Monday, 20 November 2000

WEEKEND REVIEW

Now I feel like I’m living in a Dr. Seuss book...

Once we get over the weekend analysis, it will be all movies from now until Thursday’s 2000 Thanks column. Not even a holiday Box Office Extra. (Bet on a tight race between The Grinch and Unbreakable over the five-day weekend.) Once we get past the numbers, you can finally read about the movie that will be as big an Oscar player as any film this year. (You know, the infamous Number Four from a few days ago, which I saw but couldn’t write about...) Tomorrow, a look at another still-unreleased Oscar candidate and my comments on Unbreakable. On Wednesday, it’s The Oscar Column, which won’t include Traffic but will include Thirteen Days, which I’m seeing here in Chicago on Tuesday. Also, roughcut.com won’t be updated between THB’s Thursday-morning appearance and the following Monday. Our staff has families too. But before we get to the really good stuff...

The estimates that were floating around on Saturday were off. Waaaay off. Or were they? The number I saw for The Grinch’s Friday was around $11 million. By Sunday, that number has been upped to $15.2 million, followed by a $17.4 million Saturday. But even that begs the question... a $22.5 million Sunday?!?!? Obviously not. So, what’s going on? Well, it’s hard to say from here. The outlet that prints the numbers from Friday on Saturday, showbizdata.com, gets its weekend numbers, before Exhibitor Relations starts talking to people on Sunday, from one or two studio sources. These numbers are usually accurate. In this case, not only is the Grinch number questionable, but Paramount’s Rugrats in Paris: The Movie, according to showbizdata, had a $4.4 million Friday number followed by an $7.3 million Saturday, which would require an $11.3 million Sunday to hit the $23 million estimate. Paramount is not that ballsy. No studio is. Not Paramount, not Universal... not even Miramax.

On The Grinch front, I was prepared to believe a 100 percent Friday-to-Saturday increase; last year, Toy Story 2 went from a $6.5 million Friday to a $12.8 million Saturday on the first weekend after its massive Thanksgiving opening. So, if The Grinch really did $15.2 on Friday, say $26 million on Saturday, and a projected $14.9 million on Sunday, it wouldn’t be unbelievable. Remember, opening weekend is almost never about the movie but rather about the hype... of which The Grinch has certainly had loads. If it holds, the $55.1 million estimate easily breaks the two-week-old opening record of Charlie’s Angels for a non-summer non-sequel. With the five-day Thanksgiving weekend on the way, The Grinch will have to fight the Rugrats and Cruella DeVille, but the film will likely hit the $100 million mark by next Saturday, making $175 million inevitable, $200 million likely, and $250 million or more a real possibility.

Rugrats in Paris surprised me with its estimated $23 million start. The original started with $27 million, and the 15 percent opening drop-off is exceptional, especially when the sequel doesn’t have anything new to bring to the marketplace. But again, the weekend numbers have got to be wrong, so it’s difficult to estimate what’s real and what isn’t.

Every film after Grinch and Rugrats was hurt by their success. Charlie’s Angels took an estimated 44 percent drop, which will likely end up being a 50-percent-plus drop. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s estimated $13.7 million start with The 6th Day is his worst since the unsellable Jingle All the Way, which was not an action film and but was part of a group of disastrous 20th Century Fox releases for 1996, from Courage under Fire to Chain Reaction to That Thing You Do to The Crucible to One Fine Day. Of course, Fox also had Independence Day that summer and a success d’esteem with Romeo + Juliet. But The Crucible was the studio’s "Oscar movie," and One Fine Day was going to be the start of "George Clooney -- MegaStar!" Neither worked, and Arnold was left to sell himself. And that didn’t work. Likewise, Columbia was so obsessed with the Angels that Arnold was left to sell himself. Didn’t work. And it’s too bad, because it’s a pretty good movie that’s headed toward a gross of less than $60 million domestic.

Bounce actually did better than I expected, and I have to be fair to Gwynnie and Bennie. They opened a movie that was panned by everyone except Owen Gleiberman, and no one except Jeff Wells has ever bought a movie ticket based on Owen’s recommendation. According to the weird Friday and Saturday numbers, which actually make sense for Bounce, Sunday had to be the movie’s best day by more than 20 percent to do their estimated $11.5 million. But likewise, it is hard to imagine that the estimate is so far off that the film would have fallen out of the Top Five, behind an estimated $8 million for Men of Honor. And the estimate was $1.7 million behind the Number Four movie, The 6th Day. So why stretch like that? I don’t know. Ask Miramax.

Little Nicky, Meet the Parents, The Legend of Bagger Vance, and Red Planet all took harder hits than I expected. But only one of the films was any good and this was its seventh weekend.

Starting Wednesday, Unbreakable and 102 Dalmatians, both from Disney.

GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Some on the web have proposed a new ballot for a Florida re-vote. Check it out by clicking here.

READER OF THE DAY: From The J -- "In Friday’s THB, you said critics were not supposed to release Bounce reviews until opening day -- so why are they running Owen Gleiberman’s complete Entertainment Weekly review in today’s L.A. Times? Guess they wanted an A- review from a national magazine early. I’m shocked, shocked."

DAVID REPLIES: Yes, critics seeing Bounce in Los Angeles last Tuesday had to confirm in writing to Miramax that they would not run their reviews until Friday. As far as I know, EW is the only outlet anywhere with a Wednesday review release. The odd thing is EW has released all of their recent movie reviews on Wednesdays. Apparently, that’s their day now. Should any studios expect any outlets to respect a Friday review release anymore? At roughcut.com, we’ve had a Thursday policy but, in light of that, it seems absurd to stick to it, doesn’t it?

PAGE TWO: One of the Four Best Movies of the Year