April 5, 2004

Hell of a weekend…

One must give credit where credit is due for the $23 million-plus opening of Hellboy, a franchise that had virtually no built-in awareness when the Revolution/Columbia film was in production. The trouble with naming the names of marketing execs in the Columbia and Revolution teams is that someone who deserves credit will go without and marketing types seem to hate to see their names in print. That said, Terry, Geoffrey, Josh, Tommy and everyone else should be very happy with everything other than Walking Tall’s overly aggressive mutual assured “destruction” date choice. MGM’s decision to be more scared of Dawn of The Dead than Hellboy was short-sighted and showed a lack of hipness in the room.

$23 million is enough of a sampling to get the film rolling, though even
with an “open” weekend to come (teenage girls and history buffs aside), few films are able to overcome what has become the traditional box office slide, the difference between 35% and 50% drops meaning “only” $35 million or so at the domestic box office. Yes, $85 million will look a lot better on the Revolution spreadsheet than $55 million would. But, the six or seven million that might have gone to The Rock-Handed Boy had The Rock been wielding his big stick somewhere else could have led to a flirtation with the $100 million boundary, especially given the surprisingly enthusiastic reviews by them city slicker critics, who embraced the film even more closely than did the rank & file.

The real issue right now is Hellboy 2: Hellboy Goes To Iraq and how much the film has to gross before the sequel is really greenlit. And the pressure is on Columbia’s international distribution team, which now has to match (and should surpass) a domestic marketing job with a franchise character that got profile exclusively through marketing as well as a likely domestic home entertainment release of the film before it gets released in the rest of the world in September & October. (That includes such U.S.-aware territories as the U.K. and France, not to mention Hellboy’s home production turf of Prague.) The film opened day-n-date in Japan, though I haven’t been able to get any numbers for that opening yet.

But assuming that international will find its way, Hellboy should have net revenues of almost $200 million, which should make it one of Revolution's biggest successes in its short history. Anger Management did about 50% of domestic overseas – not bad for a comedy – while Hellboy has a chance of catching up with Anger’s worldwide gross even if it is $50 million or more behind the domestic draw. And if Guillermo del Toro can do what most comic franchises cannot… to find a compelling second story for a sequel… Hellboy
as an established character could surely do 50% more theatrical business next time around.

On the flipside of the happiness spectrum, Disney took a beating on Home on the Range and has nothing to look forward to next week when The Alamo, all good intentions aside, gets forgotten at the box office. I’m not really sure what critics were seeing when they sat down in the theater to see Home on the Range. When Roger Ebert pans a Disney animated film (out of his love, not his professional affiliation to the company), you know something has gone awry. But damn it, I really enjoyed this movie. If you look at Rotten Tomatoes, you will see a lot of headlines that talk about the film in reference to other films. You will also see a scary failure of historical insight, as critic after critic fails to recognize the historical precedence for the film. But ask any one of them if they like Tex Avery… well, half of them won’t recognize the name. But ask them if they loved watching Bugs
Bunny on TV as a kid and they will all say “yes.”

One has to wonder whether the system of promotion and distribution has become so repetitive that movies like this are sometimes a systemic disappointment. Hellboy was sold, effectively, on action, action and more action. As they got closer to release, more character personality turned up. But few people I spoke to about the movie got the fact that the central theme of the movie is a romantic one. Imagine Humphrey Bogart as a giant red devil with sanded-off horns and a preference for Baby Ruths over martinis, and Ingrid Bergman as a woman so hot that she burns stuff down and instead of hiding out in Casablanca, they hide out in a secret government lair… and they are still fighting the Germans. A strategic decision needs to be made this morning (or was made last night) about whether to expand the marketing effort to try to explain the wider appeal of this character and
this movie.

The ads for Home on the Range were classic Disney. The franchise, for all the media bashing it’s taken, still exists. But the movie was, as I wrote before, Termite Terrace all the way. Could Disney have sold “Stop staring… they’re real!,” the line the Roseanne Barr-voiced show cow opens with as she arrives at the Patch of Heaven farm, to America? I’m not sure. But that’s the movie. The world’s stupidest triplets are the movie. Jennifer Tilly’s wheatgrass airhead heifer is the movie. The hippest gag in the movie is Steve Buscemi’s cameo, which would have been instantly recognizable in ads.

But my point is not to blame Disney marketing on this one. My point is that marketing is getting dangerously close to the hard part of publicity these days… that it’s more and more about managing expectations and not just about selling your product.

Fox Searchlight has an absolutely brilliant new trailer for Garden State, their Sundance co-pick-up (with Miramax), which is markedly better than the film, although the Searchlighters don’t agree with my assessment. The trailer, which emphasizes the quirky elements of the film ahead of the lame sitcomedy, hits exactly on what the company sees as the best elements of the film. Thing is, if Garden State hits $10 million at the domestic box office, Searchlight/Miramax wins. They can afford to sell the movie instead of managing expectations because they are embracing the niche nature of the
film, much as they did 28 Days Later, which should win some sort of prize for being the most sucked-up to $45 million domestic grosser of this decade. (I liked the movie a lot, but with due respect, it is still just the 66th highest grosser of last year, behind such original dependent releases as Underworld and Bad Santa… though it did outgross Lost in Translation domestically.)

Anyway, I had a really good time at Home on the Range. It’s not Finding Nemo or Beauty & The Beast. But I like a lot of flavors of ice cream. And I like a lot of brands too. Sometimes, I need the richness of Haagen-Dazs or the complication of Ben & Jerry’s or the fun of a cone at Carvel or the 31 flavors of Baskin-Robbins or even a big airy package of Bryer’s. There are two “homemade” ice cream places in Toronto that I look forward to visiting each year for coconut or ginger ice creams that I don’t get at home. I’m glad that there is pistachio ice cream around. But Home on the Range is like the peppermint candy ice cream I often got at B&R as a kid. It’s too sweet. There is so much candy in it that you almost have to put
the chunks of peppermint aside after a while. And the sharpness of the flavor is not necessarily what you want every time. But it is fun as hell. Just take a bite… come on… I know you are on a diet… come on… a little… it’s a hot day… you can have your vanilla mocha chip too… come on… don’t make me smush it in your face….

READER OF THE DAY: JOUSTER writes: “What's with the ad for 13 Going On 30? Is that a slip under a raincoat on Jennifer Garner? Does that have anything to do with the movie? I remember your "controversial" column comparing Garner to that girl from Rounders who I can't even remember. If they keep selling Garner as a sex object, you're going to end up as a prophet.”

E ME: I’m rooting for Jennifer Garner to be more than another Gretchen “Now My Boobs Are Getting Me The Betty Page Role” Mol. In fact, when I am not being mean about her success at being topless, I am rooting for Gretchen Mol to be more than another Gretchen Mol. I haven’t seen the picture. I hear that it is cute, but not quite Big. But until proven otherwise, Ms. Garner is a young actress who is well liked by her crews and peers, photographs stunningly well and just doesn’t have the on-screen personality that has made a box office star of “cute” actresses like Sandra Bullock, Julia Roberts and Reese Witherspoon.

To answer the specific question, I believe the shot is from a scene in the movie, in which the 13-year-old suddenly wakes up a 30-year-old with a man in her bed and a body that he’d like to keep exploring. It is an interesting and slightly disturbing thing when you really think about it and about how close to the cusp of sex a 13-year-old girl is these days. But I doubt the movie wants us to think about that in any way, shape or form. Her raincoated modesty seems appropriate, even as we are clearly meant to be attracted to her coy sensuality.

What do you have to say about it?