Friday, 2 February 2001

WEEKEND REVIEW

How much of a disappointment was the estimated $24.2 million opening of Me, Myself & Irene?

Good question. It is rare that a Reuters reporter leads by saying that an opening in the top slot is a disappointment. But Dean Goodman did just that on Sunday. If Fox's Tom Sherak did indeed tell reporters that only 60 percent of Irene first-nighters said that they'd recommend the movie to friends, disappointment is likely to become even worse. That number also brings up serious questions about the validity of CinemaScore, whose polling gave Irene an "A-" (men under 21), a "B+" (women under 21), a "B-" (men 21-34), a "B-" (women 21-34) and a "C" and C-" for the over-35 crowd. That averages out to somewhere around a B-, which would indicate that people tended to like, but not love, the film. On the other hand, these are the worst scores for any major release of the summer other than Boys and Girls and Battlefield Earth. Me, I don't get it. I laughed a lot from start to finish. My bet is that the film won't have the legs of other Farrelly films, though it has an outside shot at $100 million. But that's about it.

The biggest pain at Fox this weekend, however, wasn't a soft Irene opening, but the outright decimation of Titan A.E., which fell off 59 percent. Battlefield Earth did fall off 66 percent, so it isn't the death of the year, but it's pretty damned ugly. And the movie really doesn't deserve the abuse. Fox marketing usually can find the hook. This time, they got the hook.

Chicken Run didn't exactly set the world afire either. A $17.5 million estimated start is the best in DreamWorks animated history, beating the three other animated films in DreamWorks history, The Road to El Dorado ($12.8 million), Prince of Egypt ($14.5 million) and Antz ($17.2 million). The question is whether the $90 million that two of the films (Prince and Antz) managed can be duplicated in the heat of summer battle. That question should be answerable after the long holiday weekend ahead.

It's a mark of how tough this summer has already been when Reuters' Goodman writes that Shaft "only" lost 39 percent of its first weekend gross. It was actually a deeper drop than I expected, and is likely to slip past 40 percent in the finals. Gone in 60 Seconds reports a 36 percent drop to $9.5 million and Mission: Impossible 2 reports only a 30 percent drop, so 39 percent in the action arena isn't very good. On the other hand, I don't really believe the M: I-2 number. It requires that Sunday's actual be almost exactly as much as the movie's Saturday number. Nonetheless, spinning a 39 percent drop as a positive thing is quite a reach. If the movie continues on this pace, it will gross about $80 million domestic. That means that it will need a strong hand overseas to make a pre-ancillary profit.

THE GOOD: Patrick Goldstein of the L.A. Times wrote a good piece on the Internet and studio marketing. The central character in much of the article is Harry Knowles. Goldstein is tough and fair, in my opinion, and asks the question of the moment, "Is Harry being co-opted?" But don't mistake this for a piece of Harry bashing. In point of fact, the piece is upbeat enough for Harry to have posted it in prime position on the Ain't It Cool home page.

I am in a rather awkward position. I like and respect Patrick as a person and as a reporter. Yet, I feel as though the article ends up as a virtual press release for Ain't It Cool as marketing tool. Patrick was kind enough to get in touch with me on Sunday and discuss the issue. And I don't think I'm breaking any confidence to tell you all that he explained that the reason why Harry is the only non-studio Internet publisher mentioned in the entire article, except the self-promoting Rob Zombie, is that he is the only Internet publisher with whom the studios take issue.

And that pretty much defines the boundaries of the argument that I am somehow jealous of Harry. If you will, I am "jealous" that I can't get media coverage, even from supportive writers, for doing the right thing. Ironically enough, just a week ago, Jeff Wells and Harry got primetime coverage from Variety for, at least in the context of the article, doing the wrong thing, as did traditional media outlets who followed in their footsteps. Am I a studio kiss ass? No. But I understand the rules, I acknowledge them publicly when they restrain me in this column and I don't screw my sources, even when they claim it's safe to screw them. I'm just not the kind of person who can smack someone in the face and then expect them to forget it when they want something from me at a later date. I consider that loathsome behavior. And it costs me.

This is not the first time I've been upset with the results of someone who was making every effort to do the right thing. I took Marc Caro of the Chicago Tribune to task for a part of his recent story on Harry and, like Patrick, this is a guy I like and respect and know had his heart and mind in the right place. Once, I wrote a vicious e-mail to Charles Fleming regarding a piece he did on the Ain't It Cool Gladiator screening in which I thought he had put me in a terrible situation by using a bit of info that was supposed to be private. That's one of the few e-mails I ever have regretted writing. I am still no fan of Charles' work nor do I expect him to ever see me without wanting to spit in my direction. If he recognizes me. But I do feel bad about it, even if I still think he did the wrong think without even realizing.

Roughcut.com is a marketing tool for studios sometimes. So is IGN and Coming Attractions and Amazon and Yahoo and so many others. The best of us define the boundaries for our readers. But Harry is far from being the only game in town for studios who want to market or promote their films. The studios all know this. But when I read a piece like Patrick's, I worry that any other reader will see Harry as the primary marketing tool that Hollywood now embraces. And that's just not the case.

On a side note, on May 29, Harry and I were discussing by e-mail his rules of reviews for movies he has been flown in to see early. His argument was that he is only shown movies that producers are 99 percent sure he'll like because he won't accept embargo rules from anyone. And indeed, he admitted that he has never been shown a movie early that he didn't like a lot. I mentioned that I suspected that Brian Grazer would show him The Klumps over Universal's protests if it were any good at all and Harry responded that he had no interest in seeing The Klumps, but "Personally I'd be far more interested in seeing The Grinch, though I don't know if they'd screen that to me." Three days later, Harry's review of The Grinch appeared on his site. And in the piece, he wrote, "About a week ago I was laying in my bed, working on the site, when I suddenly received a phone call from a representative from Imagine, that Ron Howard company, telling me that Ron Howard wanted me and Moriarty to take a look and give him feedback on How The Grinch Stole Christmas." I don't know whether to be upset or amused that Harry already had plane reservations to L.A. to see the first screening of The Grinch while he was writing me that he didn't think that Imagine would show him the movie early. And, as reported by Patrick, he did accept embargo rules on this movie because it was such an early print.

Anyway, read the article. It's worth the time.

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