November 24, 2003

There were two major stories broken over the weekend, released by e-mail first by The Hollywood Reporter and a few hours later by Variety, although the Variety story offers an afternoon time of on-site release. (Who really cares?) Neither publication chose to send out an “alert” by e-mail. But both are huge stories that we will all be dealing with for weeks and months to come.

First, Sony Classics has broken the screener ban. I’m sure that Tom Bernard and Michael Barker will claim otherwise, loudly.

But unless the Reporter’s report – “Members of the SAG nominating committee have been sent video screeners of Monsier Ibrahim, which Sony Pictures Classics is releasing in the United States beginning Dec. 5. – is factually inaccurate, any argument that there has not been a breech is semantics.

According to the THR report, “the screeners are being issued not by SPC but by the film's French producers, the husband and wife team of Laurent Petin and Michele Halberstadt Petin, who produced the $5 million-$6 million film through their ARP Prods.” Furthermore, to cut a long story short, they say that Sony Classics told them not to do it and Sony Classics says, “It was done from Europe and is out of our hands."

In other words… bullshit.

At this point, I guess I have to pull the blinders off an item I kept blind last week in the MCN Oscar column.

I wrote, in an attempt to remain fair and not spread unproven rumor, “There were rumors earlier this week about a ‘dependent’ planning to ship foreign-language candidates to non-Academy awards groups after poor attendance at their screenings. The studio denies it at the highest level, though there is an admission that some tapes and DVDs were shipped before the ban was formalized. The head of this studio accused another studio of trying to stir things up. As it turns out, a rep from yet another studio was spreading the word.”

The rumor was about Sony Classics and now, it seems that it was indeed about Monsier Ibrahim, which did not get much traction coming out of the AFI Fest, despite aggressive work by Bloch-Kornbrat.

It probably didn’t help that Omar Sharif was telling reporters that his performance really wasn’t Oscar worthy. This is not an inference by me or the coy batting of eyes by an awards candidate who did not wish to seem vain. The actual words that came out of Mr. Sharif’s mouth about the role were, ““I don’t have that moment… the moment you need to win awards.” (THB 11/12/03).

Variety quotes the blockade-breaking producer as suggesting that Sharif motivated the action… or perhaps, we could call it “blaming Sharif for her actions.” To wit, “Halberstadt said the move stemmed from a promise made to Sharif. ‘When he said he'd do the movie, we promised him it would be worth his while,’ Halberstadt explained.”

Nonetheless, when I spoke to Tom Bernard about the issue last Tuesday, without specifically naming this title, he dismissed it as “bullshit” and asked whether the source for the story was Amanda Lundberg, suggesting in so many words that Miramax was just itching for someone else to be accused of breaking the ban so they could do the same thing with impunity.

Variety’s piece goes into some detail, analyzing the other films with theoretical back door options, including some of Miramax’s domestic titles.

Of course, my favorite reference is to Robert Altman’s Kansas City, which sent out screeners at Altman’s personal expense and came up with no Oscar nominations, despite category wins at Cannes, with the LAFCA and with the NYFCC… which just goes to show how important screeners and critics awards really are.

One more point… this allegedly insider info about this breech, which has turned out to be generally accurate, was floating around L.A. last weekend. That means that not only did Sony Classics have to know that it was coming for the entirety of last week, but that they told people in their circle that the “relief” was coming.

I am still not for this ban, though I must admit that I find the whining about the ban more irritating that the ban itself. That said, I am sincerely concerned about how this breach and the now inevitable breaches to follow will effect the industry, above and beyond the Academy Awards.

I don’t think that the many, many people who will be gleefully laughing about the breech of etiquette – as well as protocol – will ever consider the impact on the future of the MPAA. And as easy a target as Jack Valenti has been in recent months – mostly by people who have no concept of what he has done for this industry outside of the terminally broken ratings system – people don’t appreciate what the movie industry has gotten away with for a long, long time because of his efforts.

Creating a civil war inside the MPAA, which is what Howard Stringer will help start if he does not crack down on Sony Classics, is not in the best interest of the business. If the studios do not hang together, they will most surely hang apart, as Franklin once said. And you can bet a lot of Benjamins on that.

THE SECOND STORY is that John Goldwyn stepping down at Paramount. Despite relatively gentle stories in both trade papers, everyone knows – with due respect to Bill Goldman – that giving up a studio president’s job on his or her own, with the exceptions of those with health troubles or an intent to leave the business altogether, is about as rare a billion dollar gross.

