'Gravity' holds strong amid weak box office

To no one’s very great surprise - albeit to much industry excitement - Gravity completed another successful box-office orbit this past weekend. With yet another $30 million haul, the intergalactic thriller has now earned over $170 million in domestic sales.  At 28%, its fiscal drop was a little steeper this weekend (compared with last weekend’s dip of 23%), but at this point in the film’s wildly successful run, focusing on five percentage points is akin to splitting hairs.

Furthering the déjà vu nature of today’s roundup, Captain Phillips again clocked in at No. 2. Tom Hanks’ suspense tale suffered from a larger slip in sales than Gravity did during its sophomore outing: Down 33%, to gross $17.3 million. In all, the Paul-Greengrass directed, modern day-pirate touting, Oscar-chasing Phillips has earned $53.3 million.

Unfortunately, it seems the rest of the domestic box office offered little audience incentive. Even with Halloween right around the corner, the lone horror feature, Carrie, proved itself unable to scare up business. The film didn’t perform nearly as poorly as the worst of the box-office naysayers had predicted Friday morning, though neither did it justify those optimists who thought (wished?) it could compete with Gravity. Instead, Carrie made an all right $17 million. Compared with Gravity, which skews slightly male, and Phillips, which draws an older crowd, those viewers who did see Carrie were mostly female (54%) and under the age of 25 (56%). Maybe it’ll fare better when it streams on Netflix?

Rounding out the top five (Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 took the No. 4 slot with another solid weekend, earning $10 million to boost its overall gross to $93.1 million) Escape Plan earned roughly $9.8 million. The mostly male audience (66%) was also mostly over the age of 30, neatly aligning the Stallone/Schwarzenegger vehicle with this weekend’s theme of “to no one’s great surprise.”

Well, almost no one. Even given The Fifth Estate’s middling reviews, fans of Benedict Cumberbatch may not have expected the film to fare quite as poorly as it did. Apparently, American audiences found little of interest in the Julian Assange/WikiLeaks feature. The Fifth Estate raked in just $1.5 million, earning the lowest gross of any film that opened in over 1,500 theatres this year.

Thankfully for Cumberbatch, his other movie out this weekend, 12 Years A Slave, managed to exceed expectations. On Friday we speculated the film might make $30,000 or so at each of its 19 locations. This morning we learned Steve McQueen’s latest, acclaimed feature averaged $50,000 per theatre. Its total weekend haul amounts to $960,000, a wonderful start for an art-house flick. Fox Searchlight will screen the film in 100 more theatres this coming weekend.

Fellow critical darling All Is Lost may end up competing with Slave at the Academy Awards, but it proved itself a weak opponent at the box office. Robert Redford’s one-man drama took in just $97,400.

To pull the camera out, so to speak, and take a wider view of this weekend’s earnings: Those films that made up the top 12 earned a total of $96.4 million. Even given the endurance of Gravity’s run, that number still signals a 20% drop in earnings from this time last year. Let’s see if this coming weekend can improve October’s outlook.

Reese Witherspoon will tame her image with 'Wild'

Reese Witherspoon has long been a favorite star of mine. As a teen, I followed her through her performances in Cruel Intentions, Election, and Legally Blonde. She's since won an Oscar for Walk the Line, while appearing in romantic comedies like Sweet Home Alabama. Then she got arrested for arguing with a cop while her husband was pulled over for a suspected DUI. Her star image took a bit of a hit, although compared with the Lindsay Lohans and Amanda Bynes of the world, she's barely done a thing. Back in the early days of Hollywood, studios carefully controlled a star's image, but Witherspoon's crew of handlers must be taking a cue from that era's meticulous management with her next role. It can't be a coincidence that Witherspoon will be playing a messed-up woman in search of redemption by starring in Fox Searchlight's Wild.

Wild, based on a book by Cheryl Strayed, recounts the author's trek up the Pacific Crest Trail when she was in her mid-twenties. Strayed's mother had recently passed away, she and her husband divorced after her numerous infidelities, and she had even been dallying with heroin, thanks to her drug-addicted new boyfriend. She's outdoorsy, but no hiker, which made her relatable, frank account of being sore, lost, and exhausted skyrocket to the top of the bestseller lists. For Witherspoon, it's perfect casting, mirroring (albeit in less extreme ways) the star's own need for redemption from the public.

There's one minor quibble. In the book, Strayed is just 26 when she hikes the trail. Witherspoon is 37. She does look young, and the level of drama (mother's death, divorce, drugs) in Strayed's life at 26 could easily be believable at 37, but it's worth pointing out.

Witherspoon is also producing the feature. Her team hired Nick Hornby, who wrote a number of books that have been adapted into movies, including About A Boy, and also penned the screenplay for Carey Mulligan's breakout movie, An Education, to do the adaptation. If all goes well, it looks like this movie will pick up a director sometime between now and fall, when the production will begin filming.

 

Fox Searchlight picks up 'Beasts,' 'Surrogate' at Sundance

For film buffs not attending the Sundance Film Festival, the hardest part is hearing the great raves for a film you might not be able to see for months, if not a year. This year's Sundance market has been hot for pickups. Fox Searchlight has picked up two high-profile films so far at the festival. Fortunately, both are set to release theatrically later this year.

