August 30, 2004

The weekend's box office brings up a number of poignant questions….

1. How big an opening is Hero's estimated $17.9 million launch?

In the context of big summer openings, it is not that big. But it is the fifth biggest launch in the history of Miramax, behind the two Kill Bills, the first two Scary Movies (a franchise which has become Dimension product in its most recent incarnation) and Spy Kids (which has been Dimension for both sequels). And with the exception of The Passion of The Christ, it is the biggest foreign-language opening ever. (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was platformed, but even so, on its road to its record $128 million run, no 3-day weekend grossed more than $8.7 million.)

It is, of course, impossible to know what will happen next. Will people discover that the film is more complex and more in Chinese than any of the advertising let on? Might that turn them on or turn them off?

We're in a lazy journalism cycle (with me leading the way in tardiness), as most of us are either in a late summer daze or on vacation, so most stories seemed to focus on the gross as being smaller than other summer grosses, but that is so not the story. It is only the third best start for a Jet Li-starring film here. But it was a record for the fourth weekend of August. And again… this is a foreign language film!

And Hero is not the only winner here. There is little question that Hero and Anacondas cannibalized one another. They are both heavily reliant on the same demographics, though Hero plays a little wider. That said, looking back five years, this one-two punch of new films set a new record for that fourth weekend in August… not by a little, but by $3 million or 11%.

The magic answer to how this all happened is that Miramax delivered a Miramax-style punch for the first time outside of the awards season in a while. They used the Tarantino brand, which not surprisingly is responsible for two of the four opening in Miramax history that were bigger than Hero's. They took aggressive advantage of Jet Li's domestic celebrity while Zhang Yimou was off choreographing the Chinese segment of the Olympic closing night ceremony… something they most definitively did not let the media in on before their movie opened. And they pushed hard for a movie that was fighting the odds.

I would still argue that Miramax fell into and did not expect their shocking win on City of God at the Oscars last year, no matter what the spin was after the nominations were announced. The movie did the heavy lifting for them, even as it was shunted to the side. A similar thing happened when In The Bedroom took five Oscar nominations even though the film was near the bottom of the Miramax list of awards season priorities… though one must take into account that they were out there working anyway… the film was not nearly as abandoned as City of God. Likewise, the huge win created by splitting Kill Bill, which was clearly a money move and not an aesthetic one, deserves praise and surprise, at least as far as degree. Now this.

One has to give the company credit, at the very least as a force of nature. And I would argue that the fear and loathing going on in the hallways of the company on both coasts actually worked to Hero's benefit. They just released the movie, used the Weinsteins' mighty marketing brains, the powerful marketing staff flexed, and they just released the movie. Miramax was built on selling movies that "couldn't be sold" with all the gusto that studios marketing high concept crap… and getting great results. And so it was with Hero. Voila!

This mindset may also leak onto The Aviator, which will be released by Miramax in December and which is assured not to be a Weinstein cutting room disaster a la Gangs of New York, since Harvey is contractually excluded from cutting room access. Yes, literally. If you are wondering how that is possible, you must recall that this Miramax release is not really a Miramax production. The vast majority of the money coming from Warner Bros. and the European company, Initial Entertainment Group.

So the answer to the question is, this is a huge event. Not only did the film probably take $10 million - $15 million out of Sony's cash pot for the year, but it reminded us of how a silk purse can be made from a truly incredible (I love this film) sow's ear.

2. Was Open Water ever going to do more than $30 million at the box office?

Open Water took a hard dive in its second weekend, falling an estimated 60% from its $11.4 million wide launch. People got the punch line… it ain't Jaws. But while some critics and others have dismissed the film utterly, I would argue that it is still a good time at the movies. It's just not the movie they are selling.

I've been looking for an analogous film to this one, but so far, I've been unlucky. The thing is, there are lots of films that sell one thing and deliver another. But there are few films that have been this hyped in the media and in marketing in this kind of circumstance. No one is surprised when AvP or Anacondas turns out to be a genre turd. They have their own followings and they were well marketed and you get what you convinced yourself you were paying for. But the media never jumped on board and said, "You have to see this one!" Movies like 28 Days Later or Bend It like Beckham, that got praise in the media and strong marketing, delivered what they promised.

Maybe Blue Crush is a workable analogous film. Strong praise from many critics who were surprised that the film was as good as it was, but the campaign for the movie sold it as something more than a beautifully shot version of Gidget Gets On The Pill. Teenage girls, who should have flocked to the film in big numbers were turned off by the emphasis on bikinis, while guys smelled a chick flick. So it got rediscovered on DVD.

Open Water is a festival movie that has a few shots of sharks in it… and for a festival movie made on a micro-budget, that was really cool. And at the risk of most women rolling their eyes again, it is quite unusual to see casual frontal nudity in an American indie… a stunt as valuable, even if subconsciously, as the sharks. (Most indies seem to be about sex, actually, though everyone is always talking about it and then having sex with all their clothes on. Young actors, quite reasonably, don't want to give up control of their nudity when they don't know whether it will pay, much less whether it pays up front in cash.) But the core of the movie is a couple under pressure and that is classic indie. In some ways, this could be a Cassavetes film. In some ways it was. (See: The Tempest, starring John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands, directed by Paul Mazursky and written by Shakespeare, Mazursky and Leon Capetanos.)

Anyway, my point is… $30 million theatrical… for a micro-budget movie that was picked up for under $3 million… those standees felt like more money, but Lions Gate shook that tree just about as hard as it could be shaken.

ONE MORE QUESTION: This is not about the weekend box office, but about a new TV series that premieres tonight and could change the face of the film business forever. The question is:

How is Father of The Pride going to effect the DreamWorks Animation IPO?

