Another
by-the-book weekend at the box office. In & Out was all in, doing
$15.3 million and besting last weekend's $14 million opening for The
Game, whose second weekend brought a reasonable 36% drop, banking
another $9.2 million to take second place. L.A. Confidential,
which opened on only 769 screens vs. Out's 1,992, was expected to be
the per-screen average winner, but the big-city butch cops got beaten
by the small town queens, $7681 to $7152. A good number for L.A.C. (totaling
$5.5 million for the fourth slot), but not as OUTstanding as expected.
Maybe the platformed release pattern may not have been the best choice.
In
the rest of the B.O. news, A Thousand Acres took a hit to its
overall Oscar potential, with only $3 million cropping up to take the
fifth spot with a $2,483 per-screen average. That's $300 less per screen
than Wishmaster (number three with a $6.5 million total) conjured
up. The fact that, despite these numbers, Lange and Pfeiffer are still
very real candidates for Oscar gold proves just how few great women's
roles there are out there. And even worse, the numbers show why there
are more films made featuring serial killers than there are about thinking
women.
Trimark Pictures has bought the rights to Wayne Wang's next flick,
Chinese Box. The question is, "Why?" Wang, the director of Miramax's
successful double-bill Smoke/Blue In The Face and Disney's
The Joy Luck Club, screened his Jeremy Irons-starring arthouse
film at the Venice and Toronto film festivals before settling in with
Trimark, the company that brought us Carrot Top in Chairman
Of The Board and Angie Everhart taking her clothes off --
does she do anything else? -- in the 9 1/2 Weeks sequel. Another
case of Art For Crap's Sake.
In celebrity news, tragedy hit Yaphet Kotto when the limo he
was riding in broke its rear axle, lost its right rear wheel, ran up
an embankment, and burst into flames. No one was physically hurt, but
in a $500,000 lawsuit, Kotto claims "serious bodily injury, emotional
trauma, pain and suffering, and economic loss." And worse -- so much
worse -- Kotto "has not been able to get back in a limo since that time."
Please divert all donations to the Princess Diana or Mother
Teresa Trusts to the Caddy For Kotto Fund. We can cure limowreckaphobia
in our time.
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