The color of this weekend at the box office was… disappointment.

This is not to say that the three films that didn’t quite stick their dismounts are failures or that they won’t recover in an acceptable way.  But, with the exception of Spider-Man, which dropped 49 percent by estimate but also can’t complain on its way to $400 million, the top five films this weekend have got to have their respective studio execs lowering their eyes in the hallway just a bit this Monday.

I guess that The Sum of All Fears came in right around where it was tracking and it is the best start ever for a Jack Ryan movie, but the last Jack Ryan movie was eight years ago… an entirely different planet for opening numbers.  While 1994 was the last summer to sport two $300 million hits (The Lion King and Forrest Gump), it was also a year in which there was only one $40 million opening (The Lion King) and just an additional two that started at over $30 million (The Flintstones, Interview with the Vampire).  Assuming that Sum’s final stays over $30 million, it will be the seventh opening of $30 million or more this year so far, with more than a half dozen likely to come (at least as long as there isn’t a nuclear blast in Baltimore). 

Let’s not even discuss the much printed and obviously false $68 million price tag on the film that has at least $25 million in above–the-line costs going in… The Sum of All Fears is a big franchise film that’s gotten a lot of free press this week, has a PG-13 rating, is enjoying a surprisingly soft run by Attack of the Clones and has less than $20 million in box office competition from all the other adult-themed movies in the marketplace ($25 million if you include Enough).   Yet, all it managed to do was an estimated $31.2 million.

Of course, one could argue that it survived the press attention, which may have scared away some audience members who worried about being confronted with their 9/11 memories.  And the film opened better than Mel Gibson’s Once Were Soldier or The Time Machine or even the highly acclaimed Insomnia. 

But here’s one less pleasant fact… no film this year has hit $100 million without a start of $45 million or better.  Now, stop.  Chew on that one for a while.  None of the three films that opened between $30 million and $37 million hit $100 million.  That’s a little scary. 

Last year, five films of the twenty that hit $100 million opened under $30 million (including platform release A Beautiful Mind, but not including platformer Black Hawk Down, which did opened to $33.6 million when it finally went wide.)  Four more century markers started between $30 million and $45 million. 

In 2000, eleven of the twenty-two $100 million domestic grossers started with less than $30 million.  Half.  And only three movies opened with over $45 million over the entire year. 

And just to show that it wasn’t just a fluke, 1999 had twelve of its twenty-one $100 million movies start under $30 million, including Blair Witch, which was still under $30 when it finally went wide in weekend three.   It also includes The Matrix, whose sequels will be expected to pass up Spider-Man in the record books next summer in a feat similar to the Austin Powers to The Spy Who Shagged Me evolution. 

I would have been hopeful that Insomnia had a shot at breaking the cycle, but a 50 percent-plus drop in this, its second weekend, is a brutal reminder that a dark mood piece, even one as solid as this one, is a niche movie in today’s marketplace. 

But back to everyone else’s pain…

Attack of the Clones not only dropped an estimated 57 percent, but its weekend trajectory, with a big Saturday bump between a soft Friday and Sunday, suggests that the film is now playing very, very young and that the adult audience has moved along, thank you.  So I should say…

I WAS WRONG! 

Clones will not overtake Spider-Man at the box office, at least not domestically.  Spider-Man should squeak by the $400 million mark, while Clones faces a real challenge in passing the $300 million mark. 

Of course, the Lucas bashers will now use this as their cudgel of choice in beating Lucas up as we round the final turn into Episode III.  This after shrilly screaming that the box office for The Phantom Menace meant nothing… Russian peasants and all that blather.  I can hear the argument now.  “This time the audiences got hip to Lucas’ failings.”  “But didn’t you like Clones a lot better than Phantom Menace?”  “Yeah, but it still sucked.”  “So George has lost his power over the audience?”  “Yes… they got smarter... they saw through his fog.” “But they rejected About A Boy.”  “ George’s fault.  Another reason to hate him”  “So, I guess Episode III will open to under $40 million?”  “No… it’ll be the biggest of all three… people will just drag themselves out, like rats sniffing for cheese.”  “I thought they got smarter?”  “Uh…. you know unless George brings on Chris Nolan, it’s going to suck.”  “But the audie…”  “George is up there in his castle…”  “Didn’t you say that Clones’ box office proved that Lucas sucks.”  “Yeah.”  “So Spider-Man is the best film of the year and Clones is the second best, because now you are claiming that audiences know?”  “Fuck you.”  “Fuck you.”

