March 4 , 2005

Hero. Resident Evil: Apocalypse. The Forgotten. The Grudge. National Treasure. Coach Carter. Are We There Yet?. Boogeyman. Diary of a Mad Black Woman.

The Pacifier?

In fifteen of the last twenty five weekends at the box office, the Monday morning story has been "Surprise!," care of these nine movies. And I suspect that come Monday, there will be a tenth film and a sixteenth weekend, as box office mojos and gurus and geeks underestimate The Pacifier and probably overestimate Be Cool based on tracking. (I was amused to see one such box officer claiming on his page that his prognostications included no inside info… it's just based on past numbers… come on! Does he live in a box office cave?)

The surprises have varied in severity and longevity. I don't think anyone was shocked to see The Grudge "win" its first weekend, but the size of the number and the hold the film had was a shock, in and out of its distributing studio. National Treasure was underestimated. Coach Carter was forgotten by the media. And no one paid attention to the cultural phenomenon of Tyler Perry (except John Lippman & Lions Gate) until the wave had hit.

Are We There Yet? will pass $80 million in the next week. It is already Ice Cube's biggest hit and, given the numbers, it probably could have surpassed Daddy Day Care's numbers had it been released in the summer. Next up for Cube, the already being underestimated XXX2: State of The Nation, which I predict will push Anger Management as the second most successful April opener ever ($136 million domestic), both stuck forever behind The Matrix's $171 million run. (Note: Both XXX2 and Anger are from Revolution. This production entity is a classic metaphor for the current state of the industry… consistent box office success, but questionable profitability because of the cost of production and for its partner, Sony, because of the deal they made. But, consistent with the general movement around town, Revolution will soon be re-upping with Sony with a much more equitable deal for Sony. Joe Roth & Co. will still get rich, but the wealth will be better spread.)

Don't worry. This summer will be really loud and really expensive. But these ten surprise hits will soon become the template instead of the exception to the rule.

The reason the Brad Grey hire is beginning to look really interesting is not that Brad is going to change the world. It's because Tom Freston is going to make Brad Grey a key component in his plan to change the world. It's not the old model with a new driver. It's a brand new model. The production of movies is one piece of the puzzle. Marketing, where so much of the money is now spent, has its own very complex role to play. Integrating Viacom's media franchises is another key component. And it is Freston who will define how "the children" all play together, not Brad Grey.

There are versions of this model already. Freston will hope to "become" Fox's Peter Chernin and then surpass him. What Paramount has that Fox does not are extremely well-established cable arms that don't conflict with the film business, but can enhance them. Nick, MTV and even BET are powerful, useful brands. The danger for Freston is that no matter how smart his cable nets are, they aren't in the movie business right now, and while some cross over very effectively, not everyone does. In addition, how the marketing department is treated by the various players and how they interact is a challenge. Revolution steps all over Sony's marketing department and it has not been a comfy fit. Warners is a different marketing dept when Joel Silver or Clint Eastwood are involved. Brad Grey's skill at managing talent will surely be put to the test far more in behind the scenes bartering than in the public announcement and production of films.

But every one of the ten "surprise films" of the last half year could well be models for Paramount films of the near future. Kids, scares, art, urban… and,with one exception, cheap.

Meanwhile, Sony is already going down this track. Screen Gems is a cash machine. The new Tri-Star is beginning to look a lot more muscular than anyone expected it to be when it started. Sony Classics continues to bring prestige to the company… even if they keep wandering out of their strengths for mysterious reasons (if Almodovar made Thumbsucker, okay… but until then, it's not really what Sony Classics does best). Sony Rep is underutilized, in my opinion, but still it is there. Revolution fills a big chunk of the pipeline. And Amy Pascal's team is knocking out another bevy of Oscar-bait films for this fall.

Warner Bros. is about to have what may be its biggest year ever. The failure to build The WB into a "real" network continues to perplex, since it limits the cross promotional abilities of the company. Neither WB or Warner Indie have been able to launch anything off of the WB, either from or via the net, so far. No one should be better positioned to sell the Napoleon Dynamites of the world. They have the teen audience locked up three nights a week. But Mark Gill is still selling adult drama. And when they finally get what could be a home run ball, the very marketable The Jacket, what do they do? They put it out on the weekend where it can't win (this weekend) and avoid next weekend's wide open teen spaces (they are NOT going to see Robots) so they aren't butting up against Ring Two's record-breaking $50 million-plus start. .

Meanwhile, over at Disney, the $300 million figure the studio floated in the press a couple of weeks ago is starting to make a little more sense to me. The "New Miramax" is not going to be Miramax at all… it's going to be Dimension crossed with Touchstone. Remember, Disney decided about a year ago to slow Touchstone down and to focus more on family films again. $300 million is not an dependent indie division… it's New Line. And that's why going after Bill Mechanic made sense. (I feel the veil coming off of my eyes.) That's why the "New Weinsteins" will not be some indie guy, but is more likely to come from the same pool of people that Paramount was considering for what is now Brad Grey's job.

Universal has some outward signs of synergy with NBC, but nothing real yet… and perhaps not ever. The studio plays its own tune, mixing Working Title product with DreamWorks co-pro deals and then stuff that is purely their own. They have Nicole Kidman, Will Farrell and Russell Crowe coming in the spring and early summer, but after that, there is not a make-or-break film in sight until the holiday season… where they have a pile-up with Kong, Munich and the highly anticipated Jarhead. But the six movies in the middle… all the kinds of underdogs that could be highly profitable and won't hurt if they flop. Like WB, NBC does not have the cable brands that really can help the studio. As well as the studio is doing, it does have a gaping hole in the kids market. There is a lot of money there… but perhaps it just isn't worth chasing.

Anyway… surprise is the story. And the surprises will keep on coming as long as the media keeps thinking they are playing on the old Monopoly board.

Your move.

READER OF THE DAY: KB TOYS writes: "You wrote:

"It was pretty much as expected. I was happy to see Bob Richardson, who is rivaled only by Chris Doyle as the top cinematographer working today (with apologies to many, from Kaminski to tonight's nominees and on and on), win the award. He deserved it more for Kill Bill, but the Kate Hepburn sequences that played on the show, where the golfing grass was nearly blue… the man is a funky genius."

Well the only problem is that look was created in post by Rob Legato of Digital Domain fame. I honestly don't know what should happen to this category since digital intermediate is being done on so many films now. The simple fact is that if you have a properly exposed negative you can pretty much make it look like anything you want in post. There is a featurette on digital grading on the extended DVD of LOTR:FOTR that gives a pretty good look at just how much manipulation is possible."

E-ME: Move it or lose it!

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