April 7, 2004

Tuesday's breathtaking story was the decision by Fox to hand over the reins of The Fantastic Four comic-to-movie conversion to Tim Story, who may turn out to be an choice of daring and vision, but seems a whole lot more likely to be the next Mark Stephen Johnson (Dardevil), Stephen Herek (Life Or Something Like It) or Andy Tennant (Anna & The King). After missing the bullet with incomprehensible choices like Raja Gosnell and Payton Reed, Fox had the opportunity to make the right move with a franchise that is one of on the most perfect movie conversions, now that the technology is in place to do a proper Ben Grimm. The Grimm character was Wolverine before Wolverine was created and "It's Clobberin' Time" is a wet dream of a marketing slogan if ever there was one.

While character development is absolutely critical to comic book movies, directorial tone is even more important. And while Bryan Singer brought psychodrama to X-Men and Guillermo del Toro brought metaphysical Mexican angst to Hellboy and Sam Raimi toned down his hyperactive comic book style to make Spider-Man more accessible, what does Tim Story bring to the table? His Barbershop films indicate that he knows how to keep things loose when working with established talent. His work on Taxi, the American remake of France's Luc Besson franchise series, may show he has some skill with a moving camera. But nothing indicates to me that he is prepared for the rigors of a film like The Fantastic Four.

My guess is that Fox is trying to play it a little safe, hiring a director they can keep on target with the $80 million budget they want… something that would likely preclude bringing in a really interesting director like David Fincher, Mark Romanek or even someone like Paul Thomas Anderson.

Even more stunning to me was Paramount's hire of Karyn Kusama to direct Aeon Flux, the futuristic, high-styled, Charlize Theron-starring MTV-cartoon-to-live-feature. Ms. Kusama is clearly very talented. But her only feature ever - EVER - was the no-budget Sundance hit Girlfight, which grossed even less at the box office for then fledgling Sony Screen Gems than its pick-up cost, not to mention marketing costs. In other words, a tiny art film that was a box office failure leads to… an $80 million big action assignment. Oy.

This brings me to a look at Paramount's 2004 line-up. The studio went to ShoWest this year, anxious to make its mark as "The New Paramount." The result was more than a little mixed.

The studio got a lot of rope from The New York Times' Sharon Waxman, who didn't seem to feel the need to question whether bigger budgets were really going to help the studio get out of the doldrums or whether the new anxiousness to get high profile projects rolling would make them the most popular sucker on the block. Case in point is the battle over Lemony Snicket's budget which, according to Waxman's reporting, took the budget from $110 million to $60 million before it ballooned up to an unwieldy $140 million. (Some on the Paramount lot still say Snicket is coming in under $120 million, but who can argue with the New York Times?) ""We want to send a message to the creative community that we will pay $125 million for a movie," Sherry Lansing told Waxman. Perhaps we should all make a list of studios that have had great runs with a bunch of $125 million movies. Unlike the Japanese, I don't think that Sumner Redstone is going to be real happy with great market share and mediocre returns if he is going to let loose another $250 million - $500 million a year for production.

That said, let's take a look at the year to come.

SMASH HIT
Lemony Snicket's An Unfortunate Series of Events - $250 Million - The ShoWest reel segment was terrific. Jim Carrey looks like he is going to deliver a comedy performance that could actually get him a Supporting Actor nomination. And Brad Silberling's directorial obsession with death and despair seems like a perfect fit… and we haven't seen more than a morsel from this one (which is still shooting) yet.

THE DISASTERS
Sahara - $17 Million - The cast is wrong, the tone seems deaf and the mélange of genre flavors already leaves a chalky aftertaste.

Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow - $37 Million - I could always be dead wrong on this, but the more of it I see, the more of a gimmick it seems to be. And in an era of some of the most remarkable digital gimmicks ever seen by man, emotional distance plus intentionally cheesy style equals a decent opening weekend and a lot of people willing to wait on very long lines for Spider-Man 2 on Sky Cap's second weekend.

THE SOLID SUCCESSES
What's It All About? Alfie - $73 Million - I don't care what the testing says, give up on this idiotic neither-fish-nor-foul title treatment. But that's the downside. The upside is Jude Law in the rare movie star type role, looking like a 100 million dollars and ready to draw women like flies, on screen and into the theaters. I don't know what the budget is, but it is surely less than half of $125 million, which is great.

Mean Girls - $64 Million - The ShoWest reel was not as good as I get the feeling the movie really is. But this problem can be fixed. It's a clear genre play in the Jawbreaker/Heathers mold. Tina Fey is a media darling. And Lindsay Lohan is hotter than anyone had any reason to expect. No one really cares that we've seen it. If it's fun, we'll watch it over and over again.

Coach Carter - $58 Million - Samuel L. Jackson plays the real life tough-guy coach who changes lives. Sam Jackson is not quite Denzel at the box office. But he is beloved and if the film is solid single - which looks to be the least it is - Samuel L. will steal box office second.

THE HIGH PROFILE QUESTION MARKS
The Manchurian Candidate - $60 Million to $120 Million - You have a wonderful filmmaker in Jon Demme, a major movie star in Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep as the buzz for two Paramount-based Oscar nominations (thus and Snicket) and a movie that is revered by critics, but in reality, little seen by the public. The studio decision to go out on July 30 with this one indicates that they really believe that they have this year's Seabiscuit awards/box office entry. (Spielberg/Hanks' The Terminal is the other entry in the race for that berth this year.) The other thing being signaled is "money first." Sell the movie, then worry about awards season. (Demme was in the last Oscar race… with his doc, The Agronomist.) Interestingly, the only movie that will sate movie lovers' appetites for this kind of fare in July is The Bourne Supremacy… which opens open week before Manchurian. The trailer played very well at ShoWest. But there is no way that this thing is opening to more than $25 million opposite Shyamalan's The Village. So it is going to have to be terrific and be very leggy to get out of the cheap seats.