The irony is that there is almost unilateral agreement than Clones is better than Menace, yet it will be less successful.  I will entertain your answers to this unanswerable problem.

Meanwhile, it’s time to suffer for Undercover Brother.   The estimate of $12.1 million is well short of the tracking.  Why?  I would love to blame the increase in NBA ratings, but the Friday-to-Saturday numbers seem pretty normal.  I would love to blame the competition, but they came up lame too.  Maybe The Sum of All Fears became the first choice of urban centers.  But I’ll tell ya… I was discussing the film on Sunday and still hearing that it is a parody of blaxploitation films.  And I was still explaining… it’s more than that.  

And then there is Jeff Wells, writing about how criticism needs to be more from the gut, all the while doubting my judgment of the film because I laughed too hard, and looking at Owen Gleiberman and A.O. Scott as the arbiters of comedic values.  I guess he hadn’t noticed that there were only two outlets that Rotten Tomatoes counts as “major” that praised The New Guy – Entertainment Weekly and The New York Times.  True, it was Elvis Mitchell at the NYT – Gleiberman at EW.  And, of course, part of me is just using facts that are convenient… there are reviews by Gleiberman and Scott and Mitchell with which I agree.   But you might see my point. 

I can only hope that Universal will continue to fund a decent level of TV advertising this week and that they will further emphasize the complexity of the movie’s joke and not just the easy stuff.  Or perhaps we are in for another Austin Powers experience… a movie that doesn’t get greenlit for a sequel until the video stores start to feed the phenomenon. 

On the other hand, I got an e-mail on Sunday from a long, long, longtime Hot Button reader who feels a little differently…

He wrote: “Please mail a check for $7 to reimburse me for the money I wasted on this mediocre, cliche-ridden film -- that is if you have $7 after all the crack you must be smoking.  I'll stick with Owen Gleiberman, thank you.”

I want to say, “Ouch,” but that’s more flip than I actually feel.  I don’t like to feel that I’ve caused readers that kind of aggravation.  On the other hand, if you think Undercover Brother is cliché ridden, then it really isn’t connecting with you, or you with it. 

Finally, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (never mock the dead… it’s just not nice) suffered a 40 percent loss in the estimates, taking it down under the $9 million mark, still weeks away from the Lilo & Stitch blitz.  It’s going to pass $70 million, but it won’t do a third of the business of last year’s breakout film for DreamWorks, Shrek. 

All in all, the only happy news at the top of the charts is for Unfaithful, which will pass the $50 million mark after a sluggish start and My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which will pass $10 million for IFC, joining Frailty, Y Tu Mama Tambien, Monsoon Wedding and Brotherhood of the Wolf as the only 5 arthouse movies to open in the first half of this year and to hit eight figures. 

IS INDIE DEAD?  There was a very interesting piece by Anthony Kaufman in the Village Voice that you should check out.  It’s about the death of the independent film movement, as he sees it, signaled by the purchase/merger of Universal Focus and indie producer Good Machine.  The article (click here) makes some excellent points and arguments, but for me, it ends up being a bit soft.  The problem being that there is this notion out there that independent filmmaking was supposed to get all the upside of success and not get the infection that is Hollywood.  Sorry.  Can’t happen.  The reason the cutting edge is the cutting edge is that it is populated by outsiders, not insiders. 

The idea that independent film is about $8 million budgets… that’s a lot of money.  In the context of a studio release, it may be nothing.  But as an investment in a film that may not get distribution… that’s a lot of money!  And on the low end, we are now whining about the freedom of digital.  Well, distribution was the problem five years ago when there were no digital films at Sundance… and still, over 50 percent of the films that showed up in Park City without distribution never got distributed.  There was a glut then.  There is a glut now. 

Which moment is really The Day The Indie Died?  My first instinct is to point my finger at Artisan and opening day of The Blair Witch Project.  All that money and what has come of it?  Yet, it is hard to complain when the company has since been involved in funding films by Robert Altman, John Waters, Chris McQuarrie, Juan Gerard, Darren Aronofsky, Henry Bromell, Jon Favreau, Joe Berlinger, Miguel Arteta and Wayne Wang, not to mention top documentaries like Raw Deal: A Question of Consent and Startup.com.  They tried to put the money to good use, but with a few exceptions, they got mediocre results from some quality directors and hard-to-sell work from the ones that made quality films.