He may have “always had an understanding (with Lansing & Dolgen) that by the end of this year (he) would have the ability to transition into my production agreement.” ... And Timeline may make $200 million.

And so, the question becomes, “Why?” and “Why now?”

“Why now?” seems to have a lot to due with the release (or is it escape?) of Timeline, a project that Mike Ovitz found almost impossible to sell as Michael Chricton’s manager, that Paramount finally swallowed whole. It is probably the most expensive project in Sherry Lansing’s tenure that Paramount didn’t split with a major co-financier. It also has the real chance of making the Sony/Revolution loss on Gigli look like loose change. (Of course, in the world of pile-on media, Gigli also got a lot more attention than Pluto Nash, which also lost significantly more money than Gigli.)

Ron Grover was the first major writer to sound this year’s alarm in public this year, in a Business Week piece, dated November 21.

On the same day, the Wall Street Journal’s John Lippman lit the match on Paycheck, a Ben Affleck vehicle that Paramount split with DreamWorks, much like the opening of a Mission: Impossible episode, in his 11/21 column.

That brings us to the “Why?”

Another Hollywood truism is that “they” don’t mind losing money nearly as much as “they” mind being embarrassed in public. And that happened this Friday. There is little doubt that someone made a decision because of this embarrassment – the tip of a six-week deep iceberg to come – before the trades were fed this story this story on Sunday.

The irony is that last year at this time, while we were all speculating on Lansing’s exit, apparently by her own choice, to the Red Cross, Goldwyn was considered one of the front-runners.

There are three answers to this year’s puzzle that seem to make sense.

One is that Goldwyn was pushed, the sacrificial lamb to the Gods of finance and humiliation.

Two is that Goldwyn jumped ship, understanding the ugliness to come and getting out of the way before it would look too much like he was a rat leaving a sinking ship or worse, being forced out.

The third is the most complex… that Goldwyn has indeed been the intended heir to Lansing’s throne and that it became clear this weekend that Lansing is soon going to take the bullet and that Redstone and Karmazin have decided and acknowledged that Goldwyn would not be the successor. Exiting now avoids the embarrassment of not being The One when the next step in the transition takes place.

What happens in the weeks to come will shed more light on what really happened at Paramount this weekend than is likely to be printed in the papers.

AND NOW…

It wasn’t a pretty weekend at the box office…

The Cat In The Hat’s reported $40.08 million start, projected as $39.4 million by MCN’s Leonard Klady, is impressive by the standards of a typical weekend. But Cat was expected by most to be the second biggest opener of the month. And it probably will be. But even at the generous reported number from Universal, this is the worst second-best open of this young millennium.

Last year, there were three $47 million-plus openings, the second-best start being $51 million. In 2001, there were two $62 million-plus starters, the second place release being Monsters, Inc. with $62.6 million. Back in 2000, there were two $40 million-plus November starts, number two being Charlie’s Angels with $40.1 million.

Number one for the month will be The Matrix Revolutions’ $48.5 million. That too will be the worst best start in the last four years.

But here's the rub… there were seven $10 million-plus openers last November. There were no limited openings, like Love Actually’s, for a film (again, like Love Actually) that could clearly have a $10 million-plus start if it launched wide. Still, we have already had five $10 million openers in three November 2003 weekends (as opposed to five total in 2002). The Haunted Mansion will surely do better than that and between The Missing and Bad Santa, the record seems likely to be tied, if not broken. (Sorry, Timeline.)

Also, it looks like there will be a record number of November openers to hit the $100 million mark. The Matrix Revolutions is already there. Elf and Cat in the Hat are locked in. We’re not going to count Brother Bear, even though the film went wide on November 1 and even though the limited release was only 2 screens. So, between Master & Commander, Love Actually, Bad Santa, The Haunted Mansion or The Missing, one needs to hit $100 million to tie last year’s record four $100 million movies and two breaks the record.

Is there any significance to this? Well, look at last year’s four key weekends. (The big newcomer in last year’s fifth November weekend, which leaked over to December 1, was Treasure Planet with just $12.1 million, which was only good enough for fourth place.) There was competition, but nothing like this year.

The opening showdown between The Matrix Revolutions ($48.5m) and Elf ($31.1m) had two big openers separated by just $17.4 million. Last year, the closest match-up was The Santa Clause 2 ($29m) vs. I Spy ($12.8m).