Well, if you ask me, I have to say I think this is going to be one of the greatest debacles in the history of television, right up there with NBC's multi-season commitment of Spielberg's Seaquest DSV (or is that SVU or CI?). But this could be much, much worse than Seaquest because there is no easy way to change the first season as audiences fail to connect with it. Animation requires a lot of lead time and most of the first season is effectively in the can. South Park manages to squeeze some topicality into their seasons because they have a lower budget and a shorter lead time and they get support in making changes as they go or the chance to squeeze out a "very special episode."

DreamWorks showed critics Episode Four (which airs first, tonight) and Episode One. So you already know they are looking for diamonds in the lion poop. And while a couple critics wrote that the writing just plain wasn't funny, I would argue that the problem is bigger than that. The key to sitcoms is characters you like. They have that. But animation disconnects the viewer from the performance of the likable actor. Or in reverse, it allows a not-as-likeable actor to be big enough to get your attention. Mike Myers was perfect for Shrek (as Chris Farley may well have been) because he is always in a cartoon. He doesn't work as an actor. He is great playing living caricatures.

John Goodman is a terrible animation star because his power is being big and performing small. In this giant man, the audience finds gentility and empathy. A reactor, which is what Cheryl Hines does so brilliantly on Curb Your Enthusiasm, doesn't work in animation. (Think about how forgettable Julie Andrews' Queen in Shrek 2 was…and Prince Charming for that matter.) Even the guest stars on tonight's shows… Lisa Kudrow and Andy Richter… both terrific performers… terrible for animation. You know who would have been a good whinny panda girl? Sarah Silverman or Fran Drescher. A good nervous panda guy? Woody Allen or Chris Rock or Jack Black or maybe even Woody Harrelson. Animation needs animated performances. And the FOTP team seems to think that hip choices or quality performers can overcome what are long-standing traditions in TV animation. There is a reason for those traditions. And there is reason why no animated hit has ever centered around a star, even though it is great money for relatively easy work for the actor.

The elephant in the room is, however, with a season in the can, unlike a live shot sitcom where you can trash episodes, don't work more than six in advance and have as much flexibility as a word processor and creativity allows, that you can't much fix this. That is one of the reasons why you haven't seen a CG sitcom before or even many imitators of The Simpsons. Sitcoms often change a lot before they really work. I would argue that M*A*S*H was better in its first season under Larry Gelbart, but it didn't become a smash until it simplified a bit. Family Ties was bought as a Meredith Baxter-Birney vehicle, but Michael J. Fox ate the show whole and by the middle of the first season, it had evolved into his show. Seinfeld's sputtering first season is almost unrecognizable from the meat of its run, as are the last two seasons when Larry David was not there. Even Seaquest DSV had a major overhaul and some hint of success before it sputtered into dry dock.

In addition, "we" all seem to agree that the show is seriously schizophrenic, shifting between cuddly creatures and adult gross out humor. But unlike South Park, Father Of The Pride doesn't have the courage to get really ugly. Moreover, animals telling sex jokes on a sitcom are every bit as cheesy as any human that the audience would not like to bed telling sex jokes on a sitcom. Monica could be an uptight pain in the butt on Friends because men are willing to put up with anything for sex with a hot girl and the guys were all so sexually non-threatening that their sex banter just made them "aw shucks" cute. The only regular family character on FOTP that really works is Carl Reiner's Dirty Old Grandlion and mostly because he is such an overt letch. He is the only brave play on the show, except for Sigfreid and Roy themselves, who against all odds are the most consistently good thing on the show. How many times we will laugh at them being fussy and gay and arrogant and vain-glorious and Eastern European, I don't know. But in small doses, it works.

Anyway, if this show tanks as dramatically as I expect it to, there will be a deleterious effect on the Animation IPO. And if Shark Tale opens to anything less than $30 million or fails to get to the $150 million mark, the IPO could die a premature death. Wall Street is already grumbling about the mixed results for the DreamWorks division in anticipation of the IPO. And with Shrek as the only clear major asset, there is the very real possibility that the studio will have to delay the IPO effort until after they get their next animated win. Their next animated film, Madagascar, is scheduled for next Memorial Day weekend. And I ain't lion.

READER OF THE DAY: DR. MD: "After checking out Hero over the weekend I was left with a couple of a thoughts: the first being that it must be incredibly windy in China considering there was probably not one shot in the film where the fighters billowing robes weren't gracefully flapping in the wind. It of course all looked stunning, but it got to be a little overdone for my taste. Still I enjoyed the film, and I think I would make this analogy: If Crouching Tiger was the Star Wars of Hong Kong action films, then Hero was the Space Odyssey: 2001. For all the shots of grief-stricken warriors contemplating their fateful decisions of honor, there really wasn't much emotion stirred in me. I, however, was near tears with the death of Chow Yung-Fat or Zhang Ziyi in Crouching Tiger.

I enjoyed the ethical decisions faced by Nameless and by Broken Sword and Flying Snow, it's rare to see Heroes in films have to make difficult choices. Usually the toughest choice for an action star is whether to use a revolver or an assault rifle.

Still, I am not surprised by the opening number. They are respectable but not eplosive. I don't think the movie will necessarily get good word of mouth from the young folks who watched The One and Romeo Must Die. Hero treats movie violence in an entirely new way: trying to make into poetry where the strumming of a guitar or the dripping of water has as much to do with the fight as the swords or spears. I don't think many young people will be excited by this sort of contemplative swordplay. . .

Don't get me wrong. I loved the movie. But as word gets out that this is a movie that'll actually make you think - not to mention follow multiple versions of the same story - the numbers will probably drop significantly this weekend. I'm not accusing movie audiences of being stupid: I just think, unfortunately, that the intelligent movie goer who the movie should be catering to isn't going to be seeing it."

E ME: Tell me...