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May 30, 2003
Big Pond. Huge Fish.
There is only one movie that can beat Finding Nemo for the summer crown. No, it’s not The Matrix Reloaded. I must admit that the $300 million mark now looks beyond reach, unless Warners cooks up a very clever November pre-Revolutions re-release that will kick another $10 million - $15 million into the kitty. It is The Hulk, the PG-13 comic book movie that is looking to combine the pop value of Spider-Man and X-Men with the genius of Ang Lee to shock the hell out of the naysayers who have been lining up for months.
I wish I could tell you that I know for sure that the movie kicks ass. But while the Maria Salases and Earl Dittmans of the world got a look at the still-not-quite-perfect print over the weekend, I still have to take the word of people with a vested Universal interest. Truth is, I absolutely believe these particular Uni-spinners and their powerful passion for the film that they finally saw on a big screen late last week. But the studio claims not be screening it beyond the junket until the 9th. Let’s just hope there isn’t some trashy Time Magazine story next Saturday or I’ll turn quite green myself.
As for Nemo, it has a lot of open road. I have yet to hear any of the Monster’s, Inc. or Shrek backlash that turned up soon after those films planted their rather humongous flags. And maybe there will be some. But I still say that this is Pixar’s best work and I think it could play all summer long.
The huge opening draws sharp focus once again on the Pixar deal floating around the ether. Disney wants to get it done, but they don’t want to have their noses pressed up against their own window to make it happen. Meanwhile, Pixar is smart enough not to want to rock their very steady boat. No other studio is so well built to release and support animated product as Disney is.
Oddly, the only company that I think is in a position to support Pixar’s product nearly as well as Disney is MGM, which could concentrate an intense effort on each Pixar film, just as it does for Bond. Of course, the MGM merchandising machine is not on the same planet as Disney’s and the ancillary television opportunities are not built in. But in terms of theatrical release only, MGM could become a two-franchise company.
With that kind of advice, there is only one option… make the deal with Disney.
Managing to stay above water were the Minis of The Italian Job, to the tune of 19.3 million estimated dollars. My guess is that despite a lot of mixed reviews, strong word-of-mouth from real people will help this title leg it out to the $100 million mark… or at least nearby.
One now has to consider the May corner just turned. The game is a little different now, just a few weeks after Daddy Day Care arrived. While Memorial Day weekend offered some breathing room for May releases to pile on, July 4 weekend offers a gangbang of new, hugely high profile product. There is no comparable movie to The Italian Job coming up, but 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Hulk, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, T3 and Legally Blonde 2 will all be siphoning off dollars from various potential Italian Job demographics and going into the holiday with fresher legs.
Finally, X2: X-Men United should pass $200 million today. Congrats. $210 million is out of reach. Have a great video release.
MOVING OUT: I wasn’t reading deeply into the Screen Daily story on Miramax’s business decisions around the Cannes festival this year. The two biggest pieces of quiet news was the move of both Neverland, expected to have Oscar potential, and Jersey Girl, expected to be a commercial hit and a breakthrough for writer/director Kevin Smith, into 2004.
In Miramax tradition, we should now expect to see The Human Stain and The Station Agent at Toronto… and for the Oscar potential for both films to be nearly non-existent unless some very persistent critics wave their flags high. That leaves Miramax with only Cold Mountain to chase Oscar with in earnest.
As for the Jersey Girl news, it has been quiet, considering the noise that was made over Gigli/Tough Love/Gigli. As far as I can tell, the news has not appeared on Kevin’s MoviePoopShoot.com website, even though the information is at least two weeks old. I would ask Kevin what the story is, but last time I sent an e-mail to his AOL account, it bounced back. The assumption here is not that Miramax saw a cut of the film and decided to banish it to “1st Quarter 2004.” My guess would be that however happy they are with the film, the very savvy Mr. Weinsteins, B&H, could see the massive J-lo & Ben backlash coming and figured that it was better to live to fight another day. What goes down must go up.
Of course, maybe it is something else altogether. I will be happy to add greater insight in future, if any is provided.