Master & Commander opened to $25.1 million and didn’t take the top spot. The biggest opening last year to fail to land in the top spot was Friday After Next’s $13 million.

Even this weekend’s estimated $39.4 million start for Cat in the Hat was dogged, so to speak, by Gothika’s $19.5 million start.

The argument for these pile-ups of titles in the summer and now in the holiday corridor, is that some of the expected hits fail or fall short. True enough. And one can certainly argue that the landmarks that used to rule the business, like $100 million, don’t mean as much as they used to. But no one is going to argue that $20 - $30 million doesn’t mean much to a studio. Are they?

While openings are continuing to be more impressive each year, so is the fall off. And while the old school guys are railing against the quality of movies - which may be fair, but has little to do with business, unless they really want to explain how Scooby Doo was really $20 million more as a movie than Anger Management or The Hulk – they are missing what I think to be the point… the fall off is not about worse movies, but about the infrastructural design of distribution in this moment.

Thank God that there is no Harry Potter sucking up a major percentage of available dollars from the marketplace. Then it really would be a nightmare. As it is, it is the middle class that is being hurt. It defies any traditional logic, but if you look at the numbers this year, there are no films that have grossed a domestic total between $150 million and $215 million. There are films above that mark and films below, but nothing in that $65 million no man’s land. Last year, there were seven, four before we got to November.

Maybe it’s a freak of statistics. And, statistically, you know there will be variations every year. But what I see is movies like T-3, Bad Boys II and The Hulk falling short in a way that movies like Men in Black II, Goldmember and even XXX did not, just a year before. And that’s even with last year’s summer 1-2 punch of Spiderman and Star Wars outgrossing this year’s Finding Nemo and Pirates of The Caribbean combo by $100 million.

I’ve been rambling on about this since the summer. Last month, as the competitive juices swelled again, there was a parade of moderate successes that probably would have done $100 million had there been less competition. Even the most successful October film, Scary Movie 3, with its $48 million start, is not going to get close to three times opening, which both of its predecessors did. It’s barely going to get to $115 million. Last year’s 8 Mile is still the lowest grossing film, domestically, to open to more than $50 million. Scary Movie 3, which opened to just $3 million less will do about the same amount, making it only the second movie in history to open to more than $43 million and to come up short of $120 million domestic. The only other films to open to more than $40 million to miss the $120 million mark are Batman & Robin and Daredevil. And you know what? Cat in the Hat may join the group. How much is the film and how much is the trend? How much of theatrical exhibition success perception and how much is reality these days?

On other films, Gothika got a nice reception for its $19.5 million start, though it’s an odd number. It was not as much as Underworld started with, much less Kill Bill or Texas Chainsaw Massacre. On the other hand, as the first movie really sold based exclusively on the power of Halle Berry and the film concept, it’s pretty good. Underworld had more open space and a clearer, cleaner ad campaign that took advantage of Kate Beckinsale’s ass…ets, while Gothika was not a sexy sale in regards to Berry.

But slots four through ten, with the exception of the expanding Love Actually, was a bit of a quagmire, with drops ranging from 43% to 59%, by Klady’s estimate. Fox’s Master & Commander reported a 39.5% drop to the media, no doubt wanting to avoid stories about a 40% drop or worse.

Also taking a surprisingly large hit was Disney’s Brother Bear, which fell 55%, which even in the shadow of The Cat, is a lot for a Disney film.

Adding to Paramount’s woes, Tupac: Resurrection dropped an ugly 78% on its way to video and School of Rock, down just 39%, still looks to top out domestically at under $80 million… a big success that somehow didn’t quite succeed.

The Matrix Revolutions has made it clear that it will have a hard time finding the $150 million mark. And the much award-touted Mystic River continues to do cumulative business in the neighborhood of Radio and The Runaway Jury, in spite of all the romancin’.

READER OF THE DAY: THE SINGING LOBSTER comes to Frances O’Connor’s defense: “Well, Frances O`Connor has been great in every parts she’s done. Especially in Bedazzled, it was so refreshing to see her in a comedy doing all these various part-even a bitch. The movie was so-so but what’s important is that she gave a lasting impression, and if she manages to do that with all her roles, she wouldn’t have such a bad career after all. Because I like her I too am fearing that she goes into Debra Winger territory or worse Madeline Stowe territory because she’s too talented for that. But in a way I’m such a lover of films, that I’ve grown used to seeing great gems of actors and actress and filmmakers just pass below most people’s radars. That talent is not recognized, I don’t care about it anymore, if it made me feel good seeing that and that actors/actress perform, that’s the important thing. It stays with you all your life.

