‘Thor’ proves its mighty earning mettle

As predicted, Thor: The Dark World ruled the multiplexes this weekend. The latest Marvel action (with a hefty dose of comedy) flick earned $86 million at the domestic box office and $180 million worldwide. It looks as if the lauded sequel will soon out-gross its predecessor: By the end of  summer 2011, Thor had earned a successful $450 million worldwide, while The Dark World has already amassed a stellar $327 million after only two weeks. Many are crediting Thor’s appearance in 2012’s The Avengers with increasing interest in his character. The “Avengers Effect” was certainly in play for Iron Man 3, which saw a significant boost in sales over Iron Man 2 (36%) after it opened post-Avengers. Not everyone is thrilled with what is undoubtedly a blockbuster debut, however. 3D attendance was down from the first Thor, and 3D sales made up just 39% of The Dark World’s overall gross, falling short of Gravity-influenced expectations. But that’s splitting hairs on a well-coiffed head. Lacking as it does any significant competition, Thor is expected to hold onto its title for some time.



Unfortunately for everyone else, standing next to a Norse god is bound to dwarf you.  This weekend’s No. 2, Bad Grandpa, earned just $11.3 million, down 44% from last weekend. The good news? Even with the inevitable dropoff, Grandpa is the second highest-grossing Jackass film of all time, on track to earn well over $100 million.

Third and fourth place just missed out-grossing Grandpa. Free Birds and Last Vegas earned $11.2 and $11.1 million, respectively. Their overall cumes are equally waddle-neck-in-neck:  Audiences have more or less ignored the critics and helped Free Birds earn $30.2 million and Last Vegas $33.5 million to date.



Dropping faster than an intergalactic deity to Earth, Ender’s Game suffered a sales dip of 62% to earn $10.3 million. That brings the film’s total up to $44 million, which, considering its advance hype, production costs and this weekend’s steep sophomore dropoff, qualifies it as a bomb. Expect the film to hang around for another week or two, but once Katniss and co. stage their multiplex takeover come November 22 for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Ender’s Game will be all but over.

Not so with Steve McQueen’s everyone-loves-it 12 Years A Slave. After expanding wide to 1,144 locations, Slave earned $6.6 million to bump its total earnings up to $17.3 million. The rollout, and profits, will continue this coming weekend when the film screens at roughly 1,300 theatres.



Finally, with the weekend’s smallest opening, The Book Thief earned a solid $108,000 from four locations. The film, though, isn’t tracking too hot on Rotten Tomatoes – 59% rotten – and Fox has yet to announce further expansion plans.

Natalie Portman to produce teen comedy 'Booksmart'

By Sarah Sluis

Sometimes movie projects just get better and better. Natalie Portman has signed on to produce teen comedy Booksmart via her Handsomecharlie productions. The project first came to my attention because of co-screenwriter Sarah Haskins, who has distinguished herself on web-based Current TV through a short called "Target Women." The popular segment makes fun of advertising targeting women, noting the popularity of gray hooded sweatshirts among moms in yogurt commercials, for example, and the hilarious ways hair products, laundry cleaners, cars and Swiffer mops are marketed to women. More intriguingly, she has skewered chick flicks, dating advice, and wedding shows. While she's sold a script before (Lunch Lady, which has Amy Poehler attached as a cafeteria worker by day, secret agent by night), Booksmart seems to fit more with what Haskins has been doing on "Target Women." In the screenplay, two "booksmart" high school girls decide to get boyfriends in time for prom. While at first glance this sounds like a PG-13 version of American Pie, this seems like the perfect plot template for Haskins' skewering of stereotypes, including the fact that all teen movies seem to be hagiographies for Senior Prom (please don't make the prom scene the third act). What I'm looking forward to are scenes where the girls pore over dating books and women's magazines (subjects Haskins has already done segments on), and take the advice to literal, and hilarious, results. Portman, who will be producing along with Annette Savich, has a track record of choosing more challenging projects (she's never starred in a "typical" romantic comedy), and, of course, she took time from her acting career to attend Yale.

The problem with chick flicks (including, who knows, this one) is that they have become so tied to genre and ancient formulas that they can't even deliver on their main appeal: to provide a protagonist that can be reasonably substituted for oneself (a fact that Haskins jokes about in her "chick flicks" segment, photoshopping her head onto a number of movie posters). A movie about two smart, funny best friends who (hopefully) are well-adjusted and need to do more than take off their glasses to find a guy (She's All That) sounds like a step in the right direction. I'm a twentysomething person working in media in New York City (the standard chick-flick set-up) and even I find 99.9% of these set-ups detestable, something I continually bemoan on this site. Perhaps Haskins, with her eye towards stereotype and convention, will be able to provide a much-needed respite from the chick-flick rut in Hollywood.

Oliver Stone and Michael Douglas will return for 'Wall Street 2'

By Sarah Sluis

Perhaps you recall that last October, Fox planned to fast-track a sequel to 1987's Wall Street. Well, six months later, they've resurfaced to announce that two of the originals are on board: Oliver Stone has agreed to direct, and Michael Douglas will reprise his Oscar-winning performance as Gordon Gekko.

Allan Loeb, who adapted the screenplay for 21 as well as upcoming film The Baster, has been writing the sequel, and apparently the strength of the story he turned in helped win over Stone to the project. THR mentions that this project has been in development for some time, and a quick check of IMDB reveals a project called Money Never Sleeps, which may be the script Allan Loeb rewrote, or chucked.

While details

of the movie, now titled Wall Street 2, have not been revealed, six months ago the plan was to pick

up Gekko's story after he is released from jail. Shia LaBoeuf is in talks

to play a newbie, Charlie Sheen-like character that Gekko mentors, much like in the original film.

