December 15, 2003

It was another not so horrible weekend at the box office…. zzzzzzzzzzzz….

I hate to take a leak all over Columbia’s opening of Something’s Gotta Give, but while am estimated $16.6 million start should not cause any open veins, that’s only because there's the theory that older audiences come to a movie later than younger audiences. In fact, you have to go all the way back to 1995 to find an opening in the analogous December slot that was as poor. That was Jumanji, which opened to $11.1 million, but did go on to cross the $100 million mark… just barely. The number is literally half of what What Women Want started with. I guess the argument could be made that it’s not far behind the start for Jerry Maguire… but I’ve seen Jerry Maguire… and Something’s Gotta Give, sir, is no Jerry Maguire.

Sony had some better news with the very limited release of Big Fish, though the studio clearly saw Something as the more commercial prospect and Fish as the awards movie. And hey, they have five whole days to get to full steam on Mona Lisa Smile… oy!

The thing is, the studio could deal with The Missing doing $30 million and Big Fish doing $40 million if there were some awards and, more importantly, Something and Mona Lisa as $100 million-plus commercial movies. But I would still make the argument, as I have for months, that quality crowding is hurting everyone.

No one can blame Stuck On You or Love Don’t Mean A Thing on anyone other than themselves. Warner Bros. does not have the machine set up to sell urban teen comedies, even if they do a good job with DMX action movies. And Fox all but dumped Stuck On You into an extraordinarily dense marketplace. Fox may have won the battle, stealing away millions from WB’s comedy, but they lost the war with a more expensive film that is just going to get driven into the ground in the oncoming onslaught of more movies.

Meanwhile, The Last Samurai is touting an estimated 41% drop as “better than expected.” But wasn’t the excuse for last week’s $24.3 million start that snow on the east coast was the problem and that they’d make it up this weekend? It is true that Tom Cruise’s last December box office softball, Vanilla Sky, dropped 51% in its second weekend. However, that second weekend pitted the film up against Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. Additionally, Samurai is only $2 million ahead of Vanilla Sky after their mutual second weekends, as Samurai heads up against it own Rings film – and this one is direct competition. If Samurai falls just 50% next weekend, that will be a big win. It doesn’t really matter how good or bad Samurai is… if you want to see a period sword movie next weekend, one Ring rules them all. (Did I mention that the limited release of Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Extended Edition had an estimated $270 better per-screen average than Samurai this weekend?)

The glorious disease that is Bad Santa continues to catch, slowly becoming the hard-R answer to Elf. It looks like it will top out somewhere between $50 million and $60 million, which is pretty amazing for a movie that was virtually backhanded into release.

Interestingly, as the new releases continue to come up short, one after the next, the “disastrous” Matrix Revolutions is looking like it will still manage to end up in the Top Ten box office titles for the year, ending with somewhere around $140 million domestic. On the flip side, relatively well-received films like Love Actually, Master & Commander, The Missing and Brother Bear will all fall well short of $100 million.

In the end, it looks like the only two titles this month will have a legitimate chance to break the $100 million mark without crawling for that last $10 million… LOTR: Return of the King and Mona Lisa Smile… and I question Mona Lisa Smile. That means that if things hold as they seem likely to, Return Of The King, Elf, Matrix Revolutions and Cat In The Hat will be the only Nov/Dec releases to pass the $110 million mark this year. Last year, there were seven such films.

What happened?

The difference is Harry Potter 2, Chicago, 8 Mile and Catch Me If You Can. Rings matches up with Rings. Bond matches up with Matrix. Elf is this year’s The Santa Clause. Meanwhile, The Last Samurai, Master & Commander, Brother Bear, Love Actually, The Haunted Mansion, Something’s Gotta Give and Cold Mountain are all looking like they’ll come up short.

None of the seven is a car wreck. But none lived (or will live) up to expectations, it seems. Of the seven, only The Haunted Mansion really sucks. And while you can push it to extremes, only Harry Potter seems to have been irreplaceable in this year’s crop. Cruise for Hanks, this year’s Miramax Oscar movie for last year’s Miramax Oscar movie… Something’s Gotta Give has Nicholson, who did $135 million in the spring just being Jack (& Adam)… everyone in Toronto thought Universal’s Love Actually would outdo Universal’s 8 Mile…

I don’t know. I still think that overcrowding has a lot to do with it. Why were Stuck On You and Love Don’t Mean A Thing going out on the same weekend? Why would Fox be releasing a mainstream major comedy less than two weeks before their next mainstream major comedy? Why is Sony releasing four major movies in less than a month? Why are Peter Pan and Cheaper By The Dozen opening on the same day? Why is Paramount spending the money to release Paycheck in December? How can Calendar Girls not get crushed by Mona Lisa Smile… and will Mona Lisa Smile actually benefit from doing the crushing? Why is ethic and light Love Don’t Mean A Thing coming out a weekend after ethnic and light Honey? Did someone get a memo saying that movies that had great plays going against the grain in uncharted space would do well against intensified competition?