Something I have begin to do in my spare times is go to The Internet Movie Database and search the name of an unknown actor or actress that I’ve liked in a movie or the name of a director of an obscure movie that I’ve liked a while ago. From that I try finding their whole filmography and then I go hunting for these movies that they’ve made or have been part off. It’s really uplifting to see these movies in one batch after that with same actress that you loved so much in that and that film. I will say that the experience of doing that is greater than seeing any new films on the big screen for me. Because most of the time you find these gems of films that you never knew existed, there’s no hype attached so it’s easier to be surprised.”

This came in from BIG JIM: “Finally got to see Elf and, unfortunately, Cat in the Hat; Wow, talk about the good and the bad AND ugly! Was Cat written hoping they’d get Jim Carrey, and when he didn’t want another Seuss flick, Mike Myers got it instead? I mean, it sure seems like it was written for Jim, and it would have almost taken him (or possibly Robin Williams in full-on Genie mode) to make it work. I like Mike Myers, I like his movies, but this one stunk to high heavens and even my family thought so. *sigh* Most people hated The Grinch, but I liked it well enough and so did they (target audience: moms and kids), so when they thought Cat was bad, I knew it wasn’t just me being harsh. Um, I realize it was a fairly simple kids book, but did the writers ever read it? Fleshing out the story was one thing; completely changing it was another. What they made of the script was just plain bad, and that left good actors (and my money) twisting in the wind.

On the up side, I took the same people (only one daughter could make the flicks) to see Elf, and, as expected, they (and I) loved it. I had been wanting to see it strictly on the strength of your recommendation, and I was soooo glad I listened! It almost wiped away the stink from the Friday Cat showing, and offered me the rare opportunity to see the trailer again right after catching the flick. (I am left with one thought: whoever cut the Cat trailer does NOT get paid enough! It was funnier than the whole movie!) It really was like watching a live-action Rankin-Bass Christmas special, and made me feel very nostalgic, not to mention sentimental and just plain good. If somebody would put out just one movie like this every year, I would gladly take back a lot of what of the bad things I’ve said about Hollywood in the past few years.”

And DO THE DU writes: “I disagree with your analysis of the Passion situation. I am a fairly empirical person. I reject your analysis that Mel Gibson's "actions" regarding his film deserve a "reaction" when it is quite obvious that it is Mr. Gibson who has been reacting for the better part of a year now to malicious attempts made by his detractors in the media and secular academia.

Nevertheless, it is this comment that you made that I would seek to address:

"I would love for the film to make a run at this year’s Oscars. Why not? An addition like that could make this one of the most exciting, most competitive years for Oscar in history. "

As the Oscars increasingly become less about art and quality and more about political and career statements, I question how you could possibly think that Hollywood would do anything but ignore this film (which it would neither finance nor distribute).

Let's assume for a moment that Mr. Gibson has made a film that will truly be an accomplishment for the ages. That it is a film that is without peer and will be remembered for generations to come. I do not think that one has to have the last name of "Limbaugh" to admit that the new Hollywood eschews anything that is not secular in nature and has an outright hostility to anything that is overtly Christian/Catholic. Again, I am not saying this from a "conservative" or a "damn those Hollywood lefty's" point-of-view. I just really believe that anyone who even vaguely values the empirical could see that this is a film that Hollywood would/could never acknowledge in this day and age.

Mr. Gibson knows this, which is why he is not positioning this film for the awards season. I also believe he is being very astute as to what is happening culturally in America right now. Regardless of the "who started the culture war first" argument, the film will be politicized just by virtue of the subject matter and Mr. Gibson was smart to get certain demos on his side. I also think this is going to be a film whose true worth, like all great works of art will only be known many years from now if it stands the test of time. It will be very hard to separate people's political views from their objective views on this one. If Jerry Falwell comes out and says it's brilliant, I would have to take his political/religious bias into account. If the increasingly political Roger Ebert gives it a 1 and a half star review I'll have to take his now overt slants into account also.

Regardless, the one thing I think everyone can agree on is that this is the one film we truly cannot wait for. And like all things that can be considered art, it is provoking much thought and discussion.

E ME: If you have nothing to write after all that…