December 22, 2003

How sad for New Line… just a measly $73.6 million 3-day. You know, there are six films in the history of movies that had better openings. You can hear the wind coming out of those sails. After all, it’s just $11.5 million more than the start for The Two Towers and $23 million more than the 5-day… and how they managed to survive that crappy opening for Fellowship of The Ring, $26 million behind King on the 3-day and almost $50 million behind of the 5-day, I will never know.

That sarcastically said, the elusive $1 billion is not at all guaranteed. After a 32% increase in the opening weekend last year, Fellowship to Towers, the final worldwide total showed “just” a 6% improvement. The increase from last year’s opening to this year’s is “just” 19%. A 6% improvement on Towers for Return of The King means “just” a $976 million worldwide total. That would still be the second best worldwide total in history, behind Titanic and ahead of Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone, but you gotta know that New Line is hungry for the billion dollar mark.

Lucky Columbia… they don’t have to worry about all that pressure to hit massive marks. Mona Lisa Smile is reporting a $12 million estimated opening, though MCN’s Len Klady has the number down at $11.3 million. Likewise, Klady has Something’s Gotta Give off 34% to $10.7 million while the studio reported estimates of $11.5 million, off just 28.44%. Either way, the two Columbia movies that were the “clearly commercial ones” are both in real danger of not hitting the $100 million mark. Worse, as Klady points out, the two films’ troubles can be blamed directly on putting both films into the marketplace at the same time despite both chasing the same core demographic.

Columbia is not alone. The Last Samurai looked a lot more commercial than the $90 million that the movie will be lucky to top out at. Love Actually is still rolling along, though $60 million now seems out of reach. Stuck On You, Love Don’t Mean A Thing, The Haunted Mansion and Cat In The Hat are all looking ragged against expectations. Honey’s eventual $29 million is looking pretty good about now.

The politics of distribution are real and, God knows, there was someone at Sony Releasing who was really committed to making an Oscar push for Mona Lisa Smile, though the studios involved – Columbia and Revolution – clearly knew that this was turning into a money play instead of a legitimate awards play months ago. There are a lot of strong elements to this movie. I do not go along with those who are claiming it is terrible. It’s not. It’s just not great. But it should have done better than this. And if I can’t see the disaster in the making coming from the marketing or the movie itself, I have to look at the release date.

Space is the new gold in distribution. It has to be. Having “the movie” is the platinum. New Line did a good job with Elf, but Elf itself has the most to do with its success. But regardless of some reservations about Love Actually, for instance, it was good enough to do better than it did. The same is true of Mona Lisa Smile now. I would argue that no matter how much money you spend these days, traction is extremely elusive when you are in these jammed up distribution alleys.

Something’s Gotta Give is an example of a film that is, in reality, shooting for a very specific audience and they may catch on to it at some point… but the truth is, the wave of films that are still coming may well get in the way. Something’s Gotta Give as age-minded counter-programming in February could play for months. Until the last weekend of the month and The Ladykillers, the entire month is playing awfully young and silly and either “Something” or “Mona Lisa” could have set up shop there with some room to breathe.

Of course, there are still jams in the traditional slow periods. In four weeks, starting January 23, you now have Win A Date With Tad Hamilton, Barbershop 2 and 50 First Dates, all legitimate threats to the $100 million mark. And that doesn’t even include niche films like You Got Served or The Big Bounce.

I’ve already written about April, but it is really breathtaking… Hellboy, Home on the Range, Johnson Family Vacation, The Alamo, Ella Enchanted, The Whole Ten Yards, Walking Tall, The Punisher, Man on Fire, Jamie Foxx’s still untitled Screen Gems project, and Laws of Attraction. That’s April! It may be that there is only one $100 million film in that group… or none. But it is a load. And the two weekends before April, in March, include Scooby Doo 2, The Ladykillers (Tom Hanks), Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (Jim Carrey), Jersey Girl, The Dreamers, Intermission, Dawn of the Dead, Ned Kelly, Shaolin Soccer and Dogville. Someone’s gotta blink, but that’s 10 high profile movies currently slated in 2 weekends!

And who the hell knows what’s going to come of Kill Bill, Volume 2, which surely will be at least a $60 million domestic grosser, probably in March?

The other element here is ridiculously raised expectations. Of course, those expectations have a lot to do with ridiculously raised budgets. If I told you a couple of years ago that a comedy about two people over 55 trying to get laid/fall in love would generate a net of at least $135 million, you would have had to say that it was going to be a big win. And yet, somehow a $90 million domestic gross for Something’s Gotta Give will be seen as a failure. I’m willing to take some heat for the media’s obsession with numbers they tend not to understand. But as the margins on the “winners” get smaller and smaller and the budgets on the losers get bigger and bigger, the sanity of the major studio-level film business becomes a more dubious notion.

Coming this week… wide releases of Peter Pan, Cheaper By The Dozen, Cold Mountain and Paycheck. Why? Cheaper by The Dozen has the best shot, as the rare family comedy this month, fighting off only Elf in the marketplace. Can Peter Pan get traction with teenagers? Has Universal pulled a Mona Lisa Smile without the four name actresses, counting on familiarity with the title to establish traction on treacherous terrain? There is wide open space between February 20 and March 12 for a family film… there is no Ice Age sitting in its way. Why not take advantage of the opportunity? Can Paycheck open any better than Timeline opposite Miramax’s Cold Mountain blitz and the second weekend (minimum $30 million) for Return of the King?

Please believe me, it’s not that I wish ill on any of these titles. But not everyone can win when this many films are bunched together. And what drives me nuts is that a lot of people can see the “danger films” coming a long ways away. And yet things rarely change and disappointments become a theme.

E ME: Do you need a vacation like I need a vacation?