Maybe it was the day Harvey Weinstein signed up for The English Patient and actually got along with Minghella.  Or could it be the day they created Dimension? 

The Osbornes may be the future of independent film.  Huh?  Well, one of the things that struck me about the family’s new deal with MTV was that they retained syndication rights and, more importantly, they stayed on MTV.  They could have gone to a broadcast network.  Hell, Jay Leno has set it up so that Ozzy and Sharon can swear up a storm on his show… just like on their show.  (He may not be as edgy as Dave, but he is a smart cookie that Jay Leno.)  The point is, by staying on MTV, they are assuring that while they are breaking ratings records, they will be exposed to less than a quarter of the audience that they would find on the networks, making the syndication market far more valuable than it would ever be coming off of a broadcast net. 

How does the indie world readjust to a strategy of intentionally limiting exposure?  It will be really hard.  My best bet is to look over at the ultimate indie turncoat, Miramax.  As part of the Disney Company, any film purchased by Miramax has a built-in minimum buy at Blockbuster.  (You may remember an article about this referenced in this column a few months ago.)  Someone has to take the independent Film Channel (IFC) or Sundance Channel and take them from being good cable nets to HBO-style outputs of exclusivity.  If there is a way to create value on a cable network --  an actual sense that the indie product going on air is not made up of films that couldn’t get “real” slots on HBO or Showtime, but films held up as having singular value --  then there can be enhanced home video/DVD value that could actually make quality pictures with budgets under $5 million profitable.  Note that none of HBO’s series successes have been star driven, but content driven. 

Why can’t the same be done for the best of indie?  The answers are both that it requires someone to take a huge leap in a new, initially expensive direction.  And on the flip side, filmmakers of series low-budget indies have to head to the festival circuit without the home run hopefulness that has grown out of Sundance.  There’s no downside to dreaming, but there is a whole world of indie film that should be at least a breakeven proposition… but someone is going to have to start thinking out of the Miramax/Sundance box.

TWO QUICKIES:  First, a story in the L.A. Times about the Brian William hire at NBC, pointing out that Williams is the first network anchor who was never really a reporter, but was a born and bred anchor.  This is a variation on what I’ve been writing about regarding the current state of film criticism for a long time.  (Click here)

And then a little throw away… Here in L.A., we have a local morning war between channels 5 and 11, both of which are very laid back and both of which are centered around silliness.  And so, when I saw a Page Six story about the Howard Stern boxing thing, Channel 11 co-host/weather chick, Jillian Barberi, was described as a “centerfold”, along with softcore porn star Amy Lynn.  This made me laugh.  And who could really tell the difference.  Ms. Barberi apparently went to the match in a bikini.  Great bad copy editing.  I love show business.

ONE LAST THING:  I got a few e-mails on Friday about an early script review of a Charlie’s Angels draft that John August wrote that would appear to be a memory, based on Len Goldberg’s comments to Cindy Adams last week.  Included in that was the rumor that Bill Murray was out and that Jamie Foxx would play his son.  (hahaha)  But I will try to find out more today and follow-up in the column tomorrow.

READER OF THE DAY:  The Family T writes:  ““I caught SUM OF ALL FEARS Saturday.  I definitely enjoyed it -- It's fast-paced and entertaining but Affleck is like a black hole at its center.  Oh to have Alec Baldwin back as Ryan!  You can't help but laugh when they refer to Affleck's Ryan as an ex-Marine and call him "Dr."   On the other hand, Liev Schrieber just about steals the show as Clark (too bad HE wasn't cast as Ryan.)   Oh, and that nuke strike may the most bloodless terrorist attack in the history of film.  Fortunately, the wind is blowing in the right direction so no one really has to worry about all that annoying radiation/fallout stuff.

And about UNDERCOVER BROTHER:  it IS laugh out loud funny at many points [love the O.J. joke], but if - as you say - it's the funniest movie since THERE'S SOMETHING ABOUT MARY, that says more about the state of current comedies than about Undercover Brother.”

E ME:  How was your weekend?  Any ideas on how to save the indie business?