The Stepford Wives - $25 million - $75 million - There is nothing harder to achieve than what director Frank Oz, screenwriter Paul Rudnick and this talented cast are out to pull off. It's not a thriller anymore… but it is. It's a broad comedy… but it isn't. If it works, it will not be good… it will be great. But if it isn't good, it will be horribly, horribly bad. I guess that it's possible that this becomes a $100 million movie, but if it is the wonderful concoction that it might be, they will still have a brutal time selling it in the Midwest. Satire is what closes on Saturday night, right? Right.

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie - $35 million - $90 million - There are a lot of kids desperately waiting for this one to come out. But if it turns out to be nothing more than a long episode of the show, they won't come back over and over again. And the ShoWest reel, cute gags and all, suggests that this might be just that. The Powerpuff Girls Movie was one of the great marketing disasters of all time… they just didn't sell the damned thing. (It was also a second-class product.) The first Rugrats movie was a real sensation. Where will Spongebob squeeze in?

MAYBE, MAYBE NOT
Suspect Zero - $20 million - $90 million - A $30 million movie led by Sir Ben Kingsley and Aaron Eckhart and directed by E. Elias Merhige, this could be the kind of money-making machine that "Old Paramount" has been trying to cheap out for years now. The biggest change is that they didn't try to jam a $20 million name into it and kept the budget low enough so they could make real money if it plays well. Perhaps this should have been a part of the model of "The New Paramount…" fiscal responsibility, talented directors who work with smaller budgets and the occasional $125 million movie… no more than a year.

Without A Paddle - $10 million - $35 million - A cheapy, teen piece of junk…. but you never know. Based on what I've seen, I won't be seeing it, thanks.

FLYING BLIND
The Weatherman - This Nic Cage/Michael Caine drama, directed by Gore Verbinski, is still in production and there was nothing offered on the ShoWest reel to give us any clues. There are hopes that it's an Oscar movie. I don't know. Steve Conrad wrote it… but his Wrestling Ernest Hemmingway is a failed Oscar hopeful. I can't predict anything here with any reliability at all.

THE BOTTOM LINE
Nothing suggests to me that 2004 is going to be a banner year for Paramount. But they can get things started. The movies seem to be a little better overall. Sky Captain and Sahara could be this year's unmitigated disasters, but neither is going to leave a lasting stench. Not only will Lemony Snicket be huge, it will be at the end of this year, assuring that the Paramount team has some momentum going into 2005. If Manchurian Candidate can hold on for the awards season, that would be doubly joyous.

By my read, adding $70 million for the four Paramount titles already in release, this could be a $459 million year for the studio domestically or it could be a $694 million year. That $235 million difference in domestic gross, pushing into foreign release and ancillaries, could end up representing a swing of as much as $600 million in net income for the studio.

The irony is that this year's line-up, driven mostly by "Old Paramount" thinking, is just what Sumner Redstone had been ordering. No major embarrassments or losses. Modest budgets, even with overruns on a number of the bigger titles. And some real upside. Sherry Lansing is fighting for her life and she has turned the heads of a lot of industry folks who might otherwise be inclined to speak against the studio in their time of strife. But I still have to say, Karyn Kusama scares me to death as a symbol of where things are going. Let's all hope that my fear is unfounded and that genius lurks. Or the freedom to spend a little more aggressively could well be nothing more than the freedom to buy some very expensive rope.

READER OF THE DAY: Tigger The Tyger writes: "I'm sorry, but i can't really find a single thing to like about Hellboy. I don't see what's appealing about one-liners that have been done to death in a lot of other movies! I have never seen a movie pack more clichés into roughly 2 hours of film, nor have I seen a movie with a love story that goes nowhere! Come on, why does she like him, cause he's red?? they spend a whole TWO SCENES together through the entire movie! she goes from not wanting to see him anymore to falling in love with him (while also apparently having something going on with the white dude), with nothing of substance in between! And who wants to see someone fight the same thing OVER and OVER again? damn well not me.

The characters, individually, were the only redeeming thing about the movie. It sucked as an action movie, it felt so slow, as in the characters moved slow as hell from lots of makeup, big costume accessories, and the lack of an originally paced story. The good thing was the story had parts that felt like they needed more explaining, like more movies could be made to further detail the characters. I just hope it's not made this same way, Del Torro is so worthless as a writer, he needs to stick to directing only. I know the nerd crowd loved it "look, a big red guy killing monsters, my dream come true." yeah, i was looking forward to it too, only thing was i got nothing else to go along with it except worthless characters (except for Selma Blair's character, she had potential), BAD dialogue, a german assassin that did nothing but spin blades (how exciting), and let down by the sheer amount of this film that i've seen years and years before in countless movies. but oh wait, this is a "comic adaptation," new rules apply, i guess all the old stuff can be reused and suddenly we'll accept it as new. what a waste of possibilities."

But BROWN SAUCE DEELISH writes: "As much as opening weekend means nowadays, I have a feeling this movie is going to be the comic-book equivalent of "Greek Wedding". In that I have not heard such good word of mouth on a movie in this type of genre for years.

I have a feeling that this film might (and I say might) remind suits that movies like these can build legs and bring in the crowd for a bigger gross over a stretched out theatrical run, just like the good ol' days.

If Revolution was smart, they would kick up the P&R campaign and focus on the romance aspect and bring in the female crowd. All they have to do is play the scene where Hellboy tells Liz, (SPOLIER EXCISED). That's a great romantic scene for ANY movie!"

E ME: Am I being too tough on The Mountain? Too easy?