pushing aside any concerns – and some people have them – that full-length features on an IMAX screen will make many moviegoers physically uncomfortable, IMAX can build a special niche here.  But they need to have Spider-Man followed by Clones followed by Scooby Doo, followed by Men in Black II, followed by K-19, followed by XXX.  That could be a $70 million summer on IMAX’s 54 mainstream-release screens alone.  Ultimately, that might mean that their entire year is only around $150 million… but that is still a lot.

If IMAX gets overly ambitious and the stock price goes up and everyone needs a screen, they run a real risk of destroying the goose.  On a big summer movie, they could add $10, $20 million to the box office on just 100 to 200 screens.  But like the Arclight concept, the off-seasons are not going to be nearly as pretty.  And the more screens they add, the less special the concept. 

If I’m a major and I have a tentpoled line-up in the next year, I’m making an exclusive deal with IMAX for one year, integrating the IMAX process into my release schedule all year.  Go back and do things like Apollo 13.  Come up with special events.  Release the big films in the big format.  A studio, like Universal, would become the founder of an entire new release format if it worked.  And there wouldn’t be big losses if it didn’t.  The only question would be IMAX, which has to determine whether it’s going to sell the steak or the sizzle.   My opinion is that if they really believe that they can be a big part of the future, they should sell the meat and the sizzle will follow.

SPEAKING OF SIZZLE:  Great, sick story about Hollywood… with movies like The Rookie and Remember The Titans making good money with low budgets, true life sports tales are hot.  And so, Alcon Entertainment bought this great tale of a team that made the 1955 Little League World Series with two black kids on their roster.  Sports, integration, kids… and it’s true.  Of course, they would have to tart it up a bit, make the kids funnier, the coach more heroic… after all, it’s only “based on a true story.”  BZZT!!!  Wrong!  It turns out that they were sold the idea as a true story, but it was all fiction.  The price that Alcon wants in return for losing this one-line marketing tool?  $335,000.   They’ve invested $250,000 in a screenwriter and a year of their time.  But here is my question – who cares whether it’s true?  Is Alcon just ready to put the thing into turnaround and thus, wants to recover its losses or do they really think that they have lost $335,000 from possible profit moving forward.  The judge will have to figure that out.  The Variety story is here.

FROM THE ASHES:  I think it fair that I do a brief follow-up to the original story about DreamWorks and the Boston Phoenix  (please link to Tuesday).  I finally had a chat with a DreamWorks spokesperson on Wednesday.   Travel and screening schedules made it impossible for us to talk Monday afternoon or evening or Tuesday morning.  The studio feels that they made a private decision and that it was best kept private, kept only to themselves and the publisher of the Boston Phoenix.  And in fact, Boston Phoenix editor Peter Kadzis seems to have held to the same position, declining to comment when asked about the situation by The Chicago Tribune’s Sid Smith (not to be confused with master of the NBA beat, Sam Smith).

DreamWorks is a privately held company.  The Boston Phoenix is a privately held company.  They both have an absolute right to do as they see fit and to keep it to themselves.  They both seem to be perfectly comfortable with their private agreement. 

I think that a company as politically aware and alive as DreamWorks is an asset to the film community.  They don’t have the malaise of the multinationals.   They are alive as a company.   While I may disagree with some of their choices, they are never less than candid about their intentions.  

We obviously disagree about the news value of the Daniel Pearl execution video.  This is an unusual situation.  DreamWorks is an unusual company.  God knows, I am a freak.  We have a disagreement about both motive and method.   Boston Phoenix critic Peter Keough is at the Road to Perdition junket this week with full editorial access and DreamWorks has pulled its display ads from his paper.  The private conversation remains private.  And so it goes.

GETTING OLD:  There’s this kid in Like Mike who reminds me so much of Jerry Maguire’s Jonathan Lipnicki… but he doesn’t have the pronounced lisp and he has different glasses and he seems a little older… which is I guess what happens when Jonathan Lipnicki gets a little older, because it turns out that it’s him.  Weird feeling… though not in a bad-priest kind of way.

PRESS RELEASE OF THE DAY:  Tony Kaye is still out there…. way out there. 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TONY KAYE SAYS: YOKO IS NOT LOCO
Controversial filmmaker chooses unorthodox methods to pitch Ono

SAN FRANCISCO, JUNE 25, 2002 – Filmmaker Tony Kaye has staked a claim (literally) for his desire to film the life of celebrated and often misunderstood artist Yoko Ono.  On Tuesday, at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, where Yoko Ono’s show “Yes Yoko Ono” opened June 22, Kaye surreptitiously planted a film pitch into the exhibit.

He walked in and saw a pile of rocks on the floor, entitled Mound of Joy, and decided that would be an appropriate place for his poem, as opposed to one entitled Mound of Sorrow. The hand-written poem was the type of opus only an equally misunderstood artist like Kaye could deliver to the woman often only credited with breaking up the Beatles.  Ono has yet to respond to Kaye’s outreach, but he remains cheerfully optimistic.

The poem follows:

I would like to make a film about you, Yoko;
One that would make you seem sane, not loco.
I thought this would be a good way of making the pitch….
You know, getting to know you in an interesting way,
Yours sincerely, Tony Kaye

End of release…

READER OF THE DAY:  The Exhibitionist raises an often-raised issue:  “Consider this. Most ticket holders for Minority Report were adults. Most ticket holders for Lilo & Stitch were children.  Take into account the lower cost of a child ticket, and L&S did not only barely win, it won easily.  Why oh why can't we get attendance figures instead of dollar figures? EDI calls a s#!tload of theaters across the country every night for grosses?  Why not ask for attendance instead? Now THAT is a true measure of a film's popularity.”

SWAK wants to know:  “Do people in the biz talk about NYPress critic Armond White? Or, to put it a different way, when people (either in the industry or in the business of covering the industry) talk about critics beyond just Ebert & the locals (LAT, Variety, etc.), who do they talk about? Is it strictly business (as in, "a pan from Ansen is going to reach a lot of borderline viewers") or is there an active interest in film crit?”

E ME:  Armond is one of the few hard core critics still employed in a major market.  Basically, the industry is critic-proof on the big pictures and critics are key on tiny films that will never do more than $20 million, are possible $8 million movies and are likely $2 million movies… or less.  Only Ebert is considered important to opening weekends, and that is slowly fading as well, not because of Roger, but because the marketing budgets overwhelm everything… everything!!!

Me? I’m going to an actual art museum today!  Scary?  Will is ruin me for The Kid Stays in the Picture and Men in Black II, my afternoon and evening activities?  Nah, it’s only Warhol.

How would you get to Yoko or another celeb if you wanted to make the pitch?   And how “special” does a film have to be for you to go to an IMAX screen to see it writ large?