A few months ago, I wrote that people should be taking advantage of the last weekend in April that is also the first weekend of May, which Universal is leaving open before launching Van Helsing. Well, you can stop pre-programming now. The month is now overloaded. In fact, it starts in March, with Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Dawn of the Dead, Jersey Girl, Dogville and The Dreamers all scheduled for March 19. The next weekend, The Ladykillers (Hanks & The Coens), Scooby Doo 2 and Ned Kelly. April 2, Disney’s Home On The Range and Del Toro’s Hellboy. April 9, The Alamo, Ella Enchanted, Walking Tall and The Whole Ten Yards. April 16, The Punisher. Phew!!! (Miramax has Hero slotted, but no one really believes the film will ever be released.) April 23, Denzel in Man On Fire. April 30, Pierce Brosnan and Julianne Moore in Laws of Attraction.

And then, summer starts!

Boy, those six weeks reek of summer. One the romantic comedies is daring to get right up against the opening of Van Helsing. But the advantage of that opening summer date, so spectacularly successful for X2 this year, was in great part about the lull before the storm. If Scooby 2, Hellboy and The Ladykillers are all $100 million movies or close to it (you’re not really betting against Hanks, are you?), is May 7 really all that hot a spot anymore?

The three top draws from those six summer lead up weeks this year? Anger Management, Holes and Identity. $250 million between them. There were six pictures that did between $30 million and $50 million. I count that same number – or better – again this year. The likelihood is that Home on the Range and The Alamo and maybe Ella Enchanted and the Denzel could do more than that.

And there is little doubt that a four weekend stretch of Troy, Shrek 2, The Day After Tomorrow, Harry Potter 3, Riddick and The Stepford Wives is going to keep every one of those titles from adding millions and tens of millions to their box office grosses and is likely to keep at least one of the titles from making it to black ink. Smart money would be on The Day After Tomorrow being the iffy title now, but who knows whether it will become the hot movie that takes us somewhere we haven’t been? Stepford is counter programming… and adult thriller/comedy. If I were Warner Bros., I’d be looking hard at April 30, loading up Troy as the launch of summer before things get complicated. Being two weeks after Van Helsing and being chased by Day After Tomorrow and Harry Potter puts Troy in a hype hammock… which is not in its favor, I don’t think. If they’ll be happy with $125 million, they can do that. And that’s the hard nut in this story… with the amounts of money now being spent on these mega-movies, $125 million just doesn’t turn the trick anymore. Scary.

You can still tell the big hits from the big losers in this industry. But the middle earners are becoming more and more blurry. And as movies become more and more ”product,” we seem to be moving every film closer and closer to the middle with few exceptions. I guess that’s why Sherry Lansing can survive a year in which she released The Hunted, The Core, Tomb Raider 2, Marci X, Beyond Borders, Timeline and Paycheck… ALL IN ONE YEAR!!!! Geez, DreamWorks didn’t release as many movies as Paramount released expensive bombs. But they split the losses and the machine rolls along…

I guess a trend only keeps getting worse until we reset our thinking and the trend becomes the standard. And they’ll call it “The Stepford Columnist.”

READER OF THE DAY: SHE ROLLS ALONG writes: “I'm going to see Master & Commander again this coming week with procrastinating friends. I just loved the film, everything about it and will enjoy my third viewing. But I'm madder than hell at how it was marketed. Whoever decided that they needed to attract the geek boys first weekend and to hell with it's core adult audience, did the film a grave disservice. That videogame demographic wasn't going to have the patience for this film.... which makes its audience work for full appreciation. One needs to pay attention, to listen, to let the subtle notes do their magic. Oh sure, the cannons roar and wood splinters spectacularly, but that isn't the joy of the film to most people I've talked to about it. It's the characters, authenticity, fine acting ensemble and slice of gone-by life that are what are making me go back to see it this coming week.

How could marketing people go so wrong? By not pre-screening this film to the majority population in this country. Women. Had they done that, if I were to represent the voice of the majority of the women, I'd have insisted on quite a different trailer than they started out showing.

It now seems that someone has seen the light of day and is showing a different teaser trailer on TV spots this week. It is emphasizing the human drama, the fabulous recreation of a world. And... please don't think me too shallow... it shows a shirtless, wet Russell Crowe climbing up a rope onto the ship. It made my heart stop momentarily when I saw him. Just as my husband drooled all over himself watching Ludivine Sagnier in Swimming Pool [actually more of a chick flick than anything], we women enjoy a bit of raw beauty too... just a hairier, more muscled version. Unfortunately, having seen M&C, I know that Weir cut the shirtless scene out of the film. Big, big mistake. Using that scene, quite obviously, to attract a female audience at this late date, will backfire. It's a cheat. It's as though the trailers for Swimming Pool had included bare breasted Sagnier, but in the film, you only saw her in muu muus.”

E ME: I’m going to have to break out my screener of Swimming Pool and double check right away… thanks for the tip. There’s an extra Oscar column up over at MCN to go with all my rambling over here. Can’t I shut the hell up?