Beasts of the Southern Wild. The director of this movie, Benh Zeitlin, actually graduated from my college a couple years before me. His talent was evident. His thesis film, "Egg," a stop-motion, silent, animated recreation of Moby Dick taking place inside an egg that itself was about to be destroyed, was a sight to behold. It later won the Grand Jury Prize at Slamdance. 

Beasts reportedly has a similar fantastical bent, with Variety calling it a "stunning debut" and THR naming it "one of the most striking films ever to debut at the Sundance Film Festival." Set in New Orleans and starring a poor black girl, the movie likely offers oblique commentary on the post-Katrina landscape. Fox Searchlight paid $6 million for the pickup, a high but not record figure.

The Surrogate. John Hawkes stars as a man confined to an iron lung who wants to lose his virginity. The plot sounds sad, but THR reassures that the movie is more similar to The King's Speech than The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. In his review, Todd McCarthy characterizes the 1980s-set movie as a "feel-good fairytale," a "cheerful" story that "argues in favor of living a full life, whatever one’s personal constraints." Still, an iron lung sounds tougher to market than a king with a lisp, but the message could have a nice awards resonance. Searchlight is also planning a 2012 release.

I'll continue to report on the Sundance films that have been picked up to open in a theatre near you.

Early Oscar Buzz: Natalie Portman for Best Actress in 'Black Swan'

By Sarah Sluis

Since Black Swan debuted at the Venice Film Festival, the movie has been getting pretty consistent raves. It's no Toy Story 3, with a 99% Rotten Tomatoes approval rating, but the divisiveness engendered by the film seems to mostly fall in the "quibble" category, or evidence of serious engagement with the movie. And five out of six reviewers gave it a positive review at the festival.

Natalie Portman's acting in the movie has received the most buzz. Her "bravura performance," according to Kirk Honeycutt at The Hollywood Reporter, serves the kind of intensely psychological role that the Oscars love to reward. She has delusions, scratches nervously until she bleeds, and deals with a creepy, domineering mother (Barbara Hershey, who I'll always remember for her role in Boxcar Bertha). She also studied ballet for months for the part, which is almost enough to put her in that "physical alteration for-the-win" category. It worked for the fattened, uglied Charlize Theron in Monster and Nicole Kidman with a fake nose piece in The Hours!

It's also worth noting that the director, Darren Aronofsky, helped both Mickey Rourke and Marisa Tomei land acting nominations for his last film, The Wrestler. At this point, no one is screaming "Oscar" for the film itself, although it could be a contender depending on the competition.

As an actress, Portman has received one nomination before, for Closer--a so-so movie, in my opinion. She's shied away from light,

poufy roles (the closest she's come to a romantic comedy is Garden State and Where the Heart Is, both of which are more romance-comedy-dramas). Besides Closer, she starred in last year's Brothers, a would-be awards film that never took off. She may be getting to the point where an Oscar is due to her if she keeps making such serious, well-acted films.

If Portman doesn't win an Oscar for Black Swan, it looks as if her performance may line up other Oscar-worthy roles for her. Alfonso Cuaron reportedly wants her to replace Angelina Jolie in Gravity, a 3D space movie that would involve her spending long periods of time on screen alone, like Tom Hanks in Cast Away.

Black Swan opens December 1st through Fox Searchlight.

Perturbed by Disturbia

By Sarah Sluis

Disturbia, last year's knockoff of Rear Window, a fact mentioned by every critic to review the film, Film Journal's included, has just been smacked with a lawsuit alleging that it ripped off the short story used for the plot of Rear Window.  DreamWorks (including its co-founder Steven Spielberg), its parent company Viacom, and Universal were named as defendants.  Given the similarity between the two films, it's embarrassing that this was just noticed.  In fact, a similar lawsuit was brought to court in 1998 by Sheldon Abend over television rights to Rear Window, so it's not as if this property has been lying unnoticed since 1954.  Abend, executive producer of Rear Window and owner of the rights, died in 2003, leaving Sheldon Abend Revocable Trust to do the job�and apparently the lawyers are sleeping on the job.

Mean Girls sidekick turned Mamma Mia! star Amanda Seyfried has taken a cue from her other Mean Girls co-star, Rachel McAdams (The Notebook), and signed onto a Nicholas Sparks adaption.  The film, Dear John, chronicles the romance between a do-gooder college student and a soldier on leave.  They fall in love the summer before 9/11, but their romance receives the ultimate test when John goes back overseas after the terrorist attacks.

Up in Toronto, the big news was Fox Searchlight's acquisition of The Wrestler.  With a nod to Mickey Rourke's has-been star persona, he plays a fading semi-pro wrestler who tries to connect with his daughter (Evan Rachel Wood) and a similarly aging stripper (Marisa Tomei) as his success in the ring diminishes.  The film, which won the Golden Lion at Venice, will release in the U.S. this December.  Just in time for Oscar season�could this be another De Niro in Raging Bull?