A HUMAN HEAD WEIGHTS 8 POUNDS: Did you know that 68 percent of Cream Of The Crop critics at Rotten Tomatoes liked The Matrix? Did you know that 77 percent of the same group liked The Matrix Reloaded?
The only critic to go clearly negative on both films was Newsday’s John Anderson. Peter Travers and Robert Denerstein are two of the rare critics to go negative on the original and positive on Reloaded. Ken Turan liked the first film but not the sequel. Entertainment Weekly split opinions and critics between the two films.
Again, my point is not to defend the movie – there will be a whole column of that later this week – but to point out the hypocrisy of the “everyone thinks…” argument.
UNIVERSAL TWIST: The latest twist in the Universal/Vivendi saga comes not from the film side but from the TV side. The New York Times’ Bill Carter did a story on the negotiations over the Universal-owned Law & Order franchise (all three shows) and the possibility that NBC might end up in a rather different negotiating position if they buy Universal TV from Vivendi.
Of course, this would be a rather odd turn. NBC parent company General Electric does not seem inclined to buy all of Universal. While splitting off music is possible, breaking up successful television and film units seems to make little sense for a potential film unit buyer. What makes a lot more sense would be Universal TV buying NBC.
Disney, Viacom and Fox have used the TV/Film balance to good, stabilizing effect. NBC remains the magic independent network. The network buying the major production company is a method as of yet unexplored. Maybe it would work brilliantly. Maybe not. Seems like a convoluted move to me.
It’s kind of like the poor logic of DreamWorks being a “hit machine” that could be brought into the Universal fold. It’s not that DreamWorks and its team is not valuable. It’s that folding the company into Universal would change the entire game. And the independence of DreamWorks becomes iffy. John Malone is, essentially, talking about buying a company to get its executive talent, not its primary non-talent assets.
What would NBC get from Universal Television, other than a big library and access to the couple of years of programming that is now in the hopper? Well, some of Diller’s cable assets might be involved and some other hard assets. But it looks a lot more interesting as an observation than a reality.
On the flip side, Universal buying NBC would give it what every major production company left needs… a broadcast outlet for its owned product.
Which brings me around to another company… what’s with Time-Warner’s soft development of the WB since the AOL merger? For what it is, the WB works great. But it is not a major network. And that does not seem to be ready to change any time soon. Even Jamie Kellner took off. Why? When are we going to read the story on that asset play… or misplay?
READER OF THE DAY: I got a lot of very nice mail regarding the Wachowski piece on Friday. There were a few angry letters, but they only represented about 5% of the mail. I don’t really feel like continuing the conversation today, so I am not going to print any of it today. But the most important thing was that pretty much all of the mail was of either the “live and let live” or the “God bless him” variety. Only one e-mail accused me of being too P.C… from an industry journalist. Surprise!
HER CRISPINESS writes: “Despite my reservations about the anticipated quality of the picture, and despite my feelings on the choice of ending every preview with Bernie Mac announcing that he has sand up his crack, I'm intrigued to see Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle just to find out how they managed to work all those images from all those varied settings into any sort of 90-minute narrative.”
TAIWAN STEVE writes: “After I saw "How to lose a guy in 10 days", I found out actually we can make the soundtrack album by ourself.
First, the two songs we heard in the movie, "Kiss me" by Sixpence None the Richer and "Feels like Home" by Chantal Kreviazuk, both also included in "Dawson's Creek" soundtrack album. Plus, Paula Cole's "I don't want to wait" which appear in the trailer of "City of Angels", also included in this album. So when you got "Dawson's Creek" album, you almost got all.
Then You can find "Don't Dream it's over" by Sixpence None the Richer, appears in the trailer of "How to lose a guy in 10 days". You can find it in Sixpence None The Richer's new album, too. If you already have this one, you can save few money.
And the brand new song "Somebody like You" by Keith Urban appears in the movie while Kate Hudson learns how to ride a motorbike, just click to the movie official website, You can listen it online for free. Isn't It Great?”
E ME: Does a film have to hit you right the first time… or in commercials… or in trailers… to be “good?” Does time mean anything anymore?
