Tuesday, 7 July 1999

WEEKEND REVIEW

Hmmmm. How to look at this weekend? It's being pushed as a huge success by some, but I see it as a disappointment. And I don't just mean Wild Wild West. My sense was that 6 films could make more than $10 million over the Fri-Sun period. Instead, there will be only five, same as last weekend. Star Wars: Episode One -- The Phantom Menace fell off that wagon, falling more than 30 percent (33 percent over 3 days, to be specific) for only the second time, the first being a "regular" weekend following the Memorial Day holiday. Also disappointing was the failure of South Park to take off. Wednesday was the film's strongest day and the box office dropped off from Friday to Saturday. Not good. I did explain in the weekend column (THB 7/3-4-5), with the help of a reader, that theaters both conspired to bury the film and in some cases, actually enforced the rules, disallowing the "I'll buy a ticket to Wild Wild West and sneak into South Park" efforts of some under-17s. The two best films in this weekend's Top Ten were the two animated films. Tarzan probably took the biggest hit on Sunday from people going to see fireworks instead of movies and fell 42 percent over the Fri-Sun period. That didn't keep it from passing the $100 million mark, full steam ahead. South Park will be lucky to get to $50 million at this point. Too bad.

The big, big movie of the weekend was Wild Wild West, and its estimate for Monday was way way out of line. Why would Warner Bros. estimate that the film would do the same business on Monday, with folks facing work on Tuesday, as it did on Friday? It's a game of perception and reality. Warner Bros. wants the Tuesday morning papers to write about the film passing the $50 million mark, and are feeding out the lie that the studio was always projecting $50 million over the first 6 days of release. On the flip-side, there are those who have started chanting about the film not hitting $100 million domestic. That is also unlikely. Even dropping at 45 percent a week from the opening $27.7 million 3-day weekend figure, Wild Wild West would hit the $100 million mark domestically before summer ends. And we have no real proof, other than the fact that coast critics hate this film, that it will drop that precipitously. Next weekend should tell that story. True, there is no new direct competition from a big budget flick, but then again, the Movie A vs. Movie B theory really holds no water. Big films create their own atmosphere.

A little film that suffocated this weekend was Summer of Sam. I would be fascinated to find out whether anyone who wasn't living in the N.Y. or L.A. area saw this movie. The estimate of $7.8 million will surely fall even further. Disney clearly knew they had a tough sell on their hands when they decided to limit the film to 1,532 venues. Also just kind of "there" was Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, which fell 48 percent over the Fri-Sun period and now seems likely to fall short of the $200 million mark. Big Daddy was the big dropper of the weekend, falling 51 percent Fri-Sun, though, like Tarzan, it seems to have taken one of the larger hits from the firework crew on Sunday, falling 38 percent off Saturday's number, as opposed to, say, 31 percent for The General's Daughter. And speaking of The General's Daughter, its Fri-Sat dropped 48 percent versus last weekend.

THE GOOD: Mario Puzo was good. Very, very good. So was Edward Dmytryk, a great director and a member of the Hollywood Ten. Puzo's death seems to answer any immediate questions about a Godfather 4. Dmytryk's death means that we all have to be more vigilant about remembering what happened in this business just 50 years ago. The last living member of the Hollywood Ten is 83-year-old Ring Lardner Jr. Both Puzo and Dmytryk serve to remind us of the greatness of film history. Both men will be missed.

THE BAD: Overall, this really wasn't a beautiful movie weekend. If you ask me, the stupidest measure of success in the industry is the weekend cumulative total. This is not a cumulative business. The pattern for the summer seems to be set. I see 4 or maybe even 5 more $100 million movies (domestic) to open this summer. That's on top of 7 films already released that have passed or will likely pass the century mark. And yes, 11 would be a summer record. Last year, there were 10 $100 million summer films, 9 in 1997, 7 in 1996 and 5 in 1995. At the same time, the $200 million film is becoming harder to find. There were two last year, but Armageddon barely made it (if it really made it at all) and Saving Private Ryan needed an Oscar® run to get there. (It will be interesting to see if New Line goes as far as holding off a video release and re launching the film in the fall to get Austin Powers 2 over the hump to be the 27th $200 million film in history.) With marketing costs now pushing almost every major studio film near the $100 million price tag, $200 million is the holy grail, not $100 million. Manufacturing phenomena isn't as easy as it used to be.

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