No word on where the movie will position itself in the financial

crisis. Will it dial back a couple years and let the audience revisit

the collapse of all the major banks, or position the characters as

looking to profit from the recession? Production is on track to start this summer, which puts the film at a 2010 release, and Edward R. Pressman, who produced the first film, will also handle the second.

Still, one of the greatest liabilities of this project is what I'll call the Iraq War effect. Movies like The Lucky Ones were being put into production constantly when the war was a hot topic, only to open in empty theatres because the movies either seemed not relevant enough to someone totally separated from the war, or too close to home for those with friends and family involved in the war. Or, perhaps, maybe they just weren't good enough?

I saw the original Wall Street long after 80's excess had waved good-bye, but the film still worked for me because it made the 80's seem as epic and recognizable as the considerably more distant Roaring 20's. Plus, the film wasn't dependent on being a homage to the age: it had a great script, direction, and unforgettable performances. Will the sequel to Wall Street be able to position itself as timeless even as views on the financial crisis and recession continue to change? Stone's most recent film, W., managed to do well even when though it released October 17th, on the eve of the election, during a time when public opinion of the President could have swung in any direction. If anyone can handle a story that's giving a historical perspective on the modern day, it's Stone.

Fox wrests control of 'Watchmen' distrib rights from WB in preliminary ruling

By Sarah Sluis

Remember when you were a kid and sick of all your toys, and then a friend would come over, start having fun with one of your discarded toys, and all of a sudden it was "MINE!" But maybe the toy kind of

belonged to both of you, or one of you had left it at the other's house for a really, really, long time? That's kind of what's going on with Warner Bros. and Fox over Watchmen.

Watchmen had been an orphan child for years, shopped around to multiple studios by Larry Gordon, when Warner Bros. and Zack Snyder finally adopted it. As they completed production on the film, Fox filed suit, claiming that through a previous agreement, they should have been able to look at the package once Snyder came on board--Snyder being that red bow who would have finally made the movie appealing. In an expedited ruling (Warner plans--or planned--to release the film in three months), a judge ruled that Fox does have distribution rights. So how did this happen in the first place? Was this an oversight, a misinterpretation of complicated or vague legal documents, or a gamble to avoid the hassle of sorting out the rights, and as THR pointed out, a desire to avoid turnaround fees that Gordon might have had to pay in order to free the project from Fox?

The complexity surrounding this game of "dibs" makes all three scenarios likely. In any case, much was left unsaid: Gordon declined to testify, which aggravated the judge, a point he made clear when he awarded distribution rights to Fox.

What now? The judge's ruling is a bit Solomon-like: it cuts the baby in half. Warner has already started marketing the film in advance of its March 6th release date, which Fox now plans to block. Warner will appeal the ruling, and go to trial if necessary, but a trial would also delay the release date. A settlement seems the only way to avoid the gore of cutting the baby in half or moving to a less optimal release date

If Warner failed to properly secure rights, why didn't Fox try to contest its part-ownership of the project sooner? Reports differ--some say Fox did mention its claim to ownership over the project to Warner. Lawsuits are expensive, and the timing of the lawsuit--after the production finished--makes it seems as if Fox was gauging the cost/benefit of legal action for some time before deciding to file suit.

A couple other significant rights/turnaround issues have occurred in recent months: Twilight, a film with one of the highest returns on investment of the year, was plucked in turnaround by Summit after Paramount rejected the project. Earlier this year, the estate that owned the rights to Rear Window filed action against Disturbia, which reinterpreted the plot and placed Shia LaBeouf in the Jimmy Stewart role. Making Fox's timing look not so bad, the suit was filed a year after the film released, even though a simple Google search of "Rear Window + Disturbia" pulls ups tons of critical reviews pointing out the similarities between the two films.

The trial is scheduled for January 20th. Fox needs the film to be released in order to profit. For Warner, sharing rights would lead to a hefty cut in the profit: will the two studios be able to reach a settlement, or will they take their grievances to court?

'Wall Street' sequel in the works; Steve Martin third man in Meyers'-directed love triangle

By Sarah Sluis

 It was only a matter of time.  Fox plans to fast-track a sequel to Wall Street, that glorious Michael

Douglas and Charlie Sheen epic that made "Greed is Good" a catchphrase for years to come--with some using the phrase more facetiously than others.

As long as this film fulfills these three requirements, I would be sold:

1. Provide a delicious villain for the audience to burn in effigy.  The film plans to start with the Michael Douglas character back from jail.  I certainly don't want him to be "reformed" and just end up in cahoots with another bad guy.  Right now Americans are in no mood for redemption; I think most would prefer him to remain evil.



2. Explain the financial crisis.  Credit default swaps are tricky things.  The first Wall Street did a good job of explaining (what seemed to me) a complicated inside trading deal.  If nothing else, it provided technical "bomb defusing" dialogue that conveyed the degree of complexity of their deals.



3. Showcase Wall Street excess.  Everyone's heard about the AIG "top earners" spending $440,000 at the St. Regis after the bailout; I want to see that scene in the movie.

Steve Martin added to cast of Nancy Meyers comedy
The untitled Nancy Meyers romantic comedy has added Steve Martin to complete the love triangle between him, Alec Baldwin, and Meryl Streep.  Each of these three actors has a signature style and humor, but will all three be able to build off each other and not cancel each other out? 

Meyers' latest work The Holiday also juggled stars (four A-listers), but its young, half-Brit cast proved much more bankable abroad than at home.  Diane Keaton-Jack Nicholson picture Something's Gotta Give, was a huge hit, so it looks like Meyers is dialing up the age of her stars to replicate the success of the romantic comedy unique for NOT targeting twenty and thirtysomethings.